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      Fenella | Project Gutenberg
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<body>
<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75372 ***</div>

<div class="titlepage">

<h1>FENELLA</h1>

<p><i>A NOVEL</i></p>

<p class="ph1">BY HENRY LONGAN STUART</p>

<p><i>Author of "Weeping Cross"</i></p>

<p>"NAY, MY MOTHER CRIED: BUT THEN THERE WAS<br>
A STAR DID DANCE AND BENEATH IT<br>
I WAS BORN"</p>

<p><span class="smcap">Garden City</span><br>
<span class="smcap">New York</span><br>
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br>
1911</p>

<p>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION<br>
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN</p>

<p>COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY</p>

</div>

<hr class="chap">

<h2>CONTENTS</h2>

<table>
<tr><td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><a href="#PART_I">PART I</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#I">Morgengabe</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#II">Shadows Before</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#III">An Eclipse</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#IV">To Introduce Paul Ingram</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#V">"Sad Company"</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#VI">A Child Speaks the Truth</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#VII">Mostly Lady Anne</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#VIII">The Second Floor</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">IX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#IX">Sharland College</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">X.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#X">"The Way of a Maid"</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XI">An Interlude</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XII">Richmond Park</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XIII">Find Soul—Find Sorrow</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XIV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XIV">Athea Rees</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XV">History of a Conversion</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XVI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XVI">Hoa-haka-nana-ia</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XVII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XVII">The Continental Express</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XVIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XVIII">Amende Honorable</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><a href="#PART_II">PART II</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#Ia">Financial Intelligence</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#IIa">Two Telegrams</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#IIIa">In the Firelight</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#IVa">An Affair of Outposts</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#Va">Cicispeo</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#VIa">The Benefit of the Doubt</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#VIIa">A Dress Rehearsal</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#VIIIa">Lady Anne's Deposition</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">IX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#IXa">The Man at the Wheel</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">X.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#Xa">Monsieur de Valbonette</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XIa">"<i>Inextricabile Error</i>"</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XIIa">A Catastrophe</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XIIIa">New Wine—Old Bottle</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XIV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XIVa">Some Theories and a Way Out</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XVa">A Last Wish</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XVI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XVIa">Azrael</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XVII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XVIIa">A Dream Comes True</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XVIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XVIIIa">Ice to the Moon</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XIX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XIXa">The Wages</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><a href="#PART_III">PART III</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#Ib">The Baths of Apollo</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#IIb">Lightning in the Fog</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#IIIb">Valedictory</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#IVb">Something Like Cloves</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#Vb">A Very Vulgar Chapter</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#VIb">Genealogical</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#VIIb">The Waiting-Room</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#VIIIb">'Twixt Shine and Shade</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">IX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#IXb">Beaten at the Post</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">X.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#Xb">A Year and a Day</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#XIb">Two Grains of Hope</a></td></tr>
</table>


<hr class="chap">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_I">PART I</h2>
</div>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="I">I</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">MORGENGABE</p>


<p>Like the sudden, restless motion of a sleeper, a wave, marking the
tide's height, broke out of the slumberous heart of the sea, and
laid its crest low along the beach. Fenella, who had been swimming
to shore, rose in the foam, like that other woman in the morning of
the world, and began to walk slowly, wringing the salt water from her
hair, toward the bleached bathing hut that stood, by itself, under a
shoulder of the dunes. The backwash of the wave swirled past her bare
ankles as she walked. Beyond the strip of beach that it had covered
with weed and spume, the sand was hot and loose as ashes to the soles
of her feet. The noontide sun seemed to rob the earth at once of
motion, of sound, of color. It grizzled the long sharp grass with
which the sand hills were sparsely covered, quenched the red roofs of
the little cream-walled fishing village, and turned the watered lawn,
which lay at the foot of the flaunting summer hotel quarter of a mile
inland, to a level smudge of dark green. All sound was stilled—all
movement in suspense—all beauty, even, deferred. At such an hour, the
supreme of the sun's possession of the earth, none can stand, alone
and without shelter in its untempered light, and not realize that he
is intercepting an elemental force as relentless as it is impersonal.
Upon these barren, ragged edges of the earth, where the land casts
its detritus upon the sea, and the sea casts it back, transformed,
upon the land, it is felt to be what it truly is—a power that blights
as well as fosters—death no less than life. All that has its roots
firmly fastened in the soil—that has a purpose unfulfilled—fruit to
bear—pollen to sow, feels the impulse—spreads, aspires, swells, and
scatters. All that is weak or ephemeral—whose purposes are frustrated
or whose uses past, turns from that light and fervor—withers—bows its
head—wilts at the fiery challenge. To it the sun is a torch—the earth
an oven—noontide the crisis of its agony.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>At the door of the gray bathing-hut the girl turned, and, bracing
herself, with her arms against her wet sides, to which her dark tight
bathing-dress clung sleek and shapely as its pelt to a seal, stood
for a moment looking out to sea. Her bosom rose and fell quickly, but
without any distress; her heart beat high with the sense, so rare to
women until of late, of physical powers put to the test. A mile out,
the fishing-boat to which she had swum—whose very bulwarks she had
touched—seemed to hang like some torpid bat—its claws hooked onto
the line where sea and sky met. She caught her breath at sight of the
distance she had ventured: nothing in her life, she felt, had been
pleasanter than this—to stand with the sun on her shoulders, the warm
sand over her toes, and to measure with a glance the cold, treacherous
and trackless space which, stroke by stroke, she had overcome.</p>

<p>Suddenly, and as though she remembered, she turned and looked inland.
High up on the dunes to her left a little black shadow spotted the
gray, reed-streaked expanse. Fenella waved one brown arm toward it, and
throwing back the wet hair from her forehead, peered anxiously under
her hand for some signal in reply. Apparently it came, for her face
changed. Something that had been almost austerity went out of it and
was replaced by a look so full of tender concern that the long-lashed
eyes and sensitive mouth seemed to brim over with it. A moment later,
and amid a charming confusion which draped the pegs and benches of
the hut, she was humming a waltz tune softly as she dressed. The
happy, interrupted melody filled the hot silence like the song of a
honey-seeking bee.</p>

<p>The blot upon the dunes was cast by a white sketching umbrella, lined
with green, whose long handle, spiked and jointed, was driven deep into
the loose soil. Near it, but somewhat away from the shadow, which the
southward roll of the earth was carrying farther and farther from his
shoulders, a man was sitting. He sat, with knees drawn up and with his
hands clasped across them, staring out upon the colorless ocean, over
which a slight haze was beginning to drift. A gaunt, large-framed man,
but with a physical economy in which fat had no place. The skin upon
the strong hands and lean neck was brown and loose, as though years of
exposure to a sun, fiercer and more persistent than that to which he
heedlessly bared his head now, had tanned it for all time. His hair,
thick, crisp, and grizzling at the temples, was cropped close over a
shapely head. A short beard, clipped to a point, left the shape of the
chin an open question, but his moustache was brushed away, gallantly
enough, from the upper lip, and showed all the lines of a repressed and
unhappy mouth. The prisoner, his dungeon once accepted, sets himself to
carve the record of his chagrins upon its walls; no less surely will
a soul, misunderstood and checked in its purposes, grave the tale of
its disappointments upon the prison-house of the flesh. On the face
that confronted the ocean now, infinite sadness, infinite distaste were
written plain.</p>

<p>He was oddly dressed, after a <i>bizarre</i> fashion which complexity,
eager, we must suppose, for such simplifications as are within its
reach, occasionally affects. A coarse canvas smock, open at the throat,
such as fishermen wear, and dyed the color of their sails; corduroy
trousers of brown velvet, coarse gray knitted socks, that fell in
careless folds round his ankles and over the low iron-shod shoes. Under
all this uncouth parade one divined rather than saw fine linen.</p>

<p>Suddenly that view of the ocean in which was so little present help
was blotted out. From behind him two hands, cool and a little clammy
from prolonged immersion in salt water, were covering his eyes. Yet for
a while he did not move; possibly he felt the eclipse a grateful one.
It was not until the girl who had stolen upon him so silently shook him
gently and whispered in his ear that he took the hands from his eyes,
and, still without turning, laid them against his lips.</p>

<p>He might well have turned. For Fenella, one would think, would be
always worth another look. She was quite beautiful, with the precision
of color and texture that makes beauty for the artist, and sometimes,
be it said, obscures it for the general. She was pale, but not from
any retrenchment of the vital flame which burned, clear and ardent, in
her gaze—glowed in the red of her moist and tremulous mouth. Her eyes
were set full and a little far apart, and fringed with lashes that were
of an almost even length and thickness on the upper and lower lids.
Her face, broad at the temples and cheek bones, sloped to her chin
with a slight concavity of the cheeks, in which a sort of impalpable
dusk, that was not shadow, for no light killed it—nor bloom, for her
tint was colorless as a lily, and which was probably caused by the
minute and separately invisible down of the skin, seemed immanent. Her
hair, fine, abundant, and nearer black than brown, grew low and made
all manner of pretty encroachments upon the fair face. There was a
peak of it in the centre of her forehead, and two little tufts waved
near the temples which no mode of hairdressing had ever managed to
successfully include. Her neck was slight and childish—her breasts
scarcely formed, but her hips were already arched, of the true heroic
mould of woman, and the young torso soared from them with the grace and
strength of a dryad. Beyond all, face and figure possessed the precious
and indefinable quality of romance. Fenella upon the Barrière du Trône
in the livid light of a February morning—long, damp curls in which a
little powder lingers drooping upon her slender shoulders: Fenella in
<i>côte-hardie</i> and wimple, gazing over moat and bittern-haunted
moorland from an embrasured château window of Touraine: Fenella
in robe of fine-fringed linen, her black hair crisped into spiral
ringlets, couched between the hooves of some winged monster of Babylon
or Tharshish, with the flame of banquet or sacrifice red upon her
colorless cheek. All these were imaginable.</p>

<p>She sank gracefully upon her knees in the yielding sand, and, putting
her hand across the man's shoulder, laid her cheek to his. The
spontaneity of the action and its tacit acceptance by her lover—for
he neither moved nor checked his reverie on its account—were eloquent
of self-surrender, and a witness also to the truth of the observation
that, in affairs of the heart, there is one who proffers love and one
who endures it. But she was over-young and over-fair to know the chill
of the unrequited kiss already.</p>

<p>"Are you still worrying, Paul?" she asked after a while, "still vexed
and disturbed? You needn't answer. Your forehead was all gathers and
tucks just now when I came behind you: I could feel every wrinkle. Tell
me, this minute," with playful peremptoriness; "was he anxious about
his young lady?"</p>

<p>"A little," her lover answered. "It's natural, isn't it?"</p>

<p>"But, dear, I swim so strongly," she pleaded. "There's no current when
the tide's at flood. And, oh! Paul, it was such <i>fun</i>. I swam
out to that fishing-boat you can <i>just—barely—see</i>. Look!"
and she turned the listless head with her hand; "it's over there. I
can tell you the exact number: <i>B759 Boulogne</i>. That shows I'm
not fibbing, doesn't it, Mister Ingram. I hung onto the side and
called out, '<i>Woilà!</i>' Have you ever noticed you can't say 'V'
when your mouth's full of saltiness? And the man was so scared. He
crossed himself twice, poor old soul, and his pipe nearly fell into
the sea. Can't you imagine what he'll say when he gets home '<i>Cette
Anglaise!—quelle effrontée!—quelle conduite!</i>' Now, who says I
can't speak French?—Oh! Paul; why aren't you a swimmer?"</p>

<p>"It wasn't quite such fun watching you," said Ingram; "the sea's such a
big thing. Why, your head looked no bigger than a pin's out on all that
water. Things happen so easily, too."</p>

<p>The girl felt him shiver, and tightened her hold on his shoulder.</p>

<p>"And you've such an imagination to plague you; haven't you, Paul? Oh
dear! Well—here's the pin sticking into you again: here's the head
back, safe and sound, light and empty as ever. Isn't it hard luck for
you?" And she laid it on his shoulder.</p>

<p>"Would you rather I didn't swim out so far again, Paul?" she asked
presently, in a softened voice.</p>

<p>"Why should I break your spirit?" the man argued, more reasonably,
perhaps, than he intended.</p>

<p>"Oh, but it isn't worth it if it worries you," his sweetheart said
earnestly. "Nothing's worth that, when you have so much to bear
besides. I've had my foolish way and now I promise you I'll paddle with
you, dear old muff, in two feet of water all the rest of the holidays."</p>

<p>Ingram turned to her now. "Nelly, I don't want to disappoint you,
but—but, there won't be any 'rest of the holidays' for us this summer."</p>

<p>She looked into his face; her own alarmed and pleading.</p>

<p>"You're not going, Paul? Oh, you promised to stay on until we all went
back together."</p>

<p>"I know, I know," he answered, with an impatience that was none the
less real because it was the expression of his reluctance to give pain.
Silken bonds strain at times.</p>

<p>"Something has happened then, since last night? What is it, dear?"</p>

<p>"I had a letter this morning. It had been waiting at the
'<i>Arrêt</i>.'"</p>

<p>"A letter at last! Oh! Paul—Why didn't you tell me? Is it good news?"</p>

<p>"Only a straw; but then, I'm a drowning man."</p>

<p>"Tell me! Tell me!" the girl insisted.</p>

<p>"It's from Prentice; the man you saw in Soho the night before we came
away. He's taken my MSS. to Althea Rees."</p>

<p>"You mean the woman who writes those queer books where every one talks
alike."</p>

<p>"What does it matter? The talk's all good. Anyhow, she's 'struck.'
Some one's actually struck at last. She's going to try and make her
own publishers do something. But she says she must see me first, and
Prentice thinks she's only passing through London."</p>

<p>Fenella's face clouded and was so far from expressing enthusiasm that
her lover looked at her rather ruefully.</p>

<p>"You don't seem very glad, Nelly."</p>

<p>Nelly kept her eyes averted. She had already taken her head from his
shoulder.</p>

<p>"I shouldn't care to publish anything," she declared slowly. "Not—that
way."</p>

<p>As though he had been waiting for her words, Paul Ingram sprang to
his feet. All his impatience and dissatisfaction seemed to boil over.
He began to pace the dunes like a caged animal, kicking the sand from
his feet and tugging fiercely at the grizzling beard that was a daily
reproach to his lack of achievement.</p>

<p>"That way! that way!" he repeated. "But isn't even 'that way' better
than no way at all? I tell you, Nelly, I'm discouraged, aghast, at
this conspiracy to keep a man bottled up and away from the people
for whom his message is intended. I haven't written like all these
clever—clever people; after a morning's motoring, and an afternoon
'over the stubble,' isn't that the expression?—three hours every
day, while the man is laying out the broadcloth and fine linen for a
dinner at eight. What I did was done with as much sweat and strain as
that shrimper uses down there, who's getting ready to push his net
through the sand as soon as the tide turns. And when the work is done,
between me and my public a soulless, brainless agency uprears itself
that weighs the result by exactly the same standards as it would weigh
a tooth-paste or a patent collar stud or a parlor game—as a 'quick
seller.'"</p>

<p>He would have said more, but Fenella was at his side, trying to reach
his lips with the only comfort the poor child had.</p>

<p>"Oh! Paul," she cried; "be patient just a little longer. Publish how
you can! I wasn't blaming you, dear. I only meant that—that working as
you do, it was only a question of time and you'd succeed without any
one's help. I don't feel uneasy or impatient about you."</p>

<p>Ingram sat down again, a little ashamed of his outburst, but his face
was still bitter.</p>

<p>"Just so," said he. "And it's precisely your limitless, superhuman
patience that's doing more than anything else to kill me by inches. It
would be a relief if you'd lose it sometimes, curse me—reproach me for
the failure I am. After all, how do you know all these duffers aren't
right? They're wonderfully unanimous."</p>

<p>Fenella sat silent for a few minutes, not resenting his words, but
racking her brain for some comforting parallel that would ring true and
not be repulsed.</p>

<p>"Do you remember, Paul," she said at last, "the story we read together
at Christmas about Holman Hunt? How he got so sick of the unsold
pictures hanging in his studio that he turned them all with their
faces to the wall? And yet one of those pictures was the 'Light of the
World.'"</p>

<p>But Ingram, even if he had an equal reverence for the work in question,
which I should doubt, was not an easy man to console. He brushed the
poor little crumb of comfort impatiently aside.</p>

<p>"There's no comparison at all," he declared. "A picture painted is a
picture painted. A glance can take it in, and a glance recover for
the artist all the inspiration and joy in his work that filled him
when he painted it. But what inspiration is there in a bundle of
dog-eared manuscript, that comes back to you with the persistence
of a cur you've saved from drowning? Besides, every artist worth the
name has his following, however small, who help him—flatter him
perhaps—anyhow, keep him sane. There's no unwritten law against
showing a canvas. But the unpublished author—the un-acted play
writer—is shunned like a man with the plague. Oh! don't I know it?"</p>

<p>Fenella gave a weary little sigh. Amid all this glorified space,
just to be alive seemed to her simple soul a thing to be deeply and
reverently thankful for. Her own blood was racing and tingling in her
veins, with the reaction from her long swim. She wanted to run, to
sing; above all, she wanted to dance. As for books, her own idea of a
book was a very concrete one, indeed. She knew that whole rooms were
filled with them, bookstalls littered by them, libraries building
everywhere to catch the overflow. She was familiar, for reasons that
will appear in their course, with the reading-room at the British
Museum. She had confronted that overwhelming fact. And yet, one book
could mean so much to this man that, for its sake, the holiday she had
so joyously planned had gone to pieces. The truth must be told. She had
to draw a rather big draft upon her love and loyalty.</p>

<p>"When are you going?" she asked, in a little flat voice.</p>

<p>"I ought to have caught the mid-day boat from Boulogne," the man
answered, with a briskness that sounded ungratefully in her ears. "But
it's too late for that to-day. There's another at six or seven. They
stop the Paris train for you here if you signal."</p>

<p>"Don't go till to-morrow, Paul," she urged patiently. "There's the
eclipse to-night, you know, and you promised we should watch it
together. Then we can talk things over quietly. I want—oh, I want
<i>so</i> to help you! I have a sort of foolish plan in my own
head, but I'm afraid you'll laugh at it.... And there's poor mummy,
struggling over the sand with our luncheon. Run and help her, dear."</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="II">II</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">SHADOWS BEFORE</p>


<p>Mrs. Barbour was a comely, wholesome-looking body upon the descending
slope of fifty. Her face, like her daughter's, was of the <i>teint
mât</i>, and her homely English figure had what a flippant mind has
described as a "middle-aged spread" in its proportions. Her large
oval brooch, a cunning device in hair, proclaimed to these skilled in
rebus that without a cross there was no prospect of a crown, and a
black bonnet of low church tendencies, trimmed with little jet-tipped
tentacles that quivered and danced when she moved her head, honorably
crowned her abundant silver locks. She had declined Ingram's proffered
aid with a tenacity often to be noticed in those who have given hard
service all their lives, and as she drooped with weary finality
upon the sand, various parcels, string-bags, and small baskets were
distributed to right and left.</p>

<p>"Oh dear," she gasped breathlessly; "those dreadful, dreadful dunes."</p>

<p>"Have they tired you very much, mummy?" the girl asked concernedly, as
she unfastened the lavender bonnet-strings.</p>

<p>"The sand is so loose to-day with the great 'eat—<i>heat</i>." Mrs.
Barbour added the corrected version with almost lightning rapidity. One
of her peculiarities, which it is sufficient to have indicated once,
was a constant snatch at evasive aspirates. They can scarcely be said
to have really dropped; she caught them before they fell.</p>

<p>"No, Nelly," the good lady went on, while Ingram unravelled the
mysteries of the string-bag, and gathered driftwood for the fire.
"Here we are in France, where you've always wanted to be; but, another
year, if I'm consulted, Bognor or Westgate for me, my dear. Two hours'
comfortable travelling"—Mrs. Barbour ticked off the advantages of home
travel on her fingers one by one, and unconsciously quoted some railway
placard she had seen—"no Channel crossing, no customs, and the sea at
your door. And even when you've come all this way, no amusement, unless
you call a horrid Casino amusing, where grown men, and women who ought
to be sent home to finish dressing, make donkeys of themselves over
little lead horses."</p>

<p>"There's very good music there in the afternoon," Paul hazarded, who
was shaving a stick into kindling after the fashion of the Western
plains.</p>

<p>"Music—yes; but nothing really tuneful. Do you remember the Elite
Pierrots at Westgate, Nelly, last year, with the blue masks. That
dark-haired one, my dear, who used to sigh for the silvery moon and
cough so terribly in the intervals. Don't tell me he wasn't some one
in disguise. No! I hold to what I've said. The French don't understand
amusement."</p>

<p>The fire was lit, the kettle boiled, and luncheon eaten amid such
conversation as a garrulous old woman and two very preoccupied people
could contrive. Nelly was particularly silent, and had lost, besides,
what her mother was pleased to term her "sand appetite." The talk
ranged hither and thither listlessly. Paul's inability to swim, so
strange in a man who had girdled the earth, was discussed in all its
bearings till it could be borne no longer; the lurid history of Simone,
Mrs. Barbour's strapping, smiling bonne, unmarried and unmoral, was
matter for another half-hour. Followed various excursions into the
obvious, and a list of "discoveries" made that morning. Mrs. Barbour
collected facts like shells, and made some very pretty castles with
them, too, at times.</p>

<p>"... and Nelly, I believe I know who the two gentlemen are that you had
your adventure with yesterday."</p>

<p>Ingram raised his head at the two odious words very much as a horse
would do if you were to explode two fog signals under his nose in
succession; quickly enough, indeed, to intercept a warning and
reproachful glance that the girl sent her mother. Mrs. Barbour clapped
both hands playfully over her mouth. "Oh! now I <i>have</i> done it!"
she exclaimed. Her eyes snapped with, perhaps, a shade more of malice
than a kind-hearted old lady's should ever hold. Without being a
scheming or a worldly woman, she resented a little, in her heart, the
monopoly which this man had established over her child; a man so alien
to her in thought, so sparing of speech, so remote from her ideal,
which, diffuse enough in all truth, would perhaps have found it nearest
realization just now in some florid, high-spirited lad, who would have
brought her his socks to darn and his troubles to soothe of an evening,
been "company," in a word, to the talkative, commonplace old woman. As
far as she was concerned, Ingram swallowed his disappointments, and she
rather suspected him of darning his own socks.</p>

<p>Fenella considered her mother for some time, though not as a resource
to evade her lover's eye.</p>

<p>"What a rummy way you have of putting things, mother!" she said at
last. "My 'adventure' with 'two gentlemen'!"</p>

<p>Paul's face was blank, like the page of a diary awaiting confidences.</p>

<p>Feeling herself at bay, Mrs. Barbour grew flustered and tearful.</p>

<p>"Well, well!" she exclaimed, waving her hands helplessly in the air.
"I'm sure I'm sorry, Nelly, since you choose to make such a mystery of
it. But what there is in it to make you both look as grave as judges,
I can't see. I'm sure that, as your mother, I'd be the first to be
offended if there was anything disrespectful."</p>

<p>An awkward silence followed her words, which Ingram was the first to
break.</p>

<p>"I think, perhaps, you'd best tell now, Nelly," he said quietly.</p>

<p>The girl blushed and covered her eyes for a moment with her hands.</p>

<p>"It's so—so <i>foolish</i>," she said, clenching them with an impatient
movement. "Oh, well, if I must, I must.... It was yesterday morning
while you were both at breakfast. I ran down, you know, to catch the
tide. After I had come out—oh, well, there wasn't a soul in sight—I
thought they would all be at breakfast at the <i>Grande Falaise</i>;
I was chilly, too, and there was a kind of tune in the sea. So, after
I'd taken off my wet bathing-suit, I threw on my kimono and began to
practise the last dance Madame de Rudder has been teaching me—you
know the one, mother, where she won't let me use my feet as much as I
want—out on the sand where it was hard. And then, like a little fool
I am, I forgot everything, until I heard some one clapping hands and
saying, 'Bravo!'—and I looked up—and there were two men on the dunes,
smoking cigars—I suppose they were coming from the golf links to the
hotel, and I don't know how long they'd been watching me, and—and,"
with sudden passion, "I just <i>hate</i> you, Paul, for dragging it out
of me when I didn't want to tell."</p>

<p>And Fenella, already overwrought, hid her head in her mother's
capacious lap and had her cry out.</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour stroked the dark head gently, but like the wise old mother
bird she was, made no attempt to check the burst of tears.</p>

<p>"Such a dancing girl she is," she murmured complacently, "and she
does hate to have it talked about so. Do you know, Mr. Ingram, I only
discovered it myself by accident, after it had been going on months and
months. Do you remember, dearie, that awful day, the first time I was
up after influenza, that Druce got the spot on her nose that the doctor
said was erysipelas, and Twyford scalded her arm and hand making a
poultice? It's the only time, I do believe, Nelly, I've ever spoken to
you crossly."</p>

<p>A muffled voice, "You were <i>horrid</i>, mummy."</p>

<p>"Well, there, I really was, Mr. Ingram. I pushed the child out of the
way and said, 'If you can't help, don't hinder. Run upstairs and play
with the other ornaments!' I didn't think any more about it, with all
that trouble on my hands, till about half an hour afterward, when down
comes Miss Rigby with her face white—you know what a coward she is,
Nelly—and in her dressing-gown, at nearly twelve! 'Do come up, Mrs.
Barbour,' she says, 'I believe Rock has gone mad in the box-room and
is dashing himself against the wall.' Oh dear! I ran upstairs with the
poker, and what do you think it was, Mr. Ingram. My own crazy child,
dancing and waving her arms about. Such a picture of fun as she looked!"</p>

<p>A hand was laid suddenly on her mouth, and a face, very flushed and
penitent in its tumbled dark hair, emerged from between the parental
knees.</p>

<p>"I'm a silly"—<i>sniff</i>—"fool"—<i>sniff</i>—said Fenella. "Paul,
gimme my hank."</p>

<p>Ingram passed the handkerchief across the smouldering blaze. The girl
looked at him as she blew her nose. He seemed absorbed, not angry, but
<i>queer</i>, she thought. She had never seen his face look so wan and
tired. He seemed to avoid her eyes.</p>

<p>"Aren't you well, Paul?" she asked at last.</p>

<p>Ingram seemed to shiver and then rouse himself. "I'm all right," he
said; "but I think I'll go back to the chalêt. I've got letters to
write. Isn't the sun grown pale? And I guess I've either caught cold or
some one's walking backward and forward over my grave."</p>

<p>They went home together, for the women would not be left behind,
taking the longer way in order to avoid the sand-hills. Along the
loose, tiring beach—dried sea waifs crackling underfoot, by the
<i>douane</i> with its toy battery and lounging sentry; up a narrow
path that was half by-street and half flight of steps, near whose
summit a Christ flung his saving arms wide over a yellow <i>affiche</i>
of the <i>Courses</i> at Wimereux, and into a straggling village
of low-browed houses, cream, pink, light-blue, and strong as
castles, through whose doorways leather-faced crones and tow-headed
children swarmed and tumbled. They were nearing the inn of the
<i>Toison d'Or</i>, where the new road to the hotel turns out of
the village, slowly, for Mrs. Barbour climbed with difficulty and
rejected assistance, when two men in tweed jackets, flat-capped and
flannel-trousered, swung round the corner. At their backs two shaggy
town urchins straggled along, each with an arsenal of clubs and cleeks
peeping over his shoulder. The two men raised their caps and bowed
slightly, but certainly not in response to any recognition that any of
the party accorded them. Fenella blushed and hung her head.</p>

<p>Paul turned sharply on his heel. "Are those the cads who stared at
you?" he asked, in a voice which he took no pains to render inaudible.</p>

<p>Nelly caught his arm before she answered. "Hush, dear! Yes. You're not
to be foolish," she added.</p>

<p>Her mother, glad of a respite, stopped and looked after them, too. She
held it a legitimate source of pride that she had always had an eye for
a fine man.</p>

<p>"Those <i>are</i> the two, then," she said triumphantly, with an air
of sagacity justified. "Then, my dear, I can tell you who they are.
The short, dark one is Mr. Dreyfus—no, Dollfus—who manages the
'Dominion' in London, and the big, handsome one with the loose hair
under his cap at the back is Sir Bryan Lumsden, the millionaire, and a
<i>frightful</i> reputation, my dear. Mrs. Lesueur told me all about
him this morning when she came in to borrow Simone for ironing."</p>

<p>Meantime, the two men whom they had passed turned likewise, but only
to whistle up their caddies, who, with an avidity for the "<i>p'tit
sou</i>" which would seem to be sucked in with the maternal milk in
French Flanders, were holding out claw-like hands to the family party
and more especially to Ingram, who had already acquired an unfortunate
reputation in this respect.</p>

<p>"What d'you make of it, Dolly?" the big man asked. "Husband?"</p>

<p>The Jew shook his head decisively. "No, no, my boy! She's not a marrit
woman. Relations, more likely. Eh?—ah?"</p>

<p>"Or lovers, likelier still. It's highly respectable, anyway. They've
got the old lady to come along. That looks as if he were French."</p>

<p>"I'd like to meet the liddle girl, alone," said Dollfus, fervently.</p>

<p>"Some dark night?—eh, Dolly!" remarked Sir Bryan, beginning to whip
the Dominion director's stout calves and thighs with the handle of the
putter he was carrying. "You're such a devil—such a devil, Dolly."</p>

<p>Mr. Dollfus raised a corrective hand.</p>

<p>"Don't mithtake my meaning, Lumpsden," he said, getting out of the
sportive baronet's long reach as quickly as was consistent with
dignity. "I only wanter tell her she's got a forchune in her feet and
legth if she'd go in training. I oughter know something about legth,
oughtn't I, old fellow. Becoth it's my bizzyness, ain't it, Lumpsden?"</p>

<p>"Tell the lunatic in the red shirt instead," the baronet suggested,
derisively. "She's bored, anyway. See her bat her eyelid when we bowed?
Oh yes, she did, Dolly. Just one little flicker—but I caught it.
Hullo! there's Grogan and old Moon at the tenth hole."</p>

<p>And, this being a world where the incredible is always happening, it is
possible that Bryan Lumsden didn't think of Fenella again that day.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="III">III</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">AN ECLIPSE</p>


<p>Ingram took her down to the beach again that night, as he had promised,
through a sparse, pungent pine wood that by day and night seemed to
keep something of the peace of the primeval world in its coniferous
shade, and across a trackless little wilderness of sand-hills, scooped
and tortured by the earthquake storms of winter into strange, unnatural
contours, over which the moon to-night spread a carpet so white, so
deceptively level, that often they could only be guessed by the abrupt
rise or fall of the ground beneath one's feet. Rabbits popped in and
out of the earth, the sharp reeds that bind the sand barriers together
bit spitefully at the girl's tender ankles, and withered branches,
catching in her silk skirt, snapped dryly as her lover helped her
through the hedges with which the dunes are ribbed.</p>

<p>Although the night was cool, she was wearing the thin dress she had put
on for dinner. Over his shoulder Ingram had slung a soldier's cloak of
blue-gray cloth, long and wide, that was to cover them in to-night as
it had often covered them before. Fenella was already familiar with
its every fold—knew exactly when the rough backing of the clasp would
chafe her delicate cheek, could recall at any moment the peculiar
fragrance of cigar smoke with which the heavy frieze was impregnated,
and some other smell, stranger still, sweet, foreign and spicy, that
she could not define, but which, evanescent as it was—the very ghost
of an odor—clung obstinately to her skin and dress, and which she
loved to lie awake at night and feel exhaled from her thick hair like
some secret earnest of joy upon the morrow.</p>

<p>She slid her hand into the man's as they descended the slippery,
needle-carpeted path, and turned up a face to him in the darkness of
the wood that was contrite and humble as a reproved child's. She had
been a bad child, in fact; had failed in sympathy—had told him in her
passion that she hated him. Hated—him! When they had found the fire,
still smouldering, and had blown it into a blaze, she crept silently
within his arms, under the folds of the cloak, and, laying her head
upon his breast, watched the flames, creeping like fern-fronds through
the gnarled roots and sodden bleached faggots that Paul had heaped upon
it. She began to suck her thumb too: always with Fenella the sign of a
chastened spirit. The moon, serenely unconscious of the earth shadow
that was creeping upon her, made a path of crinkled glory across the
waters, straight toward them, and, like foam at the foot of a silver
cascade, the phosphorescent surf tumbled, soft and luminous, along the
shore.</p>

<p>"Are you warm enough?" Ingram asked presently, feeling a tremor,
perhaps, in the yielding figure that rested in his arms.</p>

<p>Fenella nodded her head, but she might more truly have told him that
she was cold and sick. For her the night was full of voices that
threatened her happiness. The ripple of the cold wind along dry grass
at her back, the soft thud and effervescence of the surf against
the sand, were all so many whispers telling her that her lover was
going—going to some other woman who could help him, and away from
the weak arms that only clung and hindered. She had no confidence in
herself—no belief in her own power to hold him a moment, once his
will should feel an alien attraction. The very profuseness of the
poor child's passion, its abandonment of one uninvaded reserve after
another, had been proof of this inward unrest. Let no mistake be made.
Fenella was a good girl, who could by no possibility become other than
a good woman: nevertheless it is as true as it is, perhaps, disquieting
that she might have remained at the same time happier and more maidenly
in contact with an affection less worthy and less spiritual than that
which she had encountered. For, so long as the attraction of sex for
sex, beneath all modern refinements and sophistications, remains
endowed with anything of the purpose for which nature instituted it—so
long as its repulsions are a definite distance, to be annihilated
toward a definite end, so long, if one party to the vital bargain hangs
unduly back, must the other press unduly forward.</p>

<p>She was silent so long that Ingram put out his hand, and, touching her
cheek, found it wet.</p>

<p>"You're crying!" he exclaimed sharply.</p>

<p>"I'm n-not," Fenella protested unevenly, and even as she spoke the
great drops splashed down on his hand.</p>

<p>"Nelly, look up! Do you love me as much as you say?"</p>

<p>"Oh, my heart!—my heart!" she sobbed, covering his mouth with kisses,
salt as the sea. And while she kissed him he was making a mental note
that women were unduly robust on the emotional side.</p>

<p>"If you do," said he, "you'll stop crying—at once."</p>

<p>He spoke so sternly that the girl clenched her hands and struggled and
fought with her sorrow.</p>

<p>"That's better," he said, when, by dint of swallowing her tears, she
was, outwardly at least, a little calmer. "I'm sorry if I spoke harshly
just now," he went on; "but everybody has a last straw. A woman crying
seems to be mine. It—it strains my heart."</p>

<p>"Do you think <i>I</i> like it any better?" his sweetheart asked,
desperately.</p>

<p>"I suppose," he hazarded, with a shyness that was almost grotesque,
"it's because I'm going to-morrow."</p>

<p>"Oh yes, dear, yes," the girl told him, eagerly seeking relief in
words since tears were forbidden her. "Oh, Paul! how I shall miss
you! You don't know what it's meant to me to have you living in the
same house—to even know you were sleeping near me. Darling, do you
know I've sometimes wished you <i>snored</i> so I might hear you at
night. Don't stop me, love!" she went on, buttoning and unbuttoning
his coat with nervous fingers. "Let me confess my full shamelessness.
I've even helped Simone do your room sometimes in the morning. You're
not shocked—are you? Oh! you <i>are</i>," she cried piteously, drawing
away from his arm. "You think me unmaidenly. But I can't <i>help</i>
it, love; I can't <i>help</i> it. Don't you see? You are you. It's
different to all the rest of the world."</p>

<p>Ingram's chest rose and fell unevenly beneath her cheek. She could not
but perceive his distress.</p>

<p>"Listen, Nelly," he said huskily. "Don't cry again; but—but perhaps
it's a good thing for you I am going away for a while. Things are so
unsettled, and it may help you—get you used, supposing the worst
happens, to the <i>idea</i>. There's so much in custom—in habit."</p>

<p>"Paul!" she cried once, and grew rigid in his arms. It was a death-cry,
and he flinched. Who has struck at life and not drawn the blade away
quicker because the first blow went home.</p>

<p>"Nelly, I'm not young."</p>

<p>"I don't care if you were sixty—seventy." Fenella was not crying now,
but fighting for her love like the brave little girl she was.</p>

<p>"I'm a man without home, or country, or friends."</p>

<p>"I'm not a baby. I'll go with you wherever you like. We'll make them
for ourselves, together."</p>

<p>"And I'm deadly poor."</p>

<p>"I'll lend you money, Paul. How much do you want? I've seventy pounds
in the Post-Office."</p>

<p>I think if I had been Ingram and had only one more kiss to give, I
would have given it her for this; but I am trying to tell the truth;
and the truth is that these futile interruptions to his hateful task
harassed and angered him. It is so much easier to confess to sin than
to failure.</p>

<p>"Nelly! don't interrupt me! Let me say what I have to. I'm telling
you that at thirty-seven, an age when most men have home and wife and
children and see their way clear to the end, I haven't taken the first
step upon a road that is haunted by tragedy and littered with the bones
of those who have fallen by the way."</p>

<p>"I'll wait for you," said poor Fenella, but no longer with the same
energy. What a gorgon head has common-sense to turn hearts of flesh to
stone!</p>

<p>"Yes, you'll wait for me! Spend your youth waiting for me; your middle
age—waiting. We'll save every cent; spend hours figuring out on just
how much or how little life for two can be supported. Hundreds of
people are doing that to-day who, thirty years ago, would have been
setting out, full of hope and confidence, to make money. That's a
by-product of industrial development. And, if we're lucky, just about
the time your own daughters should be telling you their love affairs,
you'll come to me and we'll crawl away together to some cottage in
Cornwall, where I'll cultivate vegetables a little, rheumatically, and
at night you'll sit opposite me by the kitchen fire—we'll call it our
'ingle-nook'—and listen to an old man babbling of his wrongs between
spoonfuls of bread and milk, with enlightening criticisms upon the
fools who succeeded where he was too clever not to fail.</p>

<p>"You'll think it strange, I suppose," he went on, no more interrupted
now by her sobs than by the sough of the sea; "strange that I should
wait until now, just when I've heard I'm to have the chance I've
been whining for, to realize what a phantom I've committed myself to
following. But it's not as strange as it looks. As long as there's
some petty practical obstacle in the way, mercifully or unmercifully
everything else is obscured by it. It's like a hill, hiding the desert
you'll have to cross when you've climbed to the top. Oh, Nelly! look
at the moon!"</p>

<p>Little by little, as the man talked and the woman paid in tears and
heartscald for the reckless passion of her first love, the portent
they had come out to watch was passing over their heads. At first it
was but a spot—a little nibble at the silver rim of the great dead,
shining orb; then a stain, that grew and spread, as though the moon
were soaking up the blackness of the sky; last it took shape and form
of the world's circumference, and for once man might watch his earth
as, maybe, from some happier but still speculative planet his earth
is watched, and idly conjecture at what precise spot upon that smooth
segmental shadow any mountain or plain, roaring city or dark tumbling
ocean that he has mapped and named, might lie. Two thousand years
ago—a day as men have learned to count time—this man and woman, who
had come out to watch the moon's eclipse for mere diversion, for an
effect of light and shade, and who, in the multiplied perplexities of
their own artificial life had even forgotten to watch it at all, would
have been lying, prone upon their faces, wailing—praying until the
ominous shadow had passed, while in the fire before them some victim
of flock and herd smoked propitiation to the threatening heavens. And
out of all the straining and striving toward knowledge of those two
thousand years—out of all the Promethean struggle wherein learning,
hot to unlearn, can but lop off one visionary beak or claw to find
itself clutched more cruelly in another, not enough wisdom reached them
now to comfort one simple, trustful heart, or to teach an intellect
that had roamed the earth to its own undoing, the primal art of
all—how to rear a roof and feed a hearth for the loving creature that
clung at his breast.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>No! Nelly wouldn't look at the moon. She left his arms and sat apart,
bolt upright; her lithe body quivering with resolution.</p>

<p>"Paul Ingram," she said incisively, "I've listened patiently to you and
you'll have to listen to me. You've been prophesying woe and misery,
and now it's my turn. Shall <i>I</i> tell <i>you</i> what's really
going to happen?"</p>

<p>Hope is like measles. No one is too young or too foolish to catch it
from. In spite of himself the man's face brightened.</p>

<p>"Well, what's going to happen?"</p>

<p>"As soon as we get home I'm going to have Mme. de Rudder to tea, just
our two selves, nice and comfy, and when she's lapped up her cream and
I've stroked her down a little, I'm going to say, 'Now, Madame! For the
last two years you've been buttering me up, to my face and behind my
back, and showing me round, and if you've meant half you said' (and I
think she does, Paul, though she's such an old pussy), 'there ought to
be a living for me somewhere.' And then—oh, Paul!—I'll work and I'll
work and I'll w-o-r-k-work. I'm not sure whether I'll see you"—with
an adorable look askance—"perhaps once a week, if you're good. And,
at the end of the year, I'll bring you a nice, newly signed contract
at—oh! well, <i>pounds</i> a week, 'cos I've got a <i>head</i>, which
you'll never have, poor dear. And then—don't stop me please—we'll get
married, and have a little flat of our own or turn ma's lodgers out,
and you'll write your mis-e-ra-ble, <i>mis-e-ra-ble</i> books all day,"
she took his head in her hands and shook it gently from side to side;
"and at night you'll call for me and I'll go home with you, sir, in my
own dear little taxicab, all warm and cosy from dancing—and, dear, you
shall never have another money trouble or even hear the word mentioned
as long as you live. Now, what does he think of that?"</p>

<p>She looked closely at her lover's face and suddenly shrank away, with a
little cry, at what she saw there.</p>

<p>"Think of it?" Paul repeated, his nostrils quivering. "I'll soon
tell you what I think of it. That if I didn't know your words were a
mere childish fancy—if I really thought you were going to dance on
the stage in London or Paris or New York or any city I've been in, I
believe, Nelly"—he paused a moment—"yes, I believe I could bear to
take you up in my arms, now, as you are, and carry you down to that sea
and hold you under until you were dead."</p>

<p>Fenella moaned and covered her face with her hands. Then she jumped up.
Paul caught at her silken skirt, a momentary cold fear at his heart.</p>

<p>"Nelly, stop! I know I shouldn't have said that."</p>

<p>She disengaged herself with a swift turn. "Let me go!" she cried
angrily. "I'm not the sort of person that commits suicide. You can
drown me afterward if you like. I'm going to dance first."</p>

<p>"To dance?" Ingram repeated, thunderstruck. "Out here? Sit down at
once! Sit down," he pleaded in a changed voice. "Be a good child."</p>

<p>"I'm not a child," she cried rebelliously; "that's the mistake you're
making. And I won't be forever checked and scolded by you, Paul. I will
have some comfort. Oh, I knew you'd laugh and storm. I'm only a silly
little thing that dances and that you pet when she's good"; her eyes
flamed at him. "But it means as much to me as your books and long words
do to you."</p>

<p>She stopped, not because she was ashamed, but because her mouth was
inconveniently full of the pins which she was pulling from a rather
elaborate "<i>chevelure</i>." She shook her head with the usual
transforming result, kicked off her shoes, and, bending down, began to
unfasten her long silk stockings under her skirt. Paul turned away his
head, and perhaps it was as well she did not see the disgust in the
averted face.</p>

<p>"Sing something," she commanded, throwing the long silk stockings on
the sand and stretching her bare toes.</p>

<p>"I don't know anything," doggedly.</p>

<p>"Oh yes, you do! Sing the Algerian recruit song."</p>

<p>"It's too sad for you in your present mood of exaltation."</p>

<p>Fenella did not seem to resent the withering tone. She had drawn a
little away from the fire and was looking upward, her hands clasped
behind her neck and under her hair.</p>

<p>"Just to get a note," she said, dreamily.</p>

<p>Without quite knowing why, and in the teeth of his own shy distaste,
Ingram began to sing. He had a fine baritone voice, to be exact where
exactness is not called for, full of strength and feeling, that was
none the less tuneful because it had only been trained to the tramp
of gaitered feet along the blinding white <i>chaussées</i> of French
Africa. The song rose and fell, haunting and melodious—</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="verse indent0">"<i>Me voilà engagé</i></div>
    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Pour l'amour d'une blond—e</i>...."</div>
  </div>
</div>
</div>

<p>The fire was between them, throwing all the beach into shadow, and,
sung thus, squatted upon the sand, and his feet to the dying embers,
with the old song so many memories crowded upon the man's own brain—so
many visions peopled the lurid shadows around him—that he had arrived
nearly at its end before he thought of regarding the swaying, tossing
figure beyond with any degree of attention. But, when he did, the
last words died away in his throat. This is not the place to describe
Fenella Barbour's dancing. Many pens have done it justice. It has been
described and overdescribed—ignorantly arraigned and disingenuously
defended. Tyros of the press, anxious to win their spurs, and with a
store of purple phrases to squander, have attempted, through a maze of
adjectives and synonyms, to convey or reawaken its charm. She burst on
the world in a time when such things were already grown a weariness to
the plain man; yet never, I believe, was any success due more to the
frank and spontaneous tribute of the people who sit in cheap seats to a
wonderful thing wonderfully done, and less to the kid-gloved applause
of stalled and jaded eclecticism in search of new sensation. And the
key to it all, I believe—though mine is only one opinion among
many—was to be sought in the mechanical precision with which, through
all the changes and postures of arms and body above the hips, unstable
and sensuous as vapor, the feet below the swirling skirts beat—beat
out the measure of the dance unerringly and incisively as the
percussion of a drummer's sticks upon the sheepskin. It was this that,
for the man in the street at least, lifted her art out of trickery
and imposture and veiled indelicacy into some region where his own
criticism felt itself at home. "A clog-dancer with sophistications,"
she has been called; but at least it was upon honest toes and heels
that Fenella danced into popular favor.</p>

<p>And all this the man by the fire watched with a sinking heart. Not
altogether unmoved. He could not, being flesh and blood, remember that
the girl dancing before him had just left his arms, and at the close
of her transport would fling herself, breathless and glowing, into
them again, eager for his approval, and spending upon his lips the
aftermath of her excitement, without many a desire and emotion of his
youth awaking and clamoring for its deferred due. But his desires had
grizzled with his beard: he had analyzed the emotions and discarded
them. Where the passions are concerned intellect is never impartial. It
must be either oil or water—foster or extinguish. And he had chosen
once for all the harder way. He was full of shyness, constraint, and
the panic instinct of flight: shocked yet arrested, like some hermit
of the Libyan desert watching the phantoms of his old life at Rome or
Alexandria beckon him from his cave. Not only was the old dispensation
void. He could imagine no ground upon which it could be renewed. His
authority had been one of those gentle tyrannies of heart over heart,
that are valid only so long as they are unquestioned. Having claimed
her liberty, though it was but for an hour—resumed the possession of
herself though it was only to dazzle his eyes—Fenella became to him
from that moment a new woman, to be wooed and won afresh; and, being
a wistful far more than a lustful man, in the very measure that the
delayed revelation of her beauty penetrated his senses, he shrank
further and further from its recapture.</p>

<p>It must have been a strange sight, had any been there to see it. The
dying fire; the shadowed moon; the man with his head bent above his
knees; and the barefooted girl, with fluttering skirts and dishevelled
hair, singing and dancing on the sand before his averted face.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">TO INTRODUCE PAUL INGRAM</p>


<p>Exactly why it should be I who sit down to write of the loves and
errors of Paul Ingram, his descent into hell and resurrection
therefrom, is a thing that is not quite clear to me now, but which
will not become clearer the more I try to justify it. It is certainly
not because I was at one crisis of his life the instrument to save
him, since I know how very careless Fate can be in the choice of her
instruments. I am not his oldest friend, nor should I care to say—his
dearest. We have done a good deal of work together—shared a good
deal of opprobrium. I still bear upon my forehead the mark made by
a stone that was meant for a better man, on the wild night when the
Home Defence League roughs broke up our meeting at Silvertown. Yet,
and notwithstanding, I am by no means sure, should the inevitable
happen in my own lifetime, whether, of all the disciples who pass from
the oration at the graveside to the whispers over the funeral baked
meats, mine will be the pen chosen to write the life—mine the fingers
authorized to untie the letters—of Paul Ingram, novelist, dreamer, and
reformer.</p>

<p>A good deal of what I have written I was witness to myself; a good
deal more I learnt from Ingram during what, with so many cleaner and
pleasanter ways of leaving the world, we all hope will be his last
illness of the kind; and a not considerable part has been told me by
his wife, for whom it is notorious that I entertain an affection as
hopeless as it is happily engrossing. Even so, when all is admitted,
each part assigned to its proper source of inspiration, I am aware a
good deal will remain unaccounted for. This I have no alternative but
to leave to the sagacity of my readers. Even to their discretion—a
little.</p>

<p>To begin with myself, only that I may get myself the sooner out of the
way. My earlier years I have regarded from different points of view at
different periods of my life. It is only comparatively lately that I
have attained the true point of view and come to see that all the early
portion should be regarded as a joke. For what legend can ask to be
taken seriously whose sole remaining evidence is a small white towel,
of the sort technically known, I believe, as "huckaback," lying folded
now in a drawer of the desk at which I am writing. Two simple motions
of the extensor and flexor muscles of one arm, and the proof of former
greatness might lie beneath my eyes. But I will not make them. I know
too well what would happen next. My fingers would not rest until the
smooth bleached folds were shaken loose, nor my eyes until, written in
indelible ink that successive launderings have only made blacker, the
following legend appeared before them:</p>


<p class="ph3">"<span class="smcap">J. B. Prentice.</span><br>
Between-Maid—No. 8."</p>


<p>You see, when a man has fallen, suddenly, from a great height, he is
not expected to record his impressions as the third, the second, the
first floor windows flashed successively past his startled eyes. He
wakes up, if he wakes at all, in a nice, cosy atmosphere of iodoform,
neatly and securely packed in antiseptic dressing, with a fluffy,
frilly angel at his side, who has been waiting for those tired, tired
eyes to open, and who puts her finger to her lips, the moment they do,
for fear her voice shan't reach the muffled ears, and says—you know
what she says—</p>

<p>"Lie still! You're not to talk nor to agitate yourself."</p>

<p>So I don't propose to agitate myself, and though I've only just begun
to talk, it shall be of something better worth while. Farewell, then,
for the last time, great showy mansion among the Chislehurst hills,
with your orchard and shrubberies, flower gardens and pergolas, your
pineries and fineries, your two great cedars, inlaid in the pale enamel
of the sky, and shaven lawns, across which and toward the pink-striped
marquee a butler hurries with an armful of white napery and flashing
silver. And to you, dear little fellow-worker—Polly or Molly or Betsy,
as the case may be—who once wiped your honest, grimy phiz on No. 8, a
quite especial grip of the hand, wherever you be to-day. Your reproach
long since kissed away, I hope; suckling some good fellow's children;
cooking some good fellow's meals. Life is so hard on the between-maid.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>When I awoke it was in a Pimlico bed-sitting-room, writing literally
for dear life, and for life that is growing dearer each year. I have
a fatal facility for descriptive writing, and my speciality is the
psychology of crowds. As old Winstanley of the <i>Panoply</i> would say
when assigning me to anything I was to write up from the non-technical
point of view, Aeroplane Meet, Palace Cup-tie, Royal Progress or what
not: "Off with you, my boy! Column and a half, and a little more
'tripe' than last time. Turn 'em all loose, 'the hoarse cheer,' 'the
lump in the throat,' and the 'mist over the eyes.' Don't be afraid!
People have time for a little sentiment on Sundays."</p>

<p>I think they have. And I think I'm a witness to the price they are
prepared to pay for it. Once a year, too, I write a novel whose
circulation, for some occult reason, always stops short at eighteen
hundred. Often when I'm reporting a football match, or anything like
that, I try to count eighteen hundred, roughly, and imagine how my
people would look all bunched together. A good many readers, but—what
a gate!</p>

<p>Of all the pranks America has played upon us, I count not the least its
having sent us an Ingram as a recruit to the cause of reform. The name
is familiar over there, but it is quoted, I fancy, rather as a peg upon
which would-be subverters of established anarchy hang their arguments
than as authority for democratic ideals. Colonel Ingram, of Omaha,
president of the Mid-West Chilling and Transportation Syndicate, is
of the family; so is the Hon. Randolph Ingram, the great "Corporation
Judge" of the Supreme Court. Jared Ingram, of Milburn, author of that
contribution to Christian Unity, "A Rod for the Back of Dumb Devills,"
was one ancestor, and Elmer Ingram, the soldier-lawyer who helped to
bait Arnold to his treason and damnation, was another. These names are
not the fruit of any research on my part: I cull them from a little
book which I saw at Ingram's rooms quite early in our acquaintance, and
which, with a smile at my curiosity, he was good enough to lend me. It
was one of those boastful little pamphlets "for private circulation,"
which are multiplying across the Atlantic, as a caste which has secured
an undue share of material welfare becomes conscious of its origins
and uneasy amid the obliterations of the democratic spirit. Of those
we love, however, even the generations are dear to us, and I insist
on recalling, with vicarious pride, that "Hump. Ingraham and Damaris
his wyffe," who landed at South Bay from the brig <i>Steadfast</i>
in Worcester year, and rode off, saddle and pillion, through forest
paths to the clearing where their home was to be raised, were of
good and gentle English stock, from Ministerley in Derbyshire. Sweet
little Damaris (one almost loves her for her name) wilted and died
within the year, but the task of increasing and multiplying, and
getting hold of the land, was taken up by a sterner and, let us hope,
stronger, Deborah, eight months later, and thence the seed has spread,
through a riot of Bestgifts, Resolveds, Susannahs and Hepzibahs, broad
of breast and hip, strong of limb, stout and undismayed of heart.
Westward—always westward. Across Ohio and Indiana, striking its roots
north and south in farm and factory, store and workshop; halting here
for twenty, there for thirty, years, but always, as a new generation
grows to manhood, up and away again. Over the plains in crawling
wagons, too impatient to await the harnessing of the iron horse—the
riveting of the strangling fetters of steel: through the lawless and
auriferous canyons of Colorado and Nevada: blown along on the mad wind
of the 'forties and 'fifties, until, amid the grapes and roses of the
Pacific slope and upon the pearly Californian beach, a wind, warm and
wasted and very old from across the great still ocean, whispered them,
"Thus far!"</p>

<p>Paul was the last Ingram that will ever be born in the old homestead.
His father he never saw; his sister died as a girl, and his mother,
struck down by some obscure woman's disease, moved, within his memory,
only from her bed to her chair, and from her chair to her bed again.
He says he was a lazy, loafing, dreamy boy, with very little interest
in anything beyond his meals; but the beautiful words in which he has
enshrined that early home for us are proof how busily his brain must
have been employed in those seemingly idle hours, and how keenly the
spiritual significance of all that he saw came home to him from the
first. Probably in the mere work of the house there was not enough
to occupy strong, bony hands, such as his. Successive mortgages had
nibbled the property away piecemeal, sparing only the house and yard;
and even for that the last mortgage was running a race with death. He
went to free school, but seems to have had few companions of his age.
The village was depopulated; the house-doors opened only on old faces.
He used sometimes to sit alone through a whole summer afternoon, he has
told me, swinging on the garden gate and whittling wood. From the fence
an old beaten track led away, through a marsh where a few ducks quacked
and waddled still, up the shoulder of a little hill, and away around
one of those woods of second growth that have sprung up all over the
old pilgrim clearings—right into the heart of the setting sun. Often,
he assures me, on looking up quickly from his whittling, he has seen an
arm and hand beckoning him westward, from the edge of the trees. Set
aside the stubborn mysticism that could conceive such a vision, and
can still maintain its actuality—is not the picture a sufficiently
haunting one? Within, the mother, waiting for death; outside, the lad,
straining to be gone. And the old wattled kitchen chimney, smoking
thinly, and the red glory through the sapling wood, and the drowsy
quack of the ducks!</p>

<p>After Mrs. Ingram's death the mortgage foreclosed upon the farm and
its contents with the precision and completeness of a highly organized
machine. It is proof how forced a growth the modern cult of the family
in America is, that it never seems to have occurred to son or mother
to appeal to any of the prosperous breed whom the old house had sent
forth. The land had long been earmarked for the great weighing-scale
factory that has since galvanized Milburn into strenuous life, and
made it a sort of industrial model, which commissions and deputations
from Europe are taken to see, presumably, says Ingram, as a warning
to what devilish lengths efficiency can be carried. The old homestead
was torn down to make a site for the boiler-house. Nothing is left of
it now except one rafter, in the lavishly endowed Museum, with what is
presumably an Indian arrow-head still embedded in the wood.</p>

<p>I am bound to add that my indignation upon the subject never roused
Paul to a corresponding heat. To his mind, already set upon first
causes, no doubt it seemed very natural, a mere incident in the
exploitation that dubs itself progress. He ate his last meal in the
despoiled kitchen, warmed his coffee over a few sticks on the hearth
that had burned away ten forests, and set off, by the path up the
hill and round the corner of the wood, to wherever the arm might be
beckoning him.</p>

<p>The lad was only fourteen when he left home, but tall and strong for
his years. He tramped to Philadelphia, "jumped" the freight by night
as it pulled out of the clattering, flaring yard, was shunted into
a siding at Scranton, forgotten, and found there three days later
starving and all but mad. From Scranton he beat his way to St. Louis;
washed dishes and set up pins in a skittle alley; tired soon of the
smoke and blood-warm water of the old French city; fed cattle in the
stockyards of Kansas, wrestled a drunken brakeman for his life on the
roof of the rocking, bumping cars halfway down the Missouri canyon, and
wrestled him so well that the man begged a job for him at the journey's
end. He was jacking wagons in the Union Pacific workshops at Rawlins
when the White River expedition came through, and joined the force as
teamster at a dollar a day. He smelt powder for the first time, lay
trapped for ten days in the stinking <i>corral</i> at Snake River, when
the water failed and the relief went wide, and "Bummer Jim" and "Flies
Above," having thoughtfully strewn the carcasses of three hundred
slaughtered horses to windward, serenaded the poisoned pale-faces
nightly with copious obscenity, the burden of which was "come and be
killed." After the relief and disbandment of the force, he stayed on
in the Rockies and grew to manhood amid the silent aromatic barrenness
of its <i>mesas</i> and <i>arroyos</i>. Settlers were dribbling into
the old Indian reservation. He was in turn horse-jingler, range-rider,
prospector, stage-driver; built fences, freighted logs, dug ditches;
spotted the banks of Bear Creek and Milk Creek, with his campfires
and tomato tins, and was happy, until something, indefinable as the
scent that steals down wind to the hunted stag, told him that the
civilization from which he had fled was hard upon his heels again. He
left Colorado the year before the railroad came through, and turned his
face east again.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>I know I am telling the story of Ingram's early life very baldly and
badly. You see, there is so little romance in it; just the instinctive
repulsion that one so often notices in the history of the world's
reformers toward the thing they are to do battle with in the end. As
Paul used to tell it himself, leaning forward over the fire in my
stuffy little sitting-room, his strong, lean hands clasped round the
bowl of his pipe and the smoke drifting lazily about his moustache and
beard, it was only from an occasional gleam of the deep-set eye or
quiver of the thin nostril, as he talked, that one could gather how
deeply every lesson of force and fraud had sunk into his soul, to bear
its fruit later in unalterable resolve. I never saw him really moved
from his stoicism but once. We had been walking home together from
dinner through the West End streets and had been unwilling witnesses of
a sordid detail of their policing. A woman, crying and screaming, was
being led away, not roughly, I think, but very determinedly, by two men
in blue. Her hair had come loose, and one great curl hung to her waist.
Her fur stole had tumbled in the roadway, and some careless Samaritan
had thrown it over her shoulders, besmearing the velvet coat with mud.
We were very silent during the rest of the walk, and when we got to my
rooms Ingram unbosomed himself.</p>

<p>It was when he was working his way back east in the shiftless and
circuitous fashion that had become habitual to him. He got off the
train at a small city, the seat of a state university. He wouldn't
tell me the name, but I imagine it was somewhere in the Southwest. It
was eight o'clock on a fall morning, the hour at which the stores are
opening and the saloons being swept out. As he left the depot, his
grip in his hand, on a hunt for breakfast and work, he became aware
of some unusual excitement. Men were leaving their houses, collarless
and in shirt-sleeves—calling to one another and running down the
street. At the end, where it joined the main business avenue, a crowd
had gathered—old men, young men, even children, and a few women.
"And what do you think they were watching? Well, sir, there in God's
blessed morning light, three women in silk dresses, with satin shoes,
and bare heads and shoulders, were sweeping the filthy street with
brooms and shovels and pitching the mud into a zinc handcart. Think
of it, Prentice! Every one of them somebody's daughter—some mother's
little girl. They were all good-lookers; but one, who might be my own
child to-night, had a face like an angel—fallen if you like—with a
slender neck such as the artist men we've been talking to to-night
rave about, that's got those cute little blue shadows where it joins
the shoulders. She was the one that had the spade. A man in the crowd
told me what it all meant. They were sporting girls from a joint that
had been pulled three times in the last month. The magistrates had
got tired, and, instead of fining them, had worked in a state law two
hundred years old that treats such women as tramps and vagrants and
sets 'em to scavenging. 'And I guess,' my man adds, 'that's where they
b'long all right.' He was a patriarchal old billy-goat, Prentice, with
a nice long Pharisee beard, and, I'll bet, a sin for every hair. While
he was pitching me his simple lay, my little girl looks up, and, either
seeing I was a stranger or because mine was the only face there wasn't
contempt in—or worse—gave a sort of heart-breaking smile; and just as
I was trying not to see it, a lad behind me, with his hat over his eyes
and a cigar sticking out of his cheek, calls out:</p>

<p>"'Get on to Mamie, fellows, with the mud-scoop!'</p>

<p>"Well, Prentice," (Paul breathes hard) "I hit him, clean and sweet, on
the cheekbone, just under his damned leering swine's eye. It was very
irregular: I suppose I should have given him a chance, but, by God! I
couldn't wait. I've had to fight all my life, in warm blood and cold
blood, but I've never hit a man as hard as that before or since. He
went down like a skittle, and I thought I'd killed him; but the boy
was full of gall and devil, and knew a lot besides. He fought me five
minutes good before they carried him into a drug store. And how those
canting woman-drivers came round! They wanted me to drink, wanted to
carry my grip—asked me to name the job. But I went and sat in their
depot, without breakfast and with a face like a boil, for four hours
until the next train pulled out. I shook their mud off my feet pretty
smart. I'd have thrown away the shoes if I'd had another pair. But I
couldn't shake off what I'd seen.</p>

<p>"No, no, Prentice," he went on, stubbornly, as I, with my cockney
worldly wisdom, tried to argue him out of what I thought an unhealthy
view of a vexed question; "No, sir: you can split men up into sheep
and goats, bad cases and hard cases; but women stand or fall together.
Everything you do to one you do to the rest. On every woman's
face—good or bad, white or black—I've seen since, down to that woman
to-night, I've seen the shadow of the same wrong."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>He was twenty-five years old when the desire of seeing Europe took
hold on him. He had no money, and, though he was strong and handy,
there was nothing he could do that any other strong man could not do
as well. He had his health, however, and staked that. Wages were high
in one department of the smelter at Leadville, for reasons that forced
themselves on the bluntest intelligence after a few months. He worked
there for a year, laying money by and fighting with the nausea that
grew upon him week by week. At the end of the twelve months, reeling,
half-blind, and with his teeth loose in their gums, but with more money
in his pockets than he had ever owned before, he turned his face to
the healing desert. An old miner turned ranchman found him at sunset
lying under a rock, his face pressed to the earth, and quivering, like
a landed trout, in the full grip of the deadly lead-sickness. He laid
him across his pony, took him to his mud-roofed hovel close by, kept
him for six months in his own blankets, gave him all the milk of his
one cow, drove him to the railroad as soon as he was able to travel,
and—bade him God-speed with a torrent of invective that struck even
Leadville dumb. Ingram had committed the capital error of offering
him pay for his hospitality, an error over which I believe he broods
to-day.</p>

<p>By the time he was fit to work again his savings were gone. He was
twenty-six, and Europe as far off as ever. This time, having damaged
his health, he staked his reason, and for two years herded sheep
on the Wyoming plains. Herding sheep seems at first cry a simple,
pastoral task, with Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Biblical Associations.
I must take Paul's word for it, then, that some special danger either
to body or soul attends it, and that few men retire from it with a
competence except to go into a madhouse or found a new religion. In
either case, he says, they will have seen "Hell on the plains." The day
before Ingram left for the sheep country he bought for a few dollars
the entire stock of a misguided Englishman who was trying to sell
second-hand books in Cheyenne City, loaded them into his grub-wagon
and read them, slowly, one by one, in the exact order or disorder in
which they were packed, and with a cold fear at his heart as the second
year drew to a close, that his shepherding would outlast them. It
seems absurd, but, as far as I can gather, this has been Ingram's sole
literary education.</p>

<p>Either the wages of loneliness, or, I fancy, something else of which
he has not told me, must have given Paul his heart's desire, for, two
years afterward, at the recruiting office in the Rue St. Dominique,
which has been many a good man's alternative to Seine water or the cold
muzzle-end, he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion.</p>

<p>Whatever his reasons for this step (and I never was told them), I think
the five years that Paul spent under the iron discipline of the Legion
cured what, with all due allowance made for the strange ways by which
men find themselves, was becoming an incurable unrest. Among the sad
middle-aged soldiers who were his comrades, many of whom had come a
longer and a stranger way than he, to find a hard bed and a bloody
grave at the end, something, I believe, which he had roamed the world
a-seeking and which had evaded him till now, was found at last. Out of
that uneasy human cauldron, into which the deserter casts his broken
oath, and the <i>roué</i> his disillusionment, and the unloved his
loneliness, and the branded their shame, and to which, as long as it
or its like shall endure, from time to time the artist will turn for
inspiration, the brave man for opportunity, the coward, perhaps, for
the stimulus which his own quailing heart denies him, and the saint for
relief of temptation, and the hungry for bread, a vision, I believe,
did arise for this lonely, unlettered American which the others missed,
a knowledge was gained that all the schools and universities of the
world could not have taught him: the vision and the knowledge of the
human heart.</p>

<p>He was thirty-four years old when he left the Legion—a little gaunt
and worn. He had given the world twenty years' hard service, and had a
worsted stripe on one arm for his earnings.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">"SAD COMPANY"</p>


<p>I first met Ingram by chance at the old <i>Café à peu près</i> in
Greek Street. The <i>À peu près</i> of those days was far from being
the institution which, in the capable hands of Philippe, the sulky
waiter, who took to himself Madame's moustached daughter plus Madame's
economies, it has since become—an over-lighted, <i>bruyant</i>
restaurant of two stories and a basement, wherein an eighteen-penny
meal of six exiguous courses, served at inhospitable speed to hurried
suburban playgoers, is raised to the dignity of a <i>diner français</i>
by various red and yellow compounds which masquerade under the names of
the old French provinces of the <i>midi</i>. Then it was nothing but
a secluded back room, panelled and painted green, with an oval table
in the centre, round which the little circle of which I was, if not
an ornament, at least an accredited unit—free lances of the press,
war correspondents stranded during lengthening periods of peace and
ill-will among nations, obscure authors and unbought painters—met
nightly to dine and to nurse our chilled ambitions, under Madame's
supplemental smile and in the warmth of a roaring fire which, during
nine months of the year, was burning under the heavy Jacobean mantel.</p>

<p>Strangers were not exactly resented at the <i>À peu près</i>, but by an
elaborate unconsciousness of their presence, to which the Oxford manner
of one or two of us was a great assistance, we contrived for a long
time to keep the circle restricted. Thus it happened that the bronzed
and bearded man who spoke French so volubly at coming and going, and
who seemed so little discountenanced by our exclusive attitude—glad,
indeed, to be let alone—had been an irregular visitor for some weeks
before we entered upon any conversation. One night the talk had
turned, as it often did, upon the strong British preference for death
as a preliminary to appreciation in matters literary or artistic, and
little Capel, burrowing, as the subject drooped, into the obvious for a
suitable remark, repeated that well-known legend—Milton's ten pounds
for "Paradise Lost." The big man at my shoulder laughed.</p>

<p>"Fancy," said he, "any one getting as much as that for a poem to-day."</p>

<p>I turned, before the guard had descended on his eyes, and saw in them
an expression that I, of all men, should recognize at the first glance:
the sickness of the literary hope deferred.</p>

<p>We had become sufficiently intimate for me to receive a call from him,
at my rooms, during an attack of the gout, which is an inheritance from
Chislehurst, before he mentioned his book. I grieve to-day, remembering
how often he was on the point of doing so, and waited in vain for
the word from me that would have made the task less irksome than, I
am sure, it was at last. By what I know now isn't a coincidence, his
final appearance in Pimlico with the dreadful brown-paper parcel under
his arm followed upon a period of three or four months during which
he had practically disappeared from my consciousness. He looked worn,
I thought, and had a new trouble in his eyes. He told me his story
shamefacedly, and stammering like a schoolboy.</p>

<p>He had written a book, a novel, and could not get it published. None
of the houses to which he had offered it advanced any reason for
rejection, and in the one or two cases where he had pressed for one,
seemed to think his insistence a solecism. He understood I not only
wrote but published. Would it be troubling me unduly.... If I wasn't
too busy....</p>

<p>Well, it <i>was</i> a great worry. I was busy just then too, after
my futile fashion; but somehow it didn't seem the thing to have that
man stammering and blushing before a wretched little ink-slinger
like myself, and I tendered the vague service that is known as one's
"best." But I was unaffectedly sorry the thing had happened. It is such
happenings that, in literary circles, write <span class="allsmcap">FINIS</span> to many a
promising friendship. Ten men will lend you a pound for one that will
lend you his countenance.</p>

<p>It was six o'clock the next morning when my lamp suddenly flared
and went out. I stretched myself—realized that the fire was out as
well, that I was cold and stiff, that dawn was coming up over the
roofs of the stuccoed terrace opposite, and that the reason I had
forgotten light and fire and the march of time lay in a disreputable,
dog-eared typed manuscript that I had begun in weariness, gone on with
in half-resentful surprise, and finished in a complete oblivion of
everything save the swift rush of joys and fears, sorrows and mistakes
to a doom that never befell. I remember a funny swelled feeling, as
though I had been crying internally.</p>

<p>It is late in the day to attempt a criticism or even an appreciation
of "Sad Company." Even as it stands to-day, in the close stereotype
of the popular reprint, it is flawed and marred to my mind with many
a <i>naïveté</i> and rawness, with here and there one of those lapses
into the banal that are an evil legacy to American literature from
the days of Poe and Hawthorne. Imagine what it must have been before,
fearfully and reverently, for I knew I was handling a masterpiece, I
helped brush off a little of the clay that still clung to it from the
pit in which it had been cast.</p>

<p>What I did, then and there, was to sit down, chilled and numbed as
I was, in the raw morning light, and write to Ingram bidding him,
on pain of perpetual displeasure, repair to me that evening, to be
severely rebuked for his presumption in having, without previous
apprenticeship or servitude, taken his livery and chair with the
pastmasters and wardens of his craft. This letter I carried downstairs
through the sleeping house, tremulous with the good consciences of my
fellow-lodgers, and slipped it in the pillar box at the corner of the
crescent. I remember I even chuckled as I posted it, to the evident
surprise of the stolid policeman who had wished me good morning. You
see, I thought I was making literary history.</p>

<p>I am sorry to say that my enthusiasm didn't communicate itself to
Paul. Six mute and incurious publishers were sitting too heavily on
his self-esteem for that. He even took their part, with a perversity I
have noticed before in the misunderstood of the earth. I have a theory
that books like his are posthumous children, and that the state of mind
which created them dies in giving them birth. What enraged him—what
baffled him, because it was contrary to every lesson his strenuous
life had taught him—was, that so much effort could be all in vain.
I imagine he wrote the book with difficulty and without conscious
exaltation of spirit.</p>

<p>"If I had put as much pains," I remembered his saying, "into any other
thing I've set my hand to, I should be either a famous man, or a very
rich one, to-day, Prentice."</p>

<p>And then, returning to the old grievance, that I could see had become a
prepossession—</p>

<p>"And yet—six men can't be all wrong."</p>

<p>"Of course they can," I exclaimed indignantly, "and sixty."</p>

<p>He shrugged his shoulders wearily. "What can a man do, then?"</p>

<p>"One thing you can do," I answered severely, "is to sit down opposite
me for a few hours a week and alter some of your modes of expression.
I've made a list of some: Listen here!</p>

<p>"'<i>Brightly shone the snow on the roof of the Rio Negro County
Farmers' Institute.</i>' You mustn't say that."</p>

<p>"Why not?" asked Paul, simply; "it's the name."</p>

<p>"If you don't know why, I can't tell you. You must take it from me that
such a thing, in England, will almost secure rejection of itself. Then
again: we don't talk of a man's 'white linen shirt <i>bosom</i>.' The
word is <i>de mode</i> for a woman, but used for a man, it's offensive.
And to say that Celia '<i>cached the mail-bags in a wash-out</i>,'
conveys no meaning at all to us."</p>

<p>Paul laughed out, and suddenly looked ten years younger.</p>

<p>"Sit down," he said, "and '<i>fais feu</i>!' Don't spare me!"</p>

<p>But the revision was a thankless task. Only a determination on my part
that such a book shouldn't be lost supported me through it at all.
Paul came to work irregularly, and in a mood that oscillated between a
careless acceptance of every suggestion I made and a peremptory refusal
to consider any alteration at all. But it was done at last, and I admit
I waited hopefully for news from Carroll and Hugus.</p>

<p>After three weeks, in fact, I got a postcard asking me to call.
Bonnyman was sitting in his sanctum, looking as young and as wise as on
the day he came down from Balliol, and with his habitual air of finding
the publishing trade a great lark.</p>

<p>"How's the industrious Prentice?" he cried, as soon as he saw me.
"What's he been doing with himself these many moons?"</p>

<p>I shook hands and sat down. I profess I have never felt so jumpy when
work of my own has been in question.</p>

<p>Bonnyman put his finger to his forehead. "What did I want to see you
about, Prentice?... Oh, yes!" He touched an electric button on his desk.</p>

<p>"Byrne!" said he to the clerk who answered it, "bring me down 'Sad
Company.' I sent it up to the packing-room the day before yesterday. It
ought to be ready."</p>

<p>My heart sank into my boots. "Aren't you going to publish it?" I
faltered.</p>

<p>Bonnyman shook his head.</p>

<p>"No go, my boy! No go at all. You've brought it to the wrong shop."</p>

<p>"It kept me awake a whole night," I flashed out angrily.</p>

<p>Bonnyman smiled and yawned. "Kept me awake too, because I'd slept in
the afternoon trying to read it."</p>

<p>"Oh! come now, Bonnyman," I protested. "You know better than that. Take
the one scene alone," I went on eagerly, "where Holt is sitting with
his dead wife, and the step-daughter comes to the door and he won't
open because——"</p>

<p>But Bonnyman went on shaking his head with the impenetrable
self-confidence any man acquires in time who exercises an habitual
right of veto.</p>

<p>"Hugo and water!" he said. "Who can't write it? No, Prentice. To tell
you the honest truth we're cutting out a lot of this problem stuff
lately. What we're specializing in at present is the 'light touch.' The
'light touch,'" he repeated, illustrating what the world is hungering
for, delicately, with an ivory paper cutter on his blotting-pad.</p>

<p>"'Polly Prattlings!'" I sneered.</p>

<p>"And d—d good stuff, too. Bring me some one like that, Prentice, and
we'll talk.—Don't get angry, old man! Who is your little friend?
American, ain't he?"</p>

<p>I nodded gloomily.</p>

<p>"Why don't he get a Rhodes scholarship and learn how to write English?"</p>

<p>"He's thirty-five," I said; "he's been all round the world and done
everything."</p>

<p>Bonnyman pulled a long face that sufficiently disposed of Ingram's
future. The brown-paper parcel was brought in and I slunk away with it
under my arm, like a man repulsed from a pawnshop.</p>

<p>I didn't see Ingram for a long time, and was secretly glad of it. For I
had no good news to give him. Other publishers were equally emphatic,
with unimportant variations of delay and discourtesy. I don't say
I lost faith in the book, but I did begin to doubt whether, in the
present state of things, great work was worth while. It was too much
like giving grand opera on a raft in mid-Atlantic.</p>

<p>At last, when I'd practically exhausted the firms I knew, and was
beginning to wonder whether we wouldn't have to come down to a
publication "by special arrangement," or a setting up in linotype by
one of the smaller provincial weeklies, an idea flashed into my head.
I knew one great writer, a woman, American, too; fashionable, rich,
but with a passionate reverence for all that was worthiest in letters.
She had succeeded by means of a brilliance and impetuosity of style
that had literally stormed the defences of dullness. In her books I
had noticed an underlying mysticism that I thought might find Paul's
work akin. It was a ticklish undertaking, and I hadn't done screwing up
my courage to it when Ingram suddenly reappeared. His long arm pushed
open the paper curtained door of the sanctum where we dined, one raw
night in June. By his side was absolutely the most beautiful girl I had
ever seen. She wore a long purple coat, cut very smartly, and a big
ribboned hat, and was swaying a little from side to side as though the
lapsed rhythm of some tune she had just heard was still in her feet.
She glanced round shyly but brightly and bowed with a pretty blush to
Caulfield. We all gaped, and old Smeaton's pipe suddenly smelt very
foul.</p>

<p>"Don't move!" said Ingram, as I made room for them at my side. "I
haven't come for dinner. Just to ask if you've had any news, before I
go away."</p>

<p>"No news at present," I confessed. "But I hope to have some soon."</p>

<p>He smiled a little grimly, and felt in his long rubber coat for a
pocketbook.</p>

<p>"If anything turns up in the next month or so, write me here," he said,
and handed me a card with an address scrawled across its face. "I'm
going to France for a few weeks. Come, Nelly!" and was gone with his
companion as abruptly as he had come.</p>

<p>"'Beauty like hers is genius,'" Capel quoted, breaking the silence with
an air of saying something apposite, for once.</p>

<p>"Who's the pretty lady, Caulfield?" asked old Smeaton. "She bowed to
you."</p>

<p>"She's a little person I've met at dances, and things," said Caulfield.
"Goes round with the De Rudder woman. Does <i>gavottes</i> and
<i>pavanes</i> and <i>corantos</i> and all that sort of thing. Pretty
name, too,—'Fenella Barbour.'"</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">A CHILD SPEAKS THE TRUTH</p>


