Initial commit of ebook 78605 filesHEADmain

1 files changed, 10156 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/78605-0.txt b/78605-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02ff0bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78605-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10156 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78605 ***
+
+
+
+
+ Tales of the Uneasy
+
+ By
+ Violet Hunt
+ Author of
+ “White Rose of Weary Leaf,” “The Wife of Altamont,” etc.
+
+
+
+
+ London
+ William Heinemann
+ 1911
+
+
+
+
+ [COPYRIGHT]
+
+ _Copyright, London_, 1911, _by William Heinemann_
+
+
+
+
+ [DEDICATION]
+
+ TO
+ R.B. BYLES
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+ THE TELEGRAM
+ THE OPERATION
+ THE MEMOIR
+ THE PRAYER
+ THE COACH
+ THE BLUE BONNET
+ THE WITNESS
+ THE BAROMETER
+ THE TIGER-SKIN
+
+
+
+
+ THE TELEGRAM
+
+Her mother was dead. Her life stood altered.
+
+She would be no poorer, it was not that. She was an orphan, and all
+her mother had had came to her. That meant seventy thousand pounds,
+plate, linen and the freehold of a fine old house in Lower Seymour
+Street, that they had moved into a year before the old lady died.
+
+Things were no more altered socially than they were altered
+pecuniarily, for the Damers’ set naturally corresponded, as sets do,
+with their postal district, and Miss Alice Damer could therefore
+continue to command an entrance into the best circles. Only she
+realized that she must henceforth enjoy all these good things to the
+tune of a paid companion, having no poor and amenable relations handy
+whom she could draft into the household economy, and afterwards snub
+into a colourless, bare existence.
+
+She was thirty-five, and her years did not weigh on her, except
+mentally. The first faint physical signs of the debacle were, so far,
+evident to herself alone, and then only in moods of unusual
+depression. She was still young enough to need a companion. Her pretty
+red-gold hair was as red as gold, as pretty as ever, her visits to her
+dentist as few, her eyes as deep, and her step as elastic, although
+she had given up dancing. She had made this sacrifice more from a
+sense of fitness, as a concession to the needs of the young girls
+coming up all round her, and who deserved their turn on the floor,
+than of social necessity. As a matter of fact, she had never been
+really fond of that over-energetic, disordering form of amusement. She
+loved the world and going up and down in it immensely, and her way of
+enjoying parties was to sit out if it was a dance, away from the music
+if it was a concert, and in the back of the box if it was a play. She
+was a flirt.
+
+Not an outrageous, noisy, ill-bred flirt, but what is known as a quiet
+flirt, with many strong and efficient strings to her bow. Did one of
+them, being after all only catgut or mere man, snap occasionally--that
+is to say, get married out of the circle of her charm--Alice, in her
+quiet way, promptly renewed the string, and supplied herself with a
+new admirer, as good at fetching and carrying as the old. In her mind
+that was the chief use of admirers--to prevent one’s _looking_
+neglected--of course one never really was!
+
+She was a woman of many “affairs”; she liked living, not exactly in
+hot water, but in water at least warm, and was seldom seen talking to
+women, though she was quite nice to them, as intrusive but
+law-permitted aliens in the _pays du cœur_. None of her friends would
+have dared to ask her to a ladies’ lunch, or any over-womaned party; a
+man had always to be “got for Alice,” else she would have been hurt,
+and quite unable to play her part properly. She was unused to,
+unversed in her own sex.
+
+On the other hand, she played fair and never took other women’s men,
+or encouraged their husbands to play the pretty game with her. People
+said _that_ for her, that she never made women unhappy, only men. She
+was never very sorry for a man’s love-troubles, for she had a theory
+that a hopeless passion or two did a man no harm and that the more he
+proposed the merrier--for him. She never told any one how many offers
+she had refused. Men often did propose to her, and she refused them
+all, and boasted that she had never been engaged for even an hour, and
+that no man had ever kissed her. The bloom was not off Alice, unless
+so much mental coming and going in her courts had produced some such
+subtle effect.
+
+“Why should I marry?” she used to say to Everard Jenkyns (good old
+Welsh family), when he importuned her to relax her rule in his favour,
+and even go so far as making the vast experiment of marriage with him
+as her partner. “There is no earthly hurry.”
+
+“No, but perhaps a heavenly one,” he had inanely replied.
+
+“I may never marry at all. Girls, economically, don’t need to marry as
+they used to, and at any rate I am independent so far as money goes.”
+
+“So the way is clear for you to marry for love.”
+
+“I don’t think I shall ever fall in love.”
+
+“Then take a man you like--and you like me?” Everard was not at that
+time sufficiently far gone in love to make him inattentive to, and
+unappreciative of the use and value of “cheek,” in discussing such
+matters with his princess.
+
+“Yes, I like you; but, as you know, I don’t love you. And I’m so made
+that I must be quite sure in my own mind that I am absolutely,
+positively incapable of loving madly before I let myself go with any
+one, even you. Don’t you see, in the interests of morality, one must
+be sure of oneself, or there might be catastrophe, with a strong
+nature like mine?”
+
+“No,” said Everard patiently and earnestly. “There would, I am sure,
+be no danger of that with you. Your husband might feel perfectly safe
+in your hands.”
+
+“Thanks. Why do you say that?”
+
+“Because the power to flirt never implies the power to love, I am
+afraid.”
+
+“Well, Everard, you can’t say that I flirt with you!” she exclaimed
+noisily.
+
+“Oh, no. Your knowing that I am desperately, dully serious about you
+protects me a little, and you do pay me the doubtful compliment of
+taking no trouble to attract me. You honestly never put your best foot
+foremost with me, or pose like a heroine to your most humble valet.”
+
+“Yes,” Alice agreed, laughing a little bitterly. “I promise you never
+to encourage you in any way. I would let you see me with my hair in
+curlers, if I wore them! Anything to convince you of the purity of my
+intentions. I simply will not have you say that I lead you on or
+encourage you.”
+
+“My God, Alice! I don’t say it! I know well enough I am a d----d fool
+and have nothing whatever to go on.”
+
+“A fool to love me?”
+
+“A fool because I am a lonely man and don’t like being a lonely man,
+and yet this feeling of mine towards you will keep me so, so far as I
+can see. I don’t suppose I shall ever marry. I know I shan’t. That’s
+what you’ve done, Alice, and I may just as well go away and make my
+will in your favour, for I shall never have any wife or child to leave
+my money to. I feel that it will be so.”
+
+“Really, my poor Everard”--she tried very hard not to look
+flattered--“this is most sad. I couldn’t have believed there was such
+fidelity left in this wicked world, and to tell you the truth I don’t
+believe it possible, even now. I’m really not vain enough--if I _am_
+cruel.”
+
+“Not so very vain, and not a bit cruel. I honestly believe if you
+thought you could get up any sort of feeling for me, you’d say so. You
+never will say it to me--but to some one else, I suppose. You are
+human like every one else. It’s all rot about not being capable of
+loving; every woman is or is able to think she is, and that’s enough
+in a great many cases. Oh, you’ll find the man sooner or later, and
+I--well, I shall wish you every happiness and be godfather to the
+kids. Nice little flirt’s kids, with pretty hair like yours. Now, I’d
+better go away to the Temple and make that will, as I’ve quite made up
+my mind to die a bachelor.”
+
+“Nonsense,” said Alice sharply, more touched than she liked to own; “I
+won’t even be friends with you if you go on like that. Leave things
+open. Not for me, of course. It must be quite understood that I don’t
+accept any such sacrifice of your life as waiting for me would entail.
+Believe me, I know myself, and I know, somehow, deep down, that I
+shall never fall in love with you. That being the case, don’t you
+think I should be really behaving rather badly if I allowed you to
+think that you could ever melt me by faithful service, and little
+things like that?”
+
+“All right. Beggars don’t choose. You shall have the faithful service
+all the same, and it shall not hope to melt you. Will that suit you?”
+
+“We’ll leave it at that, then,” said Alice, permitting the young and
+promising barrister to kiss her hand, and devote his wits and energies
+and the rest of his life to her use. She could always find work for
+him.
+
+He did it all as he had said. He was thus able to be “about the
+house.” That was his retaining fee. Whether it was painful to him or
+not in his present state of mind to see so much of Alice Damer, it was
+a fact that he did have to meet her continually. She sent little
+business-like notes round to his chambers nearly every day--short,
+sensible, not encouraging notes. He made all the arrangements for
+their journeys and their parties and their entertaining of their
+friends. He saw her mother and herself off to the Continent every year
+when they went to do their cure, was attentive at the carriage door,
+bought the railway literature, and pumped up the air cushions. He
+could always be counted upon to be odd man at a dinner party, and if
+it was humanly possible, and sometimes when it was inhumanly
+impossible, threw over any other important engagement that he might
+have had--important to himself, be it understood. His clerk thought he
+led a “dog’s life.” What Everard thought was never recorded. What
+Alice thought was simply this, that Everard liked doing little things
+for her and was by temperament a born bachelor, although he still
+cultivated that touching delusion that he was lonely and wanted a
+companion. It was only that he wanted her, and seeing her this way,
+every day off and on, was really the pabulum his soul cried for; other
+and more full-blooded men would not have been content with so merely
+spiritual a sustenance. At any rate, he never showed any tendency to
+stray from the portal and outer courts of this austere temple of
+respectful worship. Alice had no cause for jealousy. Her victim never
+twisted or wriggled on the hook of her attraction, his ready smile on
+seeing her flourished as ever, only there was more “drawing” in it, as
+expressed by the hatchet lines of his mouth. In short, Everard grew
+thin.
+
+His chest was rather narrow. He coughed often and tiresomely. Lung
+symptoms seemed to be developing themselves there. Alice, out of
+gracious regard for him, had suggested his accompanying her mother and
+herself to the Riviera one winter, instead of seeing them off and
+falling back into the fog of Charing Cross as usual. He had refused on
+the score of his pressing work, promising, however, to wear a
+respirator on the very bad days.
+
+It was a pity he had not gone with them that time. For all that she
+was a flirt, and men were her material; Alice didn’t know them at all.
+She met a man out at Cap Martin, a man Everard would have seen through
+at a glance. This common adventurer made love to her; he managed to
+engage the poor flirt’s affections. There was nothing in it, no
+magnetism. He was a better flirt than she was, that was all, and while
+Alice had money, he had none.
+
+She returned, and confided her woes. Everard had his work cut out for
+him. He interviewed this handsome predatory person, and succeeded in
+retrieving Alice’s letters for her. It was a supreme bit of service,
+and Alice was truly grateful to him. The wretch went out of her life,
+leaving her in a rather deplorable condition of nerves and mind.
+
+And Everard threw himself into the situation as no man who is not
+deeply attached to a woman unpicturesquely lovesick for another could
+have done. He visited her every day, and comforted and consoled her by
+allowing her to talk about it all. Alice’s grief furnished the theme
+for many a dreary summer’s afternoon, when Everard used to take her up
+the river to distract her mind. It was a trip she had always firmly
+refused to take with him in the old days on the score of propriety, an
+excuse that masked dread of boredom. Boredom was not in it now--it was
+acute tragedy. Poor Alice forgot all propriety when once she was towed
+well out into mid stream. There she gave way and allowed the echoes of
+Datchet and Laleham to echo with her sobs. For she had been awfully
+hard hit. Once, indeed, Everard remembered, but with no pleasurable
+sense of a lover’s guerdon gained, she had leaned forward in the boat
+with the abandon of despair and kissed her patient confidant. It was
+the only woman’s kiss Everard had ever received in his life, and it
+had tasted of salt tears! Still, it was a love symbol, the nearest
+Alice could do in the line he wished, or had wished, for perhaps he
+did not now desire her quite so urgently as he had done.
+
+Everard had never been handsome at the best of times, but that summer
+season rang the final knell of his good looks. His crow’s feet and his
+cheek and jaw lines were awful--Alice herself noticed them.
+
+“I believe it is you, Everard, who are going to break down now!” she
+said to him once when it was all over, her misbegotten love buried
+fathoms deep, and she cared to look round her a little and notice what
+other people were doing.
+
+The very violence of her passion had perhaps caused the flame to burn
+itself out in this young lady of the world, this parlour warrior, this
+heroine of a hundred ball-room fights. At any rate, her emotional
+crisis passed away, leaving her who was already hard a little harder
+than before to Everard’s business precautions and his adroit playing
+of animated safety-valve to the deserted one. Alice, luckily for her,
+had not needed to confide in a member of her own sex.
+
+Her zest for “the noble game” of flirtation had died down, too. She
+was less interested in men, and rather more interested in herself than
+she had been, and condescended to enjoy a party, even if she came away
+from it without the tendrils of a heart of sorts reaching after her.
+Her superficial bloom returned; she had never lost, only temporarily
+mislaid it. She was a fundamentally good-looking woman, with neat,
+regular features, a good figure and perfect constitution to fall back
+on. To Everard’s satisfaction she now proved the validity of these
+fine assets of beauty.
+
+But she had spoken a true word in jest. Everard Jenkyns went and had a
+bout of brain fever. He was popularly supposed to have broken down
+from overwork.
+
+Alice Damer and her mother were most kind and solicitous, and as fussy
+about him as they could be without setting the public tongue
+a-wagging. Alice now worshipped on the altar of convention again, and
+would not have been seen up the river with Everard or near his rooms
+in Paper Buildings for anything. Her mother was old and unwieldy. So
+they “wrote.” They were quite careful--but as it was, old friends
+opined that Miss Damer was going to settle down and take up with her
+old and tried suitor. When taxed with this by the ill-bred privileged
+she maintained boldly that there was nothing in it, that she and Mr.
+Jenkyns thoroughly understood each other. So they did. Everard was
+grateful without any expectation of favours to come, and thanked her
+prettily for grapes and books and things.
+
+He recovered, and went about his own business as usual. Alice’s
+business was not pressing just now, so the two rather lost sight of
+each other, Alice holding him in reserve for future extremity. She
+supposed, sometimes aloud, that he was “busy getting on” and making up
+for the time lost in his illness. There could be no woman in it?
+
+“Rather a wreck--poor old Jenks!” his friends observed with affection,
+for he was a general favourite with men, and most unfairly persisted
+in attributing his state, not to the illness he had undergone, but to
+Alice Damer’s fast-and-loose playing. She heard this, but tossed her
+head, confident in the good understanding that subsisted between her
+and her slave.
+
+“I have never encouraged Everard. He knows I haven’t,” she declared to
+her mother.
+
+“He says so. I think you have been quite horrid to him, Alice!” was
+the old lady’s single solitary pronouncement on the situation. She
+said this lying on her bed during what was to prove her last illness.
+Alice was gentle and kind, but repressed all sentimental leanings on
+the part of the invalid, who had a mother’s natural wish to see a
+vagrant-hearted daughter settled in love and marriage before she died.
+
+“Mother, how often must I tell you that Everard--Mr. Jenkyns--and I
+understand each other?” she repeated coldly. She had never chosen to
+call Everard by his Christian name, though her mother, who was fond of
+him, always insisted on doing so, and Everard obviously liked it, and
+clung to this side entry into the intimacy of Alice’s family. It did
+not matter. Alice and he, as before said, understood each other, and
+old ladies, every one knows, have a way of attaching themselves to
+young men, and selecting their daughters’ suitors for them by the
+light of their own predilections.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+And now, her dear, silly old mother was dead and buried, and the
+proud, sensible daughter sat all alone in the big Seymour Street
+drawing-room, with the three large windows that needed so much stuff
+for their curtains, and the beautiful Adams mantelpiece whose shelf
+Alice could hardly see over. The Damers had only been in the house a
+year; it was freehold, and Alice’s. It was rather a large and dreary
+abode for one young woman to inhabit permanently, yet the young woman
+thought she meant to do so!
+
+A companion, she sadly supposed, in that case must be procured sooner
+or later--later, preferably; if she could have her way, not at all!
+
+Alice was nearly forty, though she looked younger. Why should she not
+use her age for all it was worth and establish herself on the easy
+footing of years of discretion? Nay, there would be complications
+there; her womanly instincts rebelled against the aspersion of
+“discretion” and the constant assertion of her maturity which would be
+involved in her adoption of that attitude. She would be asked to play
+chaperon herself, she would have to “dress old.” No, she looked so
+young for her age, it would be ridiculous, when she could as easily
+carry the other theory through and pose as a breakable, compromisable
+commodity.
+
+She must make up her mind to accept the duenna--she must get in a
+woman to quarrel with! It came very hard! She had been used to going
+about alone and receiving guests by herself in this house; for the
+last year Mrs. Damer had been unable to dine down or preside at her
+own table. She appeared beautifully capped and lappeted, to set the
+seal of chaperonage for a few minutes before dinner, and then prettily
+said good-night to her young guests when dinner was announced. Alice
+was quite equal to it, and always invited another woman, preferably
+married, to her charming dinners.
+
+A companion would, by the conditions of her office, take part in every
+function, “quiet” dinners as well as noisy ones. It would be far worse
+than a husband, for a husband would at least leave the tea-hour free.
+All Alice’s serious _tête-à-têtes_ had been used to come off then,
+in the little room off the stairs, that was really part of the hall
+and in no way shut off, but so delightfully private. Little, soft,
+rosy cosy late teas had been Alice’s great social weapon; all the more
+fetching were these free and easy interviews in that she wasn’t in the
+least like an American, though she did see young men alone, with a
+mother stowed away somewhere in the upper fastnesses of the house.
+
+This problem of the companion was associated with the first glimmering
+in Alice Damer’s mind, of the possibility of a husband’s suiting at
+this juncture. The notion of a companion precipitated him. He came in
+by the door of convenience.
+
+A husband! Well, who was it wanted to marry her at that moment?
+
+Men’s names, long shelved, came into her mind, but not Everard’s. Like
+the poor, she had him always with her. He was always available, but
+the others, unaccountably enough, did not rush into the arena of her
+requirements at once.
+
+She must be growing old! Did people think her old? She had not noticed
+that they did, she could see no sign of “the coming of the crows’
+feet,” of which this “backward turn of beaus’ feet” was supposed to be
+ominous. For surely, a year ago, plenty of potential husbands lay
+ready to her hand?…
+
+The signs of age, if there were any signs, were on the outside. Alice,
+internally, felt as fit as ever. She was still game for anything in
+the way of social folly, she could sit up as late as any one and dozed
+off happily the moment she got home and her head touched the pillow.
+She did not have to read in bed or play “patiences” to induce sleep.
+Her figure showed no fatal early inclination to “spread,” she didn’t
+know what it was to “sit over a fire,” and she proudly refused to
+avoid lobster salad or anything else indigestible at supper.…
+
+Unless, indeed, the craving for marriage itself was a sign of age, a
+subtle token of the need for support, the birth of an instinct for
+clinging?
+
+She rose and looked at herself in the old, unbecoming Empire mirror
+that Everard had got for her at a sale at Christie’s once, for he was
+a connoisseur. No, very few lines, no look of fatigue, even in a bad
+glass! And as much colour in her hair, that poor Everard admired so,
+as ever there was!
+
+Poor dear Everard!… No, not poor dear Everard. He had been growing
+rather slack lately, and forgot her flowers and fish and game now and
+then. He had been kind, of course, and considerate over her mother’s
+death, had continually called to inquire, though the presence of
+authorized relations in the house had rendered his visits nugatory as
+far as she was concerned. Alice was formal about death. She had seen
+much of it. Still, she had liked to see his card in the hall, though
+unable to ask him to come in because of Aunts Polly and Gertrude. It
+had been an awful, unmentionable time, the sort of life that everybody
+must lead at times, when Death is in the house; but now it was over
+and the aunts had gone home, making her promise to give them a month
+at Taunton next week, when she had got things a little straight and
+done seeing lawyers. And that was over, too. Her nerves, that had been
+a little upset, though she had expected her mother’s death, had
+righted themselves, too. She cried about her mother every day, but
+only once in the day, and she began to think she should like to see
+some one who wasn’t “family.” Why should she not begin with Everard?
+When the companion had come, or the husband, she would have very
+little opportunity for _tête-à-têtes_ with him. Unless he was that
+husband? Well, we should see!…
+
+She settled that it was to be to-morrow, a quite impromptu invitation.
+If it were ceremonious she could not have him alone, and she wanted
+him alone. She set about ordering a nice little dinner for him,
+consonant with his tastes, which unluckily she did not know. Everard
+had dined in Seymour Street before, but only on big formal occasions,
+never alone, so far as she remembered.
+
+Everard replied in fairly good time. He did not say he was previously
+engaged--for he knew that she would never forgive him for not throwing
+the other people for her--but ill. At least, not ill, but with a very
+bad cold. As the dinner, she had said, was quite informal, might he
+ask her to postpone it a day or two until he had a little got the
+better of his cough, which would make him a rather tiresome guest,
+apart from the danger of chill, to which he found himself more liable
+than formerly. He would like to suggest Saturday night--his birthday?…
+
+“What a funny old-maidish letter,” was Alice’s comment; “all about his
+cold and that! I never knew Everard notice a cold before? I suppose a
+man gets finnicky, living so much alone. He’s no exception to the
+rule. I’ll have to wake him up a little.”
+
+His cool deferring of her invitation afforded him just that touch of
+masterful self-assertiveness Everard had always lacked in his dealings
+with this young woman. She now firmly made up her mind to marry him,
+that is, if he continued to carry things off so well. He would be
+better than a companion, and--there seemed to be nobody else!
+
+At a quarter to eight on Saturday evening she was all ready, dressed
+in black and looking very handsome, on one side of the brightly
+burning fire, for there was a slight touch of frost in the air. Her
+senses were alert, she found herself actually listening for the sound
+of his hansom driving up to the door. Quite loverlike, she thought,
+with a little laugh, to herself! She remembered the last sentence in
+Everard’s old-maidish letter, which she passed over on first reading.
+He had informed her that this was his birthday. She welcomed this as a
+touch of sentiment--the sentiment she had not in the old days been
+solicitous to cultivate in him, but had carelessly let die. She wished
+she could remember exactly how old he was to-day? If she had been able
+to allude to it it would have pleased him.…
+
+No use, she could not recapture the knowledge. She supposed he might
+be somewhere about forty? And he was late! How dared he be late, for
+her? Was there a fog perhaps?
+
+She went to the window, parted the heavy curtains, and looked out.
+Rather misty--but not enough to prevent Everard from keeping time, if
+he had started early enough to dress! How rude if he hadn’t? She
+remained drumming on the pane with her long, slender fingers, looking
+down into the empty roadway.
+
+She had not heard the door of the drawing-room open, but suddenly,
+before she had time to turn away from the window, Everard stood beside
+her with his handkerchief held up to his face, a familiar gesture of
+his for which she had often reproved him.
+
+“How are you?” she asked him, rather frigidly. “What a draught you
+seem to have brought in with you!”
+
+“May I shut the door?” Everard said, suiting his action to the words.
+
+“Come to the fire, won’t you? You are cold.”
+
+She spoke more cordially, but, in spite of her definite intention to
+propose herself to Everard that evening, the curious sense of physical
+alienation which she knew now had held them apart all these years,
+returned to her with tenfold vigour. Her instinct had been right.
+Physical leanings counted for something, and there was no real
+affinity between them. Alice shivered a little, for she was a
+sensible, business-like woman, and she firmly meant to over-ride the
+absurd and awkward shrinking, and marry him. Her mind once made up,
+she never went back.
+
+He was holding his thin, blue-veined hands to the blaze. His eyes
+seemed to avoid hers.
+
+“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “I hope you have got a good appetite? I
+have ordered such a nice little dinner for you.”
+
+“How kind of you! But really, I eat very little except fish. My doctor
+has cut me down remorselessly.”
+
+“And do you attend to him? You never used.”
+
+“I have to attend to his orders. I am in rather a bad way, Alice. The
+base of one lung is quite solid… and the other is gone.”
+
+“Nonsense! I believe you’re as right as I am, barring this little bit
+of a cold, that you’ll soon get rid of. You haven’t coughed once since
+you were in the room, do you know? I fancy that living alone as you
+do, you go and get ideas about yourself, and then rush out and call in
+a doctor who frightens you.”
+
+“May be,” he said slowly. “Loneliness certainly doesn’t improve one’s
+perspective. And I haven’t been inside any one else’s house for a
+month.”
+
+“There now, what did I say? And what do you do, when you are at home?
+Sit over the fire and grizzle, and think of your sins--and mine, eh?”
+
+“Not yours--much!” said he, with a chilling effect of partial
+forgiveness which benumbed Alice, whose fighting spirit was up in arms
+to bring him to her feet again.
+
+The maid announced dinner, and Alice took his recalcitrant arm, which
+gave her the sense of being glued to his side. On the way downstairs
+she thought, “Poor dear, he will want civilizing all over again!”
+
+“You’ll drink champagne?” she suggested, when they were both seated.
+
+“No, water, please.” He added, speaking to the maid, “Thanks, no
+soup!”
+
+He allowed a helping of fish to be placed on his plate, but he did not
+eat a mouthful, that Alice could see.
+
+The dreary dinner progressed. Alice Damer ate for two, and every now
+and then looked furtively at the man she had made.
+
+It was her fault; she saw it now. This man had been her slave; she had
+been his inhuman master. She had laid him on the rack, she had starved
+his heart, for bread she had given him a stone. This was what their
+famous understanding had amounted to; the ruin of a man, a pale, thin,
+hectic mask, sitting opposite her, pretending to eat--the play of his
+thin wrists that manipulated his knife and fork drove her frantic--his
+sullen eyes refusing to meet hers, as in tones that only faintly
+represented the rich, soft, legal, measured voice she used to know, he
+responded gently but dully to all her conventional openings, and
+allowed the subjects she started so painstakingly to drop one by one.
+What would the servants think? Little pearly drops of dismay and
+effort broke out on her own white forehead; the effort she was making
+was too much for even her social fortitude. Yes, she knew she had
+behaved badly to him, but he might let her down more easily! Vexing of
+him! For what she had to do, must be done, in spite of difficulties.
+
+The last course had been removed, two punctilious, slightly shocked
+maids had disappeared, and the couple were left alone over the walnuts
+and the wine.
+
+She spoke to him quite crossly, in a voice she could hardly command.
+“Aren’t you interested in _anything_, Everard?”
+
+“Yes, dear, in some things--for instance in your calling me by my
+Christian name--for the first time,” he replied quietly.
+
+Alice felt uncomfortable. Such a direct thrust from this petrifaction
+suggested that he had seen through her, who hardly realized herself,
+and what she was doing.
+
+“Oughtn’t I?--I forgot.”
+
+“Oh, don’t apologize, it doesn’t matter.… I wanted you to badly, once,
+do you remember? Strange, when it does come--one is more or less past
+caring----”
+
+“Coffee?” she asked. “I make it myself now, as you see!”
+
+“Yes, please.”
+
+She made it. She handed it. She even let her fingers graze his as she
+passed him the cup. It was literally the first time she had ever
+practised her own special art of flirtation in Everard’s connection.
+
+Then there fell a silence between them. The patent coffee machine
+ceased to bubble. Its duties were sped.… Alice, sipping a restorative
+draught of the tonic liquid, broke the silence bravely. She felt that
+she owed it to him to take the initiative.
+
+“I am feeling very lonely--now,” she said softly.
+
+“Poor child, you must be,” he answered gravely.
+
+“And I think I--I understand a little better how you must have felt
+all these years.”
+
+He lifted his fishy eyes for the first time to hers. “Yes, but I am
+used to it, now.”
+
+“But, Everard, it hasn’t done you any good?”
+
+“No, I daresay not.”
+
+“Everard, do you think--now--do you believe we--you and I, I mean,
+would have got on together?”
+
+“How do you mean? In what relation?”
+
+“I mean--in the usual relation--if I had wanted what you wanted?”
+
+“Well, you know, I thought so, then.”
+
+“Not now?”
+
+“No, not now. Did I not tell you that I had grown philosophical?
+Whatever is, is good.”
+
+“Oh, dear! Then you tell me that you think it is good, your living
+alone, with not a soul to talk to, or exchange an idea with, no one to
+look after you when you are ill, as you are now, but just to sit
+mooning over a dying fire----”
+
+The ghost of a shrug was vouchsafed her. “Oh, I keep my fire up, and I
+mix my own grog and drink it, and warm my own slippers. It isn’t so
+bad.”
+
+“Everard!” She rose to her feet and he imitated her, supposing that a
+move to the drawing-room was contemplated. “No, I am not going up yet,
+not till we have had this out. You do make it very difficult for me.
+It is as if you had lost the key--you will not understand _à
+demi-mot_!”
+
+“Why should it be _à demi-mot_?” he repeated after her, catching,
+however, none of her fire. He sat down again and motioned her to do
+the same. Then he spoke, dully, but very clearly.
+
+“Let us talk quietly, and not get excited over it. A man in my
+condition has no time for vagueness. I do understand, quite well, and
+I will show you that I do. You are willing to marry me now?”
+
+“Yes,” she cried breathlessly. “Yes, poor Everard! And you--you don’t
+want me to any more?”
+
+“I want nothing! Don’t think of me. Let us consider only you. Now tell
+me, would this marriage be of any use to you?”
+
+“Use to me to be married to you, Everard?” She started.
+
+“Sorry, but I can only put it from the point of view of utility. My
+personal desires are dead.”
+
+“Ah, I killed them.”
+
+“Yes, my dear, you killed them. I can’t pretend to any extravagant
+feelings of joy at what I suppose we must call your capitulation. You
+know, they give better terms to beleaguered fortresses the sooner they
+surrender? You, Alice, in your pride and impregnability left it too
+long. The wine got musty in the bottle, the cord got frayed and
+rotten. I am no good to you or anybody. My life is done. I thought all
+this out as I lay there--wrote some of it down even. I never thought I
+should get a chance of telling it all to you in person. I could not
+rest. In my delirium----”
+
+“Delirium! Oh, Everard, what nonsense!”
+
+He put her exclamations aside. “Well, I have told it you now, and I
+shall rest in peace.”
+
+“If it’s any consolation to you, you have had a good scold--a good go
+at me!” Alice cried angrily, adding with bitterness, “And plus the
+satisfaction of refusing me!”
+
+“But not at all!” he said, turning surprised, lack-lustre eyes on her.
+“If you think a marriage with me would do you any earthly good, you
+shall have it. I ought to have made that clear----”
+
+“I wanted to do good to _you_!” she wailed.
+
+“Too late for that. I won’t pretend, even to salve your conscience,
+Alice, that I care anything at all about it. Besides, your conscience
+has no need of salving. You were perfectly right not to marry me, in
+your heyday and mine, if you could not love me; you are very kind and
+perfectly in order to suggest it now, as a way of making me useful to
+you, as you have done in the past. I am at your service now, as ever.
+I am reserved to your use, as good as married to you already, though
+not you to me, and quite ready to go to church with you to-morrow, if
+you decide that we shall do so. I am your property.… Only, my dear, it
+is a pity you tied me up in brown paper and left me on the shelf so
+long. Fatal delay! Unused, I deteriorated! You have had me warehoused
+so many years that now, when you choose to untie me and take me down,
+you find that you have to make allowance for depreciation of stock. I
+think I wrote that to you--or said it!… How it did amuse Mrs.
+Clarkson!”
+
+“Who’s Mrs. Clarkson?” she asked through her tears.
+
+He did not answer, but rose, and took her in his arms. Pale flickers
+of posthumous triumph lighted up his kind, lined face. Weakly
+victorious, he enfolded her, and she shrunk and shivered out of his
+embrace.
+
+“What is it, dear?”
+
+“Nothing, oh, nothing! Only, I don’t believe I _can_ marry you,
+Everard, after all!”
+
+He did not ask her why, and she could hardly have told him that the
+momentary contact had affirmed the sense of physical aversion she had
+always thought she felt for him. Now she was sure. Oh, what was she to
+do?…
+
+She stood timorously away from him, as it were freed from the clasp of
+a corpse. How could she tell him that? And then she reflected
+consolingly that according to his own words marriage meant so little
+to him now, that she need perhaps never kiss him when they were
+married.
+
+Her colour returned a little as she formulated this evasion.… Many a
+conscientious woman has forced herself before now to marry a wreck, to
+pay conscience money.
+
+There was a good fire burning, she motioned him to one of two
+leather-covered chairs drawn up on opposite sides of the fireplace.
+“It’s warm here. We won’t go upstairs. I am really getting rather
+frightened about you, Everard. I was incredulous at first, but I do
+believe now, that you _have_ been ill.”
+
+“Yes, I have been very ill.”
+
+“But why come out? Why didn’t you send an excuse--ask me to come to
+you?”
+
+“Would you have come? Well, as a matter of fact, a telegram was sent
+you. Mrs. Clarkson _said_ she had sent it.”
+
+“Mrs. Clarkson--your landlady--your bedmaker? Oh, dear, how unkind you
+must have thought me!”
+
+“No, I don’t know that I thought anything about it. I said she might
+send it, and then it passed out of my mind entirely. Everything did go
+clean out all at once, somehow… it’s a most unusual sensation--very
+like death, I should think.”
+
+“Everard, I believe you ought to be in bed now, you ought not to be
+here--pleasant as it is. Go home, and I’ll come and nurse you
+to-morrow. I can safely do that. I am--engaged to you!” She spoke with
+mouth awry, putting the greatest constraint upon herself.
+
+He smiled. “Awfully kind of you, dear, but I’ve got a nurse already.
+Mrs. Clarkson is a nurse.”
+
+“Everard! you’re dreaming! Do you mean a white-capped creature, with
+starched cuffs? How could you be here if that were so?”
+
+“I don’t know, but I _am_ here, you see. Mrs. Clarkson certainly did
+send you a wire to say I couldn’t come. She asked you to come to me, I
+believe, though I forbade her. As I told you”--he sighed--“I forgot it
+all.…”
+
+“But then why have you come, and why haven’t I got the wire?”
+
+“Wrongly addressed, I fancy. I was too ill to speak much. She looked
+the address up in my book and I have only your old one there.”
+
+“It shows how I’ve neglected you.”
+
+“But it’s as well you didn’t come. The nurse is excellent. These hired
+people do best because they have no feelings, whether it’s merely
+putting on a poultice, or finally laying you out----”
+
+“Oh, don’t, Everard!”
+
+He rose. He looked preoccupied.
+
+“It’s after midnight. Do you realize how late we have been talking,
+right into the night? The daylight will surprise us in a minute!… Oh,
+dear me! I must be off.” He rose, and stood, wavering like a
+wind-blown taper. “Good-night, dear Alice, I shan’t forget you have
+kissed me--once in your life. Oh, no, twice; once on the river--that
+day, the twelfth of July. I loved you--I wish you had loved me too!”
+
+“I did--I do,” she averred, her lips chattering.
+
+“Too late!” said he, taking a woollen comforter out of his pocket.
+
+“Everard, I don’t think you are fit to go home alone. Let me send some
+one with you. Or stay here, the servants are not gone to bed, and
+there’s a spare room, slept in only last night. Aunt Polly----”
+
+“And your reputation?”
+
+“I’ll risk that,” she said. “I’ve behaved too badly to you not to make
+you some amends.”
+
+“But it’s all nonsense. I am all right. Strength has been given
+me----”
+
+“How funnily you talk! Well, since you _will_ be foolhardy and go back
+to your nurse--is she pretty? You know I don’t believe in her. You are
+thinking of your landlady, who’s been mothering you a little, as she
+should.” She put out her hand and rang the bell. “A hansom, please,
+for Mr. Jenkyns.”
+
+“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I meant to walk.”
+
+“Well, you aren’t going to be allowed to walk! You must take no risk.
+Have a good night’s rest, and be well enough to marry me to-morrow--by
+special licence.” She looked up in his face with terror-stricken
+audacity. How could she do it!
+
+“Would you really?” He was out in the hall by now, and the maid was
+whistling for a cab. “Well, we’ll see!”
+
+“I’ll come to you at eleven in Paper Buildings. I know the way. I’ve
+been there once.”
+
+“Dear Alice, how unmaidenly you are grown all of a sudden! I like it,
+though. It is some compensation----”
+
+“But will you really marry me if I come?”
+
+“If I can,” he answered gravely.
+
+The hansom had come rattling up. She gave a twist to the comforter.
+“Keep it well over your mouth.…”
+
+“I will kiss your hand first.”
+
+She controlled herself. His touch was pain to her. She wailed, as the
+hall door closed--
+
+“Oh, I don’t love him! He is dead. I have killed him! I’ll marry him,
+that is my vow!”
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+The strayed telegram was brought her next morning on the tray with her
+tea. It had been as Everard had surmised, wrongly addressed to the old
+house. It ran--
+
+
+ “Mr. Jenkyns unable to go to you to-night. Ill. Come if prefer.”
+
+
+“She must have been in a rare fright when she wrote that, whoever she
+is!” thought Alice, who could not bring herself to believe in the
+presence of a nurse in 82 Paper Buildings.
+
+Her exaltation of last night had left her. Everard was such a wreck,
+poor dear! Every bit of charm, and he never had much, had departed and
+left him sear, dry, stupid and unsympathetic. But she meant to marry
+him, and repair her sins, and be able to live without a companion.
+Even an invalid husband was better than a hired solacium. She would go
+and see him this morning, but of course they could not really be
+married at once, out of hand, like that. In a week or so, after a few
+preparations had been made and when he had been nursed up and made to
+look a little less ghastly. She could not allow a ghost to lead her to
+the altar. Then they would go off somewhere warm for the honeymoon, to
+the Riviera or Egypt, and Everard would revive under the combined
+influences of sun and agreeable society, and love--that is, if he was
+still capable of feeling the kindly glow of a delayed, but at last
+gratified passion.
+
+Perhaps he was not quite so dead after all; perhaps in time she would
+find herself able to submit to his kisses without a politely
+suppressed shudder? Though she could easily account for that symptom
+of hers. Starved physically and mentally, as he seemed to be, what
+wonder that all the magnetism had gone from him? Alice, none other,
+would nurse him back to life, make a charming, attentive, affectionate
+husband of him, one whose kisses she would get not to mind so much.
+
+She drove down to the Temple and dismissed her carriage at the gate on
+the Embankment, and walked up, quite unnecessarily, for Everard’s
+rooms in Paper Buildings had a road in front where a carriage might
+stand. But she did not mind walking. It was a lovely morning. The
+famous fountain in the court was playing merrily, and suggested
+springing hopes of all sorts--and possibilities of revival. She walked
+along to Everard’s rooms with a light step, laughing a little to
+herself at the thought that she was going to earn for him the
+reputation of being “a dog.” She did not suppose many young ladies
+sought out the dry student lawyer in his rooms! His landlady, or
+laundress, whichever it was, would be shocked, and a good thing too.
+His character was altogether too immaculate, and a picturesque smudge
+or so would improve it in the eyes of men. Alice had all the sweet,
+headlong depravity of mind of the excessively innocent. Using her
+tortoise-shell pince-nez, she read the name of Everard Jenkyns printed
+on the wall on the right-hand side of the open door of number
+eighty-two, and plunging into the dimness, began to ascend. She met a
+man on the first landing who looked like a doctor. He seemed in a
+hurry to get to his hansom, which she had observed standing there. He
+merely peered in her face and passed on before she could ask him if he
+was the doctor, and if so, how Mr. Jenkyns was?
+
+She went on ascending till she found the right door, knocked, and
+stood there, breathless.…
+
+A foolish fear assailed her as she waited. She found herself dreading
+the first sight of Everard as he would appear on opening the door to
+her; she remembered with annoyance the poor, lank, gawky face, which
+always made her think, as she used to tell her mother, of a boy’s
+compendious clasp-knife, with all the blades open! He would smile, of
+course, and look pleased to see her; it was a strong step for haughty
+Alice Damer, whom he had sighed for so long, to visit a man in his
+rooms at half-past eleven and ask him to marry her!
+
+He was a long time coming!… She rang again, more firmly.…
+
+The door was opened, by a nurse. Everard had not been raving, then! He
+was probably in bed?… She formally muttered his name.
+
+The nurse seemed to have been expecting her. Murmuring, “You would
+like to see him, Ma’am?” she led the way into the sitting-room, out of
+which the bedroom obviously opened. The door was ajar. The nurse did
+not stop.…
+
+“But not in there!” Alice stammered.
+
+A strong note of disapprobation pierced in the woman’s voice as she
+turned round sharply--
+
+“Why not? He’s dead. You’re not going to faint?”
+
+“Oh, no,” said the poor girl, striving to adjust herself to these new
+and unexpected circumstances. Like a proud, plucky automaton she
+entered the bedroom, and looked on the form that was faintly outlined
+under the sheet, so thin Everard had grown. She had good nerves, and
+could always bear shocks well. But an immense, searching pity, a world
+of value for the dead man, combined with self-depreciation, filled
+her, and she wept silently. Her noble calmness and self-restraint won
+the admiration of the nurse, who had been condemning the heartless
+creature wholesale for having left her sweetheart to die alone as she
+had done.
+
+“What was it, Nurse?” she asked.
+
+“Double pneumonia. Collapse. I telegraphed to you, Miss--you are Miss
+Damer, I believe? He objected, but when once he became unable to
+speak, I took it upon myself. I thought you would want to be here.”
+
+“Of course. But I have only just got it.”
+
+The nurse accepted the _amende_. She could not realize that Alice was
+struggling to form a comment on the apparent inconsistency of a man
+sick unto death being able to dine with her, hoping at the same time
+that dates would be proved not to fit and all be normally explained.
+She stammered something vague as the nurse laid down the covering
+sheet, and disclosed the still face, looking, however, no more
+emaciated than Alice had seen it in life and no longer ago than last
+night.
+
+Alice was painfully aware of the tacit suggestion on the woman’s part
+that she should bend down and kiss that waxen mask, and recoiled,
+though the nurse had said no word.
+
+“Oh, I can’t kiss anybody dead.… It’s awful of me, Nurse, but I
+can’t!”
+
+“Some can’t!” said the nurse resignedly. And this girl was the poor
+gentleman’s fiancée, so she had understood?…
+
+She was a little pacified when Alice unfastened the bunch of lilies of
+the valley that she was wearing, and laid them on the dead man’s
+breast. Then she turned away and dried her eyes. She was a beautiful
+creature, the nurse thought, and was conscious that the faulty young
+lady was slowly acquiring her sympathies.
+
+“When did he die? When was it?”
+
+“We don’t know exactly, Miss. In these cases---- But he last spoke
+about seven.”
+
+“What made you think of sending to me?”
+
+“Because, Miss, for days before, when he was wandering worst, he
+talked about you. We gathered, the doctor and I, that he was more or
+less engaged to you, Miss, but that you was rather too fond of putting
+him off. Said it had been going on for years, and that he was fairly
+worn out. So he was, poor man; he hadn’t an ounce of flesh on his
+bones to spare----”
+
+“Yes, but----” the girl exclaimed impatiently, “I want to get at the
+facts. He died, you say, this morning at seven o’clock?”
+
+“Spoke last at seven o’clock last night, Miss, I said. Died some time
+in the night, or, may be, directly after he did speak. At least, part
+of him may have died, as ignorant people seem to think. He was hardly
+breathing at a little before eight, but the last spark may have held
+on longer.”
+
+“I suppose you know, Nurse, that he dined with me last night, at a
+quarter-past eight,” said the girl stonily, looking away from the
+nurse’s apathetic face, which changed at once, sympathetically;--
+
+“Miss, you’re upset! You took it so calm at first. Have some brandy.
+You have had a shock. One understands----”
+
+“He dined with me,” Alice repeated obstinately.
+
+The nurse stared at her, and shrugged her shoulders. Poor girl! She
+was evidently one of the outwardly quiet ones, who smother the
+symptoms of disturbance, only to feel the shock more keenly. People
+take these things in such a variety of ways. The idea of the dinner
+party had got fixed in her mind by the shock; she was unable now to
+let go the idea of Everard’s keeping his engagement with her. She had
+received the telegram all right, of course, there could be no doubt of
+it, and some domestic reason had prevented her from responding to the
+summons. Or, possibly, that same backwardness and want of interest
+which had affected the smooth course of the engagement had been at
+work. She hadn’t cared for him much, though she had been persuaded
+into giving her word.…
+
+In an even tone, calculated to restore the shattered nerves of the
+shaken girl, the nurse remarked--
+
+“Mr. Jenkyns’ sister-in-law, the one that lives in France, will be
+here presently, to see about the funeral arrangements. He wanted you
+to have all his old china and books, Miss, he used to say so, and
+doubtless that will be done.…”
+
+But Alice Damer had gone resolutely across to the bed from which the
+two, in the course of conversation, had unconsciously deviated.
+
+She dexterously turned down the sheet, and stooping, performed the
+rite of love, the little act of devotion which she had refused him
+just before. What was she saying? Mrs. Clarkson observed closely what
+she considered one of the curiosities of mental stress.
+
+“I kissed him last night, when he came to me.… So you see, whether I
+liked it or not, I did kiss a dead man! And it’s no use minding now,
+is it?”
+
+She kissed him repeatedly, with a pale semblance of passion.
+
+The nurse took her arm gently and led her away from the bed, and she
+submitted to be placed in a chair.
+
+“Miss, now you’ve done that, you’ll feel better. I should go home if I
+were you. Take that hansom outside. It’s the one you came in,
+perhaps--and you haven’t paid him?”
+
+Alice signified a negative to this, helplessly, but allowed the nurse
+to pin her veil on for her. It hid her tear-stained face a little.
+Then the good woman led her downstairs and out on to the pavement.
+Sure enough, there was a hansom waiting there, and the nurse hailed
+the driver.
+
+Gruffly, he turned round, and stared at them.
+
+“And I say,” he appeared to be remarking, “and I say, who’s going to
+pay me my fare?”
+
+“Why, the lady will, of course. Get in, Miss, I’ll hold your dress
+away from the wheel.”
+
+But the cabman was not satisfied, nor did he address himself to the
+task of resuming his drooping reins. He seemed to have had a shock
+too.
+
+“No, I didn’t mean her. Who’s going to pay me three bob for last night
+and for waiting ’ere?…”
+
+“That’s no affair of ours,” replied the nurse cheerfully. “You must
+take the lady--where to, shall I say, Miss?”
+
+Alice, crouching inside, mumbled the address of her home.
+
+The cabman swore.
+
+“No, I’m damned! You get out. I ain’t a-going near that blasted house
+again for nobody! Took a fare from there last night, I did, and drove
+him here, and here I may stop till Domesday, I suppose, before I sees
+a shilling of his money! ’Tain’t right!…”
+
+He was obviously drunk, but not dangerous, so the nurse thought.
+
+“Come, come!” she expostulated.
+
+Alice, frightened, prepared to get out.
+
+“Oh, what’s the matter?” she moaned.
+
+“Matter! Matter’s this. I drove him here right enough, and pulls up
+where he told me--and my gentleman doesn’t get out, seems as if he was
+a-going to make a night of it in my cab. Drunk, I says to myself, and
+I opens the trap, meaning to take my fare and clear him out, but Lord
+bless me--why, there wasn’t no one there!”
+
+“He’d got out, of course,” said Mrs. Clarkson, “while you weren’t
+looking.”
+
+“‘Bilked,’ says I. And, thinks I, I’ll just come and wait here till I
+sees my gentleman come down those stairs again.”
+
+“You’ll never see him come downstairs again,” said the nurse, with a
+flash of inspiration, “except in his coffin! Come, get on! Take the
+lady where she wants to go.”
+
+She thought of it all--afterwards… but then nurses see such queer
+things! She had taken the cabman’s number.
+
+
+
+
+ THE OPERATION
+
+“Yes, I think that might hang a day longer. I can finish up the
+mince for my lunch, and you must do something with the turkey legs for
+dinner. Let me see--and there’s fish to-day. And then--well, suppose
+you make a savoury?”
+
+“Master don’t care for savouries, Ma’am!”
+
+“A sweet, then. I don’t care. And that’s all, I think?”
+
+Mrs. Joe Mardell, in her neat morning shirt, coquetishly finished with
+a man-like tie, and the severity of her attire much modified by the
+bows and loops of waved hair that crowned her head, turned and was
+about to leave the dark basement of the little house in Kirriemuir
+Street, West Kensington, when a door in the upper regions banged.
+
+“There, he’s off, and I wanted a cheque!” Mrs. Mardell observed with
+mild irritation. She glanced at the kitchen clock with a degree of
+confidence she did not place in the elegant time-keeper, cased in
+jewels, that hung on the front of her shirt. “Why, it’s only half-past
+ten?”
+
+“Master’s early gone this morning,” said the cook. “Gladys took his
+breakfast up only ten minutes ago.” She paused, then summoning her
+courage, she asked--
+
+“Ma’am, are people usually buried on Christmas Day?”
+
+“Why, you silly woman, it depends on what day they die. Who’s been
+dying?”
+
+“I’ll swear,” said the woman eagerly, “that I saw a corpse being
+carried down the steps of number thirteen just over the street
+opposite nearly a week ago, and I reckon it back Christmas Day!… It’s
+been worrying me ever since. Yes, I saw the mourners and hearse and
+feathers and all--done quite proper. I was looking out of the front
+staircase window----”
+
+“Neglecting your work, Vance? Serves you right. You saw Whiteley’s
+sale cart, perhaps? You were looking sideways through the red panes,
+and glass, you know, refracts oddly.… Who lives at number thirteen?”
+
+“Oddly enough, Ma’am, I don’t know, though I mostly could tell you the
+names of everybody in the street. I might ask one of the
+tradespeople--should I?”
+
+“Yes, do if you like. Brr!” She shivered affectedly, strong in the
+pride of her health and good looks. “It seems a cold time to choose to
+be put into the ground! One would sooner be cremated, this weather!”
+
+Holding up her crisp befrilled skirts, the second wife of Joseph
+Mardell, the popular comic actor, who was just now drawing crowds to
+his Christmas extravaganza at the “Quality,” made her way up from the
+dark basement to the abodes of light above. Noiselessly, she let fall
+behind her that swing door at the top of the staircase which
+effectively divided the world of society from its service, and
+exchanged stone and oil-cloth for soft carpets and silken curtains. It
+was a very pretty little house--_her_ house. She admitted Joe into it.
+Her husband-lover, Joe. She had managed to keep him her lover. All
+wives should. She glanced, as she passed by, at the hat-stand in the
+hall. Joe had stupidly gone without his fur coat, though it was
+freezing. Or was it that it needed a stitch? How careless of Gladys!
+He had left his big umbrella too, for there it bulged in the rack,
+beside her own delicate silver-topped one. Careless Joe, willing
+enough to ignore the mere physical claims of the self he morally bowed
+to! Moreover, he forced every one else to do so likewise. He must have
+his own way, and brooked no check where his mental desires were
+concerned. It was perhaps the secret of his sway over men--and women.
+
+She thought of him, Joseph Mardell, the greatly-sought-after, and
+hers, with complacent affection, glancing up consciously at the branch
+of mistletoe which was entwined with the square glass lamp that hung
+over the front door. Joe had passionately kissed her under the mystic
+bough, a week ago, for luck, on the first night of the successful
+piece. And luck had come, and seemingly remained with them. The
+booking was splendid. And they were rehearsing a more serious play
+that was to follow the Christmas jollity. Joe was so busy he didn’t
+know where to turn for a spare five minutes. She did not complain, for
+if things went on like this they would be able to move out of West
+Kensington, where you couldn’t get a smart parlour-maid to stop with
+you. Gladys and her finger-nails was a sore trial.
+
+She entered the dining-room, and her eyes sought the sideboard. Ah,
+Joe had had some sense after all, and had remembered to refresh the
+inner man before leaving, as the violated Tantalus betokened. He lay
+in bed late. He rarely breakfasted, and never with her. She rose at
+eight--on principle; she could not afford to keep actors’ hours and
+ruin her complexion.
+
+She stood pensively by the small piece of Sheraton furniture before
+she opened a drawer and took out of it what she had come to seek. Last
+night’s oranges and apples beamed there on a pretty dish. Joe’s
+cigarette boxes, flung about, needed tidying up. The presentation
+silver bowl given to Joe by his fellow-actors on the occasion of his
+first marriage, shone in the centre with dignified lustre. They had
+chosen something quite different to present to him as a memento of his
+second venture. That was in her room now. The bowl had a dwarf fern in
+it now, but sometimes it ran over with punch, or was packed with
+roses. Another use was contemplated for it; if Joe and she were to
+have a baby, which, sadly enough, did not seem likely, the bowl would
+be used for the christening.
+
+Mrs. Mardell took a pretty little checked duster out of a drawer, and
+went upstairs to her drawing-room on the first floor. She carefully
+picked up an iridescent bead off the carpet, the spoil of the dress
+she had worn last night, and placed it on an ash-tray. She then
+proceeded to rub up the several minute objects on her silver-table,
+wishing heartily that she could afford to have them lacquered, and
+thus dispense with her daily task. So occupied, she looked wholly
+pretty and half domestic, a little soubrettish, like those
+neat-aproned maids who flutter early about a stage-scene and usher in
+and lay the tables for tragedy.