<p>Fenella Barbour is the daughter of a clergyman of the Church of
England, who remained unbeneficed to the end of his life. Younger son
of a noble family, Scotch in origin but long settled in the Midlands,
handsome, intellectual, and much yearned upon, the Honorable Nigel
let opportunities for advantageous matrimony pass him one by one, to
marry, comparatively late in his life and outside of his own class, a
young parishioner with whose name the gossip of a small Cornish country
town had spitefully and quite unjustifiably coupled his. To the day of
her death Minnie Trevail never quite got over the surprise with which
she received her pastor's offer of an honorable share in board and
bed, and, whether it was gratitude or an uneasy sense that principles
which do not often make for a man's happiness had played her hand for
her, the fact remains, that to the end of his brief married life the
Reverend Nigel Barbour continued to be a sort of married bachelor, free
to come or go unquestioned, with a fine gift for silence and without
obvious enthusiasms, unless it were for the girl baby who would sit for
hours by his study fire, as he wrote his sermons, scolding her doll in
whispers, and to whose round cheek and fine dark curls his eyes strayed
oftener and oftener during the last year of his life.</p>

<p>Similarly circumstanced, other women by study, by observation, by an
endless self-correction, have lifted themselves in time to something
like a mental level with the men who have perversely chosen them. Not
necessarily from a sense of her own limitations, Mrs. Barbour never
tried. It is possible that she never, deliberately measuring the
sacrifice which the man had made for her good name, determined the
first sacrifice should be the last, but at least the unformed idea
governed all her conduct. She kept the ideals, the accents—inside the
house even the dress—of her class. For the spiritual companionship
which she could never give she substituted the silent and tireless
service of Martha. When her baby was born, she would have had the pain
and peril tenfold; pain and peril so dimly comprehended by the man who
smoothed her moist hair with an awkward hand, blinked his scholarly
eyes at this crude and rather unseemly mystery, and, once assured the
danger was past, went back to his weaving of words with a relief that
even his kindness failed to conceal.</p>

<p>Nigel Barbour was one of the killed in the terrible Clee Level
accident. He was returning from a New Year family gathering, the first
he had attended since his marriage, and it is typical of their married
relations that his wife never even "wondered" why she wasn't asked
too. If reconciliation which should include her was on its way, his
death disposed of the idea. Denied recognition during his lifetime his
widow refrained, with what all her friends considered great lack of
spirit, from attempting to win it after his death. He was uninsured,
and, of the slender inheritance that devolved upon her, a great part
consisted of house property at the "unfashionable" but expensive side
of the Park. One of the houses, a great stuccoed mansion in a secluded
square, happening to be empty at the time of her tragic bereavement,
she assumed the tenancy, furnished it, and, reserving for herself only
the basement and top floor, advertised discreetly but judiciously for
lodgers.</p>

<p>Although the business is one that seldom shows a profit, and although
in order to furnish the one house adequately she had been compelled
to mortgage the freehold of the other, yet, if happiness be revenue,
it is hard to see how she could have made a better investment. For
the first time in her life she tasted liberty. She had her great
house, her establishment, the direction of her three maids, and
the intense respect of family butchers, family bakers, and family
candlestick-makers in staid contiguous streets. On spring or autumn
afternoons the champing and clashing of bits and hoofs outside her
door, the murmurs of joyous life that floated along the hall and up
the wide stairs, sounded no less sweetly in her ears because it was
Miss Rigby or Lady Anne Caslon and not the Honorable Mrs. Barbour who
was at home to all the fine company. The "Honorable Mrs. Barbour!"
Often, in passing through the big bedrooms of the second floor, with
clean pillowcases or window blinds over her arm, she would stop and
look at her homely reflection in the long cheval glasses, with a little
inward smile at the incongruity. And yet in her heart, so sensitive
to the duties, so blind to the rights, of her equivocal position, the
obligations which the barren title involved were tacitly acknowledged.
If it conferred no privileges, it at least restrained her judgment upon
the caste, a corner of whose ermine rested, however grudgingly, upon
her own shoulder. She grew indisposed to gossip. Such of her relatives
and friends as called upon her while upon "day-trips" to London
found themselves cut short in their pursuit of one special branch of
knowledge. They went home to Cornwall declaring that Minnie had grown
"stuck-up."</p>

<p>But the rights which she abdicated so whole-heartedly for herself she
claimed with an added fierceness for Fenella. The child was a miracle
from the first. Even while it lay, a few pounds of pink flesh, in a
corner of one arm and drained her breast, she was worshipping it,
humbly and afar off. It is difficult to find words that adequately
convey her state of mind toward her daughter without entrenching on
a parallel that is sacred and therefore forbidden; but this much is
certain: had the legal quibble which can prove a child to be no blood
relation to its mother been propounded to Mrs. Barbour, it would have
found in her a tearful and reluctant but convinced witness to its
truth. For two successive nights before her baby's birth the same dream
had visited her. The great house of her brother-in-law, which she had
never seen, which her husband had never even thought of describing for
her, had appeared to her, wrapped in flame. Pushing her way through
the crowd that surrounded it and was watching it burn, after the
inconsequent manner of dream people, with quiet satisfaction, she had
run up tottering staircases and along choking passages, had reached a
splendid room of state upon whose canopied bed a little naked infant
lay, and, clasping it to her breast, had carried it out, smiling and
unharmed. Fenella was no more truly her child than she was the child of
the dream.</p>

<p>The little girl was four and still wore a black hair ribbon and a black
sash over her pinafore, when one afternoon in October a big shallow
barouche drove up to the door of No. 11 Suffolk Square. The springs
were very high, the harness was very brightly plated, the chestnut
horses, their heads held in by a torturing bearing rein, very shiny
and soapy. A faded, artificial woman, with a tall osprey in her black
bonnet, lolled back against the buff cloth cushions and regarded the
world through a tortoise-shell lorgnette. A girl, quite young, with
fair hair cut in a straight fringe across her forehead, sat up demurely
at her side.</p>

<p>Fenella was taking tea in great state and composure on the window-seat
of her nursery under the slates when the carriage drove up. A mug,
on which Puss-in-Boots brushed back his bristling whiskers with
one spirited paw, stood at her elbow, filled with a faintly tinted
decoction of warm milk and sugar. A bun, delicately nibbled all
round its lustrous circumference, was in her right hand, and a large
over-dressed doll, with a vacant blue-eyed face, rested insecurely in
the hollow of her left arm. From this household treasure her attention
was just beginning to stray. James, the coachman, had pulled across
the roadway, and was driving his fretful over-heated charges up and
down along the railings of the Square. Fenella pressed her forehead
against the cold window-pane.</p>

<p>"Gee-gees; gee-gees!" she soliloquized.</p>

<p>To her enter, without cue or warning, Druce the parlor-maid—also a
little the nursemaid—in great excitement, and breathless after a
non-stop run from the bottom of the house. The bun was snatched from
the chubby fingers, Marianne saved, timely, from a headlong course to
the floor, the Marquis of Carabas pushed unconstitutionally on one
side, and the napkin whisked off, all in four brisk movements.</p>

<p>"Company for my little lady!" the excited girl exclaimed. "She is to
have her pretty hair curled, and her best frock put on, and to go
downstairs to see mamma's fine friends."</p>

<p>Nelly took the outrage with the docility that was one of her charms.</p>

<p>"Gee-gees, Drucie," she said, pointing over her shoulder as she was
borne away. "Gee-gees in the Thquare."</p>

<p>The warm-hearted maid gave her a tight and quite unauthorized hug.</p>

<p>"Gee-gees, indeed! Well, they may <i>trot! trot! trot!</i> until their
feet drop off, before they find anything finer than we're going to show
them."</p>

<p>The carriage folk were in the front part of the big tastelessly
furnished drawing-room, which ran the whole depth of the house,
and which happened to be unlet at the time. A fire, just lit, was
crackling and smoking sullenly. The elder lady sat, with a transient
air, as much on the edge of a little gilt chair as is compatible
with a seat at all. I am not quite certain whether vinegar can be
frozen at certain temperatures or not. If so, her smile recalled the
experiment. The young girl sat back in a velvet rocking chair, her
slender black-stockinged legs reaching the ground from time to time as
it oscillated. She had a little pale round face; her lank, whitey-gold
hair was cut as straight at her waist as it was at her forehead.
She had taken off her gloves, and the bony over-manicured fingers
were interlocked in her lap with a sort of feeble repression. Near a
table, covered with tea-things, but from which no hospitality had been
dispensed, Mrs. Barbour was sitting, no less upright than her visitor.
She was flushed and there was the fullness of suppressed tears round
her eyelids, but there was as little sign of defeat in her face and
attitude as in the other woman's unpleasant smile. The fine lady raised
her lorgnette as the child was carried in. She turned languidly to her
daughter.</p>

<p>"Your poor uncle's face. Oh, the very image!" she exclaimed, with an
emphasis that extinguished any lingering idea poor Mrs. Barbour may
have kept of a share in the matter.</p>

<p>Set upon the ground, the child beauty gravitated instantly to mother's
skirts, and from this coign of vantage surveyed her visitors. Mrs.
Barbour put the curls back from her forehead and stooped to her ear.</p>

<p>"Nelly," said she, "this is your aunt, Lady Lulford, your Aunty
Hortense, come to see poor father's little girl. Won't you go and give
her a kiss?"</p>

<p>The grasp tightened upon her skirt.</p>

<p>"Oh, shame!" the mother murmured, with a reproach in her voice that the
glistening eyes belied. "Is this my kind little Nelly? Come over, then,
with mother."</p>

<p>With a sidelong glance at the tea-table, Fenella was led, obliquely,
across the thick new pile carpet, and received a kiss upon her forehead
that was not much warmer than the window against which it had just been
pressed.</p>

<p>"And now your cousin. Cousin——"</p>

<p>"Leslie," said Lady Lulford, covering a slight yawn with her golden
card-case, and glancing out of the window toward her horses.</p>

<p>The girl's face seemed to yearn and melt as the reluctant little feet
were guided to her. She pursed her pale lips and held out her thin
arms. Fenella was to remember it years afterwards with a spasm of pity
and indignation. But she was only a baby now, and struggled in the weak
embrace. Once back at her mother's side, a violent reaction of shyness
set in, and she buried her face in the maternal lap.</p>

<p>"Impressionable, too; like poor Nigel," the peeress remarked to her
daughter in the same icy voice.</p>

<p>"Come," the mother coaxed, "hasn't Nelly a word to say? Her
aunty"—Lady Lulford winched—"her aunty and cousin will think they've
got a little dumb girl for a niece."</p>

<p>Fenella raised her face. "I weally——" she began, and, not finding
encouragement to proceed, down went the black head again.</p>

<p>Mother lifts it gently.</p>

<p>"——was——" Nelly's finger went to her mouth. Her glance wavered,
wandered tortuously along the floor, and finally and suddenly focussed
the tea equipage.</p>

<p>"——in the middle of my tea." Louder and with sudden confidence as the
full nature of the outrage was realized, "Weally was in the middle of
my tea."</p>

<p>Lady Lulford smiled abstractedly. Leslie's lips moved. The mother drew
her little girl closer.</p>

<p>"You shall have your tea presently, dear," she said, "but I want you to
listen to me first. Now, tell me," she seemed to steady her voice, "how
would you like to go into the country with your aunt and Cousin Leslie?"</p>

<p>Nelly's eyes grew big and round. "And mother?" added she, joining the
palms of her hands, baby-wise, with stiff outspread fingers.</p>

<p>"No, dear. Mother must stay in London, because she has so much to do."</p>

<p>There was an agitation of the black curls, and from under them a most
decided negative evolved itself.</p>

<p>"Oh, but my precious," the mother pleaded, as that other mother may
have pleaded before the judgment seat of the great wise king; "just
for a while; to see the green trees, and the moo-cows, and the bunnies,
and, and——"</p>

<p>"The deer," said Lady Lulford, raising the conversation to a higher
and, shall we say, ancestral level.</p>

<p>"Great—big—stags, baby," the cousin broke in, with her eager,
unsteady voice, "great big stags with horns like this," and she made a
pair with fingers that were almost as fleshless.</p>

<p>Fenella refused to weigh the catalogue of attractions a moment. The
head shook faster and faster till the dark curls whipped first one
cheek and then another.</p>

<p>"Not for a little while? Not for a few weeks?" Mrs. Barbour urged,
almost roughly.</p>

<p>At this persistence in a quarter where it was so little to be looked
for, two fat tears distilled themselves in Fenella's eyes and rolled
down her cheeks. She opened her mouth, and I regret to say her face
lost, temporarily, its attractive power. Mrs. Barbour snatched her up
and sprang to her feet.</p>

<p>"She sha'n't be teased," she cried passionately, clasping the child to
her breast. Then, turning quickly first to Lady Lulford and afterward
to her daughter, "Don't you see she's too young now? She's only a baby,
really. Perhaps later——"</p>

<p>The Viscountess turned upon her own offspring the cold ceremonial eye
that on company nights lifted the ladies at Freres Lulford to their
feet and up into the drawing-room.</p>

<p>"We must really go now, Leslie," she said, with a little explanatory
wave of the card-case. "So many calls, you know. Well, Mrs. Barbour,"
turning to her hostess with an evident effort, "I suppose we mustn't
expect you to decide such a matter in a hurry. For the present I think
I may say our offer, Myles's and mine, stands open. I still think it is
what poor Nigel would most have wished. And even if you should decide
not to accept it now, remember, if at any time—at any time——" and in
this golden air of good intentions Lady Lulford's visit ended.</p>

<p>"That is an ordeal well over, Leslie," she said, a few moments later,
leaning back and closing her eyes slightly, as the carriage door
slammed and the tall footman with a crook from the waist still in his
long straight back, swung himself to his perch.</p>

<p>"Mother," said Leslie, nervously, pulling at her gloves, "we could
hardly—could hardly——"</p>

<p>"Could hardly <i>what</i>, my dear? You are so disjointed at times."</p>

<p>"——expect her to give up <i>such a pet</i>," the girl said
impulsively, with a gush of feeling that seemed to leave her colder and
weaker than ever.</p>

<p>Her mother lifted the frozen gloved hand that seemed to blight like
frost, and gave a little tinkling laugh.</p>

<p>"My dear, when you are my age you will not rate so highly what is
a mere animal passion. <i>True</i> love would consider the child's
material interests first. I still hope," with a little hostile back
glance as the barouche rolled out of Suffolk Square, "that Nigel's
daughter may not have to grow up in the basement of a lodging-house."</p>

<p>"The <i>basement</i>? Mother!"</p>

<p>"My dear, foolish girl, you surely don't think the room we were in
to-day (atrocious taste!) is used by them. No, my dear! They live at
the bottom of the area, eat and gossip with the servants; sometimes, I
have no doubt, the policeman drops in to tea. The <i>Honorable</i> Mrs.
Barbour!" And Lady Lulford gave her unpleasant laugh again.</p>

<p>"Mamma!" cried Leslie, really shocked now, "you don't suppose she uses
<i>that</i>?"</p>

<p>"Why not, my dear? She's either very foolish or has more delicacy
than I give her credit for if she doesn't. Why, she could have her
house full of rich vulgar Americans all the year round. Are we at Lady
Dunsmuir's already? Thank heavens, Leslie, we're not calling on the
servants' hall this time."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Meanwhile, at the house they had left, an aggrieved small person sat
on a cushion and comforted the ache at her heart very much after the
fashion of older and presumably wiser people, with mother's rejected
dainties. Stretched on a wolf-skin rug, in an attitude that had been
a common one with her in days when, the Cornish sun dappling her back
and making illuminating splashes on the novelettes that were her mental
food, she had dreamed away whole summer afternoons thus in her father's
orchard, the farmer's daughter watched the busy, sticky mouth at work,
her face wholly given up to the animal affection that Lady Lulford was
at that very moment reprehending.</p>

<p>"Why didn't you want to kiss your Aunty Hortense?" she asked presently.</p>

<p>No answer, but much sucking, as the sugary bottom of the cup was
reached. The mother loosened the little fingers and put it aside.</p>

<p>"Come, Nelly," she urged; "answer mother!" Who has not coveted a
child's thought at times?</p>

<p>This one seemed to consider.</p>

<p>"<i>Be-tos</i>," she said at last, cryptically, like some little
Chinese oracle.</p>

<p>"<i>Be-tos</i>, of what? That's not any answer. And, oh, law! child,
how backward you do speak for a great girl of four!"</p>

<p>Hard pressed, Nelly struggled to her feet. She clenched her little
hands, puckered her forehead. The mother held her breath as she waited.</p>

<p>"Be-tos——Oh! be-tos she didn't <i>smell</i> nice!"</p>

<p>And, as the woman rolled back, shaking unrestrainedly with laughter.</p>

<p>"——like you do, mummy; like you do, mummy," the child cried, flinging
her arms round her mother's neck and burying her flushed face in the
soft shoulder.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">MOSTLY LADY ANNE</p>


<p>So the baby hands threw their dice, and as the dice fell the game was
played out. Life unfolded itself amid the fog or rain or thwarted
sunlight of the staid Tyburnian square, which should have had for
tutelary deity some sleepy god, yawning and stretching himself in the
centre of its smoky grass plot. Before the opening consciousness, like
figures in an enchanted frieze, such phenomena passed as are likely
to haunt area railings: The muffin man, tinkling his bell down murky
streets and terraces at the uplifting hour of tea-time; the policeman
with his bull's-eye lantern, waking the rails to a good-night dance
along blank stuccoed walls and shuttered windows; broad hipped Welsh
milkwomen in plaid shawls, with shining pails clanking from their
wooden yokes; the old blind Dalmatian dog that panted at the corner of
the mews and drummed the hot pavement with his tail. Once a year for
one blissful month the town baby became a sand baby, building castles,
scooping moats with her wooden spade for the tide to crumble (oh,
Nelly! there's a tide that knows all our castles are sand); racing with
bare-legged chance companions along the purring lips of the treacherous
sea. Child of suppressed love and of absolute surrender, she grew up
straight, strong and ardent; fair of face, light of foot, and with
a pitiful, generous heart that could not wait its time to love, but
before the dimpled hands could reach or turn the stiff handle of the
hall door, had made to itself friends of the world's wretchedness.
The old Garibaldian accordion player, with the twisted leg, learned
to look for the little <i>signorina</i>, beautiful as the sun of
Naples, which he dreamed of at night in his cellar at Saffron Hill;
the ancient mariner with snow-white hair and beard (a terrible case!
says the Charity Organization Society) kept a bow of quite especial
condescension for Missie's penny at Number Eleven; while it was fine
to see with what a sweep of his great red hand to his battered hat old
Paddy Crimmin, the drunken Delhi hero, would straighten his racked body
of a cold Sunday morning as the little creature, her dark face aglow
with newly discovered color against the white road and snow-burdened
trees, stopped at his crossing to grope with mittened fingers for the
penny, nestling in her pocket next a sixpence which I am sure she
begrudged the cold impersonal offertory plate later on.</p>

<p>She possessed her mother's life as a single flame possesses a dark
room, creating its light, its color, and its motion. The slave does not
always make the tyrant, and to the homely woman who tended her, kissed
her limbs fragrant from the bath, twisted her curls round fingers that
thrilled with love and worship—who coaxed her from forbidden ways
with toys and sweets, and whose voice was never once pitched in even
the gentlest accent of authority, Fenella gave her heart in return.
All the fairies, it seemed, were at her christening, even to the fairy
Gratitude, who, I hear, is not often asked out nowadays.</p>

<p>For her child's sake, and spurred on by love, Mrs. Barbour toiled and
schemed incessantly. Far less mercenary of soul than the aristocratic
patrons who haggled over extras, inspected cold joints with a
questioning eye and wanted their rooms "kept over" while they disported
themselves at Homburg or Cannes—naturally credulous in fact, and
inclined to believe the best of every one, the woman effected an actual
change in her nature and under all her suave manner became distrustful,
peremptory, and mercenary. The terms she wrung from the butcher, baker,
and grocer before mentioned, with the bait of prompt payment in one
hand and the threat of the big stores at Brompton and Bayswater in
the other, were, perhaps, as unprecedented as those easy-going family
purveyors one and all declared them to be. In bed at night while she
should have been sleeping, in church on Sunday when she should have
been harkening the sermon, her brain was busy with an endless double
entry sum of receipts and outgoings, the profit of which she wrote
off, variously, but always under the one heading, something after
this fashion: "Fenella Account. To an amber satin eiderdown quilt,
same as I saw at Hampton's on Friday; to plum-colored silk stockings
such as the lady at the end of No. 6 just now is making no attempt
to conceal; item, to a black fox stole and toque—the silver pointed
ones are cheaper, but they say the hairs come out; item, to a silver
manicure set like Miss Rigby's." And the poor woman, absorbed in her
fond calculations, would scribble an imaginary total with one wrinkled,
black-gloved finger across the gilt cross of her Book of Common
Prayer, to the scandal of her left-hand pew-neighbor, and the no small
mystification of Fenella on her right, wondering what mummy was "up to
now."</p>

<p>She kept the girl from school until she was twelve years old, making
shift with whatever deposit of a church school education stayed in her
own head, eked out with the ministrations of various depressing and
untrained governesses, and last but not least with lessons from Lady
Anne Caslon, whose only fault was that they were necessarily irregular.
Lady Anne was the first of two permanent lodgers who, about Fenella's
sixth year, made their home at Number Eleven, and, for a number of
years, almost lifted Mrs. Barbour's precarious venture to the dignified
level of a settled income. The rooms had only just been given up, by
"parties" with whom money seemed to be no object, amid indignant tears
on the one side and a glow of respectable resolve on the other; but
Mrs. Barbour had not yet signified the vacancy through the columns of
the <i>Morning Post</i>, while we need hardly add that no window-card
ever shocked the susceptibilities of Suffolk Square. I suspect myself
that the Lulford connection were anxious to confine the collateral
skeleton within limits that could be controlled by them, and kept a
furtively watchful eye on the room-letting branch of the family.</p>

<p>Lady Anne appeared on a blustering March morning: a short, middle-aged
woman, none the less active because she limped from an old hunting
accident, with a long, white, bony face—the face of some great mystic
abbess of old days—a distinct prognathous of the lower jaw, and a
high, narrow forehead, from which her colorless fair hair was tightly
drawn and twisted into an absurd little knob at the nape of the neck.
On every feature, movement, and accent was stamped the indefinable
<i>cachet</i> of the governing caste. She was wearing a frieze coat
and skirt, a man's collar and tie, and a green Alpine hat, carried an
ash stick, and was pulling against, rather than leading, a hideous
and powerful white bull-terrier, bristlingly intent upon the feline
possibilities of successive areas.</p>

<p>She stumped through the vacant floors on her low-heeled shoes, rapped
the wainscot as though she rather suspected secret passages, gave a
derogatory poke of her ashplant to the feather mattresses, turned on
both taps in the bathroom, and concluded her tour with a sudden descent
upon the kitchen, where three maids, busy upon a noontide lunch, rose
and curtsied awkwardly.</p>

<p>"I'll take 'em," she said abruptly, turning suddenly in the hall upon
the aggrieved proprietress. "The rooms will have to be repapered of
course—and a hard mattress, and I have my own pictures; oh! and you'll
turn those tufty, musty armchair things with ball fringes into some
other room, won't you?—like a good soul. Any children? I thought I
heard——Down, Rock! <i>Down</i>, sir!"</p>

<p>The bull-terrier, tied to the hall-stand, had lain, whining unhappily,
sweating, and wrinkling his pink muzzle, while his mistress roamed
up and down stairs. Now he was standing, tense and rigid, growling
ominously, at a tiny hand that pushed a biscuit hospitably against his
clenched, bared teeth. Lady Anne struck the threatening head aside and
lifted the child in her strong arms.</p>

<p>"So this is your little girl? This is Fenella?"</p>

<p>"Yes, m' lady," said Mrs. Barbour, hasty and apologetic in manner for
all her secret resentment. "But she's a good, quiet little thing, and
I'll see she gives no trouble."</p>

<p>Lady Anne did not answer. She had pushed back those rebellious curls
and was brooding the flower-like face.</p>

<p>"Dear heart!" was all she said aloud, and the rest was murmured under
her breath.</p>

<p>She set the child on the floor and held out the little nerveless hand,
still clenched on the biscuit, toward the bull-terrier.</p>

<p>"You must be careful with strange dogs, baby, particularly this breed.
They aren't like any other sort of dog. Take it, Rock!"</p>

<p>Rock crunched the biscuit wastefully between his powerful jaws.</p>

<p>"No crumbs, sir!"</p>

<p>He sniffed up about a third of the biscuit, which he had let fall on
the tiled floor.</p>

<p>"Say 'Thank you.'"</p>

<p>The animal gave the small fist that was tendered him three enormous
licks, and glanced at his mistress out of his savage pink eyes.</p>

<p>"That's right! Mustn't ever bite this one, Rock! She isn't a cat, and
never going to be one either, I know."</p>

<p>"I hope the child will be no obstacle, m' lady," put in Mrs. Barbour,
stiffly.</p>

<p>"Obstacle!" Lady Anne repeated. "God bless me, no. Why should she be?
You must have your baby, I suppose, same as I have my dog. What's her
name?"</p>

<p>"Fenella, m' lady."</p>

<p>"Very well. You be good to Rock—I'll be good to Fenella. I'll send a
postcard when I've arranged things," she said. "Come on, Rock!"</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>"Why was the lady c'yin', mummy?" asked Fenella, whose accent still
left much to be desired.</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour could not enlighten her. She was wondering herself why the
woman had first called her child Fenella and then asked her name. A
conversation in the corner of the dining-room at the Palmyra Club half
an hour later might have carried her mystification a little further.</p>

<p>"I don't think I'll do a <i>matinée</i> with you this afternoon,
Brenda," Lady Anne was saying to her dearest friend. "Seeing Nigel's
baby has rather upset me. I think I'll go to my room and howl for a
bit."</p>

<p>"What's <i>she</i> like, Nanno?" asked the dearest, narrowing her eyes
through the smoke of her cigarette.</p>

<p>"Nice, comfy, child-bearing sort of person. She has no airs. That was a
lie of the Lulford woman."</p>

<p>"I believe," said Brenda Newcombe slowly, as if the opinion were the
fruit of some thought and a little disillusion, "that's the sort most
men like Nigel like in their hearts."</p>

<p>"Men like Nigel——!"</p>

<p>"Philosophers—I mean. Over-educated, ultra-refined. They divorce their
intellect and their instincts so thoroughly that the result is——"</p>

<p>Lady Anne raised her shapely white hand deprecatingly.</p>

<p>"I know what you're going to say quite well, Brenda. You needn't finish
it."</p>

<p>"To give one instance," went on the irrepressible Brenda; "did you
never hear that Don Hinchey's wife has to wear print dresses and, oh!
everything very plain when they're alone in Northumberland."</p>

<p>"Pshaw! Brenda; <i>quel conte!</i>"</p>

<p>"Nanno, it's gospel. She told Lady Carphilly, and Lady Carphilly told
me. She wore them once to a fancy dress, and looked so well that now
when Donny's bored he makes her put them on. She hates it, but he says
it's the only way she can keep his love."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Lady Anne moved in as soon as the alterations that her austere soul
demanded had been made; the walls hung with a paper that Mrs. Barbour
compared scornfully but exactly to a dry mustard plaster, and various
ebullient studies of still life removed to make way for old-wood
engraved portraits and Alken sporting prints. She began the morning,
violently, with a cold bath at seven; breakfasted—continentally—on
dry bread and coffee at eight, and wrote nearly all the morning at
a roll-topped Sheraton desk, whose drawers slid in and out on brass
rails as smoothly as the oiled pistons of a machine. It was at this
desk that Fenella stammered through her letters. Seated upon the
highest chair the room afforded, made higher still by an Italian gilt
leather cushion, the little girl spelled out the adventures of Tom
and Dick, Nat and Ned, and other monosyllabic heroes of childhood.
Nelly's attention wandered very easily. Her voice would die away to
a murmur—her head fall lower and lower until the dark curls quite
covered the heavy type and wood cuts, along which a very neatly pointed
cedar pencil, held in a firm white hand, moved with such exasperating
deliberation. Then she would begin to suck her thumb, and, finding
no encouragement to relaxation of effort in the lowered lids and
compressed mouth above her shoulder, would let her eyes wander round
the room. Under the high white mantelpiece the fire burned cheerily,
with little bubbles of gas and spurts of flame: above it, a silver
clock set in a horseshoe ticked so quickly that the slow passage of the
hands across its face was one mystery the more for the child brain to
puzzle out. The room smelt like a man's, of morocco leather and boot
cream, and the vague but piercing scent of naked steel in between.
Under a curtain to the right of the fireplace, which did not quite
reach the stained floor, Lady Anne's long boots, on high wooden trees,
stood, an orderly row of eight polished toes, like booted eavesdroppers
behind an arras. Over the "Melton Hunt Breakfast," between crossed
hunting crops, a fox's mask still wore the grin with which it was
twitching one December afternoon years and years ago when the mangled
pelt smoked upon the raw Leinster air and little, ugly, hard-riding
Lady Anne, in long bottle-green habit and flaxen pig-tail, was held up
amid the yelping red muzzled pack and blooded to the hunt; while—most
interesting and distracting of all—close to the fire, with his nose
between his paws, deliciously unemployed, lay Roquelaure, blinking
friendly eyes which seemed to say, in the secret language that children
and animals share for a few short years—</p>

<p>"Oh! I say, baby, ain't lessons over yet?"</p>

<p>Three times a week, when her correspondence was done, and a wire
basket full of square, rough envelopes with scarlet seals awaited the
afternoon post, Lady Anne would go riding in the Park. She stumped
through the hall in a short habit and wide-brimmed billycock hat, under
whose elastic band the uses of the yellow-white knot of hair became
suddenly obvious, looking more than ever like an abbess: a hunting, not
a praying, abbess this time. Outside a stable lad from the mews held
a tall, nervous horse by the head. Lady Anne would hold the child up
to pat the hairy, quivering nose, bid her have no fear of the sliding
eyes; would run her fingers down the horse's flanks and legs, maybe
pick up and inspect a hoof cunningly; at last, jumping into her saddle
out of the groom's hand, would straighten the sidling beast with one
blow of her riding crop on his buttock, and be off, her right knee
almost in line with the maned neck, and holding in the caitiff head
with hands that were a proverb in the shires. Fenella always watched
her out of sight, her eyes shining—the palms of her hands pressed hard
together.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII">VIII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">THE SECOND FLOOR</p>


<p>By this time Miss Rigby might possibly have arisen and be watching the
horse and its rider through her curtains. Emilie Rigby was the second
of the permanent paying guests. She was tall, languid, graceful and
disorderly, of uncertain age, but with a growing opacity of skin and
with darkening shadows under her short-sighted eyes to tell of the
ebbing life forces within: much younger in the afternoon than in the
morning, and recovering her youth hour by hour as the day aged. In
her rooms on the second floor she led the spoiled, sensuous life of
an odalisque or a Persian cat. She breakfasted in bed, lunched in a
wrapper and with her hair coiled carelessly upon her neck, had a hot
bath, with elaborations, at three, and left the house an hour later,
in a cab whose destinations, despite all efforts of Druce and Kendal,
remain conjectural to this day. She dined from home almost nightly, but
had few correspondents, and her visitors gave Mrs. Barbour no anxiety.
She had a telephone installed in her room, whose sharp summons soon
became one of the habitual sounds of the dark, still house. The baffled
Druce, carrying up an unascetic luncheon at one, frequently found the
door locked in her face and was forced to wait until a conversation,
punctuated with bursts of laughter and far too disjointed to be worth
listening to through the keyhole, wore itself away. Lady Anne answered
for her.</p>

<p>"Respectable?" she exclaimed abruptly, in response to a guarded query.
"Of course Jasmine Rigby's respectable. We dined at the same house last
month. Only, if I were you——" she hesitated, unwilling to spoil
the perfect relief in her landlady's face, "if I were you, I wouldn't
have Nelly in and out there too much, once she begins to grow up. Her
clothes alone are enough to unsettle the girl."</p>

<p>But it is hard, with four servants and three households to control, to
keep an efficient eye upon inquiring youth, whose fingers are already
beginning to pluck restlessly at the many hued skirt of life; and the
hardship becomes greater when you are filled with pity for a loneliness
that is part of your own contriving. As long as Fenella was a very
little girl, beyond coaxing her in now and then to pet as one would
pet a pretty kitten, Miss Rigby took scant notice of the child. But as
she grew in years and stature, and a beauty that was becoming more of
the earth and less of the angels was confirmed in her, I am afraid the
scented, sophisticated atmosphere of the second floor began to exercise
its delayed but inevitable charm. One of those foolish intimacies began
which almost every pretty young girl can remember, often with shame
and impatience. There was a year when the woman, nearly forty, and
the girl, not yet fourteen, were "Jasmine" and "Nelly" to each other;
when little cocked-hat notes (oh, how deftly folded!) were apt to lurk
under the doily mats on Fenella's dressing-table, to be answered by
ignorant, misspelt letters from the blindly adoring child. The jaded
woman of fashion and pleasure (no; I don't know what place she filled
in her world, nor is speculation worth while) took an early opportunity
of showing the little parson's daughter the beauty of her arms and
shoulders—talked unreservedly before her, dressed her up in her
gowns and <i>lingerie</i>, let her lie upon the bed and prattle while
she herself sat before the mirror, waging her unwearied warfare with
time—refreshed herself with the girl's homage, laughed away as much as
she dared of her innocence, and finally, in a last spasm of confidence,
unlocked a drawer, hesitated, and put into the girl's hands a bundle of
letters, bidding her, with a flushed cheek and the ghost of a giggle,
to read them over and to let her know how their literary beauties
affected her. "When you've read them," said she, "maybe I'll tell you
who they came from."</p>

<p>Fenella left the room puzzled, a little frightened, but with no
instinct to tell her that possibly she was holding her damnation in her
hand.</p>

<p>What happened next? One of those happy accidents, perhaps, that good
angels know how to arrange. The packet was returned, unopened, next
morning, by Lady Anne, in the course of an interview which left her
fellow-lodger considerable repairs to effect before she faced the world
anew. An hour later the good genius, habited for her ride, knocked
timidly at the door of Mrs. Barbour's sanctum in the hitherto unvisited
nether regions.</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour rose to her feet when she saw who her caller was, but Lady
Anne signed for her to remain seated. She seemed nervous and awkward,
and put her hands to her side. They say her horse kicked her there the
day she broke her ankle; oh! only a touch; no notice was taken of it at
the time.</p>

<p>"I've come to speak about our little girl," she said, sitting down and
crossing her booted legs.</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour bridled a little; but youthful habits are strong. She
resumed her deferential manner.</p>

<p>"I trust she has been giving no trouble, m'lady."</p>

<p>"She has perhaps exposed a meddling old woman to the worst snub of her
life. I'm going to be crude, Mrs. Barbour. What on earth are you going
to make of that child?"</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour plaited the table cover, but seemed to have no answer
ready.</p>

<p>"She's growing lovelier every day" (the foolish mother's eyes
glistened); "she dresses like a little fashion plate; she has more
silver stuff and finery in her room than any of us girls had at Castle
Cullen; she hasn't a friend in the world nor an idea in her head; and
we've an instance," with a glance up at the ceiling, "near enough at
hand, where beauty with nothing else can bring a woman."</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour's eyes began to fill. Not a single harsh truth but voiced
a reproach that had been nibbling her own heart for years.</p>

<p>"Why don't you send her to school? Do you know that if you were a poor
woman you could be fined or sent to prison?"</p>

<p>"Schools are so dear."</p>

<p>"Stuff! They're cheaper and better than they ever were. There's
nothing young folk can't do now. You can go from a boarding school
to the 'varsity on a string. Let's send her to school, Mrs. B.," she
persisted. "You've no time to look after her, and neither have I."</p>

<p>"Not boarding school," the mother pleaded. "I couldn't be parted from
her now."</p>

<p>"Who said anything about boarding schools? There are plenty of day
schools. None of them are perfect, I know. But it can't be put off. All
the danger isn't out of doors. Let her go and get a little honest mud
on the bottom of her skirts, and come home every evening to have it
brushed off."</p>

<p>The poor woman struggled with her trouble. "It isn't that," she said
brokenly, "but—but, I can't explain it. There are things that don't
brush off—ever. She is so ignorant of what the world thinks of—of
people like me. They'll teach her it all at school; they'll teach her
to despise her m-m-mother...."</p>

<p>She broke down and, burying her face in her hands, wept the
unrestrained tears of her class.</p>

<p>"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" she moaned. "I knew it must come. She's so
pretty—so pretty; such a little aristocrat. I'm only her mother by
accident, really. And she'll make fine friends and be asked out, and
wonder why she can't ask 'em back, and I'll have to tell her: 'Nelly,
dear, it's because your mother is only a poor woman that father married
to save her name, that lets lodgings to her betters for a living, and
wouldn't let you go to your own people when they asked for you; and
you can never have a friend of your own class as long as you live with
her.'"</p>

<p>Lady Anne kept her arm across the broad, bowed shoulders.</p>

<p>"Let's try it," she said cheerily. "I'll answer for Nelly, and I think
I can answer for the others. You have no conception how the world is
changing. I have the very school in my eye, too. I know the principal.
Sunlight and science, and knowledge that's innocent because it's
thorough, and open windows upon life that blow away all the whispers in
the corners, and a proper reverence for the body that, after all, is
all we're sure of. As for the money—well, I'm a meddlesome old body,
and you can heap coals of fire on my head by letting me be responsible.
I don't blame you for spending money on her clothes: besides—Sharland
College is dressy."</p>

<p>She wrote to her friend that night:</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Louisa</span>:</p>

<p>"I'm sending you a little girl who is the daughter of a dear, dead
chum of mine. She's extravagantly pretty, very dull, quite poor—is
being brought up as though she were an heiress and has a heart that
I believe will prove a greater danger to her than her face or her
poverty. For God's sake, Louisa, find out if she has any special
talent that will help her to a living, and ground her and grind
her until she's taken hold. I'm fond of the child, and shouldn't
die happy if I thought there was any risk of her joining the one
profession for which previous experience isn't essential.</p>

<p>"The old pain in the side has come back; the Swedish massage did it
no permanent good. But I can still ride, so I don't squeal."</p>
</div>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="IX">IX</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">SHARLAND COLLEGE</p>


<p>Fenella was nearly fourteen when she went to school. After Mrs. Barbour
had seen her into the green horse-omnibus which at that date still
rolled sedately westward along the Park paling the poor woman went
home and, regarding with a stricken eye the untidy relics of a hurried
breakfast, sat down and had a good cry. She would see her daughter
again in a few hours, but her instinct told her that the parting was
not one to be measured by time or distance.</p>

<p>At school Fenella achieved an instant success. At her lessons she
remained a sad dunce, but Sharland College had the modern conception
of bodily beauty as a supreme merit, and for its sake and also a
little for the amiability that accompanied it, Nelly's shortcomings in
algebra and geometry were forgiven and so mitigated by the assistance
of plainer and cleverer girls anxious for her friendship as to be
scarcely noticeable. She had become a fashion in the school before the
end of her second term, and a host of extravagant, flattering nicknames
attested this heady popularity. She was "Astarte" and "Principessa"
in the higher forms; "Flash" in the gymnasium and swimming bath—a
tribute to her bodily agility; "Zenobia" for one winter term, shortened
into "Nobs" during a frenzied hockey rally and forthwith abandoned;
"Greuzy" in artistic circles; while, oftenest of all and most eloquent
of all—for it voiced the sense of a common possession—she was "Our
Nelly." I do not know whether it is to her credit or discredit that
the intimacy with Miss Rigby came to a sudden and unforced end in her
first term. Poor Jasmine was forgotten or remembered only as a rather
unhealthy dream. Fenella began even to refer to her flippantly as her
"past"; "Ma, has my 'past' got up yet?" she would ask at midday on
half-holidays when she came home to change for hockey or tennis and
wanted to use the telephone.</p>

<p>It was upon wintry half-holidays that poor Mrs. Barbour felt her
desolation most keenly. It did not seem to matter so much when she
knew Nelly was working at school. There was a hungry and noisy return
at half-past four to be looked forward to, and a whole golden evening
during which she might knit and watch the dark head bent above the
irksome home task. And in the summer she would not have had the child
otherwise employed than in winning roses on lawn or river for the
colorless cheeks that she was uneducated enough to think indicated a
latent delicacy. But on rainy autumn afternoons, so brief and dark,
with the fire burning cosily in the shabby parlor and only a prospect
of forty feet of smoky grass, a leprous plaster cupid and the black
wall of the mews to entertain herself with, it seemed unjust, even
vaguely ominous to her peace, that her nestling preferred to beat her
new-fledged wings out in the dark and cold. She never complained,
but tried for a while to tempt her child to stay at home with her
"favorite" books, her "favorite" armchair, a box of chocolates—poor
ineffectual wiles that the short-sighted eyes of youth, set upon the
quest of high-spiced pleasure abroad, passed over without seeing. There
would be a hasty gobbled luncheon, taken standing, like the last meal
in Egypt; a frenzied search behind old magazines that were never read
and old music that was never played, for shoes and shin-guards—"Must
have my new shin-guards to-day, mummy. Kilburn hack simply rotten—" a
kiss, for the chocolates, given on the wing, and Fenella in red tam o'
shanter and belted jacket of scarlet pilot cloth was off—through the
area and up the steps.</p>

<p>"Expect me when you see me, mummy. I may chew with one of the girls."</p>

<p>She was not a religious woman, but she used to pray about this time,
miserably and humbly, for her child's heart to be left to her. And, in
the morning, between two mouthfuls of porridge, it was just possible
that Fenella might look at her sharply, and say—</p>

<p>"What've you been doing to yourself, mummy? You look like a boiled owl
this morning."</p>

<p>Who else was to notice that an old woman's eyes were red?</p>

<p>But there were times, also, which the mother came to look for, as
sex stole inexorably upon the slangy, boyish woman-child, when the
princess wearied of her kingdom, the tireless wings began to droop,
and the fledgling crept under the old sheltering wing for comfort.
She would come down after lunch, dressed in her house frock, sit
down unexpectedly on her mother's knee, grip the broad shoulders,
and held thus at arms' length, gaze at her for minutes together as
though with some new knowledge in the steadfast eyes. She would cover
her with tender names of disrespect—with cooing infractions of the
fifth commandment. "Dear old fathead!" "Dear old stoopid!" "Silly old
motherbird!" But she was strangely averse to the caresses with which
her mother, always expansive, would have repaid the endearing insults.</p>

<p>"Don't kiss me, donkey," she would cry, breaking away. "Can't you see
this is one of my touch-me-notish days? Hook me up the back and send
Drucie out for some chocolates. I'm going to stop with you all the
afternoon."</p>

<p>"Dearie," said the mother, timidly, one day, "won't the girls miss you
and come looking for you?"</p>

<p>Fenella knit her brows, but did not look up from her book.</p>

<p>"Of course they know where you live, don't they, dear?"</p>

<p>"No—yes. Oh! I don't know. Mother, can't you see I'm reading?"</p>

<p>Next Saturday Fenella was "playing away." The mother, still pursuing a
train of thought that had not really been interrupted during the week,
was wondering whether it would not be possible, by sending Miss Rigby
away (she had never cared for the woman), and by moving Lady Anne up
one story, to take the whole of the first floor for herself and her
child. The girl <i>must</i> have somewhere to bring her friends. She
stuck her needles into her wool and sought pencil and paper. But the
figures that foot it merrily enough when it is a matter of addition,
limp wearily and stubbornly when subtraction is in question. She caught
her breath at the result of her calculations. And yet—the situation
was intolerable.</p>

<p>In the middle of her reverie a gate creaked and slammed. There
was a clatter of feet on the steps—a rattle of sticks along the
railings—Babel let loose in the area, and, before the woman could give
a shape to the panic at her heart, into the big, shabby room, like an
ill-trained chorus at a theatre, tumbled a rout of girls—short and
tall—dark and fair—all dressed alike in red jackets and caps.</p>

<p>They were of all ages from twelve to sixteen. Some had the promise of
beauty in a few years to come—some were only comely with the freshness
of youth and health, but from one and all, in spite of strident voice,
awkwardness of gesture, and self-consciousness of regard, there
radiated that evanescent and mournful charm which is possessed by any
bevy of girl comrades that touches childhood at its one extreme and
womanhood at the other. With a comprehensive sweep of her arm Fenella
introduced her rabble court.</p>

<p>"Ma—these are the girls! Girls—this is ma! Hurry up and get
us something to eat. We've been playing at Blackheath, and they
only gave us one biscuit each with tea. And, look here, girls,"
turning from her mother's dazed face upon the brawling team, "if
you make a row and upset our lodgers, you'll" (impressively)
"<i>never—come—here—again</i>!"</p>

<p>Fenella's popularity not only survived this shameful exposure, but
followed her into the Christmas holidays. The most delightful of all
missives began to lie, three and four at a time, on the breakfast
table by her plate, "begging the pleasure." Mrs. Barbour, who did a
considerable amount of good by stealth, had arrested a thirsty genius
on a downward course from the Bond Street ateliers to Marylebone
Workhouse, and, with this strange being, who wore a palpable
transformation, smelt of brandy, and called her "Modder-moselle," Nelly
spent many a fruitful morning, pinning, fitting, and cutting, while
the machine whirred and bumped on a table near by. She tasted for the
first time the delights of the waxed floor, the heavy golden air,
the cadenced wind—all the witchery of dance-land. Sleek "freshers"
with lacquered heads, "down for the short—" pink, alert subalterns
on Christmas furlough from Chatham and Aldershot, with funny cropped
moustaches like a toothbrush—delightful middies in uniform, with
cracking voices, wrote her name stiffly and illegibly on their
programmes or, if they were very smart, on an immaculate shirt cuff.
She danced with the verve of one exercising a fine natural gift, but
hated "sitting out," and acquired a distracting habit of wandering on
her partner's arm, along corridors and up stairs, through palms and
around screens, in search of friends similarly coupled. She called this
the "visiting figure," but, oh! the despair of inflammable youth, its
head full of incoherent adoration, to which darkness and solitude would
have given such burning words. This little unchaperoned girl, with her
perilously attractive beauty, discovered endless address and resource
in keeping male fervor at a distance. The following conversation is on
record, heard from palm-filled obscurity:</p>

<p>"Look here, Bobby! I'm sitting with you in the dark, 'cos you said the
light hurt your bad eye; but if you <i>paw</i> you'll have two bad eyes
to look after 'stead of one."</p>

<p>Toward the end of her third year at Sharland College Lady Anne received
a letter from Miss Garrett, of which the following was part:</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"... About Fenella Barbour. No. I haven't forgotten the promise
I made you to let you know if the girl showed marked ability in
any one direction. Strangely enough, Madame de Rudder, of Hanover
Street, our dancing and calisthenic mistress, called upon me about
her only yesterday. She tells me the child shows a talent for
bodily movement (she calls it 'genius': poor abused word!) such as
she never marked in a girl before. She is revising some old dances,
<i>Pavanes</i> and <i>Corantos</i>, for private house parties, and
wants Fenella to join a quartette she is making up. Remembering
what you told me, I mentioned (guardedly) the expense of dresses,
etc., but she would not hear of the girl's incurring any outlay.
Not only this. She says that if Fenella could come, even two days
a week, as assistant at Hanover Street, she could have her tuition
free and, in time, be employed regularly, at very good pay: much
better than we can afford our own under-mistresses, who are all
graduates, as you know.</p>

<p>"It seems to me, dear Anne, that a <i>métier</i> offers here: not
a very exalted one, it is true, but in the only line for which the
girl has shown any talent at all. Will you, if you think fit, speak
to the mother before I do anything further and ascertain her views.
I have met Mrs. Barbour. She is a puzzling and, I should say,
rather foolish woman, who evidently married far above her class.</p>

<p>"The idea, if followed out, will of course abridge Fenella's school
career, or even terminate it; but, to tell you the truth, dear
Anne, although I am fond of the child, I am only half sorry for
this. Don't misunderstand me. The girl is as good as gold, and I
know (who should judge better) has a soul like crystal. But her
influence among us has been an unsettling one.</p>

<p>"... I picked out the much beloved 'Collywobble' in the
Country-house Supplement from among the Sea grave, with dear Lady
Anne 'up.' What a pretty beast it is!"</p>
</div>

<p>Fenella was seventeen when she left school. She thought life a great
joke, she had not said a prayer for two years, and the saddest sight
she had seen was a fallen sparrow (counted, but number unrecorded) on
the path in Holland Walk.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="X">X</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">THE WAY OF A MAID</p>


<p>Planche's "History of British Costume," 2 vols. 2500<i>b</i>, in the
Library of the British Museum, is a helpful work of reference. It is
replete with information, and the wood-cuts are spirited. Its size and
cumbersomeness, however, are disadvantages. It is emphatically a book
you would not care to read in bed. Add to this, that it is forming
the summit of an unsteady pile of books with which your arms are
filled—that you are handicapped further with a big black fur muff,
and that your nerves are already on edge with the strangeness of the
place....</p>

<p><i>Crash!!!...</i></p>

<p>One heavy morocco-bound volume lay, open and face downward, on the
floor; the other was following it fast, ringleader in a tragic glissade
over the smooth black fur. Fenella bit her lip and did not quite
suppress a word whose most obvious rhyme is "lamb." In a terror-struck
flash she saw all the results of her carelessness: attendants bearing
down upon her—expostulation—disgrace and final ejectment beyond those
heavy swing doors that she never, never should have passed. She was
really very frightened.</p>

<p>A man who had been ransacking the shelves by her side, with a long arm
that reached easily from top to bottom of the bookcase, turned quickly
at the smothered exclamation. With a swift movement of one hand, he
stayed the avalanche, and with the other picked up the fallen volume
from the floor.</p>

<p>"Oh! thank you—thank you!" said Fenella, almost hysterically. She
was looking up—a good way up—into the kindest, grayest eyes she had
ever seen.... Eyes!—eyes! the little, unprotected girl encountered
them everywhere. In train or 'bus, in the street, in the untempered
light of the lately constructed tube railway. Hard eyes; preoccupied
eyes, full of some sick trouble of their own which passed her over,
unseeing; bitter, arrogant eyes that seemed to find her beauty and her
pretty clothes an offence; eyes vicious and bold, the worst of all,
that would not leave her, that stung her cheeks, as though the heat of
the evil passions behind them were being focussed upon her through a
lens, and beneath whose level, insulting conjecture her flesh crept and
her hands clenched themselves in an agony of shame and helpless anger.
But these eyes were different to all the others. She could look at them
as steadily as at a cloudy sky: they seemed full of some tender wisdom.
And of humor too. Already their twinkle mitigated what she felt to be a
tragedy.</p>

<p>The stranger took the books from her one by one and bestowed them
compactly in the hollow of his own arm.</p>

<p>"Have you got a seat?" he asked.</p>

<p>"No," said Fenella, in an agitated whisper. "Can I go anywhere I like?
Are they all free?"</p>

<p>The man's smile broadened and showed his fine long teeth.</p>

<p>"We'll try and find you a free one," he said. "Come on with me." His
accent was strange; not quite English, yet not foreign.</p>

<p>She followed her protector on tip toe, averting her eyes from the
indignant glances that she was sure were being levelled at her. One
lean old monk <i>was</i> scowling, but he was really thinking of
something else. Then there was a dreadful fat negro, like Othello
turned scholar, who rolled his eyes. Fenella could not help peeping at
the leaves he was turning over, to confirm an unscientific conviction
of her own, that the black <i>did</i> really come off sometimes.</p>

<p>Her guide stopped at an empty place, arranged her books neatly upon
the flat leather-covered desk, pulled out a cane-seated chair on
casters, and, bowing slightly, sat down in the next place and began to
read one of a number of manuscript leaves with which it was strewn. She
divested herself of gloves and furs, and commenced turning the pages
of one of her books gingerly. Occasionally, she put her finger to her
mouth, and then, remembering where she was, stopped with a shudder, as
at danger escaped.</p>

<p>The man who had helped her was writing busily on a thick paper pad.
When he had reached the bottom of each page, he blotted it, numbered
it in the top right-hand corner, and added it carelessly to an untidy
pile at his left hand. Sometimes, before tearing it off, he read it
over, apparently without enthusiasm, erased words, and sometimes whole
sentences, with impatient curly "twiddles" of his quill pen, wrote
words in between the lines and added various cabalistic signs and
letters in the margin. He was very much occupied, and Fenella, whom
no book had ever absorbed, saw that she might watch him covertly and
safely.</p>

<p>So this was the way books were written! She wondered who he was. Not
Bernard Shaw—his hair was too short. Nor Rider Haggard—his face was
too narrow. She could not think of any other writer with a beard. She
considered him good-looking—in a strange way. She never would have, I
will not say looked, but wanted to look after him in the street, still
in a way she could not define, it was nice to be sitting next him. She
liked his leanness and dryness. She hated fat men whose sleek hair
seemed to be soaking up superabundant moisture from their bodies. Then,
his beard was trimmed so closely to his cheek it was hard to say where
it began, and his moustache was brushed out of the way once and for
all. He didn't keep "twiddling" <i>it</i>. Yes; it would be quite safe
to sit opposite while he ate soup.</p>

<p>There was a man quite like him on the very page before her.... Ah!
Yes. That was what he wanted. A big ruff showing the hairy throat,
and a little cloak, swung from his shoulders, and big puffy—whatever
they called them—nearly to his knees, and a long rapier sticking up
in the air—how awkward on staircases though—but not a silly little
<i>toque</i> like that, stuck on one side, and not—oh, not earrings
in his ears. Who was it? "Duc de Guise." What a pity she had forgotten
(forgotten!) all her French. Yes; that was what was the matter with
him, she decided. His good looks were simply out of fashion. She looked
backward and forward from the book to his face, from his face to the
book, two or three times. Suddenly she became aware he was looking
straight at her.</p>

<p>"<i>Oh! help!</i>"</p>

<p>"Anything I can do?" asked the stranger helpfully, in a low voice that
was far less obtrusive than any whisper.</p>

<p>"C-could you translate this little bit for me, please? I'm no good at
French," Fenella stammered, pushing her book toward him.</p>

<p>"Which little bit?"</p>

<p>She indicated a paragraph at random and as far from the picture as
possible. She caught her breath at her audacity. "Forward minx, I
am." She hoped he wouldn't hang over her shoulder to translate, like
handsome Mr. Curzon, the drawing master at Sharland, heedless, or
perhaps not heedless, of the burning cheek so near his own, and the
suppressed titters of "the girls."</p>

<p>M. de Guise drew the open book toward him, and, tearing off a slip
of paper, began to write on it in a cranky but rapid hand, with an
occasional glance at the foreign text.</p>

<p>"Here you are. I hope you will be able to read my writing."</p>

<p>"Thank you very much indeed," said Fenella, demurely.</p>

<p>"Anything else you want? Paper?"</p>

<p>She had dived into her muff and was splitting open various envelopes
with her forefinger.</p>

<p>"If you wouldn't mind. But I'm giving you so much trouble."</p>

<p>"No trouble at all. Here are three sheets. You have a pencil?"</p>

<p>"M—m."</p>

<p>"If it's one you stole from the catalogue desk I wouldn't suck it.
Those aren't the sort you suck. See! you've made a blue smudge on your
lips."</p>

<p>Fenella dived into her muff again, and, drawing out what I believe is
termed a vanity bag, examined her lips on the little mirror. She rubbed
them hard.</p>

<p>"Is it gone now, please?"</p>

<p>"Quite." How red the child's lips were. He glanced right and left
and put his fingers to his own. A few fretful knowledge seekers were
looking toward the chatter. Their glances were hostile.</p>

<p>"<i>A la besogne!</i>" said he, beneath his breath, and turned to his
work again.</p>

<p>Fenella shook her shoulders and settled herself in the most industrious
attitude she could think of. At the end of an hour she had drawn three
figures and could think of no further excuse for remaining. Most of
the wisdom of the world was around her and above her, but she felt no
temptation to disturb it. The man at her side had apparently forgotten
her existence. She put her books away, one by one, trying to prevent
her shoes squeaking, but making a great bustle, really, yet he did not
look round. When she came back at last to get her furs and gloves, he
was gone. She left the room with a little sinking of the heart, but not
more than one feels when, say, an interesting fellow-traveller whom we
hoped was coming on all the way to London, gets out at Rugby. It is
true that in her preoccupation she forgot to claim her umbrella.</p>

<p>When she reached Oxford Street she was reminded by passing an Express
Dairy that it was past five and that she would reach home late for
tea. Tea, as a rite, retained all its old significance for Fenella.
Some of her old school-fellows had studios or flats within easy reach,
and, perhaps, six months ago she would have made for one of them. But,
already, she thought she noticed a difference. The girls were growing
up—acquiring individuality, and her own path was diverging more and
more. They liked her to come in to tea, but preferably on a day when no
men were expected. She was already learning the hard truth that life
must be played with the lone hand. A good many of her triumphs lay
behind her.</p>

<p>She turned to the dairy, and going upstairs as far as she could, took a
seat in the smoking-room and ordered weak tea and a teacake. She liked
muffins and crumpets and teacakes with "heaps and heaps" of butter.
The tea-room, being near the Museum, was full of its <i>habitués</i>.
She saw three or four she had noticed there, playing chess or talking
together in high mincing tones interspersed with cackling laughter.
She did not recognize the accent of the "illuminated." Some had lined,
seamed faces, with long hair, and would have looked better with a
clerical collar. Those that looked strong looked rough. How different
to her "courtier." She began to think of him anew, to calculate her
chances of ever running across him again. One thing was certain, she
would never, never go back to that terrible place again.</p>

<p>The teacake was long in coming, and as she looked up impatiently she
saw him standing in the middle of the room. She recognized him at once
by the rather rakish felt hat that had lain on his desk. He had a long
blue overcoat with a belt and a funny yellow silk handkerchief round
his neck. She wanted him very much to look round, but surmised he had
a favorite waitress and was looking for her. Perhaps the naïve wish
reached him. He turned, and, smiling, came toward her, as straight as a
partner about to claim his dance.</p>

<p>"Hullo! Got tired? I missed you when I came back."</p>

<p>"I only came to draw three pictures."</p>

<p>He hung his coat up and sat opposite her in a matter-of-fact way that
robbed the action of significance. Still, the lady who had brought the
teacake waited for his order with a sub-surface smile. She had seen so
many "Museum goings-on."</p>

<p>"You're not often here, are you?... Yes, tea, please. No—nothing with
it."</p>

<p>Fenella leaned forward confidently. "It's my very first visit. Don't
tell, will you? I <i>fudged</i> a ticket."</p>

<p>"'Fudged'?"</p>

<p>"Came with another girl's—Phyllis Harmans. Do you know her?"</p>

<p>The gray eyes twinkled. "No. You're the only lady I ever speak to in
the Museum."</p>

<p>"Would I get into any trouble if I was found out?"</p>

<p>"We'd all get into trouble if we were found out. The best way is not to
attract attention. Don't drop your books again."</p>

<p>"Is it hard to get a ticket?"</p>

<p>"It's criminally easy. But I shouldn't advise you to. It's a place
for old fogies like me. You look pale. Do you get plenty of outdoor
exercise?"</p>

<p>Fenella rubbed her cheek. "That's not paleness. You're fussy, like
mummy. I'm a healthy brute. And I shouldn't call you an old fogy.
You're—brown. Have you travelled much?"</p>

<p>"Oh!—round the world and back again."</p>

<p>"Coming back's nice, isn't it?"</p>

<p>"Only when it's coming home."</p>

<p>"Isn't your home here? I <i>thought</i> you spoke—funny. Haven't you
any one who looks after you? A mother—or a sister?"</p>

<p>"No mother, no sister, no wife." The stranger spoke incisively. "No
sweetheart, even," he added, after an appreciable pause.</p>

<p>Fenella blushed. Of course she hadn't meant to ask that; still, it
was interesting to know. The child had a strange pertinacity in
constructing correct views of new acquaintances that deceived a good
many people.</p>

<p>A sudden squall lashed the windows with rain. She looked round in
affright.</p>

<p>"Oh!—help!" she said again, softly.</p>

<p>"Now what's the matter?"</p>

<p>"I've forgotten my 'brolly'."</p>

<p>"Your <i>what</i>?"</p>

<p>"My brolly: my 'mush'; ma's best gold-handled umbrella."</p>

<p>"I'll lend you mine."</p>

<p>"Oh! it isn't that. I get the 'bus at the door, and only have a step to
walk at the other end. But how'm I to get it back?"</p>

<p>"Aren't you coming again soon?"</p>

<p>She shook her head. You would never have guessed the stranger felt
disappointed. He felt in his pocket and pushed a card across the table.</p>

<p>"Write an address on that," he said, "and leave me your check. I'll
have it sent to-night by a messenger boy."</p>

<p>Fenella considered a moment. The card lay face downward, and it was a
great temptation. But her good breeding triumphed. Without turning it
over she wrote her name and address, very slowly, in print letters.
Meantime she soliloquized thus:</p>

<p>"I hate rain. It's harder on women. Your petties get wet and slop
round your ankles. I wish I could always dress as a boy. It's so
picture-squeak—picturesque I mean. I do sometimes. Dances, you know:
in a quartette, gavottes and things. I'm a boy, 'cos you can't teach
men.... There you are. I hope you can read it.... I had a ripping dress
at the 'Bechway' in the spring. Blue and silver, and powdered hair, and
a little diamondy sword."</p>

<p>"Which you could use upon occasion with great spirit, I'll wager,
Monsieur le Marquis."</p>

<p>"Oh, rather!" rejoined Fenella. (How nicely he speaks French.) "I'm
good at fencing. I was captain of the 'gym' at our school."</p>

<p>The man just glanced at the card and put it into his pocket
absent-mindedly. He was wondering what kind the school might be that
had taught this distractingly friendly child to dance and fence, but
not to read French and, above all, not to be careful—with that face
and figure—how she spoke to strangers.</p>

<p>Meantime, something in this last speech had reminded the girl of the
first fine rapture of Ruritania, years ago.</p>

<p>"You're a novelist, aren't you?" she said.</p>

<p>"Of sorts," he admitted.</p>

<p>"I wish I was intellectual"—wistfully.</p>

<p>"You're better. You're cute."</p>

<p>"<i>Cute—cute—!</i> What does that mean? Clever?"</p>

<p>"Not exactly."</p>

<p>"Pretty, then?"</p>

<p>"Well, a kind of clever prettiness."</p>

<p>"You mean smart!"</p>

<p>"Well, smart. Let us be English at all costs."</p>

<p>"I don't see how you can think <i>me</i> smart," she said, with a
rueful inflection in her voice.</p>

<p>"Why not?"</p>

<p>"Talking to a strange man as I've done."</p>

<p>At sight of the troubled young face, something that was not exactly
suspicion, but which had guarded his manner till now, disappeared. He
laughed quite freely, and it was wonderful how the sudden gaiety made
him look at once younger and more foreign. He put his hand across and
just touched the girl's arm.</p>

<p>"Dear child," said he, "talk to as many strange men as you like. The
stranger the better. It's ordinary ones you must be careful about."</p>

<p>"Ordinary ones——?"</p>

<p>"Yes. Beware the Least Common Multiple. Therein lies danger to you. I
prophesy it."</p>

<p>"I must go," said Nelly, rising as she spoke. "It isn't getting any
drier."</p>

<p>He put his coat on and followed her to the door. She noticed he left
threepence for the waitress. How extravagant, after just a cup of tea!
He kept beside her across the street, holding his umbrella over her
head.</p>

<p>"I should like to read your book when it comes out," she said, as her
omnibus hove in sight. "Why do you laugh?"</p>

<p>He was laughing because he knew the book. "How are you to ask for it
without knowing the talented author's name?"</p>

<p>She hesitated. "Well," she said, almost reluctantly, "what <i>is</i>
his name?"</p>

<p>He noticed the effort and his manner stiffened. "It's one I needn't be
ashamed to tell you, and you needn't be ashamed to hear. My name is
Paul Ingram. Here's your 'bus. Good-bye. I don't ask you yours."</p>

<p>Fenella turned on the step and laughed at him over her muff.</p>

<p>"Goosey! You've got it in your waistcoat pocket."</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XI">XI</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">AN INTERLUDE</p>


<p>All this happened on a Saturday, and Paul had a full day to think it
over. He went back to his work on Monday, and, for reasons he did
not stop to define, not only chose the same place, but even had the
weakness to try to keep the desk next it free by depositing his hat and
gloves there. It would be hard to say what he expected. He had looked
at the address more carefully when he was sending back the umbrella,
and it confirmed the impression he had already received from the girl's
clothes and casual, assured manner. She was some daughter of a good
family, he felt sure, guarded and checked, and so the more inclined to
kick over the traces when away from watchful home eyes. Had he been an
Englishman the very perfection of her turnout might have still further
puzzled him, and he might have been inclined to speculate as to how so
young a girl came by all the rings she wore; far too many, though they
were only pretty baubles. But Ingram came from a country where beauty
does not wait on marriage for its adornment. He was even ignorant that
a set has arisen there, the most artificial and utterly contemptible,
surely, in the world, which has sacrificed the healthy freedom that was
its birthright, to ape the social hypocrisies and superstitions that
Europe is outgrowing.</p>

<p>Anyway, she had made him feel very old, and for the moment out of
conceit with his self-imposed tasks, just as some wild, free creature
of fur or feather encountered on a holiday walk in the country might
distaste any one of us with his own humdrum workaday life. And he had
the same further impulse that the wayfarer may have had to arrest the
busy, aimless errand, close his hand on the furry flank—prison the
fluttering wings, and, having made the creature share his captivity a
moment, to open his fingers and let the throbbing quarry go free. A
desire so innocent—so purely intellectual, that it scarcely deserves
the hard name of the lust of the eye, and has nothing whatever in
common with the lusts of the flesh.</p>

<p>It must be remembered also, to account for his unusual and dangerous
mood, that just about this time he had put his manuscript into my
hands. No period is so demoralizing mentally as one during which we
have relaxed our own efforts, and are indulging in the vague hope of
some good to come to us through other people's.</p>

<p>Tuesday—Wednesday passed. Paul ceased to look for the girl. Why should
he? Hadn't she said she was not coming back. And what a fool he was
even to desire it. She was a pretty memory; he, a writer, should know
the value of such impressions, the pity of disturbing them. Suppose he
met her again, was it likely the glamour of the first encounter would
survive? Apart from the <i>bizarrerie</i> of her quaint, childish
confidences, she had said really nothing that was worth remembering.
On a second meeting he would be sure to find her trivial and vulgar.
Even the pretty manner was probably a trick she had tried elsewhere,
and found "fetching." Toward the end of the week he happened to be
reading, in the course of his work, the diary of a man some of whose
blood, according to family tradition, ran in his own veins: the daily
journal of Cotton Mather. Skimming through the record of that dark,
tortured soul, he lit upon the curious passage wherein the middle-aged
widower, with the naïve self-revelation that sweetens his persecuting
memory, deplores the inroads which a handsome young pupil to whom he
is teaching Latin is making in his self-respect. "The Lord," groans
Mather, piously, "deliver me from this ingenious child!" Paul gave such
a sudden laugh that his neighbors looked at him in wonder. "Bravo,
Cousin Cotton!" he said to himself. "I'm not proud of you, but I'll
forgive you a lot for that." He felt immensely relieved. Who has not
known such a foolish moment of light-heartedness, when something we
have read or heard seems to set us right with ourselves? "<i>The Lord
deliver me from this ingenious child!</i>"</p>

<p>That night after dinner he lit a cigar and strolled westward. He
found Number Eleven Suffolk Square easily enough. It was a big,
double-fronted house of cream-colored stucco, with wide steps and
a pillared porch. It happened just then that all three floors were
lit up. This illumination gave the house a festive appearance and
exaggerated its opulent aspect. Against the amber colored blinds the
pattern of handsome lace curtains stood out in bold silhouette. The
kitchen blinds had not been lowered and Paul noted three maid-servants,
two of them in black dresses and caps with long white streamers. On the
other side of the area, across another lighted window, red curtains
were drawn. More servants, probably—butler, coachman, and footman. He
thought of his own home in far Massachusetts; the "hired help" who came
to table with them; his own chapped wrists; the dying mother, rolling
out pastry on the low table to which they wheeled her chair. A feeling
of fierce camaraderie with the toilers, the little ones of the earth,
possessed him; a hatred for luxury and the parade of wealth. He took
three or four turns before the house, and went away. Before he left the
square, however, he kissed his hand toward Number Eleven. "Good-bye,
Fenella," he said. "You're a kind-hearted baby, but I guess the folks
in that house will know how to spoil it when the time comes."</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XII">XII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">RICHMOND PARK</p>


<p>Next morning, when he went to the reading-room, she was sitting
in the old place. She still wore the long blue coat with all the
buttons—the black fur, and the big plain French hat with a single
parrot-green feather, but, seen a second time, custom tempered somewhat
her formidable smartness. She had a big gauze veil, too, tied round
her hat and falling in long ends over her shoulders. It subdued the
hard childish brightness of her face, making it look both maturer and
softer. She met his surprised look timidly, and, diving into her muff,
held out a white card with a blue stripe down the centre. Her gesture
was meekly disarming—hurriedly explanatory.</p>

<p>"I've joined," she said, anxiously. "I'm a member."</p>

<p>Ingram twirled the card between his fingers. It was early, the great
room was half empty, and there was no need to whisper now.</p>

<p>"And what special line of research are you thinking of pursuing?" he
asked, gravely.</p>

<p>Fenella made haste to disclaim any serious purpose. "But it's a useful
place, isn't it?" she asked. "This morning I only looked in to thank
you."</p>

<p>"To thank me——?"</p>

<p>"For sending my umbrella. I couldn't send a postcard; I didn't know
your address."</p>

<p>"It was no trouble." He was still turning the little card round and
round. "And so you're running away at once?"</p>

<p>Fenella cast her eyes down. "I can't stay," she said. "I've got a dog
with me."</p>

<p>"A dog?"</p>

<p>"Tied to the rails outside near the little house. They'd only keep him
'cos I said I wouldn't be ten minutes. Do you like dogs? I'm taking him
for a run."</p>

<p>Paul experienced a sudden zest for adventure. "Suppose we take him for
a run together? It's such a glorious fall morning."</p>

<p>"Oh, <i>top-hole</i>!" said Nelly, joining her hands in the old baby
fashion that had clung to her. "I mean, how nice! Where shall we
ramble? The Gardens?"</p>

<p>"No. I hate the Gardens. Even the sparrows know they're a fraud.
Let's go out to Richmond. We can walk across the Park, have lunch at
Kingston, and be back in time for tea."</p>

<p>Outside the Museum lodge, a horrible old bull-terrier, chained to the
railings, was keeping up a growling soliloquy, with occasional snaps at
imaginary flies, suggested possibly by the late autumn sunshine. He was
very thick and scarred and carried his head to one side.</p>

<p>"This is Rock," announced Fenella, as, with a bewildering smile at
the liveried keeper, she began to drag the veteran to his feet and
along the pavement. "He's an awful old dog; I don't know how old, but
he was a puppy when I was a baby. Isn't it funny? Now he's all lumpy
and stiff, and I'm still growing. Ma says it's because their hearts
beat faster. Heckle—that's a medical boy I know—says he's the oldest
bull-terrier he ever knew, and that what he's asking for when he growls
is a dose of pussy's acid in a dog-biscuit. What's pussy's acid?<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>
Rock is short for Roquelaure, but some of the girls say he smells, and
call him Roquefort. He's not my dog: he's Lady Anne's. She's hunting
somewhere, and I promised her I'd take him out regularly. Oh, I want
to telephone from here. Will you hold him—please? He won't bite.
No, don't shut the doors, I shall stifle.... <i>B-r-r-r!</i> One!
<i>B-r-r-r!</i> Two. I <i>have</i> put the pennies in; didn't you hear
them? 2309 Pad. Yes, I mean Paddington. You say Pad yourself. Hello!
Are you there? Is this Miss Rigby? Oh, good morning, Jas. Jas, be an
angel and tell mummy I shan't be home to lunch. I'm going to have it
at Richmond, with a man. What d'you say? Oh, fie! Oh, tut!... Naughty
puss! Six feet one, a long tawny, silky moustache, and cold, steel-blue
eyes.... What?... I don't know ... I may. Good-bye, Jas. You're an
angel."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>In the train Ingram took the seat opposite her, and, while she kept
up an incessant chatter, watched her with a kind of ache at his
heart for her beauty. It was more than prettiness: he saw that now.
Those long heavy lashed eyes, whose full lids she had a trick of
pulling—the plaintive, tremulous mouth, too red; the two little tufts
at her temples which even the draught from the closed window blew
across her cheekbone, so fine and dry was her hair; the delicate and
rather salient nose that bespoke impulsiveness. Like all visionaries,
crusaders and other impractical persons, he had at the same time an
intense perception of bodily beauty and an intense jealousy for the
coarse uses to which life puts it. To have retained one's ideals and
to have lost one's illusions—is not this to be subject to all the
tortures that sex can inflict?</p>

<p>They left the station and walked through the defaced streets of the old
Royal Borough, its noble Georgian houses half hidden by plate-glass
shop fronts: they climbed the long ascent to the Park, and stood for
a moment on the terrace to admire the river, an isle-set loop of
silver, at the bottom of a steep glen filled with rusty verdure. Once
inside the wide ciphered gates, they left the gravelled path and by
a soft mouldy foot-track struck into the recesses of the old hunting
pleasaunce. The air was mild and balmy; not a breeze stirred the crisp,
sapless trees that stood waiting to surrender their ruined pomp of
summer to the first wind that required it of them. Fenella gave her
escort her muff and stole. She called Rock to her in a high, clear
voice and, with shrill, chirping whistles, with cracks of her dog-whip,
fluttering of her skirts, with endless enticements and provocations,
lured that much-tried old pensioner on to efforts he had really
outlived. Paul, as he watched her, ignorant no doubt of the exquisite
old Mabinogion simile, thought that her motions resembled nothing so
much as the swooping flight of the swallow before rain. Her limbs
seemed to have the pliancy of whalebone.</p>

<p>Rock wheezed and panted gallantly after his mistress, his paws drumming
stiffly on the ground—his poor old scarred neck held more on one side
than ever. But his heart was not in the chase. He was forever slinking
back to heel. He looked up wistfully at this new, sober-paced friend.
"Here are we," his dim old eyes, with their hardened cornea, seemed to
be saying, "old fellows, both of us, who've taken sharp bites and hard
knocks enough, and it's a bit late in the day to be asking us to show
off our paces, isn't it? Can't we sneak away somewhere together? This
girl will play the very devil with us both if we let her."</p>

<p>"Rock! Rock! Rock!" the clear voice would ring out. "Come here, sir!
Come here <i>thissminnit</i>! Lazy—<i>lazy</i> dog!"</p>

<p>And with a despairing throe of his knotted tail, off poor Rock must
pump again.</p>

<p>When they had nearly crossed the Park, they sat down on a worn seat,
hacked nearly away with amorous knife blades, close to a pond into
which some long-legged wading birds were digging their bills. Around
them and behind them the noble demesne outstretched itself, in long
tree vistas and seemingly illimitable glades, with nothing to scale
them to insignificance. Now and then a motor car rolled softly along
the road to White Lodge, only accentuating their loneliness by its
speed and detachment, or a ghostly little troop of fallow deer passed
slowly and securely to some favored feeding ground. Rock sniffed the
air at them, growled and wrinkled his nose. "We both remember a time
we couldn't have stood this—don't we?" the decayed old sportsman was
no doubt grumbling to himself.</p>

<p>Seeing the girl quiet at his side, Paul began to try and tell her
something of his life, working back, as is the manner of men, from the
things that are nearest their experience and yet are slipping from
their memory, into the never forgotten far past.... The night marches
across the silent desert, spellbound by the silver witchery of the
moon, and through <i>mehallahs</i>, that are like a fruitful land
smitten by an evil charm—its houses turned into boulders and brushwood
made of its standing corn: the caravans one may meet with a grave
bearded sheikh riding in front, and the bubbling dromedaries behind
him, laden with great wicker "<i>D-raths</i>" full of squalling, naked
children and silk-swathed women, who peep through the osiers and crook
their fingers at the dusty legionaries tramping by in a cloud of their
own dust: the sand pillars that march upon your flank, step and step,
like jealous genii shepherding doomed strangers into their desert: the
joy of the camp at the well, with the day's march done: the incredible
lightness of the sweat-soaked body when the knapsack is lifted off.</p>

<p>... Or that other camp—so far away it is hard to believe it all one
life. Crackling cedar wood and the good smell of coffee on the sharp
light mountain air, and the jinglers riding in the squealing cavvy
with a pother of dust about their unshod feet, all rosy and glorious
like a halo in the cherry-red morning sun: and the long lariats held
wedgewise, and the scamper and scurry as the bronchos are trapped:
and the peering through a fog of sweat and dust for your own brand
on shoulder or buttock, and the whirling ropes, and the laughter and
horseplay as the ponies are blanketed and bitted for the dawn-to-dusk
round-up.</p>

<p>I don't know whether Paul made a poor Othello, but I do know he had
a very indifferent Desdemona. Fenella was forever interrupting the
narrative on one frivolous pretext or another: to throw stick or stone
for poor sleepy Rock to retrieve ("<i>Guffetchit-Rock! Guffetchit—lazy
dog!</i>"); to gather a bunch of scarlet berries afar off, whose color
had taken her eye and which were hardly redder than her lips; to run
down for a minute to the pond to see what "those rummy birds" were
digging for so industriously. She had all the <i>nil admirari</i> of
the modern mind: its heedlessness of anything that lies outside its
own experience; its sedulous curiosity for all that lies within. It
was better when they got to Ingram's early life. She could imagine
a country road along which burdocks and hemlock and other green
fleshy things grow as high as young trees, and little gray frame
houses tucked away behind silver birches. She was genuinely and even
tenderly interested in the crippled mother, and at the story of the
sister who died, blew her nose and said she had caught cold in the
train. She clapped her hands at the quilting bees and candy-pulls and
sleigh rides and sugar boiling camps and wished plaintively that she
had been born a little American girl, to have had her share in so
rapturous an adolescence. But even this part of the story was checked
with immaterial, trivial questions such as on children's lips weary
the maternal patience. "What happened the gray mare in the end that
wouldn't pass the new letter-box? How many boys went to the sugar camp?
And how many girls? Did they ever flirt?"</p>

<p>They had luncheon in an upper room of an old inn at Kingston, that
had a curved iron balcony looking down upon the market place. The
panelling was hidden by paper of an iridescent red, covered with a
sprawling pattern of tarnished leaves and flowers. To right and left
of the fireplace two dark pictures of bottle-necked ladies with untidy
hair, brought here from God knows what household dispersion, looked
disdainfully out of the canvas in opposite directions. Some fair or
market was going on in the square below; the misty afternoon air
was full of the bleat of sheep, the lowing of cattle, raucous cries
of costermongers, and the crack of saloon rifles. They were waited
on by a depressed Teuton, upon whose broad white face Paul raised a
wintry smile by addressing him in his own guttural tongue. Fenella,
the palms of her long kid gloves twisted round her bangles, fared
delicately. She gave most of her meat to Rock—eschewed watery sprouts
and fluffily mashed potatoes—and "filled up," as she would and even
did express it, upon plum tart with unlimited cream and sugar. She
would not drink wine or coffee, but ate all the dessert and sent out
for more cob-nuts. She had all sorts of pretty, restless, bad manners:
crumbled bread while she chattered—scored the cloth with a pink nail
while she listened—counted her plum stones three times and made it
"never"—dabbled in her tumbler for lack of a finger bowl—and upon its
rim made, with one wet finger-tip, the hum of innumerable blue bottles,
at which poor Rock barked and snapped under her chair.</p>