+
+There was no harm in Florence Mardell. She was a smart, novel-reading,
+Sandown and Ranelagh going woman, easily dressed, easily amused, a
+little detached, perhaps, in her interests, and careless of the more
+serious issues of life, but quite willing to simulate and assume
+social crazes as they came up. She played a good game of Bridge. She
+glanced at the deep Reviews as well as the _Windsor_ and _Pearson’s_,
+and improved her mind on the slightest opportunity. You could always
+get her for a subscription lecture of sorts, and she quite approved of
+Female Suffrage, without, however, actively concerning herself in its
+propaganda. She never “fagged.” She was always beautifully dressed in
+a severish, strapped, mock-manly style, and could wear successfully
+the very largest hats when they came in.
+
+She had been the widow of an officer, and had lived at Wimbledon in a
+big dull house standing in its own grounds. She had first set eyes on
+Joe Mardell playing a strong “Macheath” in _The Beggar’s Opera_, to
+the most ineffective “Polly Peachum” of Julia Fitzgerald. Miss
+Fitzgerald was his wife; had she but known it, it might have made a
+difference, but very likely it would not have. Then and there she had
+fallen in love with the actor across the footlights, impulsively,
+violently, madly, and she had not rested, being of an acquisitive,
+pugnacious, predatory habit of mind, until she had persuaded a
+journalistic friend of hers and his to bring about an introduction.
+With her effective crown of real golden hair, waved and curled _in
+extremis_, her clean, fresh suburbanity, she had fascinated
+“Macheath.” He was known to be weak, _volage_, and full of moods.
+Florence was, on the contrary, strong and pertinacious, she had taken
+him in a mood, and let her love profit by it. With fond
+remorselessness she had driven him to drive his wife to divorce him.
+All this she had compassed in her own calm detached way, as if
+unconscious of the larger issues she was stirring--another woman’s
+happiness, a man’s honour, and an actor’s art, for Joe was a genius,
+and recognized to be one, in spite of, some people said because of,
+his strange limitations. A little man, almost a dwarf, he could play
+the burly Falstaff and the courtly Biron; he could write articles in
+the Reviews; he could hold supper-tables in a roar. Julia Mardell’s
+happiness had been sacrificed, for she adored, and was known to adore,
+her husband. To oblige him she had condescended to make use of some of
+the more complicated and recondite cogs of the machinery of the
+English law of divorce, and had tamely surrendered, without
+humiliating him, one of the most fascinating men of the day to another
+woman. Yet Julia was quite as good-looking as Florence, if in a
+different style. She was the full-souled, full-breasted, large-eyed
+Junoesque female type, and only undertook the playing of a minx like
+Polly Peachum to suit Joe. Such a majestic walk as hers, such dark
+swimming eyes were of no avail to the actress who aspired to play one
+of the wayward mistresses of the highwayman. It was the measure of
+Julia’s love and her power of self-abnegation. Joe was prepared to
+take the whole play on his own shoulders, only he must have a
+sympathetic woman to act with. He did find Julia sympathetic in those
+days when he loved her, and before the pretty widow from Wimbledon had
+leaned out of her box and shaken her golden locks at him. Then one day
+the two women met. Matters were arranged. Joe, susceptible, weak,
+hustled and busy, succumbed.… Lawyers acted for him. Julia was
+compliant: Florence “keen.” Joe worked on and was divorced while
+rehearsing a new play. He himself never knew how it all happened!
+
+There was a large signed photograph of Julia in Joe’s study now,
+standing unframed, concave and dusty on the mantelpiece; Joe had not
+dared, or cared, to give it a more polite or permanent abiding-place.
+Indeed, Florence had had some thoughts of removing it from its even so
+humble position; her friends wondered how she could possibly bear to
+have it there for Joe to see every day! But she was capricious. One
+never knew how she would take things. It was their expressed opinion
+which perhaps induced her to let it stay, curled up and drooping
+slavishly as time went on, and the dust and heat of the fire brought
+its proud head low.
+
+Florence bore Julia no grudge, she should think not, indeed! Julia had
+been very good about it, had made no difficulties, but on the
+contrary, had smoothed and made easy the path of divorce for the man
+she loved.
+
+That is, if she really did care for Joe. She had been so terribly
+callous in her interviews; so full of zeal to give him his freedom. It
+was hardly human, so the woman who had profited by her action thought,
+and certainly not very womanly. Florence could not imagine herself
+allowing a cold business-like lawyer to dictate her a letter bidding
+Joe come back to her herewith; a summons intended, of course, for
+ultimate publication. It disgusted Florence, this horrible business of
+sueing for restitution of conjugal rights! Julia’s formal petition was
+refused by Joe in another cold letter, equally intended for
+publication. Florence had actually read the two inhuman missives
+printed together in the daily paper. Divorce had followed in due
+course.
+
+“Oh, you tamely died!” Yes, little frivolous Florence, who had never
+read Tennyson, would have taken the advice of the Egyptian and would
+have “clung to Fulvia’s waist, and thrust the dagger through her
+side.” She was a true woman, like Cleopatra, and knew that the
+elemental passions, once raised, must have full mastery. A man all to
+oneself or nothing! That was her philosophy.
+
+The feelings of the man in question? The state of his affections? No
+matter! Florence did not see herself considering them, or taking any
+deadly sex insult lying down. She considered that Julia’s
+poor-spiritedness did really verge on meanness. She had accepted money
+from Joe--an allowance to enable her to leave the stage. Report said
+that she had grown stout. Report said that she had taken to drink.
+Lies probably, so generous Florence said. Nobody in Florence’s world
+knew anything about Julia excepting Miss Walton, who had introduced
+them. And though the two women had continued their intimacy, it was
+with the tacit agreement that the name of Julia should not be
+mentioned between them. There were plenty of other subjects to talk
+about. Miss Walton was, like everybody else, more than half in love
+with Joe.… Funny how they all were! Rather nice--for Joe’s wife, since
+Joe did not bother with any of them.…
+
+Mrs. Mardell, after having polished the silver diligently, turned her
+attention to the room. She ordered the chairs, according to some
+abstruse social system of her own, and flicked her duster about feebly
+here and there. She did not feel very “fit.” Rather queer, on the
+contrary! All-overish! She could not have told you what it was, but
+she was mysteriously conscious of something excessive--something
+outrageous, like severe pain in wait for her. She seemed to apprehend
+its nearness instinctively, as a patient seated in the dentist’s chair
+watches the eminent practitioner’s feet moving and is aware in all his
+sensitive enamel of the imminent grinding of the file that has been
+set going.
+
+Perhaps it was the long-continued strain of the cold that was
+affecting her. The frost had lasted since before Christmas, and had
+been very severe.…
+
+She paused. The little clock on the mantelpiece tinkled half-past
+eleven. Supposing she were to give herself a slight moral fillip--go
+upstairs and try on her new dress, and see how it fitted, after having
+been “back” twice. She was sure in this way to obtain a sensation,
+pleasurable or otherwise.
+
+She mounted another flight, feeling every step to be an effort. She
+lit the gas-stove in her room, and dismissed the dilatory housemaid,
+whom she found on her knees examining the pattern of the carpet. Then
+she dragged a tall cheval glass into position, having due regards to
+unbecoming cross-lights, and undressed. Her white, handsome shoulders
+appeared; she looked ten times prettier than she had done in the
+severe morning shirt and tie, and she knew it. She stood for a few
+minutes before the mirror, complacently admiring herself and in no
+hurry to don the heavily-trimmed corsage that awaited her verdict. It
+lay beside her, half in and half out of the flowered cardboard box,
+interleaved with tissue-paper, and with intersecting lines of tape
+winding it into its cage. Her eyes rested on it with feminine
+appreciation of the elaborate building of the silk lining, with its
+white bone cases crossing and recrossing the back of it, and the high
+collar which was to fit in under the very lobe of the ear. Still she
+deferred the pleasing moment of assumption, standing still and
+preening herself; soft lappets of valenciennes lace flowering out as a
+frame to the pink skin.…
+
+Suddenly, taken by surprise, without a cry or a moan, she cowered and
+was bent, bent nearly double. Agonizing pangs shot through the
+framework of her body. Her eyes were glassed over with tears, and
+through them she stared out on the world, bewildered, peering to see
+from which point the next arrow of dolour would fall!
+
+It came again, without fail it came again, this time no stabbing
+thrust, but a sword, driving, delving laboriously through her vitals
+in a lingering, painstaking manner. She was by now prepared and well
+frightened, and she groaned aloud. Her breasts rose and came together,
+as in some strange health exercise, under the laces and ribbons.…
+
+My God! Was it----? Was the silver bowl downstairs going to be used at
+last?
+
+No, it could not be. The thought was dismissed as soon as formed. A
+chill on the liver? The extreme cold.… What a fool she was to prance
+about like a peacock in front of a glass for half-an-hour half
+dressed! What else could she expect? That silly stove gave no heat.…
+
+She gathered to her a dressing-gown that lay near and sat still,
+cowering. A long pause! She could not think. But she received no
+physical intimation of the recurrence of her agony.
+
+Five minutes later she boldly rose, defying it, and tore the new dress
+out of its rustling ward without stopping to untie the tapes that
+controlled it. With a screech of tissue-paper it yielded itself into
+her hands, and she put it on.
+
+Then she laughed. The pain was forgotten. She wriggled about happily.
+
+“Yes, it still catches me… just there! They must have it back. I’ll go
+to Madam about it, on--let me see?--Tuesday.…”
+
+Taking the precaution of putting her arms properly into the warm
+dressing-jacket this time, she wrapped the dress up again, tied the
+white tapes across it, put the lid on firmly, and with the little
+stylograph Joe had given her, methodically scored out her own name
+from the label, thus substituting that of the dressmaker printed all
+over the box.
+
+The exertion, slight as it was, roused again the smouldering fire of
+pain. She sat down helplessly on her bed, giving herself up to it. Her
+eyes were like those of a dumb animal in the death anguish, as she
+stared across at her reflection of her already distorted features in
+the glass. Rolling to and fro, she grasped and relaxed alternately the
+fronts of her peignoir, knotted feverishly in her palm.
+
+“What the _divil_ is it?” she murmured. “I feel as if my life was
+going!”
+
+She did not think of calling any one--Vance or Gladys the impotent
+housemaid; no one could help her. She was but a poor human passage-way
+for these relentless throes that passed Juggernaut-like through her
+shrinking body. It was like a garden roller, when it was not like many
+scythes set on one axle turning, twisting inside her. What had she
+ever done to suffer so? No child of Joe’s could be so cruel and tear
+its mother thus!… Nay, she had not conceived, unless it was some
+monstrous impious growth that was rending her, and would not soften or
+relax till it killed her.… She really thought she was going to die!…
+
+Presently, when all was quiet again in the tortured battleground of
+her body, she rose and pushed her hand through her bows of waved hair
+and flung it back hideously and crossed the room. Apologetically
+almost, for fear of provoking a recurrence of the horror, she dragged
+herself downstairs, and to the swing door at the head of the kitchen
+stairs. She now felt the need of a confidante. She must tell some one.
+The housemaid was too young. Vance was fairly motherly. Pushing open
+the door, she sat down on the top step, with her peignoir gathered
+round her, and stretching out her legs allowed them to hang over into
+the dark abyss of Vance’s domain.
+
+By the time she felt able to raise her voice and call Vance she had
+decided not to confide in her. The cook would immediately “think
+things,” and she wanted no fuss. It was not “that” either, she only
+wished it was.… For then there would at least be some compensation in
+baby fingers to smooth pain away.
+
+In response to her weak summons the cook appeared at the foot of the
+stairs. Even in the dim penumbra of a London basement, a person
+unpreoccupied by her own symptoms would have realized at once that
+Vance was discomposed--agitated in some unusual way. Her cap was
+hanging by one hairpin, her floury arms were nervously rubbed one
+against the other. But Mrs. Mardell noticed nothing in other people
+to-day. She addressed Vance slowly and deliberately.
+
+“Vance, please I want you to make me a nice cup of tea--at once. I
+shall not be able to eat any lunch. I think I’ll wait till six, and
+have something with Mr. Mardell.”
+
+“Ain’t you feeling well, Ma’am?” asked the cook spiritlessly.
+
+“No, not very--a little all-overish. It will be nothing, only I don’t
+feel like eating a solid meal.”
+
+“Nor I can’t say I feel like cooking it!” Vance observed bitterly.
+“I’m that upset! I’ve been across and asked.”
+
+“Asked what?” inquired Mrs. Mardell wearily.
+
+“About the funeral that I saw with my own eyes leaving that house on
+Christmas Day.… It’s not natural, I said, to go getting buried on
+Christmas Day----”
+
+Mrs. Mardell interposed impatiently. “You don’t mean to say you went
+and asked at the house if they’d had any one die there? Really,
+Vance----”
+
+“It’s no good saying that now, Ma’am; I had to know. And it’s only a
+Nursing Home, not a private house, so I’ve done no harm. And”--the
+woman’s voice grew low and hoarse--“nobody ain’t died there--not
+yet--that’s all!”
+
+She put her apron to her face.
+
+“Good gracious, Vance!” Mrs. Mardell cried. “Tell me more about it!”
+
+“Ma’am, they’ve only got one patient there--a lady. She was going on
+all right, but she had a relapse this morning, just about half-past
+eleven, their cook said it was. She had an operation three weeks ago,
+and no good, and it’s got to be done all over again this afternoon at
+two o’clock, and they can’t tell as it will be successful, this time.”
+
+“Well, my good woman, don’t you worry. Let’s hope that the lady will
+get over it. People do, you know, or there would be an end of nursing
+homes. I really feel so poorly myself that I can’t get up much
+sympathy with other people’s aches and pains. Be quick and get the
+kettle on, or is it boiling already?”
+
+“Yes, Ma’am, you shall have it in a minute. Ma’am, you may not believe
+me, but I seen a proper funeral, and the hearse waiting, and the
+corpse carried out and down those steps… and the bearers with crape on
+their hats and so attentive, and one of them was no bigger than
+Master.… I thought of Master the moment I saw him.… And she was a big
+woman, for she took a big coffin.…”
+
+“You are settling that it’s the woman who’s lying ill there now who
+has got to die, I see. What’s her name?”
+
+“I asked, but the girl didn’t know it, only that she was an actress.”
+
+Mrs. Mardell gathered in her legs decisively.
+
+“Come now, Vance, don’t stand there gossiping and unhinging yourself
+with fancies; get me my cup of tea. I shall be all right, I expect,
+when once I have had something warm. Bring it to my room. I shall lie
+down a bit, I think.”
+
+She rose to her feet, closed the swing door, dismissing Vance and her
+dreary soothsaying vision, and passed upstairs. Her day was spoilt.
+The pain did not seem to be going to recur, luckily, but the deadly
+feeling of uneasiness which had succeeded it certainly increased. Her
+legs were weak and could hardly carry her. People who have seen an
+apparition are said to feel just so. But as she reflected it was
+Vance, not she, who had seen the ghost!
+
+She paused half-way up the stairs to look out of the window on the
+first landing, whence Vance declared she had watched the lugubrious
+tableau. Mrs. Mardell had never gone in for knowing her neighbours, it
+was wiser not, or else she would have been aware of the industry that
+was carried on at number thirteen, a red-brick sham artistic villa,
+just like her own house--like every other house in the street. She
+could only make it out by pressing her face against the window, and
+then she only saw it aslant, and red, through the vicious stained
+glass that occupied that particular pane. Eight steps led up to the
+front door of it, as eight steps led up to hers. Surely it was awkward
+for the incoming patients--many of them, presumably, too ill to walk?
+She wondered what sort of cases they took there. It would depend.…
+
+Julia, she had heard, had grown very fat--at thirty.… That indicated
+something abnormal, in a youngish woman!… Something that had to be
+removed, generally.… She laughed.… She wondered why she laughed.…
+
+“Your tea, Ma’am!” said Vance suddenly at her elbow. “I thought I
+would bring it up to you myself.”
+
+Mrs. Mardell was a little ashamed that Vance should discover her
+staring out of the window at the scene of her absurd cock-and-bull
+story. She turned and coldly bade the cook precede her to her bedroom
+with the tea. Vance accepted the rebuff meekly. She looked cowed and
+thoroughly upset, and as if no merely domestic trifle could affect her
+now, broken to tragic issues as she had been.
+
+The tea, as Mrs. Mardell had expected, revived her, and enabled her to
+lay a nice little plan for a quiet afternoon indoors. She proposed to
+telephone for Miss Walton to come and sit with her for a bit. She
+needed something or somebody to pick her up. Of course there was
+Charlie Bligh, a nice boy whom both she and Joe liked; she might
+telephone him to come and take her out to dine, as he often did.… But
+no, she wasn’t looking Carlton form; it wouldn’t be fair to Charlie to
+ask him to take out anything that wasn’t gay and smart. Besides, it
+would be rather mean to leave Joe to eat his dinner all alone when she
+had not even said good-morning to him. She had often left him for
+dinner, of course, and he had never thought of objecting, verbally at
+least--but just now that he was so busy and overworked she felt sure
+that he would like her, sitting beside him at his dinner, even though
+she could eat nothing. She saw herself delicately invalidish, in her
+soft draperies, picking at some grapes.… She felt mysteriously drawn
+to Joe, dear Joe, who was working for her now, who never attempted to
+control her social movements, who took what she gave him and was
+always as ready to flirt with her as if he were not married to her!
+She had managed Joe well! No, she wouldn’t leave Joe to-night, but get
+Miss Walton, who would surely stay with her till Joe returned about
+half-past five, as usual.
+
+Miss Walton, over the telephone, signified her willingness to come and
+have a good chat. Mrs. Mardell made up her mind to take things easy.
+She was really unwell, she had eaten nothing since breakfast, she felt
+empty, shaken, swelled and sore. She could not have got her
+exquisitely adjusted corsets on if she had tried, or endured the
+pressure of them round her body. A tea-gown was clearly indicated. She
+assumed one, and a little lace cap that went well with it. Sighing
+deeply, she lay down on the rose-coloured chintz sofa in the
+drawing-room, shaded by a soft standard lamp, breathing timorously,
+existing furtively, unnoticed. She hoped it would pass her by, this
+brooding eagle of pain waiting to tear her.
+
+She had brought her jewel-case downstairs with her and idly toyed with
+her trinkets. There were three trays, lined with velvet. They twinkled
+with precious stones. She took every piece in order and examined them
+slowly, seriously. All the while, her fingers seemed to know that down
+at the bottom of the box lay their real objective, a thin, crumpled,
+tousled letter folded small and turning up at the corners. Florence
+Mardell had received it a few days after her marriage, and although it
+was only a letter from a woman, had forborne to show it to her
+husband.
+
+The letter was not actually malicious or even disagreeable, but it had
+dismayed her, and shocked her. She had kept it in case Julia should
+ever choose to lay aside her extraordinary tolerance and become human
+again. She read it over now to remind her of what it contained. Indeed
+she had intended to do so when she fetched the box. The by-play with
+the jewellery was only a blind--self-deceiving, a sop to her
+superficial consciousness.
+
+
+ “_Now it is all over, my strivings have not been in vain, and Joe
+ passes from me to you. You must not mind my writing to you, Florence.
+ I think that, on the whole, you will prefer to know what I feel, and
+ that the woman you have supplanted is not your enemy. Joe loves you,
+ and as the woman Joe loves, you cannot be abhorrent to me. Convention
+ forbids me to be your personal friend, your feeling possibly, and
+ perhaps my own, for I am but a woman after all, and the open wound
+ that was left in my life when Joe was torn from my side would be
+ chafed and kept raw by the sight of him merged now in your life. Yes,
+ it is better so. I cannot, will not, see him either--though Joe is not
+ conventional.…_
+
+ “_Joe is nothing that is not splendid. I did, I do love him so
+ passionately, that I cannot hate you, Florence, as you see. You are
+ the fair new temple in which he worships the spirit of Beauty and Love
+ and Life. The law has clanged the door to, none may dare to interrupt
+ the Litany he prays there, on his knees. God bless you._
+
+ “_But oh, my dear, keep him there. Never undress the altar. No more
+ shifting for Joe, if we women can help it. He is a great man--he must
+ be treated like a great man. These upheavals are bad for him, from
+ every point of view. So be practical as well as passionate, and
+ condescend to learn from me, who failed, how not to lose him. Only
+ approximately can you learn, for the wind of art blows its children
+ where it listeth. You know what an artist he is, and all artists are
+ nothing but divine children. But, Florence, on your life, don’t treat
+ him as one. Don’t let yourself ‘mother’ him as I did and be mad enough
+ to sink the mistress in the sister, the friend even. That was my fatal
+ mistake, I abstracted my sexual self till I became at last the caterer
+ for his mere physical welfare, the confidante of his passing
+ flirtations. Oh, the bitterness of those smothered confessions, those
+ despairing returns of him, broken, marred and dispirited, to the one
+ who surely loved him! Do this, my dear, as I did, and then one day
+ he’ll come to you, as he came to me, and put his head on your knee and
+ ask you to divorce him. So you’re both ruined in your several ways. He
+ cannot go through it a second time._
+
+ “_Now listen. You must. I know. I would have you always a little
+ inaccessible, puzzling, capricious even. I would ask you to dare to
+ appear selfish, if you can manage it. Preserve your delicate
+ tangibility, punish any slight infringments of your rules, close your
+ door to him at nights when he has been naughty or careless. What it
+ will cost you! But it is the right way._
+
+ “_You have an enormous pull by not acting with him, believe me! One
+ gets so common, so cheap to a man, when he is used to knocking one
+ about all over the stage, as Katherine, say, or insulting one as
+ Nancy. Stay away from the theatre and accept as many dinners without
+ him as you can. Although there isn’t the very slightest chance of his
+ losing you, don’t let him feel as convinced of that as you are
+ yourself. You see what I mean, don’t you, Florence? I heard you were
+ very clever, as well as a little frivolous._
+
+ “_I have thought all this out, in many sleepless nights, for your
+ benefit and his. Yes, it is Joe that I am thinking of, and shall think
+ of till I die. And so of you, too._
+
+ “_Oh, don’t for goodness’ sake be offended by this letter, or take a
+ dislike to me, for whether you like it or no, you will never be quite
+ free of me, any more. Thought, strong thought, does permeate matter
+ and finds itself able to overthrow its mere material resistance. I
+ have proved it, no matter how. I won’t weary you with attempted
+ explanation. I should not fancy you were psychic. But be sure that
+ there will be a little of me in all your relations with Joe, I shall
+ have a word in your ménage and you must not let the thought of it
+ make you uncomfortable. Do you suppose I could have let him go so
+ easily, if I had not this power to console me? Take it, as the slight
+ penalty of kidnapping a man out of the ward of a devoted woman. You
+ see how it is, he comes away, she offers no material or spirited
+ opposition, but he brings inevitably some of her atmosphere along with
+ him. Joe never actually ceased to love me; he only began to love you.
+ I never misconducted myself--funny phrase!--so I am still his true and
+ faithful wife, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, and where he is,
+ henceforth, in some sort, I am. It cannot be helped._
+
+ “_It is a good thing that I am not vindictive and that I don’t hate
+ you, since our relation must necessarily be so close. I assure you
+ that it will not inconvenience you, annoy you, or trouble you at all,
+ at least not until the bands of the spirit are loosed in one of these
+ great, bare, soul-stripped, unaccounted-for moments of life, that come
+ to all of us sometimes. Then, you know, one can’t tell, or foresee.…
+ The spiritual bonds and relationships assert themselves and enforce
+ attention.… I can’t quite promise to shield you, then, to free you
+ from the circle of the charm.… But are you so frivolous, Florence?
+ Won’t it interest you--awe you--soothe you?_
+
+ “_Ah, don’t fear me, don’t hate me--bid your flesh comply with me.… I
+ am only the ghost of a wife--a power of love that can’t circumscribe
+ itself, even though it would. There is a physical lien between us,
+ undoubtedly. I won’t drag it if I can help!… I’ll try to control--I
+ don’t know what I am writing--something writes for me. But trust me.
+ Julia._”
+
+
+“What a cat!” said Mrs. Mardell.
+
+She folded up the letter again and laid it at the bottom of the box.
+It was almost actionable, she thought, a threatening letter. Or else
+the letter of a mad spiritualist--utter sentimental, impossible rot.
+What would Charlie Bligh, or any other daylight person think of it?
+
+Strangely enough, she had more or less taken Julia’s advice! It was
+sensible, and thus she supposed germane to her own character. She had
+not “mothered” Joe, what woman in her senses would? She needed no
+deserted, defeated schemer to hang about her, in the spirit, to tell
+her that! She knew men as Julia with all her preachments had evidently
+never known them, and the result of her wise treatment of Joe was that
+he was devoted to her, extraordinarily so, for a busy man. Of course
+he worked hard, too hard, harder than he had done in Julia’s time. It
+had happened so, success had brought its own tension and high
+pressure. He was not, as Julia and her friends might like to suggest,
+trying to drown the memory of her in a round of forced activities. He
+was only taking fortune at the flood and making dramatic hay while the
+sun of critics favour shone. Not for a moment did he regret the step
+he had taken, his was an essentially light nature, he never brooded,
+and he detested heroics. The writer of that letter, with its tedious
+mixture of sentimentality and preoccupation with material cares, must
+have bored Joe to death, in the days when she had him all to herself
+and could claim consecutive opportunity for worrying him. And now, of
+course, a masterpiece of supreme tactlessness, like all failures, she
+turned critic and took on herself to give good advice.
+
+Florence Mardell laughed. The reading of the letter had acted as even
+a better fillip than the trying on of the dress, and had nearly made
+her angry.
+
+“I suppose”--she tossed her little gold crowned head--“that it is very
+good of her to give me the straight tip, and volunteer to overlook my
+ménage, generally, like a sort of superior lady housekeeper! I am not
+so bad at it myself, thank you?” She worked herself up to a sneer.
+“Much obliged to Julia, I’m sure, for haunting me, especially as she
+appears willing to confine herself merely to bothering the sensible
+mistress of the house, and doesn’t go frightening the servants and
+making them give up their places. Vance wouldn’t stop a minute----”
+
+Her brow furrowed a little as she remembered the white, frightened
+face of Vance that morning.
+
+“It’s a fairly cool thing, though,” her thought resumed, “for one
+woman to tell another, flat, that she considers herself part of her
+because she happens to have adored her husband and does still, I
+suppose. Man and wife--no, wife and wife--are one flesh.… Ha! Ha!…”
+
+It was two o’clock, her face changed. Arrowy tinglings, growlings as
+of a chained monster inside her slender frame, punctuated her words.
+The pain had come again.…
+
+When Miss Walton came in she would ask her to ring up a doctor. She
+could not have dragged herself to the instrument now.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+The front door bell rang. She heard Miss Walton’s cheery voice making
+inquiries about Mrs. Mardell’s health as she shook the balled snow out
+of her boots on to the hall mat, and plumped her umbrella into the
+rack. Mrs. Mardell sat still, physically incapable of rising, though
+she had had but a short bout of pain this time.
+
+She had made up her mind to question Miss Walton about Julia. Julia’s
+affairs seemed for the moment essentially her concern. She felt no
+malevolence towards her in spite of the re-reading of the letter. Miss
+Walton, the confidante, had never been allowed to see that letter. She
+should see it now, if she was good and satisfactorily confidential?
+
+“Well, dear, how are you?” Miss Walton had come in, her work-a-day
+nose reddened with exposure, and her hands thickened with chilblains.
+“I suppose you are feeling the continuous cold, like the rest of us.
+And you know, you little minx, that you look best in a tea gown.”
+
+“Do I look well?”
+
+“Well, a bit bleached, perhaps, and your eyes rather funny and starey,
+as if you’d been seeing ghosts?”
+
+“Vance has, she says.”
+
+“A ghost in West Kensington! Nonsense!”
+
+“It was a mock funeral, Vance says,” Mrs. Mardell remarked in an even
+voice. “Coming out of a house in this street on Christmas Day, when
+there was nobody died in it, as they told her.” She looked closely at
+Miss Walton’s face. “Do you know any one at number thirteen? An
+actress, Vance says----”
+
+“Bless her. Christmas pudding, I should say. No, I don’t know a soul
+in this street besides yourself----”
+
+Mrs. Mardell, with a sigh of relief, leant back again.
+
+“But, I say, Florence, you do look dicky,” Miss Walton continued.
+“What have you been doing with yourself?”
+
+“Perhaps you’ll say it is Christmas pudding with me too,” replied Mrs.
+Mardell, laughing feebly. “But I don’t know--somehow, I’ve had a
+horrid day. I seem to have got a sudden attack of lumbago, or sciatica
+or something.”
+
+“It doesn’t sound likely, at your age.”
+
+“No, does it? But it’s pains right through me at intervals all through
+the day. I had a fearful bout, just before you came. I daresay it’s
+nothing----”
+
+“Rheumatism, probably,” said the other. “Nothing so absurdly painful
+when it gets hold of one. Here’s tea--nice hot tea. It will do you
+good.”
+
+“I’ve had two goes already.”
+
+“Oh, have a third! Nothing like tea for us women! Here, let me pour it
+out. Your poor little hands are trembling.”
+
+“No, I’ll manage. Sugar? I forget if you take it? And lots of milk?…
+Alice, how long is it since you saw Julia?”
+
+Mrs. Mardell was surprised at the coolness of Miss Walton’s reception
+of the seldom pronounced name. She might have reflected that the other
+woman had no particular reason to be shy of it, for she had been
+Florence’s and Julia’s confidante during the stormy times of the
+divorce and had managed to be loyal and friendly to both. She now
+replied offhandedly to Mrs. Mardell’s question--
+
+“Not for six months. Lost sight of the poor dear, rather.”
+
+“And when you last saw her, how did she look?”
+
+“Handsome, but rather too fat. I can’t say I much liked the look of
+that, for she’s still quite young. I always fancy it means morbid
+growths, and that kind of thing. Poor old Juley! One never even sees
+her name in the bills now, does one?”
+
+“Retired on the allowance Joe makes her, I suppose,” said Florence
+Mardell bitterly. “I can’t think how she could bring herself to take
+his money?”
+
+“Only that she’s poor, of course.”
+
+“How poor?”
+
+“One can’t tell,” replied Alice Walton, “with people like Julia. She’s
+Irish. She’s the kind of woman who pays a man from Douglas’s to come
+and wave her hair, and dry it on towels that you can’t see for the
+holes! You understand. She’s the sweetest, cleverest, untidiest soul
+alive! She took a flat in Paris with a friend, and the state of that
+flat, I’m told, after a week of Julia, beat even the _femme de
+ménage_ they got in to do for them! They never dressed or ate, but
+lay about all day in peignoirs and smoked cigarettes. They got in a
+hypnotist to talk to them about Joe, I believe. Julia makes no secret
+of her devotion to Joe, as I suppose you are aware?… Now, Florence,
+keep your feet up--there’s a good girl! You look ghastly.”
+
+“Yes, I know. So she’s still mad on Joe? Tell me more about her. She
+isn’t a woman of much taste, I fancy--can’t dress a bit?”
+
+“No, but a generous creature, full of impulses and never a mean one
+among them. I do admire her character, I confess.”
+
+“So do I,” said Florence Mardell. “And so did Joe, I believe.”
+
+“Does. He can’t help seeing her qualities, and being flattered by her
+immense devotion to him. Though, of course, he’s used to it--he can’t
+help being faskynating! He’s such a sprite and yet so strong. Julia
+was as big again as he was, pretty nearly. He admired her awfully, as
+little men do always admire big women.”
+
+“I’m not very big, yet Joe admires me.”
+
+“Oh--I know he does and long may he continue. He may, for Julia,
+that’s one thing, she’s strictly ‘hands off,’ I know. She’s never made
+the slightest attempt to get him ever to go and see her.”
+
+“He wouldn’t go if she did.”
+
+“I shouldn’t be too sure of that,” said Miss Walton, carried, by love
+of her subject, beyond the limits of tactfulness. “And what would it
+matter? Joe was truly fond of her till you came along, you little
+witch! And she’s never done anything to set him against her or hurt
+his self-love. That’s what a man minds. I don’t see how he could have
+refused her a thing like that, nor could you. No, give her credit for
+her generosity, I believe he proposed it and that she refused to see
+him, steadily. Nobody in theatrical circles thought for one moment
+you’d keep him against her. The betting was all that, if she had
+tried, she’d have got him back in a month.”
+
+“No, not if she’d tried, she wouldn’t,” said Florence Mardell
+earnestly. “She loved him too much!”
+
+Her lips sketched a grimace as she spoke; her hand moved to her side
+and her eyes filled with tears.
+
+“What is it, dear? The pain again?”
+
+“I was afraid of it--my body was, I mean. But it luckily doesn’t seem
+to mean business, this time. And I don’t believe I could feel any
+more,--I don’t seem to have any organs left. It’s the peace of
+emptiness--exhaustion! Do, dear, let me go on talking and thrashing
+out things. What I meant when I said that Julia loved him too much,
+was this, that it is a mistake to love so openly and make such a noise
+about it. Men don’t value affection that’s cried from the house tops.
+It just disgusts them. Love at breakfast, love at luncheon, love all
+day; it’s sure to pall. Love shouldn’t be mixed up with daily
+bread-getting. It should be a speciality, not a sort of smoking
+mixture, advertised on every passing omnibus.”
+
+“Go on, child, you interest me. Why, you yourself simply adore Joe!”
+
+A faun-like, tormenting expression Miss Walton had never seen there,
+came over Florence Mardell’s face, as, in the weak exhausted voice of
+a privileged invalid, she proceeded--
+
+“I adore Joe as smart women permit themselves to adore the thing they
+value and mean to keep. I believe I prize Joe, not for what he is,
+though I’m aware he’s a genius, but for what he means to me--light and
+kisses and frocks and champagne. There isn’t so much of that as there
+would be if Julia and her allowance didn’t stop the way! I love Joe
+because he’s the fount of life to me, because I feel good when he is
+in the room, and dull when he is out of it. I happen to know that I
+shouldn’t feel that about him if he came to me ill and hipped and
+unsuccessful. Sounds mean, but it’s true. I perfectly enjoy the
+placards telling me that he can make a cat laugh, and critics saying
+he is like what Garrick used to be. An ‘abridgement’--what is it? I am
+quite cross with him when the notices are poor, and I don’t in the
+least long, then, to take his head on my shoulder and comfort him.
+It’s he who has to comfort me.”
+
+“Julia had a rather different theory!”
+
+“Yes, and Julia lost him and I got him. She called him her boy and her
+baby! He even told me so, saying how nice it was of her. Quite
+sincere! He thought so, I daresay. I knew better, as if any man liked
+to be made to feel small! She’d have handed the moon down to him if
+she’d had it in her power, and when he cried for such a little easy
+thing as a divorce, of course she gave it him. A fool, I call her.”
+
+“I don’t know about that,” the friend replied, combatively. “Greater
+love hath no woman, than she lay down her marriage lines for her
+husband.”
+
+“Well, I love him, but I couldn’t have done that! I should simply have
+had to stick to him just the same. And then--if he had thrown me over,
+nothing would ever have induced me to take money from him!”
+
+“But if you were extravagant and nearly starving?”
+
+“I’d have found a man to support me and buy me frills!”
+
+“Then you couldn’t have loved him, to degrade the thing he had once
+set store by.”
+
+“If Joe had left me, anything could have become of me for all I
+cared!… I see what you are driving at, Alice, you think I can’t feel
+love as Julia does, because I haven’t got beetle brows meeting over my
+forehead and a big contralto chest to sigh with. My way with Joe,
+whether I do it from self-control or inclination, comes out best. A
+man like Joe needs a lot of spoiling, but not from the woman he cares
+for. I let outsiders do it for me. I don’t cosset him, or make a point
+of being home every afternoon from my calls at an unearthly hour to
+dine with him. If a boy offers me a dinner, I accept and Joe gives me
+my taxi fare, and looks me over, and sees that my dress, for the other
+man, mind you, is all right. Nor do I wait up for him when he comes
+back, I just see supper’s laid out all right and the fire kept up and
+go to bed. I don’t make him look ridiculous by fetching him at the
+theatre, as some actors’ wives do. Julia, I hear, used to take parts
+that didn’t suit her, so as to ensure her being on the spot with him,
+every night. I never know where he is and I don’t go getting his pals
+to play detective and tell me. I may be conceited, but I do flatter
+myself, that wherever Joe is, he is thinking of me, and of how soon he
+can get back to me.”
+
+“I think you are perfectly right,” Miss Walton replied rather
+sardonically. “It’s the best view to take of marriage, and for a woman
+married to a popular actor, the only one. Do you happen to know where
+Joe is, now?”
+
+“Yes, I happen to be able to tell you. He is at the theatre,
+rehearsing the new play. They must be through by now, though! He’ll be
+here in a minute. I haven’t seen him since yesterday. We dine together
+at six o’clock!”
+
+“And it’s half-past five now. Well, I must be off. Good-bye, old girl,
+and I wouldn’t neglect those pains if I were you. I expect it’s only
+rheumatism, but as a general rule internal pains should not be
+ignored. You look rather flushed----”
+
+“I must go and put on some powder before Joe comes. Good-bye. Tell
+Gladys to come and clear away the tea as you go out.”
+
+Mrs. Mardell was left alone, with two imperfectly drained tea-cups and
+some broken crumbs of cake on a Japanese tray. The spirit lamp under
+the kettle had gone out--she missed its cheerful flame. She was hemmed
+in, her knees were imprisoned by the flaps of the tea-table so that
+she could not lie back.… She felt disinclined to move and go upstairs
+for that dust of powder that was to impress Joe.… Everything was a
+bother… she felt very stupid, but she had no more pain, thank God!…
+
+So she sat on, waiting for the maid to clear away the tea things and
+set her free, bolt upright in her hostess-corner of the
+flower-begarlanded sofa, with the pink-shaded lamp behind her,
+convenient for reading, only she did not want to read. Her head
+drooped, till her face was in shadow. Her eyes were fixed on a Liberty
+cosy corner that adequately filled an ugly bare place in the room but
+that no one ever sat in--and then and there she had a vision.
+
+It seemed to her that her sight pierced through the faint scaffolding
+of white wood pillars that bore up the inane piece of furniture. She
+had a view of a cold, bare room distempered in pale green, and nearly
+empty of furniture, excepting for a bed and an arm-chair. Presently,
+she distinguished a table made of slabs of glass, covered with bits of
+shining steel and physic bottles. She smelt a strong odour of ether.
+Then sundry persons surged into her field of vision, though they had
+been there all the time; two white-capped nurses, bending solicitously
+over a bed where a third person lay with long black hair spread over
+the pillow. A woman, who was speaking so faintly that Florence felt
+rather than heard what she said.
+
+“You are sure you have sent for him?” the image seemed to say
+urgently. “Nurse! Nurse! It’s the ‘Quality Theatre’!”
+
+“Yes, Madam, we have telephoned through--‘Quality Theatre.’ It would
+have been as well----! Can you not give us your husband’s home
+address, Madam?”
+
+“I don’t know it,” the patient replied wearily. “But he will be at the
+theatre. He is always at the theatre. It’s his life now. He’ll come…
+he’ll come!”
+
+“Surely, Madam----”
+
+The nurse turned away to speak to a colleague who had apparently only
+recently left the room and now returned. Florence then saw the
+features of the woman on the bed, features never seen by her except
+across the footlights, charged with bright white and rose. They were
+grey and unrecognizable now, yet Florence knew whose they were.
+
+She heard the conversation of the two whispering women the while.
+
+“She’s sinking fast,” said the elder nurse.
+
+“She’ll last till he comes, I think,” replied the younger. “He’s just
+telephoned through that he’s on his way here!”
+
+With her words the whole house and its ramifications were now revealed
+to Florence Mardell--as it were the open front of a doll’s house. She
+saw the steps leading up to the door--there were eight of them--the
+hall, the staircase and the room where the patient lay, at one and the
+same time. She heard a jingling of bells and the prod of a swift
+hansom suddenly pulled up at the behest of the urgently waved umbrella
+of a man within--her husband. She saw him leap out and dash up the
+steps to the door that was flung open as soon as he touched the bell.
+She missed no single stage of his progress upstairs to Julia’s room.
+The nurse opened the door of it, admitted him, and passed out herself.
+Florence recognized Joe’s familiar gesture--the overcoat hastily flung
+off and thrown aside, disclosing the dapper little ordinary man, with
+the long lock of hair, that was his mark of genius, lifting on his
+forehead as usual, as he impetuously advanced towards the bed. She
+realized the weak complaisance that stood for paradisaical joy on the
+face of the woman lying there, whose light of life was too nearly
+extinguished to permit of a finer demonstration. But the actor’s face
+was a marvel. This expression, evoked for the beloved dying woman
+only, was of such a tragic madness as no mime could ever hope to
+originate or imitate. Florence had never seen that look on his face,
+and sharp knowledge shot through her that even if she in her turn lay
+dying she would not see it then. A sob shook, but did not interrupt
+her steady absorption in the sight spread before her.
+
+Her hungry eyes watched the discreet nurse left in charge retire to
+the mantelpiece and thoughtfully examine her sleeve links, as the
+lover, with passionate solicitude and a cunning born of intimate
+usage, sat down and laying his arms round his mistress’s neck, raised
+her a little, so as to gain her ear for the last whispers of love.
+
+As a ghost to earth returned, the second wife apprehended the dreadful
+sense of the words those two exchanged together. Joe spoke with no
+sense of renewal, but as if Julia and he had parted but a few hours,
+or it may be days, ago. Florence could not resent, but she suffered
+the first pangs of a lifelong sorrow as she listened to Julia’s faint
+sighs of content, her weak rejoinders to Joe’s protestations of
+undying fidelity, his vows that turned to old, wise, baby talk, and
+the promises she wrung from him so easily.…
+
+The nurse still fumbled with her sleeve links, blinded by unusual
+tears.
+
+“You will see me buried?” Julia exacted, her hands twisting in Joe’s
+hair, playing with the long lock.… “You will make all the arrangements
+for me, Joe, won’t you? I want _you_--I want you to manage it!…”
+
+Vance was right. Joe was the puny ghost mourner.… And Florence looked
+on eagerly again.
+
+“It shall be our wedding… our re-marriage!” He soothed her. “We meet
+again--to part no more… you and I, Julia, my Julia.…”
+
+What did he mean to do when Julia died, as die she must? It was very
+near now. Florence listened and looked, their voices seemed fainter,
+more furtive; the scene in the bedchamber was growing evanescent,
+ragged, as if there were rents in the film. She sometimes feared, so
+eager was she to see the whole of her own tragedy, that she was
+beginning to distinguish the wooden lines of the supports of the cosy
+corner that framed and crossed her view. She realized that Julia’s
+hour was approaching and that the vision would fade with its
+instigator. The doctor had come in and the other nurse. She could
+detect on all three faces the professional discouragement painted
+there by their foreknowledge of the event. They would look cheerful,
+normal again, after what must be, was over. But Joe’s face surely
+could never be set in comic lines again, those muscles, so deeply
+inured to tragedy, might never relax or unbend.…
+
+She knew it when Julia died, though at the precise moment no one
+spoke, no one moved in the room for a while. Julia died, where she
+listed, where Joe would have her--in his arms. The shape of Julia
+would never go out of them. There would never be room there any more
+for Florence, whom he had not loved!…
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+She raised her head with a jerk. The pink cushions and hangings of the
+Liberty cosy corner filled up the lines of the woodwork again. The
+pillars framed triviality as usual.
+
+She was sitting in her own drawing-room, and Gladys the stupid maid,
+was there--just come in to take away the tea things.
+
+Mrs. Mardell spoke.
+
+“Dinner will be late to-night.”
+
+“Yes, Ma’am, I see it’s just gone half-past six now.”
+
+“Your master is kept.… He has things to see to.…”
+
+Gladys, eager to show she understood, interrupted. “Yes, Ma’am, Vance
+will keep dinner back.”
+
+She folded up the table and set her mistress free. Mrs. Mardell had no
+more pain and knew she would not have any more, but she sat on in her
+place until seven, the hour at which her husband usually left for the
+theatre during this piece, in which his part entailed a somewhat
+lengthy and careful make up.…
+
+She heard the twist of the latch key in the door below, and for the
+first time in her life, shrank from meeting the eyes of the man she
+adored with a new and passionate love. But it was the lover of Julia
+who would come in to her and say something kind, as usual.
+Kind--merely kind was all he had ever been, in all these years of her
+blindness. She put out her hands as if to push him from her, and her
+lips almost framed the words, “Stay, oh, stay away!”
+
+No use, no use! Her observation, tensely quickened, told her that he
+paused in the hall, for there was an abrupt cessation of all movement.
+He was hesitating?… Then he made up his mind to the disagreeable duty.
+So Florence read the gesture. His sturdy dutiful footsteps could be
+heard ascending… a wild whiff of ether seemed to precede him!…
+
+Her eyes dropped uncontrollably, as he touched and turned the handle
+of the door gently.… It was done. He was in the room.
+
+How did he look? She must know. She raised her sad eyes, and
+contemplated the dwarf-actor standing there on the threshold of the
+pretty cheap drawing-room, oppressing, appalling her with his
+overpowering dignity. His hair was disordered, and clung, matted, to
+his damp forehead; the long lock fell over it in the style of one of
+the good-natured roysterers he excelled in portraying. But his face
+had the make-up of a clown; the dark features stood out in a mask of
+putty-coloured whiteness, all but the lips, which had no red. Those
+eyes which had just looked on death, stared down on her, not unkindly,
+but unseeing.…
+
+She spoke at last, to break the awful spell which was winding itself
+round and round her, more than for any other reason.
+
+“Julia is dead,” she said.
+
+“I know.” He took a step forward into the room, and made a cold
+gesture of menace. She recoiled--then rose and faced him.
+
+“She died in my arms. I loved her.”
+
+He turned away. It was as if he had laid a book aside and a leaf had
+been folded down. He muttered, with a semblance of forced
+preoccupation with the business of life--
+
+“I just looked in to tell you that I am going straight back to the
+theatre.”
+
+“Without any dinner?” she shrieked. Then, more calmly--
+
+“Well, you will have something to eat when you come home, won’t you?
+What time will that be?”
+
+It was the first time in her life she had asked such a question, and
+his answer to it, delivered over his shoulder as he went downstairs,
+cut her to the heart.
+
+“Perhaps never!”
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+Scant consolation! She knew that he did not mean to kill himself--at
+least not yet, for he had promised to make the arrangements for and
+attend Julia’s funeral.
+
+
+
+
+ THE MEMOIR
+
+Did women in Society ever “speak” to other women, when a man dear to
+them both was concerned?
+
+Had such an outrageous course ever been pursued since the days when
+Chriemhild “spoke” to Gudrun in the midst of the Rhine stream?
+
+Little Lady Greenwell pondered this, time after time, day after day,
+as she sat dressed in her ineffectual Paris best, alone, in crowds, in
+sunlight gardens, lamp-lit ball-rooms, unlit boudoirs arranged for
+cosy gossiping teas. She never talked gossip, but she listened to it.
+A great deal of it covertly was about herself, or rather about her
+husband. That was one of the reasons why she felt that she ought to
+speak--speak kindly, seriously, effectively.
+
+She fully meant to tell Cynthia what it was her duty to tell her, but
+she could not make up her mind to take the first plunge into
+unconventionality.
+
+So, she sat about through a whole season, watching Sir Hilary’s social
+triumphs--she herself never triumphed--and arranged her speech,
+carefully composing it beforehand, rehearsing it, canvassing the
+relative claims of diplomacy and frankness, fulness and brevity,
+emotion or matter of fact. What arguments should she use, and which
+let go? Which, having regard to the character of Cynthia Chenies,
+would be likely to affect that volatile lady most? Should she plead
+her own years the more, her own looks the less? Should she take high
+moral grounds?
+
+Should she put forward the young widow’s personal expediency? It all
+depended on what form of admonishment Cynthia would take best.
+
+Lady Greenwell was honest enough to admit to herself that she proposed
+to lecture Cynthia as much for her own good, as Cynthia’s. Truly, she
+felt that it would be a difficult thing to keep self out of it, or as
+much in the background as possible.
+
+“Just you let my man alone!”
+
+That was what Kate of Wapping would have said to Peg of Limehouse, and
+no more ado, but could Lady Greenwell of Highfields, Hungerford, and
+50, Carlton House Terrace so bluntly declare herself to the Honourable
+Mrs. Chenies of Portland Place? Did well-bred women do these things?
+It seemed at once so absurdly simple, just as you might ask some one
+to take his foot off your dress and no offence, and at the same time
+so appallingly impossible a thing to do. Women in Society were not
+supposed to show when they were annoyed, ask for explanations, or to
+“act straight.”
+
+How they suffered in consequence of these absurd fetishes of conduct
+they set up, women alone knew. Moreover, such a subject, even if it
+were fairly and squarely discussed between two exceptional women,
+would represent the merely primitive appeal of the one to the other’s
+generosity, and generosity, though permissible in Wapping or Limehouse
+is not the “thing” in Mayfair or Portland Place.
+
+Yet some women were really and truly generous at heart--Cynthia was,
+she was sure. Had it not been for the presence between them of this
+male bone of contention, Sir Hilary, Lady Greenwell would have been
+quite fond of Cynthia Chenies. She did not dislike her even now, when
+Cynthia was making her so uncomfortable, and she admired her
+sincerely, her frocks and her style. Hilary did, and she could not
+help following suit in this as in all else.
+
+And, naturally, Cynthia could not help liking Hilary and his open
+attentions. Who could help liking Hilary and complying with him when
+he chose to flirt, and he always did choose? He was a born flirt, and
+he was eight years younger than his wife. Wives, who were burdened
+with odious supernumerary years, must, of course, give their man a
+little rope, and Mabel Greenwell gave hers a good deal.
+
+Hilary Greenwell was a traveller, who came home and wrote books about
+it. He danced and dashed through a season, and then packed up and went
+to risk his life on some inaccessible mountain or other. Of course,
+when he came back, brown as a berry, and with sheaves of notes and
+measurements, he was the rage, and women simply “clawed him” for their
+parties, and adored him for their boudoirs.
+
+Cynthia Chenies was no exception to the rule. Though a widow, she was
+little more than a girl, and looked a mere child. At the parties she
+gave in her big house, so Hilary would say, you always expected to see
+the dolls set up, and find pips in the orange juice soup, and have to
+mumble the “pretend” biscuit joint. Child-like, she knew no measure in
+her appreciation of the handsome traveller returned, and people were
+saying now that she was making a fool of herself, and that Lady
+Greenwell didn’t like it.
+
+They were wrong there, Lady Greenwell wasn’t jealous at all. She was
+sure of Hilary, and would not have insulted him by display of vulgar
+jealousy. The effect of the scandal on her only amounted to
+discomfort. Great discomfort she might say, and even annoyance, and a
+few wet pillowed nights, loyally concealed from Hilary. She was
+neither young nor beautiful: it behoved her to be clever. She could,
+she knew, keep his love, though she was unable to restrain those loose
+tendrils of his fancy which waved airily to and fro, catching here and
+there temporarily on the fair upstanding flowers that bloomed every
+year in the great parterre of London’s garden of seasonal delights.
+Hilary loved her and her only. She must do nothing foolish.
+
+Whatever she felt, whatever she said to Cynthia Chenies, must be a
+secret for Sir Hilary, a matter between Cynthia and herself. Some
+women--fools!--thought little Lady Greenwell--would have rushed at
+once to their husband with an appeal or a command, to “put a stop to
+it at once,” thus definitely estranging the coveted man without
+affecting the issue in the desired way. No, it rested with her and her
+alone, to convince Cynthia of the awkwardness of the situation created
+by Cynthia’s careless compliance with the fancies of the irresponsible
+Hilary, a situation merely irksome to his wife, but positively
+injurious to his wife’s friend. Great interests on either hand were
+not concerned. No one’s heart was in it.
+
+Punctuality was Lady Greenwell’s virtue--consequently her husband’s
+too. She sat on the sofa at the Creswicks’, fan in hand, handkerchief
+in lap. The man who was going to take her in stood over her chair,
+uttering the usual commonplaces, when the door opened to admit one
+single, smiling lady--Cynthia Chenies, late as usual, wearing the
+cluster of flowers she always wore, and that every one attributed to
+Sir Hilary’s devotion. Lady Greenwell happened to know that Mrs.
+Chenies ordered them at the florist’s for herself. But how could she
+tell people that!
+
+She saw, what, of course, other people saw, Cynthia’s careless
+delicately possessive glance at Sir Hilary, a glance that effectually
+singled him out, as it were, from a group of like patterned men,
+clustered about the fireplace. So stupid of Cynthia! Nothing else, of
+course. Lady Greenwell knew, as well as if she had been told, that
+Betty Creswick would send the two in together. Suppose she spoke to
+Betty Creswick, and asked her not to join the tacit conspiracy that
+prevails in well-regulated, pleasure-loving society, to give the
+woman, whenever it is possible, to the man she is supposed to want?
+Never! She would die sooner! For Society would resent such an
+anti-social proposal and protect its own joys and convenience.
+
+It must go on although it was making her miserable. Would this
+wretched season never come to an end? Not that she need expect to find
+any intermission of her troubles even then! For there would come
+visits, “country-housing” up and down the length and breadth of
+England and Scotland, the three would be asked constantly to meet each
+other. She had been so nice to Cynthia, that people all thought that
+Lady Greenwell had accepted it. There would be no rest for her till
+the late autumn, when Sir Hilary had agreed to go with a party of men
+on an expedition to locate a continent somewhere. He would be away for
+four months.
+
+As a loving wife she ought to have dreaded this approaching
+separation; she was shocked to realize that in her heart of hearts,
+she was looking forward to it. She would not see the light of his
+countenance, but then, neither would the other! Jealousy makes sad
+dogs-in-the-manger of us all. And she would have the delight of his
+frequent letters. That is, unless he wrote to Cynthia too?
+
+If only she had had a child! Cynthia had one, Cynthia, a widow, with
+no husband now to bind faster to her side therewith! What a pity it
+all was!
+
+Dinner was announced. Sir Hilary gave Cynthia his arm, with a certain
+look… proud… protecting… sheepish rather.… Yes, she _must_ speak.
+
+She placed her hand lightly on the sleeve of she knew not whom, and
+followed Hilary and Cynthia into the dining-room. She was miserable,
+she was sure that Hilary, had he but known how unhappy she was making
+herself, would have tried at once to alter his line of conduct. And he
+would have failed! Of that, too, she was sure. Man can do nothing in
+this line, of himself alone, save by the grace of the woman who is
+leading him astray. It was settled; she must speak to Cynthia!
+
+Cynthia Chenies, who was not lacking in perception, realized at once
+the meaning of the innocently diplomatic, intensely special glance
+which Lady Greenwell, placed exactly opposite, fixed upon her, as soon
+as everybody was seated.
+
+“_Mabel Greenwell means to speak to me!_”
+
+She could harbour no other thought, from the fish onward. She was a
+nervous, lazy woman, and the fear of a “woman’s row” was intensely
+repugnant to her. She hated fuss about men, and bad form, and
+unconventionality of any kind. Her affair with Sir Hilary, whatever it
+might mean to her, was openly, at least, quite within the bounds of
+her world’s convention, and she deeply resented any attempt on Lady
+Greenwell’s part to draw it out of its limbo of self-chosen vagueness.
+
+To herself, she was willing to admit that she loved Sir Hilary very
+well, nay, desperately. She was less willing to admit that she
+suffered over this illicit attachment, and yet did suffer a good deal,
+for she was a good woman, and Lady Greenwell a healthy woman, so the
+chances were she would never get him honestly.
+
+She knew Sir Hilary loved her, was fond of Mabel, and respected them
+both. That being the case, he would not do either of them a wrong for
+the whole world.
+
+There it was! What an _impasse_! Three scrupulously honourable people
+caught in a net! No issue but death, and she could not contemplate
+even Mabel’s death with equanimity. Mabel had been very kind to her,
+and she and Mabel would have been the greatest friends if Sir Hilary
+had not stood between them.
+
+Though she pitied Mabel for her age, her plainness, she could not help
+feeling a little angry with Mabel for having presumed to marry Sir
+Hilary; she should not have allowed Hilary to persuade her that she
+was a suitable wife for him. Hilary was so plausible. Once, however,
+having committed the initial error, Mabel should not have hoped to
+keep him, except by courtesy.
+
+She knew Sir Hilary well enough not to feel obliged to talk to him, so
+she plodded imperturbably through the menu, eating a good deal to
+justify her taciturnity. “Oh, I am so hungry,” she said once or twice,
+“I have been down to Brighton to-day to see the boy!”
+
+Sir Hilary never worried. He quietly looked after her, gave her her
+own way now as ever. She was heedless, he safeguarded her reputation
+as well as he could. He never wrote to her when he was away; she would
+have forgotten to destroy his letters. He called on her not too often;
+he dined with her now and then, generally with his wife. There was no
+need to compromise her by overt acts of this sort. The mad, bad,
+sympathetic world was kind enough to cater for the indulgence of their
+affection; in all the ragôuts of society were they skilfully
+combined, and discreet opportunities of meeting served up to them
+daily, with the result that every one was happy and amused, except
+Lady Greenwell, who had been born and bred in the country and never
+could acquire London’s cynical tone.
+
+Once or twice, however, before this evening, Cynthia had suspected
+some such strata of unsuspected bourgeois feeling in Mabel. She almost
+wished Betty Creswick would not be so kind to Hilary and herself, and
+a little kinder to Mabel. She sometimes even avoided dull parties
+where she knew he was going. Not so Sir Hilary, he had no scruples of
+this kind. He adored her, he told her so--“and as there’s nothing
+wrong about it all, why shouldn’t we see as much of each other as
+people will let us?”
+
+“Ah, but other people----”--an ellipsis for Mabel, whom it pleased her
+to mention to him as little as possible. But he understood, in his
+breezy, butterfly way.
+
+“Mabel is all right. Mabel’s a good sort, and understands me. She
+isn’t such a fool as to trouble about gossip.”
+
+He never said more. It was tacitly assumed between them that Mabel was
+awfully fond of him and all that, but “demonstrations would simply
+bore her, you know.” Meanwhile, he loved Cynthia with every fibre of
+his being--all save the domestic ones, it was understood--she was his
+Egeria, his goddess, his good angel, the woman he thought of last
+thing at night and the first thing on waking, in the jungle, on the
+veldt, on the frozen Himalayan slope. He was hers--hers only. No one
+else cared, not even Mabel, who had “settled down.”
+
+Cynthia Chenies hardly realized it, but this passion had come to be
+her life. She breathed and dressed but for Hilary. She was a cold
+woman, and content with its platonic manifestations, but she
+technically regretted the immense waste exemplified in the position of
+the lover, tied for all his days to two women, neither of whom was or
+could be everything to him.
+
+She caught Mabel’s eye now and again full of timid reticences and
+prudent punctilios, but expressing over and above all others, the
+simple emotion that betrayeth itself in speech.
+
+“I must speak, or burst!” the poor woman fancied Mabel saying, and
+shivered over her chocolate _mousse_.
+
+The moment came. Sir Hilary left soon after dinner to attend an
+Ethnological Society’s meeting, and Lady Greenwell timidly offered to
+motor Mrs. Chenies home. For some fateful reason or other, that lady’s
+brougham was not forthcoming.
+
+“It is frightfully out of your way, Mabel!” argued the trapped fly.
+
+Gently, but firmly, the spider informed her that a mere difference of
+a mile and a quarter did not in the least constitute
+out-of-the-wayness, and the hostess settled it by her vague
+encouragements.
+
+“So nice of you to chaperon each other like that!”
+
+Mrs. Chenies hardly grasped the significance of Lady Creswick’s remark
+until the knees of Lady Greenwell and herself were safely stowed under
+the same bearskin rug.
+
+“I wanted to speak to you, Cynthia,” began Lady Greenwell honestly,
+without preface or pretence.
+
+“Did you?” replied the other, shrinking as far away from her companion
+as she could into the corner of the motor. Then, collecting herself,
+she said, “You can, you know.”
+
+“It is a little difficult for me--but then--I must remember it is for
+your good, Cynthia.”
+
+“Oh, for my good!” exclaimed Mrs. Chenies, stung by the familiar, too
+familiar exordium. “You must remember I am not a mere girl--I am a
+widow.”
+
+“That is just it,” continued Lady Greenwell, delighted. “A young
+and”--with a gulp--“pretty widow.”
+
+“Oh, don’t mention it,” the other begged her flippantly.
+
+Though her tone grated on and disturbed Lady Greenwell, that lady
+continued, almost apologetically--
+
+“That is the right way to take it, dear, not seriously! Just a little
+hint, you know--laugh about it as much as you like when I am done, but
+listen to me for a minute.…! Could you not contrive, dear, to see a
+little less of Hilary--my husband?”
+
+“I know he’s your husband, Mabel, well enough!” Mrs. Chenies jerked
+out crossly. “And I don’t see so much of him as all that!”
+
+“Oh, I know, dear, I know all about your friendship--your intimacy…
+it’s nothing at all, nothing at all… Only you see people will talk.”
+
+“Yes, bother them!”
+
+“We mustn’t pay too much attention to gossip, of course, but we owe it
+to--ourselves, to take some notice of what is said. You may want to
+marry again?”
+
+“Never!”
+
+“Oh, don’t say that!” pleaded the other pitifully. “You are sure
+to--so young and pretty. But don’t you think, that meantime, that
+people should couple your name and Hilary’s is prejudicial--rather to
+you? Of course, I know----”
+
+“What?”
+
+“That there is nothing at all serious between you--nothing at all,
+Hilary”--she blurted out the indecent fact--“Hilary is devoted to me,
+and always has been, he has never swerved for the fraction of an
+instant. Besides, he would not----”
+
+“Would not what?”
+
+“Oh, Cynthia, you do make it so difficult! You seem so stony.… You
+aren’t offended?”
+
+“No, of course not, I only wanted to know what it was Hilary wouldn’t
+do?”
+
+Her careless use of the beloved’s name hurt Lady Greenwell a good
+deal. She drew herself up--
+
+--“Would not allow himself to make love to another woman during his
+wife’s lifetime. You may as well take that for granted. Only--he is
+younger than I, and heedless, and you are most attractive, while I am
+a plain woman, well-dressed. And the world thinks, of course, the
+usual thing! Oh! Cynthia, help me! And it would not matter, of course,
+if it were not for you and your reputation, though I can’t deny that
+it makes me very uncomfortable to hear him lightly spoken of.”
+
+“What do you want me to do about it?”
+
+“I said what. See less of him. See him only at my house.”
+
+“Will you give him your orders, then, not to call at mine?”
+
+“Dear Cynthia, how could I do that? What do you think of me?”
+
+“I think you are like all women--want to get some one else to pull the
+chestnuts out of the fire for you. Why should I do your dirty work?
+And it would not do either, I couldn’t forbid him my house without
+creating remark, and doing exactly what you don’t want done--getting
+him talked about. Nor can I go and tell Betty Creswick not to send us
+in to dinner together----”
+
+“Of course you can’t tell her, but there are methods----”
+
+“And I refuse to employ them, and let all the world think I am doing
+it because I have a guilty conscience or because you have been making
+a scene. You don’t want that surely?”
+
+“No.” She shuddered. “Then it has been no use my speaking,
+practically? And, Cynthia, you can have no idea what it has cost me!”
+
+“I am truly sorry, but, indeed, dear, this sort of carriage lecture
+never does any good. You can’t have straight talks to women. No woman
+can employ another woman to help keep her husband for her--it really
+isn’t done.”
+
+“Keep my husband! But have I not been telling you, Cynthia, all this
+time, that if I thought for one moment that my husband had been
+unfaithful to me in word, or thought, or deed, I would not have spoken
+to anybody at all about it, I would just have died! It is precisely
+because I do believe in him----”
+
+“Then it makes it quite simple--go on believing in him. You may,”
+replied the other woman, drily, as the carriage stopped at the door of
+her own house. “Good-night, Mabel! Thank you for the lift.”
+
+“And are you cross, Cynthia? Believe me, I meant well.”
+
+“You meant well by yourself, eh, dear? Just realize that you were
+speaking for yourself----”
+
+“Oh, Cynthia, you _are_ cruel.”
+
+“Yes, but honest. Think it over. Let it all be as if it hadn’t been.
+Shall I kiss you?” She paused, with a light foot on the step.
+
+“Yes, please. You know I am really fond of you, Cynthia, but you seem
+to have beaten me.”
+
+“Oh, no!” asseverated Mrs. Chenies, “only convinced you that these
+sort of things can’t be done.”
+
+They kissed.
+
+“I had doubts about the wisdom of it at the time,” murmured Lady
+Greenwell. “I thought you might say it was tactless. Hilary says I
+have no tact.”
+
+“Never mind, you are sure he loves you, and that’s better than
+tact--that’s everything!”
+
+Mrs. Chenies was shaking out her skirts on the pavement, pulling out
+her latch key.…
+
+“So that’s all right. There’s an end of it----”
+
+“Yes, and come to dinner to-morrow night, will you?”
+
+“Yes, dear. Good-night!”
+
+Two hands met and clasped over the window-bar of the carriage. Lady
+Greenwell watched her friend in, and whirled away. Mrs. Chenies rushed
+impulsively upstairs to her room, and threw herself on her bed in an
+agony of weeping. They were tears both for herself and Mabel.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+It was a year later. Mrs. Chenies in modified mourning--for she had
+made herself as black as she dared--rang for admittance at the door of
+Greenwell House. The very house seemed in mourning. It used to be
+furnished exotically, with variegated hangings and things Hilary had
+brought back from abroad. Cynthia shivered. She had been sent for.
+Why? Why did Mabel Greenwell want to see her? The cords of their
+friendship had been sensibly loosened. It was perhaps as well. They
+mourned in their separate corners--of London.
+
+She was ushered into the presence of a little woman whose deep
+official weeds seemed almost to obliterate her slight frame and make
+her fade into the surrounding blackness. She rushed at and clung to
+her handsome visitor, and kissed her mournfully and deliberately on
+both cheeks.
+
+“Dear, dear Cynthia, how good of you to come to me!”
+
+“Dearest Mabel, how good of you to be willing to see me!”
+
+“Oh, I wanted you--somehow--so much! I believe, when all is said and
+done, Cynthia, I am fonder of you than I am of any one!”
+
+Mrs. Chenies winced and suffered herself to be kissed again on both
+cheeks. She looked extremely handsome in her glowing purples and
+blues. The widow’s inexpressive eyes were merely dimmed and bleared by
+her tears, those of Cynthia Chenies shone, and she was not so silly as
+to redden the lids by dabbing them with a handkerchief, as Lady
+Greenwell did.
+
+“He was so fond of you, Cynthia! He has left you to me as a sort of
+legacy. We often spoke of you.”
+
+Cynthia started. It had surely been a tacit convention between herself
+and the dead Hilary, that--
+
+“Yes, I ventured at last to tell him about that talk I had with you
+once, and he took it just as you did. He laughed at me and said that I
+had no right to worry you with that sort of thing and that you were
+perfectly justified in being ‘short’ with me, as you were, Cynthia,
+you know. He thought it very nice of you to forgive me and go on
+seeing us as usual.”
+
+“Yes, yes, but I saw very little of him alone after that.”
+
+“He went away so soon after, didn’t he? That was perhaps a good
+thing--it gave one time----”
+
+“I don’t think you had any need to tell him.”
+
+“Oh, my dear, what could it matter? There was such perfect confidence
+between us, and I preferred that a trifling incident like that should
+not be allowed to interfere with it. Surely you don’t mind?”
+
+“Not now!” replied Cynthia Chenies, with an effort. “And I suppose you
+had a perfect right to do as you liked about it.”
+
+“That’s all right then. And Hilary said--dear thing!--when he left me
+to go on that wretched expedition that killed him, that I was to be as
+nice to you as I could, and see as much of you as you would allow me
+to do, and so I have, and so I mean to.”
+
+“Don’t, don’t cry so, dear!”
+
+“Oh, do let me cry--it helps me! And how can I help it, when I think
+of the dearest husband ever woman had, lost to me, gone--gone--killed,
+out there alone, among horrid savages.… Why, Cynthia, you are crying
+too!”
+
+“I can’t help it either,” said the other savagely, disdaining to wipe
+her tears away.
+
+“Cynthia, you were fond of him, too--now don’t say you were not!”
+
+“I was.”
+
+Lady Greenwell rose. She looked taller. She looked grim.
+
+“And that is the reason I thought--I made up my mind that you were the
+proper person to consult about this.…”
+
+“This?” asked the other, following the direction of those sad sunken
+eyes.
+
+“Yes! It was his last wish, Cynthia!” Lady Greenwell pointed to a
+large bulging packet lying, with a magnificent despatch box, close to
+her elbow, and continued, in her thin, nervous, passionate voice--
+
+“You know, when he got ill over there--it came on so gradually--he
+never ceased writing to me till the very last--he got his secretary to
+send home the MS. of his new book to me. He wanted me to see to the
+publication of it. I was to edit it, if he never came back to do it
+himself--and I was to ask you to be co-editress.”
+
+“Good God!”
+
+“Oh, don’t be frightened, dear, there is nothing to do, it is all
+done. I did it, only, as he said you were to see it, before it came
+out, I could not but prepare to carry out his dear wishes. And now I
+must tell you, as he is gone, I should like to call it _Memorials of a
+Noble Soul_, something like that, and add some of his letters to me. I
+have them all here, in this despatch box, I never destroyed a single
+line of dear darling Hilary’s----”
+
+“They will make a most interesting book!” murmured Mrs. Chenies,
+looking away.
+
+“Yes, won’t they, only, of course,” Lady Greenwell breathed softly,
+with a watery smile of triumph, “they will want some editing. They are
+too intimate, too personal for the ear of the general public. It could
+not be otherwise. But, still, I don’t think the public should lose
+because he was in love with his wife, do you?”
+
+“No, certainly not.”
+
+“There is a great deal in them of purely general interest, of course,
+but it still wants weeding of lover’s phrases and endearments and so
+on. So I thought the best plan would be for me to read them all aloud
+to you, and consult you as to what is to be left in, or struck out.”
+
+Cynthia Chenies groaned aloud. Lady Greenwell smiled. She had gained
+confidence.
+
+“Cynthia, dear, how like you! You were always afraid of hard work, and
+there is nothing--nothing bores you so much as listening. Hilary
+noticed that. ‘These brilliant women!’ he used to say.”
+
+“Let’s have the letters,” ejaculated Mrs. Chenies bluffly. She
+adjusted a cushion or two behind her shoulders. “I have learnt how to
+listen lately. Let’s have tea first.”
+
+“Certainly!” Lady Greenwell rang the bell. Tea was brought. The
+hostess dispensed it. Then, with many a reminiscent pause, and sob and
+dab of the handkerchief, Lady Greenwell opened the despatch box, and
+produced letters tied up in blue, Hilary’s favourite colour. It was
+the colour of Cynthia’s eyes. She fidgeted in her place, and Lady
+Greenwell offered her another cushion--“because this will all take
+time.”
+
+“I’ll read the first that comes,” the widow of Hilary declared, when
+they had both settled down. “I am not afraid of your knowing, Cynthia,
+how fond he was of me. This one begins--he generally begins so--‘_Dear
+little woman_’--we can leave that out if you like?”
+
+“You can’t. It shows character,” observed Mrs. Chenies sombrely. “Go
+on.”
+
+Thus encouraged, Lady Greenwell read, shyly at first, but with
+gathering confidence, as the map of her husband’s affection unrolled
+itself under her faltering tongue. She read faster. The session was
+going to last interminably, the letters were good, but long!
+
+“Very vivid! Most interesting!” Mrs. Chenies remarked now and again,
+drumming with her foot, and with her face turned away.
+
+“It is really rather too intimate!” Lady Greenwell blurted out.
+“Listen to this--‘_Darling, my darling_.’ I can scarcely bear to read
+it. ‘_All night I lie and toss on my uncomfortable rugs, and
+think--think of you, darling, and your soft breast!_’”
+
+“You might put ‘cheek’ there, instead of ‘breast,’ if you liked?”
+interposed the co-editress hastily. Lady Greenwell looked up.
+
+“Very well.” She used a little pencil at her girdle. Then she
+resumed--
+
+“‘_And I realize how the thought of one sweet woman at home, can be at
+once the joy and the torture of the traveller. For I don’t know if it
+is most sweet or most bitter, this remembrance of happier hours in
+altered circumstances. It is joy, but then, sometimes the agony of
+separation is too keen to bear.…_’ Oh, that he should feel it so! I’ll
+go on, Cynthia, if you don’t feel too much bored. ‘_I stretch out my
+hands, I look for you, for your warm kind arms----_’”
+
+“You certainly will have to strike all those rhapsodies out,” Mrs.
+Chenies remarked coldly. “He must have been very ill then. Are the
+letters all like that? If so, they won’t made a book of very general
+interest.”
+
+“Ah!” Lady Greenwell exclaimed. She was tossing over the letters
+feverishly. “They seem to have got mixed! This is one of the English
+series--written from the Creswicks’ place. That must have been sent
+the summer before he went, for that’s the only time he ever went to
+Betty Creswick’s alone. It was the very week I spoke to you, Cynthia.”
+
+“I wish you would not keep on bringing that in,” interposed Cynthia
+Chenies irritably, “you were quite right, and I was quite wrong, I see
+that well enough, now. Go on. We are both dining out to-night, I
+suppose?”
+
+“Not I,” said Lady Greenwell haughtily. “I shall never dine out
+again.” She read on a little to herself. “He didn’t like being there
+without me a bit,” she murmured. “In fact, he loathed it.”
+
+“Why didn’t you go with him, then?” asked Mrs. Chenies, though she
+knew well enough. She had been one of the Creswick party, and the
+letter explaining Mabel’s reasons for defection had been read aloud to
+her. But Lady Greenwell couldn’t know that.
+
+“Oh, I got a bad chill at the very last moment, and had to wire I
+couldn’t go. Cynthia, shall I read this letter?”
+
+“Of course. It’s part of his life, I suppose.”
+
+“‘_My own little brown bird_,’” read Lady Greenwell softly, “‘_I was
+so grieved to leave you, tucked up in bed, a darkened room and with
+only a hired nurse to hold your little hot hand. Here I may say I am
+not enjoying myself a bit, and yet we are a very gay party and
+everything jolly. But I can’t get any fun out of it without you to
+talk it over with me, after we’ve gone to bed at four in the morning.
+Dear little woman, why did you make me go alone? The Creswick ménage
+is a bit noisy for your quiet sober husband. One gets a little tired
+of the society of brilliant women--they flash and coruscate--and
+finally weary. I can’t help thinking of a certain still small brown
+bird at home sitting on the bough, and waiting for me._’ Oh, Cynthia,
+I do believe, here is something actually about you--he mentions you by
+name----”
+
+“I’m the brilliant woman that wearies, am I not? Well, let us hear
+what he says about me.”
+
+“Shall I? I’ve read them all a hundred times, but I don’t quite
+remember, so if it annoys you, mind, it is your own fault. Here goes!
+‘_The Cynthia of the Minute is really a little overpowering. She seems
+quite to enjoy saying risque things and compromising herself.…_’ I
+really don’t think I ought to read this to you, Cynthia?”
+
+“Read it or I shall snatch it out of your hands.”
+
+“Well, you are sure you won’t mind? ‘_Poor little Cynthia, she is
+astonishingly indiscreet, but she means no harm. She is a dear, nice,
+ordinary simple woman, pretending to be a sad rake, but as good as
+gold, really----_’”
+
+“As good as gold, really!”
+
+“Well, isn’t that nice for him to say that! Poor dear boy, he always
+did go straight to the heart of the matter, didn’t he? He was, as a
+matter of fact, awfully fond of you, and this just shows it. He knew
+you through and through--though. What’s the matter?”
+
+“Give me some hot water to drink,” gasped Mrs. Chenies. “Is--this your
+revenge, Mabel?”
+
+“Dear Cynthia, aren’t you well? You do use such odd stagey words.
+Revenge! I am your friend and always will be. My husband wanted us to
+be friends.”
+
+“Well, then, do let us keep friends,” said Mrs. Chenies, drinking her
+scalding hot water hastily and rising. “I must go. An early dinner for
+the theatre.… Tommy Vavasor.…”
+
+“But what about the letters? I have only read two.”
+
+“Of course, you must leave that out about me,” said Cynthia, speaking
+very fast and knotting her fur round her neck as if she wanted to
+throttle herself, “and all personalities about people still living.
+And you must not print names. But, as for the rest, I should give the
+letters in their entirety. Go ahead, that’s my advice to you. You can
+hurt none, and your collaborator gives you _carte blanche_.”
+
+She escaped. She preserved no memory of the passage from Lady
+Greenwell’s dull drawing-room to the gas-lit street outside. She
+bitterly resented the dead man’s view of her innocent attempts at
+disillusioning him, on the only occasion they had met previously to
+his departure and after his wife’s lecture, and she would have given
+her best jewel to discover whether Mabel’s quite thorough revenge had
+been carefully planned or not?
+
+She married young Lord Vavasor within the year, and contrived, without
+exciting any suspicion, never again to be alone in the same room with
+the widowed Lady Greenwell again. But she longed as she had never
+longed for anything else, to hear of Lady Greenwell’s remarriage.
+
+
+
+
+ THE PRAYER
+
+ I
+
+ “_It is but giving over of a game,_
+ _That must be lost._”--Philaster.
+
+
+“Come, Mrs. Arne--come, my dear, you must not give way like this!
+You can’t stand it--you really can’t! Let Miss Kate take you away--now
+do!” urged the nurse, with her most motherly of intonations.
+
+“Yes, Alice, Mrs. Joyce is right. Come away--do come away--you are
+only making yourself ill. It is all over; you can do nothing! Oh, oh,
+do come away!” implored Mrs. Arne’s sister, shivering with excitement
+and nervousness.
+
+A few moments ago Dr. Graham had relinquished his hold on the pulse of
+Edward Arne with the hopeless movement of the eyebrows that meant--the
+end.
+
+The nurse had made the little gesture of resignation that was possibly
+a matter of form with her. The young sister-in-law had hidden her face
+in her hands. The wife had screamed a scream that had turned them all
+hot and cold--and flung herself on the bed over her dead husband.
+There she lay; her cries were terrible, her sobs shook her whole body.
+
+The three gazed at her pityingly, not knowing what to do next. The
+nurse, folding her hands, looked towards the doctor for directions,
+and the doctor drummed with his fingers on the bed-post. The young
+girl timidly stroked the shoulder that heaved and writhed under her
+touch.
+
+“Go away! Go away!” her sister reiterated continually, in a voice
+hoarse with fatigue and passion.
+
+“Leave her alone, Miss Kate,” whispered the nurse at last; “she will
+work it off best herself, perhaps.”
+
+She turned down the lamp, as if to draw a veil over the scene. Mrs.
+Arne raised herself on her elbow, showing a face stained with tears
+and purple with emotion.
+
+“What! Not gone?” she said harshly. “Go away, Kate, go away! It is my
+house. I don’t want you, I want no one--I want to speak to my husband.
+Will you go away--all of you. Give me an hour, half-an-hour--five
+minutes!”
+
+She stretched out her arms imploringly to the doctor.
+
+“Well…” said he, almost to himself.
+
+He signed to the two women to withdraw, and followed them out into the
+passage. “Go and get something to eat,” he said peremptorily, “while
+you can. We shall have trouble with her presently. I’ll wait in the
+dressing-room.”
+
+He glanced at the twisting figure on the bed, shrugged his shoulders,
+and passed into the adjoining room, without, however, closing the door
+of communication. Sitting down in an arm-chair drawn up to the fire,
+he stretched himself and closed his eyes. The professional aspects of
+the case of Edward Arne rose up before him in all its interesting
+forms of complication.…
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+It was just this professional attitude that Mrs. Arne unconsciously
+resented both in the doctor and in the nurse. Through all their
+kindness she had realized and resented their scientific interest in
+her husband, for to them he had been no more than a curious and
+complicated case; and now that the blow had fallen, she regarded them
+both in the light of executioners. Her one desire, expressed with all
+the shameless sincerity of blind and thoughtless misery, was to be
+free of their hateful presence and alone--alone with her dead!
+
+She was weary of the doctor’s subdued manly tones--of the nurse’s
+commonplace motherliness, too habitually adapted to the needs of all
+to be appreciated by the individual--of the childish consolation of
+the young sister, who had never loved, never been married, did not
+know what sorrow was! Their expressions of sympathy struck her like
+blows, the touch of their hands on her body, as they tried to raise
+her, stung her in every nerve.
+
+With a sigh of relief she buried her head in the pillow, pressed her
+body more closely against that of her husband, and lay motionless.
+
+Her sobs ceased.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+The lamp went out with a gurgle. The fire leaped up, and died. She
+raised her head and stared about her helplessly, then sinking down
+again she put her lips to the ear of the dead man.
+
+“Edward--dear Edward!” she whispered, “why have you left me? Darling,
+why have you left me? I can’t stay behind--you know I can’t. I am too
+young to be left. It is only a year since you married me. I never
+thought it was only for a year. ‘Till death us do part!’ Yes, I know
+that’s in it, but nobody ever thinks of that! I never thought of
+living without you! I meant to die with you.…
+
+“No--no--I can’t die--I must not--till my baby is born. You will never
+see it. Don’t you want to see it? Don’t you? Oh, Edward, speak! Say
+something, darling, one word--one little word! Edward! Edward! are you
+there? Answer me for God’s sake, answer me!
+
+“Darling, I am so tired of waiting. Oh, think, dearest. There is so
+little time. They only gave me half-an-hour. In half-an-hour they will
+come and take you away from me--take you where I can’t come to
+you--with all my love I can’t come to you! I know the place--I saw it
+once. A great lonely place full of graves, and little stunted trees
+dripping with dirty London rain… and gas-lamps flaring all round… but
+quite, quite dark where the grave is… a long grey stone just like the
+rest. How could you stay there?--all alone--all alone--without me?
+
+“Do you remember, Edward, what we once said--that whichever of us died
+first should come back to watch over the other, in the spirit? I
+promised you, and you promised me. What children we were! Death is not
+what we thought. It comforted us to say that then.
+
+“Now, it’s nothing--nothing--worse than nothing! I don’t want your
+spirit--I can’t see it--or feel it--I want you, you, your eyes that
+looked at me, your mouth that kissed me----”
+
+She raised his arms and clasped them round her neck, and lay there
+very still, murmuring, “Oh, hold me, hold me! Love me if you can. Am I
+hateful? This is me! These are your arms.…”
+
+The doctor in the next room moved in his chair. The noise awoke her
+from her dream of contentment, and she unwound the dead arm from her
+neck, and, holding it up by the wrist, considered it ruefully.
+
+“Yes, I can put it round me, but I have to hold it there. It is quite
+cold--it doesn’t care. Ah, my dear, you don’t care! You are dead. I
+kiss you, but you don’t kiss me. Edward! Edward! Oh, for heaven’s sake
+kiss me once. Just once!
+
+“No, no, that won’t do--that’s not enough! that’s nothing! worse than
+nothing! I want you back, you, all you.… What shall I do?… I often
+pray.… Oh, if there be a God in heaven, and if He ever answered a
+prayer, let Him answer mine--my only prayer. I’ll never ask
+another--and give you back to me! As you were--as I loved you--as I
+adored you! He must listen. He must! My God, my God, he’s mine--he’s
+my husband, he’s my lover--give him back to me!”
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+--“Left alone for half-an-hour or more with the corpse! It’s not
+right!”
+
+The muttered expression of the nurse’s revolted sense of professional
+decency came from the head of the staircase, where she had been
+waiting for the last few minutes. The doctor joined her.
+
+“Hush, Mrs. Joyce! I’ll go to her now.”
+
+The door creaked on its hinges as he gently pushed it open and went
+in.
+
+“What’s that? What’s that?” screamed Mrs. Arne. “Doctor! Doctor! Don’t
+touch me! Either I am dead or he is alive!”
+
+“Do you want to kill yourself, Mrs. Arne?” said Dr. Graham, with
+calculated sternness, coming forward; “come away!”
+
+“Not dead! Not dead!” she murmured.
+
+“He is dead, I assure you. Dead and cold an hour ago! Feel!” He took
+hold of her, as she lay face downwards, and in so doing he touched the
+dead man’s cheek--it was not cold! Instinctively his finger sought a
+pulse.
+
+“Stop! Wait!” he cried in his intense excitement. “My dear Mrs. Arne,
+control yourself!”
+
+But Mrs. Arne had fainted, and fallen heavily off the bed on the other
+side. Her sister, hastily summoned, attended to her, while the man
+they had all given over for dead was, with faint gasps and sighs and
+reluctant moans, pulled, as it were, hustled and dragged back over the
+threshold of life.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+ II
+
+“Why do you always wear black, Alice?” asked Esther Graham. “You are
+not in mourning that I know of.”
+
+She was Dr. Graham’s only daughter and Mrs. Arne’s only friend. She
+sat with Mrs. Arne in the dreary drawing-room of the house in Chelsea.
+She had come to tea. She was the only person who ever did come to tea
+there.
+
+She was brusque, kind, and blunt, and had a talent for making
+inappropriate remarks. Six years ago Mrs. Arne had been a widow for an
+hour! Her husband had succumbed to an apparently mortal illness, and
+for the space of an hour had lain dead. When suddenly and inexplicably
+he had revived from his trance, the shock, combined with six weeks’
+nursing, had nearly killed his wife. All this Esther had heard from
+her father. She herself had only come to know Mrs. Arne after her
+child was born, and all the tragic circumstances of her husband’s
+illness put aside, and it was hoped forgotten. And when her idle
+question received no answer from the pale absent woman who sat
+opposite, with listless lack-lustre eyes fixed on the green and blue
+flames dancing in the fire, she hoped it had passed unnoticed. She
+waited for five minutes for Mrs. Arne to resume the conversation, then
+her natural impatience got the better of her.
+
+“Do say something, Alice!” she implored.
+
+“Esther, I beg your pardon!” said Mrs. Arne. “I was thinking.”
+
+“What were you thinking of?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“No, of course you don’t. People who sit and stare into the fire never
+do think, really. They are only brooding and making themselves ill,
+and that is what you are doing. You mope, you take no interest in
+anything, you never go out--I am sure you have not been out of doors
+to-day?”
+
+“No--yes--I believe not. It is so cold.”
+
+“You are sure to feel the cold if you sit in the house all day, and
+sure to get ill! Just look at yourself!”
+
+Mrs. Arne rose and looked at herself in the Italian mirror over the
+chimney-piece. It reflected faithfully enough her even pallor, her
+dark hair and eyes, the sweeping length of her eyelashes, the sharp
+curves of her nostrils, and the delicate arch of her eyebrows, that
+formed a thin sharp black line, so clear as to seem almost unnatural.
+
+“Yes, I do look ill,” she said with conviction.
+
+“No wonder. You choose to bury yourself alive.”
+
+“Sometimes I do feel as if I lived in a grave. I look up at the
+ceiling and fancy it is my coffin-lid.”
+
+“Don’t please talk like that!” expostulated Miss Graham, pointing to
+Mrs. Arne’s little girl. “If only for Dolly’s sake, I think you should
+not give way to such morbid fancies. It isn’t good for her to see you
+like this always.”
+
+“Oh, Esther,” the other exclaimed, stung into something like vivacity,
+“don’t reproach me! I hope I am a good mother to my child!”
+
+“Yes, dear, you are a model mother--and model wife too. Father says
+the way you look after your husband is something wonderful, but don’t
+you think for your own sake you might try to be a little gayer? You
+encourage these moods, don’t you? What is it? Is it the house?”
+
+She glanced around her--at the high ceiling, at the heavy damask
+portieres, the tall cabinets of china, the dim oak panelling--it
+reminded her of a neglected museum. Her eye travelled into the
+farthest corners, where the faint filmy dusk was already gathering,
+lit only by the bewildering cross-lights of the glass panels of
+cabinet doors--to the tall narrow windows--then back again to the
+woman in her mourning dress, cowering by the fire. She said sharply--
+
+“You should go out more.”
+
+“I do not like to--leave my husband.”
+
+“Oh, I know that he is delicate and all that, but still, does he never
+permit you to leave him? Does he never go out by himself?”
+
+“Not often!”
+
+“And you have no pets! It is very odd of you. I simply can’t imagine a
+house without animals!”
+
+“We did have a dog once,” answered Mrs. Arne plaintively, “but it
+howled so we had to give it away. It would not go near Edward.… But
+please don’t imagine that I am dull! I have my child.” She laid her
+hand on the flaxen head at her knee.
+
+Miss Graham rose, frowning.
+
+“Ah, you are too bad!” she exclaimed. “You are like a widow exactly,
+with one child, stroking its orphan head and saying, ‘Poor fatherless
+darling.’”
+
+Voices were heard outside. Miss Graham stopped talking quite suddenly,
+and sought her veil and gloves on the mantelpiece.
+
+“You need not go, Esther,” said Mrs. Arne. “It is only my husband.”
+
+“Oh, but it is getting late,” said the other, crumpling up her gloves
+in her muff, and shuffling her feet nervously.
+
+“Come!” said her hostess, with a bitter smile, “put your gloves on
+properly--if you must go--but it is quite early still.”
+
+“Please don’t go, Miss Graham,” put in the child.
+
+“I must. Go and meet your papa, like a good girl.”
+
+“I don’t want to.”
+
+“You mustn’t talk like that, Dolly,” said the doctor’s daughter
+absently, still looking towards the door. Mrs. Arne rose and fastened
+the clasps of the big fur-cloak for her friend. The wife’s white, sad,
+oppressed face came very close to the girl’s cheerful one, as she
+murmured in a low voice--
+
+“You don’t like my husband, Esther? I can’t help noticing it. Why
+don’t you?”
+
+“Nonsense!” retorted the other, with the emphasis of one who is
+repelling an overtrue accusation. “I do, only----”
+
+“Only what?”
+
+“Well, dear, it is foolish of me, of course, but I am--a little afraid
+of him.”
+
+“Afraid of Edward!” said his wife slowly. “Why should you be?”
+
+“Well, dear--you see--I--I suppose women can’t help being a little
+afraid of their friends’ husbands--they can spoil their friendships
+with their wives in a moment, if they choose to disapprove of them. I
+really must go! Good-bye, child; give me a kiss! Don’t ring, Alice.
+Please don’t! I can open the door for myself----”
+
+“Why should you?” said Mrs. Arne. “Edward is in the hall; I heard him
+speaking to Foster.”
+
+“No; he has gone into his study. Good-bye, you apathetic creature!”
+She gave Mrs. Arne a brief kiss and dashed out of the room. The voices
+outside had ceased, and she had reasonable hopes of reaching the door
+without being intercepted by Mrs. Arne’s husband. But he met her on
+the stairs. Mrs. Arne, listening intently from her seat by the fire,
+heard her exchange a few shy sentences with him, the sound of which
+died away as they went downstairs together. A few moments after,
+Edward Arne came into the room and dropped into the chair just vacated
+by his wife’s visitor.
+
+He crossed his legs and said nothing. Neither did she.
+
+His nearness had the effect of making the woman look at once several
+years older. Where she was pale he was well-coloured; the network of
+little filmy wrinkles that, on a close inspection, covered her face,
+had no parallel on his smooth skin. He was handsome; soft,
+well-groomed flakes of auburn hair lay over his forehead, and his
+steely blue eyes shone equably, a contrast to the sombre fire of hers,
+and the masses of dark crinkly hair that shaded her brow. The deep
+lines of permanent discontent furrowed that brow as she sat with her
+chin propped on her hands, and her elbows resting on her knees.
+Neither spoke. When the hands of the clock over Mrs. Arne’s head
+pointed to seven, the white-aproned figure of the nurse appeared in
+the doorway, and the little girl rose and kissed her mother very
+tenderly.
+
+Mrs. Arne’s forehead contracted. Looking uneasily at her husband, she
+said to the child tentatively, yet boldly, as one grasps a nettle,
+“Say good-night to your father!”
+
+The child obeyed, saying, “Good-night” indifferently in her father’s
+direction.
+
+“Kiss him!”
+
+“No, please--please not.”
+
+Her mother looked down on her curiously, sadly.…
+
+“You are a naughty, spoilt child!” she said, but without conviction.
+“Excuse her, Edward.”
+
+He did not seem to have heard.
+
+“Well, if you don’t care----” said his wife bitterly. “Come, child!”
+She caught the little girl by the hand and left the room.
+
+At the door she half turned and looked fixedly at her husband. It was
+a strange ambiguous gaze; in it passion and dislike were strangely
+combined. Then she shivered and closed the door softly after her.
+
+The man in the arm-chair sat with no perceptible change of attitude,
+his unspeculative eyes fixed on the fire, his hands clasped idly in
+front of him. The pose was obviously habitual. The servant brought
+lights and closed the shutters, drew the curtains, and made up the
+fire noisily, without, however, eliciting any reproof from his master.
+
+Edward Arne was an ideal master, as far as Foster was concerned. He
+kept cases of cigars, but never smoked them, although the supply had
+often to be renewed. He did not care what he ate or drank, although he
+kept as good a cellar as most gentlemen--Foster knew that. He never
+interfered, he counted for nothing, he gave no trouble. Foster had no
+intention of ever leaving such an easy place. True, his master was not
+cordial; he very seldom addressed him or seemed to know whether he was
+there, but then neither did he grumble if the fire in the study was
+allowed to go out, or interfere with Foster’s liberty in any way. He
+had a better place of it than Annette, Mrs. Arne’s maid, who would be
+called up in the middle of the night to bathe her mistress’s forehead
+with eau-de-Cologne, or made to brush her long hair for hours together
+to soothe her. Naturally enough Foster and Annette compared notes as
+to their respective situations, and drew unflattering parallels
+between this capricious wife and model husband.
+
+ III
+
+Miss Graham was not a demonstrative woman. On her return home she
+somewhat startled her father, as he sat by his study table, deeply
+interested in his diagnosis book, by the sudden violence of her
+embrace.
+
+“Why this excitement?” he asked, smiling and turning round. He was a
+young-looking man for his age; his thin wiry figure and clear colour
+belied the evidence on his hair, tinged with grey, and the tired
+wrinkles that gave value to the acuteness and brilliancy of the eyes
+they surrounded.
+
+“I don’t know!” she replied, “only you are so nice and alive somehow.
+I always feel like this when I come back from seeing the Arnes.”
+
+“Then don’t go to see the Arnes.”
+
+“I’m so fond of her, father, and she will never come here to me, as
+you know. Or else nothing would induce me to enter her tomb of a
+house, and talk to that walking funeral of a husband of hers. I
+managed to get away to-day without having to shake hands with him. I
+always try to avoid it. But, father, I do wish you would go and see
+Alice.”
+
+“Is she ill?”
+
+“Well, not exactly ill, I suppose, but her eyes make me quite
+uncomfortable, and she says such odd things! I don’t know if it is you
+or the clergyman she wants, but she is all wrong somehow! She never
+goes out except to church; she never pays a call, or has any one to
+call on her! Nobody ever asks the Arnes to dinner, and I’m sure I
+don’t blame them--the sight of that man at one’s table would spoil any
+party--and they never entertain. She is always alone. Day after day I
+go in and find her sitting over the fire, with that same brooding
+expression. I shouldn’t be surprised in the least if she were to go
+mad some day. Father, what is it? What is the tragedy of the house?
+There is one I am convinced. And yet, though I have been the intimate
+friend of that woman for years, I know no more about her than the man
+in the street.”
+
+“She keeps her skeleton safe in the cupboard,” said Dr. Graham. “I
+respect her for that. And please don’t talk nonsense about tragedies.
+Alice Arne is only morbid--the malady of the age. And she is a very
+religious woman.”
+
+“I wonder if she complains of her odious husband to Mr. Bligh. She is
+always going to his services.”
+
+“Odious?”
+
+“Yes, odious!” Miss Graham shuddered. “I cannot stand him! I cannot
+bear the touch of his cold froggy hands, and the sight of his fishy
+eyes! That inane smile of his simply makes me shrivel up. Father,
+honestly, do you like him yourself?”
+
+“My dear, I hardly know him! It is his wife I have known ever since
+she was a child, and I a boy at college. Her father was my tutor. I
+never knew her husband till six years ago, when she called me in to
+attend him in a very serious illness. I suppose she never speaks of
+it? No? A very odd affair. For the life of me I cannot tell how he
+managed to recover. You needn’t tell people, for it affects my
+reputation, but I didn’t save him! Indeed I have never been able to
+account for it. The man was given over for dead!”
+
+“He might as well be dead for all the good he is,” said Esther
+scornfully. “I have never heard him say more than a couple of
+sentences in my life.”
+
+“Yet he was an exceedingly brilliant young man; one of the best men of
+his year at Oxford--a good deal run after--poor Alice was wild to
+marry him!”
+
+“In love with that spiritless creature? He is like a house with some
+one dead in it, and all the blinds down!”
+
+“Come, Esther, don’t be morbid--not to say silly! You are very hard on
+the poor man! What’s wrong with him? He is the ordinary, commonplace,
+cold-blooded specimen of humanity, a little stupid, a little
+selfish,--people who have gone through a serious illness like that are
+apt to be--but on the whole, a good husband, a good father, a good
+citizen----”
+
+“Yes, and his wife is afraid of him, and his child hates him!”
+exclaimed Esther.
+
+“Nonsense!” said Dr. Graham sharply. “The child is spoilt. Only
+children are apt to be--and the mother wants a change or a tonic of
+some kind. I’ll go and talk to her when I have time. Go along and
+dress. Have you forgotten that George Graham is coming to dinner?”
+
+After she had gone the doctor made a note on the corner of his
+blotting-pad, “Mem.: to go and see Mrs. Arne,” and dismissed the
+subject of the memorandum entirely from his mind.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+George Graham was the doctor’s nephew, a tall, weedy, cumbrous young
+man, full of fads and fallacies, with a gentle manner that somehow
+inspired confidence. He was several years younger than Esther, who
+loved to listen to his semi-scientific, semi-romantic stories of
+things met with in the course of his profession. “Oh, I come across
+very queer things!” he would say mysteriously, “There’s a queer little
+widow----!”
+
+“Tell me about your little widow?” asked Esther that day after dinner,
+when, her father having gone back to his study, she and her cousin sat
+together as usual.
+
+He laughed.
+
+“You like to hear of my professional experiences? Well, she certainly
+interested me,” he said thoughtfully. “She is an odd psychological
+study in her way. I wish I could come across her again.”
+
+“Where did you come across her, and what is her name?”
+
+“I don’t know her name, I don’t want to; she is not a personage to me,
+only a case. I hardly know her face even. I have never seen it except
+in the twilight. But I gathered that she lived somewhere in Chelsea,
+for she came out on to the Embankment with only a kind of lacy thing
+over her head; she can’t live far off, I fancy.”
+
+Esther became instantly attentive. “Go on,” she said.
+
+“It was three weeks ago,” said George Graham. “I was coming along the
+Embankment about ten o’clock. I walked through that little grove, you
+know, just between Cheyne Walk and the river, and I heard in there
+some one sobbing very bitterly. I looked and saw a woman sitting on a
+seat, with her head in her hands, crying. I was most awfully sorry, of
+course, and I thought I could perhaps do something for her, get her a
+glass of water, or salts, or something. I took her for a woman of the
+people--it was quite dark, you know. So I asked her very politely if I
+could do anything for her, and then I noticed her hands--they were
+quite white and covered with diamonds.”
+
+“You were sorry you spoke, I suppose,” said Esther.
+
+“She raised her head and said--I believe she laughed--‘Are you going
+to tell me to move on?’”
+
+“She thought you were a policeman?”
+
+“Probably--if she thought at all--but she was in a semi-dazed
+condition. I told her to wait till I came back, and dashed round the
+corner to the chemist’s and bought a bottle of salts. She thanked me,
+and made a little effort to rise and go away. She seemed very weak. I
+told her I was a medical man, I started in and talked to her.”
+
+“And she to you?”
+
+“Yes, quite straight. Don’t you know that women always treat a doctor
+as if he were one step removed from their father confessor--not
+human--not in the same category as themselves? It is not complimentary
+to one as a man, but one hears a good deal one would not otherwise
+hear. She ended by telling me all about herself--in a veiled way, of
+course. It soothed her--relieved her--she seemed not to have had an
+outlet for years!”
+
+“To a mere stranger!”
+
+“To a doctor. And she did not know what she was saying half the time.
+She was hysterical, of course. Heavens! what nonsense she talked! She
+spoke of herself as a person somehow haunted, cursed by some malign
+fate, a victim of some fearful spiritual catastrophe, don’t you know?
+I let her run on. She was convinced of the reality of a sort of ‘doom’
+that she had fancied had befallen her. It was quite pathetic. Then it
+got rather chilly--she shivered--I suggested her going in. She shrank
+back; she said, ‘If you only knew what a relief it is, how much less
+miserable I am out here! I can breathe; I can live--it is my only
+glimpse of the world that is alive--I live in a grave--oh, let me
+stay!’ She seemed positively afraid to go home.”
+
+“Perhaps some one bullied her at home.”
+
+“I suppose so, but then--she had no husband. He died, she told me,
+years ago. She had adored him, she said----”
+
+“Is she pretty?”
+
+“Pretty! Well, I hardly noticed. Let me see! Oh, yes, I suppose she
+was pretty--no, now I think of it, she would be too worn and faded to
+be what you call pretty.”
+
+Esther smiled.
+
+“Well, we sat there together for quite an hour, then the clock of
+Chelsea church struck eleven, and she got up and said ‘Good-bye,’
+holding out her hand quite naturally, as if our meeting and
+conversation had been nothing out of the common. There was a sound
+like a dead leaf trailing across the walk and she was gone.”
+
+“Didn’t you ask if you should see her again?”
+
+“That would have been a mean advantage to take.”
+
+“You might have offered to see her home.”
+
+“I saw she did not mean me to.”
+
+“She was a lady, you say,” pondered Esther. “How was she dressed?”
+
+“Oh, all right, like a lady--in black--mourning, I suppose. She has
+dark crinkly hair, and her eyebrows are very thin and arched--I
+noticed that in the dusk.”
+
+“Does this photograph remind you of her?” asked Esther suddenly,
+taking him to the mantelpiece.
+
+“Rather!”
+
+“Alice! Oh, it couldn’t be--she is not a widow, her husband is
+alive--has your friend any children?”
+
+“Yes, one, she mentioned it.”
+
+“How old?”
+
+“Six years old, I think she said. She talks of the ‘responsibility of
+bringing up an orphan.’”
+
+“George, what time is it?” Esther asked suddenly.
+
+“About nine o’clock.”
+
+“Would you mind coming out with me?”
+
+“I should like it. Where shall we go?”
+
+“To St. Adhelm’s! It is close by here. There is a special late service
+to-night, and Mrs. Arne is sure to be there.”
+
+“Oh, Esther--curiosity!”
+
+“No, not mere curiosity. Don’t you see if it is my Mrs. Arne who
+talked to you like this, it is very serious? I have thought her ill
+for a long time; but as ill as that!----”
+
+At St. Adhelm’s Church, Esther Graham pointed out a woman who was
+kneeling beside a pillar in an attitude of intense devotion and
+abandonment. She rose from her knees, and turned her rapt face up
+towards the pulpit whence the Reverend Ralph Bligh was holding his
+impassioned discourse. George Graham touched his cousin on the
+shoulder, and motioned to her to leave her place on the outermost rank
+of worshippers.
+
+“That is the woman!” said he.
+
+ IV
+
+“Mem.: to go and see Mrs. Arne.” The doctor came across this note in
+his blotting-pad one day six weeks later. His daughter was out of
+town. He had heard nothing of the Arnes since her departure. He had
+promised to go and see her. He was a little conscience-stricken. Yet
+another week elapsed before he found time to call upon the daughter of
+his old tutor.
+
+At the corner of Tite Street he met Mrs. Arne’s husband, and stopped.
+A doctor’s professional kindliness of manner is, or ought to be,
+independent of his personal likings and dislikings, and there was a
+pleasant cordiality about his greeting which should have provoked a
+corresponding fervour on the part of Edward Arne.
+
+“How are you, Arne?” Graham said. “I was on my way to call on your
+wife.”
+
+“Ah--yes!” said Edward Arne, with the ascending inflection of polite
+acquiescence. A ray of blue from his eyes, rested transitorily on the
+doctor’s face, and in that short moment the latter noted its
+intolerable vacuity, and for the first time in his life felt a sharp
+pang of sympathy for the wife of such a husband.
+
+“I suppose you are off to your club?--er--good-bye!” he wound up
+abruptly. With the best will in the world he somehow found it almost
+impossible to carry on a conversation with Edward Arne, who raised his
+hand to his hat-brim in token of salutation, smiled sweetly, and
+walked on.
+
+“He really is extraordinarily good-looking,” reflected the doctor, as
+he watched him down the street and safely over the crossing with a
+certain degree of solicitude for which he could not exactly account.
+“And yet one feels one’s vitality ebbing out at the finger-ends as one
+talks to him. I shall begin to believe in Esther’s absurd fancies
+about him soon. Ah, there’s the little girl!” he exclaimed, as he
+turned into Cheyne Walk and caught sight of her with her nurse, making
+violent demonstrations to attract his attention. “She is alive, at any
+rate. How is your mother, Dolly?” he asked.
+
+“Quite well, thank you,” was the child’s reply. She added, “She’s
+crying. She sent me away because I looked at her. So I did. Her cheeks
+are quite red.”
+
+“Run away--run away and play!” said the doctor nervously. He ascended
+the steps of the house, and rang the bell very gently and neatly.
+
+“Not at----” began Foster, with the intonation of polite falsehood,
+but stopped on seeing the doctor, who, with his daughter, was a
+privileged person. “Mrs. Arne will see you, Sir.”
+
+“Mrs. Arne is not alone?” he said interrogatively.
+
+“Yes, Sir, quite alone. I have just taken tea in.”