<p>It was late when they sat down to lunch, and they had dawdled besides.
The sun was gone and twilight closing in as they recrossed the Park
toward Richmond. She was so silent that Paul asked her, half peering
into the veiled face, whether she had felt the afternoon dull. She said
not; but her negative went no further than a little shake of the head.
She had a trick of looking back every now and then and of measuring
the way they had come, as if to insure a clear recollection of it, and
she allowed Rock—who, rested, fed, and with his head pointed, though
obliquely, for home, was in spirits that contrasted with his depressed
morning mood—to roam at his will. They had just reached the avenue of
trees that looks over Ham House when a furious barking made them turn
their heads. The dog, bristling, and with sidelong leaps that left his
nose in the one direction, was pointing at something in the long grass.
Fenella cracked the whip she had been trailing along the path.</p>

<p>"Rock! <i>Rock!</i> Come here, sir! Oh, Mr. Ingram, go quick and stop
him!" She covered her eyes. "He's got some poor little rabbit or bird."</p>

<p>Paul ran and collared the animal. A brown mottled bird with a wide
yellow beak was fluttering away clumsily, with wings half spread.
Fenella caught it from him as his hand was closing on it.</p>

<p>"Give it to me! Oh, <i>darling</i>! are you hurt?" She looked on
her gloves for blood. "Had he bitten it, Mr. Ingram?... There,
<i>there</i>—you're quite safe now. I tink oor more f'itened dan hurt,
dear! Is <i>he</i> one of the birds that fly away in the winter, Mr.
Ingram? I'm going to take him home and put him in the conservatory till
spring.... Ah! you <i>wicked—bad—cruel—fierce</i> dog! It's a good
job I gave him so much meat, isn't it Mr. Ingram?—or you'd be gobbled
up, dee-ar!... That's right; put him on the chain. Oh, yes he does, Mr.
Ingram; he eats birds, at least he <i>scrunches</i> them," stroking the
smooth brown back with her lips. "Can we get a cage in Richmond, do you
think?"</p>

<p>Paul looked at his watch. "I think we'd better get a train in
Richmond," he said. "We've been out quite a while, and you only said
'luncheon' over the 'phone. Are you going to bring the bird along?"</p>

<p>"Why—<i>of course I am</i>."</p>

<p>"Well, put him in your muff and let us hustle."</p>

<p>Fenella quickened her pace resolutely, but every now and then would
stop to be sure the creature was alive, breaking into a run afterward
to overtake her escort.</p>

<p>"I'm sorry," she said at last, penitently, as she saw him waiting for
her. "I tell you what I'll do. I'll put my finger in every now and then
and, if he pecks, I'll know he's alive. Why does he peck me when I
saved him? Birds have no brain. Cookie had a canary once that flew into
a fly-paper; it took ever so long to unstick his wings. I hope this
isn't one of the sort that won't sing unless its eyes are put out."</p>

<p>In the train the bird still absorbed her. They had a compartment to
themselves, and Paul watched her curiously through his cigar smoke. He
was wondering whether he had been bored or amused. A little of both he
concluded. She was a good girl, but quite immature, and utterly—oh!
utterly trivial. There was probably some babbling old mother at home
whom she took after, for a warning and example. She was lovely, oh,
yes—lovely enough to make the most careless heart ache—the rashest
"gazer wipe his eye." But for a man like himself that was not an entire
explanation. Wherein lay her charm? For charm there was; one, too, that
survived the long day spent in her company. There was no use denying
it; walks in Richmond Park, alone, would be sad affairs from now on.
Alone, because, of course, this one must never be repeated. Butterflies
are pretty things to watch, once in a way; but, since to clutch remains
a human instinct, and since no man who thinks in his heart ever wants
to see that sort of down upon his clumsy fingers, it would be better
if—be better if——What were the clanging, ringing wheels saying now?
Hark!</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="verse indent0">"Be its beauty its sole duty:</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">Be its beauty its sole duty...."</div>
  </div>
</div>
</div>

<p>Ah! yes. That was what he has been trying to think of all day. And yet
people could be found to called Browning "obscure."</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="verse indent0">"Be its beauty its sole duty!"</div>
  </div>
</div>
</div>

<p>"Oh, Mr. Ingram! Look! It's stopped pecking and is beginning to look
round."</p>

<p>He leaned across the carriage. He may have meant to do no more than
touch the enfolding hands that lay so near his lips. But her own mouth
was nearer still, and he kissed that.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII">XIII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">FIND SOUL—FIND SORROW</p>


<p>In the middle of the night that followed his whole holiday Paul woke
and cursed himself, at length and with conviction. Years ago, in the
good old days when punishment was punishment, with no nonsense talked
about reformatory intent, among the toiling groups that tilled the
earth, made the road or lightered the harbored vessel, here and there
a man was noticed who dragged his left leg a little as he walked. He
was not crippled, nor deformed; he was likely, indeed, to be strong and
formidable beyond his fellows; he did his day's work and earned his
day's wage with the best. But the leg dragged—always would drag. And
the reason passed in whispers: this was an old galley slave—a man who
had worked at the <i>bagnio</i>. His leg, from force of habit, still
paused for the effort that once dragged ball and chain behind it.</p>

<p>I had not known Ingram long before I guessed that, at one period of
his life or another, women had meant a great deal for him, but that
they had never meant happiness. In what did the impression reside?
I can't say. In a regard perhaps—an inflection of voice—an over
quickness to catch sorrowful meanings—in what he did not say quite
as much as in what he did. But I was as sure of it then when I knew
nothing as now when I know everything. He could not always have loved
in vain. Partings there had been, tearful, emotional, reluctant, but
always partings. Letters reached him even now through changes and
redirections, letters filled with bright, helpful gossip, of the new
friends—the unimagined husband—the children that might so easily
have been his; with only here and there between the lines, for his eye
to see and no other, the tenderness that women keep for the man who
could win their regard but not their persons. And if Ingram felt sure
of anything, I knew he felt sure of this: that the chapter of his life
from which they were a legacy was closed and dead—a great stone rolled
to the door of its tomb, sealed and mortised, and guarded by a whole
cohort of wise intentions. And now, in a week, he had fallen—fallen
as precipitately as the greenest of "rash and inconsiderate youth."
Relying on his experience and disillusionment, he had broken the
covenant of the old, wise king, and, into some unsuspected vacuum of
his heart, a pretty face, a plaintive regard, a few surface tricks
of dress and manner had rushed and were not to be extricated without
endless pain and trouble. Again and again, as he turned from side to
side in the night watches, he went over the images of his fall, for so,
in all seriousness, this strange man regarded it. He felt the thrill
of the young throat stretched to meet him, caught the fragrance, so
faint—so faint that he had not noticed it till then—of the orris
root in which her clothes had lain folded; heard the little fluttering
sigh as his fervor stopped her breath. It had been the first kiss of
passion that had ever touched her lips; he knew because——oh! never
mind how he knew. What, exactly, he wondered, and was not the first
to wonder, did such a kiss signify to a good woman? Board and bed, he
surmised dimly, at some future date; home and home circle, taxes and
life insurance, doctor's bills, children clapping their hands round
Christmas trees. And this from him! He laughed out in the darkness—so
loud that the glass shade of the lamp by which he had read himself to
sleep vibrated with the sound. From him, a mere embodied intelligence,
driven by loneliness and mental suffering to self-expression, doomed
now, while life should last, to breed and bear the calamitous offspring
of the brain.</p>

<p>He had given her his address because that much seemed called for in
decency, but he did not expect a letter for a while. Yet when, after a
few more feverish and wakeful hours and the immense solace of a cold
tub, he passed into the sitting-room in his bath robe, a letter lay on
the breakfast tray that he knew could be from no one else; a square
pale mauve envelope, with an ingenious flap, addressed in a straggling
schoolgirl hand.</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Ingram</span>,</p>

<p>"I hope you got home safe and had no <i>haresbreath</i> escapes
from motors. I was nearly run over the other day, I only got on the
pavement in the <i>knick</i> of time.</p>

<p>"I have put the bird in the <i>conservatery</i> and given him a lot
of seed, he throws it about with his <i>beek</i>, but hasn't eaten
any. I haven't given him a name because I don't know yet if he is
going to live. Ma was crazy, but I <i>smouthed</i> her down.</p>

<p>"No one ever kissed me before, but some one did hold my hand once
quite a long time. I couldn't <i>riggle</i> it away.</p>

<p>"Rock is ill, he has eaten a <i>plumb</i> stone I think and will
have (to) have some <i>caster</i> oil. If it was one of mine that
makes it this year not never. How exciting!</p>

<p>"I shall be at 14, Hanover Place to-morrow till 4.15. <i>P'raps</i>
you would be near there if you are not writing.</p>

<p>"I remain,</p>

<p class="ph4">"Your loving friend,<br>
"<span class="smcap">Fenella</span>."</p>
</div>

<p>Paul read the strange letter over and over again, from its prim
apostrophe to the shy little breath of sentiment at its close. The ink
just there was a lighter color than the rest. It was evident that she
had let the letter go dry while wondering how to sign herself.</p>

<p>"Ho! ho!" he said aloud. "So Providence has given you a loving friend,
has it? Now what's a man like yourself, Paul Ingram, to do with a
loving friend and a conscience at one and the same time?"</p>

<p>"Scrap the conscience!" said counsellor the first. "The girl's pretty
and sweet."</p>

<p>"Pull out before any more harm's done!" said another. "She's quite
innocent."</p>

<p>"Give time a chance," said the third—the one that outruns the hounds
but never quite catches up with the hare. "You've got to hurt either
her pride or her heart by making an end of it now, and there's always a
chance her whim will wear out if you wait."</p>

<p>"That's what I'll do," said Ingram at last. "I'll tell her bit by bit
what I am, and hint at what I'm likely to become. She'll see reason.
There's often a lot of hard hog-sense at the bottom of these butterfly
women."</p>

<p>And, by way of starting well, he took her out to tea that afternoon,
and was so genial and natural that the last shadow of self-reproach
vanished from the poor child's heart. And before he left her he had
promised to call for her at her home. He knew by now that she did not
belong to his natural enemies, and the knowledge made it harder to
"pull out" than ever.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>I have spent a good deal of time upon this idyll, without, I am afraid,
leaving a very just or a very pleasant impression of Paul Ingram upon
the reader's mind. But there are many excuses to be made for him. In
the first place, he was very poor—poorer than any of us guessed. He
had that profuse careless way with money which is quite as often a
consequence of never having had it as of having had it always. The
commonest, and perhaps the safest, investment of a little money is
to make present life bearable with it while it lasts. But the future
is quite another matter. A great golfer told me once that for days
after he had won a momentous handicap he was obsessed and haunted by
the stealthy patter of the feet that had followed him from hole to
hole. And I have no doubt that many a night, while the child sat upon
his knee and retailed her day's gossip, sweet and unsubstantial as
the sugary <i>étrennes</i> in a Paris confectioner's window, he was
listening less to her than to the stealthy wolf-feet of poverty that
he knew were creeping up behind him.</p>

<p>And then he was, both constitutionally and through circumstances, an
unhappy man. There are souls so designated and set apart for sorrow
that it may be said of them, almost without paradox, that they are
only at ease when bearing it. They grow to recognize in mischance the
environment that suits them best. In such a mind an isolated reason
for happiness cannot exist. It pines away for lack of company. Nothing
convinces the heart of its sorrow so surely as a sudden discrepancy in
its ill-luck—a belated and unassisted piece of good fortune. Fate has
these freaks with those upon whose unhappiness she has determined. It
is not so much her concern that they should have nothing as that they
should always have a little less than might make them happy.</p>

<p>I think he would have been a better lover for what, I if may be
permitted a moment's plain speaking, I would call a little sane and
healthy lust. But he was of the said race of literary lovers, the race
of Swift, of Shelley, of Flaubert, who are as fatal to a woman's heart
as they are harmless to her virtue.</p>

<p>Last of all, I expect the girl, in her ignorance, was exacting, and
had no notion how the smoothest curb can gall. I know for a fact that
she insisted on his writing to her any evening on which he was not
able to see her, and I can imagine no torture more refined for such
a man than to have been forced to sit down, at the end of a long day
of disappointment and mental drudgery, and answer some foolish, fond
letter in language she could understand, and into which no trace of
the <i>weltschmerz</i> should creep that was devouring his heart and
killing hope and ambition by inches. Some of his letters which I have
seen show that he took refuge in an irony and fantasy which make them
something of literary curiosities. He addressed her by all sorts of
strange names—"Crazy kid," "Dear Pierrette," "Maddest of March
Hares." One letter is written in Quaker dialect.</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"<span class="smcap">Sweet Friend</span>,</p>

<p>"As arranged betwixt thee and me I called for thee yestereve at
the house of thy worldly acquaintance, but hearkening timely the
laughter of fools from an upper chamber, which is like to thorns
crackling under a pot, refrained, and did not venture. I pray thee
walk soberly, and so farewell."</p>
</div>

<p>Some, written, I fancy, in the illiterate and misspelt jargon of the
cowboy of the plains, are, to me at least, unintelligible. At last it
became easier to call than to write at any time, and he appeared an
ardent lover for the very reasons that made him a laggard one.</p>

<p>He put off the first call as long as he could, but a day came when it
could be put off no longer. One foggy evening he found himself outside
the railings at Number Eleven, and Fenella asked him if he was not
coming in to show himself.</p>

<p>"I can't stay out late, you know, until you have," she said, with a
little reproach in her voice. It was the first time she had spoken
sadly to him.</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour rose, a little flustered, as he came into the room, and
thrust some family mending behind the cushion of her basket chair. Paul
saw at once that she was of his own caste, and you never would have
guessed how his heart went out to her. The heart was under disgrace
just then, and a strict embargo laid upon its impulses.</p>

<p>"I am so pleased to meet you at last," said Mrs. Barbour, when the
first civilities were over, "and so interested to hear you are a
literary man. My husband wrote a good deal during his life."</p>

<p>Fenella was revolving, slowly, on the hearthrug before the mirror.</p>

<p>"Paul doesn't want to hear about books, mother," she said; "he's been
reading stodge all day."</p>

<p>But Mrs. Barbour was already searching the shabby book-shelves, packed
tight with tattered exercise-books, coverless magazines, broken
cardboard boxes, and a host of other things for which book-shelves were
never intended.</p>

<p>"My husband had a very fine library at one time," the widow went on, as
she rummaged, "but most of the best books are upstairs."</p>

<p>"With our lodgers," Fenella further explained. "We're very proud of
our 'paying jests'; aren't we, mummy. We've had them for years—and
years—and years." She let her voice die away, and stretched out her
arms slowly, indicating, indeed, a considerable time vista. "What an
actress!" thought Paul, watching her.</p>

<p>"Here's one," said her mother at last, dusting a slim volume in a brown
cloth binding. "Where <i>can</i> all your father's books have got to,
Nelly?"</p>

<p>Ingram took the book from her hand. Its pages had never been cut, and
it exhaled the forlorn odor of the presentation copy. Its strange title
attracted him—</p>

<p>"Climatic Influences Upon the Reformation. A lecture delivered at Wells
before the United Diocesan Congress, 18—. By the Honble. and Revd.
Nigel Kedo Barbour, M. A."</p>

<p>There was a boastful engraved book-plate inside the cover—all plumes
and scrolls and quarterings.</p>

<p>"Has my new hat come, mummy?" asked Fenella, suddenly, in the changed
voice she kept for the serious affairs of life.</p>

<p>"I bade Druce take it up to your room," answered mother. "Have you had
tea yet, dear?"</p>

<p>"No," said Fenella, incisively. "Ring for some while I go upstairs,"
and disappeared forthwith.</p>

<p>Paul kept his eyes upon the mottled page, but knew he was undergoing a
scrutiny at once legitimate and disquieting. Mrs. Barbour spoke at last:</p>

<p>"I hope you don't think my little girl forward, Mr. Ingram."</p>

<p>Paul raised his eyes, closing the book upon his forefinger.</p>

<p>"I think her entirely charming."</p>

<p>"I know she's impulsive," the mother went on. "Yes—she is. It makes me
anxious."</p>

<p>"You don't expect me to quarrel with her latest impulse," Ingram said,
with one of his rare smiles.</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour shook her head, secure in her own worldly wisdom and code
of conduct.</p>

<p>"But men make mistakes. Don't they? You know they do."</p>

<p>"Of course they do. I've made hundreds, but never the sort I think you
mean."</p>

<p>"You see," explained the clergyman's relict, "Fenella leads a strange
life. Yes"—she repeated the phrase, as though she found it vaguely
comforting—"a strange life. She's very bright and talented, and
receives a great deal of attention; but for reasons that—well, for
<i>reasons</i>, she can't see much of her friends here. I assure you,
you are the first gentleman acquaintance she has ever asked in. You
ought to feel very much flattered, Mr. Ingram."</p>

<p>"To an extent that verges on embarrassment, Mrs. Barbour."</p>

<p>"And then," the mother went on, in the heedless fashion that recalled
her daughter, "she has a great number of fine relations who would be
glad to show her attention if she'd make the first move. But Nelly
won't be 'taken up'—that's what she calls it—<i>taken up</i>, by any
one."</p>

<p>"Bravo!" said Paul. "Let us be fellow-conspirators, Mrs. Barbour, and
confine her bounty to the laborious and deserving class."</p>

<p>"Oh my!" exclaimed Mrs. Barbour, with sudden helplessness. "You do talk
like my husband! It's quite uncanny."</p>

<p>Fenella interrupted them, entering with noisy suddenness. The new hat,
very large, very smart, was on her head. She looked quickly from one to
the other.</p>

<p>"What've you two been yapping about?" she asked. "Mother"—in an
aggrieved voice—"this beastly hat is an inch too big all round. I told
Clarice so, but you and she would talk me down. You never take my part
with dressmakers and people. It'll have to be altered. Hats are getting
smaller. Have you rung for tea?"</p>

<p>"The maids are upstairs, dear. I'll go and get it myself."</p>

<p>As soon as she had left the room the girl seated herself on Ingram's
knee and kissed him.</p>

<p>"What were you and mummy talking about?" she said, rubbing her lips
after the kiss. "The hat's a bit in the way isn't it? I hate things in
the way, don't you?"</p>

<p>"Not when I perceive them in time."</p>

<p>"Oh, but we aren't going to have any, are we, Paul? No difficulties—no
quarrels—nothing horrid."</p>

<p>Ingram didn't answer her. Perhaps he was listening to those feet
creeping, creeping up behind his shoulder.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>So the months passed. When it was too late, Ingram tried to tell
her what he should have told her at first. But Nelly would admit
nothing—listen to nothing. She turned all the clouds inside out and
bade him confine his attention to the silver lining. Upon the subject
of her dancing ambitions she entered an unaccountable and fatal
reserve, but there was nothing else in her life she did not share with
him. Through whatever fringe of whatever society she happened to be
adorning at the moment she dragged her lover gallantly. Fenella led
captive was Fenella less dangerous, and the old popularity revived
at the news of her attachment. Men liked Ingram, and he was thought
"distinguished," "unusual," even in circles that called him "Crabbed
Age" and "The Satyr" behind his back. (Besides, when were satyrs ever
unpopular?) A few mothers held up shuddering hands, but the daughters,
being of the new generation, only seized the occasion to preach the
new evangel, and, generally, to cleanse and sterilize the imagination
of eld. Speculation, in fact, having spent itself, accepted the
situation; and by the time the long-planned foreign holiday arrived,
her mother thought her "improved," "more thoughtful, and more womanly."</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIV">XIV</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">ALTHEA REES</p>


<p>One airless July morning, a good many years ago, now, old Winstanley
came bustling into the sporting editor's room, where I sat on a
desk, swinging my legs and talking "bulldog" with Stedall. He had a
typewritten slip of paper in his hand.</p>

<p>"Probate and Admiralty for you this morning, my boy!" he said,
addressing me. "Here's the cause list. There's two cases down.
M—m—m! '<i>Vacuum Recovery Co. v. Owners of Dacia. Assessment for
Salvage.</i>' That's a friendly case; it shouldn't take more than a
couple of hours. Here's something spicier: '<i>Hepworth v. Hepworth: no
parties named</i>.' It's a defended case. Special jury. Hepworth is old
Lord Hallamshire's grandson, younger son of a younger son, but that's
good enough for a 'Society Divorce,' lead and about a column and a
half. If the turtle doves come on to-day, keep your eyes and ears open,
Prentice! There's some dashed mystery about the case; secret marriage
and that sort of thing. Mrs. Hep's a Yankee. There appears to have been
a separation three years ago, and now the respondent wants the kid.
Blackmail, no doubt."</p>

<p>And off bustled Winstanley, fretting and bawling.</p>

<p>If secret there were, no one seemed to have winded it but Winstanley.
There were not more than the average knot of idlers in the public
gallery. But the body of the court was filled with a bevy of
smartly dressed women, and the five seniors who were briefed were
all well-known leaders. The Salvage case was called first, but the
Trinity Masters were not ready, and so the conjugal knot was attacked
forthwith.</p>

<p>Hart-Milner, the well-known silk and wit, opened with an appeal to the
press. The case, said he, raised no point of any public importance, but
its detail was of the most painful nature with which that court could
be called upon to deal. How far such evidence as they were about to
hear should ever be reported in the public sheets was, he thought, a
vexed question. The entire position of the press in such matters might,
at some future date, have to be revised, and he believed that the final
decision would depend a great deal upon the restraint and decency
with which the privilege had previously been handled. The position
of the parties, moreover—at least of the party to whom his interest
was confined—made a further and personal claim for indulgence upon a
body whose association with literature was growing closer each year.
The name which appeared upon the cause list—the name which he could
well believe had grown to be to his client the intolerable symbol of
all she sought relief from to-day—was, it is true, as obscure as it
was besmirched. But it was far different with the petitioner's maiden
name. That name, a name which, in accordance with a line of defence he
left his friend on the other side to justify if he could, it seemed was
to be imported into this sordid case, it would be only necessary to
mention, in order at once to strike a responsive chord in the breasts
of all who had the interest of literature at heart. (A pause, and "Oh!
you are <i>strong</i>," from Nicholls, leading for respondent.) In her
capacity of authoress, petitioner was well known to the reading public
as "Althea Rees."</p>

<p>My! what a buzz and hum and craning of necks! And how the people who
were <i>in</i> congratulated themselves on being in, and of having
refused to be frightened away by the possible technicalities of Vacuum
Salvage, and how they determined that no luncheon interval should tempt
them away from the precincts of the court.</p>

<p>"I say, 'imported into the case,'" goes on Hart-Milner, when order
had been restored, "because I believe I am divulging no secret when
I say that the other side intend to plead condonation, and to take
the unprecedented course of deducing it, not only from letters that
passed between the parties subsequent to the alleged offences, but
from passages in the published work of the petitioner bearing upon the
position of the sexes—passages which, I make no doubt, my learned
friend will know not only how to select, but——"</p>

<p>Nicholls was on his feet. "M'lud! I protest most strongly against the
line my learned friend is seeing fit to take. My learned friend can
have no knowledge whatever of what is in my brief."</p>

<p>"I think, Sir Frederick, I should let it alone at the present stage,"
the president suggests pacifically. "If it's there, we'll come to it in
time."</p>

<p>"Very well, m'lud! Then I'll open my case. The petitioner—Althea Clara
Hepworth, born Althea Clara Rees—only daughter of Mr. Lyman Rees,
president of the Anglo-Occidental Bank, an American gentleman resident
in London, and who has been for years a prominent figure ..." and so
on, and so on, and so on.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>I think I see the scene now. The dim court, packed with its restless,
seated occupants; the long shafts of light from the Gothic window over
the judge's seat, all alive with dust motes; the bearded president,
with chin on hand; the intent, puzzled faces of the special jurymen;
and Hart-Milner on his feet, relating, in a voice low but distinct,
and vibrating with the multiplex humanity that made him the darling of
Bar and Commons, the devilish tale of physical and spiritual brutality
in which a man had sought revenge for the inferiority that daily
self-comparison with a woman high-spirited, witty, and admired enforced
upon his own base soul.</p>

<p>At the close of the opening speech the petitioner went into the box.
She was a pathetic figure; all the more so, I thought, because she was
so beautifully gowned. I remember her dress well. It was of brown silk,
with the wide velvet sleeves that no one thought hideous in eighteen
hundred and—never mind. She had a flower hat covered with pale blue
violets, and a bunch of the same flowers at her breast. She kept her
veil down as much as possible, and answered in low monosyllables, or in
little, faltering sentences that one could hardly catch, and that often
had to be repeated for the benefit of the jury. The questions were
frightful. Even Hart-Milner could not do much with them.</p>

<p>Nicholls, with his long, mottled face, and jaw as of a dishonest
horse-chaunter, jumped up to cross-examine—loathing his task, but all
the more truculent for that.</p>

<p>"Look at these letters, please!"</p>

<p>A bundle of letters, on a woman's fanciful note-paper, sewn into a
stiff paper cover, was taken across by the gowned usher.</p>

<p>"They are yours?"</p>

<p>"Yes."</p>

<p>"Some are dated, some aren't. May we take it the undated ones were
written within two or three months of those that are?"</p>

<p>"Yes, I think so."</p>

<p>"During your husband's absence in Norway?"</p>

<p>"Yes."</p>

<p>"Written two years after the court has been told that your happiness
and peace of mind and health had been wrecked, your faith in human
nature destroyed, and written to the man who was responsible for all
these things?"</p>

<p>No answer.</p>

<p>"Come! Let's read one or two."</p>

<p>He read them one by one. Foolish, flippant, loving letters. The letters
of a poor little girl-wife, hungering for love and kisses, and—yes,
why not?—for cuddling (the very word was in one of them); and, in
her longing, turning for it to the dishonored, tainted source whence
alone she could ask it now. The poor soul broke down and cried as the
merciless, rasping voice read on and on.</p>

<p>"Now I ask you, and I ask the jury, is this condonation? And if it
isn't, what is?"</p>

<p>Althea threw her arms out with a little stiff, appealing gesture that
she checked immediately.</p>

<p>"Oh!" she sobbed, "what could I do? I was only a girl. I believed what
he told me. He said all men were the same."</p>

<p>The case had not concluded when the court rose. I sprinted back to the
office. The compositor was waiting for me, but I pushed by him and
opened the door of Winstanley's sanctum.</p>

<p>"Hello!" said he, scarcely turning round; "you're late. What have you
brought?"</p>

<p>"Half a column."</p>

<p>"Was it a dry case?"</p>

<p>"It's one that shouldn't be reported at all."</p>

<p>He spun round in his chair and regarded me savagely.</p>

<p>"That means it's d——d good! What's your game, Prentice?"</p>

<p>"Look here, Winstanley," I said nervously, "there <i>are</i> things,
you know——"</p>

<p>"I don't know it at all. People who go into the courts are public
property. If they don't like it, they can stay outside."</p>

<p>"And besides——"</p>

<p>"Besides what?"</p>

<p>"She's my Mrs. Hepworth."</p>

<p>"<i>Your</i> Mrs. Hepworth?"</p>

<p>"Althea Rees, the authoress."</p>

<p>He jumped up, and began to pace the floor savagely. "That's so like
you. I suspect something; I send you down because you can gush, and,
instead of sending your stuff out early and getting the scoop, you turn
up late, with ten lines for the public and a lot of tripe about 'a
woman's heart' for me."</p>

<p>Well, like Fenella, I '<i>smouthed</i>' him down. He wasn't a bad
little beast, when you knew him—Winstanley. It wasn't his fault if his
veins were full of printer's ink. I told him the <i>Herald</i> and the
<i>Courier</i> were doing the same as me. He sat grumbling.</p>

<p>"Turn in your stuff, then, and come back here. I'll send down Chaffers
to-morrow, and you can do old Astbury at the City Carlton. You don't
deserve anything better."</p>

<p>But Chaffers, and a good many other people, had their trouble for
nothing. Next morning Nicholls arose in a packed court and announced
that, after consultation, his client had decided to withdraw his
defence, and would take a verdict by consent; each party to pay
their own costs, and neither custody of nor access to the child of
the marriage to be sought. Which decision Sir William Vieille, the
president, commended in a little speech that left no doubt which way
his direction would have gone. And I, hearing the result at midday,
sent Althea the biggest bunch of pale violets I could find in St.
Swithin's Lane. The price of violets in July, was, I admit, an
eye-opener.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>You will have guessed it was not on principle alone that I took all
this trouble and risk. I had interviewed Althea a year before on
some shop-assistants' movement or other (she was a woman of varied
activities); and something in the name upon the card I had sent in
seemed to strike her. When the interview was over she asked me to wait,
and, having left the room for a few moments, came back with her father.
Mr. Rees was a big, old-time, orating and banqueting type of American
citizen, with a clean-shaven, ivory-white face and thick silver hair.
He carried a great expanse of starched shirt-front, wore a narrow
black tie, and I rather fancied I detected Wellington boots under his
broadcloth trousers. He had my card in his hand.</p>

<p>"Your name is Hyacinth Prentice?"</p>

<p>"Yes, sir."</p>

<p>"You must be some relative of Hyacinth Prentice of Prentice and
Morales?"</p>

<p>I said I was his son.</p>

<p>"Give me your hand, my boy!" said the old gentleman, impulsively. It
was the last time I was to be called a boy; but I suppose I seemed
young to him, and, indeed, a permanent immaturity of aspect is one of
my disadvantages.</p>

<p>"I knew your father well," goes on old Lyman Rees. "He was one of the
first friends I made when I came to London in sixty—sixty——? Oh,
very well, my dear," for Althea had laid her hand gently upon his
mouth. "We lost sight of one another before the trouble. I wrote him,
though. I said: 'Don't try to reconstruct! Don't show the bad trading!
Buy off the debenture holders! Give them twice the value in ordinary
shares if they insist, and raise another hundred thousand in debenture
on the Chili property.' But your father was an ill man to advise. Ah,
well; it's an old tale to-day. Althea, we mustn't lose sight of Hy
Prentice's son. When we are dining by ourselves?"</p>

<p>Althea gave a date that was significantly far ahead.</p>

<p>"But I'm always at home on Sundays," she added, smiling a good-bye.
"Come in whenever the English Sunday becomes unendurable, Mr. Prentice."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>My floral offering must have been only one of many she received, for
all manner of fine friends rallied to her in her trouble; but, perhaps,
coming from a poor devil of a working journalist, the tribute struck
her imagination. A few days afterward I got a little note chiding me
for never having taken advantage of the old invitation, and bidding me
to dinner at the end of the week.</p>

<p>I am not a sentimentalist, whatever Winstanley may pretend he believes,
but I confess that in the course of a friendship which dated from this
dinner Althea became a sort of a heroine with me. Poor woman! the veil
had been so roughly snatched from all the tender privacies of her life
that I think I had the same satisfaction in bringing her my sympathy
and consideration as a knight-errant may have felt, covering with his
own cloak the naked, shamefaced captive whom his sword had cut loose in
the forest. In fact, we became so far friends that one night, more than
six months after her decree had been confirmed, she bade me, in saying
good-night, congratulate her on a very serious step she was taking
on the morrow. I thought she was going to be married, and I admit my
heart sank a little. But it was nothing of the sort, as she explained
hastily. She was on the eve of reception into the Roman Catholic
Church.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XV">XV</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">HISTORY OF A CONVERSION</p>


<p>She first came into contact with Catholicism—I mean close personal
contact, for, during her residence upon the Continent, such things
had passed her like a painted show—during a stay she made in late
autumn with the Mawhoods (pronounce "<i>Maud</i>," please!) in Norfolk.
Harberhall, Sir Cuthbert Mawhood's seat, famous for its tapestries and
formal gardens, is one of the great houses of England. It was also,
for nigh upon two hundred years, while the Howards were tacking and
trimming, the only important stronghold of the prescribed faith in East
Anglia. It has been beset for weeks together by spies and pursuivants;
its gray flint Tudor walls are honeycombed with secret stairways,
sliding panels and "conveyances." Father Fitzsimon or Hopwell, the
seventeenth-century Abelard, lay concealed there for six months during
the Oates mystification, and a strip of sea-beach almost under the
park walls, called Paces to-day, is said to preserve in its name the
tradition of his restless night walks. Set upon a steep hill that
overlooks the fowl-haunted levels of the Wash, there is everything
in the position and associations of Harberhall to arouse a romantic
enthusiasm, and to turn that enthusiasm toward the great central fact
which has lifted a commonplace county family to the heights of heroism
and self-sacrifice.</p>

<p>The chapel of the Mawhoods is a modern Gothic building of the elder
Pugin, whose windows are filled with stained glass from a French abbey
demolished in the Revolution, and is connected with the hall only
by a long wing of palm-houses and vineries. It is also the parish
church of the village below the hill. During the last hundred years
a small congregation of the faith has grown up there, dependents and
old servants' children's children. The Mawhoods have married much
abroad, and little trace remains of the Jansenism with which so many
of the old Catholic families were once tainted. On a hunt morning,
which also happened to be a feast of the Church, Sir Cuthbert and his
two tall sons in pink approached the sacred altar among their servants
and laborers. The Confiteor was recited by the surpliced server—the
tabernacle unveiled. Above each head the chaplain, a tall, curly haired
young doctor, himself a scion of an old West of England cavalier
family, and predestined to the purple, bent reverently and murmured
some formula that Althea could not catch. All returned to their places
with downcast eyes and clasped hands, but with the easiness of long
habit as well. Mass went on with many genuflections—many salutations
from the altar steps, with tinkling of crystal vessels against the gold
chalice rim, and one ecstatic minute in which the bowed congregation
seemed to hold its breath, while a bell trilled sharply six times.
During the mass the pupils of a convent school outside the village,
directed by a community of French refugee nuns, many of them cousins
and kinsfolk to the hall, sang English hymns in sweet quavering
voices—vapid, unmetrical compositions of the veiled cloister, though
not without a certain sentimental charm of their own:</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="verse indent0">"O Sacred Heart: behold thy children kneeling...."</div>
  </div>
</div>
</div>

<p><i>or</i></p>

<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="verse indent0">"Oh, turn to Jesus, Mother turn!</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">And call Him by His tenderest names...."</div>
  </div>
</div>
</div>

<p>This blessed <i>eau sucré</i> brought tears to Althea's eyes. Harkening
it, she seemed somehow to recover her own hapless, "ill-adventured
youth." The spell of the old, wise religion, so guileless and yet so
subtle, which never seeks to explain the inexplicable, and which is as
tender to those who have lost their happiness as it is merciless to
those who are seeking it, fell over her. The end was never in doubt.</p>

<p>I should like to have been near Althea while she was "under
instruction." I don't mean on account of anything she would have said,
for, like most original thinkers, she was capable of infinite docility;
but just to have watched her face while the Catholic doctrine, say as
to the relation between physical and moral evil, was explained for
her benefit. For she was a child of revolt, if ever there was one;
far more akin to Bruno than to Augustine, to Leopardi than to Newman.
Innately sceptical, a scoffer in the grain, I suppose she discovered
that beyond all negation a doubt persists, and decided to give God
and the creed that speaks most confidently for Him the benefit of
it. Even after her conversion she liked to play at heresy—to be
<i>enfant terrible</i>—to have grave monsignori wag their fingers
half reprovingly at her. Her religion remained intensely personal,
and she was never impressed, as some worthy converts have been, by
the spectacle of the Church as a "great going concern." Its dogma
oppressed her: she was not strong enough physically or nervously to
endure its elaborate ritual, and would often leave her seat in church,
suffocating, in the very middle of high mass. What she liked best was
to creep away at dusk, when the world is busied with shopping and tea,
and, before some dimly lit side altar in Farm Street or Brompton, to
set herself adrift upon an ocean of sentiment that, with a little more
conviction and a little less self-consciousness, might almost have
become ecstasy.</p>

<p>Her new interest was immediately made apparent in her books, for her
characters henceforth began to talk theology in season and out of
season. At an earlier stage of her career, I submit, this would have
missed her her public. But her reputation was by now secure: her annual
novel was eagerly awaited by the "passionate few" whose suffrage alone
fine writing can win. Besides, it was noticeable her asceticism
never strayed far from the purlieus and issues of Mayfair. One got up
from her books feeling that one had been in very fine company indeed.
She had that affinity to the highly placed which is less snobbery, I
believe, than a kind of perverse idealism. And, beneath all the pomp
and circumstance, sorrow always worked regardless of earthly shows, and
kept the balance true.</p>

<p>Such, as far as the world has any right to know her, was Althea Rees
at the date I tried to make her Paul Ingram's earthly providence. I
pleaded his cause, not perhaps as strongly as I might, because I wanted
the man and his work to complete the impression for themselves. That
they might do more—that in trying to work good I might be working
mischief—was a thought that, I protest, never once occurred to me.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVI">XVI</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">HOA-HAKA-NANA-IA</p>


<p>It doesn't much matter how early in the autumn we come back to London;
upon our return we always find the season has stolen a march upon
us. Paul arrived in town on a dark, rainy afternoon. The impatient,
scowling skies were already beginning the ruin of the short-lived
English summer. Beyond the railway terminus the streets, with their
stream of jostling umbrellas, their straining horses and shiny-coated
drivers, were both bewildering and disheartening. Victoria was full
of belated holiday makers setting an anxious face seaward. And on all
sides, from the railway announcements with which the walls of the
vestibule were placarded, from the covers of the summer magazines that
still heaped the book-stalls, from advertisements of soap and jam and
pickles and liquors, girl faces simpered and ogled. Girls in punts,
dabbling their hands in lilied water: sunburnt girls in orchards,
carrying baskets filled with apples: languid girls in hammocks, with
shapely ankles peeping discreetly from their frilled skirts: girls
smiling from carriage windows, or standing with hounds in leash on
windy moors—but always girls, always women. In some of these journals
there might be food for thought or fruit of experience: here and
there—though rarely—an author's name seemed earnest of this; but in
every case, for the written word as for bottled mineral water or patent
cereal, the lure was the same—some pretty, foolish face; something
to excite and feed for a moment the idle desire of the eye. Paul, as
he viewed these things biliously, wondered whether it were true after
all, as his French captain had declared to him once with cursing and
swearing, that the Anglo-Saxon was the most woman-ridden race in the
world; and, alas! remembering how he himself had been employed during
the last fortnight, a spasm of self-contempt contracted and hardened
his heart. He felt degraded, commonplace, banal; caught in the toils
of the delusion that has deposed woman from her proper place as man's
helpmeet and propounds her, tricked and adorned and set on a pedestal,
as his reward.</p>

<p>He put his baggage in the cloak-room, and made first of all for my
lodgings in Pimlico. This was particularly unfortunate, as Mrs.
McNaughten, deceived by the morning's fair promise, had driven me forth
betimes, bidding me, under pain of her displeasure, which is no light
threat, not to return till night, the while my room should be swept and
scoured, "before the murk days comes, and a body canna tell dir-rt frae
darkness." Scribbling a message in the narrow hall, while his umbrella
made a pool upon its shabby oilcloth and Dulcinea, with pail and broom,
ascended laboriously to her attack upon matter in the wrong place, Paul
had an opportunity for contemplating the rewards of literature, the
sort that does get into print. It cannot have been inspiriting.</p>

<p>His own rooms were in Cowley Street, Westminster. He approached them,
through Broad Sanctuary, with the sense of expectancy that every
one feels after even a short absence who nears the spot upon which
the activities of his life converge. He had not left his French
address—and so much can happen in a fortnight!</p>

<p>There was only one letter and a packet: the harvest of two weeks! The
package contained his bank pass-book. He glanced at it hastily and
tossed it aside. The letter was from America, from the lawyers who
managed a slender inheritance that had devolved upon him some years
ago, as a tardy act of justice, years after the foreclosure upon his
mother's farm. As he read it, the blood left his cheeks under their
superficial sunburn. He pocketed it, and made a hasty calculation
upon his fingers—counting months perhaps—or even weeks. He looked
round his sitting-room with hunted eyes. They were particularly
pleasant quarters, these rooms of Ingram's, in a charming old early
Georgian house behind the Abbey. Their windows had deep seats and
looked across the cloistral calm of Cowley Street to similar quaint
windows, curtained with art fabrics and with a hint of pottery and
brass beyond. Actresses of the serious sort, journalists, an artist
or two, one junior Cabinet Minister, were his neighbors. He was proud
and fond of the old-world parlor—of its panelled walls, the slight
list of its floor, its grotesque fire-back and grate. It had been his
home now for two years; even the dust and stillness that lay on it
after a fortnight's absence seemed consecrated—seemed <i>his</i>. All
the books and most of the furniture was his own. It is marvellous how
much wandering and uprooting the instinct of a home-making race will
survive. As, give a couple of beavers in an exhibition tank a few logs,
and watch the poor beasts start building!</p>

<p>He had a hasty lunch and went to the Museum. He read hard: he was too
disturbed to write. In its untroubled atmosphere little by little his
agitation left him. A pleasant sense of comradeship reached him from
silent neighbors, many of whom had grown gray in the same thankless
task. He felt he would always be able to breathe freely here. There was
a respite after all, and projects would suggest themselves once his
mind was at rest. Once it was at rest! For certain distractions must be
put out of his way once and for all. He was sorry, truly sorry, for the
girl who used to sit quietly beside him reading "Who's Who" or turning
the leaves of some illustrated book—there, in the seat where the mad
poet was mowing and scribbling this afternoon, but he was sorry for her
only in the same impersonal sense that he was sorry for the woes with
which the musty volume before him was filled:</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="verse indent0">"Old unhappy, far-off things</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">And battles long ago."</div>
  </div>
</div>
</div>

<p>After all, self-preservation was the first law, and one could not
accept a real responsibility for anything that was as inevitable
as this. He was quite cheerful when I met him for dinner at the
<i>À-peu-près</i>, and even pleasantly ironic at the expense of a white
shirt-front and black tie which I was weak enough to think an evening
call upon a lady in Portland Place demanded.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Althea received us in her own sanctum upon the second floor: a long,
beautiful Adams room with creamy white walls hung sparsely with
Carpacciesque Italian drawings in red chalk, a few water-colors of the
old English school, and one great painting of the mad Venetian master,
all splash and impasto, which, seen close at hand, was like a lichen
stain on an old red wall, but, at a little distance, teemed with form
and color. A bookcase of dark carved wood ran breast-high round the
walls. Along its deep shelf were ranged bronzes, old Nankin jars,
fragmental majolica figures—with an occasional faded embroidery or red
morocco missal clasped with hammered silver. The carpet was of thick,
dead-leaf-colored pile, and a brass railed fender with a wide leather
seat ran across the low marble mantelpiece. Althea's room always struck
me, personally, as the last word in that austere taste which roams the
world, seeking and rejecting, in its quest of the beautiful.</p>

<p>She rose to meet us, and Paul had the impression of a woman, still
young, in a loose pale satin gown, rather clumsy of figure but graceful
of movement, with chestnut hair dressed low on her forehead, gray eyes
under thick dark brows, a heavy jaw and just a hint of sensuality in
the mouth. Her arms and hands were white and perfectly shaped; her ears
finely modelled, and set as close to the head as though they had been
carved from it in low relief.</p>

<p>As long as I was there we only talked commonplace, and I left them
early, pleading the editorial discipline. I thought I had done my
part in bringing them together, and walked back to Pimlico "on
eggshells." But no sooner was I gone, (so I have heard since,) than
she recrossed the room and, seating herself upon the fender, gazed at
Ingram in silence for a long while. Try to imagine what balm to the
misunderstood, thwarted spirit that level, frankly admiring regard must
have been.</p>

<p>"Tell me all about it!" she said at last, abruptly and impulsively.</p>

<p>Paul smiled back into the intense gray eyes.</p>

<p>"All about what?"</p>

<p>"How you ever came to write such a story."</p>

<p>She reached to the mantel-shelf, and, taking down a square silver
cigarette-box, scrawled all over its top and sides with well-known
women's names, handed it across to him. She lit one herself and
arranged her satin draperies.</p>

<p>"You speak as though I had 'arrived!'"</p>

<p>"Oh! success will come," she said confidently. "It's the beginnings
that are most fascinating. I want to be taken behind the scenes. Come,
wizard!" she pleaded "let me be inquisitorial and curious while I'm
under your spell. To-morrow you'll be my rival. Who knows but that I
may hate you then?"</p>

<p>Ingram considered a moment, and flicked the ashes from his cigarette.</p>

<p>"There's not much to tell," he said slowly. "You may have heard or
guessed that I'm a poor man's son. We have our decayed families in
Massachusetts, though I suppose we haven't quite so far back to decay.
I didn't learn much more at free school than to read and write and
figure, but you know with what care and reverence the first steps are
guarded in our country. Nothing so trivial and hopeless as the average
English taste in letters could leave even our primaries. I may say 'our
country,' 'our primaries,' may I not?"</p>

<p>She flashed her sympathy.</p>

<p>"Afterward I led a very lonely life for years. I don't mean
comparative loneliness, or even such loneliness as a man may achieve
for himself in any big city. I mean weeks, months, with never a human
face. And during that time I think"—he laughed—"I think I read every
book in the world."</p>

<p>"No writing? No early efforts?"</p>

<p>"I was twenty-eight before I tried. When I wrote my first essay I'd
almost forgotten how to hold a pen. Please," he urged quickly, "you
must try and believe it."</p>

<p>"I am believing every word you say."</p>

<p>"I was a soldier in the French army. Oh! no glory—just drudgery.
Very good society though: I still believe my corporal was an Austrian
bishop. We were on detachment in the desert, and of course English
books weren't to be had. Besides, some of the lads from Alsace were
eager to learn, and it seemed a chance before I forgot it myself. I
had met all sorts of strange characters, and began to try and set them
down as I remembered them. Then it was only a step to putting them in
new situations and figuring out how they'd make good. And then—and
then—it seemed to me I made a discovery."</p>

<p>He stopped, a little agitated, filled his lungs with smoke, and emptied
them before he spoke again. Althea sat quite still.</p>

<p>"Go on, please," she said in a low voice.</p>

<p>"In all the stories I had read the character seemed to start,
full-fledged, on the first page. All the action of the book develops
it and shows it up. Now that might be literature, but it wasn't life.
What was the reason? Not a mistake; because the best men do it. No. But
I think unconsciously they are following the line of least resistance.
They start the first chapter under a disadvantage: with the last one in
their heads. And they even get praise for preserving the unities—the
<i>unities</i>!—of <i>life</i>! What a lot of guessing it would save!
I ended by believing there's no such thing as a consistent character
at all. There's something we hang our convictions on as we hang
clothes on pegs, but all the rest is just things happening—things
happening—things happening. And in the intervals"—he laughed again,
"as much character as you like to indulge in: as much as you feel you
can stand yourself. Am I tiring you?"</p>

<p>"Oh, no!"</p>

<p>"Take my book. You've read it through?"</p>

<p>"And through again."</p>

<p>"What's Patty Holt? Only a ranch-woman who broils, and bakes, and
washes, and irons, and has wandering loves. What's her husband? An
Indian trader, who holds up trains and has views on the revision of
Hamilton's masterpiece, the Constitution of the United States. Neither
of them know either how good or how bad they are. Conviction for him
would come with the rope round his neck, and for her when the Ashplant
Vigilance Committee gave her twenty-four hours to bisect the state
boundary line at right angles."</p>

<p>"She'll be compared with Madame Bovary, you know."</p>

<p>"Very unfairly, then. Emma Bovary is a romantic-minded woman set amid
prosaic surroundings, and Holt's wife is a commonplace woman set in
romantic ones. What's wanting to romance? Her lovers ride and kill.
I suppose if they rode—what's the word—<i>destriers</i> instead of
cow-ponies, and carried two-handed swords instead of thirty-thirties,
they'd be legitimate subjects for the most full-blooded cap and sword
romance. And there was—I mean there is—violent and horrid death
at hand any time the Ute bucks lift a demijohn of fifty overproof
Peach Bloom Rye going up to a mining camp. No, what weighs them
both down is just the sordidness of the transplanted civilization
around them, and when the crash comes all they have to turn to is the
little meeting-house God of their youth, which the woman has outgrown
unconsciously during her emotional experiences."</p>

<p>"But surely——What about Mr. Ffoulkes? You don't think that he——?"</p>

<p>Paul jumped to his feet and thrust his hands into his pockets with an
impatient movement.</p>

<p>"Everard Ffoulkes! The cowboy bishop! Isn't it funny how unerringly
even good criticism puts his finger on the one true thing, and declares
'That couldn't happen.' Why he's '<i>vécu</i>'—'<i>erlebt</i>,' every
word and action of him. I've ridden with him, camped with him, bunked
with him, and even prayed with him."</p>

<p>Althea regarded him awhile, through the smoke haze, with eyes narrowed
to slits.</p>

<p>"Mr. Ingram," she said, flinging her cigarette away, "I'm going to help
you publish your book, but I'm going to hurt you first. Now—are you
ready?"</p>

<p>"Go right ahead."</p>

<p>"You'll have to modify it. Oh! don't bristle and scold. I know I've
touched a nerve. But on your own confession you've lived away from
the world a long time, and you have no conception of"—she paused
for a strong enough word—"the impregnable determination of our race
that certain things shall not be—I won't say discussed, but even
postulated. It's too strong for the strongest of us. The Inquisition
and the Index are indulgent beside it. It's begun to hurt social
progress; but even social progress has to mark time and wait its
pleasure. Right in the midst of our civilization, Mr. Ingram, a great,
rough-hewn granite god uprears his bulk. I always imagine him something
like the Easter Island deity you have to pass on your right going into
the Museum—no forehead, cavernous eye-sockets, vast nostrils and
mouth—<span class="smcap">Hoa-haka-nana-ia</span>: the god of things as they must be
supposed to be. And his thighs and stomach are simply larded with the
smoke of intellectual sacrifice. There is a legend, you know, that no
great literary work, once carried through, has failed to somehow or
another reach the world. I fancy Hoa could throw some light on that
tale. Shall we go on the balcony? It's rather warm in here."</p>

<p>She put her hand to her forehead as he followed her down the room.
Outside the rain had ceased, and the September night was clear and
fresh. Across the nobly planned street, the broadest and most effective
prospect in London, the windows of the great stuccoed mansions were
dark and shuttered, with only here and there a pale glow in fanlight
or upper window, but the many storied Langham Hotel, filled with
trans-Atlantic birds of passage, closed the vista cheerily, and a broad
flare of light round the corner showed where Regent Street and the
shops and restaurants began.</p>

<p>"Do you know French well?" she asked, presently.</p>

<p>"Only everyday French and a few curiosities I'm trying to forget."</p>

<p>"It is a pity. You could have turned your book into a French novel, and
then translated it."</p>

<p>Paul shook his head. "I wouldn't do that. It's here or nowhere. The
very houses, the very self-satisfied faces, are a challenge."</p>

<p>"Isn't it wonderful?" Althea mused, leaning on the rail and regarding
the houses opposite. "And this is only one street. There are hundreds
like it. House after house, wealth upon wealth, millions running to
milliards till the brain reels. And in hardly one a single misgiving, a
single suspicion that the same fate which measures can re-measure. Only
pleasure, food, fine raiment, and the stealthy rapture of possession.
But it can't go on forever." She shook her head. "No, here in the
cradle of the race the racial revolution will come about. These sober,
policed streets will be the theatre of the completest subversion the
world has ever known. It's one of the charms of living in London, where
things <i>will</i> happen. I have my visions. Westminster Cathedral
full of little beds is one—I don't know why—and nurses and doctors
with their sleeves rolled up.... What made you call your book 'Sad
Company,' Mr. Ingram?" she asked, with a sudden inconsequence. "Did you
know it was a quotation?"</p>

<p>"I don't think so. I may have seen it somewhere and forgotten."</p>

<p>"It wasn't this, was it?—</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="verse indent0">"'Go from me! I am one of those that fall.</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">What! has no cold wind swept your heart at all</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">In my sad company?...'</div>
  </div>
</div>
</div>

<p>"—Let us go in. It's not as warm as I thought. I'll ring for coffee,
and introduce you to my father. I've let him dip into your manuscript.
You don't mind? He's one of the proprietors of the <i>Parthenon</i>,
so be very pleasant and alert. He's been in Colorado, too, and thinks
a lot of your scenery passages." She turned and, smiling, held up a
finger impressively. "Mind! I say your <i>scenery</i>."</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVII">XVII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">THE CONTINENTAL EXPRESS</p>


<p>I heard nothing from Paul for days, and was beginning to think
reproachfully of his conduct, when, on the morning of the third day, a
note was brought by hand to the <i>Panoply</i> office. It was short and
rather cryptic. He was evidently in some trouble, the exact nature of
which he didn't disclose. He wanted me to come to him at once, and to
keep the afternoon open.</p>

<p>I hurried down after lunch. Mrs. Gribble's face as she opened his hall
door expressed relief. Paul has always been rather yearned upon by his
landladies.</p>

<p>"Oh! I'm that glad you've come, Mr. Prentice," the good woman said, as
she ushered me up the wide, shallow stair. "I don't think Mr. Ingram
oughter be alone. He's bin talkin' to hisself dreadful all night. Me
nor my 'usband couldn't get no sleep for harkening at 'im."</p>

<p>I entered the room with that air of boisterous incredulity which men
keep for a stricken brother.</p>

<p>"On your back, Ingram? Nothing much wrong, I hope."</p>

<p>Paul was lying on the bed, half clad and in his dressing-gown. His
pipe was in his mouth, and through the drift of tobacco smoke, with
which the dark, oddly shaped little room was filled, I thought his face
looked drawn. He motioned me to a chair with a wet pipe stem.</p>

<p>"Sit down and help yourself to tobacco," he said, and smoked on in
silence.</p>

<p>"Prentice!" he broke out all of a sudden, so abruptly that I let the
match I was striking fall; "did you ever break a woman's heart?"</p>

<p>I gaped at him.</p>

<p>"Oh, I'm not joking. I really am collecting evidence on the subject.
I've been studying it hard now for two days and a night. There's
not much help, is there," pointing out the open window, "in three
chimney-pots and a demolition? If you hadn't come, I was prepared to
take Mrs. Gribble's opinion. Come, Prentice—man to man—have you
ever——?"</p>

<p>"No," I answered, rather shortly. "I've been too busy all my life."</p>

<p>"But it can be done?"</p>

<p>"My dear Ingram, you know 'women' is not a subject I've specialized on."</p>

<p>"But still, you keep your eyes open?"</p>

<p>"Well, then; I can't say I think it often happens: nothing like as
often as the other way round; and yet——"</p>

<p>"And yet——I know. It may. And some people are doomed to knock their
heads against exceptions all their lives."</p>

<p>He twisted himself to one side with the weak and peevish movement of a
man seeking relief on the rack.</p>

<p>"Is the woman you're—er—writing about young, or only still young?"</p>

<p>"She's very, very young," he answered, with a curious sort of
smile—bitter and yet tender at the same time.</p>

<p>"Good!" I commented cheerfully. "That's tremendously in her favor."</p>

<p>Paul smoked on. "I really didn't bring you here to talk generalities,
Prentice," he said after a while. "Can you meet some people for me on
the 3.45 Continental train at Charing Cross?"</p>

<p>I told him my afternoon was at his disposal.</p>

<p>"You're a sure good friend," he said simply, and I took the little
phrase in full payment. Paul was seldom American in idiom but when he
was touched or excited. "There's a mother and daughter—Mrs. and Miss
Barbour. Let's see now; how will you spot them?"</p>

<p>"Did the daughter by any chance come with you to the <i>À-peu-près</i>,
three weeks ago?"</p>

<p>"That's so, Prentice; I had forgotten."</p>

<p>"I think I shall know her again," I said, smiling a little behind my
cigarette. Poor, unworldly Paul! "What am I to tell them?"</p>

<p>"I'm just figuring it out."</p>

<p>"What is really the matter, old man?"</p>

<p>"Mental vertigo, from thinking too long in a circle, really."</p>

<p>"I think I understand. A sort of moral fatigue."</p>

<p>"That's a splendid name for it."</p>

<p>"But will she—will they, be satisfied with that? Shall I be asked
questions?"</p>

<p>"Say I'm run down."</p>

<p>"Run down and no visitors. Have I got it right?"</p>

<p>"And that I'm writing. Don't forget that part. How's time?"</p>

<p>I went to the window and looked at my watch. "Just time to do it
comfortably."</p>

<p>"Good-bye, then, and thank you, Prentice, from my heart. You're doing
me a big favor. Oh! by the way," calling me back from the door. "About
Mrs. Hepworth."</p>

<p>"Yes?"</p>

<p>"She's written, making an appointment for to-night. The book, you know.
More mutilation. I can't go as I am."</p>

<p>"Very well—I'll 'phone her."</p>

<p>I paused with my finger on the doorknob. "I can say 'moral fatigue' to
her, I suppose."</p>

<p>Ingram seemed to think a moment. I wondered whether I had sounded
impertinent.</p>

<p>"Yes," he said, slowly. "I think you can say it to her."</p>

<p>I reached Charing Cross with nearly ten minutes in hand. The 3.45
Continental, having probably thrown every local and slow train on the
line half an hour out of its reckoning, was signalled "on time." A long
line of porters was strung out along the curved platform. Motor-cars
and carriages awaited the great ones of the earth, and a score of
people paced the flagstones. Among them a couple of press men nodded
absently to me. Punctually to time and quietly, as the expected always
happens, the Folkestone express pushed its smoky old nose into the
station. Porters shouted and jumped on the step, doors flew open, and
the platform was covered in a trice with a jostling crowd of veiled
women and ulstered men, the awkwardness of the long journey still
in their cramped limbs. My trained eye searched the crowd rapidly
but thoroughly for the girl I was to meet, and presently I saw her,
beautiful, happily anxious, becomingly disordered from travel, and with
perhaps a warmer pallor in her cheeks than when I had seen her last.
She did not know me, of course, and it was the strangest, saddest thing
in the world to feel myself scanned unconcernedly and passed over by
the expectant eyes I had come to cloud, and maybe fill with tears. I
reached her side and lifted my hat.</p>

<p>"Miss Barbour, I think."</p>

<p>She looked at me with a slight stiffening of the figure.</p>

<p>"My name is Prentice. I am a friend of Paul Ingram's."</p>

<p>"Of Paul's? Is he here?"</p>

<p>"Miss Barbour, pray do not be alarmed or anxious. Ingram is not quite
well enough to meet the train and has asked me——"</p>

<p>Her eyes filled with terror. "Where is he? At his rooms? Oh! we will go
at once, mother!"</p>

<p>I had never thought it would be easy; I saw now that it was not going
to be as easy even as I had thought.</p>

<p>"Miss Barbour," I said, venturing to lay a hand on her coat-sleeve.
"Pray attend to me for one moment. Ingram is to see no one to-night.
There is no need for alarm, but——"</p>

<p>"——Mother, mother!"</p>

<p>A stout, comely old lady was making her way toward us. By her side a
gnarled and grizzled railway servant walked, soothing her agitation
with a patiently reassuring manner that, had he been a doctor and not a
porter, concerned with chests, in fact, instead of with trunks, might
have won him riches and a title.</p>

<p>"Yes, marm, I understand you puffeckly. Two gladstings, you said—large
tin trunk, and a 'at-box. No, marm, I aint a-leavin' you. I'm agoin'
to git you a four-w'eeler. You stand 'ere until I comes back. Your two
gladstings, your large tin trunk, and your 'at-box is all numbered the
same, and will be put together on this 'ere counter. 'Ave your keys in
your 'and in case they wants one opened. As soon as that there man 'as
marked them with chork I shall come back and put 'em on my barrer; then
I shall take 'em to your four-w'eeler. No marm; I'm your porter, and no
one else sha'n't 'ire me. No marm; nor no one else sha'n't take your
four-w'eeler."</p>

<p>"Mother, Paul is ill, and I'm not to see him. This is Mr. Prentice, a
friend of his."</p>

<p>"There," said Mrs. Barbour, jingling her keys sharply. "What did
I say, Nelly. Those drains at Palèze. Is it something infectious,
mister—mister——? Is there any temperature yet?"</p>

<p>I caught at the "infection" and lied, as I had foreseen I would. People
were jostling and bumping against us. The girl had to catch my arm once.</p>

<p>"Please, <i>please</i> set your minds at rest," I said. "I am confident
it is nothing but a little overwork and worry that will be all right
to-morrow. But, in the meantime, Paul is, as no doubt you know, rather
nervous and scrupulous. To-morrow we shall know for certain what it is.
He is writing, and you may take my word for it, it will be good news.
And now, madam, please let me pass your luggage through the customs,
see you safely into a cab, and take a good report back before Paul
settles for the night." I had not been asked to do this, but nothing
fits so easily and naturally into one lie as another lie.</p>

<p>The mother was tractable and not greatly concerned. I could see she was
one of those ministering women upon whom sickness acts as a challenge,
and who can look forward to a long spell of nursing, untroubled by
misgivings as to the ultimate result. But the girl's white face and
questioning eyes tortured me. I could feel the question in them even
when my back was turned to her. I would not judge Paul hardly: would
not judge him at all. I knew enough of life to know that a man may
without a moment's warning find himself faced by some terrifying,
insoluble problem, out of which there is no gentle, no easy, no
honorable way. But his strange manner—his phrase, stranger still,
about the "exceptions" it had been his lot to encounter, filled me with
misgiving. I even wondered if mayhap I was the last man that should
ever see perfect happiness in that perfect face.</p>

<p>I had put them into their cab, and was leaving the terminus, when,
passing before a telephone box, I remembered my other message. I
rang through to Portland Place, and, for the first time since I
had known her, heard Althea's level voice along the wire, not only
without pleasurable emotion, but even with a sudden inexplicable
distaste. I was surprised, too, at the concern in it when I had
delivered my message. She pressed me for a true account, and, tired
of mystification, I gave her Paul's own words. At her next sentence I
nearly dropped the receiver.</p>

<p>"My dear lady—think! Oh! you <i>can't</i>."</p>

<p>"I'll risk it," Althea said, with a stubborn little laugh that I
could fancy a flushed cheek accompanied. "I'm not conventional, as
you know. Besides, you say the creature isn't in bed. Oh! you clever
male duffers, with your insight and analysis, and not enough wit to
know after months what a woman sees in the first five minutes—that a
fellow-creature is perishing before your eyes of sheer intellectual
starvation."</p>

<p>What could I do? Ring off. Sigh and make a further mental note as to
the insane quality in a woman's courage. For what Althea proposed was
nothing more nor less than to call at Ingram's rooms the next day in
her car, if fine, and discuss alterations and revisions with him in
the course of a long motor ride. As for me, with that child's white
face and panic-stricken eyes before me, and a pleasant sense of being
responsible for more than I could control, it was only left to pray for
foul weather. Which, believe me or not, I heartily did.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVIII">XVIII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">AMENDE HONORABLE</p>


<p>Meantime, with many jolts and halts, and to the accompaniment of a
good deal of mercifully muffled blasphemy from the box, the cab drew
out of the station yard and rolled heavily toward Suffolk Square. The
blighting autumn rain drummed pitilessly on its roof and lashed the
closed window-panes. So dark had the afternoon turned that Mrs. Barbour
could only see her daughter's face as a white blur against the black
velvet cushion, and was forced to guess at its expression. A good deal
of new-born hope mingled with her own concern. I am a poor actor, and
know now that after the first Mrs. Barbour had been undeceived by my
message. She had suspected a "quarrel" on the last day at La Palèze,
and though she had not been a witness to any further manifestations
of it, did not believe, perhaps because she did not wish to believe,
that it had even been made up. She had never approved her daughter's
choice in her heart—had thought it but a poor fulfilment of so many
fond imaginings. She had the relish for change often to be found in
easy-going, hospitable natures. She was not callous nor indifferent
to the girl's probable suffering, but she had lived through a good
deal herself and had the robust scepticism of middle age in affairs of
the heart. Beyond inevitable storms and fevers, beyond a few tearful
days and sleepless nights, what rosy vistas might not be opening!
With Ingram out of the way, she became seized again of all her old
air-castles. It is a strange fact that the dark homeward drive, which
was one long torture for the daughter, should have been invested for
the being who loved her best with the subdued cheerfulness of an
executor returning from a funeral.</p>

<p>A year ago she would have been profuse of tenderness and sympathy; but
during that year her child's heart had grown away from her, exhausted
by a passion it was too immature to bear, and shrank too perceptibly
from the ministrations of any other love. For the present she judged an
elaborate heedlessness to be at once the easiest and the safest course.</p>

<p>The promise of better days, of a clearer horizon, persisted in
the clean, stately house that welcomed the wanderers home, in its
high-ceiled rooms, so strangely wide and light after the dark, cramped
little cottage in which she had been living under protest, and in the
open kindly English faces of Druce and Kendal, who had not so much
grown gray as they had toughened and flattened in faithful service. Her
lodgers would not be back for a couple of weeks, and she could roam
from room to room and indulge her sense of proprietorship undisturbed,
finding everything brighter, fresher, better for her absence. One would
have said that Number Eleven, too, had taken a trip to the seaside for
change of air. She unpacked her trunk, found her knitting, and was
humming a little brisk air when she returned to the sitting-room.</p>

<p>What she saw struck the song from her lips and the happiness from her
heart. Fenella sat forward in an armchair over the cold, empty grate.
Her poor face seemed tense, strangely unyouthful and set like a stone.
She returned her mother's startled gaze with stricken, inexpressive
eyes. Mrs. Barbour was on her knees at her side in a moment.</p>

<p>"Nelly, darling! Are you ill, child?"</p>

<p>The girl shook her head slowly, and looked away again at the
black-leaded grate.</p>

<p>"Have you been sitting here ever since we came in? Oh, my pet! And I
roaming over the house and never thinking." She drew the gloves off her
daughter's limp hands. "Dear! your poor hands are like ice. Shall I
have a fire lit while tea's making ready?"</p>

<p>Nelly shivered. "I'm chilled," she said, "and—and a little dizzy.
It's the crossing, perhaps. And the house does seem cold and strange,
doesn't it, mummy, after our little <i>chalêt</i>?"</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour rang for tea and ordered a fire to be lit. Her fingers
trembled as she cut thin bread and butter.</p>

<p>"It's her eyes," she kept saying to herself, in that frightened
soliloquy we use to temper a vague dread. "It's her eyes that frighten
me. If I could only get them to look natural, I shouldn't mind so
greatly. She knows something I don't. What did that devil say to her
before he left?"</p>

<p>She wheeled the sofa before the fire—that was an inspiriting thing in
itself on this rainy September evening—tucked a shawl over the child's
shoulders and put furred slippers on the numbed, slender feet. Nelly
sipped her tea, nibbled her toast with the docility of the broken in
spirit. Later she pretended to read, but, happily ignorant how much of
real sorrow may be entombed in the printed page, found no comfort there
in time of present trouble. She was one of those for whom reading is a
last resource, literature the thinnest of veils that can be interposed
between them and the withering breath of reality. The book is yet to
write that will not be laid down at a postman's knock or an infant's
cry.</p>

<p>It was at a postman's knock now that the novel whose pages she had
been listlessly turning slipped from her lap and fell, face downward,
on the hearth-rug. She could not rise, so great was her agitation,
and the fulness of time seemed to gather in every second that
<i>tick-tocked</i> from the clock in the corner before her mother was
in the room again. She was holding a letter before her spectacles, a
letter with a deep black border, at whose superscription her brows were
knitted. Back from failing limbs and reeling brain the blood flowed to
Fenella's heart. But she did not faint. There is always enough life
left us to learn the extent of our sorrow.</p>

<p>"The letter's for you, dear!"</p>

<p>"Read it, mummy," she said, simply. "I can't."</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour ripped open the envelope. As she glanced over the
unfamiliar writing, her faced glowed with pleased excitement.</p>

<p>"What is it? Oh! <i>what</i> is it?" the puzzled and tortured girl
asked her, seeing her lips move.</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour looked up. "Darling, what's the matter? It's good news. I
mean—God forgive me!—not very bad. Only your Aunt Hortense dead. You
never knew her."</p>

<p>Fenella, as she took her suspense back into her breast, knew its name
was Hope. Her eyes filled as from some inward sweat of anguish—some
wound felt only when the sword is withdrawn.</p>

<p>"Why do they write to me?"</p>

<p>"It's from your cousin Leslie. Listen! Shall I read to you?" She did
not wait for an answer, but read on breathlessly:</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Cousin Fenella</span>,</p>

<p>"Do you remember—have you ever been told, of the girl who came to
see you fifteen years ago, and whom you would not kiss? Fifteen
years ago! and now she is bringing herself to your notice again. Do
you feel it an insult after so long? You should not, dear cousin.
For there are things that are so hard to write, but that sound so
natural when they are spoken. And even though you resent it, be
patient for the sake of the sad reason that occasions her writing
now. Poor mother was buried on Friday. One can remain loyal and
still admit that she was a woman hard to understand—impossible to
divert from a prejudice once conceived. Even now, although I have
thought of you unnumbered times, sought news of you, even kissed
the picture we have of you as a child, that seemed to me to hold
the promise of a sweet friendship to come in its baby face, I could
not write to you as I am doing did I think that my impulse still
crossed the will of the dead. You will not understand this until
you have seen one you love die by inches under your eyes, while you
stood by, powerless to save, and all but powerless to soothe. But
toward the end of her illness mother spoke of you. Her heart was
changed, and in what I am doing now I am carrying out the wishes
of the dead no less than gratifying what has always been a secret
desire."</p>
</div>

<p>Mrs. Barbour paused for breath. "Doesn't she write beautifully, dear?"</p>

<p>"I think it's gush," said Fenella. "Is there much more?"</p>

<p>"Oh! fie, dear. Listen!"</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"Dear Cousin, we are to come to town for the autumn. May I call
upon you—see you often—make amends for all the wasted years that
might have made us friends? You are our kin, and, in trouble, blood
calls to blood. We will return to Freres Lulford for Christmas, and
we want you to spend it with us, among your own people. It will
be a sad and quiet one for all, but by then I trust you will have
grown so near to us that we need not grudge you a share in our
grief. Write me when you get this. The earlier your answer reaches
me the easier I shall forgive myself for what, by one cold word,
you can turn to the deepest humiliation I have ever suffered. Think
me impulsive, think me indiscreet, think me even impertinent; but,
believe me, oh! so ready to write myself</p>

<p class="ph4">"Your loving cousin,<br>
"<span class="smcap">Leslie Barbour</span>."</p>
</div>

<p>Mrs. Barbour wiped her spectacles. They were so dim that she did not
notice her daughter's vacant gaze.</p>

<p>"Mother, are people often taken ill so suddenly?"</p>

<p>"My dear, your cousin says it was a long illness."</p>

<p>Fenella gave the low moan of the misunderstood. "Mother! I don't
mean—that. I mean Paul."</p>

<p>The woman could not check a movement of almost passionate impatience.</p>

<p>"Mr. Ingram? I don't believe he's ill at all. Men who write are always
up or down. They're worse than women. It's the unhealthy life they
lead."</p>

<p>"I wonder—I wonder!" said Nelly under her breath. She was realizing,
with a sick dismay, that this was the last evening delivery and that
to-morrow would be Sunday, a day during which, for those at least who
live in London and wait upon the post for comfort, the operations of
Providence are entirely suspended. Two nights and a day to be lived
through—somehow!</p>

<p>Her mother took out the letter again, and fingered it caressingly.</p>

<p>"It's what I've been longing for all my life," she said. "When are you
going to answer it, dear?"</p>

<p>"To-morrow, mummy, to-morrow," wailed poor Fenella, and fled from the
room.</p>

<p>She climbed the stairs weakly, feeling the empty house's atmosphere
no longer chill, but stifling and oppressive. By the time she had
reached her room the impulse to fling herself upon her knees, to bury
her face in the coverlet and weep and weep, had passed. Instead she
lit both candles of her dressing-table and, sitting down, gazed long
and earnestly at her reflection in the tilted mirror. To study herself
thus was rather a habit of hers. The woman who has beauty and does not
know it is a graceful conception, but lacks reality. All the world is
a conspiracy, pleasant or otherwise, to convince her. Fenella was not
vain, but, with all encountered comeliness compared to it, her body had
not ceased to be a rapture to a curiously impersonal love of beauty,
innate in her as in all sorts of people, but which, in her case, by a
bounteous accident of nature, could be fed most delicately upon its
own outward substance. Nor was she ignorant that, in the quarter to
which she had devoted it, she was, to use the world's chosen language,
and in a sense far beyond its choice meaning, "throwing her good looks
away." She knew it—she gloried in it. No whisper that reached her
from jealous or puzzled friends could add to her own conviction of
it—no secret recess of her being but responded and thrilled to the
call of self-sacrifice. At a certain height of passion woman becomes
strangely sufficient to herself—is priestess and host in one, with an
ecstasy in the immolation that men can only guess at. For all the lack
of curiosity as to her lover's past life which was so unaccountable a
thing to her mother, the girl guessed that it had been hard and sad,
so sad and hard that the full strangeness of the destiny that brought
him to lips and arms like hers could only be dimly comprehended by him.
His blindness forced self-valuation upon her. She flung her beauty, the
freshness of her youth, the tribute of other men's burning eyes and
stammering tongues, into the scale against it. She asked only love. Let
him but love, she would teach him appreciation in time. She had her own
white conscience in such matters, too, even though the obtuseness of
her lover's senses tempted her to lengths that innocence does not often
venture. It was not three weeks ago since, sitting upon the dunes, at
the end of an afternoon during which the grizzled head had been her
plaything, she had asked Paul abruptly whether he did not in his heart
sometimes think her a shameless woman. And the undisguised astonishment
of the gray eyes at her question had been at once a reproach and
the sweetest, completest assurance that it was possible to have.
And then and there, drawing from his arms, and while the loose sand
trickled through her fingers, she had made the poor little apologia
of her love, haltingly and timidly, and told him that should it ever
happen—inconceivable surely on this day of sunshine and sweet airs as
that sky and sea should change places—that he should go one way in
life, she another, she had such a store of shameful memories as would
press her to the earth all the rest of her days.</p>

<p>Yet it was this possibility, scarce to be imagined a fortnight ago,
which she was facing to-night; now, as she combed and plaited her black
hair, so fine and loose that the comb ran through its length at a
single stroke; now as, unfastening the corset that had chafed and rayed
the tender flesh at her waist, she put on her long white robe and stood
before the mirror, a trembling penitent, about to make amends through a
whole racked night for the follies of her undisciplined heart. Buoyant
and hopeful by nature, and really knowing nothing yet for certain, she
was aghast at the urgency with which defeat claimed acceptance, and
at the weakness and intermittence that her imagination, pressed into
loyalty's service, showed in working toward her lover's justification.
She felt herself sentenced, a culprit, a prey to the illogical anger
of some power which she had failed to propitiate only because she had
not known of its existence. The chill of abandonment was already at
her heart. As for the letter which she had just heard read to her, she
hardly gave it a thought, although a wish of her own heart, unavowed,
but very intimate, was realized in it. To-night any comfort save the
one for which her whole being ached was a traitor—an accomplice in the
conspiracy of silence, of shrugged shoulders, of amused wonder that
had surrounded her poor little love-story from the first. No one had
meddled, she remembered; no one had interfered or seemed anxious. With
smarting eyes as she laid her head on her pillow she paid her tribute
to the wisdom of the world.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>The morrow with its suspended bustle—its clanging church bells and the
awkward voices of milkwomen and paper-boys ringing upon the silence of
the streets and squares, was a torture not to be borne. As soon as her
mother had gone to church she dressed herself and left the house. The
morning was fine but close. In the park the moisture of a whole week's
rain, sucked out of the stale earth by the sun, surcharged the air
almost to the level of the tree-tops with a palm-house atmosphere that
weighed alike upon flesh and spirit. Although it was September, the
parks as she crossed them were full of smartly dressed people—mothers
and young daughters—sturdy children with dawdling lawn-clad
nurses—ivory-faced old ladies in ample creased robes of silk—an
occasional earnest young man, professionally silk-hatted, striding
along with a chattering girl at his side, who bravely but jerkily
maintained the pace of his long legs. They all seemed to be coming in
opposite directions. She was on one of those unhappy errands when we
feel we are making head alone against a contrary current of joyous
contentment.</p>

<p>The bell from the great Parliament tower was tolling twelve as she
passed into Dean's Yard. The old gravelly square was deserted, except
for a statuesque policeman and one little blue-coated messenger boy,
with his round cap cocked over his ear, who from pure lightness of
heart was waking its staid echoes with a shrill medley of popular airs.
She had set out with no precise intention, drawn as by a magnet to the
spot where the treasure of her heart was kept from her, but, though
she did not reason, with every step her insensate impulse hardened.
She would test the tottering fabric of her happiness now, though, at a
touch, it should topple into ruins about her head.</p>

<p>Cowley Street was empty, and pigeons were feeding in the roadway. She
was leaning against the railings—fighting, reasoning with a heart
that the mere sight of his windows had driven into tumult, when the
stillness was invaded by the blast of a motor-horn. The doves took
flight above the sunlit roofs. A big touring car, coming from the
river, swept into the street, and drew up, with a creaking of its
brakes, outside the door that she was praying for strength to approach.
A woman alighted, glanced at the number upon the red door, and plied
the knocker briskly. Her hat was veiled and a light dust-cloak covered
her dress, but one moment's application of that intuitive knowledge
which women possess told the girl that she was probably handsome
and undeniably rich. The whirr and clutter of the cylinders ceased
unaccountably just as the door was opened. Cowley Street on Sunday is
more than still. She heard his name clearly, the very accent in which
it was uttered somehow confirming her first impression; then the door
closed. With a single jaunty glance at the remaining feminine interest,
the green-coated chauffeur swung himself out of his seat and busied
himself with some recalcitrant machinery or other under the bonnet of
the car.</p>