+
+Dr. Graham’s doubts were prompted by the low murmur as of a voice, or
+voices, which came to him through the open door of the room at the
+head of the stairs. He paused and listened while Foster stood by,
+merely remarking, “Mrs. Arne do talk to herself sometimes, Sir.”
+
+It was Mrs. Arne’s voice--the doctor recognized it now. It was not the
+voice of a sane or healthy woman. He at once mentally removed his
+visit from the category of a morning call, and prepared for a
+semi-professional inquiry.
+
+“Don’t announce me,” he said to Foster, and quietly entered the back
+drawing-room, which was separated by a heavy tapestry portiere from
+the room where Mrs. Arne sat, with an open book on the table before
+her, from which she had been apparently reading aloud. Her hands were
+now clasped tightly over her face, and when, presently, she removed
+them and began feverishly to turn page after page of her book, the
+crimson of her cheeks was seamed with white where her fingers had
+impressed themselves.
+
+The doctor wondered if she saw him, for though her eyes were fixed in
+his direction, there was no apprehension in them. She went on reading,
+and it was the text, mingled with passionate interjection and
+fragmentary utterances, of the Burial Service that met his ears.
+
+“‘For as in Adam all die!’ All die! It says all! For he must reign.…
+The last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death. What shall they do if
+the dead rise not at all!… I die daily…! Daily! No, no, better get it
+over… dead and buried… out of sight, out of mind… under a stone. Dead
+men don’t come back.… Go on! Get it over. I want to hear the earth
+rattle on the coffin, and then I shall know it is done. ‘Flesh and
+blood cannot inherit!’ Oh, what did I do? What have I done? Why did I
+wish it so fervently? Why did I pray for it so earnestly? God gave me
+my wish----”
+
+“Alice! Alice!” groaned the doctor.
+
+She looked up. “‘When this corruptible shall have put on
+incorruption----’ ‘Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, earth to earth----’
+Yes, that is it. ‘After death, though worms destroy this body----’”
+
+She flung the book aside and sobbed.
+
+“That is what I was afraid of. My God! My God! Down there--in the
+dark--for ever and ever and ever! I could not bear to think of it! My
+Edward! And so I interfered… and prayed… and prayed till… Oh! I am
+punished. Flesh and blood could not inherit! I kept him there--I would
+not let him go.… I kept him.… I prayed.… I denied him Christian
+burial.… Oh, how could I know.…”
+
+“Good heavens, Alice!” said Graham, coming sensibly forward, “what
+does this mean? I have heard of schoolgirls going through the marriage
+service by themselves, but the burial service----”
+
+He laid down his hat and went on severely, “What have you to do with
+such things? Your child is flourishing--your husband alive and
+here----”
+
+“And who kept him here?” interrupted Alice Arne fiercely, accepting
+the fact of his appearance without comment.
+
+“You did,” he answered quickly, “with your care and tenderness. I
+believe the warmth of your body, as you lay beside him for that
+half-hour, maintained the vital heat during that extraordinary
+suspension of the heart’s action, which made us all give him up for
+dead. You were his best doctor, and brought him back to us.”
+
+“Yes, it was I--it was I--you need not tell me it was I!”
+
+“Come, be thankful!” he said cheerfully. “Put that book away, and give
+me some tea, I’m very cold.”
+
+“Oh, Dr. Graham, how thoughtless of me!” said Mrs. Arne, rallying at
+the slight imputation on her politeness he had purposely made. She
+tottered to the bell and rang it before he could anticipate her.
+
+“Another cup,” she said quite calmly to Foster, who answered it. Then
+she sat down quivering all over with the suddenness of the constraint
+put upon her.
+
+“Yes, sit down and tell me all about it,” said Dr. Graham
+good-humouredly, at the same time observing her with the closeness he
+gave to difficult cases.
+
+“There is nothing to tell,” she said simply, shaking her head, and
+futilely altering the position of the tea-cups on the tray. “It all
+happened years ago. Nothing can be done now. Will you have sugar?”
+
+He drank his tea and made conversation. He talked to her of some Dante
+lectures she was attending; of some details connected with her child’s
+Kindergarten classes. These subjects did not interest her. There was a
+subject she wished to discuss, he could see that a question trembled
+on her tongue, and tried to lead up to it.
+
+She introduced it herself, quite quietly, over a second cup. “Sugar,
+Dr. Graham? I forget. Dr. Graham, tell me, do you believe that
+prayers--wicked unreasonable prayers--are granted?”
+
+He helped himself to another slice of bread and butter before
+answering.
+
+“Well,” he said slowly, “it seems hard to believe that every fool who
+has a voice to pray with, and a brain where to conceive idiotic
+requests with, should be permitted to interfere with the economy of
+the universe. As a rule, if people were long-sighted enough to see the
+result of their petitions, I fancy very few of us would venture to
+interfere.”
+
+Mrs. Arne groaned.
+
+She was a good Churchwoman, Graham knew, and he did not wish to sap
+her faith in any way, so he said no more, but inwardly wondered if a
+too rigid interpretation of some of the religious dogmas of the Vicar
+of St. Adhelm’s, her spiritual adviser, was not the clue to her
+distress. Then she put another question--
+
+“Eh! What?” he said. “Do I believe in ghosts? I will believe you if
+you will tell me you have seen one.”
+
+“You know, Doctor,” she went on, “I was always afraid of ghosts--of
+spirits--things unseen. I couldn’t ever read about them. I could not
+bear the idea of some one in the room with me that I could not see.
+There was a text that always frightened me that hung up in my room:
+‘Thou, God, seest me!’ It frightened me when I was a child, whether I
+had been doing wrong or not. But now,” shuddering, “I think there are
+worse things than ghosts.”
+
+“Well, now, what sort of things?” he asked good-humouredly. “Astral
+bodies----?”
+
+She leaned forward and laid her hot hand on his.
+
+“Oh, Doctor, tell me, if a spirit--without the body we know it by--is
+terrible, what of a body”--her voice sank to a whisper, “a
+body--senseless--lonely--stranded on this earth--without a spirit?”
+
+She was watching his face anxiously. He was divided between a morbid
+inclination to laugh and the feeling of intense discomfort provoked by
+this wretched scene. He longed to give the conversation a more
+cheerful turn, yet did not wish to offend her by changing it too
+abruptly.
+
+“I have heard of people not being able to keep body and soul
+together,” he replied at last, “but I am not aware that practically
+such a division of forces has ever been achieved. And if we could only
+accept the theory of the de-spiritualized body, what a number of
+antipathetic people now wandering about in the world it would account
+for!”
+
+The piteous gaze of her eyes seemed to seek to ward off the blow of
+his misplaced jocularity. He left his seat and sat down on the couch
+beside her.
+
+“Poor child! poor girl! you are ill, you are overexcited. What is it?
+Tell me,” he asked her as tenderly as the father she had lost in early
+life might have done. Her head sank on his shoulder.
+
+“Are you unhappy?” he asked her gently.
+
+“Yes!”
+
+“You are too much alone. Get your mother or your sister to come and
+stay with you.”
+
+“They won’t come,” she wailed. “They say the house is like a grave.
+Edward has made himself a study in the basement. It’s an impossible
+room--but he has moved all his things in, and I can’t--I won’t go to
+him there.…”
+
+“You’re wrong. For it’s only a fad,” said Graham, “he’ll tire of it.
+And you must see more people somehow. It’s a pity my daughter is away.
+Had you any visitors to-day?”
+
+“Not a soul has crossed the threshold for eighteen days.”
+
+“We must change all that,” said the doctor vaguely. “Meantime you must
+cheer up. Why, you have no need to think of ghosts and graves--no need
+to be melancholy--you have your husband and your child----”
+
+“I have my child--yes.”
+
+The doctor took hold of Mrs. Arne by the shoulder, and held her a
+little away from him. He thought he had found the cause of her
+trouble--a more commonplace one than he had supposed.
+
+“I have known you, Alice, since you were a child,” he said gravely.
+“Answer me! You love your husband, don’t you?”
+
+“Yes.” It was as if she were answering futile prefatory questions in
+the witness-box. Yet he saw by the intense excitement in her eyes that
+he had come to the point she feared, and yet desired to bring forward.
+
+“And he loves you?”
+
+She was silent.
+
+“Well, then, if you love each other, what more can you want? Why do
+you say you have only your child in that absurd way?”
+
+She was still silent, and he gave her a little shake.
+
+“Tell me, have you and he had any difference lately? Is there
+any--coldness--any--temporary estrangement between you?”
+
+He was hardly prepared for the burst of foolish laughter that
+proceeded from the demure Mrs. Arne as she rose and confronted him,
+all the blood in her body seeming for the moment to rush to her
+usually pale cheeks.
+
+“Coldness! Temporary estrangement! If that were all! Oh, is every one
+blind but me? There is all the world between us!--all the difference
+between this world and the next!”
+
+She sat down again beside the doctor and whispered in his ear, and her
+words were like a breath of hot wind from some Gehenna of the soul.
+
+“Oh, Doctor, I have borne it for six years, and I must speak. No other
+woman could bear what I have borne, and yet be alive! And I loved him
+so; you don’t know how I loved him! That was it--that was my
+crime----”
+
+“Crime?” repeated the doctor.
+
+“Yes, crime! It was impious, don’t you see? But I have been punished.
+Oh, Doctor, you don’t know what my life is! Listen! Listen! I must
+tell you. To live with a---- At first before I guessed when I used to
+put my arms round him, and he merely submitted--and then it dawned on
+me what I was kissing! It is enough to turn a living woman into
+stone--for I am living, though sometimes I forget it. Yes, I am a live
+woman, though I live in a grave. Think what it is!--to wonder every
+night if you will be alive in the morning, to lie down every night in
+an open grave--to smell death in every corner--every room--to breathe
+death--to touch it.…”
+
+The portiere in front of the door shook, a hoopstick parted it, a
+round white clad bundle supported on a pair of mottled red legs peeped
+in, pushing a hoop in front of her. The child made no noise. Mrs. Arne
+seemed to have heard her, however. She slewed round violently as she
+sat on the sofa beside Dr. Graham, leaving her hot hands clasped in
+his.
+
+“You ask Dolly,” she exclaimed. “She knows it, too--she feels it.”
+
+“No, no, Alice, this won’t do!” the doctor adjured her very low. Then
+he raised his voice and ordered the child from the room. He had
+managed to lift Mrs. Arne’s feet and laid her full length on the sofa
+by the time the maid reappeared. She had fainted.
+
+He pulled down her eyelids and satisfied himself as to certain facts
+he had up till now dimly apprehended. When Mrs. Arne’s maid returned,
+he gave her mistress over to her care and proceeded to Edward Arne’s
+new study in the basement.
+
+“Morphia!” he muttered to himself, as he stumbled and faltered through
+gaslit passages, where furtive servants eyed him and scuttled to their
+burrows.
+
+“What is he burying himself down here for?” he thought. “Is it to get
+out of her way? They _are_ a nervous pair of them!”
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+Arne was sunk in a large arm-chair drawn up before the fire. There was
+no other light, except a faint reflection from the gas-lamp in the
+road, striking down past the iron bars of the window that was sunk
+below the level of the street. The room was comfortless and empty,
+there was little furniture in it except a large bookcase at Arne’s
+right hand and a table with a Tantalus on it standing some way off.
+There was a faded portrait in pastel of Alice Arne over the
+mantelpiece, and beside it, a poor pendant, a pen and ink sketch of
+the master of the house. They were quite discrepant, in size and
+medium, but they appeared to look at each other with the stolid
+attentiveness of newly married people.
+
+“Seedy, Arne?” Graham said.
+
+“Rather, to-day. Poke the fire for me, will you?”
+
+“I’ve known you quite seven years,” said the doctor cheerfully, “so I
+presume I can do that.… There, now!… And I’ll presume further---- What
+have we got here?”
+
+He took a small bottle smartly out of Edward Arne’s fingers and raised
+his eyebrows. Edward Arne had rendered it up agreeably; he did not
+seem upset or annoyed.
+
+“Morphia. It isn’t a habit. I only got hold of the stuff
+yesterday--found it about the house. Alice was very jumpy all day, and
+communicated her nerves to me, I suppose. I’ve none as a rule, but do
+you know, Graham, I seem to be getting them--feel things a good deal
+more than I did, and want to talk about them.”
+
+“What, are you growing a soul?” said the doctor carelessly, lighting a
+cigarette.
+
+“Heaven forbid!” Arne answered equably. “I’ve done very well without
+it all these years. But I’m fond of old Alice, you know, in my own
+way. When I was a young man, I was quite different. I took things
+hardly and got excited about them. Yes, excited. I was wild about
+Alice, wild! Yes, by Jove! though she has forgotten all about it.”
+
+“Not that, but still it’s natural she should long for some little
+demonstration of affection now and then… and she’d be awfully
+distressed if she saw you fooling with that bottle of morphia! You
+know, Arne, after that narrow squeak you had of it five years ago,
+Alice and I have a good right to consider that your life belongs to
+us!”
+
+Edward Arne settled in his chair and replied, rather fretfully--
+
+“All very well, but you didn’t manage to do the job thoroughly. You
+didn’t turn me out lively enough to please Alice. She’s annoyed
+because when I take her in my arms, I don’t hold her tight enough. I’m
+too quiet, too languid!… Hang it all, Graham, I believe she’d like me
+to stand for Parliament!… Why can’t she let me just go along my own
+way? Surely a man who’s come through an illness like mine can be let
+off parlour tricks? All this worry--it culminated the other day when I
+said I wanted to colonize a room down here, and did, with a spurt that
+took it out of me horribly,--all this worry, I say, seeing her upset
+and so on, keeps me low, and so I feel as if I wanted to take drugs to
+soothe me.”
+
+“Soothe!” said Graham. “This stuff is more than soothing if you take
+enough of it. I’ll send you something more like what you want, and
+I’ll take this away, by your leave.”
+
+“I really can’t argue!” replied Arne.… “If you see Alice, tell her you
+find me fairly comfortable and don’t put her off this room. I really
+like it best. She can come and see me here, I keep a good fire, tell
+her.… I feel as if I wanted to sleep…” he added brusquely.
+
+“You have been indulging already,” said Graham softly. Arne had begun
+to doze off. His cushion had sagged down, the doctor stooped to
+rearrange it, carelessly laying the little phial for the moment in a
+crease of the rug covering the man’s knees.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+Mrs. Arne in her mourning dress was crossing the hall as he came to
+the top of the basement steps and pushed open the swing door. She was
+giving some orders to Foster, the butler, who disappeared as the
+doctor advanced.
+
+“You’re about again,” he said, “good girl!”
+
+“Too silly of me,” she said, “to be hysterical! After all these years!
+One should be able to keep one’s own counsel. But it is over now, I
+promise I will never speak of it again.”
+
+“We frightened poor Dolly dreadfully. I had to order her out like a
+regiment of soldiers.”
+
+“Yes, I know. I’m going to her now.”
+
+On his suggestion that she should look in on her husband first she
+looked askance.
+
+“Down there!”
+
+“Yes, that’s his fancy. Let him be. He is a good deal depressed about
+himself and you. He notices a great deal more than you think. He isn’t
+quite as apathetic as you describe him to be.… Come here!” He led her
+into the unlit dining-room a little way. “You expect too much, my
+dear. You do really! You make too many demands on the vitality you
+saved.”
+
+“What did one save him for?” she asked fiercely. She continued more
+quietly, “I know. I am going to be different.”
+
+“Not you,” said Graham fondly. He was very partial to Alice Arne in
+spite of her silliness. “You’ll worry about Edward till the end of the
+chapter. I know you. And”--he turned her round by the shoulder so that
+she fronted the light in the hall--“you elusive thing, let me have a
+good look at you.… Hum! Your eyes, they’re a bit starey.…”
+
+He let her go again with a sigh of impotence. Something must be done…
+soon… he must think.… He got hold of his coat and began to get into
+it.…
+
+Mrs. Arne smiled, buttoned a button for him and then opened the front
+door, like a good hostess, a very little way. With a quick flirt of
+his hat he was gone, and she heard the clap of his brougham door and
+the order “Home.”
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+“Been saying good-bye to that thief Graham?” said her husband gently,
+when she entered his room, her pale eyes staring a little, her thin
+hand busy at the front of her dress.…
+
+“Thief? Why? One moment! Where’s your switch?”
+
+She found it and turned on a blaze of light from which her husband
+seemed to shrink.
+
+“Well, he carried off my drops. Afraid of my poisoning myself, I
+suppose?”
+
+“Or acquiring the morphia habit,” said his wife in a dull level voice,
+“as I have.”
+
+She paused. He made no comment. Then, picking up the little phial Dr.
+Graham had left in the crease of the rug, she spoke--
+
+“You are the thief, Edward, as it happens, this is mine.”
+
+“Is it? I found it knocking about: I didn’t know it was yours. Well,
+will you give me some?”
+
+“I will, if you like.”
+
+“Well, dear, decide. You know I am in your hands and Graham’s. He was
+rubbing that into me to-day.”
+
+“Poor lamb!” she said derisively; “I’d not allow my doctor, or my wife
+either, to dictate to me whether I should put an end to myself, or
+not.”
+
+“Ah, but you’ve got a spirit, you see!” Arne yawned. “However, let me
+have a go at the stuff and then you put it on top of a wardrobe or a
+shelf, where I shall know it is, but never reach out to get it, I
+promise you.”
+
+“No, you wouldn’t reach out a hand to keep yourself alive, let alone
+kill yourself,” said she. “That is you all over, Edward.”
+
+“And don’t you see that is why I did die,” he said, with earnestness
+unexpected by her. “And then, unfortunately, you and Graham bustled up
+and wouldn’t let Nature take its course.… I rather wish you hadn’t
+been so officious.”
+
+“And let you stay dead,” said she carelessly. “But at the time I cared
+for you so much that I should have had to kill myself, or commit
+suttee like a Bengali widow. Ah, well!”
+
+She reached out for a glass half-full of water that stood on the low
+ledge of a bookcase close by the arm of his chair.… “Will this glass
+do? What’s in it? Only water? How much morphia shall I give you? An
+over dose?”
+
+“I don’t care if you do, and that’s a fact.”
+
+“It was a joke, Edward,” she said piteously.
+
+“No joke to me. This fag end of life I’ve clawed hold of, doesn’t
+interest me. And I’m bound to be interested in what I’m doing or I’m
+no good. I’m no earthly good now. I don’t enjoy life, I’ve nothing to
+enjoy it with--in here”--he struck his breast. “It’s like a dull party
+one goes to by accident. All I want to do is to get into a cab and go
+home.”
+
+His wife stood over him with the half-full glass in one hand and the
+little bottle in the other. Her eyes dilated… her chest heaved.…
+
+“Edward!” she breathed. “Was it all so useless?”
+
+“Was what useless? Yes, as I was telling you, I go as one in a
+dream--a bad, bad dream, like the dreams I used to have when I
+overworked at college. I was brilliant, Alice, brilliant, do you hear?
+At some cost, I expect! Now I hate people--my fellow creatures. I’ve
+left them. They come and go, jostling me, and pushing me, on the
+pavements as I go along, avoiding them. Do you know where they should
+be, really, in relation to me?”
+
+He rose a little in his seat--she stepped nervously aside, made as if
+to put down the bottle and the glass she was holding, then thought
+better of it and continued to extend them mechanically.
+
+“They should be over my head. I’ve already left them and their petty
+nonsense of living. They mean nothing to me, no more than if they were
+ghosts walking. Or perhaps it’s I who am a ghost to them?… You don’t
+understand it. It’s because I suppose you have no imagination. You
+just know what you want and do your best to get it. You blurt out your
+blessed petition to your Deity and the idea that you’re irrelevant
+never enters your head, soft, persistent, High Church thing that you
+are!…”
+
+Alice Arne smiled, and balanced the objects she was holding. He
+motioned her to pour out the liquid from one to the other, but she
+took no heed; she was listening with all her ears. It was the nearest
+approach to the language of compliment, to anything in the way of
+loverlike personalities that she had heard fall from his lips since
+his illness. He went on, becoming as it were lukewarm to his subject--
+
+“But the worst of it is that once break the cord that links you to
+humanity--it can’t be mended. Man doesn’t live by bread alone… or
+lives to disappoint you. What am I to you, without my own poor
+personality?… Don’t stare so, Alice! I haven’t talked so much or so
+intimately for ages, have I? Let me try and have it out.… Are you in
+any sort of hurry?”
+
+“No, Edward.”
+
+“Pour that stuff out and have done.… Well, Alice, it’s a queer
+feeling, I tell you. One goes about with one’s looks on the ground,
+like a man who eyes the bed he is going to lie down in, and longs for.
+Alice, the crust of the earth seems a barrier between me and my own
+place. I want to scratch the boardings with my nails and shriek
+something like this: ‘Let me get down to you all, there where I
+belong!’ It’s a horrible sensation, like a vampire reversed!…”
+
+“Is that why you insisted on having this room in the basement?” she
+asked breathlessly.
+
+“Yes, I can’t bear being upstairs, somehow. Here, with these barred
+windows and stone-cold floors… I can see the people’s feet walking
+above there in the street… one has some sort of illusion.…”
+
+“Oh!” She shivered and her eyes travelled like those of a caged
+creature round the bare room and fluttered when they rested on the
+sombre windows imperiously barred. She dropped her gaze to the stone
+flags that showed beyond the oasis of Turkey carpet on which Arne’s
+chair stood.… Then to the door, the door that she had closed on
+entering. It had heavy bolts, but they were not drawn against her,
+though by the look of her eyes it seemed she half imagined they were.…
+
+She made a step forward and moved her hands slightly. She looked down
+on them and what they held… then changed the relative positions of the
+two objects and held the bottle over the glass.…
+
+“Yes, come along!” her husband said. “Are you going to be all day
+giving it me?”
+
+With a jerk, she poured the liquid out into a glass and handed it to
+him. She looked away--towards the door.…
+
+“Ah, your way of escape!” said he, following her eyes. Then he drank,
+painstakingly.
+
+The empty bottle fell out of her hands. She wrung them, murmuring--
+
+“Oh, if I had only known!”
+
+“Known what? That I should go near to cursing you for bringing me
+back?”
+
+He fixed his cold eyes on her, as the liquid passed slowly over his
+tongue.…
+
+“--Or that you would end by taking back the gift you gave?”
+
+
+
+
+ THE COACH
+
+It was a lonely part of the country, far north, where the summer
+nights are pale and light and scant of shade. This summer night there
+was no moon, and yet it was not dark. For hours the flat, deprecating
+earth had lain prone under a storm of wind and rain. Its patient
+surface was drenched, blanched, smitten into blindness. The tumbled
+waters of the Firth splashed on the edges of the plain, their wild
+commotion dwarfed by the noise of the wind-driven showers, whose
+gloomy drops tapped the waters into sullen acquiescence. Half a mile
+inland the road to the north was laid. Clear and straight it ran, with
+never a house or homestead to break it, viscous with clay here,
+shining with quartz there, uncompromising, exact, like the lists of
+old, dressed for a tourney. Its sides were bare, scantily garnished
+with grass. This was nearly a hedgeless country. In places the
+undeviating line of it passed through a little coppice or clump of
+gnarled, ill-conditioned, nameless trees. They seemed to lean forward
+vindictively on either side, snapping their horny fingers at each
+other, waving their cantankerous branches as the gusts took them,
+broke them, and whirled the fragments of their ruin far away and out
+of ken, like a flapping, unruly kite which a child has allowed to pass
+beyond his control. The broad white surface of the road was not
+suffered to be blotted for a single moment. Nothing could rest for the
+play of the intriguing air-currents, surging backwards and forwards,
+blind, stupid and swelled with pride, till they had got completely out
+of hand and defied the archers of the middle sky. They staggered
+hither and thither like ineffectual giants; they buffeted all
+impartially; they instigated the hapless branches at their mercy to
+wild lashings of each other, to useless accesses of the spirit of
+self-destruction. Bending slavishly under the heavy gusts, each shabby
+blade of grass by the roadside rose again and was on the _qui vive_
+after the rustling tyrant had passed.
+
+It was then, in the succeeding moments of comparative peace, when the
+directors of the passionate aerial revolt had managed to call their
+panting rabble off for the time, that great perpendicular sheets of
+rain, like stage films slung evenly from heavenly temples, descended
+and began moving continuously sideways, like a wall, across the level
+track. A sheet of whole water, blotting out the tangled borders of
+herbage that grew sparsely round the heaps of stones with which the
+margin was set at intervals, placed there ready for breaking. When the
+slab of rain had moved on again, the broad road, shining out sturdily
+with its embedded quartz and milky kneaded clay, lay clear once more.
+Calm, ordered and tranquil in the midst of tumult and discord, it
+pursued its appointed course, edging off from its evenly bevelled
+sides the noisy moorland streams, that had come jostling each other in
+their haste to reach it, only to be relegated, noisily complaining, to
+the swollen, unrecognizable gutter.
+
+At a certain point on the line of way, a tall, spare,
+respectable-looking man in a well-fitting grey frock coat stood
+waiting. The rain ran down the back of his coat collar, and dripped
+off the rim of his tall hat. His attitude suggested some weary
+foredone clerk waiting at the corner of the city street for the
+omnibus that was to carry him home to his slippered comfort and sober
+pipe of peace. He wore no muffler, but then it was summer--St. John’s
+Eve. He leaned on an ivory-headed ebony stick of which he seemed fond,
+and peered, not very eagerly, along the road, which now lay in
+dazzling rain-washed clarity under the struggling moon. There was a
+lull in the storm. He had no luggage, no umbrella, yet his grey coat
+looked neat, and his hat shiny.
+
+Far in the distance, from the south, a black clumsy object appeared,
+labouring slowly along. It was a coach, of heavy and antique pattern.
+As soon as he had sighted it, the passenger’s faint interest seemed
+diminished. With a bored air of fulfilment, he dropped his eyes and
+looked down disapprovingly at the clayey mud at his feet, although,
+indeed, the sticky substance did not appear to have marred the
+exquisite polish of his shoes. His palm settled composedly on the
+ivory knob of his trusty stick, as though it were the hand of an old
+friend.
+
+With all the signs of difficult going, but no noise of straining or
+grinding, the coach at last drew up in front of the expectant
+passenger. He looked up quietly, and recognized it as the vehicle
+wherein it was appointed that he should travel in this unsuitable
+weather for a stage or two, maybe. All was correct, the coachman,
+grave, business-like, headless as of usage, the horses long-tailed,
+black, conventional.…
+
+The door opened noiselessly, and the step was let down. The passenger
+shook his head as he delicately put his foot on to it, and observed
+for the benefit, doubtless, of the person or persons inside--
+
+“I see old Joe on the box in his official trim. Rather unnecessary,
+all this ceremony, I venture to think! A few yokels and old women to
+impress, if indeed, any one not positively obliged is abroad on a
+night like this! For form’s sake, I suppose!”
+
+He took his seat next the window. There were four occupants of the
+coach beside himself. They all nodded formally, but not unkindly. He
+returned their salutations with old-fashioned courtesy, though
+unacquainted seemingly with any of them.
+
+Sitting next to him was a woman evidently of fashion. Her heavy and
+valuable furs were negligently cast on one side, to show a plastron
+covered with jewels. She wore at least two enamelled and
+jewel-encrusted watches pinned to her bosom as a mark for thieves to
+covet. It was foolish of her. So at least thought the man in the grey
+frock coat. Her yellow wig was much awry. Her eyes were weak,
+strained, and fearful, and she aided their vision with a diamond-beset
+pince-nez. Now and again she glanced over her left shoulder as if in
+some alarm, and at such times she always grasped her gold-net reticule
+feverishly. She was obviously a rich woman in the world, a first-class
+train-de-luxe passenger.
+
+The woman opposite her belonged as unmistakably to the people. She was
+hard-featured, worn with a life of sordid toil and calculation, but
+withal stout and motherly, a figure to inspire the fullest confidence.
+She wore a black bonnet with strings, and black silk gloves heavily
+darned. Round her sunken white collar, a golden gleam of watch-chain
+was now and then discernible.
+
+At the other end of the coach, squeezed up into the corner where the
+vacillating light of the lamp hung from the roof least penetrated, a
+neat, sharp-featured man nestled and hid. His forehead retreated, and
+his bowler hat was set unnecessarily far back, lending him an air of
+folly and congenital weakness which his long, cold, clever nose could
+not dissipate. He was white as old enamel.
+
+But the man whom the gentleman in the frock coat took to among his
+casual fellow-travellers was the one sitting directly opposite him, a
+rough, hearty creature, who alone of all the taciturn coachful seemed
+disposed to enter into a casual conversation, which might go some way
+to enliven the dreariness entailed by this somewhat old-fashioned mode
+of travelling. Gay talk might help to drown the dashing of the waters
+of the Firth lying close on the right hand of the section of road they
+were even now traversing, and the ugly roar of the wind and rain
+against the windows. This--by comparison--cheerful fellow was dressed
+like a working man, in a shabby suit of corduroys. He wore no collar,
+but a twisted red cotton handkerchief was wound tightly round his
+thick squat neck. His little mean eyes, swinish, but twinkling
+good-humouredly, stared enviously at the neat gentleman’s stiff collar
+and the delicate grey tones of his suiting. Crossing and uncrossing
+his creasy legs, in the unusual effort of an attempt at conviviality,
+the man in corduroys addressed the man in the frock coat awkwardly
+enough, but still civilly.
+
+“Well, mate! They’ve chosen a rare rough night to shift us on! Orders
+from headquarters, I suppose? I’ve been here nigh on a year and never
+set eyes on my boss!”
+
+“We used to call him God the Father,” said the elder man slowly.… “But
+whoever it is that orders our ways here, there is no earthly sense in
+questioning His arrangements, we can only fall in with them. As you
+admit, you are fairly new, and perhaps you do not as yet conceive
+fully of the silent impelling force that sways us. It is the same in
+the world we have left, only that there we were only concerned with
+the titles and standing of our ‘boss,’ as you call Him, and obeyed His
+laws not a whit. I must say I consider this particular system of soul
+transference that we have to submit to, very unsettling and productive
+of restlessness among us--a mere survival and tiresome superstition,
+to my mind. It has one merit; one sees something of the under world,
+travelling about as we do, and meeting chance, perhaps kindred spirits
+on the road. One realizes, too, that Hades is not quite as grey, shall
+I say, as it is painted! But perhaps,” he added, with a slight touch
+of class hauteur, “you do not quite follow me?”
+
+“Oh yes, Master, I do,” eagerly replied the fellow-traveller to whom
+he chose to address his monologue. “Since I’ve been dead, I have
+learned the meaning of many things. I turn up my nose at nothing these
+days. I always neglected my schooling, but now I tell you I try to
+make up for lost time. From a rough sort of fellow that I was, with
+not an idea in my head beyond my beer and my prog, I have come to take
+my part in the whole of knowledge. It was all mine before, so to
+speak, but I didn’t trouble to put my hand out for it. Didn’t care,
+didn’t listen to Miss that taught me, or to Parson, either. He had
+some good ideas too, as I’ve come to know, though Vice isn’t Vice
+exactly with us here, now, in a manner of speaking. If God Almighty
+made us, why did He make us, even in parts, bad? That’s what I want to
+know, and I’ll know that when I’ve been dead a bit longer. Why did He
+give me rotten teeth so that I couldn’t chew properly and didn’t care
+for my food and liked drink better? It’s dirt and digestion makes
+drinking and devilry, I say.”
+
+The smart woman interrupted him with a kind of languid eagerness,
+exclaiming--
+
+“I must say I agree with you. Since the pestle fell on my shoulder in
+that lonely villa at Monte, I have realized what the dreadful gambling
+fever may lead to. It had made those two who treated me so ill, quite
+inhuman. They had become wild beasts. I ought never to have accepted
+their treacherous invitation to luncheon, never tempted them with my
+outrageous display of jewels! And look here, I was tarred with the
+same stick, I gambled too----”
+
+She rummaged in her reticule and fished out a ticket for the rooms at
+Monte Carlo.
+
+“I always call that the ticket for my execution. Though my
+executioners were rather unnecessarily brutal. They will attain unto
+this place more easily than I did. Hardly any pain. The hand of the
+law is gentle, compared with the methods of----”
+
+The man in the grey frock coat raised his finger warningly. “No names,
+I beg. One of our conventions…!”
+
+“Have a drop?” said the calm motherly woman to the excited fine lady.
+“Your wound is recent, isn’t it? Yours was a very severe case! A
+bloody murder, I call it, if ever there was one, and clumsy at that!
+And you only passive, which is always so much harder, they say! I
+can’t tell, for I was what you may call an active party. They don’t
+seem to mind mixing, they that look after us here! They lump us all
+together--travelling, at any rate! Though when I think of what I was
+actually turned off for, well--the way I look at it, what I did was a
+positive benefit to Society, and some sections of Society knew it,
+too, and would have liked to preserve my life.”
+
+“But what, Madam, if I may ask, was your little difficulty?”
+
+“It is called, I believe, Baby Farming,” she replied off-handedly,
+receiving her flask back from the smart woman and stowing it away in a
+capacious pocket. As she spoke, a shudder like a transitory ripple on
+a rain-swept stream passed over her hearers, with the exception of the
+thin man in the far corner, who preserved his serenity. Raising his
+sunken chin, he observed the last speaker with some slight show of
+interest.
+
+The man in grey apologized.
+
+“Excuse us, Madam. A remnant of old-world squeamishness,
+uncontrollable by us for the moment. Though perhaps, if you will, you
+might a little dissipate our preconceived notions of your profession,
+by explaining clearly your point of view.”
+
+“Delighted, I’m sure,” she answered. “Funny, though, how seriously you
+all take it, even here! The feeling against my profession seems
+absurdly strong below as well as above. I was hooted as I left the
+court, I recollect. It annoyed me then considerably. I thought that
+those that hooted had more need to be grateful to me if all was known
+and paid for. I saved their pockets for them and their lovely honour
+too. They knew they owed all that to me. For the rest, they did not
+care. They went on, bless ’em, raising up seed for me to mow down as
+soon as its head came above ground, and welcome! Sly dogs, no thanks
+from them! But those shivering, shrinking women that came to me, some
+of them hardly out of their teens, some of them so delicate they had
+no right to have a baby at all!--Ah, if only I hadn’t let myself take
+their money it would have been a work of pure philanthropy. But I had
+to live, then! Now that that tax has been taken off, one has time to
+think it out all round. But Lord!--Society, to cry shame on me for it!
+They might as well hang any other useful public servant, like dustmen,
+rat-catchers, and such-like ridders of pests. Good old Herod, that I
+used to hear about at school, knew what he was doing when he cleared
+off all those useless Innocents! He was the first baby farmer, I
+guess.”
+
+“You take large ground, Madam,” said the man in the frock coat, a
+trifle huffily.
+
+“And I have the right,” said she, her large determined chin emerging
+from its rolls of fat in her eagerness. “You men ought to know it, and
+you do well enough, when you’re honest. I was only the ’scapegoat, and
+took on me the little sins of the race. It’s an easy job enough, what
+I did, but there’s few have the stomach for it, even then. You
+couldn’t call it dirty work either. You just stand by and leave ’em
+alone--to girn and bleat and squinny and die.”
+
+“No blood, eh?” the man in the corner said suddenly. “I like blood.”
+
+“What a fine night it has turned!” said the man in the grey frock
+coat, raising the sash and putting his head out of the window.…
+“Something rather uncanny, eh, about that man?” he remarked under his
+breath, half to himself, half to the man in brown corduroys.
+
+“Take your head in,” said the latter, almost affectionately, “or
+you’ll be catching cold, and you’ve a nasty scar on your neck that I
+could see as you leaned forward, and which you oughtn’t to go getting
+the cold into.”
+
+“Oh, that!” said the other complacently, sitting down again, but
+averting his gaze carefully from the man in the corner, for whom he
+seemed to feel a repulsion as marked as was his preference for his
+cheerful _vis-à-vis_. “That! That’s actually the scar of the blow
+that killed me. A fearful gash! He was a powerful man that dealt it.
+He got me, of course, from behind. I never even saw him. I was drafted
+off here at once, his hand had been so sure.” He felt nervously in his
+pockets. “I have a foulard somewhere, but I am apt to mislay it.”
+
+“You should do like me, have a good strong handkercher and knot it
+round your neck firm. I’ve got a mark of sorts on my neck too, but it
+isn’t an open wound--never was,” the bluff man sniggered. “It is sheer
+vanity with me, but I don’t care to have it seen. It goes well all
+round, mine does--done by a rope, eh!”
+
+He paused and nodded slyly. “For killing a toff. Nice old gentleman he
+seemed, too, but I hadn’t much time to look at him. Had to get to
+work----”
+
+He was rudely interrupted by a screech from the baby farmer.
+
+“Lord!” she cried, “do I see another conveyance coming on this lonely
+road? I do ’ope so. I’m one for seeing plenty of people. I always like
+a crowd, and I must tell you, this sort of humdrum jogging along was
+beginning to get on my nerves.”
+
+They all jerked themselves round, and peered through the glass panes
+behind them. The taciturn man alone reserved his attention.
+
+Sure enough, a dark object, plainly outlined in the strong moonlight
+which now lit up the heavens, where heavy masses of cloud had until
+now obscured its effulgence, was plainly visible. It blotted the
+ribbon of white that lay in front of them.… Nearer and nearer it came.
+All heads were at the windows of the coach.… Now it was seen to be a
+high-hung dog-cart, of the most modern pattern, drawn by a smart
+little mettled pony, and containing two slight young girls.… The one
+that drove held the ribbons in hands that were covered with white
+dog-skin gloves, and which looked immense in the pallid moonshine.
+
+“What an excitement!” said the stout woman. “We shall pass them. Some
+member of one of the country families about here, I suppose.”
+
+“I hope--for all things considering, I’m not a blood-thirsty man,” the
+man in corduroys muttered anxiously under his breath, “that we’re not
+a-going to give them a shock! Bound to, when we meet them plumb like
+this! ’Orses can’t abide the sight of us, mostly, no more than they
+could those nasty motors when they first came in. And we’re worse than
+motors--they seem to smell us out at once for what we are!”
+
+“If you do really think that pony is likely to swerve,” said the man
+in the grey suit, anxiously, “would it be of any use our asking old
+Diggory to drive more slowly and humour them?”
+
+“Couldn’t go no slower than we are!” replied the man in corduroys.
+“Besides, it’s not the pace that kills! I’ll bet you that pony’s all
+of a sweat already!”
+
+The dog-cart approached. The faces of the two young women were
+discernible. They were white--blanched with fear, or it may have been
+the effect of the strong moonlight. There was no doubt that they were
+disturbed, and that the girl who was driving fully realized the
+necessity of controlling the horse, whose nostrils were quivering, and
+on whose sides foam was already appearing in white swathes.…
+
+“It won’t pass us!” said the man in the corner, speaking suddenly. He
+rubbed his hands slowly one over the other. “There will be blood!”
+
+“For goodness’ sake stop gloating like that!” said the stout woman.
+“It turns my stomach to hear you. Wherever can you have come from, I
+wonder? ’Tisn’t manners.… I say, can’t we hail them?” she inquired of
+the man in grey. “All give them one big shout?”
+
+“They wouldn’t be able to hear us,” he replied, shaking his head
+sadly. “You must not forget that we are ghosts. We are not really
+here.”
+
+“Ay, and that’s what the beasts know!” cried the man in corduroys. He
+jumped about. “That ’oss won’t be able to stand it. The kid’ll not be
+able to hold him in.…”
+
+“They’re on us!” screamed the smart woman. “Oh, my God! Do we have to
+sit still and see it?” She covered her eyes with her hand.
+
+“Yes, Missus, I reckon you have, and what’s more, run away after like
+any shoffer that’s killed his man and left him lying in the roadside.
+Old Diggory’s got his orders.”
+
+The snorting of the pony was now audible. The coachful of ghosts
+distinctly saw the lather of foam dropping from its jaws. They were
+able, some of them, to realize the agonized tension of one girl’s
+hands, pulling for all she was worth, and the scared sideways twist of
+her forcedly inactive companion. Alone the face of the yellow
+carriage-lamp glared, immovable.…
+
+Then it flew down, and was extinguished. There was a crash, a
+convulsion--and the great road to the north lay clear again.
+
+The Coach of Death rolled on remorselessly past a black heap that
+filled the ditch on one side. It lay quite still, after that almost
+human leap and heave.…
+
+The smart woman fainted, or appeared to do so. The baby farmer sat
+silent.
+
+“It’s iniquitous!” exclaimed the man in grey, turning round from the
+window--his eyes wet, “to leave them behind like that without a word
+of inquiry, when it’s our conveyance has done all the mischief!”
+
+He groaned and fidgeted.…
+
+The man in corduroys tried to soothe him. “We ain’t to blame, Sir,
+don’t you think it!” he repeated. “As you said before to the lady, we
+aren’t really here!”
+
+“That is little consolation to a man of honour,” the old man said
+sadly. “Still, as you say, we are but tools----”
+
+He devoted himself to the smart woman, who revived a little under his
+civil ministrations.
+
+“After all,” she said, “aren’t we somehow or other all in the same
+boat? I shouldn’t be surprised if those two nice girls didn’t join us
+at the next stage. If they do, we’ll make them tell us how they felt,
+when they first saw the coachful of ghosts coming down on them.
+They’re certainly dead, for they were both pitched into the ditch with
+the cart and horse on top of them. Did anybody see what became of the
+horse? No.… Well, we must settle down to dulness again, I am afraid,
+or, suppose, to while away the time we all started to tell each other
+the story of how we came to be here? A lively tale might cheer us all
+up, after the accident.”
+
+“Agreed, Madam, heartily for my part,” said the man in grey, “though
+my own story is very humdrum, and not in the least amusing. You want,
+of course, an account of the particular accident that sent me here.
+Very well! But, ladies first! Will not you begin, Madam?”
+
+She tossed her head, with an affected air.
+
+“My story, perhaps,” she insinuated with modesty, “might not be very
+new to you. It was in all the papers so recently.”
+
+“That will not affect me,” he answered, “for if, as I presume, it was
+a murder case, I never read them.”
+
+“I read yours then, Missus, I expect,” said the man in corduroys. “I
+generally get the wife to read them out to me--anything spicy.”
+
+“And yet the people that did it are not hanged yet, if, indeed, they
+ever are, poor souls! I am quite anxious,” said the smart woman, “to
+see how it goes. If the pair are really sent here, I suppose I shall
+be running up against them some night or other, on one of these
+transference parties. It will be very interesting. But”--she leaned
+across to the baby farmer--“could we not persuade you to give us some
+of your--nursery experiences, Madam?”
+
+“There’s not much story about the drowning of a litter of squalling
+puppies or whining kittens,” said that lady shortly, “we want
+something livelier--more personal, if I may say so. From a remark that
+gentleman in the corner let drop a while ago, I fancy his
+reminiscences would be quite worth hearing, as good as a shilling
+shocker.”
+
+“My story,” replied the individual thus pointedly addressed, “is
+impossible, frankly impossible.”
+
+“Indecent, do you mean?” The smart woman’s eyes shone. “Oh, let us
+have it. You can veil it, can’t you?”
+
+“Have you ever heard of mental degenerates?” he asked her
+compassionately. “I was one. I was called mad--a simple way of
+expressing it. I was a chemist. I dissected neatly enough, too, like a
+regular butcher. They did quite right to exterminate me.”
+
+His head dropped. He seemed disinclined to say more. Still the smart
+woman persisted.
+
+“But the details----?”
+
+“Are purely medical, Ma’am. Not without a physiological interest, I
+may say. Interesting to men of science, pathologically. The”--he named
+a daily paper much in vogue at that time, “made a good deal of the
+strong sense of artistry--of contrast--the morbid warp inherent in the
+executant----”
+
+His head sank again on his chest.
+
+“I do believe,” said the baby farmer, nudging the smart woman, “that
+we shall find he’s the man who killed his sweetheart and then
+carefully tied her poor inside all into true lover’s knots with
+sky-blue ribbon. Artist, indeed! They’re quite common colours--blue
+and red----”
+
+“Disgusting!” The delicate lady from Monte Carlo shuddered, and
+turning coldly away, joined in the petition proffered by the other
+ghosts to the breezy man in corduroys, to relate his experiences.
+
+“Oh, I’ll tell you how I came to join you and welcome!” he said,
+rolling his huge neck about in its setting of red cotton. “Well, to
+begin with, I was drunk. Equally, of course, I was hard up. My
+missus--she’s married again, by the way, blast her!--was always
+nagging me to do something for her and the kids. I did. Nation’s
+taking care of them now, along of what I did. Work, she meant, but
+that was only by the way. I did choose to take on a job, though, on a
+rich man’s estate, building some kind of Folly, lots of glass and
+that, working away day and night by naphtha flares, you know. He was
+one of those men, you know the sort, that has more money than a man
+can properly spend, and feels quite sick about it, and says so, in
+interviews and so on, in the papers a working man reads. That’s the
+mischief. He was always giving away chunks of money to charities and
+libraries and that sort of useless lumber, but none of it ever seemed
+to come the way of those that were in real need of it. They said the
+money had got on his nerves, and would not let him sleep o’ nights,
+and that he was afraid by day and went about with a loaded stick and I
+don’t know what all. And he was looked after by detectives, at one
+time, so the papers said--again the papers, putting things in people’s
+heads, as it’s their way. So one blessed evening I was very low--funds
+and all, and my missus and the kids hollering and complaining as they
+always do when luck’s bad. Lord bless them, they never thought as they
+were ’citing their man to murder. Women never do think. And going out
+with their snivelling in my ears, I passed the station where he landed
+every evening after his day in town, and I happened to see him come
+out of the train and send away his motor that was a-waiting for him
+all regular, and start out to walk ’ome alone by a short cut across a
+little plantation there was, very thick and dark, just the place for a
+murder. Well--I told you I was half drunk--I raced home and got
+something to do it with--a meat chopper--to be particular----”
+
+The old man opposite put his hand nervously to the back of his neck.
+
+“Ay, Mister, it takes you just there, does it? You look a regular
+bundle of nerves, you do. Well, as I was saying, I went round by a
+short cut that I happened to know of, and got in front of him and hid
+in the hedge. Ten mortal minutes I waited for my man to come by. Lord,
+how my hand did tremble! I’d have knocked off for two pence. I was as
+nervous as a cat, but all the same, it didn’t prevent me from striking
+out for wife and children with a will when my chance came. I caught
+him behind with my chopper, and he fell like a log. Never lifted a
+hand to defend himself--hadn’t got any grit. Ladies, I don’t suppose I
+hurt him much, for he never even cried out when I struck or groaned
+when it was done. Then I looked him over, turned out his pockets and
+collared his watch and season ticket and seals and money.
+Money--hah!--I had been fairly done over that. Would you believe it of
+a rich fellow like him, he hadn’t got more than the change of a
+sovereign on him.”
+
+“Shame!” ejaculated the taciturn man in the corner.
+
+“I admit it was hard on you,” the man in grey observed kindly. “Very
+hard, for I believe the retribution came all too quickly. You
+foolishly left your chopper about to identify you, and were
+apprehended at once by our excellent rural police. Yet the law is so
+dilatory that you lay in gaol a whole year before you were free to
+join your victim here?”
+
+“Right you are, mate. Yes, I swung for it, sure enough. Short and
+sweet it was once I stood on the drop, but it still makes my poor old
+throat ache to think of it.”
+
+He wriggled and twisted his neck in its ruddy cincture.…
+
+“Now, governor, I’m done, and if you’ve no objection we’d all like to
+hear how you came by that ugly gash of yours? It wasn’t no rope did
+that. Common or garden murder, I’ll be bound.”
+
+“Certainly, my man, it was a murder--a murder most _apropos_. The
+circumstances were peculiar. I have often longed to get the ear of the
+jury who tried a man for relieving me of my light purse and
+intolerably heavy life, and tell them--the whole hard-working,
+conscientious twelve of them, trying their best to bring in an honest
+verdict and avenge my wrongs--my own proper feelings, surely no
+negligible factor in the case! They could not guess, these ignorant
+living men, whose eyes had not yet been opened by death to a due sense
+of the proportions of things--that I bore the poor creature no malice,
+but instead was actually grateful for his skilful surgery that had
+severed the life-cord that bored me, so neatly and completely.”
+
+“It isn’t every one would take it like that!” remarked the smart
+woman. “Yet that is, more or less, how I feel about these things
+myself. Only in my case it is impossible to speak of skilful surgery!
+I was disgracefully cut up. I couldn’t possibly have worn a low dress
+again!”
+
+“Have you ever heard?” said the man in grey thoughtfully, “of the
+Greek story of the Gold of Rhampsinitos, and the inviolable cellar he
+built to store it in? According to the modern system, my gold was
+hoarded in my brain, where fat assets and sordid securities bred and
+bred all day long. The laws that govern wealth are hard. You must give
+it, devise it, you must not allow it to be taken. But for my part I
+would have welcomed the two sons of the master builder who broke into
+the Greek King’s Treasure House. In the strong-room of my brain it
+lodged. With one careless calculation, one stroke of a pen, I could
+make money breed money there to madden me. I was lonely, too. I had no
+wife to divide my responsibilities. She might even have enjoyed them.
+But I dared approach no woman in the way of love--I did not choose to
+be loved for my cheque-signing powers. I was not loved at all. I was
+hated. Unrighteous things were done in my name, by the greedy
+husbandmen of my load of money. Then I was told that I went in danger
+of my life, and I condescended to take care of that--for a time--only
+for a time!
+
+“One dark winter evening--I forget what had happened during the day,
+what fresh instance of turpitude or greed had come before me--I was so
+revolted that I kicked away all the puling safeguards by which my
+agents guarded their best asset of all, and gave the rein to my
+instinct. I disregarded precautions of every sort--with the exception
+of my faithful loaded stick, and the carrying of that had come to be a
+mere matter of habit with me--and I walked home from the station alone
+and unattended, up to my big house and good dinner which I hoped--nay,
+I almost knew--that I should not be alive to eat. And indeed, as luck
+would have it, on that night of all nights the trap was set for me.
+The appointed death-dealer was waiting--he took me on at once. I got
+my desire--kind, speedy, merciful, violent death. I never even saw the
+face of my deliverer.”
+
+“By George!” softly swore the man in corduroys. “This beats all. Are
+you sure you aren’t kidding us?”
+
+“No indeed, that is exactly how I felt about it, and if I had known of
+knowledge, as I knew of instinct, what was going to happen, I would
+have thought to realize some of my wealth before setting out to walk
+through that wood, and made it more worth the honest fellow’s while.
+But as you are aware, a millionaire does not carry portable gold about
+with him, and my cheque-book which I had on me would, of course, be of
+no use to him. Alas, all the poor devil got for his pains was exactly
+nineteen shillings and eleven pence. I had changed a sovereign at the
+book-stall to buy a paper, and out of habit, had waited for the
+change.”
+
+The man in corduroys was by this time in a considerable state of
+excitement. He had rent the red handkerchief fiercely from his neck,
+and now made as if to tear it across his knee.…
+
+“Why, governor!” he exclaimed passionately, “do you mean to say it was
+through you that I got this here”--he put both hands behind his head
+and interlocked them, “in return for giving you that there cut at the
+back of your neck? Well, how things do come about, to be sure!”
+
+“Gently, gently! my man,” the elder soothed him. “Don’t be so
+melodramatic about a very ordinary coincidence. See, the ladies are
+quite upset. It doesn’t do to allow oneself to get excited here--it’s
+not in the rules. If I had made the little discovery you have done, I
+don’t think--no, I really don’t think I would have made it public.
+This undue exhibition of emotion of yours strikes me as belonging to
+the vulgar world we have all left. But since you have allowed it to
+come out, and every one is now aware of the peculiar relation in which
+we stand to each other, you must let me tender you my best thanks, as
+to a most skilful and firm operator, and believe me to be truly
+grateful to you for your services in the past.”
+
+“Quite the old school!” said the smart woman.
+
+“I must say, Sir,--I consider you the real gentleman,” said the baby
+farmer.
+
+“I am a gentleman.”
+
+“And a fairly accommodating one!” said the rough man, wiping his brow
+where, however, no sweat was. “It isn’t every man as would give thanks
+for being scragged!”
+
+“Every man isn’t a millionaire,” said his victim calmly.
+
+The smart woman, leaning forward, tapped the old gentleman amiably
+with her jewelled pince-nez.
+
+“But we belong to the same world, I perceive,” she said, “and I am
+quite able to understand your refined feeling. It is as I said in my
+own case. Indeed if those two good people, who shall be nameless, had
+only dealt with me a little more gently, I don’t know that I should
+not forgive them absolutely. I shall at any rate be perfectly civil
+when I do meet them--only perhaps a little distant. But that Monte
+Carlo existence I was leading when they interrupted it, was really
+becoming intolerable! No one who hasn’t done it, thoroughly can
+realize what it is. Glare, noise, glitter, fever--that heartless,
+blue, laughing sea they talk of in the railway advertisements----”
+
+The baby farmer, left out in this elegant discussion, obviously took
+no pleasure in it, but staring straight before her, muttered sulkily--
+
+“Cote d’Azur and Pentonville! There’s some little difference, isn’t
+there, between one life and the other? Yet I enjoyed my life, I did,
+and as for gratitude, I can’t say as I see all those blessed infants
+a-coming up to me, and slobbering me for what I did for ’em. I may
+meet them, but they’ll not notice me. It isn’t in human nature. Their
+mothers’ thanks was all I got, and they thanked me beforehand in hard
+cash for what I was a-going to do. Lord, what’s a ricketty baby more
+or less? I say, we’re slowing up! Going to stop perhaps, and a good
+thing too!”
+
+“Yes,” said the man in the grey frock coat, still enouncing his curt
+sentences to the unheeding listeners, “I am able to cordially thank
+the man who rid me with one clean scientific blow of my wretched life
+and all its tedious accessories. A skilled workman is worthy of his
+hire.”
+
+“Mercy!” muttered the baby farmer. “Is he never going to stop? If it
+was for nothing else, he ought to have got scragged for being a bore!”
+
+But being fully wound up, though in the excitement of arriving at the
+depôt no one was attending, the man in grey continued, “Suicide I had
+thought of, but abhorred, though on my soul I had nearly come to that,
+and then it was merely a question of courage--you spoke truly, Sir.
+Mine was a thin, pusillanimous nature, as you said. You came by, a
+kind Samaritan, and sacrificed your own good life freely to rid me of
+my wretched one. I think I told you that when you were being tried, I
+followed urgently all the details of the trial, and made interest with
+the authorities here to allow me to appear to the judge in his sleep,
+say, and instil into his mind some inkling of the true state of my
+feelings towards you. I do not know, however, if you would have
+thanked me, for life may have been no sweeter to you than it was to
+me--you spoke of an uncongenial helpmate, I think? Still one never
+knows. I might have been the means of procuring you some good years
+yet, in the full exercise of your undeniable vigour and remarkable
+decision of character. But it was apparently not to be. You followed
+me here, after a long interval of waiting, and now we have met, face
+to face. The introduction on that dark night was worth nothing. I like
+your face. We shall probably never meet again--their ways are dark and
+devious here, so I am the more glad of this opportunity of opening my
+mind to you on a delicate subject, perhaps, but one that has always
+been very near my heart. By the way”--he lifted his stick with its
+shining ivory crown into view. “Did you notice this? You read the
+papers, you said, and they told you it was heavily weighted and that I
+carried it always as a precaution. Well, on that eventful night for
+both of us--perhaps you were too hurried to notice?--but I never used
+it. Accept it now, will you not, as a memento?… I think, from sundry
+truly unearthly bumpings, that we seem to have come at last to our
+journey’s end.… I am right, the coachman has got down from his perch
+and taken his head under his arm.… We part. Mesdames, I salute you.
+Again, Sir----” He addressed himself more particularly to the
+shamefaced man in corduroys--“Farewell. Very pleased to have met you!”
+
+One by one, the passengers faded away into the distance. The polite
+old man paused in the semblance of an inn yard where the coach had
+drawn up. A pale proud woman’s face, shining up by the step, had
+touched him. She was an intending passenger, and she was alone. She
+wore white dog-skin gloves, but no hat. Unusual, he fancied, in a
+woman of her class. On looking closer, he saw that she had a hat, but
+that it hung disregarded over her shoulder by an elastic, and was much
+battered and destroyed. He decided to speak to her.
+
+“You are the lady we killed, I think?” he asked gently.
+
+She acknowledged with a bow that it was so.
+
+“We could none of us do anything,” he apologized, “or I hope you will
+believe----”
+
+“Certainly, Sir, it was no fault of yours, or indeed of the company’s,
+I am sure. The accident was inevitable!” so she assured him, smiling
+faintly. He looked at her kindly. There was blood on the hair, he was
+able to convince himself.… “But Rory--our pony--never can pass things,
+at the best of times, and the look of your conveyance was certainly
+rather unusual. And at that time of night we rarely meet anything at
+all on the Great North Road. We choose that time on purpose, my sister
+and I--we had been staying away for a week with friends, and we were
+going home. When we saw you coming, Lucy said, half in jest--she is
+older than I--‘Suppose that thing in front were the Coach of Death the
+foolish country people talk about? They say it travels this way once a
+year, with its cargo of souls, on St. John’s Eve.’ I bade her not be
+superstitious, but I confess I thought the vehicle looked odd myself,
+and I did wonder how Rory would stand it. When it came nearer I saw
+distinctly that the coachman was headless, and I laughingly told my
+sister so. She bade me not disturb her, for death coach or live coach,
+she meant to do her best to get Rory past it. She failed----”
+
+The man in grey looked nervously around. He was alone with the young
+lady in the dull inn yard. The headless coachman was preparing to
+ascend to the box seat again.…
+
+“Where is your sister now?” he inquired.
+
+“She lies at the bottom of the ditch. Rory has galloped home. She fell
+on her head, but she is alive still. When they find her in the
+morning, she will be dead, I know that. For now I know all things. I
+am at peace… you need have no care for me.…”
+
+“Let me at least put you into the coach,” he begged. “And you will
+prefer the corner seat?”…
+
+She took it; he went on--
+
+“It looks, however, as if you were going to have all the accommodation
+to yourself, for this stage at all events.”
+
+He raised his hat; she bowed.
+
+“I am grieved that I cannot have the pleasure--that I cannot offer to
+accompany you, but I have my marching orders.…”
+
+He raised his hat again.… The coach moved on out of the yard. Soon it
+was lost in the mists.… The summer dawn was just breaking.
+
+
+
+
+ THE BLUE BONNET
+
+
+ “… _a little spark in a blue bonnet, who fought like the devil at
+ Preston._”--Boswell.
+
+
+The tourists peered past the grey stone pillars of the gateway into
+the courtyard, paved with round cobbles, grass-grown in between. The
+low sculptured doorway gave admittance to the old manor house that had
+so fascinated the lady of the party from the first moment she had cast
+eyes on it.
+
+“Oh, this is a bit of the real thing!” she had exclaimed fervently,
+when, five miles out of Richmond, the road had ceased to follow the
+course of the Swale, mantled all the way with heavy oak and hazel
+copses. They seemed to hang like hairy beards from the beetle-browed
+face of the cliffs that shelter the east bank of the river. “The very
+real thing!” she had continued, as the wagonette turned out into the
+open moorland, and their town-bleached cheeks were bathed at once in
+the pure sullen airs that roamed over it, softened and suffused with
+the tears of an April storm gone by. “This is the real Yorkshire moor
+I’ve read of, bare and empty, with not a single dwelling to be seen.
+Yes, there’s one!”
+
+For as their conveyance dived down into the scarp of a hill, she
+sighted beyond the now familiar river which wound again into view,
+directly crossing their path, and the low bridge of quite modern
+construction which spanned it, the square mass of a house commanding
+the river bank. It seemed to stand, bull-dog like, on the slight
+acclivity, posing as guardian of the ford at that place, which was
+certainly all that had served for crossing a hundred years ago. So her
+instructive companion remarked to the eager lady. She grew more and
+more enthusiastic.
+
+“John, I can’t possibly pass it! I couldn’t reconcile it with my
+historical conscience to go by without an attempt to see it. It’s like
+a grey-haired woman standing stranded on the edge of the world, an old
+Ariadne of a house, waiting for ever by the side of the flood.… Ask
+the driver what they call it?”
+
+“Wallburn Old Hall,” said the stolid Yorkshireman, flicking a fly off
+his horse’s ear.
+
+Three blind hopeless windows which had been closed up for the tax
+looked over the old garden garth. The eyes of the persons looking
+thence could have swept the stream and the narrow neck which formed
+the ford. The stone flagged courtyard of the house was enclosed by
+buildings on all sides but one. On the west, looking towards the
+river, was a ruined battlement on which a man might still walk and
+survey the country round for miles. But it was now insecure, the inner
+rubble exposed. Clumps of wild mustard and garlic sprang from every
+cranny and crevice and made a yellow blaze that lit up the grey
+substance of the pile. The lady unable to contain herself longer,
+requested the driver to pull up and let them have a look. Her
+companion took out a guide-book and read aloud, as they sat in the
+break in the streaming sunshine.
+
+“Wallburn Old Hall… fortified manor house… dismantled.…”
+
+“I should think it was!”
+
+“_Et pour cause._ _The_ old Cause of all! Listen! Family of Daunet.
+There’s the shield on the door, evidently--see all that _répoussé_
+work?--only we can’t read it from here.”
+
+“The book says: ‘The ancient family of Daunet, who beareth sable
+gultie, argent and a canton ermine.…’ Yes, Guy Daunet’s tomb is in the
+church at Redmire--remember it?--His feet are cased in brass-toed
+sollerets. Above his lady’s head are three shields of arms. She
+appears to have been a Conyers. Well, they seem to be pretty well
+extinct now. The last Daunet was out and killed in the fifteen. There
+were Daunets in the Great Rebellion, Daunets in the Gunpowder Plot--in
+the Rising in the North----”
+
+“Poor romantic dears!”
+
+“Yes, that’s the plague of lost causes. They swayed the emotions so
+forcibly and through the emotions the very lives of the old
+families--those that had any good in them. One imagines them, up to
+the very latest day, having an indistinct glimmering of their own
+original _raison d’être_, that is, lands given in exchange for
+service.… Their modern representatives have lost even the glimmering.
+Well, oughtn’t we to be driving on?”
+
+“Oh, no. After what you’ve been making out, I must have a try to see
+over it. I want to make out that blurred shield over the door. Gules
+argent and canton ermine, was it? They can but refuse us.”
+
+The young couple alighted, under mute protest from the driver, and
+entered the courtyard, the lady bold, the man nervous, deprecating.
+They received forthwith a Teniers-like vision of an interior.
+Farm-hands were sitting round a wooden table, placed in the
+oak-panelled greasy blackness of a low raftered hall. All looked up,
+and ceased pulling at their mugs. A frowsy young girl of eighteen,
+wiping her mouth, came forward.
+
+“Could we see over?” The glint of a silver coin in the lady’s hand
+pleasingly accentuated her request.
+
+A voice came from the interior as the girl stood hesitating and shy.
+
+“Mind, hinny, thou’st not take the lady anywhere it isn’t safe. Keep
+out of the room the captain’s leg came through. And mind, the stairway
+beyont isn’t much to crack on.”
+
+The girl thus admonished, turned and led the enthusiastic pair in and
+up the rich darkness of the stair.
+
+“That’s the best part of it her mother told her to leave out!”
+whispered the lady. “That about the captain’s leg. It sounds most
+exciting. Ask her--or I will.”
+
+The girl, questioned, replied over her shoulder.
+
+“It’s a tale, ma’am. A long while back it were--ages and ages. They do
+say a man’s leg came through the floor, and he’s always called the
+capting. The boards is rotten just there, and was then. That whole end
+o’ the house is fair gone to powder. My grandfeyther used for to say
+that a man’s leg made it coming through. But it was long before his
+time, and he were a very old man. The ceilings of that part of the
+house is that powdery, would you believe it, that we can always scrape
+the plaster and get a bit for baby.”
+
+“How funny and utilitarian! And is it haunted?”
+
+“Grandfeyther always said ’twas.”
+
+“Who by?”
+
+“They do say a poor man went clean daft there--came home and found
+every one lying dead about the place.”
+
+“But what had they died of? Plague?”
+
+“The smit? Naw. Grandfeyther allus said ’twor a tragedy, same as they
+has in the papers now-a-days.”
+
+“Where is your grandfather now?”
+
+She jerked her finger over towards the north.
+
+“Churchyard. But he knew all about this place. His feyther before him
+was ostler about the inn at Redmire--you’ll pass it on your way to
+Bolton. He always said there was a hiding hole here, and mor’n that, a
+secret way, but teacher says that’s all nonsense and we mustn’t waste
+our time looking for it, besides it isn’t safe. We shut oop this part,
+and just pack into the other, where it’s still pretty good, and at
+Michaelmas we’ve all got to go out and Lord Scrope is going to pull
+the old place down.”
+
+“Shame!”
+
+“Oh, I dunno. It’s fair rotten.”
+
+“Are you sure you can’t take us into the rotten part--just for once
+before it all goes?”
+
+“That I cannot. The worst room is the one the man’s leg came
+through--they call it the Lady Christina’s room. And it’s there
+Grandfeyther says the priest’s hole was.”
+
+“It was generally out of the principal room in the house,” said the
+man. “They wanted him under their own hand and to be able to feed him
+at night. Come along, Mary, you really can’t see it.”
+
+“I suppose not.” She sighed. “But I do somehow seem to see
+Christina--the Lady Christina. I suppose her spirit is about? Why
+‘Lady’? The Daunets had no title.”
+
+“These people always dignify ghosts and raise them to the peerage.
+Let’s see if we can’t make up a story for her. Christina Daunet and
+her lover--was he the man who went mad or the priest she hid?”
+
+They were descending the stairs. Their cicerone broke in suddenly.
+
+“Nay, that weren’t the way. The real heir was troth-plight to the Lady
+Christina, and he was drowned one day here in the ford, here under her
+very eyes.”
+
+“Another touch!” said her companion eagerly. “So legend grows. Let us
+go and sit out on the hill, here, and look towards the ford, and I’ll
+try to reconstruct her story for you. I’m not a novelist for nothing.
+This is how the man went mad when he came home.”
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+There was no priest. The lover was that “little spark in a blue bonnet
+that fought at Preston” Boswell speaks of. I’ve always wanted to
+connect him up with a story. Miss Christina Daunet--not Lady--was tall
+and pale, and a fine girl, so long as she had enough to eat, and
+nothing to brood on. But her adolescence and greatest need of
+nourishment happened to coincide with Jacobite times of stress, when
+loyal subjects starved in order that the Stuarts might come by their
+own. The females of her family were used--even hardened to the more
+domestic consequences of the males’ unfaltering loyalty. When the fuss
+was about priests, Christina’s own grandmother had successfully
+concealed one in the hiding-place in her room--that very room that we
+were not permitted to investigate, looking towards the ford and the
+road to Richmond. To-day her own mother lay there, eighty, bedridden,
+daft and doited.
+
+These two women were the widow and daughter of the last Daunet of the
+direct line. Since the great Guy of the canton ermine, the race had
+continually dwindled. So many of them had been strangled, so many
+hanged and drawn and quartered, a half-dozen desiccated heads
+belonging to the strain had rotted on Temple Bar. Cold steel and a
+touch of poison had been responsible for some others, and thus the
+foolish, forlorn race had been cleared off to make room for persons of
+finer judgment and less realistic ideals. Acts of attainder, recusant
+fines, had impoverished their estates, and mulcted them of their
+goods, till of all the broad lands, castles and noble manor houses
+that had bred and sheltered and maintained Daunets for the King’s
+service, only the austere, embattled farm-house on the Richmondshire
+moors remained, and therein the two women that alone bore the fine
+fighting name slowly pined and withered away.
+
+They had not enough to eat. Yet their appetites were no larger than
+feminine appetites are reputed to be. Sir Christopher Daunet,
+Christina’s father, was killed at Sheriffmuir when his little daughter
+was a year old, and her mother, grown doited with the shock, lived on
+to give very little trouble, and represent no great charge on the
+family finances. She lay always in her big room in the south-west
+wing. Her heavy four-post bed, too mighty and perhaps too rotten to be
+moved, remained firm in its old place on the safer part of the
+flooring; the tester was hung by heavy rings to the ceiling. Her
+daughter, ministering to her slight wants, had learned to walk warily
+round the bed.
+
+Christina Daunet was loyal--as women are loyal. She realized very
+fairly that this task of the reinstatement of the Stuart dynasty on
+the throne of England had been set by Providence on her and hers,
+incidentally carrying with it the doom of extermination set on the
+race. Their blind inherent loyalty clustered as it must, round the
+losing side which sucked in, naturally, these people who always went
+where their advantage was not--and the losing side had drawn in her
+father, her uncle, even the man she loved.
+
+She loved her cousin, Charles Daunet of Scanwood. Scanwood House lay
+three miles hence on the Richmond Road. Charles was the only son of
+her father’s only sister. Christina and this young man were early
+troth-plighted--they were about to wed--but the Stuarts came first. It
+was the Cause that intervened and forbade the innocent banns. Charles
+Daunet allowed the just impediment and went out as a matter of course.
+He was more eager for the day of the stranger’s crowning than for the
+morn that should usher in his wedding with Christina whom he knew and
+loved. He had left her too easily. Folk in the neighbourhood said he
+was slack. Christina herself admitted that Charles was more of a
+fighter than a lover. But the Stuarts called! What was a Daunet to do?
+
+She cried sometimes and mourned over her baulked betrothal with her
+only confidant, a certain Luke Daunet. Her father had had a son, but
+he was not her mother’s child. Luke lived with them--his mother had
+been innkeeper’s daughter over at Redmire, a good girl enough till Sir
+Christopher Daunet came her way. He lived so near, at Wallburn, and he
+was not the man to leave so fair a flower ungathered.
+
+Madam Daunet was not a hard woman. She undertook the child’s
+maintenance when its mother died and Sir Christopher fell at
+Sheriffmuir. Luke grew up. He was not “all there,” but he was an
+honest, kindly, gentle fellow, and for the two lonely women he did a
+man’s work about the place. There was not much to do. There was not a
+beast left in the stable, except a wall-eyed, knock-kneed pony that
+Luke rode into Redmire or Marske now and then to buy necessaries. They
+could afford no other servant. The white-handed proud Christina tended
+her mother, cooked, and did the inside work of the house. It was all
+one. When the Prince should come into his own, Christina would do so
+likewise.
+
+Of that she had doubts sometimes, especially when the wind whistled
+over the moor, and the stream ran heavy and turbid below the garden,
+so that the ford was ill to cross. The Prince’s final triumphing then
+seemed surer than her own. Charles had been away now a long while. He
+had not been assiduous about her for many months before his departure
+to join the Prince. He had sent her no message first or last. She had
+even heard of another lady.…
+
+For rumours flew. The news of the brief Stuart apotheosis at
+Edinburgh, tidings of the Prince’s meteoric Court at Holyrood, had
+filtered down to Redmire, and the bar of the inn there. Preston fight,
+too, was mentioned. She thought, but was not sure, that Charles had
+been noticed there. Now the Prince was marching south… had marched.…
+
+On that day of December, mild and calm and presageless as it seemed,
+Christina was ill at ease, peevish, apprehensive. She went about the
+houseplace and courtyard with her ears pricked to the free roving wind
+that might have brushed her Charles’s bonnet in passing, as he marched
+south with his troops? Or, weary of this fairy listening, she would
+droop her eyes, till they rested dreaming on the waterway below the
+dip of the hill where Wallburn Hall stood. Then she would raise them
+slowly to look a little higher on the level where the turrets of
+Scanwood were just visible nestling in their encompassing woods.
+Scanwood was a fine place, and would it be hers some day?
+
+Puzzled, like a fox that is hunted, she snuffed the air and could not
+tell which way danger, or perhaps bliss, might come. Had the Prince’s
+army passed them on its way south? For indeed the last news Luke had
+brought had been that the Stuart heir was marching on his own capital,
+with his victorious rabble of Highlanders. King George was quaking.
+Would not Charles, if this were so, have to pass by Scanwood to see to
+his domestic concerns? Her mother babbled for ever of drums; the old
+woman would have it that she heard them.…
+
+“They’ve gone by, my dear, they’ve gone by. Oh, the bonny lads!… The
+Prince has gone into England, never to leave it again, dearie. Listen
+to the old doited woman, for she speaks truth. Rub-a-dub!…
+Rub-a-dub!…”
+
+“Whisht, whisht, mother!” Christina now and again murmured softly but
+not imperatively, as she stood by the window and herself with her
+slight long fingers performed the manœuvre known as drumming on the
+pane. Yes, her heart lifted; he had passed, at a point perhaps miles
+away, too far for him to get leave to call in and see his sweetheart.
+She must have patience. One day soon she would be looking out of this
+very window and she would see Charles on his fine horse crossing the
+ford at the old place, coming to her, with a light heart, and all his
+troubles and hers behind him, cast aside, healed, over and done with.
+She could discern the very spot now where the bottom was nearest and
+the water shallowest, even exposed at times in drought. The waters
+flowed glumly over it now, there had been much rain to swell them.
+Sometimes, to the excited girl, who stood there, her nerves wrought by
+the faint vocal rub-a-dubbing that came from the bed behind her, it
+seemed that the water gathered itself up into shapes--shapes of horses
+and men. The little waves seemed to rise obediently under the harsh
+wind, and form themselves into the semblance of uncanny humanity. They
+massed themselves and menaced, yes, she came to fancy that one figure
+rose again and again from the sullen flow to shake a quivering fist at
+her. She stared the silly vision down. Soon the water ran by as usual,
+huddling, lumping itself into small ridges under the wind, but nothing
+so tall as a man.
+
+She turned to receive and divert the mother’s peevish voice. The old
+woman had ceased to imitate the drums; she was now convinced in her
+senile way they had passed. She talked strange nonsense, used strange
+names. “Bound for the South, they are.… The Bridge.… Swarkstone!
+Swarkstone.”
+
+“Where’s that, mother?”
+
+“Bad luck! Bad luck! The Bridge.… No further.… Swarkstone. No further.
+Back! Back! I’m cold, Christina. I’m cold.…”
+
+“The day’s changing and you feel it,” said Christina sadly, altering
+the position of the coverings. It was all she could do.
+
+“Nay, ’tis the smit of death I’ve got, Christina! I know it.”
+
+“Oh, mother, not now, just when we are going to be so happy.” But her
+heart did not back her words. “Look here, I’ll have Luke go to Redmire
+at once and get you some of Betty Candlish’s cordial. She promised me
+some for you the moment I wanted it, and you seemed low as you do
+to-day. We won’t let you die just yet.”
+
+“Ay, but can you keep me?” said the voice from the bed gently. “It’s
+that I’ve got and no mistake. I’ve felt it all day.… Come back and
+kiss me, Christina. You’re a good girl--a very good girl.… The Bridge
+at Swarkstone--I saw him there--the Prince.… Remember that,
+Christina.”
+
+“Yes, mother, I will, though I never heard of such a place in my
+life!” cajoled the girl as she went downstairs to seek the half-witted
+Luke and confide her errand to him.
+
+He sat, as usual, on the oak settle, swallowed up in the glooms of the
+chimney corner. She roused him up, and told him what she wanted. She
+helped him to saddle the pony and watched him potter slowly up the
+hill towards Bolton. Then she re-entered the house and cut up, on the
+corner of the big seamed oaken table, some vegetables which she had
+fetched from an outhouse. Into a pot on the fire she threw the sliced
+turnips and carrots. There was not much fire to hang over, but her
+forehead got hot, her cheeks flushed, and her hair escaped a little
+from its binding.
+
+Presently, having put the mess to one side on the hob, she walked
+slowly out into the courtyard to get air, of which she suddenly felt a
+violent need. She languidly ascended the few broken steps that led up
+to the old battlement. At that time one could still walk along it
+without having one’s attention too much distracted by the necessity of
+picking one’s way among the rubble. She strolled backwards and
+forwards, enjoying the fresh moorland air that caressed her reddened
+cheeks and blew her pale yellow hair away in an easterly direction.
+
+Holding her hand to her forehead instinctively to restrain it, though
+there was no one to be seen for miles, she scanned the country to the
+south. Her blue eyes roved over the low rolling hills that let her see
+a very long way. But not as far as that bridge at Swarkstone, six
+miles south of Derby, where the lines of her fate had been converging
+for several days past, and were now radiating away from thence in
+ragged streaks and strands of fugitive soldiers and brutal complacent
+pursuers.
+
+She was overcome with a sudden trepidation, a rush of feeling that
+somehow impelled her to get back to the room where her mother lay, and
+see for herself how the helpless woman was getting on. But she sat
+down on the parapet, which at the point where she was still stood firm
+at the side of the battlement next the road. Overcome by a sudden
+faintness, she hid her face in her hands. She had eaten very little
+to-day. Her back was to the road, and her eyes, should she uncover
+them, would have rested on the empty grass-grown courtyard.
+
+It was not empty. A noise like a dead leaf twisting startled her. Luke
+come back on foot, without the pony! She had pressed her knuckles into
+her eyes until her eyes had grown hazy and suffused, and it was a
+second or two before she saw there was actually a man in the courtyard
+below her. A man, not Luke.…
+
+His bonnet, faded by sun and wind and rain, had once been blue. She
+heard his breath that came quickly, and, very drily, scenting a beggar
+and a demand for alms, she asked him his business.
+
+He raised his drooping head.
+
+“Charles!”
+
+“Christina, quick! Who else is here? Can you harbour me?”
+
+“What? What?”
+
+“I come from Derby--the rout at Derby. We got six miles beyond and
+turned back.… I am pursued. Quick, can you hide me, will you? They
+will search my house at Scanwood, they are there now.…”
+
+Christina was not looking at him. She had half turned when he spoke of
+Scanwood, and her eyes pried into the bosky mazes lying between.… The
+fugitive thought that the brusque movement had its occasion in a
+natural change in her sentiments towards himself. He deserved no
+better, he had practically deserted her, he had never written--a woman
+scorned!… Yet in his urgent necessity he must needs appeal to her
+again.…
+
+“Christina, an answer, I beg of you! Shall I go further for a
+shelter?”
+
+“Take off that cap--reach it up to me here. Now go in to the chimney
+corner--you know it--sit down--at ease. Not another word.”
+
+While speaking she had taken the blue cap and flung it down into the
+chapel garth on the other side of the wall. The cluster of “ramps” and
+fronds of wild garlic parted and opened to receive it and came
+together again. Meantime such was the power of insistence in her voice
+that the fugitive obeyed her as he would obey the military word of
+command. Heavily walking over the stones of the courtyard, he took his
+place on the settle in the chimney nook and crossed his legs
+negligently. He could still see Christina standing on the battlement
+looking down towards the ford. She stood first on one leg and then on
+the other; she agitated her body strangely, she made signs. Then faint
+sounds, voices, the clink of bridles, came to his ears from the
+direction in which she looked. His pursuers most likely, for the noise
+came from Scanwood. He stretched his legs, stiff from two nights’
+exposure, further out in an attitude of ease as she had bidden him. He
+did not know what Christina meant to do. She was revengeful--then she
+would give him up? She meant perhaps to save him? Well, his life
+belonged to her. He waited.
+
+Five minutes ago Christina had seen his enemies taking the ford, a
+well-found troop of horse, and a stoutish personable man riding at
+their head. Charles Daunet, from the ingle nook, could not see them
+but he could see his Christina make a trumpet of her white hands and
+hear her bawl--yes, bawl--to them over the battlement--
+
+“Good gentlemen, hear me. Will you please to take some refreshment? I
+cannot allow you to go by me, for it is lonely here at Wallburn Hall.”
+
+“Is that what you call it?” said a clear voice. “Wheel, men.”
+
+Charles Daunet saw the speaker ride into the little courtyard at the
+head of his troop, and dismount. He was a fine florid man of forty or
+so. He wore a high fixed cap with upon it the White Horse of Hanover;
+his gaiters were white and at his saddle he carried a dead turkey.
+Christina had descended from the battlement, and had gone to the
+horse’s head. The man spoke breezily.
+
+“Captain Butler at your service, Mistress. We will eat a crust with
+you, the more so because we come to search you in the King’s name.”
+
+“Do you say so?” Christina replied, setting the tone of the interview
+in a way that made Charles Daunet shiver. “Come you then in, in the
+King’s name. George or James, ’tis all the same to me, a woman. It’s
+long enough since a man came this way. I was wearying for the sight of
+one.”
+
+The Captain laughed heartily.
+
+“Business, first, Miss, if you please. We have a warrant to take a
+certain Colonel Charles Daunet of Scanwood, who fought for the
+Pretender at Preston and gave us honest ones a dance of it.”
+
+Christina looked faintly bored.
+
+“My cousin of Scanwood! Is he not at home?”
+
+“We have spent two hours ferreting for him there, and the housekeeper
+bade us come here. She said he was a good friend of yours.”
+
+“She is chary of her information,” said the girl composedly. “I was
+more than friend, I was once sweethearts with him, for my sins. But I
+have no care for the fellow now.” She tossed her head. “Come in, come
+in, you and your men, as many as the roof will shelter. The wine cask
+is low, but we will do what we can. I am alone here--nearly.”
+
+“My men--some of them--must search the house.”
+
+“Ay, let them search closely! I was always one for formality. But see
+they take heed of the flooring of the upper rooms, which is
+indifferent and might let one of them through, especially if he be a
+fine man like yourself, Captain!” She giggled. “Shall I go along with
+them, and indicate the places where the maggots cling and the mouse
+gnaws, and all is gone to fine powder?”
+
+“No, they must shift as best they can, and you shall stay here and
+talk with me. Our man should be here, without your knowledge, perhaps,
+since you say you and he have fallen out?”
+
+“We fell out,” said Christina carelessly, “when he chose to leave me
+to go and fight for a man I had never seen and didn’t care for. He
+should have stayed here and taken care of his own.”
+
+“I am with you, Mistress. Little as he is, though, he fought us like
+the devil at Preston. His blue bonnet was everywhere, and he fairly
+swinged our poor fellows! The Duke is wild to have him strung up.
+Well, men, off with you! Thoroughly, mind. Every corner! Is there a
+cursed hiding hole here?”
+
+“Yes, in my mother’s room,” said the hostess languidly. “She lies
+there bedridden. Speak her fair and gently, and she will instruct you
+to find the way in. On the left-hand side of the fireplace--a bolt
+shaped like a beetle. Only it’s iron, and if Charles is there--so much
+the worse for him.”
+
+“You’ve got a spirit--nasty at that. Well, let’s in. ’Tis hot, and
+your liquor comes not amiss.”
+
+Christina led the way under the low-browed doorway to the kitchen,
+where Charles Daunet was sitting. She made straight for the corner
+where he was, and lifting up a wooden flap of the settle, rummaged for
+a bottle of spirits. Aloud she said--
+
+“Get thy great foot out of the way, Luke, wilt ’a!”
+
+“Ay, who’s that?” asked Captain Butler, apprehending the sullen inmate
+of the chimney corner for the first time.
+
+“That! That’s a poor foolish cousin of mine,” she replied, rising from
+her knees with the bottle, a little flushed with stooping.…
+
+“You seem full of cousins----”
+
+“Yes, but this one’s on the wrong side of the blanket. He’s not over
+quick, but he’ll answer a civil question, no doubt. Now then!” She
+took Charles Daunet roughly by the wounded shoulder, and he winced.
+“Look up, speak to the captain, can’t you?”
+
+“What’s your name?” asked that personage humorously, entering into the
+spirit of the thing, but he got no answer. Christina shrugged her
+shoulders.
+
+“Truth, he’s got no name, by the rights of it. Or if he has, it’s the
+same as mine. Luke Daunet, at your service. Drat you, Luke, why don’t
+you stand up and speak for yourself?”
+
+Still the man on the settle did not move.
+
+“He’s taken that way sometimes, Captain. A fit of the sullens. As
+obstinate as a mule, and you can’t get a word out of him; and another
+day he’ll rattle away fit to deave you. Poor sort of company for a
+girl like me! We just have to give him house room and a bite and a sup
+now and then for kinship’s sake.”
+
+She poured out a glass of mead and the captain took up the glass and
+raised it to his lips.
+
+“A kiss before I drink!”
+
+He put his hand on her shrinking shoulder. The kiss lit on her ear.
+The man in the corner looked up sharply.
+
+“Be quiet, Luke. Don’t you see I never gave it?” she said, as if to a
+froward jealous baby.
+
+“It isn’t to his taste, eh?” said Butler. “Ha! Ha!”
+
+“Never you mind his tantrums, Captain. We never take any notice,
+mother and I.” She filled his glass again. He sat down near the end of
+the table. She made shift to sweep the fragments of vegetables away
+with the carroty knife, but the captain raised his hand.
+
+“Let be!” he said.… “Come and sit here, if this surly fellow will
+permit it. I shall like to watch his face.” He put his burly arm out,
+and, not before she knew what she was doing, proud Christina Daunet
+was sitting on a trooper’s knee and playing with his beard.
+
+There was a sound of feet and much stamping overhead. Presently, with
+a sharp ugly crash of splintering timber, the booted leg of one of
+Butler’s men came through the ceiling and dangled helplessly.
+Christina jumped off the captain’s knee and burst out laughing.
+
+“There! I told you ’twould happen.”
+
+“Bravo, Tim Jobling! I’d know his leg in a hundred. Gad, I can hear
+him squealing like a pig up there!”
+
+“’Tis in my mother’s room!” exclaimed Christina suddenly. “’Twill
+frighten her to death.”
+
+“You shan’t go till they come down. They’ll be here directly. Look
+you, it’s all right now. Tim Jobling has gotten back his leg. They
+have him by the shoulders, and hoist him up so. He’s still swearing,
+though I can’t hear. You shall hear me roast him.”
+
+Christina did not sit on his knee again, but leaped away with a
+coquettish grimace as the members of the search party came downstairs.
+Sheepishly came Tim Jobling at the tail of the group, minded to avoid
+Butler’s merriment.
+
+“Found naught, Cap’n, except one doited old woman in bed.”
+
+“My mother!” interposed Christina proudly.
+
+“Ay, Walters, keep a civil tongue in your head, it can do you no harm.
+Did you put your blade thro’ the bed?”
+
+“We did, ay, and the old body sat up, and talked gibberish. She
+frightened poor Tim so that he stepped back sharp and through the
+flooring.”
+
+“His leg came out just there,” said Butler, pointing to the comminuted
+fracture of laths and planks that sagged down from the ceiling. “Well,
+Tim, you’re no worse and you’ve given me and my young lady here very
+good amusement. Your leg wagged like a mouse’s tail in the trap. My
+word!… Well, well, there’s meetings and there’s partings, Mistress.…
+We’ll have to be jogging away. Our man’s still to seek. What’s this
+place Redmire?” He spoke to Christina, taking her by the chin.
+
+“It’s a lost sort of place, three miles away from here. Marske’s a
+deal more likely. Yet why should I be helping you to catch the poor
+escaped fellow? You’ll hang him, I’ll warrant, and though he’s
+despised me, I don’t wish him that much harm. I was never fond of
+telling the hunt which way the fox had gone.”
+
+“Do you say so?” He looked judicial, and stroked his beard. After a
+pause--“Still, I’ll just have the correct name of that last place you
+mentioned.… You’ve no call to be careful for Charles Scanwood, he’s
+given you the go-by, you say. A man merits a rope for neglecting a
+pretty wench, over and above being punished for the hell he gave us
+all at Preston. That blue bonnet of his was like the clout of the
+devil himself. Well, well, adieu. Thank you for your mead, and if ever
+I’m this way again----”
+
+“Go, since go you will,” said she, “I shall see or speak to no man but
+you here this side of Lady Day. So, Captain, farewell. Grant me a
+favour?”
+
+“Ask it.”
+
+“My cousin, here----”
+
+“Sulky-face! Ay.”
+
+“He’s got business for me in Marske. The ford’s swollen. We have no
+horse. Let him ride behind one of your men so far? You’re going to
+Marske to look for Scanwood?”
+
+“Certainly, Miss, we’ll oblige you. Tim Jobling shall take him behind.
+Come, men, saddle. We must be off.”
+
+“Give me a letter--so that the next company passes this way don’t
+trouble me,” she said.
+
+He scribbled something in a pocket-book, and tore it out. She took it.
+
+“Another glass before you go?”
+
+“I’ll not say no to that. Here’s to King George! Will you toast him?”
+
+She drank it down.
+
+“Just a good excuse to get a drink,” she said.
+
+“Right. Women have no call to meddle with politics. And your cousin?”
+
+“You can try him. But I fear he’s stubborn. These sullen fits last for
+days. Here, Luke, drink to please me and the kind captain.”
+
+She held the cup to his mouth and whispered, “_Return here as soon as
+may be_.”
+
+Aloud she sneered, “Look you, the great baby! He is suffering me to
+spill the good liquor. His lips are close shut----”
+
+“Waste no more time on the lout that will not drink when a lady begs
+him,” the captain said. He wiped his lips. “Well, good-bye, then.… You
+were so glad to see me, you’ll not refuse me a kiss at parting?”
+
+“What are you thinking of, Captain Butler?” she minced affectedly.
+“And before your men, too.”
+
+“Be hanged to my men! They’re busy getting off. You’re the prettiest
+picking I’ve seen since I left my barracks at Hounslow and I cannot
+leave it unkissed!”
+
+He forced her lips. The man in the chimney corner stirred.
+
+“Touches him nearly,” said Butler, whose eyes shone.… “I could do with
+another, given freely. Maybe, if we were alone----”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“No good, eh? Your promise, Madam, was finer than your performance.
+But I’m a gentleman. Come, my lob-lie-by-the-fire, stump up!”
+
+The man in the ingle nook, with one reproachful glance at Christina,
+rose. He tottered a little, and appeared dazed. Captain Butler, in
+sudden haste to be gone, clapped him on the back.
+
+“Come, my little fellow, don’t keep us waiting. We’re bound to catch
+our gallows-bird before dark!”
+
+The haggard eyes of the fugitive were fixed now on Christina, and now
+on the stained kitchen knife that lay on the table.
+
+“It’s the money,” she said hastily. “I was forgetting.”
+
+Opening a shabby little leather bag that hung at her girdle, she
+produced a silver coin.
+
+“Here, take it, Luke. For all that Betty Candlish would have given us
+credit. There goes! Don’t drop it, ye daft goneril! And, mind, you’ll
+have to come back by the bridge up Marske way, for these kind
+gentlemen won’t be coming back, I fancy. It’s saving him a matter of
+two miles, Captain, thanking you kindly, and my mother pining for her
+drops.”
+
+The troopers in the yard were all mounted now, their bridles clinking,
+their horses pawing. Christina, standing by Captain Butler’s stirrup,
+bickering with him gaily to the last, watched her lover out of the
+corner of her eye, as he doggedly passed out, and hoisted himself up
+behind the man called Tim. He seemed woefully stiff. Christina
+supposed him to have a hurt somewhere, or was it merely the result of
+two nights’ exposure? If it was the former, she promised herself a
+month’s delicious nursing. Yet not a look did he cast in her direction
+as he rode away, uncovered, leaving one of Luke’s old caps, which she
+had reached down from a nail for him, on the table beside the kitchen
+knife and the carrot scrapings.
+
+She saw it when she went in again. His negligence of any head covering
+must have looked odd and indifferent, but then his sullen and cross
+demeanour had tallied exactly with her account of him. She was proud
+of the part she had played.
+
+Yet the first thing she did when the sounds had died away was to catch
+up a rough cloth, not over clean, that lay there, and rub her lips
+with it till the blood came.
+
+Then she sat down for a little while with her head buried in the
+self-same cloth, crouching low in shame, remembering bitterly the
+indignities to which she had submitted in order to secure her false
+lover’s safety.
+
+Half an hour she sat like this. Then the old clock in the corner
+struck wheezily. It was three o’clock in the afternoon.
+
+She remembered her mother. She ought to go and see and comfort the old
+woman. Perhaps the rough troopers had frightened her. Heavy-footed,
+hating herself, loving Charles, she ascended the crazy stairs.
+
+The troopers had frightened her mother indeed. She was dead!…
+
+
+The daughter, dry-eyed, left alone with death, did what was necessary.
+She washed the body of her beloved, and dressed it, and laid her arms
+across her breast with a little sprig of marjoram out of her garden
+between the fingers, and covered up the cracked dim looking-glass with
+a fair white cloth. She went downstairs and procured a plateful of
+salt, which she laid on the dead woman’s chest to fend off the evil
+spirits. She drew down the blinds of the windows that looked out over
+the garden on to the ford, and sat down near the horribly yawning hole
+in the flooring to await Luke--or Charles. Neither of them might come
+for a good hour or more. She did not know which would be the first.
+Charles might not come for days, but when he did he would be of good
+comfort, and grateful to her for saving his life at the expense though
+it were of half an hour’s desperate but not irremediable degradation.
+It was nothing to her, considering the result, perhaps as little to
+him, and yet more than once during the ordeal she had fancied he was
+on the point of interposing and forbidding, at the risk of his life,
+the desecration of the lips that were his, and his only. He might not,
+perhaps, be willing to kiss her.… No matter, she would dress his
+wound, and shelter him and be a mother, not a mistress, to him a
+while. He had not slept in a bed, nurse-tended by kind white hands,
+since Preston fight.… He would kiss the hands sometimes?… So she
+dreamed.…
+
+About five o’clock she heard the thud of a horse’s hoofs, trotting
+briskly towards her from the ford. Charles had been in luck, and had
+somehow or other managed to get hold of a horse?…
+
+She ran down, leaping, in her haste to go the nearest way, over the
+gaping chasm that shelved in like the hangman’s drop, in the middle of
+the floor.
+
+“My beloved!”
+
+A man stood, sheepish, in the house place. It was Captain Butler.
+
+“You!” she stammered, and reeled.
+
+“Yes, ’tis I, poor fool, come back to know more of you and your wiles,
+my beauty. For that you are; and may be, now that I’ve given my men
+the slip for an hour, you’ll let me have that kiss?”
+
+Christina was holding on to the high back of the settle.
+
+“Ay, there’s no doubt about it, you’re a gay piece, and no one could
+call you kissing shy. I like it. But that poor lad who sat there--he
+couldn’t stomach so much freedom, I fancy. You made his poor heart
+ache, and lost him his wits, now, wasn’t it?… Well, well, he’s the
+best judge of his own feelings, may be he’s as well out of this
+troublesome world.…”
+
+“What do you mean, Captain?”
+
+“Only that that cousin of yours slipped off from behind Tim Jobling
+crossing the ford, and was washed away almost before we in the front
+knew what was happening. It’s my belief he did it on purpose.”
+
+“Drowned! Charles!”
+
+“Is that his silly name? I thought you mentioned some other. He said
+something to Tim, I believe, before he let go----”
+
+“What was it?”
+
+“Oh, if you care to hear! He said that he found the woman he loved was
+no better than a harlot, and he didn’t care for his life any more
+since ’twas so. He just slipped off behind----”
+
+“And didn’t any one lift a finger to help him?” she wailed.
+
+“Couldn’t, I tell you, he was a deal too quick for Tim, seeing as he
+did it o’ purpose. No, Miss, make no bones about it, his death lies at
+your door.”
+
+She tottered, and he held out a clumsy hand.
+
+“Come, put it all behind you. Why should a fine girl like you sorrow
+for a half-witted yokel like that? You broke his heart, but what right
+had he to cast those bleary eyes of his on you? You are for a better
+than he. Come now--be pleasant! You didn’t use to look bashful. One
+would think it was a different woman I’ve come back to. You’re
+handsome enough, though, in all conscience, even with that face of
+thunder on you. Will you or won’t you, Mistress Daunet? Will you come
+to me--my pretty?”
+
+He took a pull at the stoup of liquor that was where he had put it
+down, and held out his arms.
+
+Still the woman stood, dazed, dumbfounded, her ordinarily quick brain
+acting slowly. She began to realize, by a series of successive shocks,
+that there was no one left to be helped or saved by diplomacy. She
+kept her distance, still eyeing the dark wet knife on the table.… She
+spoke at last, sombre, taciturn.…
+
+“My mother lies dead upstairs.”
+
+“Does she so? Well, ’twas her time to die, wasn’t it? We’ll bury her
+decently. Come.”
+
+He sat there, glorying in his work, his legs well apart, smiling
+fatuously, waiting for the fair sulky girl to forget her immediate
+griefs and fall on his neck for solace and comfort.
+
+“Dawdling! Playing the maiden, eh? You’ll come in the end. What if
+your mother is dead? Eighty, I think she was? Trooper Tim gave her a
+fright. Finished her off.…” He was slightly drunk. “I’ve left my men
+at Scanwood. I fancy its master is likely to seek the old earths after
+all.… Come, still thinking on your mother? Devil, don’t I tell you she
+was old and ripe for death? We’ll give her Christian burial, and do
+all things in order.…”
+
+He fumbled in his pockets. And Christina’s hand made a quick outward
+movement.
+
+“And will you bury me decently too?” said she, advancing at last. With
+the dignity of a queen she sat down on the knee of the amorous
+captain, who fancied the hour of surrender had come. Indeed, he had
+some small excuse for thinking so, for with a gesture of abandonment
+she flung one long arm round his neck.
+
+“Ay, but don’t strangle me!” he whispered, his chin buried in her bare
+neck. Christina’s other hand was busy at his coat lapel.
+
+She found the place, just over the collar bone--she had no science but
+she just happened on it,--and drove the long kitchen knife in
+straight. Its work was not done then. With an effort she drew the
+knife out and used it again. Captain Butler, before he fell off the
+chair, saw her eyes glazing, and for one moment held a dead woman in
+his arms.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+“And that, I think, was the way it was,” said the romancer to his
+patient listener, as they sat together on the bare hillside sloping to
+the Bridge on the other side of the ruined battlement, and let their
+hands run through the cool straggling grasses that clothed its sad
+bleakness a little. He raised his hand, that had been fumbling
+negligently in the ground beside him.
+
+“Look here! A daffodil! This must have been poor Christina Daunet’s
+garden!”
+
+
+
+
+ THE WITNESS
+
+ I
+
+I was sitting over my fire in my hut in Penanga Creek, Wyoming, when
+the idea came to me--weakly, dreamily, at first, but later on strongly
+and vividly, that I must go home. It was, as I confusedly made it,
+seven years since I left Europe. I felt the thing that had driven me
+forth less keenly, and I realized that in seven years things must have
+quieted down a bit. Sally, too, being of a cheerful, easy-going make,
+would have forgotten what had happened on that one night, since in the
+nature of the case there could have been no discovery, no scandal.
+
+No one could have known anything about it, no one had witnessed her
+act except Roger, my dog, who now lay so quietly, numb with advancing
+age, between my feet in front of the fire. Roger had been only a year
+old on that short summer night, a clumsy, flopping puppy that followed
+me unsteadily, swaggering from side to side, down the garden path of
+the old haunted manor house where Sally James lived. It was flagged
+with broad white stones, and the gate of it opened straight on to the
+road that led to Durham, to Darlington, and to the other ends of the
+earth, where I am now.
+
+I ran away, like a coward, and yet not a coward, for I loved Sally
+James and I knew too much. I turned at the gate, and I gazed back at
+the windows of the house with their close-drawn blinds. I thought they
+looked like eyelids let down over anxious dreams. I saw the one window
+in the oldest part of the house where Sally, half dressed, was peeping
+through the blind, annoyed, yet uncomplaining at my departure. She
+knew men; she thought I was just going to put my head under the pump,
+and freshen my aching brain and my eyes that had looked on so much
+since they closed in sleep the night before. Then after a walk over
+the common, with my dog at my heels, I should return to her, stay with
+her through the long years to come, and profit by her crime. She had
+rid me of a nuisance. She did not realize--how could she, being hard
+Sally James?--that I could not bear the thought of seeing her face
+again. She was so careless of other people’s feelings that she knew
+less of what I felt than the silly young dog who slunk at my heels--or
+the pert robin that perched on the cheek of the gate-post. The robin,
+with its head on one side, seemed to stare at me and leer horribly as
+I closed the gate behind me, and went out into the world for ever. I
+never meant to see Sally again, I never meant to write or receive a
+letter; I never meant to look at a newspaper again; I never meant to
+know if she were tried for murder or not. I only knew that I did not
+mean to chance having to bear evidence against her.
+
+There was very little likelihood of that. Mrs. James, the bouncing,
+jolly widow and my secret love, had saved money left her by her late
+husband and had managed to buy the freehold of Dewlap Hall, an old
+manor house that had seen better days. It had been one of the homes of
+the Conyers family, but it was now little more than a forlorn,
+dejected farmhouse, standing alone in a couple of acres about three
+miles out of Durham. It looked even a better place than it was. Once
+you were inside you saw that its ruin was only a question of time. It
+was slowly crumbling, festering, powdering away. Half the rooms were
+unsafe, the walls of the others were shored up, partitioned off,
+reduced to a fourth of their original size. One floor was taken bodily
+away--I have been told, to lay the ghost. The sharp, jagged rafters
+sagged downwards from the sides. The floor of this room was cobbled,
+it had lancet windows: people said it was the old chapel. Sally used
+the place as a wash-house; it opened out of her kitchen, which was the
+old and only hall of the first house. That, Mr. Wilson the vicar had
+told us, was built in the time of Edward II. Of course the house was
+haunted. A grey lady. Sally’s bedroom, above, must have been taken off
+the whole top of the hall, the floor was very bad, and though
+originally it must have been a handsome-sized, airy and pleasant room
+in spite of its low ceiling, the late owner had mistrusted the eastern
+portion of it so much that he had walled it off with boards and some
+concrete, calmly reducing the best bedroom to a cell about ten feet
+square.
+
+It was big enough for two people, for Sally and me, drunk with love. I
+believe Sally and I would have made love if we had been fastened in a
+barrel studded with nails, and rolled down to the sea. But not room
+enough for three.
+
+On that night, Sally and I, absorbed in each other, had not heard the
+heavy drunkard’s footfall of my wife on the creaking steps of the
+staircase that led up from the house place below, and the sound of the
+door of the room where we were, being slowly pushed open. The heavy
+bolt that should by rights have gone across it, was lying on the
+wicker chair by the bed. Sally, in her wild confidence in the
+impossibility of molestation in this lonely part of the country, had
+omitted to run it into the thole holes on either side of the lintels,
+as usual. When you did that you made the chamber into a real castle of
+strength, but she had forgotten all but me.
+
+And poor mad Mary, my wife, stood like the ghost of Dewlap Hall, and
+watched us. Sally, half dazed, may have thought that she _was_ the
+ghost.…
+
+Anyway, she struck out with the heavy iron bar that lay ready to her
+hand. She was strong. Hardly another woman could have wielded it. My
+dog Roger looked up from where he slept, crouched on my coat at the
+foot of the bed on Sally’s packing-box.…
+
+The iron bar was immensely weighty, my poor old wife fell like a log.
+Roger turned up his eyes.… I said, “Down, Roger!” and Roger lay down.
+Though a mere puppy, he was well trained.
+
+Sally dropped the bar, with a loud clang on the floor. There was
+nobody below to hear it. It lay there, till seeing my eyes fixed on
+it, she picked it up easily and replaced it on the chair without even
+looking at it. But there was no blood or even hairs on it, I could
+have told her, for I had got hold of Mary by that time, and felt her,
+and I was perfectly sure that she had been stunned--killed outright.
+So far as I could see, the skin was not even broken. Her clumsy straw
+hat was of course smashed, battered in, and her very thick black hair
+lay like a mat over the crown of her head.
+
+Sally asked me if she were dead, and I answered, yes, stone dead.
+Sally shrugged her shoulders, as who should say, It’s fate. Then
+without blinking, she put a petticoat on over her nightgown, and drew
+the strings of it tightly round her waist till I should have thought
+they would have cut her, but I expect she didn’t feel much at that
+particular moment. At least, I didn’t. I kept my eyes on her all the
+time; I thought it might prevent me from going mad. And Sally was sure
+to know what to do. It was her murder.…
+
+It was a very warm night, and getting on for two o’clock, I should
+have thought, but no light pierced through the pieces of red gingham
+that Sally had hung up and gathered into a curtain for the window.
+
+I watched Sally. She came up to me and took hold of Mary’s feet, and
+then dropped them again after I had taken the corpse by the shoulders.
+She stood a moment, a bit mazed, then she thought of the bar and went
+to it where it lay on the chair by the bedside. She lifted it, and
+examined its iron surface.…
+
+“Give it to me,” I said. I stupidly thought of burning it.
+
+“Nonsense!” Sally said, quite sharply, wiping it on her nightgown and
+replacing it on the chair. “Let it stay there where it always lies.
+Old Betty is used to the sight of it.”
+
+She was wise. She returned to me and my burden. She took hold of
+Mary’s feet again, and didn’t drop them this time, but tied a towel
+round her ankles, thus binding them firmly together. Then, both of us
+breathing heavily, we got the body down the stairs. I went first. I
+could not see Mary’s face, but I saw Sally’s, and her lips were red,
+and tightly primmed. Roger, clumsily trying to pass us and our burden
+on the narrow flight of steps, got under our feet and nearly threw us
+down, and she unclosed her lips to swear at him. If she had not
+spoken, I believe I should have dropped.
+
+We laid Mary on the stone-flagged kitchen floor, while Sally fumbled
+with the latch of the wash-house. There was a door out of that into
+the back yard, and thence into a little orchard, and out of that into
+the wood which stretched away towards Finchale Priory at the back of
+the house to the north. It was conveniently full of old abandoned pit
+shafts. I knew that well enough. But it was not until we gained the
+door of the wash-house that it occurred to me what Sally meant to do,
+and had meant to do from the moment we first lifted Mary to bring her
+downstairs.
+
+There was a little more light now, but still it was not light enough
+to see, and I hoped it would not be until we got into the shelter of
+the woods. Sally held the feet, as before. She swung a lantern by a
+string from her teeth, she had refused to let me carry it. Sally had
+not much faith in me at the best of times, and now when so much
+depended on it, I could see that she meant to see to everything
+herself. Roger followed us; he was very humble and submissive since
+Sally had spoken to him so roughly.