<p>Have you ever, on a railway journey, or in a packed public meeting,
from which there was no escape without unwelcome comment, fought
against deadly faintness? How the landscape crawled past the spinning,
flashing, wheels! How the sermon, the address pelted on, a meaningless
torrent of vocables, against the brain that was tense and taut for one
thing only—that thing deliverance! In such a mood Fenella hurried
through the streets and parks toward her home. She had forgotten her
purse at setting out, and the cheapest, slowest amelioration of her
journey was denied her. Another woman! Another woman! No defeat could
have been more complete. Everything had been imaginable but this.
Against every aspect that the annihilation of her suspense could have
shown her she would have done battle—save only this. Women are taught
by their whole life's training to seek concrete motives for action
and, when found, to respect them. To principle they concede little,
and they expect as little from it. If they fight selfishly, at least
they fight bravely, naked and unambushed—warrior, weapon and reward in
one. Auguring nothing from past treacheries, so the treachery be not
to them, betrayal always finds them unprepared, as, once shattered,
nothing really rebuilds their faith. Could it be otherwise? What value
to them in a love or a devotion whose incentive lies outside of them
and beyond them?</p>

<p>She reached home at last. Her mother had been watching for her from the
window and ran to open the door. She had a letter in her hand. Where
had the girl been? How ill she looked! There was news for her, brought
by a boy messenger half an hour ago. The poor child could only shake
her head and, taking her letter, seek refuge once more in her own room.
During her absence her trunk had been unpacked; all the silver vanities
were ranged, with snowy doylies beneath them, on the woman's altar of
her dressing-table. The bed on which she had tossed and moaned all
night was spread white and cool and smooth. A little breeze was rising,
and fluttered the curtains at the open windows.</p>

<p>After what she had seen no letter could matter much; but she read it
through dutifully, with a little sigh as each page fluttered from
her hands to the floor. It was long and kind and tender; the letter
of a man who would select his language at the very judgment seat of
God; a fair copy, without blot or erasure, product of a night no less
sleepless than her own. If the balance lay all at one side of the
account, at least he had ruled the ledger straight. The old arguments
were reiterated, the old impossibilities pressed home. The dilemma,
evaded once before, had confronted Ingram again, harder, crueller for
the delay, as is the manner of evaded dilemmas. He had had to choose
again between wounding her pride or wounding her heart—to death this
time—and with the anxiety such a man will always have to preserve a
woman's good opinion at all costs, which is half fine feeling and half
vanity, he had chosen the second. Wisely? Who shall say? At least his
end was gained. He was loved at the last. She pressed the sheet which
bore his signature madly, unrestrainedly against her mouth, blurring
the ink with her moist lips. She would have kissed his hand so—holding
the knife at her throat.</p>

<p>And with the kiss her childhood ended. Then and there the thorn-plaited
crown of her womanhood was proffered her. She put it on bravely and
unflinchingly. She did not despair of life nor of life's end. Flowers,
laurels, she felt might crown her yet, but under blossom or bay leaf
she would always know where to look for the old scars. And, finding
them, she would bless them for his sake.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>An hour later Mrs. Barbour, trembling a little at her own temerity,
knocked at the door, and, getting no answer, opened it. Nelly was
sitting on the bed, dry-eyed, sucking her thumb. The pages of her
lover's last letter were littered over the quilt and on the floor.</p>

<p>The mother asked no question. She closed the sash softly, drew
down the blind, and, going to her daughter without a word, held her
close—held her for two long hours, while the Sabbath baked meats
went to grease and the gong roared unheeded below; held her through
a tempest so deep at life's sources that she trembled and prayed as
the frail body shook against her breast. But the green tree bears the
hurricane because it is green. The storm was passing away in sobs that
grew fainter and fainter, the stained cheek was beginning to move
restlessly upon her drenched shoulder, when she spoke:</p>

<p>"Was it bad news?—from him?" she asked, and compressed her lips.</p>

<p>"Mother," said the girl, with a fresh outburst of tears that was only
the leaves shaking off the rain, "don't blame him! It's not quite his
fault. He's so unhappy. We shall never see Paul again. And oh, mummy,
I've been a bad, undutiful, careless child to you—but I'll be better
now."</p>

<p>"You've been my dearest child, always," Mrs. Barbour answered. "It will
be the old times over again for both of us. I ask nothing more."</p>

<p>Fenella was calm enough now to smile wanly at her mother's words. But
even she could not guess how unlike any old times the new ones were to
be.</p>



<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_II">PART II</h2>
</div>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="Ia">I</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE</p>


<p>Four years ago—no very long time, even to those who must count it
by the ruins and ghosts it has made—the light-hearted wayfarer amid
financial pitfalls—<i>vacuus coram latrone viator</i>—not more a snob
than an antiquary with a wistful regard for survivals need confess
himself, spared a glance, as he passed along Throgmorton Avenue, for
a big brass plate on the door of the corner building which overlooks
the crouched statue and smoky fig-trees of the "Draper's Garden." For
him the legend it bore called up a vision, unique amid the alien and
masqueradingly Semitic names with which the dreary canyon is plastered,
of other and very different days, fiercer perhaps but at least less
meanly cruel; of hard knocks given and taken in a selfless quarrel;
of blows upon helmet and corselet, thrusts that the buff coat haply
turned; of a fight that raged one whole September afternoon through the
streets of the "ever faithful city."<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>

<p class="ph3">"<span class="smcap">Bryan Lumsden, Calvert &amp; Co.</span>,<br>
Stock and Share Brokers."</p>


<p>A stranger to the ephemeral record of London society—if such a one
can be imagined in this day of "open letters" and the ubiquitous
lens—who met the genial head of the firm upon the lawn at Cowes, or
among his yearlings at Stanmore, at the pigeon butts of Pau and Cannes,
or in the thrice-guarded sanctuary of the Turf Club writing-room, or
who, as is likelier far, merely passed him in Austin Friars, silk
hat cocked rakishly, one hand holding the lapel of his coat and the
other laid lightly and characteristically upon the shoulder of some
olive-skinned lord of the market, would probably have carried away
a totally false impression of the man and of his history. Official
text-books—the one, for instance, in which poor Fenella discovered a
romance so enthralling, would not greatly have helped him. He would
have learned from them that Sir Bryan Lumsden was twelfth baronet of
either a very old or a very short-lived dynasty; that he was the son of
Denzil Lumsden, of Coffers Castle, Kincardineshire; that he had served
his country in the Scots Guards, been an aide-de-camp during the Tirah
Campaign (medal and clasps), and had left the service at twenty-five.
No less than three residences housed all this greatness: the castle
aforesaid, "The Chase," Stanmore, and 369 Mount Street. "Clubs: the
Turf, Marlboro, and Royal Yacht. Unmarried." And from the silence
concerning the sphere in which three parts of his life were spent, and
upon whose harvest, presumably, these glories were supported, he would
have conjectured that here was a case common enough in latter-day life:
the scion of an old house, bought in to finance by family money and
connection, gradually acquiring sufficient zest for the game to justify
a predominant interest, and, with position assured, returning blithely
to the life of his younger days, while, under the griffin wings that
hatch so many a clutch of golden eggs, Calvert, imaginable as a rather
vulgar but discreet person, buttoning a black coat high on his chest
and redressing the senior partner's ebullience by Apollinaris and
bulb-culture at Sutton, watched the processes that, by a law of growth
as simple as that which sows the pollen on the wind, make the rich man
daily and hourly richer.</p>

<p>They would have been quite wrong. No titled food-adulterer or gutter
journalist—no drab figure in all the broadclothed gallery with which
Dr. Smiles seeks to fire the imagination of youth—was more literally
the architect of his own fortunes. Twelve years ago, when he was an
attaché at Vienna, with a long night of ruinous play behind him and a
scented but heartless letter under his elbow, Bryan Lumsden had spun
a coin to decide whether he should continue the battle elsewhere and
under less tangled conditions or pass to the completer simplification
which was all his pagan soul conceived of death. He had tossed the
double thaler into the air simply, with no consciousness of pose, and
since it fell for life, had played the game out that way. Returning to
London, he had sent in his papers, paid his debts with what was left
of an attenuated property, and asked for "desk-room" in the office of
the broker through whom the final transactions were conducted—a dark,
secretive man, little susceptible to the appeal of the incongruous or
to the glamour of a barren title.</p>

<p>At the end of a year, upon the quarter per cent. margin allowed to
those outside the house for business they introduce, he was earning
an income in excess of many sworn members of repute, who struggle on
from settlement to settlement with the hammer suspended over their
heads like a sword of Damocles. In three years he was a member of the
house and a partner. Business flowed to him. His gay, casual manners,
his cheery voice, melted the senile heart of Mammon. The baffling blue
eye, behind which a purpose quick and strong as steel was kept bright,
pierced its pompous parade from the outset, and, holding his adversary
at a deflated value, he was never tempted to take himself any the more
seriously for his success. To the last the moves for which the market
watched would be made between a chat with his trainer and a chaffing
and recondite conversation over the telephone with the Tower mess.
History is always repeating itself in unlooked for fashions. A hundred
and sixty years ago the great Marshal Saxe, forming his squadrons for
the charge that was to give Lauffeld to the French, ordered aside their
black-avised brigadier and picked on a subaltern, careless and rosy,
whom he espied laughing in his saddle, to lead the human avalanche. And
in the meaner struggle that seems to have displaced war indefinitely,
it will still happen that a light heart with a constitutional
cheerfulness in taking risks finds all manner of blind forces following
headlong at its heels.</p>

<p>His great chance came when he was just over thirty. For two hours of
a sunny afternoon, and to the clouding of a fair brow at Ranelagh, a
gaunt, hungry-eyed Western American, referred to him in despair by a
friend whose time the stranger had daily and pertinaciously returned
to waste, sat in his private office. The man's story was a fantastic
one. Of a tunnel which he had been excavating under subvention, for
years, and timbering furlong by furlong, sometimes more, sometimes
less, as the rusty ore with which the mountain teemed assayed well or
ill; of a suspicion, dawning on him little by little as he proceeded,
that a wild miner's tale of the district—the legend of the lost lode
of Troublesome Gulch—might not, after all, be a myth; the sudden
discovery of free gold in the rarest and most precious of ores,
"running up through the rock, sir, like a fern"; the theft of the
samples that would have justified him; the sudden withdrawal of his
subvention, and the decision of the railroad to build its connecting
line at a lower level and at an easier gradient; the offers that had
been made him for his property, in all of which his fevered mind saw
only a threat and evidence of conspiracy. The man was no smooth-tongued
exploiter: he spoke roughly, uncouthly, chewing to rags the first dry
cigar he had ever smoked, in an evident sweat of fear lest somehow or
other his secret should be torn from him—straining to be back and on
guard again. His eyes blazed as he talked and his hand shook. He had
been nursing his dreams on aerated bread and coffee.</p>

<p>Lumsden kept his visitor by him—wired to Ranelagh—telephoned to
various quarters. That night in a private room at the Carlton the
company was (unofficially) formed. Within a week from their issue
"Gulches" were the sensation of the market. They started well at
parity, dropped to fifteen shillings and twelve and a half on an
attack of nerves and a truculent attitude on the part of the railroad;
recovered, rose to thirty, soared to forty, to four, to six pounds.
Fresh shares were issued; the public, almost kept out of the first
issue, responded greedily, and the opportunity was seized to unload
more of the old debentures than certain cool heads approved. It might
be another Camp Bird; it might be the most colossal swindle since
Kaffir days; in either case, its proportions inspired respect. There
was a shuffle on the financial checker-board. West Hampstead moved
to Mayfair, Porchester Gate to Park Lane, and was, so to speak,
<i>crowned</i> there, with power to move either way for the future,
in a bull or bear direction, capturing meaner uncrowned pieces <i>en
route</i>. Stanwood went back to Sleepy Cat Mountain with the light of
victory in his eye.</p>

<p>Before the snow had melted round the feet of the burros which were
bringing down his six-dollar quartz to the smelter he was a ruined man.
It was everybody's fault and nobody's fault. The necessary delays had
not been discounted; holders were pressed in other directions; finally
a discovery that Lumsden, to fill an order for a thousand shares, was
buying outside and privately at three-fifteen, stampeded the market.
The collapse was complete enough to become a joke. Clerks asked one
another: "Will you take it in half-crowns or in Gulch debentures?"</p>

<p>In the summer Lumsden went out to the States. He found Stanwood, a
baffled but not a beaten man, and his son, a strong silent lad with
steady eyes, "batching" in a log shanty with an earthen roof. Tin
kettles and saucepans were hung on pegs all around the outside walls.
Behind the hut, among whortle bushes, an ice-cold spring bubbled out
of the ground, and all manner of wild mountain flowers—rabbit-ears,
puccoons, and thimble-berries—grew to the threshold. They were seven
thousand feet above sea-level; all around was space and silence—an air
like sparkling wine: his feet, as he ascended the track, crushed sweet
harsh odors out of the barren earth.</p>

<p>In long but not aimless rambles over the boulder-strewn slopes; in elk
hunts up in the timber reserve; in naked male talk by the cedar fire
under the star-bewildered dome of night, the two men grew to learn, to
esteem, and to trust one another. There was cheering news, even before
Lumsden returned East, for the worn woman who was keeping an Omaha
boarding-house for brawling Swedish clerks. He travelled slowly, by way
of Denver, New York, Washington, and Paris, seeing a good many people
in business hours, and, it must be admitted, amusing himself pretty
strenuously out of them. He was back in London by October, and the rest
is financial history. People said: "Oh! but what about the original
shareholders?" Yet it was amazing how few ever came forward. Lumsden
and Lumsden's friends seemed to have gobbled them all up.</p>

<p>There is only one thing more which, in this place, it becomes necessary
to record of Bryan Lumsden. Once a month or so, sometimes oftener,
sometimes less, at the busiest hour of the afternoon, a big closed
motor-car made its way, with many grunts and turns, to the big corner
building in Throgmorton Avenue. Sir Bryan would issue from the swing
doors, throwing instructions over his shoulder as he passed through
the office, sometimes would even dictate a letter to the clerk at his
elbow, with one foot on the step of the coupé. After a single word to
the chauffeur, which the man acknowledged by touching his peaked cap,
he would fling himself back against the cushions of the limousine and
busy himself with a pile of papers which he had brought under his arm.
Occasionally, at some stoppage or temporary eclipse of light, he would
look up from them. It was noticeable then that his face had lost its
pleasant quality, was even hard and cruel.</p>

<p>The car rolled on, slowly and softly, through the congested city
streets, noisily insistent amid heavy van traffic in Clerkenwell,
quickened its speed as it turned into Bloomsbury's drab squares.
Presently Regents Park flashed green or ghostly gray outside the
windows; long brown garden walls and shabby stucco of St. John's Wood
reeled past; the car breasted the hill to Frognal, along a steep avenue
of widely spaced, fantastic red-brick houses, set amid shrubs and old
timber, and with an occasional glimpse, in lichened roof or clustered
chimneys, of an older suburb.</p>

<p>It stopped outside a low wide house which overlooked the heath and
was separated from the road by a clipped hedge. Generally, warned by
the tumult of the car's approach, the door would fly open before he
could reach it from the garden gate; if not, he pulled the wrought
iron bell-handle. If the summons remained unanswered beyond a few
seconds, he felt impatiently in his pocket for a key and admitted
himself. Inside, he looked round the low, wide hall, with the hard air
of proprietorship which a man keeps for the place that is his house
but not his home. He summoned the laggard servants, spoke sharply to
them (in French), pushed open the door of the drawing-room, and waited,
biting his moustache restlessly, and looking out of the window over the
wide heath. A novel, face downward, or a wisp of embroidery generally
decorated the cushions of the window seat.</p>

<p>Presently the door would open behind his back, and a soft rustle of
silk and chink of jewelled ornaments cease of a sudden as a woman stood
at gaze, watching the broad back or clear profile, silhouetted against
the diamond panes of the bow window. With the same undisguised air of
ownership, unutterably hideous now when a human creature endured it,
Lumsden turned and looked—looked at a slave whom his money had bought
and of whom he had tired.</p>

<p>Either one of two things might happen then: She might be peevish,
perverse, and bitter, answering his perfunctory questions as shortly,
with many shrugs of her shoulders and deprecatory motions of her bare
arms; striving with all the advantage her native tongue, the language
of cruel inflection and bitter meanings, could give her, to plant her
own chagrins, like poisoned arrows, in his breast. Or else, abandoning
herself upon his shoulder in an attitude for which everything about
her—her dress, the very fashion of her hair—seemed calculated, she
would force him to a seat, fling her arms around his neck, recall old
tendernesses, never forgetting to mingle her kisses with complaints
of her servants—so insolent; her tradesmen—so pressing; the view
over the heath—so <i>triste</i> in winter. Her eyes would be dilated,
their pupils at a point. Looking down, Lumsden could see little black
dots all over the large white arms. He bore kisses and reproaches with
exactly the same stoicism, still waiting, still keeping his eyes upon
the door.</p>

<p>Suddenly their expression changed. There would be a shrill chatter of
women in the hall—every one in this house seemed to speak and scold in
French—cries of "<i>Prenez garde! M. Cyrille!</i>" "<i>Une marche de
plus!</i>" "<i>Voilà!</i>"—a child's voice asking for "papa! papa!"
Led by a French bonne, though he appeared full five years old, and
struggling in her grasp, a little boy would enter the room with eager
precipitancy. He walked sturdily but somehow clumsily too, holding his
free arm out before him and tossing the fair curls from his forehead
with a curious baffled gesture. Reaching Lumsden's knee or outstretched
hand, he would give a shrill, glad cry, break once for all from the
woman who had guided him, and next moment be clasped and gathered into
his father's long powerful arms.</p>

<p>Fate has a fine unseemliness, now and then, in her dispensations. It
was in a house leased for the service of shame, among brazen foreign
women whose hard black eyes belied the respect of their voices, that
Lumsden was forced from time to time to plumb the depth of tenderness
that lurked in his own heart. He loved his little son as he loved
nothing else in the world. And the boy was stone blind from birth.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="IIa">II</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">TWO TELEGRAMS</p>


<p>Sir Bryan sat in his study at Mount Street one dark Saturday afternoon
late in December, sucking happily upon a calcined briar, but with a
watchful eye on the clock, for it was nearly time he began to dress.
He was by now a man of thirty-seven or thirty-eight, with a beautiful
but rather battered face, strikingly like certain portraits of Marshal
Blucher. He had heavy shoulders, straight legs, and lean flanks. His
enemies and men who boxed with him said his arms were disproportionate
even to his height. His hair was fair and longer than most men wear
it to-day: it was thinning over his forehead, and his wavy moustache
was streaked with gray. There are people, like buildings, who, for
all their size and show, we suspect of being hurriedly and cheaply
put together. The paucity or poverty of material shows somewhere: in
a mouth that doesn't quite shut, in ears that protrude—hair badly
planted on the scalp. No better description of Lumsden could be
ventured than that he seemed to have been built slowly and with a
good deal of thought. He was expensive in grain, like the pipe he was
smoking or the tie he was wearing.</p>

<p>He had been golfing all the afternoon, and was dressed, with happy
slouchiness, in a brown flannel suit and a limp shirt-collar. His soft
white waistcoat was a little soiled and lacked a button. The room he
sat in was clear and light, but simply furnished, a refuge in fact from
other splendors. <i>Estampes galantes</i> of Fragonard and the younger
Morean decorated its walls sparsely. There was only one photograph, of
a woman, which stood by itself in a narrow gilt frame on a side table.
It was a large modern chiaroscuro affair. One noted frail emergent
shoulders, a head turned aside, delicate lines of neck and chin, and a
cloud of hair.</p>

<p>A dark, discreet man-servant knocked and showed his face in the doorway.</p>

<p>"Gentleman to see you, sir."</p>

<p>"Who is it, Becket?"</p>

<p>"Mr. Dollfus, sir."</p>

<p>"Oh! show him up!" But with the precipitancy of his race Mr. Dollfus
had shown himself up, and entered hard upon the man's heels.</p>

<p>The baronet hailed him after his cheery wont.</p>

<p>"Hello, Dolly! Another five minutes and I'd have been shaving. Sit down
and make yourself a whiskey and soda. Cigars are over there. How are
the girls kicking?"</p>

<p>"They're kicking too much," said Mr. Dollfus; "on the stage and off
too."</p>

<p>"Rotten notices the <i>Motor Girl</i> got," said Lumsden, reaching for
a crumpled paper.</p>

<p>"That's all right," answered Dollfus with easy confidence. "We'll pull
it rount. Got a new College Song from America. Came too late to put in.
With a chorus, my boy, a chorus! 'Cher want to hear it?"</p>

<p>"Go ahead!"</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"Back oar—back roar—back waller—back nigger and bantabaloo."</p>
</div>

<p>"Sounds useful."</p>

<p>"Eh! ah! Cantcher hear it on the organs? And—I say, Lumpsden?"</p>

<p>"What is it?"</p>

<p>"Remember a little girl we saw at La Palèze in the summer?"</p>

<p>Lumsden's face altered ever so little.</p>

<p>"Can't say I do very clearly. We saw so many."</p>

<p>"Went rount wit' a kind of fisherman. Artist feller. Eh? ah? Danced,
too. Remember now?"</p>

<p>"Oh yes! I do, now. You were professional on the subject of her legs."</p>

<p>"That's the one. Well, she's come to me, my boy."</p>

<p>"Come to you? What the deuce for?"</p>

<p>"What do they all come for?" the Jew asked with sub-acidity. "Money. A
lead. A 'shance.'"</p>

<p>"And what did you say, Dolly? Took her on your knee—played uncle—told
her that if she was good to her mother you might give her a place in
the back row some day if you thought of it."</p>

<p>Dollfus looked at him keenly for a moment. He had a theory that Lumsden
remembered the girl better than he pretended; that he had, in fact,
spoken to her at La Palèze and been rebuffed.</p>

<p>"Yer on the wrong track, Lumpsden," he said; "she's quite respectable.
Madame de Rudder brought her—voman that useter teach the princesses.
She's vell connected, too."</p>

<p>"What's her name?"</p>

<p>"Fenella Barbour."</p>

<p>Sir Bryan started a little at the name, and his sudden movement did not
escape the Dominion manager.</p>

<p>"I say, Lumpsden," he went on casually; "aintcher a relation of the
Lady Lulford that died this year?"</p>

<p>"A little. Why do you ask?"</p>

<p>"That's who she is, my boy. They were talking about all being together
at Christmas."</p>

<p>"Who were talking?"</p>

<p>"Voman she called her cousin Leslie, that came wit' 'em too. At their
country house. The name's gone outer my head."</p>

<p>Sir Bryan yawned, stretched himself, and gave a meaning look at the
clock.</p>

<p>"Sorry I can't keep you any longer, Dolly. I'm dining out. What is it
exactly you want?"</p>

<p>"Vell, I believe the girl's a find, Lumpsden. And natcherally I can't
do anything at the Dominion—wit'out—wit'out——You understand?"</p>

<p>"I understand. You've seen her dance, I suppose? Is it any good? You
know how much of this humbug there's been lately. Is hers something
quite special?"</p>

<p>"Quite," said Mr. Dollfus, briefly. He seemed to weigh his opinion once
more. "Oh quite!" he said again.</p>

<p>"You see a furore, in fact?"</p>

<p>"Maybe a riot," said Joe.</p>

<p>The financial support smiled. "You've made it such a family matter,
Joe, that you won't mind my telling you I don't particularly want riots
about relations of mine."</p>

<p>The manager shrugged his shoulders, but did not revise his opinion.
Lumsden held out his hand.</p>

<p>"I'll telephone you to-morrow, and fix a night after Christmas when we
can talk this over. Meantime, of course, you'll be discreet. Ta-ta,
Dolly. I like your song."</p>

<p>An hour later he re-entered the room and flung a fur coat and crush hat
on a lounge. He was dressed for dinner, was polishing his nails and
appeared thoughtful. Sitting down before a big knee-hole desk, that was
tucked away in a corner underneath a telephone, he switched on a light,
drew a letter-pad toward him and wrote:</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Leslie</span>:</p>

<p>"May I usurp your sex's privilege and change my mind about
coming to Freres Lulford for Christmas. I was going to Ponty's,
as you know, but somehow, this year, don't feel keyed up to the
light-hearted crowd they get together at Capelant. I want somewhere
to hide my unrevered head until the Spirit of Christmas is gone out
of the land, and I should like a look at Saleratus. The alternative
is to go to Scotland and turn myself into a sort of Dana Gibson
picture of the sorrows of the rich. You know the sort of thing:
'Where Get-there Lumsden really got to.'</p>

<p>"To tell you the truth, dear Leslie, I should never have refused
your invitation if you hadn't frightened me with our mysterious
newly discovered relative. Even, now, when I've decided to take the
risk, I'll feel nervous. You say 'brilliant.' Suppose it turns out
to be some dreadful little artist or writer person who'll want to
paint me, or use me as 'a type.'..."</p>
</div>

<p>When he had got so far he re-read the letter, tore it up, and wrote
out two telegrams. One was addressed to Lady Pontardawe, Capelant,
Flintshire, and its contents are no affair of ours. The other said—</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"Changed my mind. Motoring down, if fine, Wednesday."</p>
</div>

<p>His tickled sense of expectancy supported him through a dull
dinner—possessed him, in fact, to the extent of making him rather
a <i>distrait</i> companion. Once he laughed out unaccountably.
Expectation was as rare with him as regret. He probably regarded
them as equivalent weaknesses, but there was no doubt which was the
pleasanter to indulge. Not quite a satyr, he was still less a saint.
Men who knew him well, contented themselves by saying that Bryan
"stayed it well," and the secret of his power to last was probably
that, for him, the life that began when he was called in the morning
ended when he switched the light off from above his pillow. He was not
an imaginative man, but if he had been, his morning bath might justly
have been conceived by him as a wide cool river, reflecting a gray
morning sky, that flowed between him and all follies and fevers of the
night. He took no heed what phantoms waved to him from the other shore,
nor what urgency and significance might be in their gestures.</p>

<p>He got back before twelve, changed his coat for a wadded Indian silk
smoking-jacket, and finished a long black cigar before he turned in. He
felt tranquil, and, for reasons possibly connected with his telegram
to Wales, even virtuous. Lulford, with its cloister terrace, its gray
walled fruit-gardens beneath the "Prior's oriel," and its lilied
carp-wood, girt with bastion and towers of clipped yew, had always
been a favorite house with him, far beyond the wind-tortured barrack
in Scotland that was the cradle of his own grim race, and which all
his money could not make bloom afresh. The glamour of his youth still
invested it. He had spent many a long holiday there, the while his
mother, widowed but no ways desolate, was seeking her own distractions
at Wiesbaden or Lausanne, and to the end of his school days (not
particularly pleasant ones, for he had been in an unfashionable house
and perpetually short of pocket-money) whatever sentiment of eclogue or
pastoral survived the drudgery of construe, always had for its stage
and background the remembered pleasantness of Lulford. Wonderful, not
how little had survived, but how much!</p>

<p>And to-night something else haunted it, something that was real,
that rather appealed to imagination than was evoked by it. Youth,
flushed, timorously daring, beckoned and eluded him down those alleys
and groves. (Eternal illusion, making your own summer wherever your
feet choose to pass!) He was of the age when a man is looking for the
heralds of middle life, and his <i>empressement</i> struck him as one
rather ominous sign. The growing simplification of life was another.
The match-makers were giving Bryan up at last. He remembered a time
when it would not have been so easy to sneak away for two weeks in the
hunting season.</p>

<p>Dollfus had, after all, not been so far astray in his surmise. There
had been an encounter at La Palèze—one of those secrets which the most
transparent of women never seem to feel the need of telling. She had
not appeared frightened nor very much surprised—had let him walk by
her side across the dunes and through the pine woods, even chatted a
little, lightly. But then neither had she made any attempt to keep the
appointment he had so subtly forced upon her for the morrow. He had
never seen her alone again.</p>

<p>Ill at ease among abstractions, his mind turned with relief to the case
in point. Condensed slightly, his reflections ran something after this
fashion:</p>

<p>"I wonder what Leslie's game is. Of course she's stark mad, but it's
funny the others making a mystery about it too. Are they just giving a
hard-worked little relation a holiday, or do they mean to take her up
and bring her out next year. If they do, I'll wager she marries a title
or is ruined inside the year. I know what I'm talking about. All my
sweethearts do well. Things ain't like what they used to be. There's a
sight too much young blood about, and the cubs will be in everywhere. A
girl that can play 'em can land 'em. Good lord! Look at Bewdley! look
at the Colfax good boy! With the Nampore rubies round her blasted neck!
This one's clever, but I don't think she's that kind. But if she isn't,
what the devil was she doing at Palèze? Funny, Dollfus coming to me!
And I believe I'd rather see her on the stage after all, as long as
it's decent. What did he mean by 'a riot'?"</p>

<p>He got up, yawned, and threw his cigar butt into the fire. As he did
so his reflection confronted him, a little flattered by the red-shaded
globe. He pushed his face closer.</p>

<p>"Not much youth there, old man!" he said, referring to the eyes; "but
how many of the young 'uns will be where you are in fifteen years'
time? Money! Money! Gad! I can't spend it if I try."</p>

<p>He frowned at the fire and turned impatiently away. "I'm a fool," he
said. "None of 'em live up to their faces. Besides, you can never
corner that market. A lot is not knowing when to pull out, and idleness
and over-feeding, and seeing too many new faces. Heigho! I wonder what
Stanwood will be doing in the spring."</p>

<p>He yawned again, and, an hour later, was fast asleep.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="IIIa">III</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">IN THE FIRELIGHT</p>


<p>Snow had been drifting again, softly, thickly, and persistently,
since dawn. The angles of the window sills were filled with it, every
square and diamond in the leaded gallery windows was rimmed with the
crystalline fur. The coats of the deer in the home park glowed a rich
rusty red against its intense and sparkling purity; half of every trunk
and branch at the edge of the wood was erased by it like a crayon
drawing by the india rubber of some impatient drawing-room master.
Fenella had spent the short winter afternoon roaming through galleries
and chambers of state, or watching the flakes that tumbled giddily from
the shrouded sky turn blue and green and red as they passed the painted
blazons in the great oriel window—coats fessed and barrelled and
ermined, of Alfords, and Corbets, and Danseys, and Maddocks, whose hale
and temperate blood ran in her own veins.</p>

<p>She was alone for the first time in the home of her forefathers. Her
uncle was away in the old capital of Powysland on some political
business or another; her cousins had driven down to the church an
hour ago, in a governess-cart heaped with ropes and garlands of holly
and fir. There were wreaths and crosses, too, for the woman who was
spending her first Christmas beneath the frozen earth, and Fenella
had shrunk from sharing the pious duty in which her heart could have
so little part. She was glad to be alone, and to muse undisturbed
in the ghostly protracted twilight. After the tempest of her grief
something of weakness and passivity lingered still; her heart felt the
languor of convalescence. Her movements were slower, her poises more
consciously graceful; with the restlessness of childhood the last of
its angles had gone. So imperative is nature, that she can make even a
broken heart subsidiary to her purpose. She had prayed to die, and was
three pounds heavier.</p>

<p>When the twilight glimmer in the long gallery was too ghostly to be
borne she descended to the dining-hall. Under its hooded fireplace
the roaring grate was heaped with blocks of ligneous coal almost as
large as boulders. Freres Lulford is in that borderland 'twixt the old
England and the new where, for a ten-mile walk, one may make choice
between coal-shafts and rolling mills, or ancient timbered hamlets and
the "forest fleece" of Wenlock Edge. She called Perseus, the house-dog,
to her, an eerie, feathery creature with a mouth like a shark, and,
holding his head in her lap with one hand, rested her round cheek,
dusky red from the fire into which she gazed, upon the other. The
flames, as they rose and fell, tossed a distorted shadow of her head
and shoulders, now low along the faded Persian carpets that covered the
polished oak boards, now high up on the diapered wall, across helmet
and cuirass, fringed silken banner, or antlered head, until, reaching
the straddled legs or flowered petticoat of some high-hung ancestor,
it sank again to the carpeted floor. She was dressed in a high-waisted
frock of some soft white material, with short sleeves that left most of
her arms bare, and with a high net collar kept pointed to the ears with
little whalebones, after a senseless momentary fashion that forced her
to carry her chin in the air. It was a very pretty chin, however; and
wherefore does fashion change at all if not to call attention, through
successive exaggerations, to the varied prettinesses of woman.</p>

<p>Was she beginning to taste content again? Was she even resigned?
She could not tell. A broken heart is such a relative term, one
so justly discredited by those who have not the patience or the
knowledge to follow its deadly sequelae that, except as the loosest
of illustration, it is grown to be a useless one as well. But without
flattering her own constancy in the least, Fenella could well perceive
that, but for a providence so despised at the time, it might have
gone very hard with her. Never, she owned it humbly and thankfully,
could power to endure so timely have followed the blow, ministering
angels the draining of the chalice. The worth or tenacity of a love
that death or something else violently disrupts is not to be measured
in an instant. At first, while the soul is nothing save a shocked
protesting mass of severed nerve and impulse, all comfort is welcome,
no matter whence it comes. It is not until the pain has abated that a
perverse relish for it becomes possible, and that its ameliorations
can seem a treachery done to love. So she had judged her own once,
with the indignation of youth for wise restraining laws that will
let no passion, by taking thought, grow beyond a certain stature.
She was wiser now as well as humbler—could bless the diversion even
for the poor perished love's sake. It had saved her from the meaner
vexations that, for the woman, follow the breaking of an engagement,
the unwelcome sympathy and the meaning glance, the loneliness of the
long empty hours, and the perpetual challenge to memory of familiar
scenes and faces. New skies, as the poet sings, may not change the
heart, but this much is certain—nowhere is disappointment borne so
hardly as among those who have been witness to the illusion. She went
from her lover's arms discredited, soiled even, but, at least, to those
who were ignorant of her history, and could not compare her with the
Fenella of old. Meantime, her sorrow lurked somewhere, to wake, she
felt instinctively, the day another man should ask her for love.</p>

<p>Her cousins were kind and natural, so natural that, after three months,
she seemed to have known them all her life. Leslie Barbour was tall,
thin and melancholy, mildly mad, and with the good looks that were
the only unentailed heritage in the Barbour family marred in her case
by ill-health and emaciation. She spoke little, and regarded her
new-found cousin with a purblind stare that it took Fenella a long time
to get used to, but which she was content now to accept as a tribute of
adoring affection. She loved white, waxy flowers with heavy odors, and
was psychically inquisitive.</p>

<p>Nelly was rather afraid of her uncle, a <i>bruyant</i> peer with a
past of which the late Lady Lulford had been a very small part. He had
a fine head and heavy, fleshy face, opulently bearded, that Holbein
would have loved to paint, the face of one of the terrible new lords
of the English Renaissance who hung the abbots and gobbled up the
abbeys. In the country he affected knickerbockers and velvet coats,
and was sophisticated rather than intellectual, with a sophistication
that he had placed a whole life long at the service of his pleasures.
His pursuits being apt to clash with his eldest son's, Basil was at
present in Damaraland shooting big game; but Jack Barbour, the younger
son, a cheery and casual young lancer, fell unreservedly in love with
his pretty cousin, with a fine quality of hopeless adoration in his
homage (he has since married money and freckles) that the girl was
used to by now, and could deal with competently. The two became great
chums. Jack liked to have his well-turned-out little kinswoman for
brisk walks across the Park, or for a saunter down Bond Street at the
hours of resort. He did not mind how many of his comrades-in-arms
caught him in company that did him so much credit. "Where did you find
the pretty lady you were with in Burlington Street, Suds?" "Don't be
an ass, Bogey," Suds would make reply. "She's a little cousin of ours.
I'll introduce you in the spring when we start goin' round again."
Fenella, wearing her own sad colors in her heart, looked forward to the
promised gaieties almost with dismay. Life had become such a serious
thing. She worked hard at her dancing, teaching, and learning while
she taught, and making strides that carried her rapidly beyond Mme. de
Rudder's power to appreciate justly. On the morning of her interview
with Joe Dollfus she thought it well to take her eccentric cousin into
her confidence. The look of hopeless adoration only intensified in the
vacant, troubled face. Leslie put out her hand and touched the girl's
black hair timidly.</p>

<p>"Blame you, child?" she repeated. "Does one blame the butterfly for
seeking the sun? Will you forget me, darling, in your success—for I
see success written on your brow? Will you be only one other sad memory
in my breast—one pearl white head the more along the long rosary of
my regrets?" She sighed luxuriously. "I shall recall you best," she
decided after a moment's consideration, "when I see a creamy-white
rose, half-blown."</p>

<p>Fenella wriggled uneasily. She did not want to be any one else's
regret. Brows and breasts, moreover, had a mortuary flavor. Foreheads
and chests were much cheerfuller everyday matters. They were at lunch,
and she caught her cousin's hand under the table-cloth.</p>

<p>"Don't be gloomy, Les," she pleaded; "you make me feel all
<i>squiggly</i> when you talk that way. Of course I sha'n't forget you.
I want you to come with me and madame this afternoon."</p>

<p>We know now what Mr. Dollfus thought; but his outward recognition of
his opportunity had been temperate, and the three women discussed his
attitude rather ruefully over their tea. Leslie looked at the girl's
flushed, chagrined face a long while in silence.</p>

<p>"Don't be afraid, Cousin Nelly," she said at last. "It's going to be
all right. That man is wild to have you."</p>

<p>Fenella turned on her breathlessly. "Oh, Les! do you mean it? How can
you know?"</p>

<p>Leslie narrowed her pale eyes and shook her head slowly.</p>

<p>"Never mind how I know," she said cryptically. "These things aren't
withheld from me. They wouldn't be from <i>you</i> if you could empty
your mind of <i>self</i> for even a moment."</p>

<p>No reinforcement to hope is really insignificant. Nelly had glowed
at the eerie assurance. She was recalling it now, and smiling over
poor Les's unearthly manner, when the hairy head under her hand moved
convulsively. Perseus uttered a wild, strangling bark. A man was
standing on the opposite side of the fireplace, looking at the pretty
group of girl and animal—the dog asleep, the girl dreaming.</p>

<p>"Hello!" he said cheerfully.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="IVa">IV</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS</p>


<p>He was a big man, and in his long hairy coat he looked a giant. After
the first glance the girl's first wild fear vanished. Burglars and
murderers don't wear fur coats in business hours, nor hold goggles in
their hand. Perseus, too, having given the alarm, had gone over to the
stranger, and was sniffing at him in a way that suggested recognition.
The unknown slapped his lean flank.</p>

<p>"Hello, Perse! You don't get any fatter, old man."</p>

<p>As he unwound a great woollen scarf from his neck, a fair, pleasant
face, rather damp and weather beaten, emerged. She recognized her
chatty friend of La Palèze immediately.</p>

<p>"I'm sorry if I startled you," he said, "but they told me Miss Barbour
was in the hall, so I walked in. Were they pleasant dreams?"</p>

<p>Even in the red firelight the color on the girl's cheeks deepened
perceptibly. "How can I slip past him?" she said to herself and then
aloud: "If you don't mind waiting, I'll go and see whether my cousins
are back. My uncle is at Shrewsbury."</p>

<p>"Please don't move," the man answered. "I asked. They're all out still.
But perhaps I'd better introduce myself. I'm Bryan Lumsden. I think I'm
expected."</p>

<p>"Sir Bryan Lumsden," she repeated. "Oh! we thought you'd come this
morning. Leslie waited luncheon."</p>

<p>"I burst a tire at Welshpool," Bryan explained. "Often do in snow, you
know."</p>

<p>"Shall I ring for tea?"</p>

<p>"Yes, please. And meantime, let's talk." He took off his coat and flung
it over a high-railed chair. "Shall we?"</p>

<p>She sat back, further into the shadow as she hoped, but the vicious
flame chose that moment to spurt out—a spurt of peculiar brilliance.</p>

<p>"Now, what can we talk about?" he asked pleasantly, when the footman
had gone, carrying the great coat with him.</p>

<p>"The weather?" poor Fenella suggested, with a hollow laugh.</p>

<p>"Or foreign travel, eh? That's even more interesting."</p>

<p>Nelly abandoned her treacherous ambush.</p>

<p>"I couldn't help it," she protested, rubbing the arms of her chair
nervously with open palms. "You <i>would</i> talk to me. And it's—it's
so hard to be rude."</p>

<p>"——in return, eh?"</p>

<p>"Yes. You know you shouldn't have done it."</p>

<p>"You had your revenge next day, remember!" he said, and stopped
abruptly, as another absurdly big footman, who should have been
breaking the glebe in Canada, entered with the tea-tray.</p>

<p>"Shall I turn on the light, miss?" the man asked, disposing various
silver-covered dishes on the wide hearth.</p>

<p>"No!—oh yes—if you please, Philip. Why do you say 'revenge'?" she
asked, when they were alone again. "I'm not a revengeful person."</p>

<p>"We shall see," he said, taking a cup from her hands. "Power's a great
temptation."</p>

<p>Under his steady gaze, which never left her face, except to scan
her figure, the ministry of the tea-table was a sad ordeal. In the
intervals of discharging her duties she called the hound to her and
fondled him anew. That hid one arm, anyway.</p>

<p>"I waited for you a whole morning."</p>

<p>"Oh! I don't believe that!" Said without any coquetry.</p>

<p>"It's the simple fact. And I've heard about you since."</p>

<p>"From Leslie? Of course you would."</p>

<p>"No; she only said, unaccountably: 'A cousin,' leaving me to guess
whether it was he, she, or it. I'm thinking of Joe Dollfus."</p>

<p>Suddenly he held his hand up. He had fine senses. "I can hear wheels in
the snow. You haven't told me your name."</p>

<p>"Fenella."</p>

<p>"Well, Cousin Fenella! Are we going to be friends?"</p>

<p>"Why not?" faintly.</p>

<p>"I shall be discreet, you know, about—<i>things</i> at La Palèze."</p>

<p>The girl's eyes brimmed. Instead of this face, blonde, confident, and
animal, another one—lean, spiritualized, with far-seeking, visionary
eyes, swam through her tears. "Paul! Paul!" Like any poor maid, beset,
at bay in a robber-haunted forest, her heart called to her true love.</p>

<p>"In return, will you keep a secret for me?"</p>

<p>No answer.</p>

<p>"Don't mention Welshpool. I'm supposed to have come straight from
London."</p>

<p>"Why should I say anything at all?"</p>

<p>"Oh! one never knows. Give me your hand on it."</p>

<p>What could she do? He was in no hurry to release her, and had hardly
dropped it when, chilled and dazed but boisterously light-hearted after
their mournful errand, her cousins entered the hall.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="Va">V</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">CICISPEO</p>


<p>The next morning was stirless but bracing. Snow covered the park in
soft mounds and waves, with a little black pit round the roots of
each tree, as though some hibernating animal were breathing beneath.
The laden branches balanced their fairy load daintily, against a sky,
low, buff-colored and heavy with the promise of a further fall toward
afternoon. The atmosphere was so still that the shouts of children
snowballing in the village half a mile beyond the lodge gates, the
rattling of antlers round the feeding-trough, reached the terrace,
swept and sand-strewn already, where Fenella walked before breakfast,
her arms folded under a warm golfing cape that she had found hanging
in the hall. In the morning light, austere, temperate and shadowless,
a good many of the misgivings that had robbed her of sleep were
re-examined and found ludicrously unworthy of the sacrifice. There was
no mistake about it. She had had her hour of unreasoning panic—had
even meditated excuses that should cover a precipitate homeward flight.
But that mood was over now. Women have their own code of bravery in the
only warfare they know—their own perception of the ignominy of flight.
If they act oftener upon their fears than upon the braver impulse, it
is only because, in this warfare, it is their adversary himself who has
set the rules and poisoned the weapons, decreeing that the slightest
wound as well as the mortal shall be held matter for shame.</p>

<p>"I've heard of you—from Dollfus." What did that mean? What could
be said of her yet? Of course, afterward, she was prepared for far
worse. She was going on the stage with her eyes remarkably wide open.
But that women—girls like herself, living at home, protected and
obscure—should be made subject of men's conversation, she felt was an
injustice—a treacherous thrust before the battle was joined. What was
its motive? To rob her of self-respect before her character could be
assailed? To cheapen, degrade her in her own eyes at the outset?</p>

<p>All at once a light dawned upon her—a light that beamed softly through
her eyes, that wreathed her lips with the faintest, saddest little
smile that ever was near neighbor to tears.</p>

<p>"It's all your fault, darling," she murmured. "It's all through you.
You've been and lost me my character, Paul. Oh, my dear, my dear! What
a joke! If the beasts only knew you?"</p>

<p>A foot grated upon the sand behind her. She turned and saw Sir Bryan,
very fresh and smart and youthful in his tweeds and breeches.</p>

<p>"Good-morning, Miss Barbour. I'm sent to call you into breakfast."</p>

<p>"I never heard the gong."</p>

<p>"You don't hear it from this side." He came nearer and drew in great
breaths of the cold, pure air. "Feeding's a bore, isn't it, a morning
like this? I like houses where everything's kept hot and you eat any
time; don't you?"</p>

<p>"I don't know. I haven't visited very much."</p>

<p>She tried to meet his new impersonal tone with perfunctory brightness;
but Bryan knew how a woman looks who hasn't slept.</p>

<p>"You look tired," he said. "I'm afraid I worried you a bit last night."</p>

<p>"I did think you a little—a little——"</p>

<p>"Disrespectful, eh?" Lumsden hazarded. He had that useful sort of tact
in conversation which consists in supplying the word that suits one's
own purpose best.</p>

<p>"We were such strangers, you see," urged Fenella, with gentle reproof.
"That time in France shouldn't have counted at all."</p>

<p>"If it did, the score was on your side," the baronet said quickly. "But
I'm content so long as you don't mark it against me."</p>

<p>"Then you hinted people were talking about me," Nelly went on,
reddening, but gaining confidence. "It was that worried me. It was so
vague."</p>

<p>"We were interrupted just then," Lumsden reminded her. "A word or two
would have explained, but you wouldn't let me get near you the whole
evening."</p>

<p>"Why should I? When women are talked about it's never <i>well</i>."</p>

<p>"Oh, isn't it?" said Lumsden. "I'm not a philanthropist, but I assure
you I've done my part bravely in holding lots of shaky reputations
together."</p>

<p>She raised her head now, and looked him quite proudly in the eyes.</p>

<p>"Thank you. I'm not conscious mine's in bad repair."</p>

<p>It was a different voice and another woman. Lumsden leaned over the
parapet and gathered a handful of snow.</p>

<p>"Snow's packing," he said. "We'll have sleighing after lunch. Ever been
on a bob-sleigh?"</p>

<p>"No," said Fenella. Maidenly dignity relented a little. It sounded
"fun."</p>

<p>Sir Bryan gave a boyish laugh.</p>

<p>"You've missed half your life," said he, making use of one of a
collection of phrases he had brought from over the Atlantic. "Look
here!" He touched her ever so lightly on the shoulder and pointed
across the park. "From the Belvedere down to the 'ha-ha' there's two
hundred and fifty yards if you know how. We laid it out years ago, and
marked it with stones. It's known all round. Lots of people, probably,
will turn up here this afternoon. You'll let me take you down,
won't you, Miss Barbour? I say; do I have to go on calling you 'Miss
Barbour'?"</p>

<p>"Yes," demurely; "I think it's best."</p>

<p>"For how long?"</p>

<p>She faced him with her hand upon the sash of the long French window. If
it was "just flirting," Fenella was "all there."</p>

<p>"Until you've told me truthfully what Mr. Dollfus said."</p>

<p>"I'll do it while we're sleighing. It won't take ten minutes."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>The conversation, however, lasted more than ten minutes, and it was one
Fenella was never to forget. As Bryan had prophesied, the news that the
slide was being banked and made spread rapidly, and a host of people
turned up in the afternoon, in country carts with sledges trailing
and bumping behind, or in motor-cars, with an occasional pair of skis
sticking up in the air. The run had been laid out years ago under
Lumsden's own direction, when "crooked run" tobogganing was a newly
discovered rapture. More than one future hero of the Kloster or Cresta
had taken his first powdery tumble, amid ecstatic laughter from friends
and relations, on the snowy slopes of Freres Lulford, and even now,
after the sophistication had set in that so quickly reduces any English
pastime to a science, with its canting vocabulary and inner circle of
the expert, whenever snow fell thickly enough to stop shooting and
hunting, two or three days' sleighing in Lulford Park was thought
rather "sport" by a society watchfully anxious never to be thrown upon
its intellectual resources by any trick of wind or weather.</p>

<p>Game-keepers and gardeners had been at work all the morning, and
after lunch people began to arrive. Fenella had met a good many of
them before—Lord Warrener, with his fiery whiskered cheeks and grave
little Philadelphia wife; Bill Arkcoll, whose gray face, seamed with
a million tiny wrinkles, was twisted into a permanent grin round a
black-rimmed eyeglass, which he had, moreover, a disconcerting habit
in the evening of letting fall with a sudden crash on his shirt front;
"Snip" Hannaford, the gentleman jockey, who had sacrificed his chest to
the sport of kings; finally Lady Wills-Pechell, alone condescendingly
literary on the strength of half a dozen pottering little garden books:
"Among my Syringas," "The Chatelaine's Year," "Shadow and Sun on
Spurlock Edge." Lady Warrener was of the latest type of trans-Atlantic
heiress, devoted to the peerage from the nursery, and "very carefully
brought up" by an ambitious and circumspect mother. Her opinions
were predigested and all her life nothing really unforeseen had ever
happened her, except twins. She adored her husband and babies, thought
Bryan's occasional Americanisms vulgar, and her favorite comment was,
"<i>Oh, fahncy!</i>"</p>

<p>As a class they had for some time ceased to force comparisons upon
Fenella; but this afternoon their low, clear voices, frank, unimpressed
greetings, absence of anxiety, and general air of being all afloat
together upon a stream that might be trusted never to carry them too
far out of one another's reach struck pleasantly upon her senses. A
great coke stove had been lighted in the Belvedere and the curved stone
benches covered with carriage-rugs and cushions. The trampled snow
outside was littered with an assortment of bob-sleighs, "Cheshires"
and frail steel clipper-sleds. The run started practically at the
door, with a nearly sheer fall of twenty feet; ran out a hundred yards
into the straight, turned—at first gently, then more sharply—on a
heaped embankment around the shoulder of the hill, and finished close
to the old carp pond, whose black ramparts and pointed turrets of
yew were roofed and spired to-day with a white thatch of snow. From
the gardens a sort of rough stairway, made of faggots and bundles of
brush-wood, had been made to the top of the hill. A few belated guests
were straggling up it, pulling up their sleds to one side through the
snow. Round the stove the vocabulary of the sport was being briskly
interchanged.</p>

<p>"<i>Sprawl</i> on Battledore, and use your right foot, not your left."
"Never got beyond the duffer's handicap myself." "You'll 'yaw' all
over, Arkcoll, if you use rakes on the straight." "Hands are best."
"No, they're not: 'gouties,' when they get a bit worn, are just as
good." "He was killed because he held on, Warrener. Let go and bunch
yourself, and you can't be more than bruised even there." "Who's going
to start?" "That thing's no good on a snow-run, Barbour."</p>

<p>Jack Barbour was standing on the edge of the descent, a light steel
frame with a cushion held against his chest. He put it down and glanced
at his pretty cousin.</p>

<p>"Shall we show 'em how?"</p>

<p>Fenella caught her breath, but nodded.</p>

<p>"Oh, Jack, take care of her!" reproachfully, from his sister, while
Warrener, in the background, already a little <i>épris</i>, expressed
an opinion that it was "damned dangerous."</p>

<p>"Dangerous? Down that thing?" cried Barbour scornfully, pushing the
nose of what is technically known as a "tin-bottom" over the slope.</p>

<p>"What am I to do?" asked Nelly.</p>

<p>"Just sit still and hang on to my knees. Now, are you ready?"</p>

<p>Fenella bit her lip and suppressed a vulgar inclination to scream.
The toboggan seemed to fall headlong—to rebound—to shoot out with
the evident intention of either burying itself in the embankment or
of leaping it altogether. When its nose was not more than ten yards
away she felt the speed suddenly slacken, the toboggan slewed round
with a twist that nearly overset it, and, steadying, slipped swiftly
and cleanly round a wide curve. Almost before the rapture of the
unaccustomed motion had been realized, it came to a stop, for want of
snow, in the shadow of the prior's garden.</p>

<p>"How do you like it?" asked cousin Jack, brushing the snow off his
sleeve.</p>

<p>"Oh, Jack!"—Fenella pressed her mittened hands together—"it's—it's
<i>glorious</i>!"</p>

<p>Barbour smiled at her glowing face. "Pooh! You should see the real
thing. Ask Lumsden. He did the Kloster in five-fifteen once."</p>

<p>"Is he very good at it?"</p>

<p>"He's good at everything he takes up," said Jack, unreservedly. "How do
you like him, Flash? I forgot to ask."</p>

<p>Jack Barbour had heard of this old school nickname from a brother
officer who had had a sister at Sharland College and seldom called her
by any other.</p>

<p>"M—m—pretty well. Is he really a cousin of—of—ours?"</p>

<p>"Not really, I think. It's a kind of old joke."</p>

<p>"Why is he so much at home here, then, Jack?"</p>

<p>Barbour had evidently found the situation ready made, and had never
thought of questioning it.</p>

<p>"I think he and the governor were racing partners once. There are
some of his horses here now: I don't mean hunters. Saleratus is his,
the big bay. We all hope he's going to win some races next year. Snip
Hannaford's going to ride him."</p>

<p>"Is he married, Jack?"</p>

<p>Barbour laughed sarcastically. "Bryan married! No fear! He knows too
much."</p>

<p>"<i>Jack!</i>"</p>

<p>"Oh! I'm sorry, coz. It wasn't a very pretty speech to a lady. I mean
he's a bit spoilt. Shall we go up?"</p>

<p>"No; let us sit here awhile. It's so warm. Why is he spoilt?"</p>

<p>"'Cos he's awful rich."</p>

<p>"Heaps of people are rich."</p>

<p>"Well, then, he's got a good deal to do with theatres, and knows that
kind of people. The Dominion really belongs to him. Why, your teeth are
chattering, Flash. Are you cold?"</p>

<p>"No. It's nothing. I thought Mr. Dollfus was the manager of the
Dominion."</p>

<p>"He is in a way. I don't quite understand these things, but I suppose
Bryan puts up the money."</p>

<p>"I see," said Fenella, with the accent of full comprehension. "Jack,"
she said, after a moment, "do you think it's quite right to have a man
like that meeting—proper women?"</p>

<p>Barbour jerked his head. He was a rather nice lad, singularly
susceptible to the influence of the moment.</p>

<p>"I suppose it isn't, when one thinks of it. We've thrashed this out
before, haven't we, Flash? Same law for both, eh?"</p>

<p>"I think men, and women too, ought to choose what kind of people
they're going to know, and be made <i>stick</i> to that sort. I
don't like <i>mixings</i>. Come, let's go up. Here come some others.
Oh, Jack! aren't you glad you're young? I <i>hate</i> men after
twenty-five."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>The sport was over, together with the short-lived day, before she stood
in the same place with the older man. Servants carrying tea-baskets
and kettles had made their way up the slope. Lanterns twinkled in the
pergola, and gay chat floated down to them. She had kept out of his way
all the afternoon without difficulty. It was not until she had made the
tantalizingly short descent with one man after another, and finally,
amid much vain dissuasion and subsequent applause, headforemost by
herself on Jack's steel clipper, that he came to her side and asked
her, without a trace of the manner she resented, to take the last run
with him. It was growing dark, and meaning glances were not wanting,
but she had consented without any hesitation. She felt the glances, but
she felt also a strange elation and a consciousness of strength that
made her a very different creature to the nervous tongue-tied little
girl of the night before. She did not quite know why, but, as she
stood, a little breathless from her upward climb, with the first flakes
of the new fall melting on her glowing cheek, life, even shadowed life
such as was hers, seemed something intensely interesting, and something
that, given courage, might be mastered as easily as the sport she was
essaying now. He was the first to speak when they reached the sheltered
gloom below.</p>

<p>"Don't you think our explanation's about due?"</p>

<p>He saw her smile. "I'm not a bit anxious for it now, Sir Bryan."</p>

<p>"I can believe that. You've even seemed to me to be keeping out of its
way, or out of mine, which comes to the same thing, all the afternoon."</p>

<p>"It's not really worth worrying over. When you've given it there won't
be much gained."</p>

<p>"You mean calling you—your name. It was your own idea to wait, you
know."</p>

<p>"You can call me it now without any conditions. Jack has told me we're
kind of cousins."</p>

<p>"Is that all he's told you?"</p>

<p>"A little more."</p>

<p>"Oh! Enough to make you hesitate about a certain step you had thought
of taking?"</p>

<p>"Enough to make me think I'd better take it in some other place."</p>

<p>"Don't take it anywhere else"—earnestly.</p>

<p>She was startled at his intensity, and looked uneasily up the hill.</p>

<p>"Cousin Fenella, does history bore you?"</p>

<p>"It must be a very short lesson, please."</p>

<p>"A few minutes is enough. Years ago, then, cousin, in certain parts of
Italy, when a bride was starting her new life, besides the usual stuff
about pin-money, settlements, etcetera, the marriage contract contained
another clause that seems to our insular minds intensely shocking.
You'd never guess what it provided for."</p>

<p>"If it's shocking, I'd best not try."</p>

<p>His mouth twitched. "Baldly, then, one friend—neither more nor less.
A third partner in the terrestrial paradise. Seems rather a scandalous
person, doesn't he?"</p>

<p>"I think so."</p>

<p>Lumsden lit a cigar. "And yet"—<i>puff! puff!</i>—"the more one
thinks of him the more reasonable he becomes. Men were so busy in those
days, cousin. Fighting, don't you know—treaty making—in prison for
indefinite periods. Don't you see with how much easier mind the soldier
or diplomatic or captive husband must have laid his head on his lonely
pillow for knowing there was a stout arm, ready blade, keen wit at
home, authorized to keep marauders off. Do you wonder why I'm telling
you all this?"</p>

<p>"To frighten me, perhaps."</p>

<p>"Pshaw! I know better than that. Come! put prejudice aside. Remember,
too, that his name was probably the worst thing about him. Some poor
relative, unrewarded soldier, I always imagine him—generally a cousin,
by the way. Still wondering?"</p>

<p>No answer.</p>

<p>"Cousin Fenella, listen to me! Under ordinary conditions, for a girl
like yourself to dance on the stage would be to risk more unhappiness
and humiliation and treachery than you'd believe if I told you. There's
one place in which a word from me can secure you your peace of mind.
That's the Dominion. Don't turn away from luck."</p>

<p>"You mean that I—that you——"</p>

<p>"That the mere hint, in quarters where it's most wanted, that you're
a <i>protégée</i> of mine will rid you once for all of unwelcome
attentions."</p>

<p>Fenella considered. "In fact, in order to keep my peace of mind, I must
lose my reputation."</p>

<p>"Do you care very much what the world says? Do you have to—still?"</p>

<p>The last word was pitched so low that she hardly caught it. But,
whisper as it was, it decided her.</p>

<p>"No. I don't care. Not—<i>that</i>." She snapped her fingers.</p>

<p>"That's right," said the sporting baronet encouragingly. "It's a
bargain then? Dominion or nothing?"</p>

<p>"Yes."</p>

<p>"I'm writing Joe to-night. Shall I tell him we go into training after
Christmas?"</p>

<p>"Yes."</p>

<p>He put his hands in his pockets and puffed his cigar to a glow.</p>

<p>"Quite ready to fight the world, ain't you, cousin?"</p>

<p>"The <i>world</i>."</p>

<p>"——but not me, eh? Oh! I keep my word. I'm Cicispeo."</p>

<p>"<i>Who?</i>"</p>

<p>"The man who's history I've just been telling you."</p>

<p>"Why are you taking all this trouble then?"</p>

<p>"Good! I like a 'facer' sometimes. Well, it's because I admire pluck.
Because I saw you swim a mile out at Palèze. Oh! I often watched you.
Because you took a header down that slide just now. What'll you be at
next. Shall we go back to the house or will you go up with me and face
the Wills-Pechell eye? It's celebrated, I warn you—got enough pluck
left for that?"</p>

<p>And as she climbed the brushwood path—her hand in this new
friend's—Fenella, all her elation gone, was wondering how much share
after all her will had had in the choice just made, and whether this
dazzling dream-vista of success and applause, out of which, as earnest
of her right to all it promised, a rush of warm-scented air seemed to
meet her through the snow-filled dusk, were not really a decree of
fate, hostile and inexorable to her heart's desire as death would have
seemed three months ago—peace, salty suffocation on the dark, lonely,
foreign beach, clasped in her lover's arms.</p>

<p>And Lumsden, quite possibly, was measuring the moral distance between
the cad who shoots a pheasant on the ground and the sportsman who
flushes it and gives it a fly for its life. Or for better sport—which
is it?—and to take a surer aim.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIa">VI</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT</p>


<p>Among the minor penalties with which fate, presumably solicitous
for a true balance, hampers excellence in this world, not alone the
acquired excellence, which, being achieved in its teeth, explicably
earns its maleficence, but even the natural advantages which were
its own unsolicited gift, one, we think, has escaped the attention
it deserves. We refer to a certain isolation and lack of touch with
their immediate <i>entourage</i> which those who are marked for the
world's prizes never quite succeed in overcoming, however modestly
they wear or anticipate their honors. They are interesting, and for a
correct view a certain distance, respectful, (though not necessarily
so to them), is judged advisable. Society opens its ranks to receive
them, but never quite closes on them again. None who have studied the
lives of the giants but will have noticed how rarely a friendship
disinterestedly worthy of them came their way, and is not the fatality
of beauty, encountering the spoiler where the friend was imagined, a
proverb? Fenella had not lived her new life a month before she was
aware of a subtle atmosphere which was not treachery and which could
not, without begging the question, have been called disrespect, but
which partook a little of both. One does not feel a thing less keenly
for being unable to exactly define it. Instincts are given women to be
acted on, not to be explored. Its manifestations as yet had been only
vaguely disquieting. Among the men it was apparent rather as a half
jocular reservation of judgment—a determination, in view of possible
developments, not to be committed to any one view of her character
now, and, above all, never to be in the position of having more knowing
brothers administer a rebuke to worldly wisdom. And among the women it
took the shape of a coldness in meeting her advances which contrasted
puzzlingly with the outspoken admiration that invited them. Poor,
warm-hearted, ignorant Fenella! experiencing for the first time the
full benefits of the benefit of the doubt.</p>

<p>It might be inevitable, or it might not, that, as day followed day
of a visit so rapidly losing its charm, the broad-shouldered figure
of the sporting baronet should begin to stand out more and more
sympathetically against this background of veiled disrespect and
thwarting reserve. It is true that the openness of his first advances
had been the thing nearest approaching insult that she could remember,
but, such as it was, it was forgiven now and, womanlike, the fault,
frankly owned, brought him nearer. More womanlike still, perhaps,
she liked him the better because he had been a witness to the old
lost love of the summer. He at least saw her in no half light. She
did not care greatly if he believed the worst—took a perverse joy,
indeed, in believing it was possible he did. She was on her way now
to a life where such things were no handicap, to which, indeed, she
half suspected they were sometimes the initiation. She was content the
knowledge of her own integrity should remain—a secret satisfaction to
herself—content to feel it as a dancer of the fervid south, beneath
her languorous draperies, may feel the chill of the dagger that she
carries thrust through her garter.</p>

<p>He was kind and helpful too, not with the troublesome insistence of
a man anxious to make amends for a former mistake, but as though,
the ground having been cleared once for all of false conceptions,
misunderstanding was no longer likely between them. Mourning and
seclusion, she discovered, were comparative terms among country
neighbors, and amid the men with whom the house intermittently abounded
he showed both a finer creature and a finer gentleman. Once, in the
billiard-room, when Warrener the full-blooded hinted that her cheeks
lacked roses, and made as if to pour out whiskey for her, Lumsden took
the decanter from his hand without a word, and put it back on the
wooden ledge that ran round the room. She had come on a message to him
from Leslie.</p>

<p>"I'd send one of the maids, Flash, when it's as late as this," he said,
simply, as soon as they were in the corridor.</p>

<p>He had adopted Jack's favorite nickname for her when they were alone
once and for all, but it was noticeable he never used it in the hearing
of a third person. The thing had no importance, but it is a type of the
assumptions she was finding it so difficult to resist.</p>

<p>It was he who, after all, taught her to ride. Jack Barbour, to do him
justice, was prepared to redeem an old promise so soon as, to use his
own words, "the bone was gone out of the ground," but frost followed
the snow and held for days after tobogganing had been voted flat, stale
and unprofitable. It wasn't Bryan's way to wait. He had more tan and
straw laid down over the path, bordered with evergreens, that led from
the stable-yard to poor Lady Lulford's steam laundry, and along which
the horses were exercised every day. Fenella's heart fluttered and
there was no lack in her cheeks of the roses whose absence Warrener
deplored as, dressed in a borrowed habit of Leslie's that pinched her
unconfined waist sorely, and with her hair in a pigtail again, she
put her foot in her master's looped hand. Maids and stable-boys were
peeping round the outbuildings.</p>

<p>He flicked the gray mare with his whip, and for more than an hour,
letting the rope he held run out to its full length, pulled the animal
backward and forward in a kind of "eight" figure. He threw away his
cigar, and his voice rang out crisp and decisive as on a barrack square.</p>

<p>"Straight between his ears! Now look down. Can you see the feet? That's
right! Now, then, press down in the stirrup as her fore-leg goes out,
then lift. <i>Hup! hup!</i> Oh, fine! Coz! you're a fraud. You've
learnt before."</p>

<p>"Have I really done so very well?" she asked, when the lesson was over
and they were on their way to the stables. She looked up in his face;
her own tingling with pleasure at his appreciation.</p>

<p>"I've never seen 'em trot so well the first time." He looked her over
critically. "I suppose it's all balance. When we're back in town, I'll
mount you and show you lots of things. We'll have a turn in Richmond
Park."</p>

<p>She caught her breath at the last two words, as at a positive physical
pang. This must be the future, she supposed. Stray ends of pleasure,
caught at and let go, an uneasy sense of something missing that could
have woven them all into happiness, and now and then, when the nerve
was touched, just such a spasm of pain as made her wince now. Lumsden
did not notice her. He was looking at a large bay horse with a bandaged
ankle that a stableman was leading across the paved yard.</p>

<p>"How's his hock this morning, Collett?"</p>

<p>Collett touched his cap twice. "Walks a bit lame still, I fancy, Sir
Bryan."</p>

<p>"What does Brodribb say about him?"</p>

<p>"Well, ye know what Mr. Brodribb be, Sir Bryan. 'E wunt 'ave the harse
slung. 'Get the condition right fust,' 'e says."</p>

<p>"Lift up his cloths."</p>

<p>Lumsden rubbed his hand over the lean-barrelled flank and regarded the
animal gloomily.</p>

<p>"Bit hide-bound still. Still cooking his food, Collett?"</p>

<p>"Yes, Sir Bryan."</p>

<p>"Feed him on corn a day or two, and let him have the boiled water warm.
I'll come down this afternoon and have another look at him. Well,
Flash, what do you think of him? Pretty horse, isn't he?"</p>

<p>"He's rather—<i>thin</i>, isn't he, Sir Bryan?"</p>

<p>"Thin?" Bryan looked down banteringly at his little cockney friend in
her borrowed riding-habit. "That's a race-horse. That's Saleratus."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>On New Year's Eve the Lulford party dined at Chubley, Lady
Wills-Pechell's new but much photographed and be-paragraphed castle
high up on Spurlock Edge. Despite the roaring log fire, there was quite
a baronial rawness in the air of the dining-room, and most of the women
came to dinner with lace shawls or spangled Egyptian scarves over their
bare shoulders. Toward the end of dinner Lady Wills-Pechell leaned from
her chair for a whispered conversation with her right-hand neighbor.</p>

<p>"Miss Barbour," she said. "Oh! I beg your pardon, Leslie; I meant your
cousin."</p>

<p>Fenella, who was genuinely absorbed in the technicalities of Snip
Hannaford, turned to meet her hostess's unconvincing smile.</p>

<p>"Miss Barbour, a little bird has been very busy lately twittering that
you dance. Aren't we to be shown anything before you go back to town?"</p>

<p>"There are too many little birds in S—shire," Bill Arkcoll remarked in
a penetrating undertone. "Pity the cold hasn't killed some of them."</p>

<p>Fenella reddened and turned pale by turns.</p>

<p>"Oh, I can't!" she said quickly. She flashed a quick appeal across the
table for her cousin's sympathy, but Leslie kept her eyes on her plate.
Leslie's manner had been strange lately.</p>

<p>"Oh, but you <i>must</i>—you really must! Talents oughtn't to be hid.
Ought they, Lord Lulford?"</p>

<p>The bearded widower, who had been engaged in demolishing the private
reputation of a Liberal leader, turned from the horrified face of the
great lady he had taken in to dinner.</p>

<p>"What is it?"</p>

<p>"We're asking your niece to dance here some night before she goes
back. She thinks it wouldn't be quite—quite, you know——"</p>

<p>Lulford tugged at his thick beard. "I don't know why you shouldn't,
Fenella. We're almost a family party."</p>

<p>"Don't worry the child," Lady Warrener put in, noticing her distress.
She had forgotten much that was American, but not the tradition that
kindness and consideration are budding womanhood's due.</p>

<p>"Be a sport, Flash," said Jack Barbour, cheerily but unhelpfully.</p>

<p>"We'll persuade her when we've got her in the drawing-room," said Lady
Warrener.</p>

<p>"I think," said the chatelaine, "that there's more chance of her being
persuaded here. Won't <i>you</i> try, Sir Bryan?" in her sweetest tone.</p>

<p>"It may be a serious matter," said Lumsden, without looking at any one
in particular. "Perhaps Miss Barbour's in training."</p>

<p>"Yes," said the lady of the Syringas. "But who's the trainer? That's
what we all want to know."</p>

<p>"I've—I've got no clothes."</p>

<p>A smothered laugh, not only from the men.</p>

<p>"My dear child, we've got boxes and boxes of them upstairs—five
generations."</p>

<p>There was a crash on a shirt-front, at which every one jumped but
Arkcoll. He would have very much liked to see the box belonging to,
say, generation three.</p>

<p>"And I've no music. Oh!" moving impatiently, "it's absurd."</p>

<p>Lady Warrener thought she detected a suppressed ambition in the
restless movement.</p>

<p>"If you really don't mind, I've got volumes of old dance music over
at Captoft. I was going to ask Jack to motor you and Leslie over
to-morrow. Couldn't you rummage then?"</p>

<p>Fenella, hard pressed, looked over to Lumsden, as nearly every one had
intended she should look. There was the strangest, quizzical expression
on his face. It seemed to say:</p>

<p>"Now then! Who said they weren't afraid? First fence, and we're funking
already."</p>

<p>"I'll dance," she said abruptly, amid general applause, headed rather
shrilly from the top of the table; "but please don't trouble about
dresses, Lady Pechell. I'll write to mother to send me my own."</p>

<p>Lumsden came to her side soon after the men entered the drawing-room
with such undisguised intention that Lady Warrener, who had been trying
to interest her in the dawning intelligence of the miraculous twins,
drew away, puzzled and a little shaken in her advocacy.</p>

<p>"Bravo!" Bryan said encouragingly; but the girl did not respond, and he
thought he saw a tear roll down one bare arm. Nelly's tears were still
larger than ordinary.</p>

<p>"You looked across the table to me just now," he said. "I hope you saw
nothing in my face except a wish you should do the best for your own
interests."</p>

<p>"It's settled now," said Fenella coldly, after a gulp which she
hoped he didn't notice. "Lady Warrener had the <i>Chaconne</i> from
<i>Iphigénie</i> and I can do my <i>Rosetta</i> dance to any six-four
time. I'll write for the dresses as soon as we get back to Lulford."</p>

<p>Saying which, she got up, grown stately somehow for all her girlish
short frock, and crossed the room to where the joyful mother of twins
was sitting silently, an expression of diffused and impartial sweetness
on her face. She touched her elbow.</p>

<p>"Lady Warrener, won't you go on and tell me some more about your
babies? I was really interested?"</p>

<p>The woman looked up, noted the mute appeal in voice and eyes, and,
drawing the girl down next her on the couch, took her hand and held it
as she chatted.</p>

<p>"Where had I got to? Oh, yes—Bunter said: 'Mother, there's something
tickling my red lane.' 'Your red lane, Bunter?' 'Oh, mother,' said
Patch, 'he's such a baby. He means his <i>froat</i>.' Now wasn't that
<i>sweet</i>. Miss Barbour? <i>Fahncy!</i> And only three years old,
both of them. I'm so proud, I simply <i>bore</i> all my friends.
But you love children, don't you, Miss Barbour? How can any one
<i>not</i>?"</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIIa">VII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">A DRESS REHEARSAL</p>


<p>Her own interests? Not many days had passed before she had a chance
to value them anew. The evening of the dance came and went. She was
a little surprised at the size of the gathering it called together.
There must have been eighty people in the hall, neighbors mostly,
jovial, temperately enthusiastic, in after-dinner mood, and with the
additional prospect of a first meet to hounds next day after the long
frost. She noticed, however, that Bryan seemed to be introducing a good
many strangers. She had danced amid a buzz of whispers, exclamations,
and frequently a loud "Bravo!" taken up and echoed wherever a white
shirt-front glimmered in the darkened hall. None of them knew how
well it was done, but every one could appreciate a graceful child in
a white satin Watteau dress with a great pointed frill, black sausage
curls falling upon her shoulders under a quaint glazed hat, whose
bones seemed to be of whalebone, whose feet never were still, and
whose face, through all her changing gestures of appeal, hesitancy,
curiosity, disdain, cunning, and weariness never altered from the grave
set expression with which she faced the first round of applause. Or an
odalisque, in a long striped tunic of the thinnest, softest silk and
baggy Turkish trousers that sagged in great wide folds over her bare
slippered feet, who swayed in time to sleepy <i>traumerei</i> music
almost like a top—rousing every now and then with a braying jar of
the little cymbals that were fastened on her hands, to straighten and
poise and twirl herself anew—sinking on the floor with the last faint
chords, a soft limp heap of silk and dishevelled black hair.</p>

<p>Already, as she sat by her bedroom fire in night-dress and wrapper,
her hair plaited on each side of her head, and cuddling her knee, she
was paying for her brief hour of triumph. She had the indefinable
feeling of having "gone too far" that makes one dread the coming day
like the face of an enemy. She thought people had looked strangely at
her when she returned dressed, collected, and a little paler, to the
hall. It was not because here and there she had caught a false note
in the tempest of congratulation that overwhelmed her. It seemed set
altogether in a key that was strange and new; she could judge, for,
after all, it was not the first time she had danced in public. Even the
impulse which had made her at the end of her second dance run forward
and kiss Lady Warrener (at the piano) seemed to be misunderstood. The
gentle peeress, so kind before, had shrunk from her palpably. And yet
it was so natural; for she had never danced to music played like that
before. How she longed for her public, her real public, obtuse and
leather-lunged if you will, but whom a smile can conquer and whose
loyalty, once gained, is gained forever!</p>

<p>Then she had her own private motives for misgiving. Her cousin's manner
had been strange for days. Leslie avoided her plainly, but followed
her with her eyes. When forced to speak she seemed, not harsh, but
confused, shocked, and anxious for escape. Jack had gone back to his
regiment in Ireland the day after the dinner, grumbling, and feeling
the iron of disinheritance in his soul as only the younger son of a
great house can. He would have told her everything. But she must have
an explanation from Leslie to-morrow. On no other prospect could she
face the night.</p>

<p>The fire was burning low. The little Sheraton clock on the mantelpiece
shrilled <i>two</i>. She threw off her slippers and wrapper, opened the
window, and, drawing a screen across the sinking fire, crept between
the smooth linen sheets. But, once in bed, her excitement returned on
her. Three o'clock—four o'clock—struck, and she was awake, the pulse
of the music still in her relaxed body, listening to the fire shifting
in the grate, watching the red dusk turn slowly to black.</p>

<p>Suddenly she heard the handle of the door move, very gently and very
steadily. The bed-curtains hid it from view; but she remembered that
she had forgotten to lock it, and when it closed again as gently she
knew that some one was in the room. But there was something else she
had not forgotten. She felt under her pillow and closed her hand
upon it. The very day she saw him last her lover had given her a
little steel repeating pistol. She remembered his words: "I've never
had occasion to use it, Nelly, but I should be giving you a false
impression of the world, as I know it, if I didn't tell you there's ten
times as much chance you'll have to defend your honor some day as there
is I'll ever have to defend my property."</p>

<p>She lay still, her heart beating to suffocation, but she did not quite
close her eyes, and the next moment a fear that was never to be named
went out of her heart. It was only her cousin Leslie. She recognized
her plainly—long and emaciated, with tawny, lifeless hair about her
shoulders. She was carrying a night-light in a cone-shaped glass.</p>

<p>Now that fear was gone she had time to be puzzled. Up to a week ago
a visit from her cousin at the hour of "combing and confidences"
had been a regular affair, but one of the changes noticeable in her
attitude had been the abandonment of the nightly habit. It was a great
opportunity for the clear understanding on which she meant to insist,
but it was very late, she was tired, and, as often happens, felt a
sudden disinclination to put her resolution to the test. She decided to
simulate sleep. She breathed a little heavier and closed her eyes.</p>

<p>Leslie set down her lamp—she heard it distinctly on the little
marble-topped table beside the bed—and bent over her. She felt her
cousin's breath on her cheek. The thin, weak hand began to stroke her
forehead and hair. Nelly was proof against a good many things, but not
against tickling. She laughed and opened her eyes.</p>

<p>Next moment, with a leap as lithe as a panther's, she had jumped out
of bed and, gripping her cousin's wrists, bore her backward on to the
floor. She was strong as well as active, and upon the thick carpet the
struggle was as brief as it was noiseless. Something fell from the
older woman's hand. She tossed it back on the bed and, switching on the
electric current, flooded the room with light. Leslie picked herself
up, crawled to the wall and crouched there, her knees drawn up to her
chin, looking at her cousin through her tawny mane, with eyes wide and
distraught in her white, quivering face.</p>

<p>Fenella gave one look at the little stiletto on the bed, and covered
her face with her hands in a reaction of terror.</p>

<p>"Oh, Leslie! Wicked—wicked woman! What had I done to you? Oh, what a
horror! And under your own roof! Oh, you must be mad!"</p>

<p>"Go on!" said Leslie, thickly. "Ring the bell—wake the house! Have me
put in a mad-house. Father wouldn't care, nor any one else. He's cursed
me and called me a wet blanket heaps of times before people. I'm in
every one's way now mother's gone."</p>

<p>Fenella still looked at her incredulously. She was expecting every
moment to wake from her nightmare. A thing like this couldn't be
real—couldn't be life! Suddenly the wretched woman flung herself at
her feet, weeping and kissing them.</p>

<p>"Oh! my darling, don't look at me like that, as though I were some
poisonous reptile. Oh, my God! what have I done? Do you think I really
meant to harm you? Do you think I'm jealous? But if I am, it's only for
your own good name. It's their fault. Of course you're nothing to them;
they didn't know you when you were a little baby girl. I only wanted
to be sure. And then something said to me that if—that if—Why do you
shrink that way? Do you loathe to have me touch you?"</p>