+
+She swore again, but not at him, for he kept out of her way. It was
+when the long brambles caught the hem of her nightgown that hung below
+the petticoat. Her eyes flashed a little now and then in the light of
+the swinging lantern.…
+
+“I can hardly walk, I’ve got the bloody hem of my shift so wet,” she
+said, roughly.
+
+“Can you manage?” I asked, speaking very faint. She had said “bloody”!
+
+“Yes. Good thing it’s dew, not blood, after all!” she reassured me.
+“Don’t talk. I’ve no breath for talking. My word! I sweat, and no
+mistake!”
+
+I didn’t want to talk. I was thinking of Mary, slung between us, dead
+as dead. And the last time I saw her she was dead drunk in the streets
+of Cardiff, reeling about, carrying on her trade. There was no need,
+that was the shame and disgrace. I was earning good wages at Neath as
+a colliery man, and gave her her fair share. But she had always taken
+too much and never been respectable, not even when I married her. They
+say those two things go together, and luckily there were no children.
+As soon as I found out what she was up to, I left her, deserted her,
+people would say, and drifted to Durham. That was full two years ago.
+
+How did she find out that I had come to Durham, and was working at the
+Elvet pit? I never wrote to her once. How did she know I was living
+with Sally James in her house three miles out of Durham? How had she
+tracked me? I could not tell, then, and I don’t know now!
+
+I was wondering, wondering, and the undergrowth grew thick and the nut
+boughs lashed my cheek in the dark. I stumbled a little as we got
+along with _that_ between us, and I forgot to keep step with Sally,
+and she swore at me for an awkward fool that was giving her, a weak
+woman, all the work to do.
+
+We came at last to the old pit shaft Sally and I knew of, for it had
+been one of our trysting places in her husband’s lifetime. Most of
+these disused shafts are walled round with brick, but this one wasn’t,
+for some reason or other. It was carelessly staked round with wattle,
+waiting to be done properly, I suppose. A drunken man could easily
+fall in and no one be any the wiser. For a pit shaft is so deep that
+you can see the stars in the daylight.
+
+Mary must have walked all the way from Cardiff. It was the first time
+I felt sorry for her. I had been till then so angry with her for
+coming ferreting and spying, that if you had asked me, I should have
+said I was glad she had got her deserts. But I could not help seeing
+the worn soles of her shoes as we heaved her over the edge of the
+hole, and they were fairly walked through. I felt sorry for her then.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+Mary was gone, without sticking or any awkwardness, and Sally breathed
+hard. She put out her hand and fondled Roger.
+
+“Good dog!” she said. “He never barked. He won’t tell tales of us,
+will he, pet?”
+
+Roger licked her hand, as an answer to her question. He was even at
+that age a wonderfully bright, intelligent dog.
+
+Then Sally stooped, and tried to pick the long bramble trail out of
+the hem of her nightgown. It resisted--it was hopelessly entangled.
+
+“Stand on it,” she said, “while I walk on a bit. One can always get
+rid of followers that way.”
+
+She alluded to the old superstition that a girl who attracts the wild
+wood tendrils will always have plenty of sweethearts. Her white feet
+were quite bare.… I never knew a hardier woman than Sally. She looked
+down into the shaft once, though of course there was nothing to see,
+it was too dark and deep down; then she turned round sharp and
+decided.…
+
+“We had best get back to bed now,” she said cheerfully. “There’s a
+good piece of night left, and I’m sure we both need a rest.”
+
+I caught her up in my arms, and carried her home, it was only a little
+bit of a way, no distance at all, though coming out it had seemed so
+terribly long. She liked being carried. Once she put up her mouth and
+kissed me.
+
+I took her in and set her down in the middle of the house place. She
+tottered a little, like a china ornament when you have been shifting
+it. She turned to go upstairs again. I could not manage it.
+
+“Sally,” I said, “I think I’ll go and get a wash.”
+
+“Do,” she said, “and you can draw yourself some cider. There’s plenty
+in the barrel in the corner there.”
+
+I watched her ascend the stairs, rather heavily. Then I whistled my
+dog. The door of the house stood open, the dawn was just breaking. I
+latched it carefully behind me, and went away down the garden path. I
+looked back once--only once. Then I took my resolve definitely. I have
+never seen her since.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+I secured a passage out West, and we sailed, my poor dog and I, the
+very next day. And in my panic I have never looked at a paper from
+that day to this. I don’t know whether there was an inquiry or not, or
+whether any suspicion fell on Sally; I should say not, she is too
+clever. Of one thing I am quite sure; the body was never found. They
+never are when they are lost like that. I have an idea too that my
+wife Mary was never even missed in Cardiff--who cares when prostitutes
+die or disappear? If, as was probable, no one had chanced to see her
+approach Dewlap Hall in the early hours of the morning, then there was
+absolutely no witness of Sally’s crime except myself and my dog Roger.
+
+Yet, the thought that plagued me all through that night passes through
+my mind, and worries me still. I had deserted Mary--I had not seen nor
+communicated with her or any of my old friends in and near Cardiff--I
+am a Welshman--for three years!
+
+So how did she know where to find me? Did she settle to visit all the
+great mining centres in turn? And did she draw Durham early in the
+game, and when she got to Durham, how did she get wind of my living at
+Dewlap with Sally James?
+
+My thoughts, for the last seven years, have not been pleasant, but
+they are all the company I have had. I have worked hard here, I have
+even had a bit of luck and been able to lay by a little, but I have
+hardly spoken to a single soul. The last man who spent a night in my
+cabin was a taciturn Japanese who had less conversation than even
+Roger.
+
+It is killing me. That is why two nights ago I took up my pen and
+wrote to Sally. _Mrs. James, Dewlap Hall, near Durham, England._ I
+must see her again. And to-day I have managed somehow or other to mail
+the letter. Now I wait.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+I waited a good month. Then there came an answer, an answer I had
+ridden in for to Blizzardville every other day all through the time,
+speaking to no one except the clerk at the window of the post
+office--an uncommon dull and slow dog he was.
+
+She wrote--
+
+
+ “You wretch! What a surprise to hear from you! Have you returned to
+ your senses? I congratulate you. Your letter seems to mean that you
+ have, and I don’t mind saying how glad I am! Oh! George, how could you
+ walk off like that, and I lying there expecting you to come back after
+ you had had a wash and a drink to buck you up. Men always feel these
+ things so much more than women, at the time. As for me, you’d be
+ surprised to hear it, but sometimes at nights I feel as much remorse
+ as you would have me. Only then when the good daylight comes in at the
+ pane I feel so different, one would not believe it was the same woman.
+ Morning thoughts always are more cheerful. You see, I can’t forgive
+ her for coming to dig me and you out in our happiness. She had nothing
+ more to do with you. She drank, she sold herself, she got what she
+ deserved, even if it was _me_ that gave it to her. I saw it all as I
+ lifted that great bar. She came meddling, and like all meddlesome
+ fools, she got what for. If you had considered it yourself for one
+ moment you never would have left me like that. But now you have
+ thought it over, and you’ve thought better of it, and you are coming
+ back to me! Come, only come! All is serene, as I daresay you know.
+ Nobody bothered. William Dysart fooled about me a little when you left
+ the field free, but I treated him with a high hand and I am shot of
+ him except for a lowering look he gives me over the top of his pew, in
+ Church on Sunday. They say he is my enemy, but even he can’t see to
+ the bottom of a pit shaft, and there’s no evidence. I am respected in
+ the place, and I can marry any one I please, and when I please. Shan’t
+ it be you, George? Aren’t you and I bound by the memory of that night
+ and what I did to get you? Come. Your own wicked, level-headed Sally.
+
+ “P.S.--I suppose the dog Roger, who was a puppy then, has died a
+ natural death? Poor old dear! I was jealous of that dog, I always felt
+ you liked him nearly as well as you liked me. Peace be to his bones.”
+
+
+Roger looked up at me, as I looked down his way when I came to that
+last piece all about him. I believe I read it aloud softly. I am in
+the habit of talking to Roger. He knows perfectly well what one says
+to him. I stroked him. “Dead? Not a bit of it, old dog!” I said. “We
+are all alive and kicking, aren’t we? Very well preserved, eyes a
+little bleary perhaps, not many teeth in our head, but those sound,
+and that’s half the battle.”
+
+Roger fawned on me. He is a quiet, taciturn creature, like his master,
+and I verily believe the sound of his own voice has got to scare him
+almost as much as mine does me.
+
+“You’ll come to England with me, old dog, won’t you? You and me’ll
+never be parted; she must take us both for better or worse, eh?”
+
+Roger’s tail wagged. He said nothing, but of course he understood.
+
+I could not have left him, even if I had wanted to, to die alone in a
+strange country. Besides, he knows all about me. He saw it all. I can
+still see him looking pensively down into the pit shaft, after.… He is
+my only confidant, for of course I never let on to any one, I could
+never risk giving Sally away. But a dog! Yes, I am glad he knows.
+
+I could not get ready to leave for about a week, and before I started
+I got another letter from Sally. It must have been written not much
+more than a day after the first letter, and there seemed no particular
+reason why she should ever have written it. It was rather incoherent.
+The thought of our meeting again must have troubled her, must have a
+little turned her head. She mixed up all sorts of things in her
+letter, and mentioned Roger again three or four times, in connection
+with William Dysart, who she seems to fancy has got his knife into
+her. A despised lover, but still---- I began to fear that the sight of
+my dog would distress her, remind her of that awful night, when
+suddenly and without thought or premeditation she up and did a sin for
+me!
+
+What was I to do? It was but woman’s nonsense at the best, and I could
+not leave my faithful beast to pine and starve because of a woman’s
+whim! I consoled myself with the reflection that a hard, sensible
+woman such as Sally had proved herself to be, would not allow any mere
+fancy to affect her for long. She would force herself to get over it,
+and ignore it as she had the other. I settled it the way I wanted to
+and took Roger with me.
+
+I made one tiresome discovery on the way home. I was pretty deaf, and
+could hear very ill unless the speaker addressed himself especially to
+me, and general conversation not at all. This saddened me. Even a
+slight deafness makes a man such a nuisance, and I thought it might
+put Sally off, or even set her wilful mightiness against me. Sally was
+never very patient at the best of times. You see I thought of
+everything in relation to her. Her crime, and her heartlessness and
+want of feeling with regard to it, seemed not to affect my
+appreciation of her in any way. Indeed, I admired her
+devil-may-carishness because it was on the whole the most decent way
+for her to behave. I should have hated her to whine and snivel.…
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+I walked out from Durham one fine Sunday morning in May, Roger
+trotting at my heels. I had asked no questions about Sally and her
+circumstances. I knew from her letter that she was well, and moreover
+I experienced some difficulty in framing questions, or indeed in
+getting into conversation at all. I do not believe I spoke more than
+two consecutive sentences all the way back, and those I mumbled in my
+beard, for all the world as if I were tongue-tied. No one bothered
+about me, I expect I was singularly unattractive, and for the most
+part I was left severely alone. I had lost all convivial habits, I did
+not care to see or hear anything. I never looked at a paper, my one
+idea was to see Sally again.
+
+Roger was not so unsociable. Indeed, my trouble with him was that he
+was the reverse. He seemed to be continually getting into
+conversations, and eventually into fights, with other dogs. One dog, a
+sandy, weedy terrier, lame of one leg, that we met as soon as we got
+out at Durham station, he seemed, after having fought handsomely with,
+to take a great fancy to, and the wretched lame cur chose to follow us
+all the way out to Dewlap Hall. It was disturbing, and I should have
+preferred to have kept my faithful dog entirely to myself at a moment
+like this. I was going to meet the woman I loved again after all these
+years. And only Roger knew what had been.
+
+It was Sunday morning, and I heard bells ringing at the different
+churches all the way out. Sally was standing in the clear morning
+light, at the low door of her house close to the monthly rose-bush
+which stood as high as she did. There was but one rose on it. She wore
+a pink cotton dress. She had grown a little stouter. She held her hand
+straight across her forehead, against the sun which came into her
+eyes, and made her frown--or was it the sight of me? For indeed, her
+black eyebrows were cruelly drawn down as Roger and I and Roger’s
+friend came up the flagged path. But all she said was, as she took her
+hand away from her face and laid it in mine--
+
+“Come in.”
+
+She pulled me inside, and shut the door in Roger’s face. He set up a
+whine.
+
+“Poor Roger!” I said in spite of myself, and my wish not to annoy her.
+“Don’t you remember him?”
+
+“Yes, but why did you bring the wretched creature here? I thought he
+was dead. I understood you to say so.…”
+
+She stood there, quaking, quivering with anger. I had never seen Sally
+so unmanned.…
+
+“Never mind the dog, Sally,--kiss me.”
+
+She kissed me, then she said thoughtfully--
+
+“Perhaps, on the whole I had better have him in?”
+
+She opened the door, and drove away the stranger dog. Roger she
+seized, hauling him in by the collar. She then carefully bolted the
+door with one hand, sticking to Roger with the other.
+
+“Have you got a chain?”
+
+“What for, Sally?”
+
+“To chain him up. I can’t have him loose. He’s been talking to that
+mongrel of Dysart’s--I know the malicious beast--and when dogs get
+talking together--now----”
+
+“Talking! My dear Sally!”
+
+“Oh, you know what I mean. It was William Dysart who directed Mary
+here that night, or rather morning. He’s longing to get his knife into
+me--or you.”
+
+“But was there an inquiry? I didn’t read any of the papers, I was so
+afraid of what I might see there… you understand?”
+
+She looked at me narrowly. Then she tossed her head.
+
+“Silly fellow, there was nothing to make you uneasy. There was not a
+word of gossip. No one knew. There was one woman less on the streets
+of Cardiff, that’s all.”
+
+“But you said William Dysart directed her here?”
+
+“Yes, that came out, in a roundabout way, but he didn’t know who she
+was, or that she didn’t just come here and go straight back again
+where she came from. If only you had taken my hint?”
+
+“What hint?”
+
+“About Roger.”
+
+“You do puzzle me, Sally.… You only said you supposed he was dead.
+Well, he isn’t, that’s all, and mighty glad I am of it. And he isn’t
+used to being tied up, and I’m not going to put upon the old dog now.”
+
+“I can’t help it. He doesn’t go free in my house! We must talk it
+over. Meantime.…”
+
+She left me abruptly--Sally never dawdled, not even over a murder.
+Trailing Roger helplessly by the collar, she went into the wash-house
+next door. I followed her grumbling a little, but still quite her
+humble slave. She made his collar more secure and then tied him to the
+copper. Then she reached up to a high shelf, and gave him a handsome
+plateful of bones and a pat on the head that had more of monition than
+of kindness in it. Roger looked up at me. He seemed to understand the
+situation better than I did. “Keep in with her, don’t irritate her!”
+he seemed to say. He shivered and seemed cold.
+
+“Tell him to be a good dog and behave himself,” she said to me, “and
+he shall be loosed to-morrow, if I can feel quite sure of him.… Things
+are changed a bit, George, since you were here, and it is easy to see
+you have not kept pace with them. We must brush you up, and bring you
+up to date.…”
+
+She was very nervous. I followed her out of the wash-house, closing
+the door behind me, as she bade me, over her shoulder. In the
+living-room, she turned and faced me.
+
+She was a very beautiful woman, was Sally James. Her white teeth
+showed keen, as her short upper lip was drawn up from them. It made
+her look fine, but a bit cruel. She was not a very big woman, but
+stately, majestic even, at times, though she was only a farmer’s widow
+and daughter. Just now, as she stood there, her arms at her sides, her
+broad breast, covered with pink print, was like a queen’s. She was
+holding herself in readiness for my first embrace, and I longed for it
+too, and yet--I distrusted her.… She was without principle, a figure
+of shifting sand. She would always do exactly as she liked, and at the
+moment when she liked.… And she hated my dog.
+
+I invented excuses for her.…
+
+“It is all association,” I thought, as I hung back. “She is not so
+heartless as she seems. The dog was in the room when it happened, and
+by the shaft when we heaved Her over. He reminds her.… She has some
+feeling.…”
+
+My distrust turned all at once to tenderness, and I sat down on the
+settle and took her in my arms. She was very soft and yielding, and
+she sat meekly on my knee and kissed me passionately again and again.
+Then I kissed her back just the same. The tall clock ticked as it did
+on The Night… only louder.…
+
+There did not seem to be a soul about. I asked Sally if she had no
+servant to help her.
+
+“I’ve a woman--old Betty--do you remember her?--comes to help me all
+the week through, but she stays away on Sundays. The farm hands sleep
+nearly a quarter of a mile away. You’ll stop to-night, George?”
+
+I said I would. In my heart I wondered if her room was still the same,
+and if I could stand it!
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+ II
+
+A movement in the room awoke me. I opened my eyes slowly, and in the
+grey light I put out my hand and missed Sally. She had left my side.
+
+I put some clothes on and went down the little steep single stairs,
+lit only by one dirty, cobwebby window. The scanty twilight, for that
+was all it was as yet, slid in and on to the white lintels, cracked
+and seamed with age--I never liked the dawn, when people die. The moon
+was paling quietly in the sky. The morning star still lingered there.
+At the corner where the stairs turned sharply, I looked down at my
+feet and remembered the job we had to get Mary past it! Drops of sweat
+broke out on my forehead just as they had done then. That and the
+dawn! I was very nervous. It was nearly the same as that other night.
+
+Sally was not in the house place. I stood--turning on my heels--and
+wondered where she was. I made no doubt that she was walking in her
+sleep--that seeing me had brought back all the sensations of that
+dreadful night, and that she was repeating them. Perhaps she had
+remembered the light on the lintel, the turn of the stair too?… What I
+feared was that she had gone wandering along the same dreary path
+through the wood, as far as the shaft. And then, when she got there,
+suppose her remorse was too much for her and she were mad enough to
+throw herself over!… Such things have happened--I had seen _The Bells_
+and _Macbeth_. Sally was rather like Lady Macbeth, and Lady Macbeth,
+strong-minded as she was, rued her deed, and walked in her sleep, and
+rubbed her hands. Sally had no blood to think about--only dew on the
+hem of her nightgown that time.… You couldn’t tell blood from dew at
+night.…
+
+I heard a click--something like the sound made by one earthenware pan
+rubbing against another, in the wash-house.… I had maligned Sally in
+my thoughts. She had merely gone downstairs to feed Roger! The last
+remark she had made on going to bed was that he looked weakly, and on
+his last legs, and should by rights be put away before he suffered
+pain. Dogs die so hard, she had said. I opened the door that led into
+the old stone-paved chapel Sally used as a wash-house, and stood the
+beer-casks in.
+
+Sally, in her plain nightgown, was standing there barefoot on the
+cobbled stones. She looked a bit cranky. Her black hair hung partly
+down her back, and in elf locks, that were curls overnight, in her
+eyes. She had a great quantity of hair, and out of vanity she never
+took it all down when she went to bed, but half arranged it with pins
+and coloured ribbons. Her arm was raised to a high shelf whence she
+had taken Roger’s provender earlier in the day. The movement made the
+fronts of her nightgown gape, and show her breast.
+
+She started when I came in, and dropped her arm guiltily.
+
+“Go away, go away!” she screamed, and put her hand behind her back.
+“Go away, and let me finish the job!”
+
+“What job, in Heaven’s name,” I cried, “at this hour of night? We saw
+to the dog--no need to feed him again!”
+
+“Feed him, you idiot!… Poison him, more likely--anything to get him
+out of the way!”
+
+I went up to her and laid my hand on her arm.
+
+“I do believe the sight of Roger, who saw you murder Mary, has put you
+clean out of your wits, Sally, my dear.”
+
+“And what about you and your wits, bringing the beast here----!”
+
+She rushed at poor Roger, who squatted at the extreme length of his
+cord, staring at her calmly, boldly, as if inviting her to stick him
+with the knife she brandished. He was never like any other dog. He did
+not plunge or bark. I saved him, I took the knife out of her hand, and
+flung it into a meal-tub close by.
+
+“Fool, fool!” she yelled, but I put my hand over her mouth, and forced
+her back on the tub, so that she sat on the knife. I was so sure she
+was going mad that it made me calm and strong, and I tried to soothe
+her and speak gently to her, as one does to an invalid.
+
+“What do you want to kill my poor old dog for, Sally?”
+
+“I must. I must. He’s dangerous.”
+
+“Dangerous without a sound tooth in his head?”
+
+“He has a tongue in his head----”
+
+She looked at me narrowly, dragging down the outside corners of her
+eyelids like a bulldog. Then she pulled the fronts of her nightdress
+to, and tried to speak reasonably. She succeeded more or less, but it
+was a great effort to her.
+
+“Don’t you know what has happened here while you have been away
+sulking at the other end of the world?”
+
+I said nothing on purpose, so as not to put her back up. She stood
+staring at me, waiting for me to say something. I was so long, she
+began to shake in the cold.… And Sally never could keep quiet for
+long. Her temper broke out and she shouted at me.
+
+“Don’t look so stupid, George!… God, it sends me mad!”
+
+“Dear, try and tell me quietly.” I sat down on an empty barrel. “Come
+here. Sit on my knee----”
+
+She waved me away. She moistened her lips. “Don’t treat me like a
+child or a madwoman, George. It is serious, sober earnest. I am
+telling you facts--not lies. The police--damn them!--have got a new
+weapon, and they use it for all it is worth.…”
+
+She wrung her hands and walked up and down.
+
+“Oh, to think that all this time we have made pets of these wretched
+animals, and trusted them--I had a pet dog once--I put it away because
+it watched me, though I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Yes, we used to
+let them go about with us, and see all we did, and listen to all we
+said! Who minded talking secrets with an animal in the room, or doing
+anything one liked in a whole farmyard of beasts--then? We didn’t know
+that dog of yours was lying at the foot of the bed when Mary was done
+for: I never even thought of him! We actually let him go with us to
+the edge of the shaft and see us throw her in! God, what fools we
+were!”
+
+“But what can a dog do, you silly darling?”
+
+“He can get us hanged! Get us both hanged! Why, your beast there--the
+very moment he got into England he must have learnt his power; he must
+have blabbed our whole story, and to that animal of Dysart’s, too, the
+very last person----!”
+
+I tried to soothe her.
+
+“Sally, my dear, it’s awfully cold here! You’re shivering. Do let us
+get back to bed!”
+
+I said that, but indeed I was getting to be afraid of her, in bed or
+out of it.
+
+She took no notice of me, but went on--
+
+“You never looked at a paper, you tell me, and yet they were full of
+it two years ago--the wonderful new discovery. Since then I’ve never
+known a moment’s peace. My life has been hell. You may thank your
+stars you were out of it and had left me to bear the whole brunt of
+it.”
+
+“For goodness’ sake explain!” I said crossly.
+
+She came quite close to me and whispered, “The police! It’s a new
+dodge of the police. I hate ’em and their filthy methods! They get
+hold of animals--dogs preferred, because they’re more intelligent--and
+shut them down there in cellars, behind locked doors, and then they
+torture them, rack them.… George, can you bear the idea of Roger
+tortured, racked,--kept without water for a week! Oh, if you had
+heard, as I have, scores of times, only I’ve run away and said nothing
+because of my guilty conscience--if you’d heard the pitiful howls and
+whines at the back of the police station there, and knew that some
+poor helpless beast was being made to betray and give evidence----”
+
+“But I don’t see how a dog, or any animal indeed, could let on to what
+it knew even if it tried,” I said, as grave as a judge, to pacify her.
+
+“Oh, that’s a mere matter of detail. The police have got a code--they
+manage to communicate with the beasts. They count the barks----”
+
+“Ha! ha!” I laughed.
+
+“Don’t dare to laugh, you ignorant fool. Have you never heard of those
+spiritualist affairs? The spirits rap, and the medium tells you what
+they are saying. Well, the dog barks--it comes to the same thing----”
+
+She sighed deeply and seemed relieved. It was now quite day. Her
+candle flared. She was waiting for me to speak. I was thinking of what
+would be the most soothing thing to say.… It would not come. I was at
+my wits’ end. The only thing I could think of was to get her back to
+bed and send for a doctor.
+
+I moved slightly in my indecision. She caught my hand. Hers was very
+hot.
+
+“George, what are you going to do? I’ve explained clearly, haven’t I?”
+
+“Quite.” I had now fixed on a plan of action.
+
+“And now, Sally darling,” I said softly, “just you get back to bed,
+and I’ll settle Roger, and then I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea.”
+
+That plan failed. She screamed, and beat the air with her hands.
+
+“Settle him? Not you. It takes a man to do that--or a woman like me!
+No, I know you. You want me to go quietly, while you untie the dog,
+and let him go free to get us hanged--me, at any rate. I murdered
+Mary--you only looked on. And your dog. What’ll _you_ get? I shall
+swing for it. He’s sure to have told Dysart’s dog, and the police’ll
+get wind of it--Dysart’ll take care of that. He’s only waiting--has
+been these ten years. And then they can howk Mary up--what’s left of
+her--and the damned dog’ll tell them who put her there.”
+
+“Do you suppose Roger would betray us?” I said, humouring her. She was
+crying now, violently, against my heart.
+
+“But, George--under torture--there is no knowing what he might do. Is
+there, Roger?”
+
+She left me, contemptuously, and bending down a little, spoke to Roger
+as if he were a human being. That gave me a turn, and I felt very
+queer. She seemed so sure of herself, and her tale. Roger appeared to
+listen. He barked three times… then four times… then more. I lost
+count. But Sally didn’t, apparently. She wiped her eyes on the sleeve
+of her nightgown, tossed her head back and cried triumphantly--
+
+“There, he says I had better warn you! He can’t be quite sure--he’s
+not so young as he was--his power of endurance is weakened! That’s
+what he says, as well as he can--to me who understand him.… Did you
+notice,” she continued, “how Dysart’s dog limps? Well, that’s
+because--every one knows it, though it’s supposed to be a secret--the
+police examined him--tormented, I call it--a year ago, in connection
+with a case of arson. Dysart’s ricks were set on fire----” she
+chuckled.
+
+“Who was accused?”
+
+“Me.”
+
+“And did you----”
+
+“That’s not the point. But Dysart’s dog was got to admit that he had
+seen one of my men loitering about at an awkward time--the time when
+it happened, in fact. The police couldn’t make anything of his
+evidence--it was too scanty, luckily; but all the same, he’s gone lame
+ever since. I hate the police as I hate sin.… Brutes they are!… Roger,
+good dog, tell me how did you learn the code in this short time?”
+
+Roger barked gently, a little chain of barks.
+
+“From Dysart’s dog, he says. It’s quite simple. Well, George, look
+here--no, I’m not cold when I’m interested--I’ll go on getting it from
+Roger, and perhaps I’ll be able to convince you that for his own sake,
+Roger had better be put out of the way. He wishes it.…”
+
+“I _am_ convinced,” I said. I was convinced that she was off her head
+on this particular point, and that a good rest would set her right. I
+put my arm round her, and tried to kiss her and lead her away. But she
+pushed me off.
+
+“Go and sit over there. Don’t worry me. I want all my wits about me
+now, and once you see the danger--if you love me you won’t set the
+life of an old toothless, worn-out dog against mine, for that’s what
+it comes to.”
+
+“I do love you, Sally.… Now, Roger, stand and deliver. Answer the
+lady.”
+
+There is no good fighting hallucinations, it is best to humour them.
+Any doctor would have agreed with me that it was useless to argue with
+a woman so terribly excited as Sally was. There she stood, barefooted
+on the stone floor, in the light circle that the candle made, waving
+her arms and casting shadows of awful length and shape. The black
+jagged ends of the rafters of the broken flooring over her head framed
+her in spikes, as they sagged and drooped towards the middle of the
+room where she was. Nice home-coming for a man after all those years!…
+I wished, then--how I wished!--I had stayed in Wyoming with my
+faithful Roger, and only seen Sally as I remembered her, plucky,
+resolute and sensible, instead of the all-to-pieces madwoman remorse
+had made of her.
+
+But she was determined to go through with the mad farce. She stooped,
+tossed back her hair and fixed Roger with her eyes. He met them as
+dogs do without flinching or turning away. Poor dear old Roger was so
+faithful and so old, I did wish she would leave him alone. But no--
+
+“Roger,” she said solemnly, “did Dysart’s dog warn you of the state of
+things here, and of what might happen to you?”
+
+A lot of little orderly barks answered her. Though Roger always did
+bark when you spoke to him in a certain domineering tone, it was
+fairly horrible.
+
+Sally turned to me, and her voice was lifted with pride.
+
+“He says yes, that he is fully informed. Moreover, Dysart’s dog has
+told him that his master has had suspicions of you ever since a
+certain tramp woman he met on the Witton-Gilbert road was so keen on
+finding her way to you. William Dysart told her she would probably
+find you in bed with me, blast and curse him! I am glad I burnt five
+of his ricks!”
+
+“Come, come, Sally, does my dog really say all that?” I mocked her.
+
+“He says that and a lot more. That Dysart went straight to the police
+this morning after seeing you and your dog walk across the
+market-place--now, then!”
+
+“Damn it all, that’s where Roger picked up the cur first,” I called
+out, for I own this struck me. And the dog’s manner was disquieting.
+All this was exciting and very bad for him. He shivered and whined
+very low.
+
+“Roger, Roger, old man!” I caressed him and talked to him as if he was
+human and sensible, as indeed he was, but only as dogs--the best of
+them--are. “Don’t take on so! What is it? What’s the matter?”
+
+“He’ll tell you fast enough,” Sally said, grinning. She went up to
+him, too, and passed her hands over his back. “Come, tell us all about
+it, good dog.”
+
+I couldn’t bear to see her lay her Judas hand on him. I shouted,
+“Don’t you touch my dog, you----” I couldn’t find a word bad enough
+for her--not even one of the worst; all my love for her had gone,
+melted away.
+
+“All right!” she answered carelessly, desisting.
+
+So we both stood at an equal distance from Roger, who barked
+incessantly for about five minutes. I thought I noticed gaps between
+the groups of barks, as it were, but even now I cannot be quite sure.
+Sally had got me into the same state as the dog, we were both beside
+ourselves--fairly bewitched, I think.
+
+Now Sally translated, in a level voice. Her quiet was more awful than
+her bluster.
+
+“He says, ‘Master, save me from the torture. I am old, I have not many
+months to live. Shoot me first. I may not be able to stop myself from
+betraying you--and her. Shoot me, in mercy! Shoot me!’”
+
+“Is that so, Roger?” I asked him. The spell wrought on me so that I
+began to believe it. “Do you want me to kill you?”
+
+He barked--yes, he barked horribly.
+
+Then I turned on Sally, and she held up her head and looked me with
+insolence in the face, and the dog began to plunge and strain on the
+cord, barking furiously all the time.
+
+“You devil,” I yelled, “you are taking me in! This is all a plan got
+up to make me put away my faithful old dog!”
+
+“Look at your dog!” she said, calmly. “He has more sense than you. Do
+you know what he is trying to do? He’s trying to commit suicide--he
+says it’s his only chance, if you won’t shoot him. You coward! Afraid
+to put him out of his misery and help him to get out of the way before
+he’s forced to betray you! Go and get your gun! Kill him, man--or let
+me.”
+
+I came out of my maze just in time. I saw Sally whip the knife out
+from under her and go for Roger with it. The dog had nearly succeeded
+in strangling himself--he had come to make gurgling noises in his
+throat.… But I was all there, now.…
+
+“Don’t you do it, old dog!” I up and shouted. “I’ll settle her, as she
+settled Mary!”
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+And that is why I am sitting here in Durham gaol waiting to be hanged,
+and a good riddance too. I don’t care to live.… Poor Roger did manage
+to commit suicide. He knew.
+
+
+
+
+ THE BAROMETER
+
+There existed a few years ago, in the Yorkshire wolds, a state of
+affairs in which the barometer was more consulted than the Bible, and
+the only barometer in the district hung in the hall of the Vicarage
+and belonged to the parson, who scanned it daily and out of its
+abstruse lettering gave no hope to his pining household. The
+relentless needle stood ever at “set fair,” and the terrible drought,
+which had already lasted for six whole weeks, continued. The dreary
+sheet of sky overhead stretched in its pitiless blueness over the
+baked brown earth that lay beneath, parched and cracked and yawning
+for rain. In between the rift set apart for their habitation, walked
+sad human beings, sighing and complaining, full of vague physical
+uneasiness and sense of stress of longing.
+
+The Church and Vicarage of Barmoor, and the few cottages to which it
+ministered, made the only break in the wilderness of moorland that
+stretched away for miles to Pickering on the one side and Danby Moor
+on the other. Three trees grew near the Vicarage: the boughs of one
+hung over the roof of the lean-to, and made a land-mark over the moor.
+In the early spring they had been fine bunches of verdure. Now their
+tattered and disconsolate foliage hung motionless, shrinking day by
+day into the brown semblance of what were once green leaves. A little
+beck ran at the bottom of the parson’s garden, but it was now all but
+dry. Everything was dried and wasted, except the heather which
+sprouted and thickened and browned under the desolating shine of the
+pitiless sun, while the air above it quivered with refraction.
+
+“The air is dancing!” cried the parson’s boys, lying in the thick
+tufts and looking towards the low ridges that bounded their moor to
+the north. Later on it grew so hot that the very sun was veiled in
+mist, and the air did not dance any more, but stood still with
+weariness, so the children said, again. A lighted candle, held in the
+kitchen garden, flared straight up, like a pillar.
+
+The children tried it--they tried everything--everything permissible
+under the strict system of Vicarage discipline--to amuse themselves,
+in these days, when their elders were too tired and cross to undertake
+to keep them happy. They wandered about together, their arms heavily
+linked round each other’s shoulders, dragging their feet along the
+cinder paths in an irritating unison. They stood now, in their baggy
+little home-made clothes, on the path that led down the kitchen
+garden, bordered with feeble flowers. It was only bordered; the middle
+patch of ground was, perforce, devoted to useful vegetable
+cultivation. The living of Barmoor was not a rich living, and the Rev.
+Matthew Cooper, its incumbent, stood very low in position, birth, and
+education.
+
+His gardener, who was also the sexton, was digging the potatoes for
+early dinner. He grunted while he dug, and his back was turned to the
+children, who watched, with a kind of fascination born of ennui, the
+turn of the fork and the roll of the loose mould, and the horny hand
+that came down every now and then and gathered up the harvest of his
+toil and flung it into a basket. Saunders was careless, and let
+several potatoes roll back into the furrow, out of the eight or so
+that each turn of the fork should yield.
+
+“Oh, Saunders, look, ye’ve missed one!” piped the youngest child.
+
+“Happen I have, Master John,” replied the old man. “It’s ower hot to
+be fashed!”
+
+The child sighed.
+
+“Won’t it really rain soon, Saunders dear?” he asked wearily. He had
+heard so much lately of this wonderful rain that was to heal all ills
+and make the world a pleasant place again. Child-like, he had
+forgotten what rain was like, and how he hated it, since it kept him
+indoors, and spoiled his play.
+
+“Happen it may, happen it mayn’t!” muttered the old servant sulkily.
+With a sudden access of spite, he added, “Didn’t the master pray for
+it i’ church last Sunda’? But some folks has no influence with the
+Almighty. A’m sayin’ that the Lord ought to do it for His ain
+sake--the bonny garden’s fair perished for the want of a little kindly
+moisture.”
+
+“I think it will rain soon!” said the youngest child again gravely. In
+his blue eyes was something of the rapt look of a visionary.
+
+“Well, it doesna’ look much like it,” grumbled the old fellow,
+pointing up with his fork to the sky that hung above, a wall of
+greyness, and coming very close to earth, somehow. “What for suld it
+rain, think’st tha’?”
+
+“Because it must in the end,” replied the child sturdily. “It wants to
+rain so badly. It is like me, when I want to cry and can’t. Oh,
+Saunders, there’s another potato you’ve left. What a lot you miss!”
+
+“Gan awa’! Gan awa’,” said Saunders impatiently, “and let me get done.
+Gan awa’ an tew Hannah!”
+
+He shook his pitchfork at them with playful savagery, and they turned
+away.
+
+“Listen, Willie,” said the child called John, confidentially taking
+his brother’s arm, and leading him towards the kitchen, a low,
+one-storied outhouse attached to the house, overshadowed by the
+biggest of the elm trees. “Listen, Willie; I think the sky is like a
+great wall, very thick, and yet very brittle. There’s all sorts of
+queer things going on the other side of it, that we can’t see.”
+
+“Tell us,” said the elder boy, dimly interested.
+
+“There’s great bulls roaring, and sparks flying, like in Hobbie
+Noble’s forge, and a noise--such a noise! If there comes a hole in the
+wall; we shall see it.” His eyes dilated; he squeezed his less
+poetical minded brother’s hand.
+
+“Hout!” said the listener, “I don’t care for that story much. Let us
+go in, and bide with Hannah a bit.”
+
+The Vicarage rooms were damp and insufficiently lighted, but the
+Vicarage kitchen was bright and pleasant. Hannah’s lime and marl floor
+was freshly washed, her copper vessels as bright as the mirror in Mrs.
+Cooper’s best bedroom; but in spite of all these signs of previous
+activity the girl herself was sitting in a limp and weary attitude,
+her knees apart, and a great bowl of peas between them, which she was
+“podding” for dinner. Her eyes were heavy; her big lump of flaxen hair
+hung on one side of her head; her clumsy red hands moved among the
+pods lazily and inattentively. “Deary me--a deary me!” she murmured to
+herself at short intervals.
+
+“Now, bairns!” She roused herself as the two slunk in. “I’ve not time
+for none of you. Gan awa’ and play, there’s good childer!”
+
+“Don’t be cross, Hannah!” said the eldest timidly. “We’ve only comed
+in for a sup of milk.”
+
+“The milk is all gone sour,” she replied shortly. “Ye mun just content
+yersel’s wi’ a drink of water from the pump. Now be off with you!”
+
+She gave the thin, inoffensive house-cat a hoist with her foot, and
+settled down to her peas again.
+
+The pump in the garden had gone dry long since and Hannah knew it. The
+water they used in the household--that all the village used--came from
+one place, the well at the bottom of the village, which had luckily
+continued its functions in spite of the drought.
+
+The children, as Hannah knew well enough, did not really want anything
+to drink, they wanted nothing but the antidote of human conversation
+to the restlessness and uneasiness that they shared with Hannah and
+Saunders, and what their father was apt to call “the lower animals.”
+The house-dog was as restless as they, and would neither play with
+them nor stay quiet in his kennel. The hens fluttered brusquely in the
+hen-house, and the feverish rushing of wings that went on there made
+it an unpleasant abiding-place for the children. They sometimes amused
+themselves by going in to hunt for eggs, but they left them alone
+to-day, and wandered on to the open study window, where the Reverend
+Matthew Cooper, in hot, black clothes, was working at his sermon for
+next Sunday, putting his hand up to his head every now and again.
+
+The two little boys were always somewhat in awe of their stern father,
+and all they dared do now was to stand and watch him, until the
+intermittent scraping of their feet on the walk in front of the window
+roused him from his meditations. He looked up; his brow was pained.
+
+“Well, my laddies, what do you want?” He spoke kindly enough, but his
+voice dragged with fatigue and oppression.
+
+“Father,” asked the eldest child, “Father, tell us; why don’t they
+send rain when you pray for it?”
+
+“You had better go and ask your mother,” said the Vicar, with the sort
+of grim humour in which he usually dealt. He was by nature a hard,
+cold, God-fearing, painstaking, undeveloped man, conscious of having a
+wife who managed him. “What about your lessons? Willie, I gave you a
+chapter to write out. Go and do some work if you can’t play.”
+
+“But we’ve got a headache, Father.”
+
+“So have I--splitting. Run away now, and let me go on with my sermon.
+I haven’t even chosen my text yet.… ‘_Who doeth great things and
+unsearchable.… Behold, He withholdeth the waters and they dry up.… He
+bindeth the waters in His thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent
+under them.… He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.… If the scourge
+slay suddenly, He will laugh at the trial of the innocent!_’”
+
+The children left him, in desperation, and, going down to the bottom
+of the garden, took off their socks and sat with their feet in the
+diminished brook. The dog would not come with them, but snapped and
+growled at John when he tried to make overtures to it. Hannah, who
+came to look for them to fetch them to early dinner, could not find
+them, though they were only under the shade of the big rowan-bush near
+the brook-head. But she did not trouble herself to look very far, she
+herself could not have told you what ailed her.
+
+“I cannot find them, mistress,” she said to their mother sitting,
+carving-knife in one hand and fork in the other, before the family
+joint, which Hannah had set before her, previous to going in search of
+the truants.
+
+“Oh, very well! if they don’t choose to come in to their meals!”
+
+Mrs. Cooper helped her husband to a plateful, and sent it in to him to
+his study, which he had intimated he was too busy to leave. She ate a
+small portion herself--not much--it was too hot to be hungry. She was
+a hard woman, and the absence of her two little sons did not affect
+her appetite in the least.
+
+The kind-hearted maid gave them what she called “a bite and a sup”
+later on, when they came and put their apprehensive heads round the
+door cheek. She did not scold them. The youngest boy looked very pale
+and white, and avoided her eyes.
+
+“Poor bairn!” she said, “he wants setting up with the sea air.”
+
+The two children lay down after they had eaten, and slept on a heap of
+sacking, very clean and dry, near the woodstack. Their little bedroom
+was over the kitchen, and easy of access, but very dreary in the
+daytime because of the huge tree that overshadowed it. Hannah did not
+think of sending them up there, but flung a sack over their bare legs
+as they lay, and did not disturb them.
+
+As the afternoon wore on to evening the hush became oppressive. Not a
+breath, not a sound of birds twittering, of fowls fluttering. Only the
+far-away moo of a discontented cow in an outhouse somewhere in the
+hills sounded like a faint trumpet call, and emphasized the stillness.
+The sky seemed nearer than ever now, and oppressively near, and
+all-encompassing.
+
+As Hannah crossed the yard, just before supper, to throw a pail of
+scrapings into the pig-trough, she heard a noise. It was not Hodgson’s
+cow.… It might have been the grinding of one of Miller Farsyde’s flour
+wagons on the quartz that sprinkled the road up there beyond the
+brow--half-a-mile away. She did not know what it was--a very faint
+rumble. She thought no more of it, but as she crossed the courtyard on
+her way back something dropped on to the back of her hand which she
+could have sworn was a rain-drop.…!
+
+The thought passed. Her country mind again was a blank. She gave the
+boys a shake as she passed in. “Come now, wake up! ’Tis supper time!”
+
+The youngest boy stirred and frowned.
+
+“Is it come?” he said--“the hole in the wall?”
+
+“Whatten hole? Whatten wall? Whatten rubbish is the child talking
+about?” she said carelessly, brushing the loose straws off his jacket
+with strong sideway pats, and leading him in to the dining-room where
+supper was spread. Willie, the elder and more prosaic of the two,
+manifested some interest in the items of the meal. It was beans and
+bacon and porridge, too solid fare for such a day as this had been.
+The Vicar had finished his sermon, and was sitting in his place, as
+pale as his white tie, but otherwise placable enough. The eldest child
+went round to his own high chair in silence, but the youngest crossed
+the room to his mother’s side and pulled her by the sleeve.
+
+“What ails ye, laddie?” she asked not unkindly.
+
+“Will you give me a kiss, Mammy?” he asked shamefacedly and in a low
+voice, lest his brother should hear, and taunt him for being a “mammy
+pet.”
+
+“What nonsense!” Mrs. Cooper said, with all the helpless shyness of a
+hard woman. She stooped down and kissed her little appealing son,
+nevertheless. “Now, sit down, and eat your supper quietly. Well, Mr.
+Cooper, how have ye got on with your sermon?”
+
+“Badly!” replied her husband. “I seem to have such a weight on my
+brain--an oppression! It is quite dreadful. It is so bad, it really
+can’t last--something must happen. Eat your supper, John, and don’t
+stare.”
+
+For the youngest child’s eyes were constantly fixed on his father, and
+little questions seemed to be trembling on his lips. He said nothing
+until supper was over, when he begged his mother to read to them, in
+which request he was seconded by his elder brother.
+
+She got the big family Bible and reverently flirted the pages.…
+
+“Read about the Israelites and the Plagues of Egypt,” suggested
+Willie.
+
+“Very well,” the mother said equably. Her day’s work was done, she had
+time now, and was willing to please the children in their own way.
+
+“‘_And Moses stretched forth his rod towards the heaven, and the Lord
+sent thunder and hail----_’”
+
+“I wish He would,” murmured the Vicar.
+
+“‘_And the fire ran along the ground, and the Lord rained hail upon
+the land of Egypt.…_’”
+
+She was going on in her monotonous, uneducated voice, when the
+youngest child suddenly screamed and hid his face in the cushions of
+the sofa.
+
+“Whisht, whisht!” she called out, by way of soothing him. “Why, you
+silly body, haven’t ye heard it all before?”
+
+The child continued to sob.
+
+His face remained hidden. Sternly his parent ignored his hysterical
+outburst.
+
+“How old were the children of Israel?” asked Willie, by way of
+distracting the attention of his elders from this bad conduct on his
+brother’s part, which would assuredly end in both being sent off to
+bed. Crying was never allowed. “Were they as old as me, or only as old
+as John?”
+
+Mrs. Cooper now gave her mind to the destruction of this erroneous
+impression under which her children had been labouring, and when it
+was done she raised her voice, and called “Hannah!” to the maid, who
+was to be heard moving heavily about in the passage.
+
+John raised his tear-stained face from the sofa, a wild terror in his
+eyes. Willie clasped his hands together, and together they pleaded
+with an unaccountable vehemence.…
+
+“Oh, no, no, Mother; please, Mother--we don’t want to go to bed. We
+can’t! We can’t!” both wailed.
+
+“And what for no?” asked the mother, raising her strongly marked black
+eyebrows. “Why not to bed, to-night, same as other nights?”
+
+“Because--because--oh, Mother! because we want another story. We want
+Abram and Isaac,” pleaded William. It was only an excuse, and the
+mother knew it.
+
+“One story is quite enough for one evening,” she answered severely;
+“and John did not behave particularly well over that; I won’t hear any
+fond nonsense. Now you just trot along both of you! You are both as
+cross and sleepy as you can be. Bed’s the safest place for you!”
+
+Her rough soothing was of no value. The children’s faces, as Hannah
+came in, were blanched with terror. John ran up to the kindly
+servant-maid, and hid his face in the folds of her linsey gown.
+
+“I want to speak to you,” he sobbed.
+
+“Noo, what then, ma honey?” said Hannah good-humouredly, stooping,
+till her smooth head touched his touzled one. “Well!”--as she raised
+her head--“did ye ever hear the like? What sets ye asking that?
+Mistress, he wants to know if they mayn’t creep in aside of father and
+mother to-night?”
+
+“Please let us, Mother,” they murmured, almost inaudibly.
+
+“I never heard anything so fond!” exclaimed Mrs. Cooper, laughing
+grimly. “Be off with ye both quietly, now, and let me hear no more
+nonsense.”
+
+“We did once, Mother!”
+
+“Once! Yes! when they were mending the roof of your bedroom; but the
+roof’s safe and sound over your heads now, at any rate. Why,” she
+laughed, “why, when I give ye a nice big bed to yourselves, should I
+go and cram my own and the master’s with two tiresome children, to
+kick me black and blue before morning? What are ye afeared of, I say?”
+
+But they would own to nothing, and averted their eyes. A little
+underswell of sobbing, whimpering breaths testified to their distress.
+
+“What’s come to the bairns, I wonder?” She was puzzled, through her
+thick mental hide of unsympathy. “They’re as fractious! It’s this
+unked weather sets us all out of our wits.”
+
+“It _must_ break,” said her husband, “there’s no sense in it. We may
+have rain to-morrow. I forgot to look at the glass as I passed in
+to-night. There may be a change soon, nay, there must be.… Come here,
+children, and say your prayers, and let’s have no more crying.”
+
+They all at once realized the hopelessness of it all, and came meekly
+to his knee, Hannah folded her hands and looked on approvingly at the
+two flaxen heads, as in their innocent, pretty, piping voices they
+begged blessings on their hardened elders, and murmured deep
+contrition for the sins they had not yet committed. They wound up as
+usual with the prayer--
+
+“‘_Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and by Thy great
+mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the
+love of Thine only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen._’”
+
+Sadly they rose and kissed their parents, who had so carelessly
+crossed them in their strong instinctive desire, and murmured
+inaudible good-nights. Then Hannah, taking a little submissive hand of
+each, led them out of the room.
+
+They went past the weather-glass in the hall, whose strongly marked
+signs and signals of change they were too young, and Hannah too
+ignorant, to understand, and walked round by half roofless passages to
+the kitchen. Then Hannah, laughingly propelling “mischief in front of
+her,” inducted them up the shaky wooden staircase that led into the
+large room where they always slept, brooded over by the enormous
+over-arching elm-tree. Its branches tapped the little skylight pane
+when it was windy, but now they hung still like a drooping banner in a
+calm.
+
+“I do believe it’s that ugly, girt tree they’re feared of!” Hannah
+thought to herself.
+
+During the passage towards their sleeping place they said nothing, but
+the fingers of the younger child closed and unclosed round the maid’s
+stout thumb, and the touch struck her as very cold.
+
+“I’d let you both creep in aside o’ me,” she said, “only I’m that
+fleyed o’ the mistress! She’d find us out, as sure as my name is
+Hannah Cawthorne.”
+
+She set down the candle on the chest in the long, low, empty
+loft-room. The chest and the bed were almost the only articles of
+furniture in it. The wooden rafters that supported the roof made
+fanciful bars and arches over the white dimity quilt. The bed was
+large, clean and comfortless.
+
+When the two children had undressed and lain down, Hannah Cawthorne,
+of a gloomy North Country turn of mind that ran continually on omens
+and predestinations, could not help thinking how like two corpses laid
+out they looked, lying so straight, their little bodies outlined under
+the quilt, their eyes wide open and staring at the roof. It made her
+uncomfortable.
+
+“There’s nought to be afeared on,” she thought, trying to bring
+comfort to herself merely, for the children were still, submissive and
+past all repining now. “It’s as safe as a church, but all the same.…
+Now shut your eyes,” she said aloud, “there’s good lads, and say
+‘Gentle Jesus’ till ye feel the sleep coming on ye. Oh, ye’ll sleep
+fine, trust me. Shall I leave ye the light?”
+
+This was a wild stretch of authority. She might have lost her place
+over it. She was relieved when they shook their heads and declined it.
+
+“See here,” she went on, producing an apple from her pocket. “See
+here, ye can munch this atween ye.”
+
+She laid it down on the coverlet, but no little hand came forth to
+take it.
+
+“Poor bairns, they’re sad-like.… Eh, she’s a hard woman, is the
+mistress! If they were mine, shouldn’t I like them to nestle in aside
+o’ me! This room is fair lonesome. Naebody could hear them if they
+were to skrike out.…”
+
+“What are ye looking at, my honey?” she asked John curiously, for the
+child’s eyes remained obstinately fixed on the roof, as if he saw
+something there.
+
+“He’s looking at the hole in the wall,” volunteered the eldest boy at
+last. “He’s shiverin’.”
+
+“Hap him up in your arms, ma bonny bairn, that’ll soon warm him.… Now
+I must be going, lads.… Good-night to ye both.…”
+
+Hesitating, reluctant, she took up her candle and made a start for the
+door.
+
+“I don’t half like leaving them,” she murmured, as she stole out
+casting a last look at the two children, lying clasped, according to
+her recommendation, in each other’s arms. Their faces were hidden in
+each other’s necks, their sad apprehensive eyes were closed,
+obediently summoning sleep.
+
+Gently snecking the door, she blundered down the rickety staircase,
+and made her way back into the other, safer part of the house.
+Ignorant, she passed by the mysterious oracle hanging in the hall,
+unable to read or understand the plain meaning which its hands now
+bore.
+
+“Eh, but she’s a right hard woman, is the mistress, and master follows
+her in all things. _He’d_ have let the poor childer come in aside him,
+when they begged and prayed fit to turn a heart of stone.…”
+
+She did not toss on her hard pallet, but lay stupefied in the heavy
+slumber that was the meed of her arduous existence. Upstairs, in the
+best bedroom, the Reverend Matthew Cooper slept off his headache. His
+wife did not drowse, but lay by her husband’s side, straight and still
+as she had laid down, congratulating herself on the great healing
+storm that was even now breaking over the Vicarage, gloating over its
+promise of recomfiture and peace.… It thundered and lightened for two
+hours.
+
+When morning dawned the great drought was over, and the air was
+refreshed.
+
+Hannah, the maid, rose and went about her duties with a light heart,
+and presently, having started the kitchen fire, called the parson and
+his wife to resume theirs.
+
+When it was time, she pulled her dirty kitchen apron aside, put the
+kettle where it could not for the moment boil over, and went to call
+the parson’s children.
+
+She went up the crooked stair and opened the door gently, “not to
+waken them sudden.” The first thing she saw, before she screamed, was
+the wide, jagged hole on the rafters above the bed where they still
+lay in each other’s arms. The lightning that, guided by the tree which
+hung over the roof, had passed through to the innocent children and
+dealt them their unearned and undeserved death, had not divided them.
+They were quiet and unchanged in appearance except for some little
+blue marks like shot in the forehead of the one and the breast of the
+other.
+
+
+
+
+ THE TIGER-SKIN
+
+ I
+
+
+ “_’Tis but a little piece of Childhood thrown away._”--John Ford.
+
+
+She wandered about the wards at the Infants’ Hospital, a privileged
+person, ignored, tolerated, looked on askance by the properly
+caparisoned, properly certificated, properly trained nurses. She was
+not a nurse, she was not even a probationer, except by courtesy; she
+was the daughter of the founder of the Hospital, Dr. Emeric Favarger.
+She spent many hours there, lounging about, asking irrelevant
+questions of the nurses and the visiting doctors, getting into the way
+as only a privileged person can do. She was no good, she could not
+even amuse a baby, or keep it quiet for a moment until expert
+assistance arrived. She was there, it was understood, because she
+liked it; because the grey-green walls and absence of decoration were
+soothing to her, and the rows of white cots, to the number of thirty,
+each with its frontal brass denoting the name and style of its
+god-parent and pecuniary backer that lined both sides of the room. Her
+own name, Adelaide Favarger, figured over one little bed, and she was
+used to take up its puling occupant now and again. She would linger,
+casting her liquid glances at its chance, constantly varied, occupant
+lying there, with some at least of the creases of ill-nurture and
+previous ill-usage smoothed out and eased by the bands of merciful
+sleep.
+
+She was twenty-five years of age, unmarried, motherless, the only
+daughter of Dr. Favarger. He was old, and had grown excessively rich,
+and had found himself able long since to retire from the activities of
+the profession. He still had his room in the Hospital, lectured there
+twice a week, and saw foreign doctors, departmental authorities,
+philanthropists and other persons who were interested in this
+particular new departure. This he had inaugurated himself, hoping to
+see it lead to Eugenical cultivation of the uncounted progeny of the
+struggling, uninstructed masses. At home, in the immense
+wool-gathering house he rented in Portland Place, he had a room the
+door of which was kept always closed. Behind this he was understood to
+be engaged in “experiments.” He entered it, never from the house, but
+by a door that gave on a mews at the back. As people said,
+anything--all sorts of things--might be going on in that house and
+never be heard of. It was known that Dr. Favarger bred and kept there
+countless cats; he wrote and commented learnedly on their habits in
+the monthlies. He was a man who might have been asked out to dinner
+every night in the year if he had chosen to let himself figure in the
+list of Society’s possible guests. But that he had always refused to
+do, and his daughter shared his self-imposed solitude. She was not the
+kind of girl whom hostesses asked out alone, or at a moment’s notice,
+to fill up a gap. She had no cordiality, no entrain, no “go.” She was
+attractive but not charming, the image of her father, whose hooked
+beaky nose she had inherited, together with passionate, regretful eyes
+that her dead mother had left her.
+
+But no restraint was put upon her exercise of hospitality in Portland
+Place. She could ask any one she liked to dinner and she availed
+herself constantly of the privilege--but the proportion of male guests
+who put their knees under the old mahogany dining-table and drank her
+father’s old port, which was almost famous, was far in excess of the
+female. But Adelaide did not object to this proportion. Still, sly,
+silent with an air of biding her time, at eighteen; by the time she
+was twenty-five, the passion in her eyes was tremendous; she glowed in
+her dark setting, a meagre Circe who gathered the ready-made beasts
+about her, and shook no deterrent wand at them.
+
+These were her evenings, smoke of cigars, fumes of liqueurs,
+conversations of veiled indecency under the guise of scientific
+discussion, which were led by her father; the cynical, heartless old
+man, holding forth indifferently, from sheer love of talking, to the
+audiences of queer, inferior, second-rate men that his daughter
+provided for him nightly. And for her days, they were mostly spent
+within the four walls of the abode of sanitation and physical purity
+that represented the outcome of both their theories of life. Adelaide
+had no sense of humour, but the cruel old man was apt to say that his
+daughter was the only microbe in the establishment--that miracle of
+asepticism. He gave her plenty of pocket-money, gibed at her to her
+friends before her face, but allowed her to do exactly as she liked,
+and with no consideration for her extreme youth and the life she had
+to live when he was gone, fared contemptuously towards the grave of
+known finality that awaited him. He had done his best for the world in
+the establishment of a higher ideal of infant feeding and early
+physical culture.
+
+He had done well by his daughter, he had fulfilled his duty as he
+considered it towards her mind and body. He had given her the best of
+educations. She had been to school by the sea as a child, as a girl to
+college. She had insisted on being highly trained and educated up to
+the nadir of her powers, and had her views cut and dried at sixteen.
+Carefully concentrating herself, with feverish intentness on
+efficiency, she had managed to do well in the tripos at Oxford, but
+her friends said that she had been screwed up to the required pitch by
+her imperious vanity. The girls of her year who had come out below her
+in Honours used to laugh when they met her afterwards in the street;
+for them she was the crank who had outstripped them, peering as her
+habit was, under the hoods of perambulators, on her way to lectures on
+Eugenics and Baby-Culture. They had heard all about her desire, nay,
+her fixed determination, to marry and worthily contribute to the
+World-Force, in the usual manner. At Somerville Hall, she had made no
+secret of her intention to bear an Eugenical child, or two, having
+first selected its father carefully, from a physiological point of
+view. Oh, yes, she had talked of nothing else at tea parties and
+walks, and had bored them so that when she left she had made no
+harvest of life-friends. They had tossed their learned young heads,
+and quite expected, some day, to hear of Adelaide Favarger, in spite
+of her big talk, as the feeble hang-dog mother, if a mother at all, of
+one puny infant, begotten of nerves and hysteria, by the usual
+self-selecting father. That is, if any man chose her, and this, in
+spite of her wealth, they were inclined to doubt.
+
+She wasn’t a girl who appealed to the men that marry. They felt that,
+and they were right.
+
+For men, looking at Adelaide Favarger with the instinctive and
+unconscious cunning of the male, that makes in the long run so surely
+for what Adelaide herself would have called the World Purpose, were
+likely to pass her by, as sexually ineligible for motherhood.
+Socially, too, she did not appear apt to satisfy their own particular
+standards of comfort and pleasure. Though, indubitably, Adelaide would
+be rich, they feared to take a wife out of the dreary, ill-managed,
+ill-cleaned house in Portland Place, full of unprobed corners and
+flights of stairs that seemed to drop you into plumbless depths of
+scullerydom and basement. The hall and dining-room were full of
+valuable mahogany furniture whose dull unpolished surfaces reflected
+nothing, the drawing-room was spread with rich yellow damask, that
+draped the sofas and chairs, and hung as curtains to mask as much
+scanty light as was willing to filter in through the tall windows that
+no normal housemaid could reach up to clean. No one did clean them.
+The curtains soared out of sight into the dusty ceilings and the
+chance hand, essaying to draw them further apart, shook out a dusty
+flavour that nipped the nostrils and was forthwith obliged to desist.
+
+Adelaide’s dinners, and she gave a great many of them, were ill
+cooked, scrambling and depressing. But the wine, Dr. Favarger’s own
+province, was excellent. He himself would have none of it. As soon as
+the sweets were put on, it was the old Doctor’s custom to rise, to
+stuff his creased napkin into the middle of his plate, and to leave
+the room without comment. It was always the same. He did not as a rule
+appear again: he disliked the kind of man that his daughter was apt to
+invite, and he had no desire to control her in the matter. The men
+were rather sorry to see him go, he was lazy, cynical and fascinating.
+
+There was one of Adelaide’s men whom he perhaps did not dislike. Yet,
+although he would not sit out the dinner even for him, the only time
+that Wald Ensor dined with Adelaide he stayed until the coffee and
+cigarettes were put on. Perhaps it was because he had himself
+introduced his daughter to the amiable young man at the Children’s
+Hospital. Ensor came to inquire after a child, whom he had kindly been
+instrumental in bringing in. It was dying of malnutrition. Its slum
+mother, stupid, underfed and wretched, but not vile, could not nourish
+it properly even if she would.
+
+The image of the tall, handsome young fellow with the perishing child
+in his arms had never left Adelaide; she had fallen in love with Wald
+Ensor, and with Adelaide, to fall in love was to ask to dinner.
+
+Ensor came. He was excessively fascinating to Adelaide, because he was
+so different from her other young men and especially from the
+second-rate Chelsea artist whom she had asked to make a fourth, and
+whom she already considered a survival from her old days of bad taste.
+Ensor’s manner was perfection. He was shyish, grave, intent, and
+self-contained, talked prettily to her father about his hospital and
+his cats and respectfully to herself about the subjects in which a
+young lady should be interested. Adelaide was not interested, but she
+instinctively forebore to disabuse him.
+
+She was too young, too reckless, too much unversed in strategy, to
+conceal the trend of her feelings and directing, as she did, all her
+conversation and her eyes towards Ensor, she seriously alienated the
+liking of her late friend, ally and limner, Mr. Wallace Marks, R.I.B.
+
+He bided his time, however, and as long as Dr. Favarger presided over
+his own table, he listened in a frankly bored manner which contrasted
+with Wald Ensor’s polite attention to talk which he only
+half-approved, coming from the lips of this savage irresponsible old
+savant, the indifferent natural guardian of a young girl’s delicate
+morals.
+
+“There is something,” the old hook-nosed man was saying, “something to
+be said for the woman who ill-treats her children.”
+
+Adelaide protested conventionally. “Nothing!” she said.
+
+“My daughter,” said her father spitefully, without looking in her
+direction, “wishes to impress you with the fact of her well-known love
+for babies. She does not, however, really care for them a bit. She has
+never considered these matters scientifically in her life, although
+she’s always hanging round the Hospital, and hindering my young
+assistants. If she had a child, she’d neglect it. Cruelty--masked by
+Philanthropy! Look for it deep--it’s there!” His nose appeared cold,
+sharp and ferreting. He did not smile. Ensor shuddered.
+
+Adelaide made a wry face and Ensor was sorry for her,
+disproportionately so, for she did not really mind being teased by her
+parent. The old man continued--
+
+“On the lines I have been mentioning to you, Ensor, even child-murder
+is excusable, obeying, as it may be said to do, an almost forgotten
+animal instinct. A cat, say, who by some circumstance or other has
+been disturbed before parturition and rendered hysterical----”
+
+“Good Lord, a hysterical cat----” ejaculated the bounder.
+
+Dr. Favarger took no notice of him, but continued his sentence--
+
+--“will tear or otherwise destroy the progeny that she foresees
+herself unable to feed or attend to. So do unhappy servant girls,
+faced, in their hour of trial, with the problem of the disposal of
+illegitimate offspring, reserve to themselves the right of destroying
+what their instinct tells them they will be unable in the future to
+protect and nourish----”
+
+“Oh, Father,” protested Adelaide again and her tone was sincere.
+“Think of it! The tender young life, the helpless weakling, bone of
+one’s bone, flesh of one’s flesh.… Motherhood is so sacred--it should,
+I think, be subsidized by the State. A capitation fee for every child.
+Then the mother would have the wherewithal to nourish herself properly
+and maternal feeling would do the rest.”
+
+Dr. Favarger smiled, a smile without kindness in it. It was his
+daughter’s smile. She had that too, as well as his nose.
+
+“Even then, she or you would probably have none of these fine feelings
+at the moment. She has suffered physically; she is irresponsible: mere
+brutal selfish instinct dominates her. And if she desists, if she does
+make an attempt to salve it, she has to watch the hapless infant”--he
+sneered--“through her care, surviving, but as a hopeless idiot.… Of
+course,” he continued, “I except cases of mere cruelty, such as
+baby-farming. If a woman kills or ill-treats the child of another, no
+natural feeling except greed of gain can possibly come into play, not
+even vanity----”
+
+“Vanity?” said Adelaide.
+
+“Yes, Mother’s vanity, a huge non-negligible factor in these matters.
+But in most cases it is not necessary to plead it, for nature’s broad
+back may easily take the blame. And when a woman of our own class,
+maybe, is brought before the magistrate and fined or imprisoned
+because she has taken a rod to the ugly duckling, or systematically
+ill-treated a weakly, ungracious child to the point of extinction, she
+might plead that she is only doing what a cat or any other perfectly
+normal animal does when one of her young is not up to sample, and
+seems obviously degenerate to her keener sense. My cat Philippa, for
+instance----”
+
+Adelaide sneered. The bounder fidgeted. Ensor preserved his attitude
+of somewhat strained attention.
+
+--“Had a fine litter of four the other day. I found one of them, to my
+uninstructed eye, as healthy as the others, on the cold stone floor
+for three successive mornings before it died. She had thrown it out of
+the nest, she had refused to feed it, she had just weeded it out. Why?
+It was unfit to live. And if you study these trials that come up every
+now and then, and observe carefully the characteristics of the little
+victims as described by the officers of the S.P.C.C., you will see
+that in most cases these brutalized children are slow,
+unprepossessing, unpleasant and sometimes revolting in their habits.
+They work up through the first few years of infancy, unpetted,
+neglected, marked down to develop all the successive stages of
+degeneracy. They are obviously better dead. No pretty, healthy,
+fetching child--a child like the egregious infant in _Bubbles_,
+say,--ever appears in court on such a plea. There Mother’s vanity
+comes in.…”
+
+He would have continued, but Adelaide, whom this conversation neither
+pleased nor interested, rose. The bounder heaved an audible sigh of
+relief. Ensor, though he had been interested, even a little charmed by
+the old man’s manner, could not help deploring that this extremely
+technical and advanced conversation had not postdated the young girl’s
+departure.
+
+Old Dr. Favarger left the room with Adelaide. He said to her in the
+hall, before he hobbled away to his own study and sleeping apartment
+on the ground floor--
+
+“You have picked up a gentleman for once.”
+
+She walked on as if he had not spoken. She always made a point of not
+answering her father when he girded at her. His approval of Ensor,
+though not unpleasing, was absolutely immaterial to her. She loved
+him, she meant to have him, through the door of marriage or no. She
+went upstairs to the drawing-room to await the two men, and flung
+herself down on the great yellow sofa with the black cushions, too
+nervous even to smoke. She was convinced, albeit for the twentieth
+time, that she had found the Eugenical father at last.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+Wald Ensor, the gentleman according to Dr. Favarger’s acceptance, left
+sitting after an atrocious dinner, with a man who could not possibly
+fulfil the Doctor’s conditions, felt extremely uncomfortable. His
+annoyance grew as his messmate tended to grow familiar in
+conversation. A wretched artist from Chelsea, self-styled modern, with
+white hair and a dyed moustache, to whom the host had not vouchsafed a
+word all dinner! The fine old man had been annoyed by his cockney
+accent, presumably. He had talked, although she did not listen,
+psychology with Adelaide, and his pert underbred voice had broken in
+all the while through Dr. Favarger’s cultivated tones. Now that the
+host and hostess were gone, this bounder ventured to turn the
+analytical method on to his hostess herself, and Ensor did not know
+how to stop him. He fidgeted about on his Spanish leather covered
+chair, and made various efforts to do so, but in vain.
+
+“Nice girl, very,” the creature went on. “With a face like an old
+master--one of those Primitives, don’t you know? Lots of drawing
+about. Pity she’s so morbid.”
+
+Wald Ensor made a gesture of negation.
+
+“Oh, yes, she is. Talks of nothing but Eugenics and so on. Thinks of
+nothing but the other thing.… It’s only a mask, with these women you
+know, all that rot about child-bearing and being subsidized by the
+State and so on. She’s an erotomaniac, that’s what she is--sits about
+on yellow sofas and asks men to love her. They do that fast enough,
+she’s very good fun--but they don’t marry her.… Do you know Gertrude?
+Do you know why they put up with her--she’s the cook--why the dinners
+here are so confoundedly bad?”--
+
+“No, I don’t, and----” Ensor expostulated. His blood boiled, he didn’t
+think he could stand it any longer, he wanted to throw his glass in
+the fellow’s face. He rose.…
+
+The other man, nothing abashed, although their conversation had hardly
+lasted the canonical few minutes, rose too, saying amiably, “So! Let’s
+join our hostess.”
+
+He continued amiably as they passed out--
+
+“Cook’s bad, but can’t be parted with, don’t you know? She’s up to
+games of her own, is the fair Gertrude. They found a baby she’d just
+had in a dressing-table drawer, so Adelaide told me while she was
+sitting. Time for confidences, eh? Seen my portrait of her? In the
+New----”
+
+They were half-way upstairs by this time. The artist opened the
+drawing-room door and disclosed Adelaide sitting, as he had predicted,
+on a yellow satin sofa, with her head resting on black satin cushions.
+There was room for one man beside her. The bounder slipped easily and
+voluptuously into that place, and Ensor with a spasm of jealous
+disgust, took an early opportunity of making his adieux, and left
+them.
+
+
+He never dined in the house again. He could not bring himself to risk
+meeting men of that stamp.
+
+Yet he pitied her. He admired her. Her great discontented eyes haunted
+him. He felt as if a white plaining woman’s hand was outstretched to
+him from out of a weltering sea of bounderism. Adelaide, a lady, could
+not really like that sort of man? No, for she liked him. She wrote
+continually begging him to accept her hospitality--hospitality of all
+kinds. She began to vary skilfully the form of her invitations, but he
+still refused all invitations to meals at her house.
+
+At last she suggested that if he could not stand her cook he should
+take her out to dine at “some low pot house,” so she phrased it. He
+laughed. For he knew that if he should succumb to her blandishments,
+he would certainly take her to a decent fairly respectable restaurant:
+he would not pander to her taste for Bohemianism, but save her from
+herself and her friends.
+
+As he thought it over after each fresh invitation, a taste for this
+form of social humanitarianism grew on him. He began to fancy the idea
+of rescuing this really nice girl and taking her to decent places and
+showing her how a decent man would behave. The girl was motherless,
+her father did not pretend to look after her. She had a fine generous
+character, was large in her ideas, she gave freely, she was kind to
+her own sex, and would never go back on any one. The disreputable
+cook, now,--he was sure that in keeping her on, poor Miss Favarger was
+really undertaking a work of charity. The woman had obviously had what
+is called a misfortune, she had possibly gone through what is also
+called a tragedy. Adelaide was obviously not the sort of person who
+would ever cast a human being out of doors, under any circumstances
+whatever, especially a woman in the condition in which the cook had
+presumably found herself. Lazy, preoccupied, indifferent, she made no
+excuse for her shameful tolerance, and even condescended to discuss
+the details of it with such worms as Ensor’s fellow guest of a few
+weeks ago. That was merely an error of taste, the result of her
+unmothered, unchaperoned state. She was at bottom a really well-bred
+woman. Ensor, a rover, a man who had knocked about the world and yet
+preserved his vast shyness and a modicum of innocence, thought he saw
+clearly that the time and place were out of joint with Adelaide. Her
+morals were mediæval, with no present parallel except perhaps one
+that should be found in the milieu of the South Sea Islands.
+
+So he came to invite her to dine with him at Prince’s and even
+Kettner’s; she had tea with him on the slopes in Kensington Gardens;
+they walked together in Hyde Park on Sundays, Adelaide protesting
+vehemently that she hated dressing up and posing as one of the smart
+set. In vain Ensor assured her that to mingle casually with that
+select denomination at Church Parade, was not to be within a hundred
+miles of being “of” it: that to dine at Kettner’s with a man alone was
+sufficiently unconventional. Adelaide continued to protest, to beg him
+to take her to his flat, and to discuss sex questions in a loud voice
+over restaurant dinner tables. She called it Eugenics.
+
+Ensor did not really enjoy these discussions, the young woman, sitting
+there, her elbows on the table, her hands propping her hard chin, her
+burning eyes fixed on him made it almost impossible for him to eat a
+solid British dinner, and keep his British countenance at the same
+time.
+
+He could stand any amount of talk of this kind from platforms, or on
+the stage with the footlights between him and the exponents of the new
+Feeling, the New World Movement, the new Morality; here, under the
+shaded red lights, with discreet foreign waiters gliding about the
+chance commensals; the face to face discussion of such topics outraged
+his simple sensitiveness and ordinary sense of decency. The only thing
+that at all saved the situation was the girl’s astonishing absence of
+self-consciousness. She talked like a boy--a clever, morbid,
+self-conscious lad just home from college, her sedulous use of slang
+helped the impression. Yet all the while her eyes belied her and
+occasionally her voice. Now and then an outrageous note of sex
+bitterness pierced through her level lazy accents and brought their
+talk home with a rush from the plane of impersonality. With Adelaide
+it was when her eyes ceased to look passionate and eager but became
+sombre and heavy, instead: it was when her sharp grating voice grew
+soft and mellow and trailing that Ensor feared her most, and such
+moments were growing more and more frequent as their meetings went on.
+He stood to his guns, however, he was not one to throw even a
+graceless woman over.
+
+Had he not been the most retiring, most modest of men he would have
+realized that Adelaide Favarger was in love with him. He would have
+disliked--he would have refused to realize it, for it would have
+forced him to formulate his own feeling for her, and that was a queer
+mixture of sensual pity, and revolted fascination. There were times
+when he thought he fully grasped what she wanted of him and was glad
+of her assumption that his refusal to dine with her in Portland Place
+represented merely a protest against the inefficiency of her cook.
+This theory, which at all times and all seasons she put before him,
+and which she had freely proffered as an explanation of his “snubbing”
+of her, was a convenience to him, since it effectually masked his
+reluctance to be the father of her eugenical child.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+Like her other men friends, Ensor always saw Adelaide Favarger home
+after their evenings together. Unlike the others, however, he always
+left her punctiliously on the doorstep, as soon as her front door
+answered to her key and the cavernous gulf of the hall swallowed her
+up. No Bianca Capello business for him! She used to tease him about
+this, she used the romantic illustration, with a point of bitterness.
+She had now accepted the situation and no longer even asked him to
+come in. Her “Good-nights” were a miracle of sour brevity and
+conciseness.
+
+One night in July they had been to the Exhibition together and had sat
+late listening to the band playing “Tristan.” The out-door performance
+represented a pale vapid reflection of the original orchestral heat
+and passion merely, but out there in the murky shadow-thridden
+radiance, in the dust-fumed air, it was effective. Adelaide had talked
+less than usual. The summer nights that year were long and clear. When
+rather late, they returned to it, satiate of romance, great, wide
+Portland Place seemed to sleep lonely under a Norwegian midnight.
+Nothing so cold even as a moonbeam shone on its raddled stones and
+stern house fronts, except where a tree in the garden next to
+Adelaide’s house hung over her steps on one side and lent it some
+mystery. There was a big party higher up the street and some
+stationary taxicabs stood waiting in the middle of the roadway, black,
+vague, a file of indistinguishable shapes, whence the figure of a man
+now and then disengaged himself, did something to his vehicle and was
+absorbed into the mass again. Adelaide had insisted on Ensor’s
+dismissing their own cab at Oxford Circus, and together they walked
+across the broad stone-paved expanse. The girl held her exiguous
+skirts tightly round her thin, airily poised legs. She knew they were
+fine, she knew she had a beautiful figure.
+
+She gained the broad flat step in front of her door and turned a
+little sideways to the man who stood waiting for her to effect her
+entry and bid her a hasty good-bye as usual. He was a little bemused
+by “Tristan” he was looking dreamily back across the street they had
+just traversed, his head full of carefully conceived, adroitly moving
+harmonies.…
+
+“Come in and have a drink?” Adelaide said carelessly, but her voice
+was rough and throaty.
+
+The demand appeared to startle him. He thought he had cured her of all
+that. Her request was out of all order and he did not reply at once.…
+
+She faced him but did not meet his eyes.…
+
+“Why won’t you?” she asked peevishly. “Even if you won’t dine? What
+have I done? Why am I doomed? Cursed.…”
+
+“My dear Miss Favarger!…”
+
+“Miss Favarger be blowed!” She spoke like a school-girl. She caught,
+as a monkey does, at the lapel of his coat--fumbled at it.…
+
+“For God’s sake,” she said, “don’t insult me so! Come in for a
+moment!”
+
+ II
+
+Wald Ensor came back to his flat in Ebury Street some time in the
+early piping dawn and found a cablegram lying in his letter-box. It
+told him of the sudden death of a distant but beloved relation, out in
+California, a man in whose business he had a concern. A day or two
+later he had arranged his affairs and sailed for the other side. He
+had found time before he left to forward a bulky package to Miss
+Adelaide Favarger, containing the skin of a leopard which he had shot
+himself, and of which he had spoken to Adelaide. It went with her,
+somehow, and she had looked flattered when he said so. He had now a
+very friendly feeling towards her, she seemed to him, on the whole,
+since their mutual experience, to be a saner, worthier member of the
+community than before.
+
+He did not fancy, when he stepped off this hemisphere, that he was
+leaving Europe for a very long time. But it was so. He married out in
+California. He conceived it to be out of pity in some sort, an idea of
+giving a girl, much buffeted by fortune, a home. But as a matter of
+fact Adelaide had awakened the zest of the eternal feminine in a man
+who had imagined himself to be a confirmed bachelor. The girl was
+saved, domesticated, but Wald Ensor’s attempts at civism and paternity
+were not blessed in the usual way. After they had been married five
+years his wife died in giving birth to a child, which died too. Then
+he drifted, bereft of his casual impetus towards a settled life. His
+cousin died, leaving him fairly well off. He started several
+adventures in the world of business, nearly all of which failed, for
+he had not what is called _la main heureuse_.
+
+With an orange grove that did not pay, left on his hands, and nothing
+else to speak of, he came back to Europe. Temporarily crippled in his
+resources, he decided to lie low till matters should have righted
+themselves. He was too proud to take his place in society, and go out
+while his only dress suit was shiny at the knees. He avoided London.
+He did, however, call in Portland Place and found new inmates
+established there, and was told that old Dr. Favarger was dead and
+Miss Favarger gone, no one knew where, and that she had taken the cook
+with her.
+
+It was in Yorkshire on a market-day, in Beverley, that he met Adelaide
+again.
+
+At first sight she seemed very little altered, only he realized that
+he had always imagined that she was taller. She was walking with her
+old staccato step that suggested some congenital weakness, such as a
+slightly stiffened spine, on the rough cobbled stones of the market,
+about and among the pens and improvised folds that prisoned lowing
+cows and calves and indifferent, sullen bulls. She was not alone. Her
+companion was a beautiful girl of about fifteen, a whole head taller
+than herself. Perhaps that was why he thought her shrunken? There was
+about her a slight countrified air, which differed greatly from the
+exaggerated, rather meretricious style in which the old Adelaide had
+been used to make her points, and strive to enhance her own peculiar
+charm.
+
+The two women were absorbed. They were leaning on the well-worn wooden
+rail, which served to pen in the unruly cattle, and watched with
+interest and attention the movements of a magnificent young bull,
+which had as nearly as possible succeeded in wrenching his neck free
+from the clumsy headstall that fixed him to the post. His
+discontented, inflamed eyes, his stubby, determined shoulder, the
+dull, passionate intentness on freedom manifested by his attitude
+seemed to fascinate the elder woman, who was expatiating on his
+beauties to the seemingly less interested spectator beside her.…
+
+“Nice beast, isn’t he, Phillis?” she murmured.
+
+“Yes, but he’ll get his head out in about a minute!” the child said
+nervously.
+
+“Then it will be Hell let loose,” replied the elder woman, evidencing
+a sort of savage enjoyment in the spectacle of the younger one’s
+timidity. She continued, gloating, “He’d have the whole place cleared
+in no time. Shall we stay and see the racket?”
+
+Her hand stole towards the frayed rope.…
+
+“No, don’t undo it, Addie. Oh, I do believe you’re going to! Do let’s
+go home,” the child pleaded pettishly. “And Mary must be tired and
+cold, waiting in the car all this time.”
+
+“Oh, damn Mary!” said Adelaide. “Who cares for Mary?”
+
+“But I’m tired and cold too.”
+
+“You are? Come along then, my precious--at once.”
+
+She turned and faced Wald Ensor. The long last look with which she had
+enveloped the splendid, sullen, restless animal had not left her humid
+eyes.
+
+Quickly she recognized him, and righted herself. She put up to her
+eyes, with a reminiscence of her town manner, a pince-nez that hung
+round her neck by a chain of antique workmanship, and said in a hard
+voice--
+
+“Is that you?”
+
+Then a marked hesitation seemed to overcome her. She raised her arm
+that hung languidly down at her side, as if to ward off a blow. A
+little collection of parcels she was holding together by a string fell
+to the ground. The child very properly bent to pick them up. Ensor
+properly, too, was about to forestall her, but a gesture from Adelaide
+seemed to him to be intended to prevent and forbid him doing so. There
+was an awkward pause.…
+
+Then Adelaide, indicating with her pince-nez the stooping figure of
+the beautiful young girl, and looking carefully away, pronounced
+quickly--
+
+“Wald, my daughter, Phillis.”
+
+“How do you do?” said Wald Ensor, formally, when, her cheeks reddened
+with stooping, the child resumed her upright position. She was
+concerned because one of the parcels was missing. Perhaps it had
+rolled under the feet of the bull?…
+
+“Never mind,” said her mother fondly. There was a loving pride in her
+voice. None of the lowing cows, untethered, but morally fast anchored
+to the posts where their calves were firmly bounden, their mother-love
+taken into strict consideration by the cunning drover, who relied on
+it more surely than on any rope that was ever spun of hemp, could
+boast a tenderer, more maternal solicitude. Ensor was touched. So the
+restless, theoretic Adelaide was happy and settled at last, her hopes
+fulfilled, her theories carried out.
+
+Phillis, in her bucolic completeness and obvious sterling health, was
+a maternal production to be proud of. She had golden hair, blue eyes
+and a complexion of roses and again roses. There were hardly any
+lilies, and although she was lovely at fifteen, the chances were that
+she would be raddled at fifty. Ensor noticed that the bare hand that
+clutched the wooden rail was, unlike her mother’s, large and heavy.
+She probably had feet to correspond. The dark, bushy eyebrows, which
+struck a note of savagery in the simple, placidly sensuous
+countenance, suggested one coarse progenitor; Adelaide’s was an
+excessively refined type. He surmised that she had in effect succeeded
+in capturing something in the nature of a prize-fighter for a mate.
+Such, she had declared, was her ambition to do in the old days at any
+rate, something rustic, fair and Saxon.…
+
+Adelaide released her underlip, which she had drawn in and had bitten
+till it bled, and spoke quickly, with a graceless, oppressive
+cordiality that reminded Ensor, at that moment, of the first time she
+had invited him to dinner in Portland Place. In her access of nervous
+excitement, as of one constantly expecting to be refused, she was
+exactly the same, uncertain, deprecating, but peremptory.
+
+“Where are you staying, Wald? At the Antelope? Here on business? Well,
+you can do it from High Walls. We’ll motor you in every day. Let us go
+and get your things out of the Antelope. The car’s there--waiting for
+us----”
+
+“Thank you-- I hardly think I----” so Ensor was saying at intervals,
+and continued to say. He felt annoyed, hustled, overborne by all the
+methods of an aggressive, overweening personality. Adelaide’s love of
+domineering had once been modified by youthful languor; now her
+masterfulness was reinforced by physical fitness. She had grown out of
+the delicacy of the young girl, and was well, a woman to count with.
+
+He thought of this as he walked behind her and Phillis through the
+thronging market-place. She talked to him over her shoulder, hardly
+listening to his objections. They threaded the crowd. Fusty interested
+groups were collected round this or that shrewd cheap Jack. He
+extolled, in the clearings they willingly made for him, now yards of
+tawdry lace, now pieces of coarse netting warranted never to tear, now
+rough crockery warranted never to break. And Ensor could hardly hear
+Adelaide’s unmodulated voice, through the clatter of hoofs on the
+stone causeways as the clumsy, puzzled animals were run along them at
+a gallop by sweating, panting stable-boys, anxious to exhibit their
+paces to intending purchasers. Adelaide would stop dead every now and
+then and become absorbed in the contemplation of melancholy stallions
+with straw-plaited tails, which stood, their shiny black hocks turned
+outward, all adown the smooth bits of stone flagging intersecting the
+rough cobbles.
+
+Ensor, to call her attention to his protests, punctuated his remarks
+at intervals with, “My dear Mrs.----” She took no notice, and if she
+heard, did not care to supply the name. Now and again Phillis would
+turn and smile, a sweet irresponsible smile, at him and sketch an
+inviting gesture. Ensor liked all children, and especially girls of
+that age, and after one of these little demonstrations followed with
+less travail of the spirit and fewer protests. He rather wanted, too,
+to see the Mary “be-damned” who was said to be waiting, cold, tired,
+and neglected in the car.
+
+They had reached the outer fringe of booths, the raucous voices of
+cheap Jacks and the heartrending moos of the cows faded out of
+hearing, and the broad street in front of the Antelope Inn, before
+whose open yard door many conveyances stood, lay before him. He
+crossed the road and was now faced with the immediate problem of
+acceptance or refusal of Adelaide’s invitation.
+
+There was another child in the motor, hunched up and cowering among
+the rolling swathes of the leather motor hood pushed back. She was
+obviously cold and tired of waiting. She seemed about ten years old.
+Her dull eyes fixed themselves on him stupidly, wearily, with a kind
+of painful animal interest.… She did not take them off him. Her white,
+wide, flat face did not light up in the least when Adelaide
+approached, and in reply to Ensor’s tacit inquiry, said briefly--
+
+“No, not mine. The cook’s. You remember Gertrude--the cook that
+couldn’t cook? Ha! ha! Didn’t you worry me about it? I have Mary here
+for her health, and I leave her in the car because she’s afraid of
+cows. Now, Phillis, be quick, go and get the things at Storr’s, and
+come back. It’s a fairly long run home, Wald.…” She busied herself
+with some rugs.…
+
+Phillis departed, saying in a child’s flirtatious way as she obeyed
+her mother’s request, “Now mind you come,” while Ensor slavishly
+entered the hotel, sought his room and gathered up his belongings. The
+other child seemed to him to have seconded the invitation too, in her
+own dreamy, spiritless way. It touched him. He fancied he might cheer
+her up a bit if he could once get her to take to him and gain her
+confidence. Children liked him.
+
+When he came out of the hotel again Phillis and the other child were
+safely stowed away in the back of the car under one rug, pressed up
+against each other to keep warm. They seemed to get on very well
+together, Ensor was glad to see.
+
+Adelaide invited her guest to take his seat in front beside her, and
+they started.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+Adelaide drove in a careless, slapdash way which suggested the hand of
+little practice. She took risks, she showed ignorance of some
+fundamental rules of safety. This, however, did not disconcert Ensor
+at all, he had plenty of physical courage. Full tilt they ran along
+dull lanes and roads, blackish under foot, hedge-bordered in a sullen
+craven green. The Plain of York in all its mediocre dreariness
+unrolled itself before them. Adelaide, from between her pursed lips,
+made no attempt to point out landmarks or objects of interest. There
+were no interesting features to point out. Dull bryony shoots and
+clematis tendrils were spread over the hedges, like a dusty net
+coverlet on a lodging-house bed, neutral-tinted nettles carpeted them
+at the foot, and at due intervals in their extent, clean, neatly-made
+gates shut off the entry into fields each one like the other. The same
+kind of stupid, spiritless bird rose up now and again, and lighted on
+the tedious brown furrow that hid the one behind it. Mean clumps of
+trees that veiled no possible trysting-place, bordered the road or
+looked over it here and there. Ensor heard the little girls behind him
+whispering and chuckling in the well of the carriage where they had
+declined in laughing avoidance of the cold wind that blew steadily
+over the plain. At least he heard Phillis’s voice and took Mary’s for
+granted. The two seemed to be very good friends.
+
+And then Adelaide began to talk to him in her wiredrawn inartistic
+tones which suggested to Ensor something like a rope, lashing, being
+trailed along a gravel walk, for he longed to bid her lift it, to try
+to get taut now and then. The crude passion that smouldered in her
+eyes, only lent an edge to her voice. It always did. When his mind
+dwelt on the changes in her, he could think of no feature that had
+altered much in twelve years, except her mouth which, from having been
+as nearly as possible straight, had now lost all suggestion of curve,
+and opening generally in raspishness, closed always in a helpless
+peevishness. Her face reminded him of the matronly yet at the same
+time old-maidish faces of those mentally starved, materially satisfied
+women of the Renaissance he had seen in pictures and reproductions. It
+was the same drawing over the cheeks, the same anxious slope of the
+flesh away from the consumptive peaks and hollows of the bones. Her
+nervous little hands, clawlike, handled the wheel with ill-regulated
+vigour and obstinate determination to excel. Her vanity amused Ensor,
+and since it made so decidedly for efficiency, commended itself to
+him. He liked women to show grit, and did not on the whole object to
+be managed by any person exhibiting marked competency.
+
+As he reckoned, she had to give most of her real attention to the
+driving of the car. Her vanity stimulated her to attempt to pay off
+her guest with a conversation composed of ideas long since formulated
+by herself or others.
+
+“Isn’t it a grim country?” she said cheerfully. “They say that there
+are more heirs and heiresses of solitary habit and tottering reason to
+the square inch here than in any other county in England. You see,”
+she knitted her brows, “these old feudal people have all along paid no
+attention to physiological rules; they have chosen to intermarry so
+fearfully.”
+
+“Your old preoccupation, eh!” said Ensor, smiling.
+
+“Don’t sneer, Wald. We met and took to each other on that ground, you
+remember, and I am keener on it than ever. I hate anything of a
+misbegotten or deformed nature like death or sin, which indeed it is.”
+She looked at him keenly. “Do you know if I was not a Christian woman
+I should find myself beating Mary here within an inch of her life?”
+
+Ensor made a sound indicating his wish and his conviction that it were
+proper that she should lower her voice. Adelaide accepted the
+criticism and to some extent heeded its remonstrance, in the next few
+words she said.
+
+“But as she’s poor faithful old Gertrude’s unique scion I stay my
+hand, and give her instead Parrish’s Food.”
+
+“It’s very good of you,” Ensor murmured, oppressed. He remembered the
+baby in the chest of drawers, and, besides, he felt those big helpless
+opaque-seeming eyes of the child in the car behind, plumb in the
+middle of his back.…
+
+“Dead against my own theories too,” Adelaide went on. “That sort of
+distinct evidence of a parent’s physiological failure ought to be
+stamped out at birth.”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Ensor slowly and strainedly. “Perhaps she is going to
+be a poet? I fancy Keats had those beautiful suffering eyes.”
+
+“Eyes of a sick monkey, pah!” ejaculated Adelaide, brutally, and as
+loudly as she had ever spoken before. “Let us not think of her. Tell
+me all about yourself.”
+
+Wald Ensor obeyed and gave her an account of his doings during the
+last twelve years. As he talked in the even, rather tame manner which
+in him was accentuated, not diminished, by deep feeling, he was
+conscious all the time of a duel waged within him by two opposing but
+strong moods.
+
+One side of him longed to lay his hand on Adelaide’s and get her to
+stop the car, and allow him to step out of the range of her puissant
+personality, which alarmed while it interested him. The other side,
+the explorer-adventurer side, divorced from her image, wanted to stay
+and see it through, and have another look at the two youthful beings
+for whom Adelaide was making herself responsible, more especially the
+cook’s ailing child. One long, attenuated, but distinct thread of
+passionate feeling linked him to her.… He had felt like that towards a
+monkey from a tropical island on the ship that the captain was
+bringing home to colder climes, and which resented it in sadness and
+melancholy.
+
+With regard to adventure, he could not help wondering if when they
+reached a place called High Walls, where Adelaide said she lived, a
+fond husband would come to the portal, and welcome his wife and the
+stranger she had chosen to bring home. For Adelaide had volunteered no
+information about herself on that head, and he was too shy, or too
+apprehensive of difficulties to ask for any. He only gathered that she
+was well off and had bought High Walls herself, for Dr. Favarger had
+left his only daughter everything.
+
+Ensor expected, he knew not why, that the car would turn in at some
+majestic drive, bordered by fine old trees. He was the more surprised
+when after going for half-a-mile or so along a bit of road bordered by
+hedges on one side, and a high brick wall on the other, overhung by
+heavy elm-trees, Adelaide stopped the car opposite a small sunk door
+in this very wall.
+
+“I live here,” she said. “Wald, will you ring?”
+
+Rooks cawed from their nests in the clumps of high trees that seemed
+to fill all the enclosure, and a dog barked, evidently hearing the
+noise of the car and anxious to welcome its mistress. Ensor, as he
+stood in the roadway after having pulled the long iron handle of the
+bell, had the sense of being at the postern gate of some embattled
+fortress standing tall and grimly self-contained in the gloomy plateau
+of the Wolds.
+
+Time passed. No one came to the door, the dog inside barked fitfully.
+Adelaide’s voice sounded unreal in the great spaces.… Yet she was
+talking as people talk in cities.
+
+“Nice old place!” she was saying jauntily. “I bought it, it went so
+well with my own peculiar mentality. It belonged to one of the
+crocky-minded noblemen I told you of; he came to need only one
+room--somewhere else and padded--so I got it cheap, freehold and all.
+It takes delightfully few servants to keep it up, and that’s what I
+like. I hate servants spying. What are mine about.… Hollo!”
+
+She stood up in the car and called out. Her voice was not good. At
+last, a shuffling old manservant appeared, and stood holding the door,
+not attempting to make himself useful in any way. It was Ensor who
+helped Adelaide out. Then he turned to the two children.… Phillis had
+already leaped out. Ensor looked keenly at the other child, sitting or
+rather crouching in the wide seat. Their eyes met for a moment. Then
+Adelaide seemed to intercept them.
+
+“Mary, stop in the car!… No, she may as well come round with us,” she
+said fussily.
+
+The man got in and took the vehicle off somewhere, and piled with
+motor-rugs, Ensor stumbled after Adelaide and the two children. A
+narrow path, flagged with stones, not a carriage drive, led up the
+very short way to the house. On the steps an ugly puppy rushed at
+them, and covered Phillis with damp paw-marks. The child tried to
+abash and quieten it, in vain. Adelaide in her unnatural, would-be
+forcible tones, called it off, and bade it come to her. The dog
+obeyed, but in Ensor’s opinion, without enthusiasm.
+
+Adelaide seemed to think differently. “You see,” she said. “He loves
+the hand that chastens him. I do the chastening. I have to, all these
+people are so tender-hearted, except Gertrude--she has good strong
+hands.”
+
+“I do hate to hear it howling, Addie,” remarked Phillis.
+
+“All young things,” said her mother, gravely, “need to go through a
+period of misery and due correction before they are fitted for social
+purposes. And this is a good dog, or you bet I shouldn’t keep him or
+trouble about him at all. I hate mongrels, human or otherwise, don’t
+you, Wald?”…
+
+Her eyes hardened, embittered in expression, fell on the puny child,
+who held an immense rug that trailed on the ground beside her. She was
+evidently too shy or helpless to put it down or act at all until an
+order was expressly given her. Ensor took the rug from her. She did
+not look up. He began to think this instance of Adelaide’s
+philanthropic kindness was half-witted.…
+
+“Go in, Mary,” said Adelaide sharply. “Don’t stand fiddling there!”
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+Some one did thrash the puppy next day, for Ensor heard it howling
+loudly beneath his bedroom window. Its cry was for all the world like
+that of a child that was being beaten. He could not rest in bed
+through the noise, though he knew well enough that dogs must be
+trained. He rose and employed the hour or so thus gained on the day to
+examine carefully the position of the room he was in, its means of
+exit, etc., in the style of all well-seasoned travellers. He then put
+on his hat and went out by a back entrance, half stumbling over and
+apologizing to a small child in a cotton frock who was scrubbing the
+steps of it. He examined the shape of the house, the extent of the
+garden, and counted the number of tall elm-trees that surrounded it,
+and were in their turn circumscribed by the high, dull brick wall that
+gave Adelaide’s house its name.
+
+High Walls was a composite building, finished in late Georgian period,
+but including portions dating from almost every period after
+Elizabeth. The Elizabethan part was more or less built up in the
+interior. A Georgian architect of the worst years had carefully
+enclosed and hidden it away, and faced all with a frontage that
+offended every canon of art and taste and depressed every eye as well.
+The high brick wall, Ensor fancied, represented a still more recent
+addition, for the hideous expensive portal and colonnade of the
+façade which had been evidently designed to dazzle the countryside,
+was dwarfed and crushed out of all proportion by the encroaching
+circumference which ate up both air and space, and gave the house the
+air of an asylum or a prison.
+
+His voyage of discovery ended, he went quietly in by the front door in
+the middle of the colonnade, and found himself in a shiny-floored
+hall, carpeted here and there with wild beast skins, among which he
+recognized his own handsome present to Miss Adelaide Favarger. One
+corner of the hall, rendered rather dark in daylight by the pillars of
+the colonnade, was palisaded off with old German screens, or
+arm-chairs that successfully fended off draughts from the front door,
+and permitted it to be used as a lounge and smoking-room.
+
+It was panelled with oak and furnished in the old-fashioned regulation
+country-house style in dark browns and yellows. Several heavy antlered
+heads of deer hung on the walls. Their sad, glassy eyes leered down
+pensively. He noticed, as he went round, pince-nez in hand, that there
+were some very good engravings. But they all embodied the usual
+gloating cruelties of the sportsman. There was a print of the fighting
+deer of Landseer with antlers interlocked till death, another of the
+rabbit in the trap, and one of the stag pulled down by its yelping
+enemies. All these famous works of art were repugnant to Ensor. He
+was, if he thought about it, inclined to be anti-vivisectionist.
+
+On the broad hearth, although it was July, charred logs rested on the
+iron dogs and fell slowly away into a bed of soft grey ash, the
+reduced ghosts of themselves. There was a growing heap of detritus
+that was never buried or cleared away. The gnawing flame lurked there
+somewhere at its heart, but gave no warmth, and the man, used to
+Californian summers, felt chilly and longed to stir the logs, though
+it was summer, into some semblance of wintry activity.
+
+He knew how to behave, however, and taking up an out-of-date local
+paper that was lying about, he sat down with a patient eye on the main
+staircase which he expected his hostess to presently descend. The
+paper was dull to the uninitiated in local gossip, and he dropped it
+and began to go over again in his mind the last words that Adelaide
+had said to him as she ascended that very staircase last night. One
+small, finely-shaped foot was on the stair. With her small
+housekeeping letter-bag in one hand--the bag he had never seen her
+without since they came to High Walls--she had held out to him the
+other hand, saying gravely, without suspicion of vulgar archness--
+
+“Good-night. Sleep well. I shan’t.”
+
+He had said nothing, disconcerted, but had let her go. He was
+outraged, not so much by her words, as by the look with which she had
+punctuated them. It made him remember, with an intense, shy, conscious
+memory, the last time he had seen her eyes as she had turned to him on
+the gas-lit doorstep--the eyes of a sick monkey--she had given him the
+phrase herself--the yellow sofa in its corner at Portland Place--the
+wide gleaming doorstep again, when placated, reproachless, seeking not
+to bind him, she had let him out into the dawn.
+
+He had begun by admiring her for her fine non-deprecatory attitude,
+her bold reliance on the social and moral efficacy of her own
+standards and principles. She denied nothing, deprecated nothing,
+dropped nothing. The yellow sofa was there, in the hall, he had
+recognized it overnight, a handsome piece of furniture. He had not
+supposed that she cared to invest it with sentimental recollections of
+her old home and her maiden days. Or did she?
+
+He brooded over the ways of women, of which he proudly supposed
+himself to know nothing, when a female servant came through the outer
+hall, bearing to-day’s paper, which she laid down on the yellow
+cushions beside him. He had no time to ask her a question as to
+Adelaide’s morning plans, for she quickly passed back again through
+the red baize door that led, so Ensor imagined, to the kitchen region.
+She left the door open. A waft of sounds came to him, voices, one of
+which he fancied was the voice of the famous and omnipotent Gertrude,
+on whom so far he had never set eyes, while the other he knew to be
+Adelaide’s. She was already down and afoot, then; she was a good
+housekeeper, and gave her orders early?
+
+She was evidently holding the handle of the door preparatory to coming
+through, finishing a sentence which he did not hear. The tone in which
+Gertrude permitted herself to answer her mistress set him against her;
+it was raucous, coarsely good-humoured, and her speech, of which he
+caught fragments here and there, grossly familiar.
+
+“With me? You’ve told Phillis? Well, that’s quick work, I must say!”
+
+“It’s got to be done,” Adelaide replied sturdily, he heard her. “And
+the sooner the better.”
+
+“The other’ll miss her!”
+
+“That can’t be helped. _You_ needn’t mind--Phillis’ll profit. This
+very day, mind!”
+
+There was a pause. The cook had gone back into the kitchen some little
+way before she replied, and the vicious emphasis with which she spoke
+was accentuated by the clang of a dish, roughly set down on some
+pantry shelf or other.
+
+“I don’t mind, but it seems a queer sort of way to go and treat your
+own flesh and blood!”
+
+Adelaide let the door go sharply and, bag in hand, came forward to
+greet her guest. She had not expected to see him already down, and
+said so. She looked excessively handsome, if a trifle pale, as she
+pushed her hand through the cloudy swathes of hair that lay across her
+forehead. With characteristic crankiness, she arranged her hair
+across, not over or back from her forehead. It became her.
+
+She stood chatting to her guest, telling him that breakfast was not
+ready yet, for that lazy little Phillis, whose business it was to make
+the tea, had had a fit of temper this morning early, and was not
+dressed yet. While she was speaking, Phillis looked over the
+banisters, and addressed her mother, calling her by her Christian
+name, a fashion that Ensor disliked. He fancied that perhaps the child
+was allowed, nay enjoined to do so, in order to minimize the effect of
+her size and the precocious development on the age-estimation of her
+mother, a natural weakness to which Adelaide, like other ladies, was
+probably prone.
+
+“Oh, Addie!” the child said appealingly. “Mayn’t I really have Mary to
+sleep with me any more?”
+
+“No,” replied Adelaide. “It is high time Gertrude began to train her.…
+Now, don’t worry, it would be poor kindness to keep her any longer
+with you, spoiling a good servant and unfitting her for her station.
+Go in and make tea.”
+
+Phillis obeyed sulkily. Ensor was glad to see her put up a good fight
+for her companion.
+
+Adelaide perched with a childish movement on the arm of the sofa,
+showing a pretty ankle in its openwork stocking. She looked like a
+handsome, capable gipsy, as she sat there, dangling her everlasting
+bag.…
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+“I’ve been asking Gertrude,” she said carelessly, “if she remembers
+you, and she says she does. You must look her up after breakfast.”
+
+“But I never saw her!” he said, unwillingly, remembering her voice so
+lately heard. “You mean your cook in Portland Place?”
+
+“Not much of a cook, was she? But so faithful. And I needed it. She
+needed me. She had a lover who was a prize-fighter, and he deserted
+her and left her with that wretched child you’ve seen, to keep.… It is
+a case of atavism, I expect, for he was a fine fellow.”
+
+“Was that she beating the dog this morning?”
+
+“Yes. She’s got good strong hands.”
+
+An exultant gleam, an instantaneous flicker, as though by some new
+unexpected mode of invention, he had been afforded a kodak view of the
+suddenly protruded forked tongue of a viper, crossed Ensor’s excited
+vision. He shuddered. And Adelaide suddenly, but with an air of
+intense premeditation, slipped off the arm of the sofa and kissed him.
+
+ III
+
+Impelled by the sudden fruition of all that was morbid in his nature,
+Wald Ensor, towards the end of the year, married Mary Adelaide
+Frances, the widow of J. Dibben, Esq. It is a fact that until he
+bestirred himself to apply for the licence, he had not known the name
+of the father of Phillis. Adelaide never refused but seemed to prefer
+not to speak of him. Ensor supposed that Dibben, a healthy, ordinary
+man of no preponderating degree of intellect, had quickly managed to
+alienate and embitter a capricious, easily-bored woman like Adelaide.
+He was too modest to imagine that he himself amused her or interested
+her to any great extent, but at all events, he thought she considered
+him adequate. In his company, she appeared to find the nearest
+approach, for her, to a state of repose. She took possession of him,
+body and soul. He realized it faintly. She even seemed to have made
+some slight sacrifice of her individuality with a view to enslaving
+him completely. Though to every one else her manner was curt,
+unpleasant and at times unbearably arrogant, she stayed her savage
+tongue and curbed her domineering temper whenever it came in direct
+contact with her husband. And even had she allowed her natural
+acerbity full play, the fact that she was now about to become a mother
+for the second time, called forth all Ensor’s chivalry and tenderness.
+
+He rejoiced greatly at his approaching paternity. The want that had
+been created deep in his heart by the premature death of his child out
+in California was about to be completely satisfied; the void that for
+lack of a better he had filled with Adelaide’s child, Phillis Dibben,
+he had adopted openly; while, secretly, Mary, her foster sister, as he
+in his heart called her, was far dearer to him. Phillis Dibben was
+unsympathetic, he did not think hers was altogether a nice nature, but
+still she was a child, and Ensor’s love of children was a real and
+true sentiment.