<p>Fenella bent forward and laid her hand across the hysterical woman's
mouth.</p>

<p>"Leslie, be quiet this instant, or I won't answer for what I'll do. And
throw this over you or you'll get a chill. Now, are you quieter? I'm
not going to make a fuss, or even tell a living soul what's happened
to-night. But it's on a condition."</p>

<p>"I know what you mean."</p>

<p>"Yes. You must tell me what's being said about me?"</p>

<p>"They say that he—that you——"</p>

<p>"Yes. Go on!"</p>

<p>"That you were Bryan Lumsden's mistress in France, and that he's
spending money on bringing you out and paying for your dresses and
lessons, and that he——" She hesitated.</p>

<p>"What? Is there more?"</p>

<p>"Yes. That—oh! that he wasn't the first. That when he—found you, you
were posing as a model to some French artist."</p>

<p>"What a picturesque past I've got! And have you believed it all?"</p>

<p>Leslie made a despondent and penitent gesture.</p>

<p>"Not now I've seen you. Not now I've told you to your face. But you
can't live in a house like Lulford all your life and not hear—things.
Well, are you going to loathe me forever?"</p>

<p>Fenella seemed thoughtful. "I don't loathe you," she said, "not more
than any one else. Go back to bed now. I'm tired after last night."</p>

<p>"You won't refer to this to-morrow, will you? I shall be hunting all
day, but you won't throw it in my face when we meet at night."</p>

<p>"No. Here, take this thing back to where you got it. No, I'm not
afraid to let you have it. Yes, I'll kiss you good-night. Oh, Leslie,
<i>go</i>!" She stamped her bare foot desperately.</p>

<p>As soon as her cousin was out of the room she locked the door and began
to pack her trunks, turning keys and opening drawers as stealthily as a
thief in the night. Her teeth chattered and her heart was filled with
the wild panic instinct of flight. She only cried once, as she folded
the clothes in which she had danced. "They said—his money!" How well
she remembered the day they had been made, the whirring and bumping of
the machine, her mother's perplexed face over the paper patterns, the
very smell of Paul's pipe. "Theatricals," she had told him, and he had
not asked a single question. The poor wounded heart ached for home.
When her trunks were packed she lay down and watched for the dawn.</p>

<p>The house was astir early. There was shouting from room to room,
running hither and thither of ladies' maids and gentlemen's gentlemen,
brushing of habits and knocking out of wooden boot-trees. She
breakfasted in her room, and sent down word that she was getting up
late—that she was over-tired. She had to endure cheerful proposals
to come in and pull her out, cries of "Tally-ho!" and "Gone to
earth!"—even try to answer them in kind. When they had all ridden
away, she got up and dressed herself to her hat and coat and furs, her
hands numb and clumsy from haste and agitation. There was a Bradshaw
in the library, through whose mazes she ran with a finger in which she
could feel the very beat of her disordered pulse, but she could make
little or nothing of it. The house seemed to be empty of men-servants,
but in the stable yard she ran across one of the helpers. He eyed her
strangely and rasped a stubbly chin with a broken finger nail at her
question.</p>

<p>"Lunnon train? Noa, miss, baint no Lunnon train through Lulford 'fore
two-twenty, an' that doant stop fur to take up nor fur to set down,
'cept ye tellygraff down the line. There's a slow to Wolv'r'ampton
at three-thritty, but ye'll have to wait forty minutes f'r yewr
connexshuns. Two trunks, ye say, miss? Now, let me think——"</p>

<p>Fenella slid ten shillings in silver into a hand that seemed to be in
the way.</p>

<p>"Thank'ee kindly, miss. 'Tis a bad marnen, miss, ye see: bein' a
huntin' marnen all oor men be haff th' place. Come twelve o'clock, I'm
taken 'nother harse to Wrogwarden Wood m'self, but if ye don't mind the
bit of a walk to stash'n, I can harness Marvine to th' bailiff's cart,
and tak' yewr trunks to stashun now in a casulty way like, and bid 'em
wait till ye come. Thank'ee, miss."</p>

<p>After a wretched pretence of eating a cold lunch, served in the
solitude of the morning-room by maid-servants who whispered together
outside and even peeped through the crack of the door, Fenella took her
muff and dressing-case and set off to walk to the station. Snow lay
still in recesses and hollows of the trees beneath the drive, and there
were dirty lumps and patches on the slope of the hill where the slide
had been made. She breathed freer when a corner of the drive hid the
gray walls and turrets of the old priory, and more freely still when
she had passed the round white lodge with its one smoking chimney and
was out on the public road. Often, upon her summer holidays, passing
such a lodge with its escutcheoned pillars and long dove-haunted avenue
curving away into a dim and baffling perspective, she had wondered what
sort of life was led beyond its swinging gates. Her lip curled at the
thought that now she knew.</p>

<p>The road she was walking along was sheltered and lonely, but sunken
between high banks. The thawing uplands on either side had drained into
it, and she was forced to pick her way very carefully, her heavy skirts
held up with one hand and the baize-covered dressing-case, which seemed
to grow heavier and which she hated more each moment (it had been one
of mummy's ridiculous ideas), knocking against her knees on the other
side. She had only gone some few hundred yards when, beyond a turn
in the narrow road, she heard the splash of a hard-ridden horse, and
clambered up the clayey bank to be out of its way. At sight of her the
rider pulled up so hard as almost to bring his steed upon its haunches.
She had not time to pull her veil down.</p>

<p>"You of all the world!" exclaimed Lumsden. "What's up, Flash? Playing
lady bountiful on the sly?"</p>

<p>"I'm going home."</p>

<p>Bryan whistled softly. He was wearing a black coat with wide skirts,
a low-crowned silk hat and the palest of pale blue stocks. His white
breeches and boots were covered with mud and his horse's miry flanks
heaved like a bellows.</p>

<p>"Going home?" he repeated, in open-mouthed surprise. "What on earth has
happened?"</p>

<p>"Please let me go on! I've had bad news from home this morning, that's
all."</p>

<p>"That's a fib, Flash. You've been awake again all night. The second
time. Oh, fie!"</p>

<p>No remark from Fenella.</p>

<p>"Any one been rude to you?"</p>

<p>The girl shook her head.</p>

<p>"You won't tell me, eh?"</p>

<p>"Sir Bryan, I can't. I've promised——Oh, you've <i>no right</i>!"</p>

<p>Lumsden swung himself out of the saddle.</p>

<p>"At any rate, you're not going to walk any further in those thin shoes
and sit four hours in a train with wet feet. Come! up you get. The lane
gets worse the farther you go."</p>

<p>With sudden docility she put her dressing-case down on the wet grass.</p>

<p>"That's right! Put your foot here. Steady—Greaser! Don't be afraid.
He's quite blown; going's far too heavy to-day. Now take the bag in
your lap. What's in it, Flash? Diamonds?"</p>

<p>He looked at her quizzically as he laid the reins over his shoulder.</p>

<p>"For two two's I'd come up with you to London. Oh, don't look so
frightened. It's only an impulse. I've been fighting impulses every
day for the last fortnight. I don't want to worry you," he went on, as
the horse began to pick his way downhill with stiff, tired legs; "but
you'll have to give some reason for all this. Did you leave any message
behind?"</p>

<p>She shook her head.</p>

<p>"Then we'll have to fake a telegram. You simply can't leave like this,
and that's all there is about it. Hullo! who's this?"</p>

<p>A small boy in corduroys and with a red badge on his arm was drifting
up the lane toward them, examining the hedge-rows first on one side,
then on another, in search of diversion. At Lumsden's call he started
and adopted a more official gait.</p>

<p>"Come here, boy! Can you take a telegram?"</p>

<p>"Ahve got one," said the leaden-footed herald unfastening his satchel.
"Miss Fen—Fen——"</p>

<p>Bryan snatched it from his hand.</p>

<p>"Open it, please," said Fenella in the ghost of a voice.</p>

<p>"By George!" said the baronet, looking up, "this is Providence. This
lets us all out."</p>

<p>"Read it, please."</p>

<p>"<i>Lady Anne very ill. Asks for you. Think you had better come.
Wire.</i>"</p>

<p>"I don't think that's good news at all."</p>

<p>"Well, it suits us, doesn't it?" with a quick look at the troubled,
indignant face. "You mustn't feel things too much, you know. Fancy Anne
Caslon dying in her bed at last! 'Tattering Annie' they used to call
her in the West Meath. Fate! fate! there's nothing else. Here, boy,"
he said, putting his hand in his breeches pocket, "take this, and cut
away to the station and tell 'em to stop the two-twenty. Shocked at me,
ain't you?" he said, as the boy trotted off after a backward gape at
the strange couple.</p>

<p>"I think it's horrid to talk about fate as if it was meant to do our
little odd lying jobs for us. I'm very much upset at the news."</p>

<p>"No, but isn't it true—I mean my meeting you this way? Confess, now.
You were on your way back to town wounded and indignant, with a firm
resolve never to see any one you'd met at Lulford again, weren't you?"</p>

<p>"Yes, I think so."</p>

<p>"But you're not now?"</p>

<p>"I don't know. I must have time to think."</p>

<p>He seemed quite satisfied with the answer, being used possibly to
oblique affirmations from women.</p>

<p>A culvert and signal-box appeared suddenly above the hedge to their
right.</p>

<p>"You'd better get down here. There's a foot-path at the side of the
main road." He flushed deeply as he held her in his arms. Another
checked impulse, no doubt.</p>

<p>In the waiting-room they sat, one on each side of a sullen fire in a
black stove. He smoked a cigar, and steam rose from the drenched skirts
of his coat.</p>

<p>"I'm going to Biarritz almost immediately," he said; "but Dollfus knows
what to do. Call on him as soon as you possibly can. I don't see myself
there's much more training wanted, but you must be fitted in somewhere,
and that takes time."</p>

<p>He might have added that it takes money too—some one's money—but
it was not the moment to enlarge on this. Fenella listened to his
advice respectfully and gave him her address when he asked for it.
She liked him no better, but, at the point they had reached, she felt
it necessary, for her own satisfaction, that she should take the
least complicated view of his helpfulness that was possible. To take
a great deal and to give a little is a prerogative that the nicest
of women think it no shame to use. She bought her own ticket, but
let him order foot-warmers and even literature—<i>The Tattler</i>,
<i>Photo Bits</i>, and a novel by Charles Garvice, to be brought her at
Wolverhampton. He was back at her side as the train, chafing fussily
at the check to its course, began to move out of the little country
station.</p>

<p>"Don't worry over whatever's happened you down there," he said at the
last, jerking back his head at the hospitable mansion she had just
left. "They're a dull crowd. We'll meet a very different lot later on.
Good-bye! Keep fit and don't grizzle. I'll wire your mother that you're
on your way."</p>

<p>He stood gazing after the tail of the train as the gray distance sucked
it in to a point.</p>

<p>"You were a pretty wench, Bill," he heard a voice say behind him in the
porters' room. The homely comment jarred him, but it also readjusted
a view that had been inclining dangerously toward the romantic. Is
there, I often wonder, some inbred memory of old disaster that makes
Englishmen afraid of romance? Bryan, as he plodded homeward on his
stiff hunter, almost laughed to remember that he had suddenly sickened
of the chase, sickened of everything, and ridden back eight muddy miles
on a beaten horse to see this girl, and—who knows?—perhaps to ask her
to be his wife—if she had insisted upon it.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Shawled and pillowed at Wolverhampton by the guard's care, and quite
tired out, Fenella slept, as warm as a dormouse under the snow, nearly
all the way to Euston. A new ring from the clanging permanent way, more
metallic, more menacing, as the train, sighting its goal afar off, made
up its schedule time, roused her from a dream—ah! how deadly sweet of
sun-steeped dunes, of outspread skies and seas, her poor little "land
of lost content." The carriage pitched and rocked, lights twinkled
together behind the bare trees, suburban pavements, and broadways
blazing in blue-white light flashed past the windows. She put out her
head against the cold, gritty rush of wind, and looked toward a red
glare in the sky. Somewhere in that man-made wilderness of stone and
brick, from whose smouldering discontents reddened smoke seemed to be
ascending to heaven, he lived and moved and had his being who but now,
in the lilied meadows of her dream, had held her against his breast and
kissed away the desolate ache at her heart. Back to him, and he could
not hinder—straight, straight as a homing-bird she was flying. With
every moment that passed the distance that sundered them was being
annihilated. Intense unreasoning joys! triumph almost lyrical of spirit
over matter! God's crowning mercy in affliction!—manna from Heaven,
and portion of the outcast!</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIIIa">VIII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">LADY ANNE'S DEPOSITION</p>


<p>We wonder if it has ever happened to any of our readers—being a common
human experience, it probably has—on the very morrow of some change
which they had assayed, light-heartedly, experimentally, and with all
provision made for honorable retreat in case of failure, to find the
retreat, as it were, cut off, the old life put out of their reach once
and for all, and success in the new becomes the condition not of a
pleasanter manner of existence, but of very existence itself.</p>

<p>We know that Fenella's independence of the career she had chosen was
never as complete as appearances seemed to warrant. Even if it had
been so, hers was not the temperament to discover comfort in any such
ignoble security. She had the bright confidence of her youth. Eager
for the contest, she was not afraid of any of the rules. And if the
comfortable thought that, after all, the worst that could happen
her would be a return to domestic conditions with her one ambition
quenched, visited her at all in despondent moods, it was rather
owing to Madame de Rudder's insistence upon the fact, as the great
strategic advantage in a campaign which about this time that lady
began to conduct with Mr. Joseph Dollfus—a campaign carried on so
pertinaciously and with such utter disregard for the Dominion manager's
feelings, that he often wondered whether any inkling of the secret
clause, the Lumsden clause, of the treaty could have reached her. If it
hadn't, her bluff was a masterpiece.</p>

<p>"I'm afraid Joe Dollfus was rather rude to you to-day, dear," Fenella
said to her old mistress one afternoon over the teacups. Madame's
irruption into the affair upon the strength of an old "understanding"
which her pupil could neither remember nor would deny, had, in fact, at
last proved too much for Mr. Dollfus's manners.</p>

<p>"Pooh!" said madame, airily. "I'm not hurt. I don't care what the
little bounder says. It's rather a good sign, in fact, that he
<i>should</i> lose his temper. That type always does when they see
you've the whip hand."</p>

<p>"How have we the whip hand?" Fenella never questioned the implied
association of interest.</p>

<p>"My dear, because we're not dependent on Joe's say-so for a living.
We're not a bankrupt solicitor's daughter with a mother and young
sisters to support. We're not poor."</p>

<p>This was about the time that doubts were beginning to assail Fenella.</p>

<p>"Oh, but I am <i>really</i>," she persisted, rather ruefully.</p>

<p>"Well, you're not to all appearance, and it's appearances that count.
Look at where you live! look at your relations! Oh, I've rubbed that
all in; trust me."</p>

<p>Fenella sighed. A home in which strangers gave orders; relations under
whose roof she would never be tempted again—for that chapter in her
life was closed definitely. She had answered one incoherent, penitent
letter, and sent back two more unopened.</p>

<p>"My dear Nellikins," said the kind-hearted dame, "have some more tea
and don't look so worried. I know we're rather a sham, but try to
<i>feel</i> the part. Be a winner!" She patted the slim hand held out
for the teacup. "You do <i>look</i> one so, my dear. Once you admit,"
she went on, in a voice slightly veiled by buttered toast, "once you
admit, even to yourself, that you're not doing a thing for fun and
because you like it, the game's up. Because it's this sort of people
who are coming to the front everywhere now—in books, and pictures, and
music, and the stage—and everything."</p>

<p>"I've always heard that dabblers never did anything!"</p>

<p>"My dear, who said 'dabblers'? And besides"—impatiently—"a lot
of that musty, fusty old wisdom wants tearing up and writing
over again. How can any one who has to worry do the work that
<i>pays</i>. Clever! Oh, yes, they may be very clever, but all they
succeed in doing with their cleverness is in making the people
who matter—the rich, important people—uncomfortable. And they
<i>will—not—be—made—uncomfortable</i>, my dear. Besides, they never
last long. Worry kills them off like the cold kills the flies."</p>

<p>Fenella did not pursue the subject. She felt all the vulgarity
of her old mistress, but she felt also an unaccountable sense of
protection in her company. Brazen, alert, competent, grasping, utterly
disillusioned, mature; with good looks that seem to have settled down
for fifteen years' hard service; smartly dressed, opaque of eye,
unrestrained of laugh and anecdote with condescending patrons; living
in discreet little houses, in discreet little streets off fashionable
thoroughfares, with open-work lace blinds at their windows—Berthe,
Clarice, Suzanne, Estelle, as the case may be—latterly even, Elizabeth
and Kate: polishing nails, crimping hair, ironing out wrinkles,
reducing flesh, kneading and anointing the pampered body; teaching
dancing, selling fans and lace; "advising" decoration, dabbling in
magic, undertaking "confidential" commissions; with a range of service
that touches impropriety at one extreme and heroism at the other, and
often with a past of their own behind them in which the finer feelings
have perished, but not a good heart, the De Rudders of the world play
their part in the parasitical life of the rich bravely enough—play
it often, too, with a secret hatred and contempt for the class whose
follies they fatten on that would be a revelation to the mere reformer.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>The trouble began with an interview that poor Lady Anne was "accorded"
early in November. The place, a sober "Adams" parlor, distempered
in green, furnished in the old oak of commerce, and hung with Romney
engravings in black carved wood frames. Between the two gaunt windows a
writing-desk, littered with memorandum blocks, supports a large silver
inkstand bearing the legend: "To <span class="smcap">Jas. Pemmer-Lloyd</span>, Esq., M.
R. C. S., from a grateful patient." To right, a low couch covered with
a white linen cloth and with some mysterious mechanism or other at its
head. At its foot, a glass table on rubber wheels, its two tiers loaded
with multiform electro-plated apparatus. Carpet obtrusively thick.</p>

<p>"But are you quite sure?" she was saying.</p>

<p>Her companion, a dark, keen-faced man of few words, seems to consider
awhile. Conversation in Harley and Weymouth Streets is expensive: even
so, it was felt that Pemmer-Lloyd gave short weight.</p>

<p>"Personally," he answered, "I have no doubt whatever. Of course, if
you wish, I can arrange a consultation or meet your own doctor. It was
quite irregular you're not bringing him."</p>

<p>"Never ride again! Never—ride—again!" Poor Lady Anne kept repeating
the dreadful sentence over and over to herself.</p>

<p>"Doctor!" she said aloud. "I have no doctor. Never been ill in my life.
And what's the use of paying more money to a lot of men who'll only dot
your i's and cross your t's for you? You're the top of the tree, ain't
you?"</p>

<p>Pemmer-Lloyd, who was writing at his desk, did not deny the soft
impeachment.</p>

<p>"I've written two names," he said, "on the back of your prescription.
The apparatus can be obtained at either. The massage should be done in
the evening—at your own house, if possible. You will find it a little
exhausting at first. Thank you."</p>

<p>Lady Anne laid down two golden coins and a florin near the grateful
patient's inkstand, stuffed the prescription into the pocket of her
tweed coat, and stumped out to her cab.</p>

<p>"Druce," she said, when the door was opened for her at Suffolk Square,
"I shall want you and Twyford to come up and help me pack after lunch.
I am going to Market Harborough to-morrow."</p>

<p>She returned unexpectedly after the Christmas holidays, walking a
thought more lamely than before, and with a new absorbed gentleness
in her manner. She kept her room for three days, writing busily. Many
callers, some of them strangers to the servants who admitted them,
drove up in cabs and carriages. For the first time since she had taken
the rooms her brother, Lord Windybank, spent two nights in the house.
Fenella's empty bed was made up for him. On the evening of the second
day, after dinner, the two maid-servants were called up to Lady Anne's
sitting-room. The earl, a little horsey-legged man, with the face,
hair, chin, and voice of his sister, was standing on the hearth-rug.
His eyes were inflamed, and he blew his nose violently from time to
time on an Indian silk handkerchief, an assortment of which he seemed
to keep in the various pockets of his frieze suit. Old Mr. Attneave,
the solicitor, stood by the writing-desk, wrapped in the grave
professional manner that covers all human contingencies. The girls
curtsied, signed a document, laboriously, in a space indicated by the
lawyer's chalky finger, curtsied again, and turned to leave the room.
Lady Anne called them back, handed each of them a couple of bank-notes
from a little pile beneath an enamelled paper-weight, and kissed the
dazed hand-maidens on the cheek.</p>

<p>"Be good women," she said, gravely. "Do your duty by your mistress. If
I have given cause of offence to either of you, or made your work hard
and ungrateful, by word or deed, remember I asked your pardon for it.
And now bid your mistress come and see me as soon as is convenient."</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour entered the room five minutes later with a white, scared
face.</p>

<p>"Mrs. Barbour, this is Lord Windybank, my brother. Mr. Attneave I
think you have met before. Stop snivelling, Windy;—please do. Won't
you sit down? I'm going away to-morrow, Mrs. Barbour, for a short
stay in another neighborhood, and whether I shall come back is rather
doubtful. No, it isn't nonsense, Windy; I caught the red-headed one's
eye when he didn't know I was looking. The other was too old to let
anything out. Mrs. Barbour, I want to see your little girl before I go
away."</p>

<p>"I'll telegraph for her at once, m'lady."</p>

<p>Lady Anne pursed her lip. "Telegraph for her in the morning," she said.
"It's late, and I don't want the child to come up at night. Besides, it
will spoil her rest."</p>

<p>"Are you ill, m'lady?" Mrs. Barbour asked, much mystified. There seemed
to be so little change in the long white fretful face.</p>

<p>"Oh, dear, yes; quite seriously, ceremoniously ill, I assure you.
Please don't look at me that way. You can't see anything. I don't
believe any of them can, though they pretend to. And now about Fenella.
Mr. Attneave, will you please explain?"</p>

<p>As the lawyer, in dry calculated sentences, explained the details and
conditions of the little legacy, Mrs. Barbour broke down and wept
after the fashion of her class, with great whoops, and holding her
housekeeping apron to her eyes. All her little world seemed to be
crumbling. She was not, by nature, an impressionable woman, but had it
been her lot, as it is the lot of so many of her kind, to hear, month
by month, new footsteps echo on her stairs; to see, month by month,
strange faces people her rooms, the dignity of proprietorship, the
sense of being mistress of a home, which had done so much to soften
and sweeten her, must have missed her altogether, and the wear and
tear upon her perceptions vulgarized her heart far quicker than feet
or hands shabbied her house. During fifteen years, as far as Lady Anne
was concerned, without the slightest temptation to anything that could
be construed as a "liberty," or a single soul-searching as regards her
own equivocal social status, the service of love had, little by little,
been substituting itself for the service of gain. Custom and habit are
strong with all who have attained middle life, but with women, after a
certain age is reached, they are tyrants. Nor was it in its monetary
aspect chiefly, though that might well have given her pause, that the
sense of bereavement reached her. Simple words are most convincing. She
was wondering how, "if anything should happen," poor Lady Anne in the
nursing home, to which she was evidently bound, she could ever find the
heart to wait upon strangers in her rooms.</p>

<p>"——five hundred pounds, until the age of twenty-one, unless upon an
occasion of urgent necessity, the nature of which shall be determined
by said trustees, appointed on the one part by the said Honorable Mrs.
Nigel Kedo Barbour——"</p>

<p>"Boo-hoo!" wept the honorable lady.</p>

<p>The invalid patted her upon the shoulder. "My dear, good friend, do
control yourself!"</p>

<p>"Oh, I can't, I can't! Oh! I never shall stop in this house. It won't
be the same to me."</p>

<p>The broken phrases struggled through her tears like bubbles through
water. The lawyer had to stop.</p>

<p>"I suppose," Lady Anne said, after the faithful Druce had led her
weeping mistress away, "that class doesn't really know what their ideas
are until they've put them into words. They say a lot over, and then
pick out the ones they want to keep. Oh, I shall be glad when it's over
one way or another, Windy. I think I know now how poor Uncle Eustace
must have felt the day before Major Hartnett shot him. There's not much
difference between a duel and an operation."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Thus it was to a house cold and dark with the shadow of change and
worse that Fenella came home. Mercifully she was spared questioning on
her own pale cheeks and dull eyes. Mrs. Barbour was in no mood to be
entertained with a description of her doings among the fine folk. Lady
Anne was dozing when she arrived, and might not be disturbed. The poor
lady was already invested with something of her perilous state. A nurse
in a blue linen dress and goffered cap, whose lightest word was law,
moved softly up and down stairs in felt ward slippers, carrying various
mysterious burdens. She called Fenella at about midnight. The girl had
taken off her outer garments and put on a fleecy dressing-gown.</p>

<p>"You must be very quiet," Nurse Adelaide said, "and not stay more than
half an hour. I want her to settle for the night while she is out of
pain."</p>

<p>Inside a fire burnt cheerily, and a kettle sung its happy and heartless
song. A tilted lamp plunged half the room into shadow and the air was
sickly with the smell of some anodyne.</p>

<p>"Is that Nelly?" said a voice from the shadow.</p>

<p>The girl bent over the bed and put her lips to the high bony forehead.</p>

<p>"You mustn't cry so, child. You always had such fat tears, Nelly.
There's one running in my eye now. Are you dressed?"</p>

<p>"Only ha-half."</p>

<p>"Get under the quilt, then. Be careful, child. I'm 'this side up;
fragile; with care.'"</p>

<p>"Dear Lady Anne, is it true what they say? Are you very ill?"</p>

<p>"My dear, I have about one chance in a thousand of ever walking the
streets again. It's all my own fault. I had an awful spill, child; none
of them know how bad it was. But what could I do? There was the gate
with some patent latch or other and I didn't dare get down. I'd never
have got up again. Pepper knew it was no use. He tried to roll his dear
old eyes back to tell me, bless his heart. And the off-hoof was just a
little lazy. Ugh! I'm very wicked, I suppose. Often, after lying awake
all night, I've had to bite my lip not to scream when some clumsy lout
put me up wrong. Once I was up, I didn't mind. But it was worth it.
Oh, Lord! it was worth it. One only has one life. I'd do it again. I'd
have been a poor creature, Nelly, without horses and dogs. They've
always understood me better than people. If there's a God for them,
He's good enough for me, and if there isn't I don't want one either.
Windy was shocked because I wanted to call a vet in consultation....
What did I want to tell you, child? Oh! I've been hearing tales about
you in the last week. Of course they're all lies. What's become of your
pirate friend?—don't pretend you don't know who I mean—Paul Ingram.
Wasn't that the creature's name. All over, is it? So much the better.
He was no good, Nelly. I saw that the night we talked together. A man
can't play beggar-my-neighbor with the world and win, and that's what
he wanted. Bryan's better, but I'm afraid he's spoilt another way. But
don't let a lot of old-woman talk frighten you away from him. There's a
lot of nonsense talked about girls' 'characters.' Every poor girl has
to take risks, and every poor girl's mother knows it. There's only two
rules. Never do what would lose you your own self-respect, and never
love a poor man for his handsome face. You won't, will you, child? You
know, when a person's dying they're allowed to make a deposition; so
here's mine: There's nothing matters on this earth but just—money.
You think every one knows that? Oh! they don't. It wouldn't do if they
did. So all sorts of other things—art and high ideals, and, yes—even
religion, are given 'em to amuse themselves with until it's too late.
Then, of course, they have to pretend they're satisfied. But give 'em
their chance over again; you'd see. And for a girl with a face like
yours it ought to be so easy. Oh, Nelly, what does your love matter if
<i>his</i> buys you health and beauty fifteen years longer, and angel
children, and a house with lovely gracious rooms, and cool green lawns
in summer, and the winter in the sun, and motor-cars and horses, while
poorer women are scrambling and pushing and taking their turns for
'buses and trams in the rain, and a strong arm to help you whenever
you need it, and honor and peace in your gray hairs. My own life hasn't
been much, but think what it would have been for little ugly Anne
Caslon if great-grandfather hadn't dipped his fingers in the Irish
Exchequer. And yet—what am I saying?—if Nigel Barbour would have held
up his finger, Nelly, I'd have gone with him and cooked his meals and
washed his clothes in a garret——"</p>

<p>The nurse tapped Fenella on the shoulder.</p>

<p>"I think you'd best go now. She's been talking some time. I want to
settle her for the night."</p>

<p>She shook a bottle as she spoke and poured out a cloudy mixture into a
glass.</p>

<p>"Good-night, my pet! Do you remember when I taught you to read—'Ned
had a gad—' and you wanted to know what a 'gad' was, and I forgot to
find out. I'm afraid we shall never know now."</p>

<p>"I'll see you in the morning," murmured Fenella, as she kissed her.
Miss Rigby was on the landing outside, dishevelled, round-eyed, and in
a wrapper, asking news of her dear friend in a tragic whisper.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Perhaps it was because she cried herself to sleep that Nelly slept so
late. The house was all topsy-turvy, and by the time they remembered
to call her Lady Anne had been taken away. Her bedroom windows were
wide open and Twyford was strewing tea-leaves on the carpet as Fenella
passed the door. She had taken very little luggage—just a portmanteau
full of linen and a dressing-case, and two days later she went a longer
journey and took no luggage at all.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="IXa">IX</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">THE MAN AT THE WHEEL</p>


<p>Just as we are used to hearing from time to time that the lives of
certain great ones of the earth are insured for many thousands of
pounds in quarters which their demise will unsettle but certainly not
move to grief, so there are lives dismissed at their close with scant
obituary notice, the shadow of whose eclipse reaches far beyond the
covenanted few who wear mourning for their sakes.</p>

<p>The house in Suffolk Square never really recovered the shock of poor
Lady Anne's taking off. Her rooms, stripped of their household gods,
repapered and repainted, stood empty for weeks before Mrs. Barbour
could even be prevailed upon to notify their vacancy, and when she
did move, the paying guests whom they attracted were not of a sort to
efface the hard-riding lady's wholesome memory or to make her the less
keenly regretted. London is changing daily, and in nothing so much as
in the accommodation it offers the stranger within its gates. Cheap
hotels, the diseased craving for a veneered luxury, rapid transit
from outskirts to centre—all combine to render what was always a
precarious living well-nigh a hopeless one. In vain do old-fashioned
people, unable or unwilling to read the signs of the times, advertise
the family atmosphere to a public anxious to escape from it—quiet
and seclusion to a generation that droops unless it feels its spirits
uplifted by the wind and whirl of life. Between the tragic end of
the old dispensation and the final dispersion there was a squalid
interlude which Fenella never could recall in after years without
a sinking of the heart as at the memory of a ravaged sanctuary. A
dreadful Anglo-Indian <i>ménage</i>, which washed the dirty linen of
ten stations with doors and windows open; a grumbling <i>ayah</i> whose
gaudy rags clung to her, like wet cloths to a clay model, and whose
depredations upon kitchen and larder on behalf of her screaming charges
drove cook to revolt. A prim flaxen-tailed family who practised upon
the piano all day by turns, and whose high-nosed parent did not think
Miss Rigby "respectable." Was she, indeed, respectable? Mrs. Barbour
had had her doubts from the first, and in spite of Lady Anne's breezy
assurances, or perhaps on account of them, had long suspected a secret
treaty of oblivion and protection between the two women. It had seemed,
however, to include a tacit clause against direct communication, and
with the new order the weaker woman appeared to see her way to break
through this restriction upon her social aptitudes. She contracted a
distressing habit of rapping at the doors of the first-floor rooms,
to borrow, to return, to remonstrate, to apologize for remonstrating.
Her friendship with little Mrs. Lovelace of Mian Meer, especially was,
until its stormy close, over a disputed bargain at a "White Sale," of
a suddenness and intensity calculated to revive a weakened faith in
human affinities. Even the mother of the musical Miss Measons, after
a glance at a skilfully disposed basket of calling-cards, called her
"my dear" before she called her "that woman." In short, to express in
one word a delayed and painful process, Jasmine Rigby deteriorated day
by day, paid at long intervals, under pressure, and with cheques that
were not her own, and finally, yielding no doubt to the instinct of
flight from those whose good opinion we have forfeited, took a tearful
and sentimental departure from the rooms which had been witness to
fifteen futile years, and God alone knows what frenzied resolutions,
what agonies of remorse and self-contempt as well. Financially, her
loss was a serious matter, for she had rich and powerful connections,
who might be trusted never to let her sink too deeply into debt nor
beyond a certain standard of outward respectability: in other ways it
would be idle to deny Mrs. Barbour felt it a relief. It afforded her
an opportunity to reduce her establishment and to sell off some of the
furniture. But the joy of turning our possessions into ready money and
of ridding ourselves of old associates who have become encumbrances is
a dearly bought one. It is likely that her health had been secretly
unsatisfactory for years. It failed visibly from the day poor Druce,
with the tears streaming down her honest wooden face, clasped her young
mistress to her sparely covered chest in the hall and said "Good-bye."
She had never been a good sleeper, but insomnia now became her nightly
habit. Her cheeks grew flabby, her eyes dull; her comely face exchanged
its pleasant pallor for a disquieting earthen tint.</p>

<p>Fenella would have been less than human if, amid all these anxieties,
regrets, and annoyances, Lumsden's letters had come to her otherwise
than as cheerful heralds from a happier world, bright assurances of a
better time in store. He wrote oftener than many friends, though not
as often as most lovers. He was generous enough or wise enough not to
depart from the note he had struck during their conversation upon the
day of winter sports at Freres Lulford. She was still his "investment,"
always "in training." And yet it was marvellous what a very wide field
of inquiry, of advice and speculation, this position was held to
justify. Her cheeks sometimes burned at Bryan's letters. Even when they
were mere cheery chronicles of sport and pleasure, there was a little
mocking undercurrent of sarcasm in them—sarcasm, as a rule, at the
expense of society's hypocrisies—its standards of what might and what
might not be permitted between two friends of opposite sexes, which she
secretly resented—resented, that is to say, to the extent of never
referring to it in her answers. Why should Bryan expect her to take the
more cynical view, she wondered? Surely illusions were permissible to
a girl of her age. What man who respected one, wished one well, would
see her cheated of them? Clever letters are seldom written without
ulterior motive. When heart speaks to heart it does so in language that
admits of no double construction. It would save many a tangle were more
sophisticated ones subjected to a merciless paraphrase.</p>

<p>For the rest, the time had probably passed when, in any sense of the
word, she could be said to be "afraid" of Lumsden. He stood before her
imagination now in all his pleasant power, holding open the gates of
the fairyland to which he had the golden key, encouraging, inviting
her to enter. Once through the gates, she had no doubt of her ability
to justify and to repay. That money can discharge any obligation was
just one of the obscuring simplicities of her youth. Another was that
a stigma attached to the acceptance of money or money's visible worth.
Beyond a cab-fare, she would have shrunk from such a thing as from
actual dishonor; yet that money, to the extent of many hundreds of
pounds, was being risked upon her untested power to please gave her
only a very vague sense of indebtedness. It is true that to Bryan's
personal interest she referred, with a completeness that was a little
unfair to Mr. Dollfus's really kind heart, the ameliorations in her
hard task—the warm dressing-room, the polite seriousness with which
her views were entertained by the leader of the orchestra, the chair
in the wings at rehearsals. She even fancied that she could detect a
conspiracy to keep the seamy side of theatrical life from her. Mr.
Lavigne, the stage-manager, never swore in her presence, though from
her dressing-room she often heard language whose very volume implied
profanity reverberate like stage thunder through the dark empty
auditorium.</p>

<p>When general rehearsals began in March, among her new comrades upon the
draughty, echoing boards, who stood blowsy or haggard in the perverse
up-thrown light and exchanged the knowing, raffish jargon of their
craft, there was abundant discussion as to her precise position, but
no doubt at all. It is a pitiful thing to relate, but Bryan even got
the credit of the clothes in which poor foolish Mrs. Barbour had sunk
the profits of her enterprise. Fenella's dress had always possessed
sophistication, and although by this time she was "economizing,"
enough of elegance remained from the old life to wreck her character
in the new. But where she was now such things were a common-place. The
misconception even was of use to her in one way. It removed her from
the envy of those who were struggling upward on the strength of mere
talents. Seen from the wings, her dancing made little impression upon a
race not prone to enthusiasm, and notoriously bad judges of their own
craft. She was to have the lime-light, the big letters on the bills,
the "fat"—that was enough. She was <i>hors concours</i>, a thing
apart. The latest recruit might dream, and did dream, of having the
same chance some day. A strange thing, that it should be not so much
"luck" which failure resents as the crown upon hard work.</p>

<p>By an unhappy coincidence, the first dress rehearsal was called
upon the day when her spirits were at lowest ebb. The night before,
her mother, unable to keep the secret locked up in her breast any
longer, had exposed with tears and incoherent self-reproach, the whole
disastrous domestic situation. It was all mismanagement, muddle,
abused confidence, rights signed away for a tithe of their value,
mortgages and life assurances effected in the interests of people whose
one service seemed to have been to draw the strangling net a little
tighter. Fenella closed the eyes of her mental vision firmly and wisely
against the disastrous prospect. She let her mother have her cry out
upon her shoulder.</p>

<p>"No, dear; of course I'm not angry with you, or only a tiny bit for
letting me be a foolish over-dressed little pig all these years.
We'll give up this great big house before it's swallowed all that's
left and move into a smaller one. They must give us something for
the lease. And I've got Lady Anne's money coming to me in two years.
We can raise something on that now. I'll speak to Mr. Dollfus about
it. And Mr. Lavigne told me the <i>Dime Duchess</i> comes on early
in May; then I shall begin to draw salary, and all our troubles will
be over. And, mummy, you <i>must</i> give those disgusting people
upstairs notice. Never mind what they owe. Turn them out! I'll live in
a garret with you, dear, but I won't have our home turned into a common
lodging-house."</p>

<p>But, for all her brave words, her own spirits sank. Was she so sure
of success, after all? To have so much depending upon it was only a
reason the more for misgiving. Dancing seemed to be in the air. The
flaming posters that met her eye on every side, of women in one stage
or another of uncoveredness, filled her with nausea. Nothing depresses
true genius so much as to feel that an inspiration with which they
could deal worthily is given broadcast, under various mean forms of
impulse or emulation, to those whose touch can only degrade. It is a
failing so like unworthy envy that even to be forced to admit it to
oneself is demoralizing.</p>

<p>When she reached the theatre a drama that was no part of the <i>Dime
Duchess</i> was in progress. Miss Enid Carthew stood down centre. Her
dress was Doucet and her hat Virot. Her sable coat was open at the
throat and a diamond <i>collier</i> streamed blue fire on her agitated
bosom. Her arm, thrust through a muff whose tails swept the dusty
stage, was akimbo on her slender hip. She had a pretty, dissipated,
sour face and a quantity of fair hair.</p>

<p>"Oh! I can't have it at all, Mr. Dollfus," she was saying, evidently
not for the first time, biting her lips and tapping the stage with her
foot. The manager, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, his back
to the footlights, straddled his legs in a truculent manner.</p>

<p>"You can't haf it!" he repeated, derisively. "Well, can yer lump it?
Ah! Think yer the only tin can in the alley, dontcher, eh? Think you're
de manachment, ain't it? I tell you once for all: I bills who I like,
unt I bills 'em as big's I like. Now then—ah! eh?"</p>

<p>"You can tell all this to my solicitor," said Miss Carthew, loftily.</p>

<p>The word seemed to goad Mr. Dollfus to frenzy. He took a stride
forward and shook a brown, ringed finger within an inch or two of Miss
Carthew's Grecian profile.</p>

<p>"Now, don't gif me no contract talk. Pleace—<i>pleace</i> don't. 'Cos
I drew up de contract, and I know what's in um. You can't holt me on de
contract—see? You can go on rehearsing or you can t'row yer part down,
and that's all—now?"</p>

<p>"I've a good mind to do it."</p>

<p>"Vell, make yer goot mind up quick, pleace, 'cos this happens ter be my
busy day."</p>

<p>Before poor Fenella could retreat from the storm, the leading lady
looked her up and down with an expression that was meant for contempt,
but only succeeded in expressing dislike. The advantage of five years
is not to be annihilated by a glance.</p>

<p>"Another of Lumsden's kindergarten," she observed, with a short,
disagreeable laugh, and, having launched this Parthian shaft, exit left.</p>

<p>Mr. Dollfus turned upon the cause of the trouble rather irritably.</p>

<p>"Vot! aintcher dressed yet, neither. Good Got! ve oughter be t'rough
the first act. Run upstairs at once! And while we're waiting let's
haf the finale ofer again. I ain't satisfied yet, Mr. Lavigne. Come,
<i>kapell-meister</i>!"</p>

<p>Somehow, and by an effort of her whole will, Fenella got through her
two dances without actual disaster. For the first time in her life
discouragement failed to react in bodily movement. Her limbs felt
heavy—out of accord with the music, and, though this is a strange
term for arms and legs, maliciously stupid. Once she stumbled and
all but fell. Mr. Dollfus looked puzzled, and in the wings, where a
brisk murmur of sympathy with the deposed favorite had been running,
significant glances were exchanged.</p>

<p>She was leaving the stage-door, glad to be in the cool, wet street,
when a big man who was holding cheerful converse with an exquisite
youth—all waist and relaxed keenness—raised his hat and made a little
familiar sign with his head for her to wait. Next moment Lumsden
had cut his conversation short, resisting an obvious appeal for
introduction, and was holding out his hand.</p>

<p>"Hello, Flash!"</p>

<p>At another time she would have been glad to see him, but, with that
dreadful sentence ringing in her ears, his touch seemed an abasement.
She plucked her hand away.</p>

<p>"I thought you were in Cannes."</p>

<p>"Came back Tuesday. Had lunch?"</p>

<p>"Yes, thank you."</p>

<p>"Get in, then, and let me drive you home."</p>

<p>There was a dark green motor-coupé standing by the curb. Fenella took a
seat in it automatically. She noticed he had no difficulty in recalling
her address.</p>

<p>"I've been sitting in front watching you."</p>

<p>"I wish I'd done better. I made a fool of myself to-day."</p>

<p>"Oh, you were all right. Been over-working?"</p>

<p>She shook her head.</p>

<p>"Dolly told me there was a breeze. Hope it didn't upset you."</p>

<p>No answer.</p>

<p>"Bless you! That sort of thing's an everyday affair with us. Oh, fie,
Flash!"</p>

<p>"Sir Bryan"—and a big sob.</p>

<p>"Well, what is it? Having trouble with the boys?"</p>

<p>"I know you'll be furious."</p>

<p>"Never mind. Spit it out in mummy's hand."</p>

<p>"Don't make me laugh. I—I want to give it up."</p>

<p>"Pshaw!"</p>

<p>"Oh, but I do."</p>

<p>"What on earth for?"</p>

<p>She clenched her hands. "Because I feel such a <i>humbug</i> coming on
this way. Those other girls have worked and worked and been acting when
I was at school. And now I step in front of them because—oh! you know
what they think."</p>

<p>"I warned you of that before, you know."</p>

<p>"Yes; but I didn't realize then."</p>

<p>"And now, because a spiteful woman has said the obvious thing, you do.
Oh, fie, Flash! This is weak-minded. I wish you knew her own history."</p>

<p>The girl turned to him, and even laid a timid hand on his sleeve.</p>

<p>"Sir Bryan, that's the mistake you make. You're always telling me—I
mean in your letters—what a hypocrite this person or that is. But
it doesn't make any difference to me. Of course, we understand one
another, don't we?"</p>

<p>"I think we've made a start," Lumsden replied, in all seriousness.</p>

<p>"Yes, but those girls at the Dominion—some of them even younger than
me. Think what I must seem to them. I can't go to them and say, 'Oh,
believe me, it's not what you think.' And so the more they admire me,
and the better I succeed, the greater scandal I shall be to them. And
perhaps, some day——Oh! it seems such a responsibility, doesn't it?"</p>

<p>"Such a big one, that I advise you to put it out of your head."</p>

<p>"Oh, if I could!"</p>

<p>"Well, don't do anything in a hurry. And, oh, by the way, Flash, I
believe I met an old friend of yours last night. World's a small place."</p>

<p>"A friend of mine? One of the people from Lulford?"</p>

<p>"Oh, no. Further back. At La Palèze. By George! that seems ancient
history."</p>

<p>His kind, candid expression did not change, and yet not a detail of the
girl's agitation was escaping him.</p>

<p>"Where did you meet him? Tell me, quick!"</p>

<p>"Don't look so scared. It was at a very nice house indeed, and he was
looking uncommonly well."</p>

<p>"Did you speak to him?"</p>

<p>"No. He hadn't much to say. It was at the Rees house, and he's
evidently <i>épris</i>."</p>

<p>"What's that?"</p>

<p>"Why, smitten with his pretty hostess—Mrs. Hepworth—the woman who
calls herself Althea Rees, and writes rummy books. He stayed behind.
I saw it arranged, like the fly, with my little eye. I finished the
evening with Nick Templeton, who knows 'em well, and he says every
one's expecting——Hello! here we are."</p>

<p>He held her hand again at parting, and this time she didn't snatch
it away. Once inside the door, she returned a languid negative to
the suggestion of lunch, and went upstairs to change her clothes and
think over what she had just heard. First she cried a little, though
nothing like as much as she had expected from the apparent weight at
her heart; then, opening her trunk, she took out a leather box and
emptied all his letters on to the hearth. So often, during that last
lonely week by the sea, when she was hungering for news of him in vain,
had she taken them down to the dunes to read, that there was almost
a teaspoonful of fine sand at the bottom of the case. She had even
been reading them over, she remembered, the day Bryan spoke to her
first. She sat down on the hearth-rug, struck a match, and, crumbling
each letter scientifically in her hand, burned piecemeal about half
her little hoard from the wrecked past. Then she lost patience and
locked the rest away. She was chilly; there had been no warmth in this
sudden eager flame. She stretched herself and looked once more at her
reflection in the long mirror. Her tears had thickened her features and
throat. Something strangely, suddenly mature—some new adaptibility to
life's sterner purposes—was looking back at her. She had wept—oh, how
she had wept!—before, and yet only yesterday with her tears it had
been the aspect of childhood that returned upon her. You would have
said then: "There is a little girl who has broken her doll"; not until
to-day: "There is a woman who has broken her heart." Was it so, indeed?
Had it survived the first, the crueller blow, to break now at a piece
of intelligence that was only to be looked for? Had there been hope,
insane and unavowed? And why could she not hate him, as was her right?
Why was it that only a brooding, yearning pity for him survived this
final evidence of his faithlessness? Oh! it was because life was so
hard on him—always would be so hard on him. Into whatever toils he had
fallen, she could forgive him, because she knew he had not been seeking
his own happiness when he fell. Just as she had never once conjectured
concerning the old loves, so now she hazarded no guess as to the
history of the new; but her woman's instinct, her appreciation of the
nature by whose complexities her clear, sane common-sense had refused
to be baffled, served her truly. It was still his compassion that sold
him into new bondage—still his fatal fellowship with all that was
weak, maimed or forsaken that, like a millstone round his neck, sunk
him out of her sight. Hate him? Oh, what an uprush of smothered waters!
What a tingling, as love like blood flowed back into her numbed heart,
rebuked the suggestion! She reached out her arms to the mirror, and
from its frozen depths, like an embodiment of all he had renounced in
life—happiness, love, laughter, and ease of heart—the woman whom he
had held shyly and awkwardly against his distracted heart, and whom
to-morrow a thousand base eyes would covet, reached out her arms, too,
in a mocking response.</p>

<p>"Oh, darling! why couldn't you trust me a little longer? Just because I
couldn't <i>say</i> things, didn't I feel them? I was what you wanted
most. Just because I <i>was</i> so different. Why weren't you a little
patient with me, Paul?"</p>

<p>And now for her work. There was another rehearsal next week, but she
couldn't wait. She would telephone Joe; have one called for Friday.
They should see something then. She had a bit up her sleeve.</p>

<p>She was leaving her bedroom, humming over the first bars of her
<i>Chaconne</i>, when she cannoned into the little maid who had
replaced the irreproachable Druce. The sleeves of the girl's print
dress were rolled up to her elbows, her cap awry.</p>

<p>"Frances, it's five o'clock. Why aren't you dressed?"</p>

<p>"Oh, miss! It's the missus."</p>

<p>"Your mistress? What's the matter with her?"</p>

<p>"Oh, miss, I dunno. She's a setting in the big armchair. It ain't
sleep. Me nor cook can't rouse 'er, try 'ow we may. She's a moanin',
too. I think it must be some kind of a stroke."</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="Xa">X</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">MONSIEUR DE VALBONNETTE</p>


<p>One of Paul's peculiarities, which I think I have indicated before, was
a remissness in paying out the small coin of friendship. His visits
were apparently governed by caprice, and as unaccountable as the fall
of the red or black in roulette. Not to have seen him for the last
month gave no warrant to expect him within the next. On the other
hand, to have been honored with a visit last night was some reason for
expecting a return on the morrow.</p>

<p>I had not seen him for two months when I ran across him in the foyer
of the Elite Theatre. It was the first night of Durnham's <i>Miss
Muffet</i>. (You will remember Brasier as "the Spider.") Things
apparently were inextricably tangled up for all the smart sinners,
and I was rather dreading the fourth act. I was surprised to see him
there, though I knew he had got into journalism. In the twilight of our
under-world one may know a man a long time before one knows what he is
doing—perhaps only discover it then because he is found nibbling at
the same loaf as oneself. I had never seen Ingram before in evening
dress; he looked very gaunt and foreign and distinguished. One mentally
added a red ribbon and the enamelled cross of the Légion d'Honneur.</p>

<p>"Hullo, Ingram! you a first-nighter?"</p>

<p>"I'm doing it for the <i>Parthenon</i>!"</p>

<p>"Oh! of course." Rumor had not lied, then. I had a horrible feeling
that my comment sounded "knowing," and a suspicion that Ingram flushed
at my tone. I made haste to change it.</p>

<p>"Lucky devil! You've got nearly a week to do Brasier's genius justice
in. What d'you think of it all?"</p>

<p>"Pah! London bouquet. Sin and sachet powder."</p>

<p>"You won't say that in the <i>Parthenon</i>?"</p>

<p>"No." I noticed then how tired he looked. The bell began to ring.</p>

<p>"Look here, old man! You're quite impossible, but I want a chat. Where
can you come on to afterward? Pimlico's so far away. What do you say to
the <i>Concentric</i>?" (I belong perforce to an "all-night" club.)</p>

<p>Ingram demurred. "No, thanks. I don't much care for the frescoes at
the <i>Concentric</i>. I've got rooms—a room, I should say—nearly as
close. It's not a bad little crib. Come round there as soon as you've
fired in your stuff." And I pencilled the address on my shirt-cuff.</p>

<p>Paul's room was at the top of a narrow, old-world house in Beak Street,
almost looking into Golden Square. A creeper wandered over the front,
and there were little painted iron balconies at each window. The first
floor was taken up by a bowed, weather-stained shop front, and behind
its narrow panes, on a rusty wire blind, appeared the following legend
in gilt lettering:</p>

<p class="ph3">"<span class="smcap">J. Foudrinier</span><br>
Table Liner and Leather Gilder."</p>

<p>The narrow staircase up which we climbed—for he let me in himself—was
fragrant with the smell that is said to make radicals.</p>

<p>"What d'you think of it, Prentice?"</p>

<p>"Fine! Atmosphere here, my boy."</p>

<p>"It might be worse," said Paul, apparently misunderstanding my remark.
"Imagine fried fish!"</p>

<p>I looked round me as he fought with a stubborn fire. The room was poor
and low; its furnishings mere flotsam of the Middle Victorian era. The
bureau and tallboy that I used to admire so much at Westminster were
gone. My heart sank a little. Paul wasn't getting on.</p>

<p>"Come over here a minute, Prentice," he said, getting up and taking the
lamp. "Look!"</p>

<p>Upon the old-fashioned shutter which folded back in the window recess I
made out a long name, clumsily cut and half obliterated by paint.</p>

<p>"What do you make of it?"</p>

<p>"It's not very distinct. There's a C and a V."</p>

<p>"I'll read it for you. It's '<i>C. Gaillard de Valbonette</i>.' That
thing at the top is meant for a coronet. Some French <i>émigré</i>
had this room a hundred years ago, and amused himself by cutting his
name. All this quarter swarmed with them at one time—Golden Square,
Broad Street, King Street. Can't you imagine him at work here for a
whole Sunday morning, with a nice pea-soup fog out in the square, and
speculating about his wife or sweetheart in the Conciergerie. He's
great company at times, is M. de Valbonette."</p>

<p>"I think you live too much alone, Ingram," I said.</p>

<p>He put down the lamp. "I wonder do I?" he said, twisting his beard.
"But it's Satan reproving sin."</p>

<p>"Let's club lonelinesses, then," I answered impulsively. "I know what
I'll have to put up with by now. Remember the old warning, '<i>Vae
Soli!</i>' If nothing else in the classics were true, that is."</p>

<p>"No," he said, roughly, "it's the wrong time. How can I afford a friend
when I'm throwing out ballast all around. And besides"—he seemed to
struggle with an invincible repugnance to speak—"Prentice, I'm living
on money a woman—gives me."</p>

<p>"Oh!" Shocked as I was, I tried to keep my voice flat and toneless.
Even as it escaped me, the exclamation was rather a request for further
enlightenment.</p>

<p>"You won't repeat your invitation now?"</p>

<p>I got to my feet. "Yes, I will. You can come to-morrow—to-night, if
you like. You're too good to lose, Ingram. I'm poor; but there's enough
for two men like ourselves to struggle along on, even now. I can get
you work of a sort almost at once; it'll be hack work, but you won't
feel equal to anything better for awhile. Later on, when you're more
yourself——"</p>

<p>Ingram shivered, and then, putting his hands on my shoulders,
considered me a long while gravely and tenderly. I could have cursed to
think of the charm of the man, wasted in loneliness and silence, and
put to such base uses at last.</p>

<p>"My! but you're <i>white</i>, Prentice, you're <i>white</i>," he said.
"Sit down"—in a lighter voice. "It's not as bad as it sounds. A man
doesn't fall into a pit like that so suddenly. No; at first it was
advances—advances; nothing more."</p>

<p>"On your book?" catching at a straw.</p>

<p>"Yes—on my book."</p>

<p>"From publishers?"</p>

<p>"I thought so at first. When I asked the question outright, it was too
late. I was in debt already."</p>

<p>"But, my dear Ingram," I said, immensely relieved; "if Mrs. Hepworth—I
suppose you mean Mrs. Hepworth——?"</p>

<p>"Yes."</p>

<p>"Well, if she liked to back her own opinion, I don't see where dishonor
comes in at all. She's helped other people. And even if, when it's
published, it turns out badly——"</p>

<p>"Prentice, it never will be published through her."</p>

<p>"Get it back then. We'll try somewhere else."</p>

<p>"I'm afraid I'd have some trouble even to get it back now."</p>

<p>The mystification was getting too much for me. I shrugged my shoulders
helplessly.</p>

<p>"I'm sorry to seem mysterious," said Paul, "but I really am telling
you all I know myself. I even hoped you'd be able to throw some light
on it. Because you know as well as I do how it started. She was
enthusiastic, wasn't she? Would see no fault. She advised me to cut a
good deal, it's true; but it wasn't for reasons I could object to.
Anyway I didn't object. I was too proud and happy. For once in my life
I tasted full appreciation, full understanding. Oh! I know what that
look of yours means—that I've been taking a woman's gush for gospel.
But, I can tell you, a thing rings true or false to me the first
time. Do you know, Prentice, once we were motoring to some place near
Aylesbury, and she went ten miles out of our way to see the church
where Ffoulkes—the English parson, you know—was a curate once. I'd
just picked on the place haphazard, and then described it later. You
know my mania for exactness in trifles. Nothing would satisfy her but
to get out of the car, have the church opened, and scout around the
vicarage. Now, is that genuine or isn't it? I tell you, sir, she made
the people of my own book live for me—used to invent comments for them
upon things we heard, so much in character that I wondered how I could
have forgotten them myself."</p>

<p>"And then——?"</p>

<p>"And then"—wearily—"the subject dropped. When I spoke about it, which
wasn't often, her answers were as evasive as a woman's can be who, I
think, can't lie. I'm not an insistent person, and she seemed to guess
it. Money got short: she guessed that too—offered me advances on the
publication. Ever so delicately, mind."</p>

<p>"That was the very time for the <i>éclaircissement</i>."</p>

<p>"I know, I know. Don't be too grim. For me it's almost impossible
to throw any sort of kindness back in people's faces. It's been
responsible for half the unhappiness of my life. Then she got me this
thing on the <i>Parthenon</i>. Lord, how I hate it! and the people it
brings me into contact with, and how they must hate me! Sleek young
barristers, on the make—you know the sort—dine out every night and
say, 'Dear lady.'"</p>

<p>"Ingram! I say 'dear lady' sometimes."</p>

<p>"Yes, yes—but not the way they do. A precious johnny-cake of an art
critic who wears thumb-rings and doesn't wash behind his ears...."</p>

<p>I hadn't been listening very attentively. A light was breaking in upon
me.</p>

<p>"You meet a good many priests at Mrs. Hepworth's, don't you?"</p>

<p>Ingram raised his hands expressively. "My dear Prentice, at all
hours—dinner, tea and lunch—bishops, deans, canons, monsignori. I
don't know half their titles."</p>

<p>"I gather you don't find them sympathetic."</p>

<p>"Prentice, I just writhe."</p>

<p>"Aren't they civil?"</p>

<p>"Oh, intensely! It's their mental attitude that maddens me. So
perpetually on guard, so impermeable to argument: bearing the
condemnation of the massed intellect of Europe with a pitying smile,
denying words their plain significance. What is it, Prentice? Is
every one else really wrong? Does to be born at Guipuscoa instead of
at Epworth make all the difference? Do these men know something that
you and I don't? Sometimes in their company I almost feel I'm under
mesmeric influence."</p>

<p>"Perhaps you are. I've always suspected you of being mediumistic. But,
tell me, don't you suspect anything from all this?"</p>

<p>"Suspect—what?"</p>

<p>"That your book is really being held up because these men won't give it
an <i>imprimatur</i>."</p>

<p>"Good Lord! I'm not one of their flock."</p>

<p>"No, but Althea is."</p>

<p>Paul flushed savagely, and muttered something I could not catch.</p>

<p>"Don't be too hard on her, Ingram. Probably her position's harder than
either of us can conceive."</p>

<p>"Don't be afraid. There are about a hundred solid reasons why I
couldn't be hard, even if I wanted to. Besides, I'm ceasing to care."</p>

<p>"Got the hump, in fact."</p>

<p>"Call it what you like. The book's become a scandal—a reproach. It's
a relief not to see or hear of it. Once a certain point is reached a
sense of humor comes to your rescue, and you cease to take a thing
seriously. Something else is worrying me far more just now."</p>

<p>"What is it?"</p>

<p>"You'll only think me an old woman for my pains."</p>

<p>"Never," I answered stoutly. "Your virility is in your way."</p>

<p>"Do you believe in dreams?"</p>

<p>"Not as a rule. But at two o'clock in the morning, alone with you in a
Soho attic whose associations you've just pointed out, I'm not so sure."</p>

<p>"I'm having the same one every night."</p>

<p>"Oh! What is it? A woman, or merely a tartan cat with acetylene eyes?"</p>

<p>"It's a woman."</p>

<p>"Go and see her then. Nothing will exorcise it like that."</p>

<p>"But it doesn't. Oh, Prentice! it's no use beating round the bush. You
must know. I mean the woman we've just been talking about."</p>

<p>I confess I had been rather thinking of the Continental Express at
Charing Cross.</p>

<p>"Go ahead old man," was all I said. "It will do you good to tell."</p>

<p>"It's in a church—always. A sort of foreign building with colored
marble columns, gloomy side chapels, silver lamps, dark paintings of
well-nourished virgin martyrs——"</p>

<p>"Wait a minute. Is it any place you've seen?"</p>

<p>"No. I'm sure of that.... She's always kneeling before one of the side
altars. I'm not clear why I'm in the church at all. I'm not meeting
her. Her back is turned, and she doesn't seem to know I'm there. And
yet, mind you, I feel—I'm as certain as a man can be that there's
something or other she wants to tell me—wants me to know. Something
she's struggling with, and I'm not to go until it's told."</p>

<p>"At this point you wake?"</p>

<p>"I used to until last night. Do I sound childish, yet?"</p>

<p>"I'm immensely interested, Ingram. No one but a gross fool laughs at
these things to-day."</p>

<p>"Well, last night I lost patience, and began to look around and to take
bearings. I noticed there was a way in between the chapels, so you
could pass from one to the other. I could get in front of her, see her
face if I wanted to. Of course I wanted to. I tell you, I was tired
out with all this nightly waiting. But something or other I couldn't
see—'a Voice,' if you like—said, 'No, you can't!' 'Why not?' I
argued. The answer was foolish."</p>

<p>"What was it?"</p>

<p>"'<i>It breaks the Law</i>'."</p>

<p>I moved restlessly. "But I hope you didn't mind the Law."</p>

<p>"No; I went in."</p>

<p>"Well——?"</p>

<p>He took a long breath. "Prentice, she's been dead for years and years."</p>

<p>"Pshaw!"</p>

<p>"Yes, dead, I tell you. There's nothing gruesome about it.
Just—bleached—whiteness. But you can't mistake. You'd only have to
lay your hand on her and she'd crumble away."</p>

<p>There was not a sound for a few moments, until becoming conscious my
expression must look strange, I grabbed the poker and began to make
brisk play with it. I also decided not to tell Paul I recognized the
church perfectly from his description.</p>

<p>"What do you think of it?"</p>

<p>"Think? Oh, nothing. It's some sub-conscious crazy notion that has
never been definitely formed in your own brain, so waits until you're
asleep to sprout. The same thing's happened to me. Once I was visiting
some people. They were so far disagreeable that one had to be very
careful what one said before them. And every night I spent in their
house I used to dream I was crossing the lawn, and underfoot, wherever
I walked, were ducklings, and frogs, and new-born kittens, and
everything that's most unpleasant to tread upon. You probably won't
have the dream again.... What's the matter?"</p>

<p>"Look over there, Prentice! Do you see anything queer?"</p>

<p>I followed his eyes in the direction of the window upon whose shutter
he had shown me the half-obliterated carving. To evidence my entire
honesty in this matter, I will premise that, having shifted the lamp
from the centre of the table in order to find me a pipe, Paul had
plunged all that half of the room in shadow, and also that the curtain,
which he had drawn roughly aside to show me the <i>émigré's</i> work,
still hung in awkward, bulgy folds. This much having been freely
allowed, I don't mind going on and declaring that I saw, apparently
as plainly as I have seen anything in my life, a man sitting upon
the narrow window-seat. Every detail was distinct. He was as small
as a woman, apparently old, and dressed entirely in black, with a
white collar or cravat. One leg hung down to the floor, the other
was drawn up to his chin, and his face rested upon it. He had white
hair, gathered up or cut short round his ears, and a black cap. His
expression was unforgettable. Serene, disdainful anger best expresses
it.</p>

<p>I looked at him only a moment, for I don't believe in encouraging
visions. In two strides I was across the room and shook the curtain
loose.</p>

<p>"There goes some of your ghost," I said. I put the lamp back on the
table. Its white reflection vanished from the blurred and darkened
pane. "And there goes the rest!"</p>

<p>Paul didn't seem to listen. He was twisting his beard.</p>

<p>"See his face, Prentice? Now, I wonder what I said that irritated him?"</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIa">XI</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">"INEXTRICIBLE ERROR"</p>


<p>It was quarter to seven when Ingram arrived at the house in Portland
Place. Althea, already dressed for dinner, sat writing at her desk in
the big white room. It was the same desk, battered and inkstained, at
which years ago—a staid little maid with a big pigtail, terminating
in a sort of heavy tassel of auburn hair—she had prepared her home
lessons. At one corner the leather lining had begun to curl up.</p>

<p>She scarcely looked round when he was announced, but thrust a bare
white arm over the back of her chair.</p>

<p>"You find me achieving a last chapter," said she. "Sit down somewhere
and, in the name of our common art, respect a fellow-laborer's agony."</p>

<p>"I suppose I'm unpardonably early."</p>

<p>"Doubly privileged mortal, then, to find yourself welcome."</p>

<p>"Do I abuse my privileges, Althea?"</p>

<p>"Never in the world. You are as unobtrusive, my dear friend, as a gray
sky."</p>

<p>Paul, as he sat down by the fire, wondered why the phrase rang
reminiscently. Who had compared his eyes once before to rain-clouds?
Oh! he remembered. It was the little girl, in the summer-time, by the
sea. He seldom thought of her now; when he did, it was without such a
personal pang of loss as might have been expected. She had come—she
had gone. The life before he had known her, the life after, like parted
leaden waters in the wake of a ship, closed above her memory.</p>

<p>For form's sake, and in order that his presence might not fret his
hostess, he picked up a book at random and opened it on his knee; but
his eyes, after a few minutes' aimless reading, left the printed page
and rested on her. She was writing quickly. The fountain-pen poised,
pounced, ran forward, and was checked anew. A little pucker on her
forehead straightened out as each sentence was completed. The shaded
electric lamp before her left the brows in a green shadow, but flooded
neck and arms with naked light. She was dressed in black; a long limp
scarf the color of a dead rose-leaf lay across her shoulders, trailed
upon the carpet, moved with the motion of the restless bare arm. Her
beautiful chestnut hair was drawn up from her neck and dressed high on
her head in soft rolls and plaits. Looking at her, and remembering the
furnace through which she had passed, Ingram marvelled once again that
the searing flame should have left so little evident trace upon her.</p>

<p>He had come prepared for explanation, reproaches, rupture even, but
never in his life had he felt less ardor for battle, more doubt as to
whether the cause were worthy the warfare. Hope deferred, neglect,
dejection, had nearly done their work. He was beginning to doubt his
own powers, inclining more each day to take the world's estimate of
them as final. He had been writing a good deal lately, and to little
purpose; it seemed unlikely that, years before, he had done better. No
man endowed with the artist's temperament ever gained ease to himself
by deliberately writing down to some imagined popular level. It is
doubtful even whether the thing is to be done at all; probably every
one that succeeds, even in the coarse acceptation of the term, succeeds
by doing the best that is in him. The world may have no eye for genius,
but it is quick to detect disrespect.</p>

<p>It was early in March: he had known her now nearly six months. To say
that they had become better friends in that time would be inexact; it
is juster to say that, from the high level of her first acclaim, he
had never known her to descend. She had seemed to divine that he was
already sick of beginnings that led nowhere, and lacked patience for
the circumspect steps that friendship in the first degree requires.
From the outset she showed him a full measure. She had a multitude of
friends—much devotion, even, at her command. Here and there, amid the
exotic sentimentality that for some reason or other was the dominant
note in her circle, a graver, truer note vibrated; and yet, before he
had known her a month, Paul must have been obtuse indeed not to have
noticed a special appeal in her voice and a special significance in the
hand-clasp that was kept for him. And if he was not precisely grateful,
he was, at any rate, tremendously impressed. He had learnt her history,
and no adventitious aid that riches, popularity, fine clothing or
jewels—and none of these was wanting—could have lent her would so
overwhelmingly have presented her to his imagination as this. That she
should have emerged from such an ordeal at all was wonderful, but that
she should have come through it beautiful still, gentle and plaintively
wise, lent an almost spectral charm to her beauty, and the same
significance to her lightest comment on men or things that one strives
to read into a rapped-out message wrung from the dubious silence of the
grave. The strange unreality which none who knew Althea well escaped
noticing, though all did not call it by the same name, reached him,
oppressed as he was by the burden of the material world, almost like a
native air. In her house he breathed freely, forgot his chagrins, was
enveloped in a formless sympathy that, by anticipating the unwelcome
thought, spared him even the humiliation of uttering it.</p>

<p>Perhaps, without looking at him, she had guessed his thought now. At
least there was a little conscious gaiety in her voice as she laid by
her pen and packed the loose sheets square.</p>

<p>"<i>Voilà!</i>" said she. To speak French always carries the register a
key higher. She switched off the light, and moved to the seat opposite
him with a soft rustle of skirts. One finger-tip was marked with ink.
She put it furtively to her lips and streaked it, schoolgirl fashion,
down her black dress.</p>

<p>"Would you like to know who you are dining with?" she asked, taking
a slip of paper from the mantelpiece. "We're very worldly indeed
to-night. 'Marchesina d'Empoli, the Countess of Hatherley, Lady Claire
Templeton, Mrs. Sidney Musgrave.' Here! see for yourself."</p>

<p>As Paul glanced over the list, she put one slender foot on the curb of
the fender and pulled her skirt a few inches above her ankle.</p>

<p>"'Sir Bryan Lumsden?' Who's he?"</p>

<p>"A stock-broking baronet, sir, of my acquaintance."</p>

<p>"That's a lurid description."</p>

<p>"He's very good to my 'Sparrow Parties.' Do you know him, that you pick
him out?"</p>

<p>"I've seen him once," said Ingram slowly, pulling at his beard. "His
manners where women are concerned did not impress me."</p>

<p>She tapped the rail with her foot. "You are very unmannerly. Mustn't I
ask the world and the flesh sometimes?"</p>

<p>"What about the devil?"</p>

<p>She gave a tentative and rather frightened glance at his sardonic face.</p>

<p>"I think <i>he</i> comes the earliest."</p>

<p>There was no mistaking her meaning. Paul put the slip back on the
mantelpiece.</p>

<p>"Don't you think," said he, speaking with equal intention, "that it's
as well even the devil should be allowed to state a case at times?"</p>

<p>"Perhaps—I don't know," Althea faltered in reply.</p>

<p>"Excuse me if I bore you. I don't ask often. Is there any news of my
luckless story?"</p>

<p>"Some one is reading it."</p>

<p>"Some publisher?"</p>

<p>"Not exactly. I—I wanted an opinion from some one who—from some
one——"</p>

<p>"Some one quite impartial, you mean?"</p>

<p>"Not quite that, either. From some one who is able to take a very
special point of view."</p>

<p>Ingram laughed grimly. "Why don't you get some of your worldly friends
to teach you how to lie?"</p>

<p>"<i>Sir!</i>"</p>

<p>He regarded her from head to foot and back again. Her cheeks
flamed—not altogether with anger. It was not unpleasant to be looked
at hard by him.</p>

<p>"Althea," he said at last, "suppose I told you I had come to-night to
quarrel with you?"</p>

<p>She turned with a strange, scared appeal in her eyes.</p>

<p>"Oh! I should beg you not to. Don't ever quarrel with me, Paul—please."</p>

<p>The artless speech was so unlike anything he had ever heard from
her—her voice, as she uttered it, so uncomfortably reminiscent of
another, whose vain pleading had only just ceased to vibrate in
his heart, that Paul had what may be best described as a moment of
sentimental vertigo.</p>

<p>He laid his hand lightly upon hers. "Dear Mrs. Hepworth, do you dream I
could be harsh with you?"</p>

<p>She did not move her hand from under his, nor appear conscious that
one chapter of their intimacy was irretrievably ended by the impulsive
moment.</p>

<p>"I only know I dread your anger. I suspect it can be awful."</p>

<p>"You shall never be sure, then. But reproof at least you must bear.
Althea, you have put me under an obligation that no man finds
tolerable."</p>

<p>Now she snatched her hand away. "Oh!" with a catch in her voice, "that
is unworthy of you."</p>

<p>"And you are keeping me from what is at least a chance to discharge it."</p>

<p>"It is not I who keeps you from it."</p>

<p>The blood rushed to Ingram's head. "Some occult tribunal, then—some
inquisition against whose unwarrantable interference my whole soul
protests."</p>

<p>"Hush!" for he had raised his voice. "I think I hear a ring. People
are beginning to arrive, and I must fly. Come down in about five
minutes—it will look better—and wait after the rest are gone. I think
you had best understand my position in this matter clearly. That much
is due you."</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIIa">XII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">A CATASTROPHE</p>


<p>Checked in mid-course, and with all his righteous indignation bottled
up, Paul, I expect, hardly found the "worldly" dinner a diverting
affair. He had reached the stage of mental development—a mid-way
one, be it noted—where types interest more than persons, and none of
those he met to-night aroused in him anything save a burning desire
for their speedy effacement. Lumsden did not appear to remember him,
which was hardly wonderful, considering the complete change of dress
and environment. Besides which the baronet was a man very much occupied
and in request throughout dinner. He was just back from the <i>Côte
d'Azur</i>, and was primed with the true inwardness of the approaching
Manby-Millett sensation. Lucy Millett was passing through Paris alone,
and thought it civil to leave a card on the only Mrs. Manby at the
<i>Superbe</i> because she had sent her a wedding present. Mrs. Manby's
reputation hadn't reached her, it seems, which was hardly wonderful,
seeing Lucy was a daughter of the great Quaker sago-refining family,
and rather out of things. She had left her own card and her husband's,
and by a mistake of the clerk only the smaller card was handed to the
gay lady on her return. Result: that Lucy found a <i>petit bleu</i>
waiting when she got back from a round of the shops, which gave
everything away. "Most impassioned," Lumsden understood, on good
authority, and quite up to Manby form.</p>

<p>"And if you put that in one of your books, Mrs. Hepworth, people would
say there was too much—what d'you call it?—coincidence, wouldn't
they, now?"</p>

<p>It happened that Lady Robert Millett had been the first woman Ingram
had interviewed for the <i>Parthenon</i>. He remembered the sandy
haired girl-wife at Isleworth, with her high teeth, awkward kindness
and innocent pride, who had given him tea and, "as a special favor,"
shown him her white squirrels and blue-wattled Japanese fowl. Well—her
happiness was destroyed. He did not join in the laughter when some one
achieved a stammering, knock-kneed epigram in French; something about
<i>sagou</i> and <i>sagesse</i>.</p>

<p>Captain Templeton had just won a seat for his party in a three-cornered
contest. He detailed with considerable verve the intrigues necessary
to induce a labor candidate to run and split the vote. The Liberal's
wife had social ambitions. "I hope we shall meet in town, Captain
Templeton," she had said after the poll. "We're Liberal; but
<i>naturally</i> most of our friends are on your side of the house."</p>

<p>At the top of the table, with his noble old ivory-white face, silver
hair, and limitless shirt-front, their host sat, a fine flower of
democracy, and enjoyed his daughter's social success. His ponderous
civilities failed to absorb the little Italian marchesina on his right
(Gioconda, they say, of the <i>Fool's Errand</i>). Her heart was at the
noisy end of the table; continually, at some new outburst, she would
clap her tiny ringed hands autocratically for silence. "<i>What</i> is
this? <i>What</i> is this? I have not heard well." Things had to be
repeated, explained, for her benefit.</p>

<p>Paul was nearest the door, and rose to open it as the women passed out.
His hostess, who had barely addressed a word to him during dinner,
bent forward as she passed and reminded him of his promise. Lumsden
was the only man who seemed to notice the incident; and Ingram thought
he caught the tail end of a look of intelligence as he returned to
the table. But it was gone instantly, and presently the men drew to
the side next the fire and began to talk tariffs. Tongue-tied amidst
the women's chatter, their host easily dominated the conversation
now. He spoke of Republican prospects at the Mid-West conventions,
their intimate association with business prosperity, discussed the new
influences at Washington with good-natured banter, predicted worse
times before a "banner-year," hinted what was worth watching meantime.
The men listened to him intently—even Lumsden—carelessly, sipping
their coffee or rolling their liqueurs round and round in tiny gilt
glasses. Every word was golden now. Art, literature, philosophy, all
the visions that visit an idle mood, blew off like mists when the sun
mounts the sky. Paul, watching him in silence, felt an involuntary
respect, a pride despite himself, in their common nationality.</p>

<p>"You're force," he was saying to himself, "blind Titanic force—that's
what you are. And our business is with you and not with this trash
that cumbers the ground and obscures the issue; these parasites, who
imagine the things their own hearts covet were the incentive to men
like yourself, who corrupt you because they fear you, and with grave,
attentive faces are trying to make you believe now that there's great
personal merit in what you've been doing. You've sucked up riches from
a disorganized society that your energy took unawares, because you
couldn't help it, and you spend it on yourselves because you don't know
any better way. Well, we must show you one. The force that creates,
the wisdom that could distribute—these two are groping for each other
through a maze of laws, human and divine, that the world has outgrown.
They must mingle, must come together, must interpenetrate, and if
priests and judges hinder, then priests and judges must go. They were
made for man, not man for them."</p>

<p>"... so if you've bought warrants at sixty-three merely on the report
of divisions inside the amalgamation, you haven't done badly, Lumsden.
And now, Lord Hatherley, what do you say? Shall we join the ladies
upstairs?"</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>An hour later Ingram was alone with his host and hostess. His presence,
<i>ami de maison</i> as he had become, did not restrain Mr. Rees from a
palpable yawn.</p>

<p>"You look tired, father," said Althea, putting her arm over his broad
shoulder. "What are you going to do? Mr. Ingram and I have something to
talk over."</p>

<p>"I think I shall read Lew Wallace for half an hour, honey, and then go
to bed. Have my hot milk sent to the study."</p>

<p>"Let us go upstairs to my own room," said Althea, when he was gone. "I
can always talk better there."</p>

<p>Ingram followed her, and, as she preceded him gracefully, something
forlorn and lonely in her face and figure struck him, over-receptive of
such impressions as he was. He thought she drooped. Once she stumbled
slightly.</p>

<p>She often wrote till morning, and the fire was still burning brightly
in her room. She took the strip of paper on which the names of her
guests had been written and, reading it over again, crumpled it in her
hand with a little gesture of disgust and weariness, and threw it into
the glowing coals.</p>

<p>"<i>Ugh!</i>" she said.</p>

<p>"Why do you have them, then?" asked Paul, more reasonably than politely.</p>

<p>"Oh!" impatiently, "you don't understand." She hesitated a moment.
"Don't you ever find such people strangely interesting yourself?"</p>

<p>"The least so of any class I've met," Paul replied, without hesitation.</p>

<p>"I mean—sit down, please—because they are so <i>free</i>."</p>

<p>"——of scruples?"</p>

<p>"Yes, of scruples, if you will. Don't you see as long as one has work
to do, or an ideal to follow, or conscience to consider, or a heart
even, one's life must, in a sense be incomplete, fettered, bound. One
must leave off in unexpected places—never go quite to the logical end,
never run the whole gamut."</p>

<p>"That's just as well, isn't it—for other people's sakes?"</p>

<p>"Perhaps. You don't read Newman, I suppose?"</p>

<p>"Never."</p>

<p>"He speaks, in one of his poems, of 'A secret joy that Hell is near.'
Now, he was a great saint, Mr. Ingram; no Augustine, but one of the
predestined of God's love, who never in the whole course of their lives
commit a vile act, say a vile word, nor probably entertain an ill
thought. And yet, you see, he felt it."</p>

<p>She had taken out her handkerchief, and was twisting it nervously into
a rope.</p>

<p>"'<i>A secret joy that Hell is near!</i>' That's what I feel at times.
That's what I've been feeling all to-night, as I listened to those
people. It's wicked, I know. It's even a refinement of wickedness."</p>

<p>"I think it's nerves."</p>

<p>"Oh, no, you don't. I won't submit to that kind of talk from you—but
I'm not keeping you from bed to discuss my temperament. About your
story: I'm so sorry I can't help you to publish it."</p>

<p>"Owing, I gather, to its religious views?"</p>

<p>"Why deny it? Yes."</p>

<p>"As exemplified in the Rev. Mr. Ffoulkes, the Salvation Merchant?"</p>

<p>"Oh! don't laugh. It's terribly serious. You have—I don't know where
you learnt it—such a terrifying plausibility in your case against
Providence. Nothing strikes at faith like a perverted mysticism."</p>

<p>"Name one instance!"—a little bitterly. "I'm beginning to forget what
I did say."</p>

<p>"Well, you say that the most obvious result of punishment is to destroy
the sense of guilt."</p>

<p>"So it is."</p>

<p>"Yes—perhaps. But——"</p>

<p>"In short, one may bear witness for your God, but not against Him?"</p>

<p>"I know I must sound illogical to you. It is so hard to explain."</p>

<p>"Don't try, please."</p>

<p>She was silent awhile, staring into the fire. "Mr. Ingram, you've
heard, perhaps, that my life has not been a happy one.</p>

<p>"A word here and there. <i>Que sais-je?</i>"</p>

<p>"Exactly. What do you know? What can any one know of it? Imagination
even couldn't do justice to the whole truth. I came out of it not
desolate, alone; not only sick of body and soul, but even degraded.
Yes, I mean it. A degraded wretch—that's how I saw myself. The poor
street-walker seemed a clean and honorable thing beside me."</p>

<p>"And so you became a Catholic. Is this the usual way into the fold?"</p>

<p>"It is, for many. Yes," she went on, with a strange glow in her eyes,
"for those who have endured great wickedness as for those who have
committed it, God be thanked, there is one respirable medium left on
earth. Call it what you will—a hospital of sick souls, a home for
moral convalescents."</p>

<p>"I call it nothing. I take your word for it. Does this account for the
decrepitude of so much of your doctrine?"</p>

<p>"Ah! don't be clever, Paul. Cleverness is a little thing. At least I
should be loyal to that in which I have found peace, self-respect, a
new life."</p>

<p>"You misjudge me, Althea. I grudge you none of your comfort. God is
true if He's true for you, and He's true, for you, if the thought of
Him gives you peace."</p>

<p>There really seemed nothing more to say, and he got to his feet.</p>

<p>"Send along my manuscript," he said, "whenever it's convenient, and
dismiss the matter from your mind. It makes no difference."</p>

<p>"Why are you in such a hurry to go?" she asked fretfully, and put her
hand to her head. She seemed to sway.</p>

<p>"Are you ill?" Ingram asked, coming across and standing beside her.</p>

<p>"My head went queer suddenly," she said. "It does that lately. It's
fatigue, I think. Listen to me, Paul Ingram. I want to strike a bargain
with you."</p>

<p>"Well."</p>

<p>"I want to buy 'Sad Company' myself."</p>

<p>"In order to destroy it?"</p>

<p>No answer.</p>

<p>"And at what do you assess the damage, moral and material, to your
creed that its suppression will avoid. Come, now! just for curiosity's
sake."</p>

<p>"Five hundred pounds—a thousand if——"</p>

<p>He interrupted her brusquely. "You must have taken leave of your
senses. Do you think I'm to be bought? Burn the thing yourself, if you
like—burn it in the name of whatever god it offends—but don't impute
dishonor ever again to a man, even to a man that doesn't believe in
Him."</p>

<p>She caught at his sleeve. "Oh, but you must have some money for
it," she said, incoherently. "You must—you must! Don't rob me of a
pleasure. You've travelled the world over, but you don't know what
poverty in London means. Why, only to-night, as I looked down the
table and saw your face so—so proud and fine, and thought how little
stood between you and—there! I won't even name it. But don't be
stubborn—for my sake. Because you must have money; you must have
money, dear."</p>

<p>At the last word he took her in his arms.</p>

<p>"Let me go!" she whispered, pushing him away with all the poor force
of her bare arms. "I didn't mean this. Oh! believe me. Upon my honor I
didn't—nothing like this, Paul."</p>

<p>Ingram only drew her closer. "Stop struggling," he said, with
authority. "That's better. Now then—kiss me properly."</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIIIa">XIII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">NEW WINE—OLD BOTTLE</p>


<p>When the Reverend Antony Vernon, on the very morrow of a controversy
whose issue was hailed variously in various quarters—here as a
triumph and as a scandal there—forsook his fellow's rooms in Wadham,
his parish of St. Hedwige, and the Hernandes Ethical Lectureship, to
take the old, old beaten track toward the City of the Seven Hills and
intellectual disenfranchisement, beyond a languid wonder as to what
might await him in the less indulgent fold his migration aroused little
interest. Excommunication or a cardinal's hat? Either, it was felt,
might be the crown of his new career. He took no disciples with him in
his incontinent flight, and he left no spiritual orphans to bewail his
loss. No vindication of the strange step was ever published by him, and
it cannot be pretended that his reserve balked any very keen curiosity.
After all, had not the question been worn threadbare—to rags—years
ago? To the fervor of the 'forties a generation had succeeded too weary
of dogmatic strife to account for its own actions, far less demand
an account from others; satisfied, in short, since it saved time and
trouble, to accept the plea of impulse in full extenuation. During the
traditional nine days, it is true, his motives were guessed at idly in
the Common Room. Intellectual despair, said one; another, a recoil from
the abyss to which a will to believe with the minimum of revelation
always leads; a third might hint at reasons more personal and intimate
still. None knew; and, when a few weeks had passed, none cared. The
Reverend Antony Vernon was absolved and forgotten.</p>

<p>After his ordination in Rome, Archbishop Manning, who had been an
old Oxford friend of his father, gave him a curacy in the northeast
of London, in a district which had not then acquired its present
sinister reputation, but was beginning to earn it. The mission itself
was an old one, founded in the days of captivity and bishops <i>in
partibus</i>; so much the fabric witnessed, a square box-like structure
of hard yellow brick, with a stucco portico, and on each side four
round-headed, narrow-paned windows of pinky-white glass, obscured by a
wooden galley, and, on the side that faced the street, still bearing
traces of some sort of wash which had once discreetly veiled the
mysteries within. And yet, in its unpretending ugliness, the humble
fane did not lack a certain charm denied to the great Gothic barn that
has replaced it. It had been built upon the site of what had been a
city merchant's suburban estate in the days of hoop and powder. Upon
the side furthest from the street, two or three of the old garden trees
had been spared, which of a sunny afternoon, according as the season
lay, stained the clear panes a tremulous green and gold, or fretted
them with an uneasy tracery of tangled branches. One guessed that,
within the memory of man, before the city had spilled its desolating
overflow around and beyond, gardens had bloomed—orchards borne fruit
beneath these weather-stained walls, the odors of the hayfield stolen
in at times and mingled its incense with that of the altar. For with
cities it is as with the generations of men—new buildings upon which
the old have gazed carry on, when they themselves have grown gray, the
tradition of all that has been demolished and displaced around them.</p>

<p>"I am sending you into great temptation, Vernon," Manning had said
to him at parting. (He had opened his heart to his superior, and
there were no secrets between the two men). "The mission is the most
difficult in the whole archdiocese. Since the trams were built the
East End is pouring its cramped population into it in thousands. The
old respectable families are leaving, in absolute panic, as soon as
they can sell or surrender their leases. There will be no better centre
in three or four years' time for a great missionary effort; but until
Swinton dies or retires nothing much can be done. You will have need
of all your faith and of all your tact. Abroad you will encounter
an animalism such as you cannot have conceived possible; at home, a
creed almost without love, and to which only the darker side of the
revelation seems to have been vouchsafed. Get to know your people
quietly; watch your armor, and—pray! And, above all," he continued,
laying a hand that was already ethereal upon the young don's shoulder,
"above all, Vernon, never despair of the poor. Don't be appalled by
anything you see or hear. The degradation is great, but it is my
experience it seldom reaches down as far as the soul. A word will work
conversion here—a week's illness make a saint. It is far, far easier
to wash the filth off of them than it is to heal the ulcer of the rich,
or purify the intellect of men like you and me. It is God's crowning
mercy to his elect. 'Blessed are the poor!'"</p>

<p>Vernon quickly discovered that the difficulties had not been
over-rated. Father Swinton, the missionary rector, was a scion of an
old Northumbrian family. His eccentricity, probably congenital and
the result of long continued intermarriage, had been heightened by
a solitary life until it reached a pitch that was almost monomania.
Beneath the outward uniformity which Catholic discipline imposes he
concealed a fanatical Jansenist heart. He was perhaps the last of a
generation of priests who took a perverse pride in the insular and
secluded character which three centuries of persecution had impressed
upon the Roman communion in England. He boasted of never having made a
convert, and resented the new expansiveness as a personal grievance. He
never returned to his "chapel"—you would have earned his resentment
by calling it a church—from a visit to more pretentious missions
without experiencing a stealthy joy in his own square, painted pews,
his railed gallery and bare altar, flanked only by two small plaster
statues which a great lady, stubborn as himself, had imposed upon him
as the price of peace. Two of his many aversions he made no attempt
to conceal: he hated Irish curates, and he hated the beautiful modern
devotion of the Sacred Heart.</p>

<p>"God bless my soul, Vernon!" he cried, one evening, shortly after
the arrival of the new curate, waddling into the dining-room after
benediction. "Do you know what's just happened me? No? Well, sir, a
woman came into my sanctuary just now—my very sanctuary, sir!—as I
was covering the altar, and asked me to bless a piece of red flannel
for her—a common piece of red household flannel, sir, cut into the
shape of a heart. Called it her '<i>Badge</i>!' I said: 'Take your
blasphemous piece of red flannel home, ma'am! It's too small for a
chest-protector, so make a penwiper of it. God bless my soul! haven't
you seven sacraments?'"</p>

<p>Far from being shocked, the archbishop laughed at the story until the
tears ran out of his watery blue eyes.</p>

<p>"Dear old Swinton!" was all his comment; "last of the Gallicans!"
Vernon was early struck by the gaiety and love of fun among his
fellow-workers in the vineyard.</p>

<p>As for the curates: he discovered he was the successor to a long line
whose misplaced fervor and attempts to familiarize the channels of
grace had brought them into collision with the heady old man.</p>

<p>"<i>Four—times—a—year</i>, Mr. Vernon," his rector would assert,
bringing the palm of his hand down on the table at each word. "Four
times a year, sir, and no more, if I had my way. And the three
months in between all too short to prepare for the reception of
this tremendous"—at the word something that was almost ecstasy
descended upon the foolish old face—"<i>tremendous</i> Sacrament!
Besides"—fretfully—"none of 'em knew how to eat like gentlemen."</p>

<p>Perhaps on account of his superior table manners, perhaps for other
reasons, Vernon's enthusiasm—the enthusiasm of the proselyte—was
condoned. Often during his strenuous later life he looked back upon
those three years of curacy as perhaps the happiest he had known. If
he might not sow the seed broadcast, at least he could sow and tend
it in his own heart. He loved to read his breviary of an afternoon,
pacing up and down between two green matted grass lawns, under the
creeper-covered wall of the meek little house of God. The sun,
filtering through the tender leaves of the plane trees, made a dappled
puzzle-pattern on the broad flagged walk at his feet, or, if the season
was late, he crisped their shed vesture beneath his low buckled shoes.
Often, as his lips moved in the prayer that he had now got by heart,
his eyes, wandering from the familiar page, would map out by the line,
and square the foundation of his settlement—his bustling citadel of
the friends of God—so soon to arise in the great wilderness, blotting
out this selfish little oasis of peace and stillness forever. This very
walk the vault of a chancel should cover—vast, imposing, lined with
glowing chapels that pictured in fresco and mosaic the hard-won battles
of the Church militant—draped with embroidered banners of guild and
confraternity. Here, at the ivied presbytery gable, where a mob of
sparrows, heedless of impending change, were repairing their frail
tenements of straw, the gymnasium should stand, with a dining-hall
above, where from henceforth his daily meals should be taken in the
company of the starving and the outcast; of the workless man, hovering
with amazement upon the brink of crime; of the felon, still sore from
the stringent hand of earthly justice; guests gathered at his Master's
bidding from highway and byway, and set down with the broad robe of
charity over their bowed shoulders. And once a week at night, when
chairs and benches had been cleared away, the piano should tinkle and
the fiddle tune, and lads and lasses, in whose perverse minds guilt and
gaiety had become convertible terms, should learn the religion of joy,
and dance the devil out of their souls.</p>

<p>These were his dreams during three years. And yet, in his imagination,
susceptible as a woman's to any influence of beauty and grace, and,
like a woman's, sworn foe of all that is ugly and irrevocable in
life, the quiet close was full of voices that reproached him for
their outcasting. He used to pray against his weakness at night, when
confessions were over and the church closed. Horse-cars jingled past
the doors. The windows shook with raucous oaths; with cries of buyers
and sellers in the market outside, from mouths furred with blasphemy
and filthy talk; the naphtha flares threw strange, troubled shadows
over the doomed pews and galleries.</p>

<p>Father Swinton fell ill in the middle of the third year, and after
lingering a few months, died rather suddenly. At his death it was
discovered that his private charities had been unbounded, and had
eaten up all his inheritance. He left nothing of his own behind, save
a family genealogy, in which the connection between the Swintons
of Dimpleshall and the Swintons of Blacklash is clearly traced—a
connection which, it would appear, Mackenzie, in his "View of the
County of Northumberland," has been at pains to dispute, and a bound
manuscript, much thumbed, of meditations on the Passion. The projected
work had hardly waited on his death; indeed, Vernon was called to his
superior's agony from a consultation with his architect. No man's
dream is ever realized; but within two years a good deal of his was
an accomplished fact. Vernon was a wealthy man, and, when his own
money was spent, a consummate beggar. The dining-room, the schools,
the gymnasium, the dispensary, and the old folks' hostel took shape
one by one, amid discouragement, covert sarcasm, and abundant prophecy
of failure. The trees fell, the chapel was gutted and torn down as
completely as ever by Gordon rioters; the presbytery, with its panelled
chambers, went the same way; the sparrows took to a dusty wing and,
as covenanted servants, let us hope found sanctuary elsewhere. Last
of all, the chancel, gaunt and bare as yet, a mere shell and outline
of all it should be, but imposing if only by virtue of its bulk, with
traceried windows, flying buttresses, clerestory and triforium,
towered over the wet slate roofs that smoked sullenly all day, like a
slaked furnace, beneath its feet. At the centre of the cross, where
the long chancel met the truncated apse and aisles, an octagonal lead
lantern, lit by eight round lunettes, took the place of tower and
spire. It was at this lantern that men stood to stare; toward it that
the whips of passing van and 'bus drivers inevitably were pointed for
many a long day. For there, set up too high for any to escape His
appeal—a symbol of hope to the hopeless, a fable to the scoffer, a
source of irritation to the Pharisee, lit up at night by two coronals
of electric light that encircled the pierced feet and haloed the
drooping head—the Man of Sorrows watched the sorrowing city, and
plucked His vesture aside to show the wounded and flaming breast—the
Sacred Heart, beneath.</p>

<p>At fifty-eight Canon Vernon would have been a strange portent in the
Common Room at Wadham. He had gained sanctity, but there is no denying
he had lost polish. One cannot sit to table habitually with the outcast
and not become either a little self-righteous or a little disreputable;
and nothing could ever have made Antony Vernon self-righteous. He had
a brown, seamed face, on which the lines of humor and pain crossed and
intercrossed; the loose, mobile mouth of the great actor he might have
been; piercing black eyes, an untidy thatch of dark hair whitening only
at the temples, and thin, sensitive nostrils rimmed with snuff. Snuff
also liberally besprinkled the breast of his shabby cassock. There
had been, three hundred years back, an ancestor who wrote himself M.
de Vernon, and, in reverting to the ancestral faith, Vernon seemed
to have reverted a little to the ancestral type. He had no apparent
austerities, was fond of a certain brand of white wine which grocers
do not stock, and when his young men saw him in his private room,
gave them, together with absolution, an Egyptian cigarette that was
no part of their penance. His life is now matter for biography. In
the district which is bounded roughly by Kingsland Road on the west
and Hackney Road on the south, and which may be said to have London
Fields—a rather tuberculous "lung"—for its centre and playground,
it was even then matter for legend. Upon some of the legends his own
comments were flippant, and we should probably err in attaching greater
importance to them than he did himself. In speaking of his spiritual
influence we are on safer ground. Very few—perhaps none quite—had
ever withstood this. It was the old, old test. Power "went out" from
him. Very unjustly, the worship of which he was the object did not
extend to the hard-working curates with whom he surrounded himself. His
delivery in the pulpit was bad, his writing all but illegible, and, as
he never had time to prepare his sermons for the press, a good deal
has perished that deserved to survive. We preserve a few fragments,
however, as characteristic of his peculiar train of thought.</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"<i>Of love</i>:</p>

<p>"There is no way to love God but through His creatures. It is
through admiration of the work that we must be brought to the
artist. But often the one condition upon which our love can stay
sinless is that it shall stay silent."</p>

<p>"<i>Of suffering</i>:</p>

<p>"There is a genius in suffering as in all else. The confessor may
labor with Christ, the martyr be crucified with Him; it is the
artist alone who can understand or share the agony of Olivet."</p>

<p>"<i>Of sacrifice</i>:</p>

<p>"The history of Cain and Abel is full of significance to us. It is
not of the things that renew themselves year by year that God would
have us make our offering. To be acceptable to Him the sacrifice
must be irreparable."</p>
</div>

<p>Despite his gaiety, his personal pessimism was unbounded. He was taken
to task for it once by a burly and breezy Jesuit.</p>

<p>"After all, Vernon, God is Lord of life as well as of death."</p>

<p>"True," replied Vernon, as though speaking to himself. "But with a
perceptible bias toward death."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>He maintained that while it was our duty to resist all temptations,
there were some so overwhelming that our responsibility was ended when
we asked God to keep them out of our way.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>He used to say that the crowning humiliation of the saints was to know
their lives would be written by the devout.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Once upon his return from examining a school taught by religious, he
was observed to be preoccupied, and was asked the reason.</p>

<p>"I was thinking," he said, "that few indeed are to be trusted with the
credulity of childhood."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Of a noted atheist who was very charitable, he remarked: "G—— gives
alms for the hatred of God."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>After leaving Oxford his remarks seldom strayed beyond the sphere of
his new duties. When they did, they were apt to be rarely illuminating.
He said of France, for instance: "Four words give us her genius and her
history—'Often conquered, never ashamed.'"</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>He used to declare that, in striking a balance between a man's
happiness and unhappiness, time was not to be taken into account at
all, because men live all their lives every day of their lives.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Religion, he observed, had an advantage that had not escaped the
worldly mind. There is no other ideal which a man can live for and live
on at the same time.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIVa">XIV</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">SOME THEORIES—AND A WAY OUT</p>


<p>He was sitting in his study late one windy March Saturday when Mrs.
Hepworth was announced. He had been in his confessional all the
evening. A half-finished letter lay on his blotting-pad, but he had
turned away from it and was warming his stockinged feet at the fire.
She was heavily veiled, but he divined a crisis at a glance.</p>

<p>"Are you very busy?" she asked, in a smothered voice.</p>

<p>"Very idle," he answered gaily. "The appearances of industry are
deceitful. I was really—don't tell—toasting my toes. Are you in any
trouble?" he asked in a graver tone, taking her hand in both his.</p>

<p>She nodded, but did not speak. He drew an arm-chair to the fire, and
poked a great lump of coal into a blaze.</p>

<p>"There, there!" said he. "Sit down and have the cry out. I have a
letter to finish and another to write. By the time they are both done
you will be calmer."</p>

<p>He went on with his writing; re-read, sealed, and stamped the two
letters, rang the bell, and, when it was answered by one of the mission
lads, carried them to the door himself. When he turned to her again the
worst was over. She was drying her eyes. He leaned forward and patted
her hand.</p>

<p>"What a big baby we are!"</p>

<p>She returned him a spasmodic smile. She was conscious of a tear-stained
face—possibly a red nose. But then, he was a priest. That made a
difference.</p>

<p>"And now, what is the trouble? Has invention given out? No? Come, come
then, everything else is bearable, isn't it? If I were an imaginative
writer, that fear would never leave me, and would end by paralyzing my
pen. I should have stage-fright every time I sat down opposite a sheet
of paper. It has always been less of a marvel to me that a novel should
be finished well than that it should be finished at all."</p>

<p>Althea hardly listened. She was wondering how she should express
the things of this world in terms that a man of the other should
understand; a necessity—let the prurient believe it or not—that makes
confession a dry business for all parties.</p>

<p>"Father Vernon, has it ever occurred to you that I am a woman as well
as a writer?"</p>

<p>"My dear, a very charming one."</p>

<p>"At least an honest one. Three years ago, you will remember, I came to
you on quite an impersonal matter. You divined an inward trouble—saw
that I had missed the peace which passes understanding, and offered
me—how delicately, I shall never forget—your aid to attain it. I
refused it. You never would guess what the refusal cost me."</p>

<p>"My dear——"</p>

<p>"Yes, yes; let me go on. I must have seemed churlish. But if principles
are to be anything beyond mere idle words, they must be held to; and
one of mine is that for a woman to invite sympathy is only a degree
less shameful than for her to beg for love. The way of the devout woman
with her director is hateful to me. This unseemly self-revelation from
week to week is treachery—treachery to her own heart and to those whom
she takes into it. Am I very heretical?"</p>

<p>"Oh, my child! How it would lighten my task were there more who thought
like you."</p>

<p>"Before I left, you bade me, if ever I was in great trouble, to come to
you again. And now——"</p>

<p>"Now the time has come?"</p>

<p>"Yes." She rubbed her hands nervously one over the other. "I am in
great straits."</p>

<p>"Is the way growing dark or only hard?"</p>

<p>"Oh, <i>hard—hard</i>!" she moaned, rocking a little backward and
forward.</p>

<p>She looked up in his face and saw her trouble was guessed. When the
will to help and the powerlessness meet upon a face that regards us
tenderly we read our fate written there in letters of fire.</p>

<p>"Yes," she went on, as though he had spoken. "I am a Catholic: I am a
divorced woman whose husband lives, and I am in love—in love with all
my heart, and soul, and strength."</p>

<p>"The man? Is he free?" Vernon asked, perhaps for something to say.</p>

<p>"Yes. I thank God, whose captive I am, that he at least is free."</p>

<p>"He understands your peculiar position?"</p>

<p>"He understands nothing."</p>

<p>"My dear child, you should let him know. In justice to him."</p>

<p>His words irritated Althea vaguely, as a little professional mannerism
might irritate us in the surgeon fighting for our lives.</p>

<p>"Oh, have patience! I am going to tell you everything. It is the man
whose book I sent you to read. Mr. Prentice, a friend of mine, a
journalist, brought him to me last summer. He was quite unknown in
London and was finding a difficulty in even getting it considered. He
is not quite a stranger to us; at least, we know who he is. My father
is a friend of some of the rich branch of his family in Connecticut. My
publishers made difficulties, of course, but the thing was in a fair
way of being settled—"</p>

<p>"But surely, my child, his opinions shocked you?"</p>

<p>"Not at all, Father!" Noticing his surprise: "You must take my word for
that. It is so hard when one is leading two lives—the artist's and the
other. There seems no contact between them—no common ground. I have
had no temptation myself to such things, and so the question had never
arisen for me personally. No, I was conscious of nothing but the joy,
the privilege of helping a fellow-worker toward his reward."</p>

<p>"When did you first find it a matter of conscience?"</p>

<p>"Once when I went to confession to Father Mephan at the Priory. I
mentioned it almost casually. To my surprise, he took the matter most
seriously—said I was incurring a tremendous responsibility, and that
if one soul was led by it to love God less, the sin would be at my
door. I had to get the manuscript back from the publishers. Oh! it was
weary work."</p>

<p>"Mephan pronounced against the book, of course."</p>

<p>"Yes. I told him that to my knowledge the writer was a good man—in
his way almost saintly. I knew him well enough by then to say that.
But he said it didn't matter—that Antichrist had his own prophets and
confessors, and even martyrs. Is that so?"</p>

<p>"I fear it is."</p>

<p>"He said something else stranger still. He said the virtue that was
outside the Church was a greater danger than the wickedness. Do you
believe that?"</p>

<p>"No, I don't. I think virtue, of any sort, is quite secure from
popularity. But go on. You have told me nothing of the man himself."</p>

<p>"He continued to visit us. He was lonely and embittered at first, but
it wore off. He is very handsome. I was proud to be able to show such
a fellow-countryman after some that have been at our house. The men
liked him, and I know the women envied him to me. Oh! a woman can see.
I got him to tell me some of his life. It's wonderful! He seems to have
deliberately sought out pain and labor as though some inward need of
his soul impelled him to it. He does not know God, but he has never
lost the spiritual vision. His heart is as clean as a child's and as
simple. He has his faults. He hates the rich; but there is not a trace
of envy in his hatred. He is not even like Mill—led to the love of
the many by the hatred of the few. It is simply the holy hunger and
thirst after justice."</p>

<p>"My dear, you are painting a very good man. Did you never try to
influence him toward the truth?"</p>

<p>"Father Vernon, do you believe in my sincerity or not?"</p>

<p>"I do, indeed."</p>

<p>"Then, believe me when I tell you it's not possible. Perhaps in years
and years to come; but his heart will have to be broken first. No, his
virtue is the virtue of Marcus Aurelius—of Julian. He has all the
sadness of the old, stoical, pagan world. Will you think me exaggerated
if I tell you how he affects me?"</p>

<p>"I think not."</p>

<p>"Well, I feel as though some great angel, neither of light nor
darkness, neither fallen nor confirmed, to whom the test for or against
God has never been offered, has folded his wings and dropped gently at
my feet. I have but one fear—that he will spread them as quietly and
take flight."</p>

<p>Two red spots glowed on her cheeks as she spoke. Vernon, considering
her, suddenly realized how ill she was looking. There was even on her
face an expression that, as a priest, it was part of his office to
watch for.</p>

<p>"When did this thing happen—the thing that makes you so unhappy?"</p>

<p>"Last Thursday. He had dined with us. I had been feeling ill all day.
Since the summer I have been frightened two or three times—it is my
head I think—but I have put off getting any advice. He could not
have asked for an explanation at a worse time; but I had no right to
withhold it. I tried to explain, even offered him money, and then——"</p>

<p>"Yes, and then?"</p>

<p>"Oh, Father Vernon, he grew so big! He seemed to tower. Everything else
was small. Yes—let me tell the truth—religion, priests, even God—we
all seemed to be a little band of intriguers trying to pull him down.
He told me to burn his book, turned on his heel. I knew he wouldn't
come back, and so—and so—I'm only a woman: I babbled something or
other that was in my heart, and he took me—in his—arms."</p>

<p>She leaned forward, put her elbows on her knees, and looked into the
fire. The action was deliberate. One never would have guessed what a
storm was rending her breast.</p>

<p>"He kissed me only once," she went on. "He was very gentle. Then
we sat down, and I found out that, all the time while I had been
condescending, advising, putting him at his ease, I was nothing to him
but just a little, lonely, spoilt girl."</p>

<p>"Have you seen him since?"</p>

<p>"No."</p>

<p>"Nor written?"</p>

<p>"No."</p>

<p>"He has called, of course?"</p>

<p>"Yes. I have not been at home to him."</p>

<p>"Then—the thing is over."</p>

<p>"Read this!" She drew a letter from the bosom of her dress and handed
it to him. She watched him narrowly as he read it, but his expression
of grave concern did not alter.</p>

<p>"Are you alone in town?" he asked, when he had read it through.</p>

<p>"My father and most of the servants are at Hindhead. I should have gone
with them on Saturday, but I waited because——Oh! I just waited——"</p>

<p>"Do you want this back?" said Vernon, still holding the letter between
his fingers.</p>

<p>"Burn it, please. No, wait a minute! Tear me off the signature first. I
want that."</p>

<p>She pressed the little shred of paper against her lips.</p>

<p>"Oh! I love him <i>so</i>, I love him <i>so</i>," she moaned.</p>

<p>Vernon crumpled the sheets of paper one by one and threw them all into
the fire together. The flames caught them at once. The writing glowed
red, then white. The draught from the chimney rustled the ashes to and
fro in the grate.</p>

<p>"Well," she asked, almost roughly, "what am I to do?"</p>

<p>"There is but one thing—your duty. I cannot soften it."</p>

<p>"<i>Duty!</i>" she repeated, in a terrible voice. For a moment Vernon
thought a nerve-crisis was at hand; but she fought it down. The wit
that was almost the woman's second nature came uppermost.</p>

<p>"It's a pretty trap, isn't it? There ought to have been a notice-board
on my narrow way, Father Vernon: 'Beware man-traps and canons.' God's
ways are a little <i>impish</i> at times, don't you think so? Can I see
him?"</p>

<p>"I think not, dear child. It will only make it harder for you both."</p>

<p>"Pah! You say that, but you really don't trust me. You're only a man,
after all. Can I write the letter here? It won't be very long."</p>

<p>Without a word he wheeled his writing-chair round for her, and pulled
out unheaded note-paper and plain envelopes. She wrote a letter of
six or eight pages quietly, without hesitating, except just at the
end, when Vernon noticed her lips were pursed and her eyes swimming in
tears. The second letter was a much shorter affair, and she enclosed in
it the slip of paper which she had saved from the burnt letter. It lay
on the top, and he noticed the address was that of a bank.</p>

<p>"I will leave these with you to post," she said; "then you will feel
quite safe. I shall go down to Hindhead to-morrow and stay a good
while, I think. I like watching the spring come. Good-bye; and remember
it is by what you <i>didn't</i> say to-night that I measure your
sympathy. I don't think I could have stood platitudes."</p>

<p>"My child, I preach to those who are bearing their cross, not to those
whom God has nailed to it. Before them I dare only kneel and pray."</p>

<p>"Oh, I felt it! I felt it! Something seemed to come out of you and
break my will suddenly. Besides"—she hesitated—"besides, there's
always something a woman keeps back, they say. I think, perhaps, he is
saved from great unhappiness by what you have made me do to-night. I
can't say more, even to you."</p>

<p>"My dear, love is never sent idly, never in vain. It is from our
ignorant misuse, our blind misapprehension of its meaning, that the
pity and the waste come about. Many a precious purpose is brought to
nothing by the world's superstition of the happy ending. In love, as
in life, those who seek selfishly forever seek vainly; even as they
grasp it, the radiant vision turns a corpse within their arms. It is
they who humbly and submissively—no matter how hard the law, how
intolerable the accident—follow the inscrutable finger beckoning them
from pleasant ways, to stumble upon the road that is narrow and steep
and dark, who have their heart's desire given them in the end.... Yes!
Who is it?"</p>

<p>There was a knock at the door.</p>

<p>"Please, farver, it's Mrs. Murnane come about Jimmy's charackter for
the 'am-and-beef shop."</p>

<p>"Say I'm coming.... Would you like to spend a few minutes with me in
the church before you go? We have the Forty Hours' devotion this week.
I can let you out by the side door into the street. I suppose you have
your car?"</p>

<p>She passed before him down the staircase and along a white-washed
corridor, whose bluntly pointed windows and doorways were wreathed by
texts in Gothic lettering. Mrs. Murnane, a woman with a commanding
eye and great digestive capacity, was sitting on a long bench in the
hall; the ham-and-beef aspirant, a knock-kneed lad who seemed to grow
more uncertain and wavering of outline as he receded from his enormous
boots to his cropped white head, sat by her side with an air of being
in custody. Behind the bench successive sessions of unwashed heads had
besmeared the wall with a grimy average of height.</p>

<p>The church was dark, and silent too; not with the mere absence of
sound, but with a positive and penetrative stillness that seemed to
radiate from one white disk, rimmed and rayed with gold, and enthroned,
amid a phalanx of tapers and sweet waxen flowers, in one of the side
chapels. A lad in a scarlet cassock and laced cotta was extinguishing
a guttering candle, almost beyond his reach. As he rose on tiptoe
the long pole trembled in his hands like a fishing-rod. Within the
rails two men, their heads sunk beneath their shoulders, and without
the rails two nuns, in broad white <i>cornichons</i> and turned-back
sleeves of serge, watched the host motionlessly. On a votive-wheel near
by many tapers, some white, some red, were blazing and dripping. The
smell of incense was everywhere.</p>

<p>She knelt upon a rush-seated <i>prie-dieu</i> in the same posture of
absorbed devotion as the others, but her thoughts strayed, like a
child's brought to church by an elder sister. She tried to count the
tapers—how many red? how many white?—wondered what the nuns' faces
were like behind the flapped white caps. The scene took shape in her
head in little biting phrases, just as another kind of artist would
have seen it in tone and composition. She was rather restless, wanted
to be gone, and even said to herself that this last move of Father
Vernon's was in doubtful taste. After going through so much——!</p>

<p>But the silence, the stillness, the enervating loaded atmosphere gained
her little by little. She had an access of devotion: tapers, flowers,
prostrate fellow-worshippers were all part of some intimate rite of
which there were two protagonists—that white sphere toward which, from
time to time, she stole an awed glance, and she—a white host herself,
with tired, folded pinions, submissive, only waiting for fire from
heaven to complete the sacrifice....</p>

<p>... Oh, God—the pain! the pain in her head! She wanted to scream, to
faint, but her horror, the refined woman's horror of any "scene," kept
her dumb and almost still. She prayed, wildly and incoherently—pressed
her gloved fingers into her temples; her forehead was damp with
perspiration....</p>

<p>It was going now. Yes. In wave after wave, each less poignant than the
one before, the pain left her. She lifted her head, wet her lips—wiped
her forehead with the handkerchief still damp from her tears. Her eyes
were tired and dim; the altar swam mistily. She looked across to Father
Vernon, and he, noting her restlessness at last, rose and, with a low
genuflection on both knees, beckoned her, and passed before her from
the church.</p>

<p>In the open air she revived, and even began to doubt the reality of
what she had just undergone. There is a dream-like quality about
intense pain that makes it hard to estimate it truly afterward. The
car was waiting, in a dark slum that had once been a walled country
lane smelling of mould and verdure. Even now the warm restlessness of
spring could be felt in its fetid air. The chauffeur sat sideways upon
his seat, reading some strange by-product of literature in a green
cover. A dozen or so of ragged children, shock-headed and sore of face,
clustered round the headlights like so many poor scorched flies. She
shared the coppers in her purse between them.</p>

<p>"Write me from Hindhead," Vernon said, at the door of the car; "and
come to see me again when you get back. Be sure, my dear, God has some
great mercy for you after this. And if I were you, I should see some
one about the headaches. Nerves? Oh, yes! but it never does harm to
have good advice. Good-bye, good-bye! God bless you, my dear. Now then,
babies, why aren't the lot of you in bed?"</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>The car rolled, smoothly and swiftly, southward and westward. Through
brawling, chaffering Saturday night markets; through the old "Square
Mile," deserted now, its mysterious lanes coiling away to left and
right in tortuous perspective; across the Circus, in whose midst the
bronze archer poises himself, choosing his prey and aiming his unseen
arrow day and night at the spinning wheel of pleasure; round the sweep
of the Quadrant—and home. Two and two, two and two; the men leaning
over the women, the women leaning toward the men. Nature, after all,
was slightly vulgar. To be placed—by circumstances—out of reach of
its allurement had compensations—lent dignity to the point of view. It
was almost enough to make one turn to virtue to have to share vice with
so many....</p>

<p>There she went again! Phrases, phrases! Well, it was just as well,
since, after all, there wasn't much else left for her now. How tired
she was of it all! And what was the great mercy that Father Vernon had
predicted so confidently?... Home, at last.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>"Three hours, probably more," the doctor said. It was Pemmer-Lloyd, the
great cancer specialist from Weymouth Street, just round the corner.
He was in golfing tweeds, and felt justly aggrieved that, with so many
general practitioners in the neighborhood, he should have been called
away from breakfast, for this. The nine forty-five to Amersham was out
of the question now.</p>

<p>One window-blind had been drawn up, crookedly and hurriedly, and
through the rhomboidal opening a sinister light fell upon the disorder
of the room. Two frightened maids and a housekeeper stood at the foot
of the bed, watching the doctor, with inane hope upon their faces. One
of the maids was crying, but looking about her curiously at the same
time.</p>

<p>"Done? No! of course nothing can be done. Am I not telling you she has
been dead over three hours. Had any doctor been attending her lately?"</p>

<p>"Not to our knowledge, sir."</p>

<p>"There may have to be an inquest, then. In that case you must see that
nothing is touched. Have the family been advised?"</p>

<p>"No, doctor. I thought first——"</p>

<p>"Wire and 'phone them immediately! <i>immediately!</i> and the police
as well. Here is my card for the inspector. I shall have to stay at
home all day now. In a case like this, you should always call a general
practitioner."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>They say she must have been reading a great part of the night. Two
books were on the table near her bed—"Madame Bovary," and "The
Imitation of Christ." Flaubert and à Kempis! Poor Althea! It was almost
your life's epitome.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVa">XV</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">A LAST WISH</p>


<p>Many will remember the profound impression that Althea's death created.
It extended far beyond the circles that her novels had reached. There
was something about that last mysterious journey through London—the
sudden, unheralded end, at some conjectural hour, when the great
heart of the city was beating its faintest, that struck the popular
imagination, always ready to be harrowed, and secretly grateful, I
believe, for evidence that fate works with an even grimness under all
the inequalities of rank or fortune. I attended the funeral, combining
for the last time my professional duties with the privileges of an old
but lately neglected friend, and saw her committed to the awakening
earth. She was buried with all the pomp and circumstance that the
church of her adoption gives its children as a last assurance of its
own unshaken power, but through all the chants and absolutions the
chill human ache of an irreparable loss persisted, as, through the
perfume of incense and flowers, the raw smell of the polished elm
coffin pierced to the sense. The church was crowded with her friends;
wreaths and crosses, lyres with snapped strings, broken columns of rare
exotic flowers, all symbols of untimely end, were banked round the
catafalque, but the coffin itself was stark and bare, covered thinly
by a pall of purple silk wrought at its hem with passion flowers. The
girls in some refuge or another, poor soiled doves whose unwearied
friend she had been, had sat up, it was said, night and day in order to
complete it.</p>

<p>About the time that references to Mrs. Hepworth's career were ceasing
to appear even in the minor papers, rumors of a theatrical hoax
began to circulate through London. The new dancer, whom the zealous
friendship of a certain well-known sporting baronet had forced upon
an unwilling management, would not, after all, appear in the new play
that was to replace the <i>Motor Girl</i> at the Dominion some time in
May. "<i>Would not appear!</i>" Imagine what an eye trained to cheat
the censor of his spoil could make of that; with what significance a
tongue, thrust into a leathery cheek not quite innocent of biscuit and
cheese, at the Bedford Street Bodega, could invest those three little
words.</p>

<p>"<i>Will not appear</i>, my boy. Catch on? Why won't she? That's the
joke, my boy. Because she's got to stop at home and <i>nurse her
mother</i>."</p>

<p>Imagine it! just once, and then let us pass on into sweeter air. Even
if it must be the air of a sick-room. For many weeks Fenella hardly
breathed any other. During that first breathless rally which hardly
gave thought to the final issue, and during which a spoonful of broth
swallowed, an hour's quiet rest or a fall in temperature were triumphs
repaying the sleepless night, dull eye, and hollow cheek a hundredfold,
career, character, seemed very empty, shadowy words. Even if one of
the vile journals in pink and blue and yellow covers addressed in a
handwriting needlessly disguised, which, be sure of it, the postman
did not fail to deliver at Number Eleven, had reached her, had not—as
all were, in fact, been torn from its wrapper by honest Frances' grimy
hand to light parlor or kitchen fire—I doubt very much whether the
marked paragraph would have had power to inflict one pang upon her
self-respect, or bring one drop of blood to her cheek.</p>

<p>How much she loved her mother, how far the wholesome, homely
<i>fact</i> of her had been the basis of all happiness in life, Nelly
had not guessed until now, when the thought must be faced of its
speedy change to a mere memory. A reproachful memory, alas! She looked
back on her girlhood—her school-days, and saw herself heedless and
heartless. How niggardly of love she had been, how chary in response!
She even accused herself of a little snobbishness in her mother's
regard—unjustly, since it was from the innate expansiveness of the
older woman and not from the accident of station or manner that her
own finer nature had shrunk. But, in circumstances like these, to be
conscious of a finer nature does not administer much comfort.</p>

<p>Mrs. Barbour rallied a little from the first stroke, but never rose
from her bed, and never spoke intelligibly again. Sometimes, by bending
close to her lips and straining every sense, Fenella fancied she could
construe the formless gabble into words, but into the words even her
affection could read no meaning. During the day, indeed, her presence
seemed to agitate the invalid to such an extent that the nurse had to
be roused and the desperate effort to speak cut short by some opiate
or injection. Once, driven almost mad at sight of her mother's mental
suffering, Fenella took a sheet of stiff white cardboard, propped the
sick woman upon a pillow, and put a pencil into the palsied hand.
Slowly, with infinite pains on the one hand and infinite patience on
the other, five dreadful letters took shape upon the writing-pad; five
letters such as a dying man might scrawl with a finger dipped into his
heart's blood:</p>

<p class="ph3">"D—A—N—C—E."</p>

<p>A light broke upon the girl. "You want me to go on rehearsing? Is that
it, mother?"</p>

<p>Oh! what joy in the poor fading eyes at being at last understood. The
trembling head nodded again and again, and fell back on the pillow
exhausted.</p>

<p>"I will then, dear!" Fenella whispered in her mother's ear. "I'll go
and put my things on at once."</p>

<p>She came back, dressed as for the street, and kissed her mother
good-bye. Ten minutes afterward, in response to a stealthy knock at
the door, the little Scotch nurse whispered that the patient was fast
asleep.</p>

<p>From now until the day on which the slowly curdling brain ceased to
receive any impression at all the little loving conspiracy of lies
went on. Every morning, at the usual hour of her departure for the
theatre, Fenella, in hat and long coat, kissed her mother's cheek and
forehead, and asked her how the night had passed—that night whose
every hour she often had watched. At seven o'clock, dressed again, she
came back, having first laid her cheek to the marble mantelpiece in
the drawing-room, that it might be convincingly cold. (The best women
have these depths in deception, this recognition of the importance of
trifles.) She would sit down upon the bed and regale her duped parent
with a long and elaborate history of the day's doings—what Mr. Dollfus
had said, what Mr. Lavigne had said—how tiresome the chorus were,
how jealous the leading lady—how set, above all, were all signs and
portents toward ultimate triumph. Her achievement in this new field
stirred even little Frances, now become a person of vast importance and
responsibility, to involuntary admiration.</p>

<p>"Miss! You can't 'alf tell 'em!" that little helpmeet would say,
harkening her.</p>

<p>Whenever a protracted illness has ended in death it is a commonplace of
comfort with well-meaning but shallow folk to say, "You must all feel
it a <i>merciful release</i>." Apart from its sincerity, the phrase is
founded upon a misconception of human feeling. No dead are missed so
much as the dead who have been long a-dying. The presence of a perilous
illness brings many an evil into a house; it at least casts one out.
<i>Ennui</i> never reigns in the house that has the straw in front of
its railings. A great drama is going on, and there never is a moment
when one may not steal upstairs on tiptoe to measure its progress.
Hence, apart altogether from sorrow, a strange emptiness in life when
all is over, a bitter superadded regret for the close, shadowed room,
haunted by broken murmurs, that was once the core of a whole polity of
existence.</p>

<p>In her sad absorption Fenella forgot Sir Bryan all but completely. He
wrote to her often. His letters, headed in black or blue, or embossed
whitely in thick square letters—"The Turf Club"; "369 Mount Street,
Tel. 9087 Mayfair"; "Coffers Castle. Parcels: Balafond Stn. N. B.
R."—lay strewn about her dressing-table or stuck carelessly behind
looking-glasses, for all the world, represented now by Nurse Ursula or
Frances, to read if they would. (We will not suspect Nurse Ursula of
such a thing for a moment, and on any that have been placed in my hands
there is no such grimy finger-print as I am sure Frances would have
left.) She answered rarely, and then only in little set missives, mere
bulletins of her mother's health. She begged his pardon for leaving so
many of his letters <i>unansered</i>. She was quite well, thank him,
had had a quiet night, and felt quite <i>enegetic</i>. The doctor had
been and said mother's <i>strenth</i> was well maintained. She thanked
him for the lovely grapes from Stanmore. She hoped that "Mud-Major"
would win in the big race at Liverpool, and she remained sincerely
his—Fenella Powys Barbour. She had decided on the full signature in
letters to Lumsden. It sounded stately, and enforced respect. She would
have been vastly surprised seeing the sort of respect with which the
misspelt little notes were treated.</p>

<p>It is only part of the general injustice of life that while the man
who was doing his clumsy best to lighten her sorrow hardly stayed in
her mind a moment after she had cast his letters aside or scribbled an
answer to them, the false lover, who had kissed her in her own home,
loved and ridden away, haunted every hushed empty corner of it. Her
very unhappiness brought him back to her, as a new illness weakens the
smart of an old wound. She had an impulse once, which the lonely and
deserted will understand, to set her thoughts on paper in the form of a
letter to him.</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"<span class="smcap">My darling lost love</span>" (she began),</p>

<p>"What years and years it [<i>sic</i>] seems to have past since I
saw your dear face——"</p>
</div>

<p>Then she stopped, and tore the sheet into little pieces. Anything
approaching literary composition suddenly became hateful. The thought
had occurred to her: How well the other woman could do this! The other
woman—in her grave nearly a month.</p>

<p>One morning, while she lingered outside her mother's door, after
perpetrating the customary deception, Frances, the begrimed, brought
her Lumsden's card in a corner of her apron. He was in the small
drawing-room, straight and fair and good to look upon, standing amid a
dusty huddle of chairs that had not been restored to their places since
the doctors consulted there a week ago.</p>

<p>"I came to see if you were killing yourself," he said, when they had
shaken hands and he had asked after her mother.</p>

<p>"Oh! I'm as strong as a horse."</p>

<p>"That remark rather loses its force with me, because I know something
about them. When did you take your feed—'horse'?"</p>

<p>"Sir Bryan! I eat with nurse."</p>

<p>"Oh! I know the sort of meals. You're dressed. Have you been out?"</p>

<p>"N—no."</p>

<p>"Just going then?"</p>

<p>Fenella blushed, but did not reveal the pious fraud.</p>

<p>"I've got the big car outside," said Lumsden. "Care to come for a run
till tea?"</p>

<p>The suggestion had its attractions.</p>

<p>"I must run upstairs first. You don't mind waiting a minute?"</p>

<p>Nurse not only gave permission, but a little straight hygienic talk
she had been saving up, too professional to be repeated here. Fenella
took her seat almost with a feeling of duty done. Bryan ordered the
chauffeur into the back and took the wheel himself.</p>

<p>"Tuck this round you. Now, where shall we go that's within reach?
Richmond?"</p>

<p>"Oh no!" hastily—"not Richmond. Let's go to Hampstead."</p>

<p>"No; I don't care for Hampstead," with a sudden shadow of distaste. Two
pasts met in their glance—her woman's fault of loving too well—and
his.</p>

<p>After a while the mere physical act of breathing fully and deeply
again, the rush of the spring air, pleasantly cold, past her pallid
cheeks, did their work, and unsealed the springs of joy in her own
young breast—a facile joy, born of health and perfect balance, for
which she had often blamed herself since the summer, ignorant of how
between it, as between every function of her body, and the ascetic
ideal which a heart, untimely chastened, sought to impose, there was
war declared, in which she was a mere battle-ground for contending
forces. It had rained hard in the forenoon. Now, level with their eyes,
a belated sun flooded the suburbs with temperate gold, spilled its
overflow on wet slate roofs, set bright jewels in the upper windows of
gray stucco houses, and wove a filagree pattern, beaded with tender
green buds in railed gardens and bristling walled shrubberies. Nothing
was beneath its glorifying magic. Between the flashing tram-rails
the very bed of the wide road seemed flooded with alluvial dust. A
wonderful sky country, all mountain and islet-strewn tarn—such a
landscape as may lie at the gate of dream-cities in the Alps—closed
the prospect into which they were rushing. The wheels hummed, the six
cylinders purred happily. She began to sing to herself, stretching her
neck and pouting her lips, a foolish little song she had caught from
one of the Dominion girls:</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="verse indent0">"I like your old French bonnet</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">With the ribbons on it,</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">And I like your cha-a-a-arming ways.</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">If you'll come to Parry</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">Then we two will marry</div>
    <div class="verse indent0">And our wedding march shall be the Marseillaise."</div>
  </div>
</div>
</div>

<p>"Feeling happier, Flash?"</p>

<p>She had forgotten him. Now, as she turned, self-reproachful, at the
sound of his voice, the unreasonable little fit of happiness took
wing. Yet she could not but admire him. How cleverly and coolly he
drove! What chances he took! They were passing every one. Once, at
some congestion in the traffic, a policeman touched his helmet and let
him through. He seemed to feel this was a man not used to wait his
turn. Paul had once said to her that most men failed in life because
its detail was too much for them to tackle; at least, this was what
she made out of a rather more ornate speech. Bryan didn't seem to find
any difficulty. She remembered Jack Barbour's comprehensive phrase,
"Bryan's first-class in anything he takes up." Was it because she was
ambitious, aspiring, herself that she resisted this power, instead of
succumbing to it, as ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have
done, and being content to shine with a reflected glory? She had had
her own little dream of success—the packed theatre, the thunders of
applause, her name flashing and winking in letters of fire—part of
the madness of a great city by night—paragraphs, interviews. All very
mean and personal, no doubt, yet with an element in them that somehow
dignified the ambition. For to be the favorite of the public was what
she wanted—nothing else would do—the great good-hearted public, that
rings its hard-earned shilling or half-crown upon the ledge of the
ticket-office, shopman and clerk with honest wife and sweetheart at his
side, equally ready to laugh or cheer or cry, who dip a mutual finger
into a box of chocolates and believe that even a dancer can be an
honest girl.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVIa">XVI</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">AZRAEL</p>


<p>They stopped at a little place in a fold of the Chiltern Hills, a
mere roadside inn which the neighborhood of a fashionable golf-course
had galvanized into new and rather graceful life. The stone front was
covered in ivy, two wings of red brick terminated in sunny bay windows,
there was a bowling-green at the back, and an academician had repainted
the sign. A few men in tweeds and flannels whom Lumsden appeared to
know were strolling about the place, but abstained tactfully from more
than a passing greeting. While tea was getting ready the baronet lit
a cigar, and the girl gathered a bunch of primroses in the garden and
pinned them at her waist. Now that she had taken off the heavy coat
he had insisted on her wearing, he noticed for the first time the
shabbiness of her black house-frock. A white thread, dropped from some
needlework, clung to one sleeve.</p>

<p>Lumsden was a man for whom some kind of a love affair had always been a
necessity. Even before he left Eton he had had friends among women of
the world. His bluff, slangy manners covered a good deal of intensity
of a rather un-English sort. Men of Scotch race have a subtlety
denied to the obtuser Southron. They are both more steadfast and more
perfidious. His early manhood had been shaken by one great passion,
which had ended unhappily and which it is no part of our business to
disinter. A long series of inconclusive sentimental experiments had
followed it; inconclusive, because he had the grace or the vanity to
think that, had it been constancy he was seeking, he might often enough
have found it. The devotion, indeed, which one might strike up against
in unexpected quarters was, in his opinion, a serious drawback to
the game. He was a generous lover. The idol of the moment was always
bravely apparelled, always had plenty of tinsel on it, and if a sense
of its inadequacy oppressed him, he got rid of the feeling by putting
on a little more. All he had asked latterly was that it should simper
prettily and do him credit. He was deceived, of course, from time to
time, but never before his own waning attention had given betrayal at
once its justification and its clue. Thus it fell out that, although
his favored pastime had cost him a great deal of money, it had never
cost him what such a man would consider his self-respect. It will save
time to admit that his intentions toward his young cousin (she was not
really his cousin, we know, but he liked to speak of her, even think of
her so) had not been honorable. That she was kin and of the same caste
as himself had no weight with a man accustomed to divide women into two
classes—those he would not marry under any circumstances and those
whom he would only marry if there were no help for it. Fenella, to do
him justice (and, in a way, to do her justice too), had belonged to the
second class from the beginning, but her emergence from it now into a
category all by itself was not due to any recognition on his part of
her integrity—why should he recognize what he had not tempted?—but
simply and solely to the fact that the illness of that poor lady, her
mother, had upset all his early calculations. He had his own code of
conduct, and one of them was that you can not call at a girl's home,
inquire after the maternal health, send the invalid fruit and game, and
then—well, without an entire change in perspective as regards her. Of
late, indeed, she had lain in his imagination to a quite distressing
extent. The impulse that had made him give up a day's hunting and come
spurring to her side over ten miles of muddy ground had not failed
to repeat itself again and again. His thoughts turned toward her
incessantly. At every man's tale of fraud and wrong her image stirred
uneasily in his imagination, and the ideal, rather deferred than quite
disowned, to which his whole life had done violence, joined with his
passion in pleading for a reparation that was at once so easy and so
pleasant. Women are generally avenged competently by some woman. The
eclipse of the individual in the species never lasts. She emerges,
armed with all the old illusions, and often at the very moment when a
man is weakest to do battle with her.</p>

<p>Smoking silently, he looked at her now, busied with the pretty feminine
duties of milk-jug and sugar-tongs, marked the perceptible changes of
face and figure since their first encounter. His experience projected,
as it were, her maturity, even her gray hairs upon her—owned that she
would always be charming, always a sweet woman.</p>

<p>"Dreaming, Flash?"</p>

<p>She had only been respecting his own silent mood, but did not deny her
abstraction.</p>

<p>"I was thinking of the Dominion. When's the first night?"</p>

<p>"In about three weeks. It'll be <i>Hamlet</i> without the prince for
some of us, eh, coz?"</p>

<p>She did not answer.</p>

<p>"You must only look upon it as put off for awhile," he said
reassuringly. "You'll get another chance."</p>

<p>She shook her head. "I don't feel I shall. Don't you ever feel there's
just one time for the one thing?"</p>

<p>"Even if I didn't, Shakespeare has. But you're over-young, Flash, to be
thinking of fortune at the ebb."</p>

<p>He looked down at her hand. There were no rings on it. He had a
suspicion that was confirmed when she snatched it off the table and put
it in her lap.</p>

<p>"Don't think me impertinent, but will it make much difference, I mean
financial difference, to you if your mother dies?"</p>

<p>"I don't know. I'm afraid so. But I have a little money coming to me
when I'm twenty-one. Not a lot."</p>

<p>"How old are you now?"</p>

<p>"Nearly nineteen."</p>

<p>"Two years! What are you going to do meanwhile?"</p>

<p>She shrugged her shoulders, or maybe shivered. Life <i>was</i> gray
with the dream out of it.</p>

<p>"Work, I suppose—at something. I can always teach dancing again."</p>

<p>"Flash, I'm ungodly rich. Won't you let me——"</p>

<p>"<i>Bryan!</i>"</p>

<p>It was the first time she had ever called him familiarly by his name,
but her face was so shocked and white, her voice so like a real cry of
pain, that he did not notice it. He flushed, and churned the gravel
with his heel.</p>

<p>"What have I said? Do you know, young woman, I don't find the
expression on your face very flattering."</p>

<p>"Bryan! If I thought you meant what you've just said, you—I—we——"</p>

<p>"Well, what?"</p>

<p>"Never, <i>never</i> could meet again."</p>

<p>Lumsden swallowed his humiliation, but it didn't go down very far.</p>

<p>"I beg your pardon. Will that do? There was some excuse for me, you
know. You let me help you once before."</p>

<p>"Not with money."</p>

<p>He wasn't in a mood to be very delicate. "Wasn't it?" he said with a
short laugh. "Never mind, then."</p>

<p>"Why do you laugh that funny way?" said Fenella, with unexpected
spirit. "You must tell me now. Did you have to pay Dollfus to take me?"</p>

<p>"Dear <i>ingénue</i>! Do you mean to say you've never suspected it? You
don't think Dollfus is in business for hygienic reasons, do you?"</p>

<p>"Much money?" she persisted.</p>

<p>"Oh, ask Joe," said Lumsden, rather wearily. "He's on the telephone."</p>

<p>Fenella beat her palms against the side of the chair. "I've been a
fool," she went on, in a fierce soliloquy, "a little, credulous
donkey. No wonder that girl thought me a fraud! And yet—I believed you
all believed in me. Do you think I'd ever have let you—unless I felt
sure? Oh! you must know it."</p>

<p>"My dear child, be content. You carry conviction. I acquit you from
this moment of everything unmaidenly, generosity included."</p>

<p>"Generosity!"</p>

<p>"Yes. It sometimes requires as much to take as to give. But you're like
all women."</p>

<p>"Why?"</p>

<p>"When they're not insulted at being offered money they're insulted it
isn't more."</p>

<p>"How dare you call me 'women'?"</p>

<p>"Does it hurt your dignity?"</p>

<p>"Never mind what it hurts. You've no right to speak that way, to class
me with—with others. Oh, yes, you have, though. I'd forgotten."</p>

<p>"Flash, let me tell you one thing: No matter how young or charming or
virtuous you may be, to keep harping on what you know hurts a man's
feelings is to be a shrew."</p>

<p>"Your 'feelings'!" The vexation went out of her face. She leaned
her chin on her hand and gave him a look so piercing, so direct and
unexpected, that it went through all his worldly armor.</p>

<p>"Well?" he asked, grimly, through his teeth. She never guessed the
restraint he was putting on himself. "Haven't I a right to any?"</p>

<p>She looked away without answering.</p>

<p>He got up abruptly. "Let's go home," he said. "We've had enough
heart-to-heart talk for one afternoon."</p>

<p>They rode back into the London lights in a silence which the gentleman
in the peaked cap who drove them probably misconstrued as perfect
accord. "They don't talk much, not w'en they're 'olding 'ands," he said
that night in his favored house of call. But he only held her hand
once, to say good-bye at the door.</p>

<p>"Have I been a prig?" asked Fenella, contritely.</p>

<p>He seemed to be turning the matter over, but was really thinking how
prettily penitence became her.</p>

<p>"Have I offended you?"</p>

<p>"I'll tell you whether you have some other time."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Apparently not beyond forgiveness, for he came again two days later
and took her for an hour's drive—and then the next day. Good or bad,
the habit formed itself. Two or three times she allowed herself to be
persuaded further, and let him take her to dinner. At such an hour the
big restaurants would not be very full; but it seemed Bryan could not
go anywhere without meeting a man he knew, and who, while speaking,
divided his attention pretty evenly between the baronet, half-turned
in his chair, holding the lapel of his friend's coat, and the pretty
stranger to whom he was not introduced. He was very kind and cousinly;
had theories as to what people should eat (he never asked her to drink)
when low-spirited and anxious, kept clear of the personal note, and
always saw she got back in time. Thus, little by little, the hint she
had received of a dangerous hardness in his nature was effaced. In
time of trouble the heart receives more impressions than the head,
and it is wonderful into what bulk tearful eyes can magnify a little
kindness. Fenella was to blame herself subsequently for her conduct
during the last days of her mother's life; but I think, perhaps too
indulgently, that it was only the instinct to grasp at enjoyment while
enjoyment was possible. The very pang of self-reproach with which she
took up her nightly task might have convinced her of this. Old habits
are not effaced in an instant. From babyhood she had known no surer
way to make her mother happy than by seizing all opportunities for
pleasure that came her way. Outsiders who suspect love because it falls
from some arbitrary standard they choose to set up have no idea how
often apparent heartlessness is justified by some such little secret
covenant between the loving and the loved. And then, though the period
of suspense was short, it passed so heavily. The days seemed counted
out with pitiful slowness by a power that knew how few they were.
Time, like distance, deceives when one is seeking the way. She was so
fearfully alone! Her vision sometimes ached at the obscurity of her own
destiny. In that still room uncertainties seemed to multiply, thicken
and coil, like smoke in a tunnel. She envied every one in turn—Nurse
Ursula, with her brisk professional manner and endless prospect of
clearly defined duty—cases to come running into perspective like beds
in a long ward; slatternly, pretty little Frances, with her brisk
love-passages in the area; the woman upon the bed, nearer with every
breath to a change that raises no problems but solves them all. She
often whispered in her mother's ear, "Mother, mother; take me with you.
Don't go without Nelly."</p>

<p>Foolish extravagances of an undisciplined heart. Even for death, Nelly,
we have to wait until the time for enjoying it is past.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Early one morning, following a night in which her mother had seemed
much easier, and in the very first hour of her untimely sleep, the
nurse shook her by the shoulder. In the one look that the two women
exchanged her news was told. Fenella huddled on her clothes and
followed to the sick-room. Her mother was breathing strangely. Every
inspiration was like the hiccough that follows a fit of weeping in
a child. Her brows were knitted—she seemed puzzled and absorbed.
Occasionally she tried to lift a hand stiffly and clumsily toward
her head. By noon all was over. The doctor called twice, and, for
the first time in many days, failed to write a new prescription. The
lawyer was telephoned for. About three o'clock in the afternoon two
decent pew-opening bodies were admitted without question, stole
upstairs, and, having performed their office, stole as quietly away.
The charwoman stayed for tea, and uncovered a rich vein of reminiscence
suitable for the occasion. The blinds were drawn down, the windows
opened. Outside, in the square, was heard the champing of bits, the
rattle of the harness, that poor Mrs. Barbour had loved to listen to of
an afternoon in spring or autumn.</p>

<p>Toward evening, when they were all done with the dead woman, Fenella
went softly upstairs. Nurse Ursula, upon whose breast, for want of a
nearer, the orphaned girl's first passion of grief had spent itself,
but whose attentions harassed her now, would have accompanied her, but
she would have no one. She approached the door full of awe as well as
sorrow. Within it seemed some dark angel, with brimming chalice, had
been waiting till she was calm enough to drink. There was something
sacramental in this first visit to her dead; her passion composed
itself for the encounter. Through the lowered blinds the afternoon
sun filled the room with a warm amber light. The windows were opened
slightly at the bottom, and the fresh spring wind puffed and sucked at
the light casement curtains. She laid her head down upon the pillow
and put her lips to the chill, sunken temples, upon which she felt
the hair still damp from the sweat of the death-struggle. As there
are depths in the sea which the hardiest diver cannot support save
with constraint of breathing, so there are depths of sorrowful reverie
wherein the soul abdicates for a time its faculties of memory and
comparison. Fenella did not cry nor remember nor rebel. The briny
flood rose quietly—encompassed her utterly—covered her insensibly at
the temperature of her own forsaken heart. Sorrow so deep has many of
sleep's attributes. She had been vaguely conscious for some time of a
knocking at the door before she raised her head. It was turned quite
dark; the charwoman, with a candle lighting up her frightened face,
stood in the open door.</p>

<p>"Mrs. Chirk! How dare you disturb me."</p>

<p>"Oh, miss, I'm sorry; but I knocked and knocked. Nurse is upstairs and
Frances is out, and there's two gentlemen below says they must see you.
I 'aven't told them nothink, miss, not knowin' as you'd 'ave me."</p>

<p>Some more of the dreary business of death, she concluded. She went
to her own room, bathed her eyes, dressed her hair hurriedly, and
came downstairs. She started as she opened the dining-room door. Her
visitors were Lumsden and the Dominion manager.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVIIa">XVII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">A DREAM COMES TRUE</p>


<p>The two men were in evening dress, standing a good way apart. Both
seemed ill at ease, and each showed it in a different fashion. Bryan
was pulling at his fair moustache, and Mr. Dollfus, his watch in
his hand, full of suppressed excitement, had evidently just checked
himself in a nervous pacing of the carpet. Before she could give her
indignation words, Bryan came quickly across the room, and kept her
silent with a gesture.</p>

<p>"Miss Barbour, just a word before you say anything, and before Dollfus
tells you our errand. I've brought him here to-night because I don't
want either you or him to reproach me afterward that I came between
you and even a hundred-to-one chance; but I want you to know before
he begins that the whole thing's against my judgment, and against
my inclination, too. Now then, Joe, fire away, and remember time's
valuable."</p>

<p>The Jew only seemed to have been waiting to burst forth.</p>

<p>"Mith Barbour," he exclaimed, with a nervous movement of his hands, and
lisping worse than ever, "I wantcher to thave me."</p>

<p>"To save you?"</p>

<p>"Yeth. Oh, don't look at me that way. I'm thpeakin' sense. Dontcher
know what's happenin' to-night?"</p>

<p>She shook her head.</p>

<p>"What!" he almost screamed; "you meanter thay you've forgotten. It's
the first night of the <i>Dime Duchess</i>. They're playin' the second
act now, and, by Gott, the piece is damned already!"</p>

<p>He wiped his dripping forehead with a big scented handkerchief, and
began to pace the floor again, flinging out his arms exuberantly.</p>

<p>"It's a conthpiracy from beginning to end," he cried, shrilly—"a
conthpiracy! I tell yer, Lumpsden, I bin in front, and I know a lot of
the faces. Fifty or sixty of Costello's people if there's vun. I'll
haf the law on him. But cher can't turn out sixty people, eh! They've
stopped Ormiston's encore twice; Mith Carthew's so frightened she can't
sing a note. Three months' work and thousants of pounds gone to h—ll
in a night, by Gott!"</p>

<p>"Stop swearing and raving, Joe, and tell the girl what you want."</p>

<p>Dollfus sobered himself with a great effort and wiped his mouth.</p>

<p>"Scuthe my langwitch, please, Miss Barbour," he said in a lower tone.
"I'm excited; I ain't meself. I wantcher ter come and dance."</p>

<p>Fenella stared at him. "To <i>dance</i>! to-night?"</p>

<p>Bryan, who had kept his back to them, turned his head now.</p>

<p>"That's right, Flash," he said over his shoulder, "my advice to you is
'don't you do it.' Joe's crazy, but he ain't exaggerating much. They're
pretty wild over something in front."</p>

<p>Dollfus shook his head despairingly from side to side.</p>

<p>"There you go Lumpsden, there you go agen. You're all wrong. I've bin
tellin' him that all the vay in the cab. He don't know the public like
I do. They're jutht in the mood now when somethin' new and somethin'
good'll carry 'em off their feet. Mith Barbour, I haf ter go back
anyhow. It'th for you ter decide. Will you come or wontcher?"</p>

<p>"Bryan," she said. "Doesn't he know?" pointing to the ceiling with her
head.</p>

<p>"Bout cher mother!" said Dollfus, who was watching her narrowly.
"Courthe I know the poor lady'th ill. But I'll take yer down and I'll
bring yer back. Think? Three quarters of an hour! You'll never be
mithed."</p>

<p>"Mr. Dollfus, mamma died this morning."</p>

<p>The Dominion manager took up his hat without a word and walked on
tiptoe to the door. Bryan followed and, if looks could have killed, Mr.
Dollfus's troubles would have been over then and there. In the hall the
little man turned.</p>

<p>"Mith Barbour, pleathe, <i>pleathe</i> belief me. Not for a thousant
pounds, not for ten thousant, I vouldn't er had this happen. I couldn't
know, could I—ah? I gotter heart—eh? You von't t'ink the vorse of me?"</p>

<p>"Oh, come on!" said the baronet, taking hold of his sleeve. "Haven't
you done enough mischief already?"</p>

<p>"<i>Stop!</i>" cried Fenella, so loudly that both men obeyed. She
stood rigid for a moment, pressing her hands over her eyes. Across her
brain in letters like fire the last message from the beloved dead was
throbbing and glowing. "<i>Dance! Dance!</i>"</p>

<p>"I'll come, Joe!" she cried. "Just two minutes to put on my cloak,
that's all. Don't stop me, Bryan! I know what I'm doing. Let me pass!
Oh, I've had enough of its being made smooth and easy for me. I'm one
of the crowd to-night, and I'm going to help 'em pull the fat out of
the fire. I can do it, too. I never was afraid, and I've got a bit up
my sleeve you haven't seen."</p>

<p>She was gone and back in a moment, cloaked and with a little box under
her arm.</p>

<p>"My make-up box," she said, tapping it. "I just thought of it in time.
Have you got the car outside? How long'll it take? Mrs. Chirk!" she
called down the kitchen stairs. "Tell nurse I've been called away on
business and not to sit up."</p>

<p>"You're a herrowen, a herrowen," said Joe, dabbing at his eyes this
time, as they took their seats in the cab.</p>

<p>"Oh, no, I'm not, Joe. No more than any of the other girls. Do you
think I'm the only woman that's got to grin to-night when she'd rather
cry? I never was stage-struck, like other girls. I always knew it was
'work! work!' once you were over the floats. Don't look so glum, Bryan.
That's 'cos he only knows half our business, isn't it, Joe? He's only
a dabbler. It's bread and butter and a bed to lie on, and perhaps
medicine for somebody's mother, isn't it, Joe? Some of those girls told
me they'd been eighteen months out and three months rehearsing! Think
of it! Oh, why doesn't he get through the traffic?"</p>

<p>The front of the Dominion flashed past, festooned with boards
announcing that stalls and dress circle and amphitheatre were full. The
vestibule round the box office was crowded with men in dress clothes.</p>

<p>"They're just t'rough the second act," said Dollfus. "Now you know what
you've gotter do." And he repeated his instructions. At the stage door
he took her hand and pulled her after him, past the wicket and down the
whitewashed corridor, full of girls in spangled finery, who gazed at
her in amazement and drew aside to let them pass. Near the wings the
manager was pounced on by various subalterns, but he waved them aside
furiously.</p>

<p>"Go 'way! ask some vun else! Do somethin'! Getter hustle on! What
is it, Mr. Lavigne? Oh! the band parts for the cymbal dance. Take
'em rount to Steiner. I ain't the orchestra! Run up to your old
dressin'-room," he said, and let go of her hand; "I'll send up your
own dresser. Mr. Lavigne—have the old cue put back. You know. What's
it—'muffins'?"</p>

<p>Jack Ormiston was just finishing his third song as she came down
dressed, made up in vivid white and carmine, and with the little silver
cymbals on her hands. He tumbled off, breathless, perspiring through
his grease paint, and stood for a moment, his knees trembling, trying
to catch some encouragement amid the babel of cheers, counter—cheers,
whistles, cat-calls, and cries of "Order!" that followed him through.
And she had to face <i>that</i> presently—unknown, untested, her name
not even on the programme.</p>

<p>"Do you think you can do it, Flash?" Bryan asks, nervously, chewing
his moustache. In defiance of the "well-known Dominion rule" he has
followed her behind.</p>

<p>"Wait and see!" she says, without looking at him, and next moment has
taken her cue and is on the stage.</p>

<p>In front the vast concavity of the auditorium sweeps away from her
feet, outward and upward. It is dark, confused and populous, full of
faces, like pebbles, she fancies, dragged seaward by a retreating
wave—flecked white with shirt fronts and fluttering programmes—a
hungry monster, ready to engulf her at a tremor or hint of fear. Its
hot breath mingles with the cold down-draught of the stage like the
flush and chill of an ague. Beyond the blurred footlights her eyes,
misty with emotion, watch the leader of the orchestra lifting the
first languid bars of the score. His head is turned toward her. In a
moment he will give her her signal. Yet, though not a single stroke
of his baton but is counted by her, as she waits, poised and tense,
for the note upon which, with a clash of cymbals and a tremor of her
whole body, the dance must begin, her thoughts, strangely detached and
visionary, stray far away from the present moment with its personal
crisis of success or failure, to brood, with a perverse preference,
over the two great sorrows of her life—the lover who forsook her at
the cross-roads of his own ambition because she had not wealth or wit
to hold him—the mother, deserted now in her turn, whose waxen fingers,
stitch by stitch, had sewn the very dress she is wearing, and who lies
at home unwatched or watched only by strangers on the first night
of her pitiful state. Life! life! this is life. Something beautiful
yet horrible, too. Something that in its demand for service—for
distraction—takes as little heed of the woman's breaking heart as it
took of the man's thwarted ambition.</p>

<p>"<i>B-r-r-r!</i>" The note is reached. As she clashes her cymbals
together all visions take flight. The music rises like a flood, pours
over the footlights, enters into her and possesses her utterly. She
has sold herself to it, and, true to the bargain, her bangled feet
beat—beat out the rhythm upon the boards as they once, upon the sand,
had beaten out a tune that one man and the eternal sea sang together.
Not a movement of her body above the waist but is poised upon them,
governed by their shifts and changes, and nothing is stranger than,
having watched them awhile at their work, quick and calculated as
the shuttle of a machine into which a brain of steel has been built,
to look upward to where arms and breast and head thrown back are all
partners in some dream of an unattained desire, that hovers just out
of reach of the inviting arms, swoops wilfully for a moment to touch
the pursed lips, and, just as it is clasped convulsively to the heaving
breast, escapes, to leave her gazing after it with set, expressionless
face and limbs, suddenly grown rigid again.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>"<i>B-r-r-r!</i>" The cymbals bray their harsh discord anew. The music
begins, more faintly at first; slowly, slowly it woos the coy vision
back to her arms. Her face softens. Out of despair intenser desire is
born. Nearer and nearer still. But a new note of warning has crept
into the score. A muffled drum-tap, hardly heard at first, grows
louder—falls faster. And her face changes with it. To bewilderment,
horror succeeds rapidly. Either this is not the dream that fled her
arms before, or else some new significance in what she sees terrifies
her, now when it is too late. Straight and level as a blow it reaches
her. She covers her eyes, tries to strike it down, holds it from her
with outstretched hands, folds her arms across her breast to deny it
entrance. The music tears through crescendo to climax, and all the
time she is dancing as well as acting—dancing with all her strength
and skill. She cannot feel the tension of the audience, does not know
what a tribute is in its breathless attention. She only knows that
her dance is nearing its end and that they are silent. Why does no one
cheer or clap their hands? Is it possible that, amid those hundreds,
not one knows how well the thing is being done? Furore or failure:
this had been prophesied of her, and she had given no thought to the
alternative. It is to be failure then. All her work is to go for
nothing—her dishonor, the violence done her own feelings to-night—for
nothing. With success she might even have forgiven herself. A great
terror seizes her of the pitiless many-headed monster whom she has
wooed in vain and whose churlish silence has power to change all she
had thought inspiration into the dross of a crazy, heady folly. It is
beginning to murmur—to move restlessly. As she holds her arms out to
it in a sort of last abject appeal, the murmuring grows louder. It is
the wave, the wave again, of her first fancy, that has hung suspended
while she danced, and that now, gathering volume, rears its head to
finally overwhelm her with shame and confusion. She was mad to have
ventured! Nothing living can face it! She stifles a scream, dances out
the last furious finale of the orchestra, and falls prostrate, her arms
stretched out before her, the silver cymbals held upward.</p>

<p>Everything turns dark and thunderous. She feels the chorus sweep past
her with a glitter of gold legs and a stiff rustle of skirts; fancies
that the orchestra is playing again, but that something louder and
stormier is drowning it; gets shakily to her feet, takes one frightened
glance at the tumult before her, and, with a half curtsey, totters
through the wings. Mr. Dollfus rushes to meet her; he is shaking her
hands again and again, some one else is holding her round the waist and
whispering in her ear.</p>

<p>"Pull yourself together, Flash! It's all right. You must go on—once,
anyhow. Damn it, Joe, give the girl a few moments. Can't you see it's
got over her?"</p>

<p>"Did I—do—all right?" says Fenella, between gasps.</p>

<p>"All right?" Dollfus repeats, excitedly. "Cantcher hear 'em? Listen to
the noise! Wotcher think they mean? Come—surely to gootness, you're
ready now?"</p>

<p>She is calmer, and draws herself out of the baronet's arms.</p>

<p>"Go on, kid," he says, as he lets her go. "Go on, and taste popularity.
Take a good long drink of it, Flash."</p>

<p>As she came through the wings the dropping fire of applause exploded
into a roar again. It was nearly three minutes—I mean three real
minutes—before she was done kissing her hands to us all, and the play
was allowed to proceed to its triumphant finale. I happen to know,
because I was in front, and a good deal of what you have been reading
is my own impression, on record in the columns of the <i>Panoply</i>,
of the night Fenella Barbour came into her kingdom.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVIIIa">XVIII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">ICE TO THE MOON</p>


<p>And yet an hour later, when the theatre was empty, the cheering and
the speeches done, and the linotypes were pecking various people's
impressions of a wonderful night into place, she was crying as though
her heart would break. She was sitting in Lumsden's study in a big
chintz-covered arm-chair. She had taken off her hat but not her
cloak, and her hair fell in some disorder over tear-stained cheeks.
The baronet sat on the edge of a table opposite her, his long shapely
black legs stretched out before him. He had changed his coat for a silk
dressing-jacket and was smoking a cigarette. In spite of his air of
being at home, something in his face, harassed and unquiet, checked the
inference that he was also at his ease. His thin hair was ruffled and
his eyes were a little bloodshot. Quite frequently he reached across to
a tray on which a syphon, a cut-glass bottle, and a long thin tumbler
kept cheerful company.</p>

<p>"Don't you think you've cried about enough, Flash?" he suggested,
presently.</p>

<p>She pressed a handkerchief, already wet through, against her eyes, but
made no attempt to check the flow. There was something disquieting in
this steady drain upon her emotions. It seemed to tell of a mortal
wound to affection or self-respect.</p>

<p>"I t-told you I should. You should have let me go home."</p>

<p>"My dear child, it's natural you should cry after what you've been
through. But there's a point where every one ought to stop. You'll make
yourself ill."</p>

<p>"I shall never forgive myself—<i>never, never</i>!"</p>

<p>This was a point of view that the baronet had evidently tried to combat
already, and unsuccessfully. He sighed, and took another drink.</p>

<p>"I'm bad—wicked—heartless and disgraced." She jumped up and began to
button her coat.</p>

<p>"I must go—at once!" she cried. "Where did you put my hat?"</p>

<p>"<i>Flash!</i>"</p>

<p>She was so near him that without rising he could put out his hand and
catch her arm. She looked at his face and sat down, weakly and as if
fascinated. He held her so for a few moments, and then turned his eyes
away.</p>

<p>"Don't be a little muff!" he said.</p>

<p>His words seemed to relieve a tension. She giggled hysterically.</p>

<p>"You're up here to-night," he went on deliberately, "because I made you
come up, and because I wasn't going to have you go home, after eating
nothing all day, to a house where every one's in bed, and cry yourself
to sleep or lie awake starving and self-reproachful. You won't be so
hard on yourself after eating and drinking something. Hello!"</p>

<p>There was a stir and tinkle of glass and china from the inner room.
Bryan threw the door open.</p>

<p>"Bring it in here, Becket," he said.</p>

<p>Two servants entered, carrying a tray. Quickly as a conjuror the elder
of the two cleared the low table, spread a fringed linen cloth and laid
out supper. There was soup in brown silver-covered bowls, and something
in a tureen with a white tongue of flame licking the bottom, and an
epergne of fruit topped with a big pine and a phalanx of thin glasses.
The footman put a pail on the ground full of cracked ice, out of which
three long bottle-necks were sticking. He began to cut the cork of one
of them loose.</p>

<p>"Anybody call while I was out, Becket?"</p>

<p>"Madame called about nine, Sir Bryan."</p>

<p>"Again?" he said, in a surprised voice.</p>

<p>"Yes, Sir Bryan."</p>

<p>"Did she leave any message?"</p>

<p>"She said you would probably hear from her to-night, Sir Bryan."</p>

<p>Lumsden looked at the clock and shrugged his shoulders.</p>

<p>"You needn't wait up, Becket," he said. "I'll telephone to the garage."</p>

<p>The outer door closed softly upon the two men. Neither of them had
looked at her once.</p>

<p>"Now then," said Lumsden, expanding hospitably. "Sit where you are and
I'll wait on you." He put a napkin over her knees, tilted the scalding
bouillon into her soup-plate, and filled two glasses with the spumy
wine. He emptied one himself and refilled it immediately.</p>

<p>"Aren't <i>you</i> going to eat anything?" asked Fenella.</p>

<p>"Oh! I've had dinner. Besides, I'm a bit off my oats, Flash. Been
worried lately." He gazed at the fire awhile, chewing one end of his
moustache, but didn't enlarge upon the reason of his disquiet.</p>

<p>"Is that all you can eat?" he asked presently, seeing she put aside her
plate. "You must have some Hide-and-Seek, then. You should have taken
some first. It'll give you an appetite; and it'll give you a color
besides. That's another of my worries. You're too pale, child. Have you
always been so?"</p>

<p>"I suppose so."</p>

<p>"Oh! it's all right, then. Of course it's a divine color; but one
doesn't want an artistic effect at the expense of health. Well, Flash,
here's a toast: 'The New Life,' Miss Fenella Powys Barbour." He bowed
profoundly and emptied his glass.</p>

<p>Fenella just sipped her own wine. A suspicion that had crossed her mind
even in her own house, and again when Lumsden held her in the wings,
but which, in her excitement, she had forgotten, returned upon her.
Every time he filled and drained his glass fear clutched at her heart.</p>

<p>"What a rummy little face you made then, Flash. You won't do that when
you're ten years older. No, no! Thank God for the juice of the grape.
It's killed more men than bullets, but it's better to be full of it
than full of bullets. 'Ah! eh!' as Joe would say. Don't jump!—'tother
cork's just going."</p>

<p>"Bryan, don't drink any more. It—it isn't fair to me."</p>

<p>"Oh, oh! So that's the secret? That's why we're such a tongue-tied
little lady: that's why we've lost our appetite? My dear kiddie, you
surely don't think a bottle more or less makes any difference to an old
war-horse like myself. But I love you for hating it. It's a low taste
for a girl. I get fits of loathing myself; sometimes even the smell
suggests dyed hair. There, then!" He thrust the open bottle back into
the melting ice. "Now, turn to vinegar!... But I'll tell you a secret,
Flash. Half the work of the world is done by men who aren't quite sober
after nine o'clock. Just cosy, y' know. And the best paid half, too. I
could give you names that would surprise you. It's a rummy world."</p>

<p>He meditated awhile on the strangeness of the world against which he
had so little cause of complaint, shook his head, and, probably from
force of habit, mixed himself a whiskey and soda.</p>

<p>"What was I saying when we were interrupted? Oh, yes; I remember.
I'll tell you while I'm cutting up one of these little brown birds.
Why—just this, Flash. You're unhappy because you're confusing reasons
with motives. One can have all sorts of reasons, good and bad mixed,
but it's the motive that counts. Take yourself to-night. Why did you
come and dance? Well, Joe in tears is an affecting sight: that's one.
Then you don't like to see work and worry wasted: that's another. And I
think you're a helpful little baby. That makes three good 'uns. Suppose
in with all these there was a bit of vanity mixed, a little half-formed
wish to show 'em a trick or two and a very pretty shape...."</p>

<p>He stopped suddenly and threw down the knife and fork he had been
plying. "I say, Flash, don't you think you and I ought to know where we
stand?"</p>

<p>"Where we stand?" Her mouth went suddenly dry.</p>

<p>"Yes"—nervously but stubbornly—"where you and I stand. It's the
proper time for it. There's a new life beginning for you to-night,
Flash. I don't want to exaggerate it; I've seen too many of these
things end in smoke, and the time's gone by for any Lola Montes. The
world wants things just as bad, but it wants to pay less for 'em. But
you're good for three or four years, and that looks a long way ahead
to me. Flash, what do you think of me? I mean, personally. Bryan
Lumsden—the human animal?"</p>

<p>"How can I tell? I don't know you well enough."</p>

<p>"That's the sort of answer that tries to gain time and only loses it.
I'm playing <i>bona fide</i>, Flash: don't you play Punchinello. You're
woman enough to know the most important thing about me."</p>

<p>"Important for you, perhaps."</p>

<p>"Yes, my clever girl, and for you, too. You can't play the lone hand
forever. All life's a conspiracy against it. When fate throws two
people like you and me together, it doesn't let them go under an
explanation, at least. Let's have ours."</p>

<p>She covered her eyes. "Not to-night, Bryan; not to-night. Think what
I've been through."</p>

<p>"Yes, to-night, coz. Don't look scared. You ain't going to hear
anything you shouldn't. I'll begin at the beginning.... Nine or ten
months ago, you know, I was at La Palèze. I'd been asked to put money
in, and I went for a look. God knows why I stayed on. We didn't have
much to do in the evenings except talk scandal, and I admit there was a
good deal talked about a French artist and his pretty model, who were
staying together in the town. You've heard, perhaps, how common that
arrangement is all along the coast. But this time they said the model
was English, and even before I saw you I felt sorry for you. It's
a kind of national pride, I suppose. We ain't angels ourselves, but
we don't like to think of our own women that way, abroad. My bedroom
window looked right out along the beach, and when I was dressing for
dinner I used often to see you coming back along the sands. Do you
remember it?"</p>

<p>Fenella was leaning forward now, intense interest on her face, her lips
parted, and her eyes half closed.</p>

<p>"I know—I know," she broke in. "We used to go to Sables and have tea
in a little windy, boardy place that he said reminded him of America.
It was about half-past seven or seven when we used to come back, wasn't
it? And the hotel windows seemed to be all on fire, and the village all
low and gray and sad, and, however quick we walked, the streak from the
sun over the water kept up and dazzled us. And I used to stop and grub
for shells and funny things, and when I looked up he'd be miles ahead,
and I had to run—run—oh! I'm sorry for interrupting." She looked at
Lumsden and all the glow died out. "Go on, Bryan."</p>

<p>His mouth twitched and his face grew dark.</p>

<p>"Well, I spoke to you at last. I hope you remember that as vividly.
It didn't seem a great sin against propriety under the circumstances.
You'd gone before I found out who you were. If I had known, it might
have made a difference. Because I knew your father, Flash. I used to
spend my holidays at Lulford, often. Coffers was always let to some
rich cockney or other, and we used to live on the rent in Pimlico. He
taught me how to throw a fly. Then he dropped out. I heard he married
some one—who didn't—you know——"</p>

<p>"He married a farmer's daughter for love," said Fenella, proudly, but
inexactly.</p>

<p>"It doesn't matter. When I got back from New York just before
Christmas, Joe came to see me, full of news. He told me you had gone to
him asking for an engagement and that you were to spend Christmas at
Lulford. He wanted money. I wouldn't promise till I'd seen you. You
know what happened then, don't you, Flash?"</p>

<p>"I know some of it."</p>

<p>"I'll tell you the rest. When I came into the library, I won't say I
lost my heart. I'm not a man to be bowled over by the first piece of
plaintive prettiness with a white neck and a turned-down collar that
comes his way. I've seen pretty nearly every pose, and that's the one I
mistrust most. Besides, I already had La Palèze against you."</p>

<p>"It wasn't such a secret as you think. Other people had it against me
too."</p>

<p>"Yes. But with the unimportant difference that I got the credit of the
walks to Sables in the sunset and all the rest of the idyll."</p>

<p>"Which you never took the trouble to deny."</p>

<p>"Frankly, I never did, coz."</p>

<p>"Why not, please?"</p>

<p>"Ah! there you touch a kink in my nature that I can't explain."</p>

<p>"You saw that we were left alone. You must have noticed the women cut
me. Do you know that my own cousin spied on me at night and accused me
of wearing clothes and jewelry you'd bought for me?"</p>

<p>"Flash—don't scold! I didn't know all this; and if I had, it wouldn't
have upset me. It seemed more my business than any one else's what had
happened to you before."</p>

<p>"<i>You! you!</i> Why is my reputation your affair?"</p>

<p>Instead of answering, he knelt down on the bearskin hearth-rug, and
leaned forward until their eyes were on a level.</p>

<p>"Look at me, Flash—straight! That's a good girl. Now, tell me this.
I've met Ingram once. If I were to know everything as, say, for
argument's sake, God knows it, is there any reason I shouldn't like to
meet him again?"</p>

<p>"<i>You'll—never—know.</i>"</p>

<p>Of all the answers she could have made him, it was probably the one
for which he was least prepared. He jumped to his feet and stood,
baffled, pulling at his moustache and looking down on the floor. Then
he threw up his head.</p>

<p>"So be it," he said. "I'll take that risk with the others. Flash, will
you have me?"</p>

<p>She curled her lip.</p>

<p>"Oh! quite respectably. A man with his shirt outside his coat shall say
those few words first that mean so much."</p>

<p>"No, Bryan. I won't."</p>

<p>"Don't be a little donkey, Flash. You don't realize what you're
throwing away. You don't know what a man like me is prepared to do,
once he's hard hit. Don't believe all the tales you hear. My heart's
been burgled, but it's never been raided before. You <i>are</i> the
first, in a way. I'll be gentle—I'll be respectful—I'll be as like
the men in the novels girls read as I can. I know my faults. Haven't
I been holding myself in all the time? It's not as if I wanted you to
give up anything. You can live your own life, till you've tired of
it. I ain't"—he laughed shortly—"jealous of the public. And as for
the man you won't tell me about, you see I'm putting him out of the
question. He's gone, anyhow. And oh, Flash! I'll make your life a fairy
tale come true. Think of the dresses you'll have. I'll never be tired
of seeing you in new ones. And the travelling! We'll go all over the
earth. If you've got those new ideas, I'll settle money on you in a
lump. Then you won't feel bad asking me for it. I'll leave everything
to your own generosity. Could I say fairer? Could I offer more? Oh,
why don't you say something? How can you sit there and listen to me,
talking like some rotten old drysalting coronation knight?"</p>

<p>He knelt down on the hearth-rug again, unlocked her fingers, and took
them into his own—gently and with a sort of frightened respect for
the repulsion in her averted face. His own was flushed and ignobly
eager. His agitated breath, tainted with liquor and tobacco, seemed
to penetrate her fine dry hair to the scalp. Within, I suppose, was
ferment and chaos—blind, confident passion waiting impatiently on a
tenderness, felt indeed, but which seemed to perish on his lips in one
bald unconvincing speech after another, whose unworthiness he felt as
he uttered them. Somewhere inside the animal tegument that his life had
thickened and indurated he was groping for his starved, mislaid soul.</p>

<p>"Flash, why don't you speak? Haven't I eaten enough dirt yet? What
pleasure can there be in watching a human being grovel? Why don't you
say 'Yes'?"</p>

<p>"No—no—<i>no</i>!" she cried, passionately, stamping her foot.
"Bryan, don't touch me! I won't have you touch me! I've got a temper.
Oh, can't you see I'm not the sort of woman that gives herself twice."</p>

<p>She thrust him away and jumped up, pushing the arm-chair back on its
smooth casters. He rose, too, and picked a hair or two carefully from
his broad-clothed knees.</p>

<p>"I see," he said, gloomily and comprehensively. "It's a lesson not to
judge by faces. Yours has given me the sell of my life—but it's what
I've always maintained. The first man—the first man, however great a
hound he may be. You never catch him up."</p>

<p>"Think what you like of me," she cried indignantly, "but don't dare
suppose evil of him. You can't even imagine him. He's as far above me
and you, Bryan, as the stars are above the ground. You've met him, you
say. How could you look in his eyes and not be ashamed of all your
horrid, wicked knowledge? Oh!" she went on in a softer voice, "I don't
despise you, Bryan—truth and honor, I don't. I like you as a friend.
I've heard things about you; but I feel that if I was a man and had
your chances I mightn't be much better. That's honest, isn't it? You
and I are much about the same. We're fond of the world and pleasure
and all the good things money buys. What you offer dazzles me in a
way—'specially the clothes. Perhaps if I hadn't known him first—but
oh, Bryan, I <i>can't</i>—I can't come down after that! You don't know
how hard I fought for him. I found him at his work and I tempted him
away. I made myself pretty for him. I made all the advances. I'm full
of tricks, really. There's things even I couldn't tell. But they don't
mean the same to him, Bryan, as they would to us clay people. I don't
know what they do mean. I thought I might have in time. Because he was
always kind. He saw through me, I think, but my feelings never got
hurt. I think I was just a little bird that had come to drink out of
his hand, and he wouldn't frighten it away."</p>

<p>"It's a pity Mrs. Hepworth isn't alive," sneered Lumsden. "You and she
might compare notes."</p>

<p>"Is she dead?" said Fenella, in a still lower voice. "Poor thing;
that's it, then. She was ill and suffering and told him. He couldn't
resist those sorts of things—Paul couldn't."</p>

<p>"He must have been an amusing companion."</p>

<p>"Not amusing, Bryan, but, oh! something so much deeper. Don't think I
loved a muff. My darling is as strong and brave as he's good. I felt so
<i>safe</i> with him. You don't know the terror a girl can feel of a
man she isn't sure of. It's like a nightmare where you can't run away.
I'd have gone tramping with Paul. I'd have slept under a hedge if he'd
had me in his arms. Now, don't you see how impossible it is? I'm tired,
Bryan, I <i>must</i> go home. Will you 'phone for a cab?"</p>

<p>The dogged silence in which he listened to her, sitting on the edge of
the table, his hands thrust into his pockets and his head hanging down,
should have warned her. Now, when he lifted it and showed his face, she
measured the full extent of her folly in trusting herself to him. He
walked deliberately across the room and locked the outer door. With an
open laugh at her terrified face, he slipped the key into his pocket
and stood before her, his hands clutching the lapels of his smoking
jacket.</p>

<p>"Now then," he said, and took a deep breath. "You've had your
advantage and you've used it as a woman always does—mercilessly and
foolishly. It's my turn now."</p>

<p>She faced him bravely. "I know what you mean," she said without
flinching, and without raising her voice. "Don't go mad, Bryan! If you
destroy me, you destroy yourself."</p>

<p>"I'll take the risk," he answered. "I see you looking at the windows.
You're quite right. They ain't locked. You can throw one open now and
squeal. I shan't stop you. There's a bobby on point just round the
square. Tell <i>him</i> your story. But, before you do, just look at
the clock, and think how you'll come out of the show-up yourself. Time
passes quickly in the kind of chat we've been having. I think, under
the circumstances, there's discredit enough for us both. You won't?
That's sensible. Now listen to me."</p>

<p>He stopped for a moment as though his mouth were dry, filled a glass
from the syphon and gulped it down. She watched his face with a sort
of disgusted fascination—the bloodshot, frowning eyes, the dilated
nostrils, and the twitching mouth.</p>

<p>"You say you've the same flesh and blood as myself, Flash. Perhaps you
can imagine, then, how it feels when you've chucked your heart at the
feet of the only woman in the world, and she's danced on it and kicked
it back to you. Pretty bad, I assure you. There's nothing like a little
real life to chase away the dreams you've been filling your head with."</p>

<p>She would have fainted if he had kept his eyes upon her; but he turned
aside to drink again, and when he looked up it was into the muzzle of a
little steel revolver. He didn't flinch or start—only kept quite still
and whistled softly under his breath.</p>

<p>"I'll shoot!" she said. "I swear I'll shoot, Bryan, if you don't unlock
the door and let me out. It's his present. He told me I'd want it. It
was under my pillow all the time at Lulford. I've had it in my coat
pocket every time I went out with you. Will you let me go?"</p>

<p>"No," he said. "Less than ever now."</p>

<p>Her hand wavered—steadied—tightened convulsively. Next moment he
had gripped her wrist. With a little cry of pain she let the revolver
go. It fell on the thick carpet almost as noiselessly as on grass. He
picked it up and examined it before he put it in his hip-pocket.</p>

<p>"By gad!" he exclaimed half under his breath. "She really pulled the
trigger. Why didn't he tell you to push the safety catch up first?"</p>

<p>She had fallen back in the arm-chair, quite beaten and crying.</p>

<p>"Have mercy on me, Bryan!"</p>

<p>"Oh, yes! I'll have mercy. I'm going into the library to collect my own
thoughts. I'll leave you here for a quarter of an hour. You can do a
lot of thinking in that time. All I've offered you stands. If you make
up your mind quicker than you expected, just knock at the door or call
me."</p>

<p>He opened the door of the inner room, looked at her for a few moments,
checked a sudden movement either of ruth or passion, and closed it
behind him. She heard him drag a chair along the floor and sit down.</p>

<p>Left alone, she looked quickly round her for a means of escape. The
windows were not bolted. She opened one, trembling at the slight noise
it made, and looked out. The street was twenty feet below her. Empty
asphalt stretched left and right, scalloped by the street lamps into
white semi-circles of incandescent light, whose dim edges touched one
another. There was a triangular open space across the road to her left.
Some hotel or club opened upon it. As she watched, one of the glass
leaves of the door swung open, and two men in evening dress came out.
They parted at the bottom of the steps with some light talk that ended
in a coarse unrestrained laugh. One took a cab, the other went swinging
along and still shaking with laughter, in the opposite direction. Call
for help!—tell her story!—to a world like this!</p>

<p>She closed the window and looked round her with that despairing glance
that leaves no corner unscanned. Suddenly her eyes were arrested in
their search. At the farthest end of the room, just beyond the light
of a shaded reading lamp, they caught the familiar ebony and silver of
a telephone apparatus. The nurse was not to leave them till to-morrow,
and she was sleeping in Miss Rigby's old room. They had decided to
give up their telephone, but there was a month or so of the old lease
still to run. She tiptoed across the room, lifted the receiver from its
bracket and put it to her ear. Silence for a long, long while. Then the
metallic sound of feet approaching along a zinc-covered floor.</p>

<p>"Number please?"</p>

<p>She tried to keep her voice low and steady.</p>

<p>"3087 Paddington."</p>

<p>"I can't hear you."</p>

<p>She ventured to speak a little louder, glancing over her shoulder as
she did so, and the man repeated the number. After what seemed an
eternity she heard a piping, sleepy little voice with a Scotch accent.
Thank God! It was nurse.</p>

<p>"Who are you?"</p>

<p>She had not answered when the receiver buzzed in her ear, nearly
deafening her. Another voice, louder, more urgent, broke in.</p>

<p>"Are you Mayfair? Is this Sir Bryan Lumsden's?"</p>

<p>"Oh! please go away," pleaded poor Fenella, "you're interrupting a
call."</p>

<p>"I <i>won't</i> go away. We're Hampstead. Is this Lumsden's? It's
urgent. It's life or death. Tell him——"</p>

<p>She listened for a moment, then dropped the receiver with a scream.
Bryan burst into the room, haggard, his tie hanging loose.</p>

<p>"What's the matter? Are you hurt?"</p>

<p>"Oh, Bryan! There's some one on the telephone for you. They say your
son——I don't understand. It's something awful."</p>

<p>Lumsden caught the oscillating receiver and clapped it to his ear. This
is what she heard:</p>

<p>"<i>What!</i> Both? <i>My God!</i> The boy's alive? Have you got——?
What does he say? Yes! At once! <i>At—once!</i>"</p>

<p>He turned so quickly that Fenella, who was standing by his shoulder,
was nearly thrown over. She had to catch his arm to keep her balance.</p>

<p>"Is it bad news?"</p>

<p>"Yes, yes! Oh the devil!—the devil!"</p>

<p>"You'll want the car, won't you?"</p>

<p>"Yes. Do you know how to call it? Put the peg in the hole marked
'Garage!' Say: '<i>At once</i>—dressed or not.' I can drive."</p>

<p>He tried the outer door, cursed at finding it locked, then remembering,
took the key from his pocket and flung it open. He shouted. It seemed
scarcely a minute before the passage was full of servants, half
dressed, the women with their hair loose, and the men fastening their
braces—hardly two before the car was at the door, filling the quiet
street with the throb of its great pulse.</p>

<p>"Call a cab and get home quick," he said, as he twisted a white muffler
round his throat. "You'll find the number of a cab-rank in that red
book. Have you got money for your fare?"</p>

<p>"Can't I go with you, Bryan? Can't I help?"</p>

<p>Even in his distress he had time for a moment of surprised admiration.</p>

<p>"Oh, Flash!" he groaned, "there's no one like you. Come on, then, and
be in at the finish!"</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIXa">XIX</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">THE WAGES</p>


<p>The chauffeur was fastening his leather gaiters as they came out.</p>

<p>"Frognal!" was all Bryan said. "And drive like h—ll!"</p>

<p>The lad touched his cap. As they took their seats, the car seemed to
bounce and then leap forward. The streets and squares were empty,
except for an occasional limping shadow on the pavement that stopped
short at their approach and turned to watch them past. From time to
time the chauffeur's shoulder dipped to one side, and the piercing wail
of a "Gabriel" horn went before them like an admonition of judgment
at hand. She knew then that they were nearing a corner, and that she
must hold her companion's arm, for the suddenly diverted impetus seemed
to heel the car over on two wheels and she could not keep her seat on
the inflated cushions except by clinging to him. But he never spoke to
her, or seemed to notice the clutch upon his sleeve. The muscles of his
forearm were always moving spasmodically, as if the anguish of waiting
found relief in some restless, regular motion of the hands. She knew he
had a trick of twisting his signet-ring round and round. The carriage
lamp was behind his head, and she only saw his face in silhouette. In
the dark lanes around Hampstead the car seemed to be plunging giddily
into a tunnel of light made by its own lamps.</p>

<p>It stopped, almost as suddenly as it had started, outside a thick
hedge of evergreens. Over an unpainted oak gate an electric light was
burning inside a tiny drop-lantern of frosted glass. Beneath it three
or four men were standing together; one of whom wore a flat braided
cap with a peak. Lumsden jumped out almost before the car had pulled
up, and, with a hasty word to the man in blue, disappeared. He had not
asked her to come in with him, and she was shy of renewing her offer of
service. She sat still in the corner where he had left her, and began
to look about her and take her bearings. The hedge was so high and the
house so far back that she could only see two of its gable windows. A
light, turned very low, showed in one of these. Across the road, on
the other side from the house, was a pebbled path with a fringe of
coarse grass at its further edge. In front of her a few lamps marked
out a curved perspective of road. Beneath it and beyond, the heath
lay in confused patches of various intensities of blackness. The sky
was paling over in the direction of Highgate, and a bird in a tree
overhead, roused probably by the glare of the lamps, was beginning to
pipe drowsily and tentatively.</p>

<p>A "<i>honk! honk!</i>" like the croak of some old marsh-haunting
reptilian bird, began to sound behind her from the direction in which
they had come. It grew louder. A motor-cab slowed up behind them, and
two men, one of whom carried a large bag, passed quickly into the
house. The two chauffeurs, avoiding the whispering group at the gate,
walked up and down together on the edge of the heath, smoking the
cigarette of freemasonry and stamping their feet, for the morning was
turning cold. A French maid-servant brought out a big cat-skin rug.
"For mademoiselle," she said. Her beady eyes scanned the girl curiously
as she tucked it round her.</p>

<p>It was broad daylight when Fenella woke, and the heath was a dull
sodden green under the window. Lumsden was shaking her by her shoulder.
She woke suddenly and completely, as we do from a sleep of which we are
half ashamed.</p>

<p>"Why didn't you call me before?"</p>

<p>"You were better asleep. You couldn't have done anything."</p>

<p>"Is—is the boy better?"</p>

<p>He shook his head, and put his hand to his throat as though his collar
irked him.</p>

<p>"Not—dead? Oh, Bryan!"</p>

<p>"<i>S—s-h!</i> Just going. Come in now. I want you to see him first."</p>

<p>The house was quite new, full of quaint projecting windows planned to
trap the sun, with a tiled roof that dipped and rose in unexpected
places. A house of nooks and corners—built for light and air, and the
new religion of open window and running water over porcelain baths, in
which one feels death to be almost as incongruous as dust. Half the
hall door was of glass, in bubbly panes like the bottom of a bottle.
He held it open for her, and, bidding her follow, crossed the tiled
hall parlor to a white-railed and velvet-carpeted staircase. A red-eyed
maid-servant, carrying an enamelled pail and with a mass of soiled
linen over one arm, stood aside to let them pass. At the head of the
staircase was a square landing, lit by an octagonal turret skylight. A
great many doors opened off it. Bryan turned the handle of one.</p>

<p>"In here!" he said.</p>

<p>The room was large and gaily papered. In the centre was a brass-railed
cot. Its brass-railed sides had been lifted off and stood, behind it,
against the wall. All around the little bed, upon tables and even
chairs, were strange utensils, meaningless to the girl, some in glass,
others in shining white metal with tubes that coiled and trailed, and
linen, linen, everywhere that sheet or towel could be hung. The room
was as full of strange scents as of strange shapes, but that of rubber
overpowered all the rest, and was to be, for all time, the smell that
could most vividly recall the scene to the girl's memory. The blinds
were up, but no one had remembered to switch off the lights. Into one
corner of the room a pile of toys had been hastily swept; prominent
among them a great elephant brandished four lumpy wheeled legs in the
air.</p>

<p>Upon the bed a little lad of five or six was lying, covered with
clothes to his waist. Even now, with his poor little face lead-color,
and all the spun silk of his hair damped down on his forehead, he was
beautiful: with the hue of health on his cheek the face must have been
that of an angel. His fringed eyelids were closed, and had dark shadows
under them; his pinched nose was pitifully like Lumsden's. He seemed
to be very tired, and very glad that all these clever people had given
up exercising their skill upon him. For no one was doing anything now.
One man, in shirt sleeves, held his limp wrist in a great hairy paw,
and kept his eyes upon his watch; the other stood at his colleague's
shoulder with his hands behind his back, intent upon the shrunken
little face.</p>

<p>Lumsden cleared a chair, and, pulling it forward, bade the girl, with a
gesture, sit down.</p>

<p>"Any change, Webber?" he asked.</p>

<p>"It may be a few minutes yet. <i>Hush!</i>"</p>

<p>He got up and put his ear to the boy's mouth. A faint snore was
audible. He looked up at his partner.</p>

<p>"'Cheyne-Strokes' breathing beginning, Girling."</p>

<p>"Is he suffering?" Bryan asked. He seemed to have lost interest in the
technicalities of the question. "That's all I want to know."</p>

<p>"No, no," said the younger man. "Please believe us, Sir Bryan. He won't
have suffered from first to last."</p>

<p>"Why's it such a long business?"</p>

<p>"Oh! seven hours is nothing unusual. The power of resistance in
children his age is generally much greater. Twelve to fourteen is quite
common. I still believe, Webber, there was subcutaneous administration
as well."</p>

<p>"Perhaps. I could find no puncture, but his reaction to the ether
certainly looked like it."</p>

<p>As Webber spoke he dropped the wrist, pocketed his watch, and made a
sign to Lumsden.</p>

<p>"Can I take him up?" said the baronet.</p>

<p>"Yes. It doesn't matter now."</p>

<p>Bryan lifted the inert little body out of bed, held it to his breast,
and put his face down on the wet curls.</p>

<p>"<i>Squirrel! Squirrel!</i>" he whispered once or twice, and held him
closer.</p>

<p>"I can't hear anything now," he said at the end of a few minutes.</p>

<p>"Let me look at his eyes," said Webber.</p>

<p>Bryan gave a great wild laugh. "His eyes! Good God, man! what do you
think you'll see there? Eyes? He never had any. He was born blind."</p>

<p>He laid the body tenderly down on the bed, put one hand across his face
for a moment, and touched the weeping girl on the shoulder.</p>

<p>"Come down, Flash. I must send you home now. Don't cry so, girl! It's
not fair. This is <i>my</i> funeral."</p>

<p>On the way to the head of the staircase they passed another door. He
laid his hand upon the brass knob.</p>

<p>"I promised I'd show you real life. There's more inside here. Do you
want to see it?"</p>

<p>"No! no!" The girl shrank away, and pulled her skirts from the panel.</p>

<p>"All right, then. Don't be afraid. I haven't been in myself yet. I'm
not going to. The fiend! oh! the fiend, Flash! A little child like
that—a little boy born blind! He never saw the sun. Look out of this
window over the heath and think of it. For all he ever saw he might
have lived and died at the bottom of a well. I used to describe things
for him though. He was stupid with some people, but he knew my voice.
Gad, how he knew it! You'd see the poor little devil's eyes straining,
straining, and he'd struggle and kick and push things out of the way
till he found me. Oh! the incarnate fiend!"</p>

<p>"Bryan! She's dead, remember."</p>

<p>"Dead! What do I care? If she wasn't I'd have killed her myself.
And she knew it. She was the one I cared for least. A cold, vicious,
bargaining jade. I tried to get the boy away, but she was too d—d
clever. So many hundreds a year more, that's all he meant to her.
Do you remember my asking you once if you were fond of kids? I
was thinking of him when I asked you that. Some day, perhaps—I
thought——'Cos some good women are the devil over things like that,
Flash; and if I'd had a dozen born right they shouldn't have come in
front of him—This is nice talk to a girl!"</p>

<p>"I don't mind, Bryan. I don't seem to mind a bit now. I think I've
missed my proper delicacy, somehow."</p>

<p>He stared at her. "You haven't missed your health, at any rate. You
must be a robust little animal for all your color. This time yesterday,
Flash, think of it! If it was put in a book, who'd believe it? I wonder
if everything that ever can happen a man and a girl has happened us, or
if there's more coming to-morrow."</p>

<p>They had been talking in the dining-room. He went over to the sideboard
for a drink and stopped suddenly. A half-crown was lying on the top of
the buffet. He brought it over to the light, lying flat in the palm of
his hand.</p>

<p>"This is a rummy coincidence, Flash," he said, without taking his
eyes off it. "D'you know, years and years ago in Vienna, where I
was a thing that danced and trailed the conquering sabre past the
<i>Töchterschulen</i> in the <i>Hohenmark</i> on court days, I spun a
coin this very size to decide a rather important matter for me. 'Tails
I go on; heads I go out.' I wasn't bluffing. I was pretty hard hit, or
thought I was. But I was young, too, and I'll never forget my feelings
when I looked down and saw the double eagle—I'd shut my eyes while it
spun, and I remember feeling behind in my hip pocket——Hello! Where
did this come from?"</p>

<p>He was holding Ingram's strange present in his hand.</p>

<p>"Of course. Another property. 'Act ii., scene 2: The lair of the wicked
baronet.' Do you want it back? No, I won't, though," snatching it back
as she reached for it. "Guns are for people who know how to let them
off."</p>

<p>He made a movement as though to put it back, then checked himself, and
balancing it in his hand looked from it to the coin and back again. The
half-crown lay now, head upward, upon the table.</p>

<p>Suddenly Fenella caught his arm. "Bryan! not that—not that!"</p>

<p>He seemed to rouse himself. "Not that?"—angrily. "Why not? What d'you
mean? How can you know what I was thinking of?"</p>

<p>His hand had closed upon the weapon. She loosened his fingers one by
one to find her own hand held fast.</p>

<p>"Bryan, perhaps I've been too hard on you to-night.
Suppose—suppose——Don't look at me that way or I'll stop. I don't
promise anything. I must have time. It won't be easy for either of us."</p>

<p>He bent his head and put his lips to the hand that had been held out to
slay him and to save him in one night.</p>

<p>"As you will, Flash. God bless you whatever you do with me."</p>

<p>"And now, dear, let me go," she said gently. "Remember, I have my own
dead to watch."</p>



<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_III">PART III</h2>
</div>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="Ib">I</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">THE BATHS OF APOLLO</p>


<p>On a foggy November morning of the year whose events have been
chronicled a man came out of a house in Westminster and stood for a
moment on the worn steps, supporting himself against one of the pillars
of the porch, to blink sorely at the raw day. The house he was leaving
was one of a few old buildings that still exist on the long, crooked
street whose northern frontage follows the ancient precincts of royal
abbey and palace. From its size, the graceful detail of its doorway,
the white and black squares unevenly paving its hall and the depth of
brickwork which the long recessed windows revealed, one judged at once
that this had been, in days gone by, the town mansion of a great legal
or political family, forced by its very functions to dwell at the gates
of the legislature. But whatever it had been in olden times, to-day
the great house was inexpressibly sordid and degraded. The cupids
and garlands of its doorway, blunted by two centuries of whistling
house-painters, had well-nigh disappeared once for all beneath a last
coat of coarse red-brown paint. With the same dismal tint—the old
penitential hue of the galleys—were daubed window-sashes and sills,
the panelling of the wide hall, the carved brackets that supported the
crumbling edges of its tiled roof. Within, one conjectured rightly
bare lime-washed walls—disinfection, not decoration—sodden boards
worn away round the knots. Even in the foggy half-light, so merciful
to all that has beauty of outline still to show, its crude defacement
did not escape. One felt that the pickaxe and sledge-hammer of the
house-breaker, busy in a neighboring hoarded space, spared it too long.</p>

<p>A thick, dun mist had been creeping up-river since dawn from the Kent
and Essex levels, gathering up on its way the filthy smoke of glue
factories and chemical works, and holding it suspended over the spires
and domes of the Imperial city. The close alleys and wynds that, like
a fungus growth upon polluted soil, cover the area once sacred to
the brothels and dog-kennels of the Plantagenet Court, seemed not so
much to be endued with smoke and grime as actually to be built up out
of compacted slabs of the sooty atmosphere. The sun was still in the
east—a red wafer stuck on a sealed sky.</p>

<p>For a few minutes the man stood still, as if either too tired to make
up his mind which way he should take, or as if, really paralyzed for
the moment by the equilibrium of the forces that acted on his will, he
was at the point where, vertigo having seized upon the mind and, as
it were, disorientated it, direction loses its meaning. It is almost
certain that had any passer-by—a policeman, a man bearing a burden,
even a child—jostled the man, he would have gone on in the direction
to which the collision turned him.</p>

<p>He wore a jacket and trousers of what had once been blue serge, faded
by exposure, by dust, by rain that soaked in the dust, and sun that
dried the rain in turn, to that color which is obtained by mixing all
the primaries upon a palette. A streak of the coat's original color
showed still under the upturned collar, and had the effect of a facing
upon a soldier's tunic. Coat and trousers were miserably frayed at the
edges, but neatly mended in more than one place. Probably from being
worn night and day upon an almost naked body, the stiff straight lines
natural to modern clothing had disappeared, and they had acquired, in
their place, an actual mould of the limbs. His shoes, spattered with
mud and grease, seemed once to have been brown. They were broken,
and the heels had been trodden down so far that the soles curled up
in front like an eastern slipper. The man was quite clean, his hair
and beard even trimly kept. His face was refined. Whatever physical
suffering he was undergoing or had undergone, it was evident he had not
yet reached the depth at which the soul contracts and shrivels once
for all, and, dropping into some inmost recess where only death shall
find it again, leaves the animal epidermis to bear the outrage of life.
Under one eye the discoloration of an old bruise showed faintly.</p>

<p>As he looked about him—first above his head, then mechanically to
left and right—what was almost a look of relief and peace came over
the tortured face. In this narrow drab margin twixt night and night—a
day only by the calendar and by the duties it imposed—it is possible
he felt something akin. Something of the mechanical precision of life
that was such a reproach to his own confusion would have to be relaxed.
It would be a day of late trains, of crawling, interlocked traffic, of
sudden warnings from the darkness, with the ever-present possibility
of some levelling disaster to lend a zest to the empty hours. Excluded
from human communion on the side of its pleasures, the outcast yearns
toward it all the more upon the side of its pain and mischance. What is
the savagery of revolution but a very exaltation of perverted sympathy?
"Weep with me, my brother," says the red of hand, "weep with me at
least, since I might not rejoice with you."</p>

<p>He had been the last to leave the common lodging-house which had given
him a night's shelter, and, as he lingered, the deputy, a big, fleshy
man in shirt-sleeves, came down the passage behind him, whistling and
sweeping before him the caked mud which forty pairs of broken shoes
had brought in during the night. At the sound of his broom against
the wainscot, the man turned sharply, with a sudden energy that was
like the release of a coiled spring, and, thrusting his hands into
his pockets, strode off to the left quickly and aimlessly as a caged
wolf. Where Great Smith Street runs into Victoria Street he turned to
his left again, and followed the main thoroughfare southward. Through
the happy accident of its deflection midway, at the point where the
colossal doorway of the Windsor Hotel confronts the Army and Navy
Stores, Victoria Street possesses, as all visitors to London with the
architectural sense must have noticed, a dignity and effectiveness
unique in the city of costly ineptitude. Approached from the river
at sunset or sunrise, or in any light low enough and dim enough to
hide the sorry detail of its lofty houses, the effect approaches the
monumental. The wanderer's eyes had been fixed on the ground; but,
possibly arriving at some spot where in former days he had been used
to watch for it, he raised his head and stood, unsteadily, for a few
seconds, intent upon the beauty with which the world is as prodigal as
it is niggardly of its substance. The sky was an orange dun, deepening
and lightening almost momentarily, as though some pigment with which
the day was to be dyed later were being prepared overhead. The long
Italianesque façade of the stores was all one blue shadow, but over
its roof, through some atmospheric freak, the campanile of the new
cathedral emerged, pale pink and cream, and in the upper windows of the
great hotel, whose pillars and helmed mask closed the prospect on the
right, a few wavering squares as of strawberry tinsel foil reflected
the foggy sun. As he watched, leaning against the railing, one might
have noticed his lips move. He took his clenched fists from his
pockets, and opened them slowly with a strange gesture of surrender. It
was as though some inward resolution, evidenced by the hasty walk, the
lowered eye, the clenched hands, yielded at its first contact with the
influence he was attempting to forswear.</p>

<p>A man who had been walking hastily from the opposite direction, with a
long roll of blue prints under his arm, stopped short, pulled off his
glove, and, diving into his trouser pocket, pulled out a copper and
pressed it against one of the open palms. The dreamer started, closed
his hand upon the penny convulsively, and, without a word of thanks,
gazed after the bustling figure. He opened his fingers slowly and
looked at the coin, with the same fear and repugnance that a sick man
might show who, having put his hand to his mouth, finds blood upon it.
Then, still holding it in his hand, he quickened his walk, until it was
almost a run.</p>

<p>In a baker's shop near the terminus he spent half the money on a
stale roll, and ate it, standing in the doorway of the Underground
Station, and using his free hand to cover his mouth, as though he
felt his voracity was indecent. A wretched little waif—a girl child,
bareheaded, in a long dress like a woman's, and with her hair done up
in a wisp—seeing him eating, approached, held out a hand scaled with
dirt like a fish's skin, and begged of those rags with the same blind
confidence with which the child in heart asks relief of a beggared
providence. He gave her the halfpenny, and as much of the bread as he
had not eaten; then, crossing the road, he shouldered his way into the
station yard.</p>

<p>The Continental Night Mail, more than half an hour late on account of
the fog, was just in. A long line of motor-cabs, with an occasional
four-wheeler, stood along the curb. Porters in charge of portmanteaux
and trunks were shouting and gesticulating; the air was full of grunts,
whistles, and the sudden clatter of horses' feet catching hold on the
pavement. The man paid no attention to the motor-cabs, but, slipping
behind a four-wheeler loaded with luggage and a bicycle, followed it
from the yard and into the street.</p>

<p>The cab rolled along through Pimlico and in the direction of the river.
Almost immediately the station was left the fog shut down and hid
the houses on either side. The driver, an old street pilot of thirty
years, kept on at a steady amble; the man behind, quite ignorant of his
destination, settled down to a steady loping run, which apparently he
was prepared to keep to between the wheels as long as the horse kept to
it between the shafts.</p>

<p>At a cross-traffic break he looked up, and saw he was not alone. A
short, thick-set stranger, with a bullet head and strangling, wheezy
breath, had joined him <i>en route</i>. That competition which is said
to be the soul of trade was not to be lacking.</p>

<p>"Ullo!" said the stertorous one, as soon as he felt himself observed.
"W'ere did <i>you</i> come from?"</p>

<p>Finding he was not rebuked, he thought it safe to essay a little
further.</p>

<p>"You be awf and find a —— keb for yourself. D'jeer? Follered this
from the stishun, I did."</p>

<p>His bearded brother in misfortune gave him such a look that he judged
it wise to defer settling the difference. The cab started again,
turned, and twisted in the maze of stucco streets, always followed by
the two men; stopped finally in a crescent that even in daylight was
secluded, but in a fog might be said to be mislaid. Bullet head, being
outside the wheel, used his tactical advantage to lay one authoritative
hand on the leather trunk and the other on the bicycle.</p>

<p>"It's aw ri', guv'nor," he called, reassuringly through the window
to their proprietor. Even as he spoke, he was himself deposited upon
the pavement in an efficient manner of which the tall comrade's face
had given no hint. Followed, not so much a volley of oaths, as a kind
of set-piece, a transparency of language, which hung suspended in
the shocked air of Pimlico long enough for a window or two to open,
presumably in protest. Appealed to by his fare, a literary gentleman
of peaceful habit, upon the score of age and experience, the driver
refused to be drawn into the conflict.</p>

<p>"Settle it between yerselves," he said complacently, sucking on a voice
lozenge and pocketing his legal fare. "Door to door, my trade is, and
don't ferget it." A woman meantime had opened the hall door, and was
scolding every one, impartially, in the dialect of Fifeshire.</p>

<p>Nothing goads to madness like foiled knavery. The tall man, having
already shouldered the trunk, the short one laid a violent and
ill-advised hand upon it from behind. Next moment it was set upon the
ground and with a vigorous movement of the shoulders that gave his
words authority, the dreamer spoke for the first time, in a voice whose
accent and whose idiom alike were familiar.</p>

<p>"See here, now! You have one minute to hit the grit. If you're not gone
then, I'll lay that mouth of yours against the sidewalk and give it the
dry cleaning it needs. Now that goes—all the way!"</p>

<p>"My God!" I cried, "it's Ingram!"</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>He turned to run, but I clung to him. He was a powerful man, much
stronger, even exhausted as he was, than I have been at any time, but
I am proud to think my grip upon him never once gave way. At last he
desisted, perhaps because he heard tears in my voice, and disengaged my
fingers gently.</p>

<p>"Ingram! Oh! in God's name what does it mean? I thought you'd gone
back—thought you were thousands of miles away."</p>

<p>He laughed. "Can't you see what it is, Prentice? It's the last note in
journalism. A delegate to the depths. Talks with the underworld. I'm
doing it pretty thoroughly, don't you think?"</p>

<p>Well, I stood there and pleaded with him. His competitor carried in the
baggage meekly, under Mrs. Mac's petrifying eye, was paid, and went his
way—the mystified Jehu cracked his whip and rumbled off into the fog
before I had exhausted half the arguments and expedients with which my
brain swarmed. I wanted him to take money, to come in and be fed and
clothed, to go back to America (assisted passage). He shook his head
at everything, and at the last suggestion set his bearded jaw hard. I
thought his objection very fanciful.</p>

<p>"I won't go back," he said, "to see a democracy that has had its chance
and missed it, done to death with a golden bandage over its eyes. It's
less hard to stop here among the poor devils that have never known what
economic independence meant."</p>

<p>He found reasons equally good or equally bad for resisting my offers
toward rehabilitation in England.</p>

<p>"It's no use, Prentice," he said, again and again. "Believe me, between
the very last rung of the social ladder and the depths in which I'm
swimming round and round, and waiting for the final suffocation,
there's a sheer fall that no power on earth can ever bridge again. From
where I am I can speak still, hear still, even feel. I look up and see
living men on the slope above me. Some are slipping down, some, who
have stood once on the verge and looked over, are crawling up again,
weak and half dead from terror. But I and those with me are past help.
You don't know the gulf that separates having a little money, even your
last pound, from having none at all. That's an experience as final and
irremediable as death. None can imagine it unless they have known it,
and none that have known it ever come back to tell."</p>

<p>Before such remorseless logic I weakened, little by little. I told
him he was ungenerous—that friendship involved debts of honor he had
never been willing to pay; finally I went into the house to make him up
a parcel of warm underclothing. I remember blubbering like a whipped
lower-form urchin as I ransacked drawers and trunks, and how the string
kept snapping as I tried to tie up the great untidy brown-paper parcel.
When I came downstairs the street was empty.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="IIb">II</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">LIGHTNING IN THE FOG</p>


<p>He ran, he has told me since, like a man with a hue-and-cry in his
ears, turning left or right at random. At last his breath failed; he
remembered his rags, and noticed people looking suspiciously after him.
He came out onto the river somewhere near the Tate Gallery, by a yard
full of spray-battered old ship figureheads, and crossed the big new
bridge to the Albert Embankment. At a river sluice below an iron yard
men were unloading bundles of Belgian tees and angles from a barge.
The river was falling fast, and he got an hour's job helping them to
unload the cargo. It was on such casual labor, I suppose, that for
months he had supported life. He was paid sixpence for his hour's work,
and, seeing his strength and famished willingness, the lighter-men
overloaded him and raised a weal on his shoulder. He was still nearly
starving, but did not dare spend the money till later. By two o'clock
in the afternoon the fog was general and very thick. He was standing
in the centre of the little foot-bridge that runs under the viaduct
from Charing Cross Station. Above his head trains rumbled softly and
circumspectly. There were Pullman cars filled with sun-worshippers on
their way from the winter-smitten city to France and Italy—to ivory
villa and amethyst bay, maybe to the white sun-steeped cities upon
whose ramparts he had once stood sentry. The fog-signals went off in
his ears like cannon. On the Middlesex shore of the river was a dim
bustle, muffled tang of gongs, constant flitting of blurred lights; but
under the Surrey shore, lonely as a quicksand on the Breton coast, a
strip of mud left by the falling tide shone, a coppery red, beneath
the bulk of the big Lambeth brewery. Below his feet a squadron of
empty lorries lay moored together, four—four—and three, like a hand
of cards dealt face downward by a fortune-teller. All around him was
mewing, as from a dozen litters of kittens; the fog became thick with
the fluttering winged forms of sea birds. No one had passed him for a
long time. He stretched out his arms and spoke aloud—</p>

<p>"Soul! what things are these that hem us in—that compass us about this
November noontide, as we roam, stifled and uncertain, through Babylon's
foggy streets? These towers, soaring into the infinite; these palaces,
whose limits we conjecture from the dimmed overflow of light within;
these chariots, rolling one instant soundless from obscurity, next
instant engulfed by it? What things are they? Even such as to-day thou
beholdest them: shadows, phantoms, vapor, and cloud. To-morrow the wind
shall smite them, and their places know them no more; daylight seek
them, and find them gone. Oh! paradox immeasurable, that where the sun
had lied to thy senses fog should truly bespeak them!"</p>

<p>Solitary as he seemed, he had been observed for some time. A bulky
figure, in heavy overcoat and helmet, stepped from behind a girder and
touched him on the shoulder.</p>

<p>"Don't you think you'd best get to one side or the other? It's bad
loitering weather."</p>

<p>Ingram started at the touch, then looked over his shoulder and laughed.</p>

<p>"I see," he said. "But there's no fear of that," and he looked at the
river again. "You'd have come in after me, I suppose—boots, overcoat,
and all."</p>

<p>"I'm not saying what I'd have done," the constable answered stolidly.
"My dooty, I hope. But it's not the day I should choose to win the
Albert Medal on."</p>

<p>He looked at the suspect closer, and seeing a man probably as strong as
himself, his voice and manner changed. There was a new freemasonry in
it when he spoke again, and a strange curiosity, shame-faced but eager.</p>

<p>"Man to man, mate; is it very bad?"</p>

<p>Ingram turned on his heels like the soldier he had been.</p>

<p>"Man to man—no. I've earned sixpence this morning; that's supper and
bed. My nakedness is only an offence to the providence I've ceased to
believe in, and I've the æsthetic sense which makes a thing like that,"
and he pointed to the patch of rosy mud, "a living joy. What man who
works for bread will have more to say in two hundred years? Do you know
there are great artists who'd go a day without food to paint truly what
we've got under our feet. Not many English ones, though. I'll do them
that justice."</p>

<p>"I think I know wot you mean," said S. 11. "I'm fond of pitchers
myself. I suppose you know there's one of our force gets 'is pitcher
into the 'cademy reg'lar every year. But hunger's one thing and
starvation's another."</p>

<p>"It's not starvation, man; it's the fear of it that's putting out the
sun and stars for three quarters of the world. 'Do <i>my</i> work or
starve! do <i>my</i> work or starve!' that's what every factory hooter
and works bell and alarm clock is ding-donging from morning till night.
We're all too frightened to do ourselves justice. We sit down to our
desk, or stand to our bench or easel with a full belly and an icy cold
heart. So the great book never gets written, and the great picture
never gets painted, and the great wrong never gets righted, and the
soul we have no use for is passing into piston-rods and flywheels
that eat up human flesh and blood as the beasts of the field chew
grass. No thank you, constable. Didn't I tell you I'd got sixpence.
Keep it for the next woman you have to move on. <i>That's</i> the
shame—<i>that's</i> the unpardonable sin."</p>

<p>There had been no present thought of self-destruction in his mind,
but, in spite of himself, the policeman's suspicion stirred a dormant
idea that was now a comfort to him, now a terror, just so far as it
lay vague or assumed definite shape. He climbed the ascent into the
Strand, glad to be in the crowd again, and to feel himself jostled
and elbowed by its hurrying life. Amid all the human tide that, after
having turned the wheels of commerce all day, was now setting homeward,
there was probably no one who walked straighter or brisker than he.</p>

<p>His long steps soon carried him into a distant quarter of the city;
but as night fell he turned them toward Westminster again—back to the
house where he had slept last night and perhaps many a night before.
It was no better than others that lay to his hand, but at least its
horrors were familiar. He shrank from new initiations. Besides, it was
not seven o'clock, and eight was the earliest hour at which such places
opened. How to kill an hour?—absorbing occupation for a mind like this.</p>

<p>He decided to follow the Embankment again. There, if his feverish
walk outpaced the clock, he might loiter—lean upon the parapet, sit
down upon one of the seats. He would buy some liver in Lambeth and
cook it before the lodging-house fire. He was faint when he reached
Blackfriars, and not from hunger alone. Dimly he divined a crisis.
The last of a little store of illusions with which he concealed from
himself how personal and irremediable was his misery had been expended
during that wild talk with the man in blue upon the bridge. Something,
if life was to continue, must supply its place.</p>

<p>The work upon the widening of the bridge was still in progress.
Opposite De Keyser's Hotel a big wooden hoarding covered the pavement,
making a little niche with the low granite wall of the Embankment.
It was too early in the evening for the recess to be occupied or to
be explored by the bull's-eye lantern of law and order. He crept
within it under cover of the fog, and, resting his arms upon the wet
granite wall, relit a half-smoked cigarette. All day long, throughout
his defiant speech, his indignant bearing, his wretched assumption
of energy, he had felt himself under an observation as unfriendly
as it was thorough. Some other self, cold, critical, sneering, was
watching his struggles with amused contempt. He had felt its presence
before, but never so utterly detached, so hostile or so impatient. That
<i>alter se</i> which education creates and easy living nourishes, and
which, deplore him as we may, is a personality to be reckoned with at
every crisis and in every action of our lives, is never long content to
outlive such an experience as his. It is only a question of time before
the rational in man wearies of prison and poor entertainment.</p>

<p>"<i>Let us go hence!</i>"</p>

<p>Ingram smoked his cigarette until it burnt his lips, leaned over the
parapet, and, as he dropped the glowing end into the river, measured
the distance to the water that was "<i>clop-clopping</i>" soupily
against the foot of the Embankment. His isolation in the heart of
London was strangely complete, for such foot-passengers as passed,
passed wide of him by a railed plank walk built outside of the great
wooden hoarding that concealed him from view. The wide roadway,
moreover, full of vague sound and motion—blast of motor-horns, rumble
of trams, quick come and go of blurred lamps, accentuated his solitude.
He waited until a heavy tread that was going westward had died away
into the fog. Then he drew up his legs, first one, then the other, upon
the parapet beside his hands.</p>

<p>"<i>Oh Gawd! oh Gawd!</i>" a voice groaned behind him. He checked his
sinister movement and listened intently. Some one—some fellow-creature
in torment—was cursing and sobbing on the pavement he had just left.
He got down and groped for it. A man, huddled together, and with one
leg jerking convulsively, was lying with his head against the boards.</p>

<p>Ingram put his arms round him and lifted him gently.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="IIIb">III</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">VALEDICTORY</p>


<p>Mrs. McNaughten has assured me that I stood for nearly five minutes,
the brown paper parcel under my arm, staring blankly, first in
one direction, then in another, and licking my lips. I am glad of
her evidence that a mood so abject and personal lasted no longer.
Because—alas!—what held me in a trance that temporarily lost count of
time was not that this intolerable thing had befallen Paul Ingram, dear
Paul, with whom I had sat, so many a night and on into the small hours,
holding converse, high and austere, on man's destiny through life and
beyond—no, it was that, having befallen him, it might befall any one,
and, befalling any one—let me give the full measure of my craven
heart—it might befall me. For one paralyzing instant that veil which
mercifully cloaks the extreme chances of fate had been plucked aside.
I had looked full into its malignant eyes, and, like the man in the
Greek fable, what I had seen had been enough to turn flesh to stone. In
that moment the shadowy safeguards which men erect between themselves
and the grim possibilities of destiny—knowledge of the world,
self-consciousness, confidence in untested friendships—stood revealed,
the shams they are. The security born of years—anxious, toilsome years
it is true, but during none of which, for a single day or night, bread,
clothing, or sheltered sleep had failed me—shook and fluttered darkly
like the eternal hills in an earthquake. I literally lost hold on life.</p>

<p>Thank God, the mood was over soon. I had time to be pitiful, to be
even angry, with an illogical but humanizing wrath that fate, taking
hourly toll of the world, had not spared one dear to me. I blamed
myself bitterly for leaving him alone those few minutes. I had wearied
of well-doing too soon. He must have yielded at last. Seated by the
familiar fireside, fed and comforted, with the pipe in his mouth that
still bore the scar of his long wolfish teeth upon its stem, a better
mood must have awakened. I say a better mood, because, at certain
depths, misfortune calls almost for the same treatment as crime,
and the kindness that seeks to save must be disciplining as well as
compassionate.</p>

<p>I dined at the <i>À-peu-près</i> after my work was done, hoping against
hope there would be news of him there—some indication that might
put me on his track again. Smeaton was in the chair to-night—old
Smeaton, best and bravest knight that ever set quill in rest—with his
little restless pink face, snapping black eyes, tumbled white hair,
and bulging and disordered waistcoat. I was greeted uproariously.
For nearly a month I had been away in the south of France, press
correspondent at a murder trial which had stirred all thinking Europe
by the depths it revealed of cynical depravity on the one side, and
of morbid, reiterated condonation on the other. It was by far the
biggest thing I had been given to do yet, and I hoped I had done it
well; but it was too much to hope that, in a subject coming home so
nearly to the average sensual male, the psychological conclusions I had
drawn should pass unchallenged. I sat for over an hour, besieged by
questions, pelted with authorities, shouted down, derided unexpectedly
and as unexpectedly championed. Even madame's indulgence was not proof
against such pandemonium. She pushed open the lace-curtained door, put
her hands to her pretty brown ears, and shook a reproving finger at her
unruly family.</p>

<p>"<i>Quel tapage! Mon Dieu, quel br-r-ruit!</i>"</p>

<p>"<i>Oui!</i>" cries Smeaton, pointing at her excitedly with the
nut-crackers. "<i>Et vous en êtes la cause!</i>"</p>

<p>"Do you remember your Yankee friend's dictum on the little point
of manners we've been discussing?" Mackworth asked me when order
was restored. He was a dark, depressed man, perhaps the richest who
dined at the <i>À-peu-près</i> regularly, and had written the most
talked-about novel of the year before last.</p>

<p>"By the way," interrupted Smeaton, whose manners are bad, "who's seen
Ingram lately?"</p>

<p>"I saw him—to-day," I answered, balancing the spoon on my coffee-cup.</p>

<p>"What's he doing? I thought he'd gone back to the States."</p>

<p>"He followed a growler I took from Victoria and wanted to carry in my
trunk. Would have had to fight another man, too, for the sixpence."</p>

<p>Madame could not have desired a more complete cessation of turmoil than
followed these words of mine. In more than one pair of eyes I saw the
panic that would be my own lasting shame rise suddenly, and as suddenly
be checked. I wonder how they got it under.</p>

<p>"Was he very bad?" asks Smeaton, in a low voice. "Down—right down?"</p>

<p>I nodded.</p>

<p>"<i>Poor—devil!</i> Did he know you, Prentice?"</p>

<p>"Not at first. It was too foggy to recognize the house."</p>

<p>"What did you do?"</p>

<p>"Grabbed him as he turned to run, and held him. He wouldn't come in,
but let me go to fetch him some clothes. When I came out, he'd bolted."</p>

<p>"Bravo!" said Smeaton, and clapped his pudgy little hands.</p>

<p>"Why do you say that?" I asked, voicing a surprise I think we all
shared.</p>

<p>"Because it confirms a judgment of my own upon Ingram. He was the
logical animal <i>par excellence</i>, and to take money or substance
one hasn't been allowed to earn, if it's only a penny to buy a loaf or
a rag to cover nakedness, is to sell logic as Esau sold his birthright.
If there were more like Ingram, the tangle of this filthy old
kaleidoscope we call life might straighten out. He'll die, of course,
but at least he'll die with a man's soul in him."</p>

<p>"Listen to Satan rebuking sin!" said Waldron of the <i>Hemisphere</i>.</p>

<p>Smeaton brought his fist down on the table. "Yes," he thundered. "I
know what you mean. Yes, I've given charity. I've cast bread on the
waters—to drowning men that were begging for a rope. I've helped
lame dogs—over stiles that led to nowhere. And every time I've done
it, Waldron, I've been ashamed of myself. For I know I'm helping to
protract an agony and perpetuating a state of things that ought to
have been done with twenty years ago. Literature isn't paying its way
to-day: that's the cold fact we must face. And a thing that isn't
paying its way is a sham, no matter if it's as brilliant as the last
ten years of the old French monarchy. It's falling more and more into
the hands of men and women who either eke out a little private means
by scribbling, or else eke out their hire by borrowing. Journalism's
not so rotten; but, by the Lord Harry, after a morning in Fleet Street
I sometimes think half of us are living by taking in one another's
washing."</p>

<p>"You're taking rather a black view," said Waldron.</p>

<p>"Am I? Well, compare the present day with long ago—with Grub
Street—with what Macaulay calls the darkest period of English letters.
Read Johnson's early life—Savage—all the historical instances. Look
at the sums those beggars got! Twenty-five pounds benefit from a play
that ran fourteen nights: fifty pounds for an ode to Royalty once a
year: ten pounds for translating a volume of Portuguese travels. Why,
to many a man whose name is a household word to-day these things read
like a fairy tale. They used to call on publishers with 'projects' and
have luncheon served them while he read 'em over."</p>

<p>"What about the novel?" says Waldron, with a half-look at Mackworth.</p>

<p>"In its death throes. Fifty years hence the English novel—considered
as literature, mind you—will be as dead as the epic poem. I stick to
what I've said. When a thing ceases to pay its way, it's a sign the
stage of national development that called for it is over."</p>

<p>"What's going to take its place?"</p>

<p>"Look around you. Something's begun to take its place already:
articles, books—by people who've <i>done</i> things, not dreamed
them—written in the English any one can write who tries. 'Three
months' lion slaughter in Central Africa'; 'One degree nearer that
pole'; 'How I made my millions.' Especially the last. People never
weary of that. They don't see that the game must be up, or the secrets
wouldn't be being given away."</p>

<p>"Come!"—noticing a silence of dissent round the table. "Take a
concrete instance. Mackworth, there's only one opinion about 'When the
Sky Fell.'"</p>

<p>"You're very good."</p>

<p>"Simple justice, my boy. Now, take us behind the scenes a little. How
long did it take you to write it?"</p>

<p>"Nine or ten months."</p>

<p>"Say nine. Working hard?"</p>

<p>"All day and every day."</p>

<p>"How long before you found a publisher?"</p>

<p>"Finished in June, and it came out in the autumn season."</p>

<p>"That's a year. Were you paid on publication?"</p>

<p>"No: six months afterward."</p>

<p>"Eighteen months. I don't like to ask you any more."</p>

<p>"Oh, I don't mind telling. I've cleared a hundred and twenty pounds."</p>

<p>"For eighteen months' work and worry."</p>

<p>"It's great fun. I've nearly done another."</p>

<p>"Yes, but assuming, for the sake of argument——"</p>

<p>"——that I had to live on it, eh? Well, I'm afraid there'd have been a
third after Prentice's cab this morning."</p>

<p>"I think that settles it," said Smeaton, looking round. "No. The
novel's had its day. And what a day it's been! Let us think of that.
Fielding to Henry James! It's like the creation of another world. Come!
I'll give you a toast we can all drink in silence—'Speedy deliverance
to Paul Ingram!' And now let's talk of something more cheerful. Who's
been to see Fenella Barbour's Cuckoo dance at the Stadium?"</p>

<p>"I suppose that's really the stage of national development we've
reached," hazarded Mackworth.</p>

<p>"If it is, there's something to be said for it," said Smeaton, stoutly.</p>

<p>"She's paying <i>her</i> way, anyhow," said some one. "Two hundred and
fifty a week ought to keep the wolf from the door."</p>

<p>"Oh, the wolf at the stage door is a domesticated animal. No one wants
to frighten him away."</p>

<p>I wasn't interested in what followed, and dropped out. Now and then a
word or two struck me: "A clog-dancer with sophistications." "Anyway,
you'll see a jolly pretty girl!" "No, not Jewish, Mackworth—Phœnician.
Mother was Cornish, and she's a throw-back more than two thousand years
straight to Carthage." "As much again for the posters. Briggses paid
her four hundred for the 'Crême de Pêche.'"</p>

<p>And I smoked on, thinking of Ingram's rags. As our party broke up,
I thought Smeaton made me a sign to stop on. When we were alone, he
smoked silently for a while, and then—</p>

<p>"This is a more than usually filthy tragedy, Prentice."</p>

<p>"About Ingram? Yes, it's pretty bad."</p>

<p>"Wasn't there some book he was going to set the Thames alight with? Has
it been published?"</p>

<p>"No. It had some funny adventures; but not that one."</p>

<p>"You read it. Was it really good? Between ourselves, you know."</p>

<p>"Oh, I answer for it."</p>

<p>"Don't be in a hurry. It's not late. You knew Ingram better than most
of us. Now, wasn't there something between him and the little girl
we've been talking of? Perhaps you guessed I didn't mention her by
accident. Didn't they come here together more than a year ago?"</p>

<p>I told him what I knew, including the boat-train incident.</p>

<p>"Isn't that Ingram all over?" he exclaimed. "If his eye or his friend
or his ladylove offended him, one felt the axe would be out in a
minute. You know what they're saying about her now?"</p>

<p>"About dancing the night her mother died? Why shouldn't she? If she'd
been a shop-girl or a typist, no one would have thrown stones at her
for going on with her work. They'd have thought the more of her for it."</p>

<p>"No, no, my dear boy. I mean the Darcher case—woman at Hampstead who
poisoned herself and the little boy, you know. There was a mysterious
lady came down in the car with Lumsden. Her name was kept out, but they
say——"</p>

<p>"That it was she. Oh! impossible, Smeaton! How could it be?"</p>

<p>"Because she left the theatre with him, and happened to be in his house
when the message came through. Two o'clock in the morning! I had it
from a quarter that isn't usually wrong."</p>

<p>"And you believe it?"</p>

<p>Smeaton shrugged his shoulders. "My dear boy, I've given up guessing.
Anybody that wants it can have the benefit of the doubt, now." <i>Puff!
puff!</i> "I often think of poor Newstead, last time I saw him, at
Guy's. They thought he was going to get well, and he was sitting up on
the pillows reading one of those blasted Sunday papers that you write
for. 'Well Newstead,' said I, as I was going, 'what am I to tell the
boys?' 'Tell them,' he says, laying his poor claw of a hand on the
paper, 'tell them I'm driven to my grave at last by the beauty and the
horror of life!'" <i>Puff! puff!</i> "Why don't you go and see her?
You can get there easy enough. She's interviewed once a week on an
average."</p>

<p>"What good would it do?"</p>

<p>Smeaton rapped for his <i>addition</i>. "I dunno. I think if I were a
friend of Ingram's I'd take a certain amount of malicious pleasure in
letting her know what you saw to-day."</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="IVb">IV</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">SOMETHING LIKE CLOVES</p>


<p>As a matter of fact, I found no difficulty at all. Little Winstanley
was pleased with my murder specials, and fixed up an interview over the
'phone in no time.</p>

<p>"You're getting rather heavy metal for this, Prentice," he said,
puffing out his cheeks and regarding me with the benevolence a man
keeps for the work of his own hands; "but toddle along and see what you
make of her." One of Winstanley's illusions is that he has "formed" me.</p>

<p>Fenella had a very pretty little doll's house in the tiny square that
is tucked away near Knightsbridge Barracks, whose gardens back upon the
Park. The brickwork was very neatly pointed, and the window boxes were
full of chrysanthemums, and a red door with brass appointments flew
open to my rather timid ring with a disconcerting suddenness. But I was
not prepossessed with the stunted little maid who opened it. Neither
in manner nor appearance was she "up to" the house. There was a latent
hostility, too, in the way she scanned me.</p>

<p>"Noospapers?" she queried over her shoulder, as she closed the door.</p>

<p>I admitted it.</p>

<p>"Come in 'ere and wait."</p>

<p>I was precipitated rather than ushered into a fireless dining-room,
a little cold and uncheery for all its graceful furnishings of dark
scrolled wood and striped mulberry velvet cushions. There was a hanging
lamp over the oval table, of liver-colored bronze; mistletoe leaves
stuck over with little electric berries, which budded into light as
the girl left the room. The sideboard was covered with silver toys. I
remember a jointed crab and lobster, and a ship on wheels with all its
sails set, and a coach and six, whose driver, his calves in the air,
waved a long whiplash over six curled, trampling stallions. I know
there are more striking contrasts in the world if one goes seeking
them, but for me the injustice of life always stands pictured now by a
shelf full of useless beaten silver toys on the one hand, and on the
other by a coat buttoned across a naked throat.</p>

<p>I wonder would I have known my pale little girl with the frightened
eyes, whose heart I had been so strangely commissioned to break,
eighteen months ago? Then I had only been able to guess at the probable
grace of the body which a rough travelling coat so thoroughly covered,
and though, even in the strained, anxious face and disordered hair,
beauty had been apparent, it had been beauty seen through a mist of
tears, its harmonies disordered by the tortured questioning soul.</p>

<p>Since that time I suppose her figure had attained its full graciousness
of line and had reached the limit of development which modern standards
of bodily beauty, forced to take a fashion into consideration, would
consider compatible with elegance for a woman of her height. She was
still in half-mourning, and wore a trained dress of some soft gray
material embroidered in black on the breast and sleeves. I am a child
in such matters, but imagine her dressmaker, or the builder of garments
more intimate still, must have been something of an artist, for,
seen thus, there was absolutely nothing to recall the boyish <i>sans
gêne</i> of figure and manner which was her great asset—her trump card
upon the stage, and which, from the moment she kissed her hands across
the footlights, never failed to bring rapturous applause about her
ears. Her dark hair, "fine as the finest silk" (after all, there is no
bettering the robust descriptiveness of fairy-tale), was dressed rather
fashionably than prettily—wide across her forehead in front, and
rather far beyond her head at the back. I thought she wore too many
rings, and diamonds glittered in the soft shadow of her throat.</p>

<p>She did not recognize me, but gave me her hand to shake without
condescension, which was all in her favor. I will make a further
confession: At the first frank, interested glance of her eyes I
consigned old Smeaton and his hateful friend who didn't often make
mistakes to the eternal fellowship of Ananias. The impossibility simply
began and ended with those eyes. It was not the glamour of a lovely
face and a gracious welcome, for, as I took her hand, I remember
feeling indignant that so little shadow of the wrong my friend had done
her crossed the bright well-being of her life. It was too evident that
she forgave and forgot with equal completeness. Poor, logical-minded
Paul, carrying about with him night and day the image of this lost
mistress. Did I blame him that food and raiment were hateful to him?</p>

<p>"Why," she said, "poor man! you're shivering. This room is a bit cold,
isn't it? I'm afraid Frances doesn't like the press. I've noticed she
always shows them into whichever room hasn't a fire in it. She's rather
a tyrant, Frances is. But it's nice isn't it, to have some one left who
cares enough for you to bully you. Druce, the housekeeper, was my nurse
once. Come across to the drawing-room. It's much prettier, and there's
a fire in it. Twenty minutes now"—lifting a warning finger—"not an
instant longer."</p>

<p>I followed her across the ridiculous little hall into a drawing-room
whose size surprised me. It was low but very long, and the bottom was
filled in by a curved window of leaded glass looking out over the
sodden Park, where a belated rider or two still walked a steaming
horse and probably dreamed of a hot bath and dinner. The room, with
its lacquered "dancing dado," and walls hung with Chinese silk, has
been often paragraphed. It smelt of sandalwood and roses, and had a
fire of old whale-ship logs burning in a steel casket upon the hearth,
with little spurts of flame, all manner of unexpected tints—violet
and bottle-green and strawberry red. How fond she was of color and
glitter! A frightful old bull-terrier—reared, I should say, from his
appearance, in the bosom of some knacker's family, and whose head
something, prosperity perhaps, had turned violently on one side—got
up from the hearth-rug and came limping and sniffing across the room.
Fenella got down on her knees and put her soft cheek to the repulsive
pink nose.</p>

<p>"Did <i>he</i> want to be interviewed then? And so he shall. Do you
know"—looking up at me—"you're the first one that's seen <i>him</i>?
I generally show two small ones like pen-wipers; but they're away at a
show." She turned to the dog again. "Is he vezzy old then, and vezzy
blind, and vezzy much chewed and bitten, poor old man! and is the
world just one big, dark smell to him? Well if 'oo <i>will</i> chew
my whiskers, dear, of <i>tourse</i> 'oo'll sneeze!" She jumped up as
though some thought suddenly checked her playful mood. "Put <i>him</i>
down, please!" she said, pointing in a business-like manner to my open
note-book. "Name? Roquelaure—Rock for short. Eighteen years old—two
years less than me. Fancy <i>that</i>—younger than me! No tricks—only
habits. We were puppies together—at least, I mean—Yes, yes. Put it
down that way. It sounds rather <i>dear</i>, I think. Sit down, please.
Now, what else do you want to hear about? My dancing? Oh! I've always
danced. Used to do it instead of flying into a rage."</p>

<p>"Wait one minute, please," I said. "'The usefulness of dancing as an
outlet for the emotion is probably a discovery as old as the world
itself.' Um—um——When did you begin to take regular lessons, and how
far——?"</p>

<p>I looked up. She had recognized me. Forgetfulness? Oh! I was as bad as
the others.</p>

<p>"Wait a moment!" She rose, and left the room as quickly as her tight
silk underskirt would let her. She was back again in a minute, holding
my card in her hand.</p>

<p>"Are you <i>his</i> Mr. Prentice?"</p>

<p>I bowed my head, and laid note-book and pencil aside. What a fool I had
been to come!</p>

<p>"Where is he? Do you see him? Oh, <i>how</i> I've tried and tried to
remember your name!"</p>

<p>"I don't know where he is."</p>

<p>"But you've seen him? I know you have. Answer, please. Why do you look
so queer?"</p>

<p>"I saw him last week."</p>

<p>"Was he well? Was he happy?"</p>

<p>"He was—starving, I think."</p>

<p>"<i>O-oh!</i>" I had seen tragedy in the girl's face, now I saw it in
the woman's. I told her as much as I dared. I hope I was merciful.</p>

<p>"Why didn't you hold him?" she cried, at one point of the story. "Oh,
my God! Why did you let him go? Don't you know the sort of man he is?"</p>

<p>"I thought I was doing my best. I had only gone to get him some warm
clothes. It was such a raw, foggy morning. That seemed the first thing."</p>

<p>"Some warm clothes!" she repeated, under her breath, looking round
at the silk and silver and roses. Then she broke down, and cried and
cried. Poor soul! I had to stop her at last. I was afraid she'd be ill.</p>

<p>She was very docile, dried her eyes, and begged my pardon for what
she'd just said.</p>

<p>"You're his friend, aren't you?" she pleaded, "his real, true friend?
You won't give him up?"</p>

<p>"What can I do? I'd even bear it for him if I could."</p>

<p>"No you couldn't," she said, tightening her lips and shaking her head
decisively. "Nobody can bear anything for him. Do you think I didn't
try?"</p>

<p>She rolled her handkerchief up into a ball, and tucked it away, with a
resolute little gesture.</p>

<p>"I'm not going to despair," she said bravely, with a kind of gulp and
a tremor of her throat that set the diamonds streaming blue fire. "I
think things will come all right. I've had a kind of a—kind of sign.
Shall I tell you?"—timidly.</p>

<p>I'm foolishly impulsive, and I kissed her hand. After all, the dog does
it.</p>

<p>"Listen, then! Thursday week"—I started, but she didn't notice
it—"Thursday week I was feeling simply <i>awful</i> all day. I can't
explain it. Imagine some one you love is being tried for something
that means death—or more awful still, if it goes against him. It got
worse and worse. I've never missed a night I was billed for, but I
shouldn't have been able to go on as I was. Still, I went down to the
theatre—just on chance, you know. It was half-past seven or quarter
to eight. I had an hour, but I dressed early to be safe. Suddenly
something seemed to say inside of me, 'Now! now! down on your knees,
quick. This is the dangerous time.' My dresser had gone out. I locked
the door, and fell on my knees in a kind of faint. I prayed, and prayed
as well as I could. I don't remember much what. I think I asked God, if
Paul was never, never to be happy again, to take him the best way to
some place where nothing could hurt him any more, and where he would
see me and know what I was feeling for him. And then, Mr. Prentice—and
then——Oh! it was wonderful. Something all warm and comfortable,
like—oh! like <i>cloves</i>—why do you laugh? I'm trying to tell you
the best way I can—seemed to come round my heart. I got up from my
knees. It was eight-fifteen, and my dresser was banging on the door and
asking if I was ill. I opened it and hugged her. She must have thought
me crazy. All the sadness was gone—every bit. I knew they'd done
trying him, and he—and he——" She struggled with her emotion, and,
then, covering her face with her hands, rocked backward and forward,
moaning and sobbing—"he's Not Guilty. No! my love's Not Guilty."</p>

<p>There was a knock at the door. She turned her head quickly into the
shadow.</p>

<p>"Come in!"</p>

<p>"It's Sir Bryan, madam."</p>

<p>"Tell him to wait in the dining-room.... Now, Mr. Prentice, we must
try again. What are the best papers to advertise in? Papers that—that
quite poor people read most?"</p>

<p>I gave two or three an unsolicited testimonial.</p>

<p>"Write your address—your private address—on this card. I'll put
an advert."—she said it this way—"in three for a year. Just your
initial. The moment you hear, telegraph—no, telephone me! I'll say
you're to be always given my address. I don't go to New York for nearly
a year. Good-bye. I'll send you something for your paper to-night."</p>

<p>I did not see the sporting baronet, but I smelt his cigar in the hall,
and I saw his damned motor-car outside the door. And as I walked out of
the little square, I wondered whether perhaps it wouldn't be to every
one's advantage, and his own, if Paul Ingram should never be heard of
on this earth again.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="Vb">V</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">A VERY VULGAR CHAPTER</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>"Ingram, Paul. Will Paul Ingram communicate at once with 'P.,' 15,
Darlaston Crescent? The matter is urgent, and concerns the future
happiness of another."</p>
</div>

<p>Some day, when Paul Ingram is already a legend, the dipper into musty
records who stumbles upon this heartrending appeal in issue after
issue will imagine he has made a rare find. Always supposing another
eventuality, which I sometimes seem to foresee, has not supervened, and
that a reformed society, for security's sake, and as an earnest of its
reformation, does not make a bonfire once for all of the records of its
past depravity and madness.</p>

<p>Nothing, to me, affords fruit for such sad thought as to see unworldly
folk taking advantage of the machinery of a world that is organized
to crush them and their like out of existence. That Oxford graduate
who seeks "congenial employment as amanuensis or secretary," the
gentlewoman "thrown suddenly upon her own resources through financial
loss" who is anxious for a post as nursery governess, as companion, as
anything that will allay the fright and loneliness at her heart—("fond
of children," she adds. Poor soul, one sees her casting a wistful
glance into passing perambulators.) Do not the very compositors, I
wonder, laugh as they set up such type? I was sorry indeed for that
"other" whose happiness depended upon Ingram's resurrection.</p>

<p>Meantime I had given my word, and I was not idle. Every good
journalist is a bit of a detective at heart, and I discovered a
mournful zest in following Paul's calvary, step by step, from one
lodging to another. Everywhere I found help and sympathy, and conceived
a new regard for the maligned race of landladies. (Mrs. McNaughten, of
course, is <i>hors concours</i>.)</p>

<p>"Ah! poor gentleman," said one grimy soul. "Well I remember the
night he come. I knocked at the door to arst 'im if 'e wouldn't take
somethin' 'eartenin' with 'is tea—a bloater, or a rasher—and there
'e wos, settin' with 'is 'ead down on the table. Money? Oh, a trifle
of rent, sir. Wanted to leave 'is trunk be'ind; but there, live and
let live's my motter. It went to my 'eart to 'ave 'im go—wanted care,
'e did—but you see, sir, me bein' only a workin' woman, and 'avin' a
'usband at 'ome with bronickal trouble——Thank you kindly, sir, sence
you orfer it. You won't think no worst of me for takin' it, will you?"</p>

<p>At the very next stopping place—I had almost said stumbling place—the
trunk came to hand. Strangely enough, he owed nothing here. I suppose
at a certain point in misfortune a man flings his possessions from him
as a swimmer flings his clothes.</p>

<p>"Took 'is things away in a bundle, wot there wos," said the mistress of
this house, who was nursing and rocking a child as she spoke. "I ain't
techt nothink," with a slight shiver. "If so be you're a friend of the
party, you'd prabst better open it. The keys is upstairs. No: nothin'
owin,' but I wasn't sorry w'en 'e went. Too strange in 'is manner. It
goes agenst a 'ouse w'en things—you know wot I mean—'appens in it."</p>

<p>To Mrs. Purvis's secret disappointment, I believe, there was nothing
in the trunk but a mass of torn paper and a queer brown-paper parcel
that I seemed to recognize. It was addressed to the house near Golden
Square, and the label was headed with the name of some legal firm in
the West End. It was the manuscript of "Sad Company."</p>

<p>For a long while after Mrs. Purvis had left me to attend to the
shrill wants of some of her elder children, I sat with it in my lap,
looking out of the rain-spotted window upon the mouldering back gardens
beneath, where string after string of intimate household linen dried or
stiffened in the sooty air. I thought of the tender, mournful wisdom,
the sad insight into life which that despised bundle contained, bought
with the blood and sweat, and tears maybe, of thirty years: jotted
down—for I knew its history—in cattle camps, by Algerian bivouac
fires, in hotel lobbies of roaring Western cities. And I thought of the
little luxurious house beside the Park, filled with all that ministers
to the lust of the eye and the pride of life. A pretty face and figure,
an aptitude for bodily movement, a few shallow tricks of manner, had
earned that in a year for a woman whom I had already occasion to know
couldn't spell. Well, the world knows what it wants. The world had
chosen. Was there to be no appeal? Is failure here failure forever? Or
is there, beyond this world, with its stark denials of justice, another
where such things count still, and where the reward so insolently and
capriciously withheld shall be bestowed, the hungerer after justice,
even artistic justice, have his fill? Sad questions that no religion
cares to answer.</p>

<p>And here my search ended. He had left no address: no letters had
followed him. I took the manuscript away with me and locked it into a
drawer. I was not sure yet what I would do with it. Show the world what
manner of man it had despised, perhaps. Or perhaps tie a stone around
it and sink it in mid-channel. I must think which Paul would have
chosen.</p>

<p>Nearly six months afterward in late summer, I was sitting at my desk
and beginning to think of turning in, when Mrs. McNaughten rapped at
the door. A "vairy rough body" was asking for me. Should she show him
up or bid him state the natur-re of his business?</p>

<p>"Doesn't he say what he wants?"</p>

<p>"He'll say nothing but that he wants Mister-r-r P. He says ye'll
understand fine. <i>Mister 'P.'</i> I think the body's daft."</p>

<p>The advertisement. My heart jumped. "Show him up, please. At once!"</p>

<p>A short thick-set man in soiled working clothes and with a colored
handkerchief round his neck came in, tossed a cap on the table with a
gesture full of natural grace, stretched his neck two or three times,
as if to intimate that he was ready for any manner of reception, and
began to beat a limy dust with the back of his hand out of as much of
his corduroys as was within easy reach.</p>

<p>"Nime of Palamount," he said, oracularly and rather hoarsely.
"Builder's mite, my tride is."</p>

<p>I indicated a chair. "And what can I do for you, Mr. Palamount? I am
not contemplating any repairs or additions to my quarters at present."</p>

<p>All this time the man had kept one hand in his pocket. He drew it out,
holding a newspaper, folded very small and very tight.</p>

<p>"In conneckshun wiv two advertysements," said he. "Fifteen Darlaston
Crescent is the address wot's on one. 'Ere y'are. Marked in blue it is.
Initial of 'P.'"</p>

<p>He unfolded the journal and handed it to me. It was the paragraph which
heads this chapter, and which, having been paid for a year in advance,
would reiterate its useless appeal for another six months to come
unless——Somehow Mr. Palamount did not impress me as a bearer of glad
tidings.</p>

<p>"Well," I asked, without much hope. "What news can you give?"</p>

<p>"'Old 'ard," said my visitor, who was feeling through various pockets,
as if in search of fresh documents.</p>

<p>"You needn't bother," I said, irritably. "I know it's in more than one."</p>

<p>The horny-handed one smiled, a powdery and superior smile, as of
foresight justified.</p>

<p>"Ah!" said he. "That's wot I thought you'd be in the dark abaht. Two
parties there is. Complickitions—that's wot I calls it. 'Ere y'are.
Sund'y <i>'Erald</i>. Twenty-first July. 'Work'ahse Marster, depitties
<i>and</i> uvvers.'"</p>

<p>I snatched the paper from his hand and devoured the salient paragraph.
It was a very superior article; far more calculated to strike a
reader's imagination than the feeble little effort we had concocted
between us. I read it aloud.</p>

<p>"£200 Reward. To workhouse masters, lodging-house deputies and
others....</p>

<p>"The above reward will be paid for information that shall lead to the
discovery or certify the death of <span class="smcap">Paul Ingram</span>, native of
Lilburn, Massachusetts, U. S. A. He was discharged from the French
Foreign Legion in March 19—. Was subsequently correspondent in Morocco
for the Federated Press, and is known to have been living in London in
very reduced circumstances as recently as last September.</p>

<p>"Communications are to be made to the American Consulate, St. Helens
Place, Bishopsgate, or to Messrs. Pollexfen, Allport and Pollexfen,
Solicitors, 52a, Bedford Row, W. C."</p>

<p>A description of my hapless friend followed, remarkable, or perhaps not
remarkable, for conveying the very haziest notion of his appearance.</p>

<p>Mr. Palamount was regarding my amazed face meanwhile with excited
relish, somewhat tempered by his surroundings which were ill adapted to
its natural relief by expectoration.</p>

<p>"Wotcher mike of it?"</p>

<p>I stared helplessly. "It's—money, I suppose."</p>

<p>The builder of houses was now approaching his supreme effect. He half
rose from his chair, made an ineffectual attempt to rid his voice of
cobwebs, and pointed an accusing finger, about the shape and size of a
banana, at the two papers in my lap. At last he spoke.</p>

<p>"'Ue and cry: that's wot that is."</p>

<p>"What on earth do you mean?"</p>

<p>"Wot I ses. 'Ue and cry. There's lot of blokes, mind you as won't tike
blood-money as'll give evidence of w'ereabahts if they thinks it's
all stright. Money? yus—I <i>don't</i> fink. Certify 'is deaf? It'll
be certified all right if 'e puts 'is nose inter that loryer's orfice
or if any bloomin' copper's nark as knows 'im gets 'is eyes on that
parrygraft. Tike it aht, guv'nor. Git 'im aw'y somew're w'ere there
ain't no extry-edition treaties. Shive 'is beard, too, 'e'd better,
less 'e growed it since."</p>

<p>To say that I was dazed by Mr. Palamount's mental processes is to state
bare truth.</p>

<p>"You think he's done something, then, and is in hiding?"</p>

<p>"Yus. Cut a bloke in hot blood, I fink."</p>

<p>"And that my advertisement will help put the police on his track?"</p>

<p>"Yus," said Mr. Palamount succinctly and without any implied respect
for my superior lucidity. "Watch the 'ahse, they will, and pinch 'im
w'en 'e calls."</p>

<p>"But—my dear obfuscated friend——"</p>

<p>"'Ere, guv'nor; no langwidge please."</p>

<p>"Well, my dear friend, Paul Ingram's an old friend of mine. He's a
highly respectable citizen. It's true he's got no money, but you and I
know that isn't a crime. One advertisement is put in by his friends who
want to help him, and as for the other—it's too late to-night, but I
shall find out all about it first thing to-morrow."</p>

<p>My new friend made a repressive gesture. "'Ere guv'nor—none o' that.
I seen it fust. If it's all right, them two 'undred quids is prop'ly
mine."</p>

<p>"Well, do you know where he is?"</p>

<p>"I know w'ere 'e wos a week ago. To fink," catching up his cap and
dashing it to the ground, "to fink as I showed 'im that one o' yours
four munfs ago."</p>

<p>"You'd better tell me all you know," I said, losing patience. "Will you
have some beer first?" The cobwebs were getting on my nerves.</p>

<p>"Beer!" echoed my visitor. He had, indeed, a generally unslaked
appearance that rendered the question an impertinence. "Beer!" he said
again, giving the word this time its full diapason or organ sound. The
rest was vigorous action.</p>

<p>Unfortunately he had not an equal talent for connected narrative, and I
was too anxious about Paul to welcome the light upon dark places which
his discursiveness incidentally threw. One day, late in the previous
autumn, I made out, his own trade being slack, he was working on the
tramway extension to one of the northern suburbs. About midday the fog
came on so thickly that the road-making gang were laid off for the
day, and wended their way home after the riotously sociable manner of
their class, with frequent calls at favored houses of refreshment. When
evening fell, he was drinking in a bar the other side of Blackfriars
with a neighbor and fellow-workman, whose patronymic of Barker had
been long abandoned in familiar discourse for the more recondite one
of "Flying Fox." ("Put two tanners on the 'orse 'e did, at odds on,
an' won fruppence.") The backer of certainties had only been taken on
that morning by the foreman after a week's waiting, and was probably
in ill-humor at his enforced leisure. Either for this reason or some
other a dispute arose in the bar of the George and Cushion, which was
ended by Mr. Barker's shouldering his way out, with the expressed
intention of pursuing his homeward way unaccompanied by any "bleedin'
skrim-shanker." Mr. Palamount was eager to detail the misunderstanding
that had led to this cruel charge, but I checked him, and from this
point the story took quite a leap forward.</p>

<p>"Parsin' Thomases 'Orsepittel, I see'd a crahd rahnd the cas'alty door,
an' arst 'oo was 'urt. 'Bloke on the Embankmint,' they ses, 'knocked
over by a motor-keb near Blackfriars: come aht of the fog like a
cannon-ball,' they ses. I arst the nime, 'cos I was feelin' anxious
'baht Foxie; not drunk 'e wasn't, but I give you my word 'e'd 'ad
some, and 'e wasn't a man as could 'old the booze. 'That's 'im, they
ses—'that's the party. Ginger-'aired wiv freckles; arnswers to nime
of Barker.' 'I'm a pal,' I ses, ''oo's in wiv 'im?' 'Man that fahnd
'im,' they ses—'eddigicated bloke: give 'im fust ide, and 'eld 'is
'ead in 'is lap in the tramcar.'</p>

<p>"They let me in w'en they 'eard I was a friend of the party wot was
'urt. Big room wiv benches: young tawfs in long w'ite coats—sawboneses
I calls 'em—nurses too (my word, not 'alf givin' 'em the tale): blue
jars, an' a smell wot mikes yer fice crack. 'Wotcher want?' the mitron
ses to me. 'I fink I can identify the party, sister,' I ses, 'I'm a
nighbor.' 'Wite 'ere,' she ses. 'They'll be bringin' 'im through in a
minute.' So I sets dahn. A tall furrin' lookin' bloke was a settin' on
a bench nigh me, wiv a beard. Werry thin an' fierce 'e wos and eyes a
blazin' like coals. 'Crool business over there,' I ses, pointin' to the
screen. 'Wife near 'er time, four nippers, an' only took on yesterday.
Fust job since the spring.' 'I know abaht it,' 'e ses. I was a-goin'
to arst 'im ow 'e knew, w'en the row begins from be'ind the screen.
Just told 'im they 'ad as 'e was a free munfs' kise. 'I carn't do wiv
it. I carn't do wiv it,' 'e was 'ollerin' over and over ag'in as they
carries 'im through. 'My wife's near 'er time, and there ain't five
shillin's in the 'ouse.' Tryin' to git up 'e was, and arstin' Gawd to
strike 'im dead. ''Oo knows this man?' ses one of the doctors as was
'olding 'is arms. I was a-goin' to speak w'en the tall bloke jumps up
and goin' over to the stretcher, bends dahn and w'ispers somethin'
quick. Foxie stops strugglin' an' looks rahnd at 'im. ''Ow will yer?'
'e ses, and looks rahnd at 'im. 'Never you mind' ses the man. 'I didn't
promust without knowin' 'ow. You wite,' 'e ses, 'and there'll be good
news termorrer.' I fink Foxie was stunned like and let 'em carry 'im
aw'y quiet. I was a wonderin' too w'ile they filled up 'is card for 'is
missus, 'cos I never see destitootion so pline as on 'im.</p>

<p>"W'en we was ahtside: 'Nah then,' he ses, and 'e couldn't 'ave spoke
brisker not if 'ed bin one of the doctors. 'Somethin's got to be
done.' 'Yus,' I ses, lookin' at 'im 'ard. '<i>Done</i>' I ses, like
that. 'Tike me to 'is 'ome fust of all,' 'e ses. 'You know the w'y.'
I'd mide up me mind be now as 'e was balmy, and I was a bit ashimed
of 'im on the tram. But 'e pide 'is own fare and 'eld 'is jor. On'y
w'en we wos gittin' near Camberwell: 'Wot sort of woman is this Mrs.
Barker?' 'e arst me. 'I don't know much of 'er,' I told 'im. 'Keeps
'erself to 'erself she does. But sence she's bin doin' laundery work,
my missus looks in and gives the kids their meals and a bit of a
wash. Gimekeeper's daughter, she wos, in the country.' 'E looks dahn
on to the Walworth Road w'ere some gels was a-dancin' to a organ.
'Gimekeeper's daughter!' 'e ses. 'In the country! My Gawd! 'Ow many
kids?' 'Four,' I ses. 'Eldest is a van-boy earnin' five bob a week.
T'other three's little gels. Don't see 'em in the street much. Mother
keeps 'em indoors. Un'ealthy, I calls it.'</p>

<p>"Mrs. Barker must 'ave been listenin' for 'er man, 'cos she comes
aht 'fore we'd got to the landin'. Tall, dark, 'an'some woman, wiv a
diffrunt voice to most of the wimmin' dahn our w'y. Not so 'igh. 'Oh,
Jim,' she ses. 'Wot mikes you so lite. 'Ave you forgot—?' and then
stops short, seein' us two. 'You tell 'er,' I ses, keeping aht o' sight
and nudgin' 'im. 'That's wot I come for,' 'e ses, and goes in and shets
the door in me fice. I listened, expectin' to 'ear screaming, but there
wos only talkin'—fust 'im very low, then 'er, and then more talkin',
like prayin'. 'You can come in now,' 'e ses, throwin' open the door.
She was settin' by the fire, cryin' to 'erself and young Ern, in 'is
blue coat and brass buttons, blubbering into 'is coker, and two plites
under the 'arth, one on top of the other, and grivy bubbling between
the edges. The little gels wos in bed. On'y one room they 'ad.</p>

<p>"'Wot was Barker's job,' 'e asks. 'Road-making gang.' 'My old job,' 'e
ses wiv a larf. 'Yus, I don't fink,' I ses, with a sidewise look at
'im. 'That'd be a better tale, matey, if there was a little more meat
on your ribs.' 'I've mide roads,' 'e ses, 'under a sun as'd melt you
like a taller candle.' 'Wot kinder roads?' 'Millitery roads.' 'Oh,' I
ses. 'You bin a soljer?' 'Yus,' 'e ses, 'the only real sort as is left.
I never enlisted at eighteen to 'ave my 'ealth built up wiv 'ealthy
food an' Swedish gymnastics, so be the time I was twenty I c'd go to
Injer and sit in a verander durin' the 'eat of the d'y, flappin' the
flies awf me fice w'ile a brown bag o 'bones shined me buttons and kep'
me rifle clean. I never bin a luxury seven years and a problem all the
rest of me life. Gimme that poker!'</p>

<p>"Young Ern giv it 'im, staring like 'is eyes would drop aht. 'E took it
up be the two ends and bent it double, then 'anded it to me. 'Staighten
it out,' 'e ses, wipin' 'is forehead. 'It's a knack,' I ses. 'E took it
agen' and laid it out true, wiv a kind of a 'eave of 'is chest an' a
groan. Next thing 'e did wos to put 'is 'ands over 'is fice and tumble
in a 'eap on the floor.</p>

<p>"Wot a ter-do there was! Missis Barker bithing 'is 'ead wiv cold
water, old Mrs. Conder from the nex' room tryin' to pour gin down 'is
teef—'See wot it is,' she ses, 'to never be wivout a bottle'—young
Ern 'ollering out to loosen 'is neck w'en there wasn't nothin' to
loosen. 'Oh! is 'e dying?' ses Mrs. Barker to me. 'Dyin'!' I ses; 'not
'im. Acceleration is wot's the matter with 'im and nothing else.' "</p>

<p>Here my curiosity got the better of my anxiety. "What do you mean by
acceleration?"</p>

<p>He shifted uneasily in his chair. "Well, guv'nor, it's a word us
people has got. 'Aven't you read in the pipers w'ere it ses, 'Vital
Statistics. In London ten persons was found dead of starvition during
the past year?' That's ten w'ere the coroner couldn't think o' nothin'
else. All the others is only 'acceleration.' Pneumonia accelerated be
insufficient nourishment, brownchitis accelerated, 'ousemaid's knee,
tennis elber—wotcher like, so long as it's on'y accelerated. Looks
better and keeps the charitable people comfortabler in their minds.
'Acceleration,' I ses to 'er; 'and that's the meddicine 'e wants,'
pointing to the plites under the fire. 'And, 'e wants it sharp.'</p>

<p>"'E come to 'isself presently, and seemed quite ashimed. Sed it wos
'is own fault, and that that poker trick didn't oughter be done on
less than a 'ole roll once a d'y. We give 'im the tommy, and at first
'e tried to eat slow. But it wasn't no use. 'E just seemed to in'ale
them beef and taters an' a 'ousehold loaf and four cups o' coker.
Mrs. Barker ackcherally larfed as she cut the slices. Women is funny,
guv'nor. She seemed to fergit 'er own trouble. Wouldn't 'ear of 'im
goin' away that night, but mide 'im up a bed in the passidge.</p>

<p>"Before I come aw'y it was arranged wot we was to do. I was to call for
'im in the morning and bring a suit of corduroys. We wos to go dahn
togevver and apply for Foxie's job fer 'im.</p>

<p>"There wasn't no trouble over that. I got dahn early and give my mites
the tile, and though the foreman wagged 'is mahth a bit, 'e saw there
was trouble comin' unless 'e give in. 'E went a bit slow the fust d'y
or so; but arter that there wasn't a better 'and, and in three weeks'
time the foreman give 'im charge of a gang on a job up Finchley w'y."</p>

<p>"And you became great friends, I suppose."</p>

<p>"Well, guv'nor, I won't s'y that. 'E wasn't a bloke you could tike
lib'ties wiv. Not enough wot I calls give an' tike abaht 'im. One 'er
two tried calling 'im 'the lodger' and was sorry. But we went 'ome
togevver and dahn to 'orsepittle of a Sund'y, and after Mrs. Barker
gone to Queen Charlotte my missus useter look in reglar. But I give
you my word there wasn't much as she could do. 'Owever early she come
round, there was the floor swep' an' the kids dressed and barfed—great
on barfs, 'e was: fussy I calls it—and 'avin' their breakfast and 'im
sluicin' 'isself in the passidge. Wonderful 'ow 'e could cook too.
Useter mike soup outer milk and vegitables. Never seed sich a thing,
nor my missus neither."</p>

<p>"When did he tell you his name?"</p>

<p>"I'm a-comin' to that. Fust night I arst 'im and 'e said 's nime was
'Bruvverhood.' Well, it might be; 'cos I worked for a firm 'o that nime
at Deptford—engineers they was. But one night soon after Barker's
missus gone aw'y, I got a letter from 'im askin' me to call. Funny,
I thought it, 'cos we'd come home togevver that evening. 'Owever, I
cleaned up and went rahnd. There 'e was in what 'e called the buzzum
of 'is fam'ly. Pretty sight it was. Young Ern was gone to the cawfy
concert at Syviour's Schools. There was 'im smokin' 'is pipe an'
little Effel wiv 'er curls brushed out recitin' a pome 'baht the night
afore Christmas, and anuvver little gel on 'is knee, and Gertie on the
floor pl'yin' wiv piper chickens wot 'e'd cut out. Schools was shut on
accahnt o' scarlet fever, and 'e'd bin teachin' them their lessons.</p>

<p>"'E jumped up and called in Mrs. Conder to put the kids to bed.
''Ammertoe,' 'e ses, w'en we was in the street—that's my nime with
my mites—''Ammertoe, I got to trust some one, and it's goin' ter be
you.' 'E pulls a bit o' piper out of 'is wescutt pocket. 'This 'ere's
a cheque,' 'e ses, 'an' I want you to go down termorrer and cash it
at the bank.' Well, remembering 'ow I'd met 'im, you c'ud a knocked
me over wiv a canary's wing fevver. 'You ain't done bad, matey,' I
ses, 'out of two munfs' navvyin',' 'No, I 'aven't bin long putting a
nest-egg by,' 'e ses, quietly. 'That's a fact,' I ses, very serious.
'What's your gime?' 'E 'anded me the bit o' piper and I read the nime
at the bottom. 'Ullo,' I ses, 'you're the bloke they're advertisn'
for—spoilin' some one's 'appiness—in the <i>Sund'y 'Erald</i>.'
'Yus,' 'e ses.' 'And that's wot I'm trustin' you with. Not the
money—that's nothin'.' 'But wot abaht it?' I ses. 'Will they give
it me?' 'They may arst questions,' 'e ses. 'But you ain't to know
too much. Say you've give consideration, and a workin' man ain't to
be kep' out of 'is due. There's no one can give that talk better'n
you, 'Ammertoe', 'e ses, smilin'. 'And besides, I'll p'y you for your
trouble.' ''Ere, guv'nor,' I ses, 'old lard! You're a eddigicated
bloke, but don't think a artesian ain't got feelin's. You 'ave pide
me,' I ses. 'I'm pide by wot I jest see up in Barker's 'ome.'</p>

<p>"There wasn't no real trouble at the bank. 'E'd give me annuvver letter
to put into the envelope 'e'd sent me, signed wiv the same name as was
on the cheque. The cashier looked pretty 'ard at me, and two or three
clurks puts their 'eads togevver. 'Don't 'urry,' I ses. 'I'm pide be
the year, and it don't matter w'ere I spend me time.' Cahnted the five
quids free times, they did, to be sure two wasn't stuck togevver.
Non-prejoocers, that's wot I calls them.</p>

<p>"This 'appened so often that the clurks got to know me. One night, jest
before Foxie comes 'ome, I couldn't 'elp openin' my mahth a bit, jest
to 'im. 'Wotcher goin' to do wiv all the money I drawed to-d'y? Give
Barker a surprise be gettin' their stuff out o' pawn? Rare lot's bin
up the spaht,' I ses. 'No,' 'e ses. 'It ain't wuth while now.' 'W'y
not?' 'Cos they ain't 'ere for long. I'm a goin' to emmygrite them,
'Ammertoe.' I was 'avin a drink at the time, an' I nearly choked.
'Yus,' 'e goes on, afore I could speak, lookin' at the ceilin',
'they're a goin' to God's promust land. Them kids is a goin' to grow up
somew'eres they don't 'ave to be shut in a room for fear of wot they
may see and 'ear. It's full of tigers and wolves, that street is,' 'e
ses, pointin' aht the winder, w'ere Bill Shannon was a tryin' to git
'is missus 'ome wiv all her clothes on. 'They're a goin' to be woke
up on the trine some mornin' to see the blessed sun come up under the
prairie as big and red as the dome of Paul's. It ain't spoiled sence I
seed it fust, nigh on to twenty-five years ago. I've fallen from there
to 'ell,' 'e ses, 'and there ain't no return ticket the w'y I come. But
if I can't go back meself, I can show uvvers the w'y to escape.'</p>

<p>"'And ain't you a-goin' now'eres?' I ses, noticin' for the fust time
'ow w'ite and ill 'e was lookin'. 'Oh, yus,' 'e ses. 'I got my journey
to go too.' 'Crost the sea?' I arst 'im. 'Just a short w'y,' 'e ses.
'Crost the sea to a big white furrin town I knows of, w'ere there's a
tramcar w'itin', as'll tike me 'alf-w'y. Full of women in wi'te caps
it'll be, goin' 'ome from marketin' wiv baskets in their laps, and
maybe there'll be some like meself as found there wasn't no sale for
the wares wot they carried in. And w'ere it stops there's a road up a
'ill that turns through a field w'ere they're stackin' 'ay this minnit,
wiv steep clay banks on bofe sides, and a old farm w'ere ducks is a
swimmin' in a pond and pigeons a slippin' and slidin' dahn the roof.
And w'en I've reached that,' 'e ses, 'I'll rest a bit and look down
on a gray village and miles and miles of sand, wiv the sea a-crawlin'
and a-crinklin' beyond; 'cos I'll know,' 'e ses, 'as I've reached my
journey's end at last. Think of it,' 'e ses, grippin' my shoulder 'ard.
'Think of it,' 'e ses, 'man! Clean, soft, dry sand, warm from a 'ole
day's sun, and the grass a-wavin' and the sea w'isperin' and the gulls
mewin'. There's worse ends to a journey than that, and you and me's
seen 'em.' I looks at 'im very 'ard indeed. 'If you tike my advice,' I
ses, 'before you goes on any of them journeys you'll 'ave a rest and
some one to look arter you.' 'I shall 'ave some one,' 'e ses. 'She'll
be a w'itin' for me in that town I telled you of. She'll tike my 'and
and won't never let go until——Tell me, 'Ammertoe,' 'e ses, breakin'
off sudden, 'wotcher think of me? Man to man. Think I'm a good man,
dontcher?' 'Yus,' I ses. 'Bit balmy all the sime.' 'I ain't balmy,'
'e ses, 'and I ain't good. I'm a very crooil man, 'Ammertoe, and the
reason is I'm too sine; too clear in me ed. W'en a man's too clear in
'is mind, it's death and ruin for 'em as 'as to do wiv 'im.... And nah,
drink yer beer up. We're talkin' nonsense, and I must git back to my
bybies."</p>

<p>"Did you never talk to him again about this plan of his?" It was
curious how our voices had dropped. We had both risen, and were
standing opposite one another with a curious effect of being on
different sides of an open grave.</p>

<p>"Never, guv'nor. Flyin' Fox come 'ome nex' day, and wot with explainin'
everything to 'im, and wot with n'ighbors droppin' in, some s'yin',
'It's the best thing could 'a 'appened,' and uvvers, 'mark my words,
you'll rue the d'y.' There wasn't no chanst again not for private talk.
Foxie was dized in 'is manner. Mrs. Barker and the kids they 'ad it
all cut an' dried. It was too lite for 'im like to 'ave any s'y in the
matter. 'Let 'im alone,' Mr. Bruvver'ood says—still called 'im that
afore stringers, I did—'let 'im alone. 'E'll come to 'isself on the
steamer. With wot you got and wot a woman can earn cookin' and cleanin'
w'ere you're goin', 'e can 'ave the fust year to git well and strong.
It'll be a convalescent 'ome to 'm, Canada will.'</p>

<p>"I took a mornin' off to see 'em start. Wonderful sight it was! Near
four 'undred on the one trine, singin' 'Old Lang Syne' and 'Gawd Sive
the King,' and shykin' 'ands all rahnd, and the people left be'ind
s'yin': 'Leave us in your will.' The nippers was very smart, all in
new warm togs, and little Gladys wiv a Teddy bear wot my missus giv'
'er. Thought 'e was coming with 'em up to the end they did. Didn't
dare to tell'm no different. And at the end, as the guard was a-wavin'
'is flag, Mrs. Barker broke dahn and frows 'er arms round 'is neck and
kisses 'im like 'e was another woman or praps more, cryin' like 'er
'eart would break. 'Good job for you, Foxie,' my missus ses,'as you're
leavin' the lodger behind.' We all larft at that, and then the w'istle
blew and the trine went awf wiv 'ankerchiffs at all the winders. 'E
stood a long time lookin' after it. W'en it was gone,' e turns to me.
'Let's 'ave one more drink,' 'e ses. 'Wot ho,' I ses. 'But ain't you
comin' to work? 'Cos we was on a job togevver. 'Not to-d'y,' 'e ses.
'Tell the foreman I ain't up to the mark.' So we 'ad one drink and I
goes off, ignorant as a blessed byby wot was in 'is 'ead. And w'en I
got home in the evenin'——"</p>

<p>"Well——?"</p>

<p>"Gawn, guv'nor. Took all 'is fings—not as there was much—and left no
address. And I ain't set eyes on 'im from that day to this."</p>

<p>"Can you suggest anything?"</p>

<p>"Yus, I can. That's w'y I come here. I fink 'e's done something 'fore
you knowed 'im or I knowed 'im, and is a-goin' to give 'isself up. You
don't? Well, no matter. Wotever it is, I don't fink 'e'll likely tike
any steps before 'e 'ears a word from the parties as is in Canada to
know 'ow they gets on at fust. They 'ave 'is address, I'm sure o' that.
Wotcher think? Don't that 'elp us a bit?"</p>

<p>"Can you give me theirs?"</p>

<p>Mr. Palamount had come well provided with documentary evidence. He drew
a soiled and crumpled piece of print from another waistcoat pocket. It
was only the name of the Canadian Pacific agent in Alberta. The straw
was a very slender one.</p>

<p>"I'll cable them to-morrow, prepaid. And I'll see the lawyers first
thing in the morning. Don't be afraid," for I thought I detected a
slight look of anxiety on Mr. Palamount's battered face. "I'm after
something better even than two hundred pounds."</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIb">VI</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">GENEALOGICAL</p>


<p>The first thing I did the next morning, after a sleepless night
besieged by possibilities, was to send a prepaid cable to Alberta;
rather for the relief of my own feelings than because my promptitude
could effect any possible good. Indeed, as the telegraph clerk was
at pains to inform me, eight o'clock in England is three o'clock
in western Canada, and the very earliest of alarm clocks had not
yet delivered its nerve-racking message there. Also I was pacing up
and down the passage outside Pollexfen and Allport's offices fully
three quarters of an hour before their managing clerk ascended the
linoleum-covered stairs, rattling his keys and warbling a morning
carol, to open them for the day.</p>

<p>Mr. Pollexfen, the senior partner, was a spruce, well-preserved man,
with white hair and moustache, but as little of parchment in his manner
as in his florid, supple skin. He swung round in his chair and listened
to my story attentively, with the tips of his fingers joined, and
clicking his well-groomed nails as I talked.</p>

<p>"Well! well! well!" said he, with a commentary sigh, when I had ended.
"It's a strange case: the strangest, I verily believe, that I've had to
deal with in the whole course of my practice."</p>

<p>He pulled a drawer open and tossed something to me across the table.</p>

<p>"Do you know anything of this?"</p>

<p>"This" was a little book sumptuously bound in blue roan, and bearing
upon its cover, embossed and gilt, a coat-of-arms, and the following
legend in old English lettering.</p>

<p>"Pedigree of the Ingram or Ingraham family of Lilburn, Mass."</p>

<p>It was the very pamphlet over which, more than two years ago now, Paul
had joined me in rather shamefaced laughter.</p>

<p>"Oh, yes," I replied. "I saw it at his rooms. Look! there's his name at
the bottom."</p>

<p>"It seems so strange to us," the lawyer mused. "So contrary to all
preconceived notions of America. Here, in peer-governed, class-beridden
England, we take these things so much more as a matter of course.
Myself, as an instance. I believe we are a highly respectable landed
family, somewhere in the Eastern Counties, but I'd be bothered to say
what my great-grandmother's maiden name was, and, I assure you, except
for some tangible reason, I would regard time spent in finding out as
time sadly wasted. The very crest on my spoons and carriage is a matter
of tradition. It's never occurred to me to regard it with any degree
of complacency. But, indeed, I must own to a rather complete ignorance
of America, though we manage a good deal of business for clients over
there. My ignorance extended, until lately, to the very name of the
city where all this money was made. Oshkosh? You're a journalist, I
see. Can you truthfully say the name stirs any latent geographical
idea."</p>

<p>"Yes. I've heard Ingram mention it. It's a big grain-shipping place on
the Lakes."</p>

<p>"Grain?—grain? Yes. That's how the dollars were made, I remember.
Three quarters of a million of them. Over sixty thousand pounds. We had
no idea of it. The plainest, driest little man. Stayed at one of those
cheap Bloomsbury hotels, and lunched on an apple and a wheat biscuit."</p>

<p>"Do you mean to say all this money is left to my friend
unconditionally?"</p>

<p>"Absolutely, sir. Lester Ingraham—he'd even gone back to the old
spelling—seems to have spent the evening of his days in compiling the
little book you hold in your hand. That's how he came to be sent to
us by our New York correspondents. They are big people, and seemed to
think him very small fry indeed. It had become an absolute obsession
with him. Used to bore Allport to death talking of the senior and the
junior branches, and sometimes it was all I could do to keep a straight
face. His dream had been to buy the old homestead and die there, and he
told me the discovery it had been pulled down robbed him of ten years'
life. Then the idea occurred to him, since it had vanished and he had
no near relatives, to leave his money to the last Ingram born within
the old walls, the walls which, as he told me impressively, had had an
Indian arrow-head sticking in them for two hundred and fifty years. He
had seen that in the museum. Well, well—who says romance is dead?"</p>

<p>"Sixty thousand pounds!" All the time Mr. Pollexfen was speaking I kept
writing the sum on the Ingram pedigree with my finger nail, calculating
interest at, say, four per cent, and thinking of Paul as I had last
seen him.</p>

<p>"I've told you everything, Mr. Pollexfen. What do you think of our
chance of finding him again within the year that is stipulated?"</p>

<p>The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. "Very slight indeed, I fear, even
if the advertisement reaches his eye. You say he had over two hundred
pounds in a bank at his disposal, and chose to run after cabs. Now, to
me, that looks very like hallucination. No. If I was the reversionary
legatee, I'd feel pretty comfortable."</p>

<p>I said I had told him everything, but, as a matter of fact, I had not
told him what I had every reason to believe I knew, and that is, the
source whence the money came which Ingram had been loath to touch. I
wonder, if I had, whether he would have changed his estimate of my poor
quixotic friend. Codes of honor must seem shadowy things to a man who
has been instructing counsel for thirty years.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIIb">VII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">THE WAITING-ROOM</p>


<p>And, after all, it happened so simply in the end. A brief note, lying
on my table, when I got back, with an address at the top that was
strange to me, asking me to call "when convenient, for a chat." Imagine
if I found it convenient. Is there in all the world a cleaner, purer
joy than to be the bearer of such tidings as mine?</p>

<p>The house proved to be one of some shabby mouldering little stucco
"gardens" near Chalk Farm. It suggested seediness rather than great
poverty, and, with my abominable journalist's <i>flair</i> for the
dramatic, I was almost sorry the contrast was not to be a more
startling one. Perhaps I hardly realized how much misery a decorous
exterior can conceal in modern London, until an old woman, bent, deaf
and short-sighted almost to blindness, opened the door. The hall was
more than bare; it was naked. Not a picture on the walls, not a strip
of oilcloth on the boards. On the bottom stair a cheap glass lamp
without a shade had been set down and filled the passage with wavering,
smoky shadows. The air was penetrated with the raw smell of paraffin,
the "<i>triple bouquet</i>" of poverty.</p>

<p>If the nakedness had repelled in the hall, its persistence in the room
to which I was let find my way was shocking. No curtains nor blinds
at the window; a low truckle bed, rather felt than seen in the shadow
at one side; upon the uncarpeted floor a great, crooked parallelogram
of moonlight. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I made
out further a chair by the bedside, with a flat candlestick and a
paper-covered book turned face downward, and a big china wash-basin
close to the bedside. I don't know what made me look more curiously
at this than at anything else, and shudder when I saw how dark its
contents were. Next moment I had felt for his hand and grasped it in
mine, Thank God! it was not cold and heavy as I had half dreaded.
Life—feverish, parched, burning life, it is true, but still life, was
in its contact.</p>

<p>He must have been sleeping, and it is eloquent of his utter abandonment
that, before I uttered a word, he guessed who had awakened him.</p>

<p>"Clear away that candle and sit down," he said, in a drowsy, muffled
voice. "No! don't light it please."</p>

<p>I sat down obediently, and looked around me again. Gradually, as I
gazed, the full significance of the stripped room came home to me. It
was the bareness of the station waiting-room—the room in which one
chafes and frets, watching the hand crawl over the clock-face, with an
ear strained to catch the faint whistle of the train that is to bear us
away to where we would or should be. That was it. He had come here to
wait. The poor faint voice spoke again.</p>

<p>"I'd been lying here a long time," it said, "watching the moon, and
it must have sent me to sleep. Don't ride rough, old man," feeling
clumsily for the hand that was at my eyes. "It's easier for me than
it would be for almost any one else. I often wonder what it was gave
me such a conviction of the utter unreality of the world. I think it
was the years I spent, month after month, alone on the great wastes.
I used to come into the cities and see the people swarming under the
arc-lights round the hotels and theatres, and think that's what they'd
been doing all the while, night after night. One can't take a world
seriously that can mean two such different things to different men.
Hold that basin a minute, will you, Prentice? I've got to cough. I
can't put it off any longer. Thanks! Yes, it was that last winter in
London that broke the bowl and loosed the golden cord. I thought
I'd been through a lot and knew all life could do; but, by God! I
never imagined anything like that. Stop snivelling, man. I tell you
there's no pain at all now. Just something like a big yawn that gets
worse while I speak. And I had a lot to say. Do you know, what you
said rankled a bit: I mean about my not understanding the ethics of
friendship. Why, old man, I've often said to myself that there'd have
to be a God if only to thank Him for a friend like you. Now I'm going
to discharge the debt. Where shall I begin?"</p>

<p>I told him what I knew already. I forget exactly what words I used.
Poor broken ones, no doubt. I told him he was a hero, a saint: that
just to have lived a life like his to the end was to have won the bays
and gained the victory. He stopped me halfway.</p>

<p>"Nonsense, you sentimental old penny-a-liner! Any one would have done
the same. You'd have done it yourself, and you'd have done it far
better, because you'd have loved while you worked. That's where I break
down. Try to see me as I am, Prentice. I like to have you sorry for me;
but don't let illusion mingle with the regret. I hated them! yes, yes,
I did. Hated them as a man like me hates anything warm and human that
encumbers him and tangles his feet upon his own ruinous tragic course.
Even while those angels sat on my knee and ate their bread and jam and
asked for more fairy stories I was straining for escape—thinking out
ways by which I could rid myself of them, once and for all. You know
the way I took. I had to sell my honor for it—handle money that you'd
have died before you touched. For I'd given my word to them, fool that
I was. I'd eaten their bread, and there's only the one law among white
men. Fumble round, Prentice—there's a tumbler full of water somewhere
near your feet."</p>

<p>He drank and went on, at first in a calmer voice:</p>

<p>"It began by my going to the theatre where she was dancing. I'd gone
to the door again and again, taken my place in the queue and come
away at the last moment. And one night I went on and sat up in the
gallery, jammed tight, waiting for her. People were talking. I won't
say what I heard. It may be true. They didn't know that what they were
heaping up was only more damnation for the shabby, shame-faced brute
that sat among them, biting his tongue, and keeping his fists deep in
his pockets for fear he should curse them suddenly and strike them over
their unclean mouths. And then—she came on the stage, Prentice, and
kissed her hands, and the whole house got up and roared and cheered.
But I hung my head. I didn't dare look at her for a long, long time.
At last, when I knew the dance was over, I found the courage. She was
curtseying and smiling up at us, and it happened my first glance went
straight into her eyes."</p>

<p>He gripped my wrist.</p>

<p>"There's the shadow there, Prentice, what I told you of the night we
walked home: the look I was afraid of when I sent you to meet her. None
of you see it, because you didn't know her before. God! how it shocked
me. I couldn't stand it. I jumped up and climbed out. Some of the men
hit out at me. There's some sort of a chapel on the other side of the
Circus. The door was open, and there were about twenty people listening
to a man gabbling in a language that's like nothing in heaven or earth.
I knelt down on a bench at the bottom of the church and prayed, the
first time since I swore off—oh! twenty years ago. 'Don't let it touch
her!' I kept on saying. 'It's up to my neck, it's over my mouth and
down my loathing throat, but don't let it touch the hem of her dress! I
give in, God! You have me beaten, eternal Father, all in, down and out.
But oh, Jehovah, Jahveh! Shining One! don't hurt a slip of a girl.' A
man touched me on the shoulder. Said I'd better go out and come back on
an evidence night.</p>

<p>"So you see, Prentice, for all my cleverness, I've had to come to it
at last. I've had to whine for mercy to the God that made the tiger
and the cancer microbe. I am only an old Puritan, after all. One
lifetime's too short to get two centuries and a half of Massachusetts
out of your blood. The only time a real codfish Yankee's out of
mischief is when he's making the dollars. A hundred years ago I should
have been a great preacher of the word, Prentice. One of the sort
that the sight of a man rejoicing in his strength or a woman in her
beauty goads to cruel madness. And wherever I'd have gone I'd have left
bowed heads and chilled hearts and minds half-crazed with the fear of
judgment to come. What joy I'd have taken in it! I'd have been so busy
seeing death got its due, it never would have occurred to me life had
any rights. But it's a hundred years too late for that. The world's
grown wiser. It never will let that sort of deviltry get the upper hand
again. They saw it in my work, Prentice. That's why they've kept me
bottled up and let me kill myself inch by inch with my own poison. But
if a man can't do ill broadcast, there's always a quiet place where
mischief can be done. You can always take your revenge for the world's
common sense on some trustful soul that's laid itself bare in your
hands...."</p>

<p>Then I think he ceased to talk coherently.</p>

<p>"——and so I said to myself: I'll go down to the sea, where I had my
darling all my own, pure and loving, before the stain of the world
reached her or evil tongues made busy with her name. She's there
still, I know. She's haunting those lonely sands, crying and wringing
her hands and kissing the old letters because I won't write her any
new. But she must forgive me when I ask her pardon and show her my
punishment, and when it's all told, we'll sit hand in hand and knee to
knee and watch the sun foundering out at sea and when the last little
red streak has gone——"</p>

<p>He broke off suddenly, and sat up in bed.</p>

<p>"Where are my clothes? Haven't they sent them yet? I <i>can't</i>—I
can't be found like this, you know! It's a wretched little piece of
vanity, but I can't. And now I'm getting so weak, I can't go into town
again. Perhaps I didn't tell them where to—send—the right number."...</p>

<p>His voice died away in his throat, and he lay back, quite exhausted.</p>

<p>It was nearly two hours afterward before I left the house for the last
time. A doctor had seen him, and a nurse was settling in an arm-chair
to watch him for the night. We'd done what we could to that awful room.
That wasn't much, but the train was nearly due now, so it didn't really
matter. There was a lot of work before me on the morrow.</p>

<p>And it wasn't until I was halfway home that I remembered the sixty
thousand pounds!</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIIIb">VIII</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">'TWIXT SHINE AND SHADE</p>


<p>To be young, to be beautiful, to be free; to radiate a charm which it
is felt not ungracious alone but ridiculous to pretend to withstand,
and to be paid for its exercise in the tangible form that renders
all else possible; to wake one morning and discover that pleasure,
change of scene, and gracious surroundings have become the anxious
concern of good genii whose motives are too evident to make any demands
upon gratitude: to find each day a fairy vista wherein, by a happy
perversion of the gray old rule, fulfilment waits upon desire: in one
word, to be "the vogue." Has life ever offered more than this? and is
it not a mere question of time how long any memory of old defeat, any
regret for a lost Eden, can resist an assault by happiness made from so
many quarters?</p>

<p>I think, if the whole truth could be known, Fenella's state of mind
during her two years of furore would be a curious psychological
study. I have just been looking through a pile of <i>Sceptres</i> and
<i>Prattlers</i>, the issue of those enchanted years. It is hardly
an exaggeration to say her photograph appeared in one or the other
every week.—Fenella at Ascot—"The Secret of Success. One favorite
whispers it to another."—"Look pleasant, please! A recent snapshot
of Lord Lulford's popular niece." (I forget who invented this phrase.
It was rather done to death.) Here are more: "Commons idol among the
'backwoodsmen' at the Burbery point-to-point. Names from left to
right: Miss Barbour, Sir Bryan Lumsden, et cetera, et cetera." "Will
'No. 8' go up to-night? After a strenuous day with the North Herts,
Miss Barbour has to hustle to catch the London train." I say, take
out all the palpable poses, all the profitable winsomeness of poster
or postcard—there must be one or two where she was taken off her
guard—and then try to trace the shadow poor Paul fancied he saw. I
can only say I have failed. Complete absorption in the business of the
moment—that is all I ever found.</p>

<p>Of course I know that people in the world do not wear their hearts upon
their sleeves, and that there are all sorts of dodges whereby if not
happiness, at any rate the peace of mind necessary for due enjoyment
of life, can be secured. The sad thought can be kept moving on a day
ahead, an hour ahead; always in sight, as it were, but always out of
one's mental reach. Even so, the question remains whether such a shifty
process can be continued indefinitely, and if a day does not come when
the harassed ghost, weary, like poor Joe, of incessant moving on, takes
wing, once and for all, for the land of oblivion.</p>

<p>I was years making up my mind about Fenella. I sometimes fancied the
dear lady knew it, and that that was the reason my brooding glances
were never surprised. It would have been so easy to look up and catch
them. "A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Prentice." And then—remember
I'm a journalist, and used to seeing truth sold at the price—"I was
wondering whether I wasn't only just in time, after all."</p>

<p>She did catch me at last. It was on that night, I fancy, that I passed
once and for all from the sober status of "my husband's great friend"
to the more vertiginous one of "my own." Paul was out at some committee
meeting or another—he leaves her a good deal alone—and would not be
in till late. I had been sitting silent a long while, watching the busy
slender fingers and the sweet puckered brow. Knitting is rather a rite
with Fenella, but I pity the naked she clothes if they had to wait on
the work of her own hands. She had dropped a stitch. "One—two—three,"
she was counting under her breath—"<i>one</i> and <i>two</i> and
<i>three</i>!" and then——Oh, I protest, madam! it was an unfair
advantage that you took. I forget what answer I stammered out. She
stuck her needles into the wool, glanced at the clock and told me
everything.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>A long electric launch, whose stern was covered by a white awning lined
with green, skimmed its way through the lines of moored yachts, and
across the blue Solent, its prow held high like the breast of a diving
sea-bird. Over the bows, from which two sheets of water spurted away,
clear and convex as blown glass, a seaman sat, dressed in ducks, and
holding a long boat-hook in his hand. Round the ribbon of his glazed
hat, in letters of gold, the legend ran—</p>

<p class="ph3">S.Y. <i>Castadiva</i>, R.Y.C.</p>

<p>Amidships a tall, broad-shouldered man in blue serge, very sunburnt,
and wearing a peaked cap, sat, or rather sprawled, in conversation,
probably technical, with the driver of the dynamo, whose head and
shoulders only appeared above the half-deck. Under the awning a girl
was sitting alone. Her furled parasol made a vivid splash of scarlet
against her snowy dress.</p>

<p>Near the jetty of the yacht club the engine ceased to flutter, and the
sailor, putting out his boat-hook, drew the launch to shore. The man in
blue jumped out and, extending a long arm, helped the girl to land.</p>

<p>"Moor her where you can to-night, Mr. Weeks," he said to the head and
shoulders. "I'll see the commodore to-morrow and find out why we're not
given our usual berth."</p>

<p>"Ay, ay, sir."</p>

<p>"And, Weeks, have the launch sent back at three sharp, with the baggage
on board. Becket needn't come. I'm going to Beverbrook immediately
after lunch, and shall sleep there. Good-day, Weeks."</p>

<p>"Good day, Sir Bryan."</p>

<p>Meantime, the girl, unfurling her parasol and balancing it daintily
on her shoulder, walked toward the land, looking about her with a
bright interest at the blue bay, the white sails of the yachts, and the
smartly dressed crowd loitering outside the yacht club enclosure. She
wore a white linen princesse robe, its costly simplicity adorned only
by a wide band of embroidery that ran from throat to hem, and a big
gray straw hat trimmed with a wreath of what roses would look like if
nature had had the good taste to make them the color of pansies—the
roses that bloom in the Rue de la Paix.</p>

<p>Slowly as she walked, she had reached the hedge of the enclosure
before her companion overtook her. Inside the lawn was not crowded.
The big regatta had taken place the day before, and it was lunch
hour. Such groups as were strolling up and down or sitting in little
encampments of canopied arm-chairs stopped flirting or talking to
stare and whisper. On some of the women's faces appeared the dubious
admiration that is kept for social audacity in their sex. The girl
seemed unconscious of the effect she was creating and looked about her
indifferently. Espying some friends in a far corner, she signalled
vigorously with her open parasol.</p>

<p>"Bryan, there's Lady Carphilly and Mrs. Rolf d'Oyley. I must go and
talk to them. Will you come too, or wait?"</p>

<p>"I'll wait," the man answered shortly. "I've sent in for my letters and
I'll open them here. We ought to have lunch soon. Don't be long, Flash."</p>

<p>A club waiter who had been standing in the offing with a pile of
letters on a salver and an initialled leather dispatch case, approached
and disposed them on a table near the chair into which the baronet
had flung himself. Lumsden bestowed a casual glance upon the pile and
looked toward the man's free hand.</p>

<p>"What have you got there?"</p>

<p>"A telegram for Miss Barbour, Sir Bryan."</p>

<p>"Give it to me."</p>

<p>The man handed it over without demur. Bryan ripped it open and read the
message through. He looked thoughtful.</p>

<p>"How long has this been here?"</p>

<p>"Two days, Sir Bryan."</p>

<p>"Didn't they try to get it through by wireless?"</p>

<p>"I can't say, Sir Bryan. I'll ask if you wish."</p>

<p>"No: it doesn't matter. Bring me a 'John Henry'."</p>

<p>He slipped the opened telegram into his coat pocket and, lighting a
cigar, proceeded to read his mail through, systematically, but with a
pre-occupied brow.</p>

<p>The past twelve months had dealt hardly with Bryan. There is probably
in the life of most of us some day, or preferably some night, when fate
chooses to pay us the arrears of years, in which the hours as they pass
over our heads grizzle them, and our tears, if tears we can shed, are
a corrosive acid that bite their record upon our cheeks for all time.
No one honestly mistook Lumsden for a young man after his little son's
death.</p>

<p>It may have been something in one of the letters he had just read—may
be, who knows, something even in the telegram, that made him, after he
had swept his correspondence, with various pencil scribblings on the
margins, into the dispatch case, recall that night with rather more
deliberation than he usually permitted himself, and stare gloomily at
the group into which, with much embracing and chatter, pitched in a key
of congratulatory envy, Fenella had been drawn.</p>

<p>How she had changed! How she had changed since then! To-day, as for
many a day past, it was in nothing more precise than this loose mental
phrase that his ill-defined dissatisfaction could find vent. Beyond
it he seemed unable to go, and was even forced to admit a certain
flimsiness in a charge out of which no better indictment could be
framed. Because, whatever strain upon his finer perceptions had made
the year of probation the torture it had undoubtedly been, he could
not deny that she had remained true as steel to the bargain made
with him in the house of death—a bargain so vague that scarcely any
pretext would have been too tawdry to discharge her from it had she
wished. She had sacrificed her good repute to him forthwith; had even
seemed eager for circumstances that, as far as the world was concerned,
should put the sacrifice past doubt, and if, of late, it had been
coming back to her, as most women's is conveyed from them, in whispers,
the rehabilitation was not of her own devising, but rather part of
the observed tendency of murder and other violations of established
usage to "out." Strangely enough, her fame fared better at women's
hands than at men's, and worse among those who were convinced of her
technical integrity (the phrase was even invented for her) than with
those who inclined to give the ominous face of appearances its full
value. I don't know why this should have been so. Perhaps vice has
its own hypocrisies and canting code of law, and her resistance to
the spirit after the letter had been so admirably fulfilled was held
an outrage. At least she gave him no anxiety, although he knew that
temptation had reached her, once from a quarter so exalted that it is
not usually taken into account—even suspected one wooing as honorable
as perfunctory, and although all his money and all his good will could
not make him as young as the hot blood that besieged her. Her house
was always open to him, at hours which his own forbearance was trusted
to keep within the limits set by decorum; she kept whisky and cigars
for him in her sideboard, with even the little sprig of vanilla in
the cigar cabinet that she must have seen and taken note of in his
own rooms. She never denied him her company nor discovered affinities
among his friends; she even seemed to have a tender conscience in this
regard, and looked round anxiously for him whenever the ripple of
her little triumphs carried her temporarily out of hail. Whence then
his secret dissatisfaction? Oh, this termless war of attainment with
desire, old in human story as the history of David's unruly sons!
Was Bryan the first to set a snare and grudge the fair plumage he had
coveted for the marks of his own springe upon it?</p>

<p>She was a great success, socially. She entered the smart world, it
is true, under his auspices, and because he was sulky if she was not
asked to the same houses, and because it was important to a good many
people that Bryan Lumsden, to say nothing of Calvert &amp; Co., should be
kept in good humor. But, once in, her own talents were quite competent
to keep her in the place he had made for her. She had even reached a
point now where her successes were her own, and no longer were held to
throw reflected lustre upon her sponsor. She fitted quickly and easily
into what, after all, was her own class. In a year she rode hard and
straight and had developed a heady but hitherto successful system of
tactics at bridge. Bryan no longer got the credit of her clothes, but
it was generally understood she was frightfully in debt and would marry
him when her creditors delivered their ultimatum. She had an infantile
wit and a faculty for what the French term <i>choses inouïes</i>. One
of her riddles became proverbial.</p>

<p>"What did the fishes say to Noah when he asked them into the ark?" "No
tanks."</p>

<p>I subjoin a few more specimens, not with any hope that their charm will
subsist in print, but just to show with what things, on pretty lips,
the weary old world is prepared to be amused.</p>

<p>Once she was trying to collect money for some charity and no one had
change. This happens sometimes even in smart society. "Oh, dear,"
sighed Fenella, "everybody has the hand-to-mouth disease."</p>

<p>She was slightly angered at a restraining clause in one of her
contracts, discovered when too late.</p>

<p>"You're a bad man," she told the flustered manager, "and you deserve to
come to a nasty sticky end."</p>

<p>To Rock, of ill odor in the Park, after his senile advances had been
rebuffed by a snobby little Pekinese: "Don't whine, <i>dee-ar</i>!
I don't believe that kind of dog knows whether it's a dog or a
poll-parrot or an insect."</p>

<p>"Bryan's caught cold, I think," she said one morning. "He keeps calling
for 'Letitia'."</p>

<p>If these are fair samples of the parts she put at the disposal of her
new friends, her reputation is not the surprise it might be to a man
who knows that the dear lady to this day conducts her conversation upon
an economical little vocabulary of about three hundred words.</p>

<p>Maybe the conscience we have spoken of had been pricking her, for when
Lumsden raised his head from his reverie the world had gone red, and he
was looking at the sun through her parasol.</p>

<p>"You look glum, old man," said Fenella. "What's the matter? Do you want
your lunch?"</p>

<p>Lumsden got up and stretched. He had been pulling at his moustache,
and one hair—a white one—was on the shoulder of his blue reefer. She
picked it off, held it up to the light, looked unfathomably at him and
blew it daintily into the air.</p>

<p>"Perhaps we'd best have lunch now," she said. "I want to get to
Beverbrook soon and see what arrangements they've made. Do you remember
Edmaston, Bryan, where they put that dreadful polish down—Takko or
Stikko or something—and when my foot stuck I buzzed and every one
laughed?"</p>

<p>"Don't you feel nervous, Flash?"</p>

<p>"Just a teeny. When do <i>They</i> come?"</p>

<p>"Oh, to dinner; but you won't be introduced till you've danced. And
remember, Flash, you must only speak when you're spoken to by Them.
Just answer questions."</p>

<p>"I'll try not to disgrace you," she said airily, and led the way to the
pavilion.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="IXb">IX</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">BEATEN AT THE POST</p>


<p>She was very gay and flippant during lunch, and while crossing the
bay, and in the motor on the way to the great ducal house, where she
was going, if not to sing for her supper, at least to dance for her
dinner. She was very serious and a little dictatorial on the stage,
but immediately after tea took the owner of the Chaste Goddess and so
much else by the arm, and proceeded to drag him on a prolonged tour of
inspection, through the stables, round the noble Italian gardens—at
whose lichened fawns and satyrs she made faces, expressive of the
utmost scorn and defiance, but which only succeeded in being charming,
and the English garden—where the leaden shepherdesses were pronounced
"ducks"; into the aviary to drive four macaws to frenzy with a long
straw, and back by orchid houses and hothouses to the terrace again.
She picked a good many flowers and ate a quantity of fruit.</p>

<p>It was while she was picking grapes in the vine house that Lumsden took
heart and disburthened himself of a little of his recent chagrin.</p>

<p>"Flash! I'm going to scold you!"</p>

<p>"Oh, Bryan! what for? For culling all these grapes? I like 'cull,'
it sounds less greedy than 'pick.' I cull, thou culleth—no,
<i>cullest</i>—she culls."</p>

<p>"Flash! out of all the world what made you pick on those two Jezebels
to speak to on the lawn?"</p>

<p>"What's the matter with them besides 'jezziness'?"</p>

<p>"You know well enough. They're not nice women."</p>

<p>"Really nice women don't have much to say to me? Have you noticed it,
skipper?"</p>

<p>"They would if——Oh! stop eating all those grapes. You'll make
yourself sick."</p>

<p>"If what, please?"</p>

<p>"If you'd only do the straight thing?"</p>

<p>"What do you mean? Go into a refuge?"</p>

<p>"A <i>refuge</i>! What abominable twaddle you can talk when you like."</p>

<p>She laid a sticky finger over his mouth. "Tut-tut-tut! Come outside if
you're going to scold. It's too fuzzy in here. You'll get a rush of
brains to the head."</p>

<p>Outside, the garden was deserted. The centre of interest seemed to have
shifted to the upper terrace. A large horny beetle was pursuing his
homeward or outward way over the pounded shell of the walk. Fenella
assisted him with the point of her parasol, and did not relax her good
offices until he was in dazed safety upon the border. Then she looked
up.</p>

<p>"Flash! why don't you marry me and have done with it?"</p>

<p>She punched six holes in the path before replying.</p>

<p>"What do you want to 'have done with?' Why can't we go on as we are a
little longer?"</p>

<p>"Because it's—unnatural. There are other reasons, but that's enough."</p>

<p>"It isn't, if you don't let it worry you—Oh! what am I saying? Bryan,
do you think we'd care as much for one another if—if I did as you say."</p>

<p>"Of course we should—more every day."</p>

<p>"Why didn't you keep getting fonder and fonder of those others, then?"</p>

<p>"I think that question most unseemly. You don't seem to realize I'm
asking you to be my wife."</p>

<p>"M-m! It is hard to."</p>

<p>"Oh, don't be clever. Every one's clever. What are you waiting for?"</p>

<p>No answer.</p>

<p>"Shall I tell you?"</p>

<p>"If you think you know, dear."</p>

<p>"You're waiting until there's not one little bit left of the girl I
fell in love with, the girl who tried to hide her bare arms under
Perse's ruffle in the hall at Lulford, and who cried by the cot where
my poor little urchin was dying. You've never forgiven me that cursed
night in Mount Street."</p>

<p>"Dear! I've never mentioned it from that day to this."</p>

<p>"Well, it's behind everything you say. It's behind your eyes when they
look at me. Can't you understand I wasn't myself."</p>

<p>"You were a little—eh? Weren't you, dear? Not much; just a gentlemanly
glow."</p>

<p>"And it's your way of taking revenge for it. And a d——d cruel woman's
way it is."</p>

<p>She laid her hand on his arm. "Bryan, don't worry me now. I've got a
lot to go through to-night. It's harder than anybody thinks. There's
some sense in what you say. But we can talk about it some other
time.... Oh! look up there! What's happening?"</p>

<p>A big browny-red closed motor-car rolled along the upper terrace and
stopped at the great doorway. In a moment servants—visitors seemed
to run together, to range themselves in two lines, one on each side
of the wide curved steps. Framed in the dark gothic arch, the Lord of
Beverbrook appeared, noble, white of hair and moustache, with a serene
and lofty humility in his bent head that was strangely impressive. The
rest is Apotheosis. Before it we veil our dazzled eyes.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>He had not gone to bed at two o'clock the next morning. He sat,
completely dressed, smoking and looking out his bedroom window over the
silvering terraces and park. The great gay house was abed: the night
very still. Only to his left, above the low quadrangle of some stables
or outhouses, could be seen a dim shaft of light. A murmur of voices,
the sound of water running and splashing about a hose-pipe, seemed to
come from that direction.</p>

<p>His thoughts were busy, but not directly with the girl whose interests
and his own were by now tacitly associated. The night had been a
new triumph for her—in a way the crown upon all the rest—but such
triumphs by now were discounted in advance, felt almost to be in the
order of nature. No. It was the telegram he was thinking of, the
telegram that he had intercepted on the lawn at Cowes. He had not so
much forgotten it till now as mentally pigeon-holed it for future
consideration. This habit, acquired in business, he unconsciously
followed in all the concerns of life.</p>

<p>Who was making himself this beggar's advocate in London. Who was
"Prentice." Curse him! whoever he was. Few though the words had been,
they contained a hint of some previous understanding or rendezvous.
Who were the conspirators that wanted to drag a girl away from the
light and laughter that was her due, (influences so desirable from
every point of view) into the chill shadow of a hospital death-bed. He
had long ceased to be jealous of Ingram, as of a man whom the world
that was his friend had taken in hand and beaten handsomely, but there
is no hatred so merciless and lawless as that with which contempt is
mingled. The suppression of the telegram never struck him as dishonor,
although he was not a cruel or a treacherous man. He counted it a
fair counter-stroke to what he esteemed a blow in the dark, a stab
from behind. Letter by letter and word for word the hateful thing was
printed on his brain, but who does not know the instinct of return
to a message in which substance and significance are so inversely
proportioned? To have read nine times is no reason for not reading a
tenth. The screed has not changed, but the mood may have; and, with the
new mood, who knows what fresh meaning may not leap at us.</p>

<p>He got up, opened the wardrobe, and felt in the pockets of his blue
coat. It was not in either of them. He considered awhile. Had he
packed it, with the letters, into his dispatch case? If so, it had
gone aboard to his secretary, which didn't matter much. But—no. He
distinctly remembered feeling it in his pocket during the crossing to
the mainland. Plainly gone, then. But where?</p>

<p>He took the coat off the rack and looked at it as though he would
read its history since dinner. His own man was not with him, but he
had stopped at Beverbrook before and knew the valeting was a little
overdone. R—— was so natty himself. He had flung it on the bed when
he dressed. Whoever did the room had taken it to be brushed or pressed,
and the telegram had fallen out of the pocket. How could he be sure?
Oh! he knew. There had been a tiny smear of white paint under the left
cuff. If the coat had been taken away——He took it to the light. The
white smudge was gone.</p>

<p>He was not pleased at the accident, but decided to dismiss the matter
for the night. The faculty to do so, and to fall asleep on some
pleasant thought, was part of his life's sound régime. He began to
think of her again. How prettily she had carried off her success. He
recalled the little bob-curtsey in the Presence, so in character after
the hoydenish dance—the gleam of sub-audacity that accompanied it,
which every charming woman knows she can permit herself in company,
however august, where her charm is likely to be felt. But who would
have done it so gracefully? He had stood aloof (it seemed more decent
to), but he remembered how long she had been kept in the circle, and
how every one had laughed from time to time. Her competence, her
amazing competence—that was what he was never done marvelling at.
Nothing seemed to scare her, nothing to dazzle her. What a genius there
can be in school nicknames! And then, that chin and jaw of turned
ivory, and the hair, dark and fragrant as a West India night, and the
diamond twinkling in the little fleshy ear.</p>

<p>Suddenly he stood quite still, with his hair-brushes in his hand,
listening intently. Some one was scratching stealthily on the upper
panel of his bedroom door. Remember the hour—the stillness—the man's
old experience, and of what his imagination was full. His heart seemed
to miss two or three beats, and to resume its function thickly and
heavily in his throat. The last traces of anger and dissatisfaction
died away. Women had called Bryan Lumsden's face beautiful before. They
might have called it so now again.</p>

<p>He walked to the door and opened it softly. It was she; but dressed,
with her hat and veil, and with the telegram in her hand.</p>

<p>"Bryan!—Bryan!" she said under her breath, and then stopped. Her
agitation was so great that she could not go on. He drew her gently
into his room and closed the door.</p>

<p>"You must be careful, Flash," he said gravely. "This isn't an ordinary
visit like Lulford, you know. It won't do to have any scandal here."</p>

<p>"Bryan, can I speak to you a minute?"</p>

<p>"Go on."</p>

<p>"You know what you asked me this afternoon?"</p>

<p>"Yes."</p>

<p>"I will, I will, I <i>will</i>; any time you like."</p>

<p>He looked at the telegram and his face hardened.</p>

<p>"If——?"</p>

<p>"Yes. If you get me to London to-night."</p>

<p>"Flash! it's absurd. Think of the hour! Can't you wait till morning?"</p>

<p>"No. I shall go mad."</p>

<p>"But even if the station is open, it will take hours to get a special."</p>

<p>"You have your car."</p>

<p>"Yes; but every one's in bed, and the garage probably locked up. Be
reasonable."</p>

<p>"Oh, no they're not," she said eagerly. "I can hear them from my
window. They have lamps and they're washing the cars with a hose."</p>

<p>"What has happened?"</p>

<p>She handed him the telegram quite simply. "I found this on my table.
It's been opened. I don't understand——"</p>

<p>He read it through again and folded it quite small and evenly.</p>

<p>"Where's your room? You can't wait here."</p>

<p>"At the other end of the corridor—Oh, Bryan! God bless you!"</p>

<p>"<i>S-sh!</i> How will I know it? It won't do to make a mistake."</p>

<p>"Can't I hang a stocking over the knob?"</p>

<p>He looked at her askance a moment, then put on his jacket and walked
away into the darkness. After what must have seemed more, and was
probably less, than half an hour, he tapped softly at her door. He was
wearing the big coat she knew so well. He had wrapped her in it more
than once.</p>

<p>"I've arranged it," he said, in a low voice, strangely gentle. "Follow
me, and walk quietly."</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="Xb">X</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">A YEAR AND A DAY</p>


<p>We got Paul out of that dreadful lodging and into a private ward at
St. Faith's. I'll never forget the way Smeaton helped. We had the very
best advice, but all the doctors shook their heads over him. Some old
adhesion of the lung, they said, that, under normal conditions, he
might have lived till eighty and never suspected, but which privation,
or a chill, or a blow, or perhaps all three, had fretted to malignity.
There'd have to be an operation. It wasn't what is called a desperate
one, was well within the competence of modern surgery in an ordinary
case, but everything was against poor Ingram. Webber, who was watching
the general condition, took no responsibility for the operation, and
Tuckey, who was to do the cutting, took no responsibility for the
result. As a division of responsibility, it was the neatest piece of
work, I think, I have ever seen.</p>

<p>"It's not really strength he lacks," said Webber, after his last visit
before the critical morning. "It's the <i>vivida vis</i>, the desire
of life, that isn't there. Two grains of hope would be worth all the
oxygen and beef-juice and brandy we could pump into him in a month."</p>

<p>I didn't confide to Webber that I'd already told Paul sixty thousand
pounds was waiting till he was well enough to claim it, without seeing
one shade of pleasurable emotion come into the tired, drooping eyes.
As for Fenella, her name was never mentioned between us. I don't think
he had any idea how much he had told me in that dark room at Chalk
Farm, and I did not remind him. I had reason, soon enough, to bless
my forbearance, for day followed day, and no answer to my telegram
reached me. At Park Row I had found a sullen reluctance to give any
information at all. She was travelling—she was on the sea—had left no
instructions for forwarding. But a journalist is not to be thrown off
the scent by a sulky and probably venal little slavey. Two telephone
calls put me into possession of Lumsden's probable movements, and I
knew I had not gone very far astray in sending the telegram to his care
at Cowes. I never doubted for an instant that it had reached her hands.
No; she had sought advice where advice, perhaps, was already backed by
natural authority, and had decided that, under the circumstances——You
see what I mean? It is true she might have written or wired asking for
news. But trying to repair life's errors is a thankless task. Through
the breach we are patching up the whole salt, dark ocean of destiny
comes pouring and thundering about our stunned ears.</p>

<p>I slept little on the night before Paul's operation, and was up and
moving restlessly about my rooms before the sun had risen. Who is it
says, "Help cometh with the morning?" The Bible, probably. Anyway, I
know I was heartened by seeing the rosy glow on the curtained windows
opposite. It is a strange thing that I, who was to have no share in
the day's great business, was probably up the first. Paul, I hope, was
asleep, and I am sure Tuckey and Webber were. How far easier is work
than waiting! The one has its seasons—a life may be wasted in the
other.</p>

<p>I was looking out my sitting-room window, thinking this and many a
deep solemn thought besides, when a big car, covered so thickly with
mud and dust that its color could not be distinguished, and with the
unmistakable appearance of having been driven far and furiously,
swung—one might almost say dropped—into the crescent. I knew it was
she. Oh, how I loathed myself for my doubt! I had the door open before
she could put her foot on the steps.</p>

<p>She flashed into my face one mute, awful question in which I could tell
the anguish of hours was concentrated, and I gave her the mute reply
which says, "Not yet."</p>

<p>"Oh, thank God! thank God!" she said, and clasped her hands across her
breast. The man in the car, stooped above the steering-wheel, did not
move once nor look round.</p>

<p>"Can I see him now? Will he know me?"</p>

<p>"You won't be let see him till nine. The operation is at eleven, and
there's hope. He was conscious last night but very weak. I can tell you
no more."</p>

<p>If I sound harsh or cold, lay it to the charge of the man at the wheel.</p>

<p>I went on. "Shall I arrange for you to see him at nine?"</p>

<p>"Is it far?"</p>

<p>"Just across the river."</p>

<p>"I'll call back at quarter to nine, and you must take me."</p>

<p>She climbed into the car without looking at me again, and next moment
was gone. Across the road I counted six blinds drawn to one side.</p>

<p>Lumsden never asked whether the man he had brought her a hundred and
thirty miles to see was dead or alive. His face was set like a stone.
In the main road he turned it to her, a mere dusty mask.</p>

<p>"Where do you want to go now?"</p>

<p>"Go to my house. I'll get you a drink and some breakfast. You must be
half dead."</p>

<p>He headed the car for Knightsbridge without a word, and while Frances,
sleep struggling with surprise in her bemused brain, was fulfilling
her humble rôle in the romance by poaching two eggs over the electric
stove, they sat in the dining-room on opposite sides of the table. She
had filled a long, thin glass with the beverage his heart loved, but
he only sipped it, which was not like Bryan, and turned the tumbler
thoughtfully round and round. He avoided her eyes. He had seemed to
avoid them all the way up.</p>

<p>"Will you come with me to—to the hospital?" she asked, when the
silence had begun to weigh upon her.</p>

<p>"No. I don't want to see him."</p>

<p>"Bryan, since we're to be married, I think I'd best tell you what I
wouldn't tell that night at Mount Street. Do you remember?"</p>

<p>"Yes. Well?"</p>

<p>"Dear, there's no reason, when you see him, you should feel anything
but just a great, deep pity for all his unhappiness. I don't know why I
didn't tell you this before. I think it was your doubting him drove me
mad. And you're quite right in saying I've changed myself on purpose.
It was because, after I learned the world a bit, I saw what a fraud I
really was. All those little girl's ways you liked so much—they're
very pretty, I dare say, but they're shams for me, anywhere off the
stage. I had no right to them. I'm only what the world calls a 'good
girl'—I'm only a girl at all, because he was merciful and—spared me.
He must have been a very good man."</p>

<p>"Or a very cold one? Which?"</p>

<p>"Well. I'm not going to try to answer that, Bryan. It's what you call
yourself an 'unseemly question'."</p>

<p>"You're a strange creature."</p>

<p>"Oh no, I'm not, Bryan. Not a bit different really to heaps and heaps
of other women. I used to think I was once, at Sharland, because I
didn't seem to have the other girls' ways or their curiosity. But I
know better now. Do you remember Lord—the old lawyer beast that we
went to the White City with? He took me on the launches, and when we
were alone, he leaned over and told me—oh, something I can't even tell
you, Bryan—now. He said it in French first and then, in case I didn't
know what it was in French, he translated it into English. Those are
the things that make us <i>loathe</i> you, Bryan—deep, deep, deep,
down in the little bit of us you never reach. But I only giggled, as
any other girl would have done, any other girl who felt the same as
me. And now he'll always remember me as—the woman who laughed."</p>

<p>"You're all a mystery."</p>

<p>"Not half as much as is pretended, Bryan. The mystery comes about
because we don't tell the truth. Married women don't tell it, even,
to one another, and it's thought shocking to tell a girl things that
the first man she meets will tell her if she lets him. I hear more
than most, 'cos I'm not one thing nor the other, and every one thinks
I'll tell them things back, and then they'll find out what's puzzling
them about us two. And we never tell you. How dare we? We find a set
of rules ready made for us—by you. You take the men we really want
from us because you're stronger than they are, or richer, or even
braver than they are, and since it's the way you settle things among
yourselves, and since you're satisfied with what you get by it, we
pretend we're satisfied too. But it's one thing to conquer them, Bryan,
and it's another thing to conquer us. I'll tell you a little woman's
secret: No nice girl ever gives herself up quite to a man unless
there's a little of <i>her mother</i> in him. There was an awful lot in
Paul. I found it out."</p>

<p>"A bit of an old woman, in fact?"</p>

<p>"Oh! I see I can't teach you. It doesn't matter. So you see, dear," in
a different voice and raising her head, "there's not much left for you.
But what there is I'd rather you had than any one else. I <i>like</i>
you, Bryan—I like you <i>so</i>."</p>

<p>"And you think I ought to be satisfied with that?"</p>

<p>"Well, you know what you said a year ago."</p>

<p>"Yes—a year ago, but not now. Yesterday perhaps, but not this morning.
It's the old Scots law limit—a year and a day. Often the wisdom that
doesn't come in the year comes in a night. You're too deadly wise,
Flash; too utterly disillusioned. I never could stand it. There'd be
nothing to teach you; nothing to break down. You believe you've taken
my measure, and every time I tried to lift our lives out of the mud,
I'd feel you were laughing at me—down in that little bit you've just
told me of. It may be as you say, all a make-believe, but, by G—d! it
doesn't do to have both know it. What do you want most, really? Your
liberty?"</p>

<p>She did not answer or raise her head.</p>

<p>"Well, you can have it." He got up and took his cap off the table.
"Good-bye."</p>

<p>She didn't speak until he had his hand on the handle of the door. And
then—</p>

<p>"Bryan, I've never let you kiss me. You can now if you like."</p>

<p>He spun round on his heel, as though some one had given him a blow
between the shoulders. For a moment she thought he was going to strike
her, or humble her pride to death. A foul name seemed to be actually
forming itself on his lips. But he came across the room, and took her
in his arms, and held her a long while.</p>

<p>"Take care, please," she said, breathlessly, "you're hurting me—a
little."</p>

<p>Then he let her go.</p>

<p>"Oh, Flash!" he said hoarsely. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?
Doesn't that tell you something?"</p>

<p>She was looking in the mirror at a little red mark where he had pressed
the earring into her neck.</p>

<p>"Good-bye," he said again, and she heard the hall door slam. And then
the throb of the motor began to rattle the windows in their frames.</p>

<p>She fell upon her knees and buried her face in her hands.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIb">XI</h2>
</div>

<p class="ph2">TWO GRAINS OF HOPE</p>


<p>If that early morning call at half-past five had been my only meeting
with Fenella, I don't think I should have known her when she came back
at nine. All the weariness had gone out of her face. Under her light
cloak she was freshly and beautifully dressed. Her eyes seemed to brim
with a sort of wistful happiness. I hated the task; but knowing what
she was about to see, I <i>had</i> to try and prepare her. But I soon
saw I was having my trouble for nothing. I think she hardly heard me.
Her heart, it was plain, was full of that brave, sane hope that, even
when it is brought to nothing, I think bears sorrow best. Webber had
just paid his morning visit, but she did not wait for his report. I
fancy from the look he gave me that he took in the situation at a
glance. I smiled back at him a little nervously. He had prescribed two
grains of hope, and I was conscious of bringing an overdose.</p>

<p>In the private ward my impulsive companion took no notice of doctors
or nurses, but went straight over to the bed on whose snowy pillow the
poor wasted face lay like a gray shadow. She gave a little moan at the
first sight of it: that was all. His eyes were closed. She knelt down,
and passing her arm ever so gently underneath his neck, threw back her
cloak, and laid the shadowy face upon the warmth, and the fragrance,
and the softness beneath.</p>

<p>"Paul," she said at his ear, low, but so distinctly that we all heard.
"Don't you know me, dear? It's Nelly, come back to take care of you,
and look after you and love you all the rest of your life. You're
going to get well, aren't you, dear, for her sake? 'Cos you mustn't
break her heart a second time, you know. And, dear, she doesn't want
you to talk; but won't you just open your poor tired eyes once, a teeny
second, to show you know whose arm is round you? Because she's been
waiting, waiting—oh, such a weary time! just waiting, dear, till you
sent for her."</p>

<p>There was silence for a few seconds, broken only by the unrestrained
sobbing of the little day nurse at the foot of the bed.</p>

<p>Then Ingram opened his eyes.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>"I don't know whether he's going to die or get well," I said, some
hours later. I was trying to swallow <i>chateaubriand</i> and
champagne and unmanly emotion all at the same time, which doesn't help
lucidity. But I'd been supporting an anxious day on a tin and a half
of cigarettes, and the champagne was old Smeaton's fault, so perhaps
I shall be forgiven. "I don't know whether he's going to get well or
die. I can't feel it matters much, to-night. You'd know what I meant
if you'd seen his face. Oh! it was wonderful. I think I know now how a
man looks when he wakes in heaven and knows he very nearly missed it.
And the Barbour woman, crooning and cooing over him, and the nurses
snivelling, and all those doctors trying to pull the poor devil back to
life! Yes, you can laugh if you like, Smeaton. But I say it's a damned
fine old world, and I'm glad to have a place where I can sit and watch
it—even if it is only a second-floor front and back in Pimlico."</p>

<hr class="tb">

<div class="footnote">

<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Possibly Prussic acid.—Ed.</p>

</div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Worcester</p>

</div>

<hr class="tb">

<p class="ph3">THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK</p>

<p class="ph3">[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]</p>

<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75372 ***</div>
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