+
+Though Adelaide and he had met first on the common ground of their
+philoprogenitive instinct, Ensor had come to suspect that his own was
+the truer development of it. Adelaide admired healthy, presentable
+specimens of the class only, and the beauty of Phillis as an
+undeniable guarantee of her own Eugenical perfection afforded the
+amount of toll to her vanity, the satisfaction of her pride that was
+needed to evoke the motherly in her. It was the only motive that
+swayed her, Ensor thought. Or else why did she so neglect the cook’s
+unhappy progeny, the child she had begun by petting, and more or less
+treating as her own? He could not forget that he had seen Mary, now
+degraded to a servant, on the day he had come across her in Beverley,
+sitting in the car with Adelaide’s own child. The turn was too sudden.
+It outraged his sense of decency.
+
+Ensor, whose large heart was capable, where children were concerned,
+of embracing the halt and the maimed and the eugenically incorrect,
+could hardly endure to let the question stand over till Adelaide was
+more fit to deal with it. He constrained himself to do so, however,
+and contented himself with speaking kindly to the little girl whenever
+he met her on the stairs or in the corridors. She did not walk, she
+crawled; he had an idea she was slightly deformed? He realized that it
+was Mary he had stumbled over that first morning as she knelt by a
+side door into the garden, feebly scouring some stone steps. Her
+translation from the padded seat of the car to the hard stones she was
+washing had been so sudden that he could not easily conceive it to be
+she.
+
+After a while he did speak to Adelaide. She made no mystery of it. She
+was a woman of her word, and Mary’s play days were over. Yes, it was
+true, she had until then been more or less brought up with Phillis,
+had shared her room and her meals and walks and games. It had pleased
+Phillis, but she could not sacrifice a child’s whole future even to
+please Phillis, so now that was over. With a sort of fiendish
+rationalism and want of consistency, she condemned a child brought up,
+through her caprice, in comparative ease and idleness, to do the rough
+work of the house, eat inferior food, worst of all, she subtracted her
+from all the softening educative influences to which she had been
+accustomed.
+
+He listened, tapping his boot with his riding-whip. He said nothing.
+He thought it over. If only the child could hold on, it would of
+course be as well not to worry Adelaide just now, but wait till she
+had got safely over her forthcoming experience, always a severe mental
+trial to women of her temperament. Then, surely, milder counsels might
+prevail; he might get Mary reinstated, a kind of foster sister to
+Phillis, and that was what he would like best. Oh, very much best, for
+he had the greatest, the most absurd, tenderness for the ugly, sad
+unchildish child! But if that were impossible, if her mistress still
+refused to allow it, Mary might at least be taken out of this and sent
+away to some bright, well-managed school, or home of her own class, to
+be properly trained and educated. He did not like the notion of her
+being brought up to be a servant, she did not look as if she would
+ever be strong enough. But there were other professions. He would
+see----?
+
+Meantime he did what he could for the child, and that was very little.
+She never appeared in the better part of the house that the red baize
+door shut off, and he sometimes fancied that Adelaide disliked to see
+him cross the threshold of it into the other. Yet the oldest and most
+interesting part of High Walls lay beyond, and Ensor was something of
+an antiquary, where architecture was concerned. He did not want to
+annoy his wife, however, and he was careful to conduct his
+architectural investigations from the back, where the historical
+portions of the house were situated. There Mary’s work lay, and he
+often spied her at her task of ablution on steps and hearth stones,
+armed with a pail and a piece of bath-brick, feebly scouring, swirling
+a wet rag about, ineffectually spreading long spiderlike arms in a
+radius of their length all round her and producing a dull wet surface,
+to be succeeded by a bright brown sanded one, where before all was
+dull, unvisited dust or dirt. She had terribly long arms for a child
+of her size and age, and she was moreover, he noticed, left-handed
+like himself. He would stand there for quite a long time looking down
+on her rusty red ribbon top-knot, knowing that the child was aware of
+him, but was far too well drilled to look up and crave his notice. How
+had they managed to transmogrify her so quickly, from a sort of foster
+sister to Phillis, sleeping with Phillis, driving about in the motor
+with Phillis and her mother, into the submissive drudge who never
+looked up till he spoke to her, and then with a sad cowed expression
+that went to his heart?
+
+If she were actually carrying a heavy pail, too heavy for her or
+trailing a broom long enough for a person twice her height, he
+considered he was justified in taking the pail or the broom away from
+her at once and trying to learn from her the place where she wished it
+to be deposited. It was difficult to get her to speak at all, and she
+got shyer as the days went on. He felt, manlike, that he could
+scarcely offer to go down on his knees and scrub the stone floor in
+her stead, but he would have liked to do so, for he realized that it
+was not a child’s work. He fancied that the School Board, if they were
+aware that one of their prey was thus day by day removed from every
+form of school training, might have something to say about it, and
+dreaded some sort of exposure for Adelaide. Mary was given no tuition
+of any kind; he was sure of it. High Walls was five miles away from
+Market Weighton, and though in the nearest hamlet, consisting of a few
+cottages, there was a school that was half-a-mile distant, Mary never
+went beyond the garden, if indeed she got any fresh air at all.
+
+The place was curiously self-contained, in its girdling walls.
+Adelaide did her own marketing in the motor, tradesmen never
+penetrated within their circumference. As it used to be said of the
+house in Portland Place that anything might go on there, so it might
+be said of High Walls. Adelaide had perhaps chosen to live here,
+perhaps through some affectionate analogy with the home of her birth
+and the house in which her mother had died. She had bought High Walls
+outright, so he learned, she made her own gas, she kept her own fowls
+and her own cows, and she ordered her clothes from Paris, fetching
+large wooden boxes that had crossed the seas, from the station
+herself, in the ever useful motor. In everything she did there was a
+_brusquerie_, a jerkiness, a suggestion of eccentricity.
+
+There was no doubt that for one reason or another, from austerity,
+shyness and love of solitude, or simply from lack of social instinct,
+Adelaide had succeeded in creating a human vacuum all round her, an
+area sterilized of gossip. Since their marriage, before the registrar,
+three months ago, Mrs. Ensor, her husband felt pretty sure, had had no
+visitors. As a matter of fact, Ensor knew of three people who said
+they had driven or motored out to High Walls to pay their respects to
+the lady he had married, but even if they had done so, admittance was
+probably refused them. These were the wives of men that Ensor had met
+about in Market Weighton or Beverley, and who had enjoined their women
+folk to call on the queer, uncivilized woman whom this gentle,
+civilized man that they rather liked, had married. It was easy for
+Ensor to see that she was not popular. If people even realized her
+previous existence, they forbore to talk of her, and the call was only
+a tribute to his own charm and obvious pleasant gentlemanliness. For
+he was a man’s man, a man whom women are apt to find dull. But as
+Adelaide never went out, never returned a call, never expected to be
+asked to anything, it was easy enough to be civil to the husband, and
+make him free of what there was of Society in these sleepy little
+market towns. Before very long Wald Ensor belonged to the Conservative
+Club of Beverley, and was put on the Library Committee of that active
+little place, while in Weighton he played golf, and adjudged prizes.
+The wives’ drawing-rooms knew him not or hardly at all, he could not
+very well go about among the women without Adelaide, and he did not
+choose to do so.
+
+He constrained himself to be more or less active in whatever was
+going, to fulfil his trivial duties as a citizen when they came his
+way, partly from a sense of duty, partly, he fancied, because the
+monotony of his existence at High Walls was slowly sapping his
+vitality, dulling his good temper and sense of good fellowship. The
+desire to travel again sometimes came over him in a great wave. If it
+had not been for Phillis and Adelaide, he said to himself: if it had
+not been for Mary, he did not say or even think to himself--he would,
+in certain irrepressible moods, have proposed it to his wife, to leave
+her for a time.
+
+He could not, somehow, talk to Adelaide now; he thought it was because
+of her condition. He had come to think that everything, including
+questioning, plans and so on, must be deferred until Adelaide, in her
+own phrase, was “through.” She thought and talked of nothing else. It
+was an event of more than ordinary importance to her. Well, it would
+be over in a few months. Then he would ask her about her social
+ostracism. He would find out if it was self-incurred, a voluntary
+effort on her part? Or was it a case of sour grapes, and had she been
+clever enough to make a virtue out of necessity? She was clever enough
+for anything, of that he was convinced. Or had she from pique, temper
+or caprice, so obstinately refused herself at the beginning, when
+first she had come to settle in Yorkshire, that people had grown tired
+at last of making overtures of friendship; overtures that were
+continually repulsed by the sour chatelaine of the lonely house, in
+its belt of sombre trees and solid deterrent masonry.
+
+He could not ask her this now, he could not ask her anything. He
+literally knew nothing about the woman he had married and taken to his
+breast, together with her child and her cook and her cook’s bastard,
+with the name that a man unknown had given her and which he had
+superseded so easily.
+
+He did not know how long she had lived in Yorkshire, why she lived in
+Yorkshire, and why she had taken a mansion that was little better than
+a prison in which they two lived immured.
+
+To do her justice, she did not seek to prison him there with her, she
+made no objection to his leaving her for hours. She would not
+seemingly have minded his leaving her for days, only he never did. He
+was held by her lazy, picturesque indifference, by the remembrance of
+the attraction of her bursts of passion in the days when she was not,
+as now, concentrating every force of her being on one single point,
+the bearing of a healthy child, a wonderful child, a child that should
+be even more eugenical than Phillis. He did not know that he was weak,
+but he knew that she was strong and that when he was not loving her,
+he was afraid of her. Yes, he, Wald Ensor, the man who had shot tigers
+and braved artillery and dug for gold under circumstances of almost
+impossible fortitude and endurance, was afraid of this hawk-nosed,
+straight-lipped woman, with the thin wrists, the small feet and the
+vanishing waist.
+
+She was ruining him, she was breaking his spirit, making him a craven,
+as in another department Gertrude the cook, with her “good strong
+hands” that he shuddered to look at, was making of Mary. Mary, her
+child, the human being over whom she had power, even as Adelaide his
+wife, had power over him. He was sure of it. With her cruel, if
+necessary, training, Gertrude was killing her child by inches. In
+obedience to her mistress’s strange wild theory of economics, the
+warped little body of the cook’s child was being maimed and stunted,
+her mind dwarfed and annulled, her moral and physical growth
+contravened beyond recall. For Adelaide, with her strong will and
+sense of duty, was behind Gertrude, driving her to do what she thought
+was right and correct for the child of humble birth domiciled under
+her roof. She was right, economically right; it were indeed useless
+and extravagantly unpractical to bring up the cook’s child in luxury,
+beyond her station; the wrench of unfitness for her inevitable
+degradation and fall to her true station in life would be all the more
+severe later on. Only Adelaide’s want of imagination, however, could
+inure her to the thought of such a situation created by her own
+behest. Adelaide! fond of children! Never! Ensor smiled bitterly under
+his drooping moustache, and forced himself to remember that Adelaide
+had the defects of her qualities, and that philoprogenitiveness was
+not one of them. He had gauged her aright in the old days at Portland
+Place, or was it that that sly, all-seeing old father of hers had sown
+the doubt in his mind?
+
+“_Adelaide, fond of children! She only thinks she is. Cruelty masked
+by philanthropy._”
+
+And what was that about Mother’s vanity, and its non-negligibility as
+a factor? He remembered the old man’s pawky sneer as he said it.
+
+“_Cases of baby-farming_,” he had argued. “_There’s sheer cruelty. If
+a woman ill-treats or even kills the child of another, no natural
+feeling except cruelty can possibly come into play, not even
+vanity.…_”
+
+Vanity! Yes. There it was, a clear issue. The beautiful Phillis, her
+own… petted, cherished!… And on the other hand Mary, deformed,
+disgraced by Nature’s hand.… He used to hide his head in his hands as
+he contemplated the terrible antithesis.
+
+Get her away!… He must… as soon as Adelaide had given birth to the
+wonderful child that was to be hers and his! That was settled.
+Meanwhile, he suffered, strange, unreasonable torments. Sometimes
+hanging about in the back of the house he would see the hem of Mary’s
+frock or the reach of her arm, as she scrubbed and lathered and
+polished. Then, with a groan, he would prevent himself from turning
+the corner of yard or out-house, lest he actually caught sight of the
+child at some one of her debilitating tasks. He would clench his
+hands, stuff a great cigar into his mouth, anything to keep him from
+rushing upon the poor waif, lifting her up, and boldly facing
+Gertrude, carry her off to America or the Antipodes.
+
+One day, feeling he could bear it no longer, he got on to his bicycle
+and rode out to Weighton, on purpose to buy something; toys,
+sweatmeats, he did not know what, for Mary. Too handsome a present
+might bring down a beating, he sadly suspected; he had better get her
+something to eat, something nourishing, something that would
+disappear. He was about to invest in chocolate _fondants_, the best,
+when he suddenly realized that the cook’s child had been back in her
+proper station full three months, and would no longer appreciate the
+kind of eatables that would appeal to Phillis, who was a gourmet. He
+asked for and procured the wholesome candy, and rode home, tired and
+depressed. The impulse which had sent him out was a little spent. Poor
+Mary was the cook’s child after all, bred to servitude, doing only
+what her mother had done before her. He was a meddling busybody and
+would probably only succeed in getting the poor little creature a
+beating.…
+
+He was thinking of Adelaide and Phillis now--of the rich sensuous
+beauty of Adelaide’s child, and the uncanny handsomeness of his wife.
+The devilish attraction of it swayed him, always more especially when
+he was tired and overwrought. It was her eyes.…
+
+However, he had got the candy, a fat packet that ought to rejoice any
+normal child’s heart, and on arriving home he went boldly into the
+rear premises through the red baize door, and asked where Mary was?
+
+Gertrude, coarse, homely, but on the whole well favoured, suspended
+her chopping operations at a board, and raising her chin, regarded him
+quizzically. With a kind of good-humoured malice, so it appeared to
+him, she slightly deferred her reply.… Then she said calmly--
+
+“Mary is in the scullery.”
+
+Raising her voice she called--
+
+“Mary! You’re wanted.”
+
+Quickly, obediently, a drooping, crestfallen figure of infancy
+appeared and stood in the sunlight that poured through the doorway,
+flung from a wide open window far back in the room she came from. It
+irradiated the ground she stood on and the filmy mass of cobwebs over
+her head; it could not light her up, any more than the bogey in the
+fields which flaps lank and dull in the full glare of noontide. And
+this was a living child, rendered by what means he knew not,
+unsusceptible, like any scarecrow, of light and joy. The depressed red
+bow on the top of her head looked as if it had not been untied for
+weeks. The hem of her skirt was partially torn off, it was far too
+long for her, and she had fastened, or some one had fastened it up for
+her, clumsily with a piece--two pieces of string. It showed a dirty
+pair of knickerbockers.
+
+She stood, waiting patiently, blinking a little, hideous, shapeless,
+piteous. Gertrude said nothing but looked from one to the other,
+comparing them as it were, enjoying herself quietly, like a rough in
+the front row of the pit.
+
+After a while, as if the play had lasted long enough, she said--
+
+“Come here! I’ll put a pin in for you.”
+
+Mary came shuffling up, not unwillingly. She did not seem to dislike
+her mother, that is all that could be said, and Ensor was glad to be
+able to think it possible that Gertrude was not always unkind to her.
+But such shocking neglect, even if there had been no excessive
+corporal punishment, was culpable. He stood, handling the packet of
+sweets dubiously, while the mother proceeded, with many a shake and
+pull, to modify her child’s disorder, which she had the sense to see
+injured her in the opinion of her master, if master he could be called
+who had no authority. At last summoning his courage, Ensor pulled out
+the packet and put it into Mary’s hand as she stood there, pending the
+adjustment of clothes that could hardly be called such, so ragged and
+insufficient were they.
+
+The sweets fell to the ground, dropped with strange unchildish
+negligence from a nerveless hand. The child did not even look up. A
+spasm of agony transfixed the heart of Ensor.
+
+Gertrude noticed the violent contraction of his features. She picked
+up the packet of bull’s eyes, and actually inserted one into Mary’s
+mouth. Ensor did not see if the child retained it, for he was groping
+on the ground for some of the sweets that had fallen out of the burst
+packet.
+
+“Say thank you, you silly!” Gertrude adjured the child who stood
+astonished, bewildered, by such ordinary attentions as are the usual
+award of the protected and cherished young of any class. She was
+passive through fright, but if she had had the spirit, it was easy to
+see that her one idea was to hide, and that her eyes were looking for
+a corner to run into. But her mother had hold of her, ordering her
+attire, shaking her as if she had been a small frail apple-tree.
+
+“That’s a very unsuitable length for a child’s dress, surely?” Ensor
+remarked, when Mary stood, hardly erect, sheepish but disengaged at
+last. The peccant undergarments were shoved into their proper place,
+more or less, and concealed, and her long loose frock was draped into
+paniers all round her.
+
+“She’s skinny, that’s what it is!” conceded Gertrude. “Nothing won’t
+stay up round her! The dress too long, eh? No wonder! It’s one of
+Phillis’s that Miss Adelaide threw away because it was too bad for her
+beauty to wear. It had to do for my Mary, hadn’t it? We can’t afford
+to have clothes made on purpose for us, can we? Now run away, run away
+and play!”
+
+She grinned. Mary stood stock still.
+
+“You’re to grow into your clothes, I see,” said Ensor helplessly.
+“Well, make haste and grow, there’s a good girl!”
+
+Mary smiled. Even if the gentleman’s words were absurd and irrelevant,
+she could not be deceived in the kindness of the speaker’s intention.
+
+The smile, begun without spirit or brilliance, faded out like sunlight
+on a wall on a rainy day. Gertrude took up his speech, and answered
+it.
+
+“Grow! Her! Never fear! Mary’s one of those stunted-from-birth ones
+Miss Adelaide’s always talking about. Just look at these thundering
+long arms!”
+
+She extended to its full length the gnome-like, skinny limb to which
+she alluded. The owner suffered this liberty wearily. Her stupid
+glazed eyes were fixed on Ensor. They seemed to say, “Save me! Save
+me!”
+
+He stammered out--
+
+“Couldn’t she be sent to the sea for a month or so?… I would arrange
+it.… That is, if you could spare her?”
+
+He waited on the cook’s answer agonizedly. She was in effect the
+child’s mother, with absolute power over it for life and death.…
+
+“Spare her, Lord, yes!” answered the cook calmly. “The work she does
+isn’t worth speaking about. You’re nobbut a poor worker, aren’t you,
+Mary?” She turned to Ensor, away from the child, but she did not
+trouble to drop her voice at all--
+
+“’Twould be no good, Sir. I’m thinking Miss Adelaide’s begun her grand
+training too late.”
+
+“What d’you mean?” he asked.
+
+“She’ll be training her into her grave, that’s what she’s doing.”
+
+“Sh--h! for God’s sake, woman!” he muttered, and sought his wife.
+Something must be done.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+He had no authority, except, strange to say, as far as Phillis was
+concerned. And though Phillis’s physical upbringing left nothing to be
+desired, he considered her mental education in some ways to be
+defective. Adelaide placed no obstacle whatever to his realization of
+certain views he had formulated and insisted on to the verge of
+tediousness with regard to the moral standards to be inculcated in a
+young growing girl.
+
+She listened patiently, while he exposed these theories, and her thin
+lips wore something more nearly approaching to a smile at these times
+than any other, while her husband thus took a practical interest in
+the future of her daughter. He reasoned broadly, and generally; he
+could not lay his whole mind before the wife of Phillis’s father. For
+that father counted, and not, in Ensor’s idea, favourably. Phillis had
+certain strongly marked tendencies which he deplored, and which he
+conceived her to derive from the parent he did not know. She had
+undoubtedly a strain of the coarse and the callous; her father had
+probably had these characteristics more strongly developed. She had
+also some disagreeable qualities that he distinguished in and traced
+from Adelaide, and that careful training might cross and deny and
+finally eradicate. She was sly, she was morbid, she was headstrong and
+reckless of the claims of others.
+
+So, acting with Adelaide’s authority, delegated to him,
+unquestioningly, he kept a strict watch and supervision on the books
+she read, and the conversations she heard or took part in. He did not
+countenance her frequent visits to the kitchen and her odd indecent
+familiarity with Gertrude the cook. He had asked his wife if he might
+not prohibit the child from entering the servants’ quarters
+altogether, and seal the red baize door that led to them against her
+use. He would like to forbid all entrance and egress by it, and force
+her to give her word of honour that she would observe the prohibition.
+
+“She may give it, but she won’t keep it,” said Adelaide lazily. “You
+can’t wonder. She’s fond of Gertrude, because she gives her tit-bits,
+and Phillis is greedy, poor darling! And then”--she looked up in his
+face--“there’s your beloved Mary! She’s about, and you must remember
+the two were brought up together. They were like foster sisters before
+you came. You altered everything. And now I am going to have your
+child!”
+
+He stooped and kissed her, full of premature paternal emotion.
+Adelaide was supposed to be not quite so well to-day. She was lying on
+the famous tiger-skin that he had given her, and which she had spread
+over a low wide couch in the hall. She chose to lie on it always, so
+that the brute’s savage head was close to her own. Loving and akin,
+the live Adelaide and the dead beast he had given her, both reeked of
+each other. There was all the hot suggestion of the jungle, of
+careless natural savagery in the juxtaposition of the tiger’s snarling
+teeth, Adelaide’s dusky eyes, and the spots and splashes of black that
+showed on each side of her spare form, like caked, dried blood upon
+the gold. It was his wife’s boast that her beautiful figure was hardly
+altered by her present condition, and the shocking cruelty to the
+unborn implied in this attainment of an unnatural shapeliness was lost
+on the simple fellow who was so soon to be a father.
+
+“Our child,” he said, kissing her again passionately, “is the thing
+that matters.”
+
+Then the recollection of that other child went through, pierced his
+heart like an arrow. He rose from his knees. All the blood in his body
+came into his face. He stood looking down on the woman, who had
+returned the passion of his caress with all the force of which she was
+at present capable. A large patch on the tiger-skin, a zebra mark
+bitten in, zig-zagging across the yellow fur, focussed his eyes.…
+
+“Adelaide,” he prayed softly, “could we not take Mary back into the
+house again?”
+
+“No,” Adelaide said. She spoke quite quietly too, but Ensor knew her;
+a storm was coming.
+
+“Then,” he said pleadingly. “Could she not be sent away for a
+bit--or”--his immense struggle betrayed itself in his voice--“for
+good?”
+
+“You cannot interfere with Gertrude’s business,” came plumb and sharp
+from Adelaide. “If Gertrude likes to leave me, she can of course take
+her child away with her. But I cannot do without Gertrude, and
+Gertrude will never leave me. Ask her.”
+
+She turned away, and laid her cheek against the flat head of the
+tiger.
+
+“And I was so happy!” she wailed, in bitter accents.
+
+He knelt down again. Her breath came quick. He feared for her.
+
+“It is no use,” she said. “You have spoilt it all. And all for the
+sake of a dirty misbegotten little wretch whose own mother can’t stand
+her and beats and neglects her. I don’t blame Gertrude. Don’t you
+understand, Wald, Mary is one of the wrecklings, one of Nature’s
+faults that ought to have been smothered at birth? I wish I had. I
+wish somebody had. My father would have put her away fast enough if I
+had asked him, only like a fool, I was kind to Gertrude, and saw her
+through with it. But I have come to hate the very sight of the child!
+And you--_you_ to come snivelling to me about her.… You!”
+
+She laughed. Her passion was spent. She looked him, her husband, up
+and down, contemptuously.
+
+He murmured: “Don’t, don’t excite yourself!”
+
+“I won’t,” she said squarely, turning her face round to the wall. “I’m
+better now. I won’t let you hurt me. I’ll even discuss the unwholesome
+brat, if you like, that’ll show you I don’t care. Get on. Talk quietly
+and tell me what’s wrong about Mary’s upbringing.”
+
+“You are very good,” Ensor murmured, “are you sure it won’t upset
+you?”
+
+“No, I tell you.” She sat up and faced him. She pulled a basket of
+needle-work towards her and busied herself with it. Her hands did not
+shake. Ensor admired her. After all, she had no nerves, and he might
+as well say his say about the child, get better terms of existence for
+her, and be done with the subject. He made up his mind he would not
+say much; he would not descend to particulars of her ill treatment
+unless Adelaide asked for them. He began gently--
+
+“I do think, don’t you? that when all’s said and done, Mary’s young,
+and even a servant’s child ought to have some joy of its life. Mary
+oughtn’t to be made to slave like a grown-up. Hang it all, a simple
+child should lightly draw its breath, not to the tune of housework and
+floorscrubbing. The sight of that poor kid carrying those heavy pails
+about makes me quite sick. I should like to tell you what I saw
+yesterday. Gertrude must be an unnatural mother----”
+
+“Well, speak out, what did you see?” Adelaide asked sharply.
+
+“You were out driving. Mary was standing by one of the high windows in
+the hall----”
+
+“She’d no business to be there. Suppose a caller came?”
+
+“No callers come. Why don’t they, by the way?”
+
+“I hate people. I’ve snubbed them all, they daren’t show their noses
+here. Go on. What was your paragon doing in the hall?”
+
+“She was eating something out of an enamel tin platter such as you
+feed dogs in, laid on the sill. The platter was not over clean, and I
+don’t know what the mess was, but it looked most unappetizing and she
+seemed to be--yes, actually picking something--something
+disgusting--something alive out of it.…!”
+
+“Pah, you sicken me!” Adelaide screamed. Ensor went on relentlessly,
+now that he was wound up.…
+
+“I put my hand on to her little scrubby head with that faded knot of
+red ribbon on the crown----”
+
+“I wonder you can touch it. Don’t touch me.”
+
+“And I told her not to eat the nasty stuff, and what was it? She said
+it was bits Gertrude cut off the toast before it went in the
+dining-room, the same as the dog had. It looked days old--quite
+mouldy. I shouldn’t like to give such a mess to my dog. I can only
+account for it as a morbid taste of the young growing child, and I
+bade her throw it away, and not eat between meals. It shows the
+shocking state of health she’s in, and she’s morbidly inventive, for
+then she said----”
+
+“What did she say?”
+
+“That it was her breakfast. Nonsense, I said. But she stuck to it. She
+seemed cowed, brutalized, but she stuck to it. I say, Adelaide--I know
+you aren’t very fit just now, but oughtn’t you to make some inquiries?
+Does Gertrude beat her or ill treat her? I hear sounds, of a morning
+sometimes--not so much lately since you’ve been seedy--but they freeze
+my blood, until I realize that it’s the dog getting a licking.… Oh,
+Adelaide, reassure me, don’t you see a man can’t stand the suspicion
+of such a thing in his house? A helpless child.…”
+
+The drops of sweat stood on his forehead. Adelaide spoke, as it were a
+prepared speech, which it was now time to make.
+
+“Your house!” she said. It was hers and the man winced.…
+
+She continued, raising herself a little. “Look here! Mary’s a liar as
+well as a pig. You’ve owned it. Morbid--is that all? I say a filthy,
+beastly liar!… And, Wald, I’m going to bear _your_ child, and if you
+want to have a healthy one, born alive--you haven’t had much luck with
+children, so you say--you had better not worry me.… Let me have this
+chance. I’ll never try again. I shall kill myself if this one does not
+come off. Suppose you be wise in time, and leave off meddling in my
+domestic concerns, and go and attend to your own. You’ve a meeting of
+the Library Committee in Beverley at three. It’s full time.” She
+glanced composedly at the watch that lay on her breast, and lay down
+again as if it were a duty.…
+
+He went about his business, trying to calm down in the quiet operation
+of the natural round, and the mild form of civic functions that filled
+his days. Adelaide was right, an important meeting of the Library
+Committee was on for to-day, at which he had announced his intention
+of speaking, for the subject interested him personally. It was a
+question of morals as applied to the feast of contemporary literature
+spread before the youth of Beverley and Weighton. Ensor’s contention
+was that as young girls formed the main contingent of the readers of
+books in all provincial towns it behoved far-seeing and right-minded
+city councillors to see that no works pernicious in quality or
+deleterious in tone should be delivered over to their private
+consumption. Their elders, with a taste for life, spiced and
+otherwise, should purchase outright the literature their souls loved,
+and leave the shelves of chance to works of limpid purity and
+unimpeachable if dreary moral tone.
+
+The Library Committee was composed of enlightened men and women, for
+it had been founded by an exceedingly busy and fussy Mrs. Marrable, “a
+bit of a Socialist,” as she called herself. She was at any rate a
+person professedly open to all the new ideas. The Committee were a
+little afraid of her, and had come to look to Ensor, the shy silent
+embodiment of Conservative, almost retrograde feeling in their midst,
+to oppose her. He generally began his sentences: “I know I am a bit
+old-fashioned.” This was a capital counterblast to Mrs. Marrable and
+her “bit” of Socialism. They found him invaluable, a sort of slipper
+on the wheels of frenzied progress, and Mrs. Marrable was not easily
+gainsaid. She was a relation of the Bishop’s cousin, and had lived in
+Beverley for years in a big red house where she entertained Saturday
+to Monday parties from London. She had no daughters.
+
+Another influential member, Canon St. Leger, unmarried, and living in
+the best house in the Close, was a friend of Ensor’s, though he had
+not asked him to come in so much lately.…
+
+Indeed, looking round the green baize-covered table where all the
+Committee found themselves at last seated, it occurred to Ensor that
+he had not shaken hands with a single one of his confrères since the
+last meeting, and that was a month ago. For that reason, he supposed,
+they seemed strange to him, although they were all or nearly all,
+people with whom he had been desired to take pot luck on any occasion,
+lunch, or dinner, when he had ridden in from High Walls on his bicycle
+and found he had put it too late to get back. All except Mrs.
+Marrable, with whom for political and temperamental reasons he had
+always cared to have very little to do.
+
+While the Committee dealt with some purely financial and business
+matters, which called for no more attention from the members of the
+Committee than was implied in passing a vote of confidence or holding
+up hands for a resolution, Ensor wrought himself up into a strange
+state of nervous apprehension. It might have been mere perverse fancy,
+but as a matter of fact not one of these people had spoken to him
+since they sat down, or recognized his presence except by a nod of
+salutation such as the barest courtesy demanded. The attitude of each
+several person could be accounted for separately. So-and-so had come
+in late, such a one had too many irons in the fire to be able to spare
+a word till the meeting was over, but still--there it was, the
+indefinable uneasiness, the disagreeable insinuating point that morbid
+imaginings could establish. No one had actually addressed a word to
+him!…
+
+He brooded over this--he was tired, overwrought and annoyed, for the
+child Phillis had shown a sad racial cloven foot to-day. He was afraid
+she was not going to turn out so well as he could have wished. By and
+by other business being disposed of, the Committee were invited to
+deal with the question of detailed selection of books for the Library.
+It was a subject on which Ensor was keenly interested, and here he had
+so much to say that he forgot his preoccupation and did not allow his
+natural shyness to interfere with the expression of his opinion. He
+was strongly against the determination of Mrs. Marrable, to permit,
+nay, to encourage, the introduction of a certain novel, the work of
+one of her literary confrères, into the list of the Library. Ensor
+had had the book sent him from London, so as to acquaint himself with
+its supposed nature. He had carefully kept it out of the way of his
+womenkind, until having thoroughly digested it, he threw it into the
+fire. Yet this book was to be placed on the shelves of the Library to
+which Adelaide subscribed, and a copy of it would be sure to find its
+way to High Walls! He could not bear the idea of such a girl as
+Phillis, eager, sensuous, full of strong, exuberant, readily-awakened
+sex instincts, sucking in the unhealthy, unnecessary knowledge
+presented so cleverly by this book, and it seemed to his
+hypochondriacal imaginings that the tendency of the rest of the
+Committee was to override his objections _per se_. He grew
+tremendously excited, and the Committee wondered to see the usually
+still and discreet man, who had married the lady they called the
+terrible Mrs. Dibben, make such a violent exhibition of himself.
+
+“I have a nearly grown-up daughter, as you all know,” so he ended his
+speech, and for the moment he felt every inch a father. “Well, let me
+tell you, that I had rather see her lying dead at my feet than realize
+that she was taking into her pure mind anything so poisonous, so
+pernicious, so destructive of all moral health as the work in
+question. I would rather see her starved, neglected, maimed even, than
+ruined mentally by such murderous nourishment.…”
+
+He stopped, he felt that the sense of the meeting was not with him.
+The silence that swallowed up the last word was hard and disapproving.
+The Chairman, Canon St. Leger, drubbed on his desk with a pencil.…
+Mrs. Marrable, divesting herself of her feather boa with the air of
+one throwing down the gauntlet, and tilting forward her chair, rose.…
+
+“Do I understand?” she said, speaking with privileged indistinctness,
+but Ensor heard her for all that. “Do I understand from Mr. Ensor’s
+eloquent speech, that he cares to throw his shield merely over a
+member of his own immediate family? What about the stranger within his
+gates? And I have yet to learn that spiritual injury and moral
+oppression are the only enemies worth combating? Talk of mental
+starvation, indeed!… Mental!… There are worse things than mental
+starvation. There are blows…!”
+
+She appeared to become hysterical and quite incoherent.
+
+“Such hypocrisy… such disgusting hypocrisy I never heard of. Let him
+look to his own house, I say--let him set his own house in order
+before we put the Society on to him!”
+
+“Mrs. Marrable, I must beg you to observe! This language is
+impermissible here,” Canon St. Leger said, avoiding Ensor’s eye and
+the deprecating gestures he automatically made.… “I must call upon you
+to apologize!”
+
+“To me,” Ensor said, white to his lips.
+
+“Oh yes, I’ll apologize to the Committee,” said the lady, “and they’ll
+accept my apology. They all know what I mean. But in the interest of
+Humanity, it is time some steps were taken, and I’ll take them.…”
+
+She folded her boa tightly round her neck and passed out. Canon St.
+Leger swiftly put the retention or refusal of the book in question to
+the vote and closed the meeting.
+
+Ensor, dazed, his eyes blurred with unaccustomed passion, walked away
+like a condemned man, condemned for a crime of which he was unwitting.
+
+He rode studiously home, meditating on these things to the point of
+falling off his bicycle. He was stunned with the impact of the
+undeserved disagreeable, and knew not what to think or whom to ask for
+an explanation. And when he got home he found real trouble awaiting
+him. Phillis, who had been ailing rather unaccountably for some time
+past, had shown definite symptoms of illness during his absence. The
+little local country doctor, (but quite “good,”) had been sent for and
+had been and gone. He had pronounced the child’s uneasiness to be due
+to a mild attack of typhoid fever, so Adelaide, afoot, her eyes alight
+with excitement, told the sluggish, depressed man who dismounted from
+his bicycle at the door where she came to meet him.
+
+“Have something, Wald. You look pale. That meddling brute of a doctor
+has gone and ordered a nurse all off his own bat!” she fretfully
+informed him, leading the way into the drawing-room and closing the
+door. “I was so angry with him when I heard what he had done. Of
+course I should have nursed her myself. The woman is here now so we
+must make the best of it.”
+
+Ensor was secretly of opinion that Dr. Hodgson was right, and that the
+state of Adelaide’s nerves would have made her an indifferent nurse;
+he, however, contented himself with remarking that neither himself nor
+Dr. Hodgson would approve of her sitting up at night.
+
+“But I shall have to as it is. No nurse can do both. And, Wald, I do
+so detest strangers coming into the house! They go prying about,
+making up all sorts of absurd conclusions and telling the ass of a
+doctor everything.…”
+
+An expression of indefinable apprehension crossed her peevish face,
+and her husband was touched, taking it, as he did, as indicating the
+state of nervous tension she was in. Phillis’s illness--her own
+condition----
+
+He took her limp hand and kissed it.
+
+“My poor Adelaide, what have you to fear? There’s nothing wrong for
+him to find out; I don’t quite approve of the status of Mary in the
+house, but after all that’s the cook’s affair, not ours.… By the
+way.…”
+
+He was going to tell her something of Mrs. Marrable’s insinuations,
+but concluded he had better not mention the matter at this juncture.…
+He merely asked abruptly, “Where is Mary? I haven’t seen her about for
+the last few days.”
+
+“Gertrude has sent her away to some friends at Cullercoats, I believe.
+She asked me if I could spare her!”
+
+“And of course you did, kind girl,” said Ensor.
+
+“Oh yes. The work she does isn’t worth thinking about. I told Gertrude
+we should never make a servant of her.… Good-bye. I must go to
+Phillis. I want to keep an eye on that nurse. I didn’t like her face.
+A mischief-maker if ever there was one.”
+
+Adelaide was gone and Ensor fell a-thinking on the painful scene of
+to-day. He was obsessed, now that it was over, by the recollection of
+a fluid and retreating Committee. He saw black coats, and the grey
+mantelets of the country ladies melting away from him, fleeing from
+his contact. He could not account for the social ban under which he
+appeared to lie. This was the culminating incident; he remembered now
+other slighter acts of neglect and inattention in the past, which he
+had been too little self-conscious to observe or to piece together in
+a pattern of general avoidance and cold shouldering. The arraignment
+of the woman Marrable did not disturb him so much as the nervous
+acceptance of it by the Canon. Mrs. Marrable was a shrew, a local
+terror, a person of advanced views, and the author of the book in
+question was a friend of hers, probably?…
+
+But Canon St. Leger, a decent, sober-minded man, a man of his own
+stamp!… He saw his thin hand toying with the suspended pencil, he
+heard again his meek milk-and-water reproof of Mrs. Marrable’s
+unparliamentary language.… He could not away with that.…
+
+He wandered about the garden half the night with the puppy, now fully
+trained to be a perfect house-dog and companion. It followed him in an
+orderly manner from covert to covert under the high beetling wall with
+the thick beds of nettles growing luxuriantly at the base. Once,
+however, there was a skirmish; the dog grew quite excited at what must
+surely have been a not unusual sight for him, the yellow knob of a
+small boy’s head peering over the wall, supported presumably from
+behind by a human Japanese ladder of other small boys. It was a
+favourite game in this neighbourhood.
+
+“He! He!” they crowed and chuckled. “Who lives ’ere? Old Mother
+Brownrigg and her girls. He! He! No one ever comes out here alive…!”
+
+The dog barked and sprang. Fear of his ultimately reaching them at
+last dislodged the grotesque cohort. Ensor, his nerves a little shaken
+by this noisy onslaught of words only half heard, turned and made his
+way back to the house. It was absurd to mind. Children were always
+climbing up the other side of that wall; it was nice to climb, it had
+jutting courses of bricks half-way up, and the village curiosity was
+provoked and stimulated by the air of quasi-mystery which Adelaide
+chose to foster about High Walls, and that her rather witch-like
+appearance abroad, always heavily, mediævally cloaked and
+motor-veiled, abetted. She dressed like a toadstool in the day. And in
+the evening like a panther. She strode along, her step was confident,
+her eyes abstracted, her whole manner carelessly insulting. No wonder
+the children were afraid of her.
+
+He went in, and saw the doctor coming out and questioned him about
+Phillis. His anxiety was easily allayed. The big girl was strong
+enough to resist a whole army of adverse microbes. He saw the new
+nurse, a tall, thin sprig of a woman with some indication of
+character. She was very cold and civil, especially when she spoke to
+Adelaide. He thought he saw plainly that she disliked the mistress of
+the house, already. Another! Poor Adelaide!
+
+He knew he was right, as the days went on. The two women detested each
+other, skirmished every time they met, issued cross orders and
+confused the other servants. But the maid defeated the mistress. Dr.
+Hodgson, meek, little insignificant man that he was, resisted all Mrs
+Ensor’s hints and manœuvres, and finally, her most palpable efforts
+to get rid of Nurse Ferrier, who was, on her side, careful to give no
+positive offence, or commit any domestic crime which might lead to her
+dismissal on other grounds than medical ones. She was a capital nurse,
+even Adelaide admitted that, only Phillis no longer wanted one.
+Hodgson said she did. He further implied that a nurse stood between
+Mrs. Ensor and all fatigue or anxiety undesirable for a woman in her
+state, and that was the only argument Adelaide dared not, or did not
+care to, gainsay.
+
+The distracted woman vented her annoyance at the doctor’s tactics on
+her husband, and to punish him would not let him see Phillis. As she
+spent most of her time in the girl’s room which opened out of her own,
+Ensor saw very little of her. He found himself not very much cast down
+by this arrangement; he was much out of sympathy with his wife, a
+little fretted by her irritability, and was glad to defer their
+meeting until the need for the nurse’s presence which so enraged her
+should have passed away.
+
+He wondered, sometimes, when that would be, and thought he would like
+to ask the nurse. But she rather sternly, and with a sort of frigidity
+put on over and above her statutory nurse’s manner, passed him in the
+hall or on the stairs. He began to fancy that Adelaide, moved by her
+strange taste for regulating the movements and gestures of others, had
+bidden her enter as little as possible into conversation with the
+master of the house. Well! Well!…
+
+He missed Mary, to whom, in the present upheaval, he could have paid a
+little more attention. Still, presumably she was well. Adelaide had
+apparently carried out his expressed wishes for once, and had insisted
+on Gertrude’s sending her child away for sea air. He missed the daily
+appeal of the dark eyes set in paleness, the weak gestures with her
+hands which Mary often used in lieu of speaking, as if mere movement
+made less stir, and drew down less attention on her from the cruel
+powers above. Though her face was pale it was always clean, he
+remembered. And a queer thing--he never remembered her sitting down.
+Did she ever sit down? He had seen her squat, he had seen her stand,
+but he had never seen her sit except that first day in the motor-car,
+when, the dark fur cap on her head, and the dark fur up to her chin
+had made her look almost a lady. She was dressed exactly like Phillis,
+then, he remembered! Strange monitory caprice of Adelaide’s--an
+instance of her sheer love of power--to raise, and then to degrade! No
+man could do such a thing except, perhaps, some savage Asiatic king,
+one in whom caprice remained the only lust left to satisfy.
+
+He did not care to affront such scenes as he had gone through at
+Beverley any more, and he took his name off the Committee. He stayed
+at home and spent this dreary, uneventful time mostly in wandering
+about the house followed by the dog, who had grown attached to him. It
+generally lay at his feet in the hall while he sat on one of the
+yellow chairs, reading papers endlessly, smoking far more than was
+good for him. Thus he caught the doctor, on his way through the outer
+hall to see Phillis. The doctor generally nodded kindly, but did not
+stop, there was nothing to say about Phillis; she was going on well,
+and Adelaide did not expect to be confined for a couple of months or
+so. The nurse flitted by on her screw soles, going up and downstairs,
+and taking no notice of the solitary man. He never saw Gertrude at
+all.
+
+He was thinking seriously of going away from High Walls for a time,
+until Phillis was quite well, and Mary had come back, and he had got
+as far as the handling of _Bradshaw_ and the turning of the page
+marked Continental Trains, when one day the nurse chose suddenly to
+leave the orbit in which she generally travelled, between the red
+baize door into the servants’ quarters and the staircase that led up
+into Phillis’s sick room, and came straight up to Wald Ensor. The
+deflection of the moon from her course could not have surprised him
+more. She spoke.
+
+“I beg your pardon, Sir, but have I your permission to take Dr.
+Hodgson to see Mary?”
+
+Her eyes drooped and seemed to look down both sides of her nose. With
+her white cap like a frontlet, her brown hair fluffed out in ascetic
+waves over her forehead, she was not altogether an unprepossessing
+woman. She was looking down at him, her lips were coldly pursed, and
+Ensor felt just as he had felt in the Beverley Committee-room.
+
+“Certainly, Nurse,” he stammered, “But Mary, is she at home?”
+
+“She is at home, Sir, and in my opinion very unwell.”
+
+“What is the matter with her? I want to know. Mary is a special pet of
+mine.”
+
+The lame, absurd words came broken from his lips.… He was not thinking
+of what he was saying. He was overwhelmed by an avalanche of doubts.
+Adelaide had lied to him.… “Hasn’t Mary been away at all?” he
+stammered.
+
+The nurse raised her eyes, and gave him one straight winged glance.…
+She had strong black eyebrows that met across her nose, and a pout
+that was determined.
+
+“She may have been. Not that I know of.…” Her nose was in the air.
+“Will you see her, Sir?” she ended more kindly. “Perhaps you would
+like to know how she is for yourself.”
+
+“Yes,” he replied. “I should indeed. But I understood she had been
+sent away to the sea for her health? Let us go.… I don’t know where
+she sleeps, when she is at home.…”
+
+“You shall see, Sir, if you will come with me.”
+
+Her calmness was only a mask, Ensor felt; the quiet words covered an
+indignation that nearly broke through her professional reserve. She
+was boiling over with rage. She walked through the red baize door with
+an assured step, never turning or looking round at the shamefaced man
+who followed her with humble, downcast head, his morning paper still
+crumpled up in his hand.
+
+The red baize door marked the transition between the oldest and most
+modern parts of the house. Ensor had never been up the second and
+original staircase which led to the attics, and it was these that
+Nurse Ferrier now proceeded to mount. It was rather dark everywhere,
+for a heavy shower was impending, the first few drops of which had
+fallen before they left the part of the house where the windows were
+bigger. The stairs were uncarpeted, low and uneven. They led up to
+wide, emaciated corridors, whose panelling was worm-eaten, pale with
+age and desuetude. Low doors, plumb in the wall, opened into many
+rooms, at each of which in turn Ensor expected the nurse to stop and
+enter.
+
+Another flight of stairs, leading to just such another corridor! The
+air was faint, it seemed to have been sealed for centuries.… Ensor
+protested… asked some sort of question.… “Where were they going?”
+
+“Into the attic, where Mary sleeps alone,” the nurse answered. Her
+manner was more kindly now.
+
+“A child, to sleep all this way from everybody!…” he murmured.
+
+She nodded but did not turn. They reached a short flight of five
+steps, built in. Ensor was quite in the dark, until the nurse pushed
+open a door at the head of the stairs and they emerged into the
+twilight of a large bare attic. When his eyes grew accustomed to the
+light, he realized that it occupied the whole top of the house.
+
+“Give me your hand, Sir,” the nurse said quite gently. “You may get a
+shock. Mary’s here, or was yesterday.”
+
+The attic was like the aisle of a church, with chapels on both sides.
+A wide window at the very end allowed a milky track of light to fall
+along the pale, decayed flooring of the middle. There were small
+dormer windows in the embrasures formed by old, roughly-joined beams
+filled in with whitewashed lath and plaster. Each was like a little
+room shut off. Towards the centre the flooring was rotted away--the
+jagged boards seemed to meet in a pattern of interwoven flanges.
+
+They walked along it carefully, up to the very end, and Ensor saw the
+wide stretch of rolling country out of the big window. The nurse went
+along it carefully, peering into each alcove. She seemed puzzled.
+
+“It was this one,” she said at last. “It’s so dark with the rain I can
+hardly see, but I was up here yesterday and got scolded for it.… Here
+she is!”
+
+He stopped. His legs almost refused to move. The child was lying on a
+large thin mattress just at his feet. A shawl with ragged fringe
+covered her, and the dull stained tick of the mattress showed beyond
+it. There seemed to be no bed-linen, and the child’s nightdress, which
+might have been originally of pink flannel, was of a curious ingrained
+dull colour.…
+
+Ensor started, and felt sick.
+
+“Ah, Sir, you see----?” the nurse said, and stopped. She bent down.…
+
+“Mary!” She had soft tones as well as harsh ones.
+
+The child, who appeared to be dozing, opened her eyes and turned them
+up at her visitors. She still had her ridiculous top-knot straining
+the hair from her forehead, and the rest of it was matted on her face.
+Her hand lay open on the shawl, the other was under her cheek. She may
+have been aware of them, she did not look at these people. Slowly her
+eyes closed again and she lay quiet, a grey patch on the dark
+background of the pallet.
+
+“Mary!” the nurse said again. “Here’s Mr. Ensor to see you.… Take her
+up, Sir,” she bade commandingly.
+
+Ensor knelt down and lifted the upper part of the wretched, filthy
+little body half out of her bed on to one of his knees. As he handled
+her he had the sensation of her dry, harsh skin, and it reminded him
+of parchment. She coughed as he unavoidably jerked her in lifting.
+
+By his prompt obedience to her request, he had rehabilitated himself
+in the nurse’s opinion, as she showed by the more familiar tone of her
+next speech.…
+
+“Did you ever see such a disreputable nightdress? And such a hole to
+let a child sleep in?”
+
+She went on scolding, and Ensor realized that her abuse was directed
+at Adelaide. Yet it seemed an impossible thing to answer her. She
+blamed the doers of this deed, but in a strain so incommensurate with
+the depth of the painful emotions raised in him by the sight of the
+child’s condition.… Seeing, however, that he was feeling as he should
+feel, she respected his wretchedness and spoke gently.
+
+“She’s been alone so all night, but will you stay with her, Sir, while
+I fetch the doctor? It’s just on his time for coming. I may catch him
+before Mrs. Ensor sees him.”
+
+She crept away. Ensor heard her gently close the attic door. There was
+silence, and her heels, on the stair, tapped… retreating.
+
+Left alone in the attic with a dying child across his knee, the man
+tried frantically to collect his thoughts. Beyond a little dry,
+patient cough, made as it were of ashes and dust, which racked her now
+and then, Mary lay quite still across his knees. He changed his
+position, and now he sat on the floor beside the mattress. His eyes
+grew accustomed to the lighting of this place and he saw that there
+was a small window in each embrasure, and the one opposite him on the
+other side of the house had panes. That immediately over Mary’s bed
+was open to the air. The glass had evidently been cracked and had
+fallen out leaving jagged pieces in the frame. From one of these there
+depended the fragments of a checked cotton duster, stuffed in there by
+some one to ward off, more or less, the draught.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+The shower was over, and the sun had come out, and sent warm rays
+across the worm-eaten floor, the floor whereon in the old days the
+feudal servants of the manor house had slept, weary feet to weary
+feet, fastened in all night by their lord, with no egress save by the
+little locked door at the foot of the staircase. The lord of old dared
+not leave his slaves free to murder their taskmaster in his sleep.
+There may have been at that time about a hundred healthy farm-hands
+keeping each other warm and their spirits up through the long night
+with jests and story-telling; now this enormous garret held but one
+sickly, fearful, solitary child.
+
+Oh! who had done this?… His head swam with dreadful certainties.
+
+A great bluebottle flew in at the window, and buzzed in and out of the
+rafters over Mary’s head. She was past noticing it, but it irritated
+Ensor and he wanted to get up and chase it away. But he could not bear
+to deposit the child on the filthy palliasse again. The same with a
+cockroach that made blundering rushes from one joist to another of the
+decayed ribs of the flooring.… There was probably vermin in that bed,
+and on the child even, but he was past caring.… He could not beat his
+breast, _Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_ or tear his hair;
+his hands were tied, occupied with the task they should have set
+themselves long months agone--the work to which his down-pressed heart
+had all along instigated him. But in this moment he expiated fully
+what he described to himself as his rotten carelessness, his wicked
+easy-going acceptance of Adelaide’s excuses, his shameful apathy in
+the face of the cruel crime that was being enacted in his house--in
+Adelaide’s house indeed, but the shame was his. Here was a helpless
+child, dying under his roof, of neglect, or worse, and he had had the
+face to stand before that Committee composed of decent people, and had
+been puzzled by their quite natural behaviour. They were unfriendly;
+disgusted, outraged by his pusillanimity, of which they probably had
+an inkling, or more than an inkling. What about those boys looking
+over the wall!… He had expostulated with the Committee for admitting
+an unpleasant work of fiction into their list--a solecism at worst. He
+was thinking of Phillis’s morals whilst Mary starved! He knew now what
+Mrs. Marrable had meant. That harridan in the right!----
+
+Dying of neglect and worse! His hand stole towards the open front of
+the child’s nightgown. With sudden resolve he turned her body quite
+round on his knee, and pushed the garment down to her middle.
+
+Yes, the scars that play such an important part in the evidence when
+these sort of cases come before the court were all there, fresh and
+old scars; deep and superficial; healed, ill-healed, and suppurating.
+He turned the body round again, and felt Mary’s pulse. It seemed to
+him to be almost non-existent.…
+
+Another long ten minutes--savage, agonizing, interminable!… He knew
+nothing about it… but he wished the doctor would come! The nurse had
+probably not been able to catch him before he saw Phillis, and had had
+to wait to waylay him until his official visit was over.
+
+And as the child lay across his knee, to all appearances comatose,
+something grey and loathsome did crawl out from the screwed black hair
+on to the forehead.… He pulled out his handkerchief from his breast
+coat pocket, he felt no sense of disgust to weaken his efficiency.…
+Such things are!… It was all part of the horror that had surely now
+culminated and left him seared and stunned, shamed and blighted.…
+
+The child sighed, and with a pathetic hint of the baby ways that had
+been scorched and made to perish out of her, crept closer into his
+embrace. Her sigh may have been one of relief, Ensor fondly hoped it.…
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+The bluebottle buzzed, the black-beetle looked out again from the
+crinkled folds of the _Daily Telegraph_ which Ensor had flung down.…
+He did not move, he hardly thought, he was conscious only of the child
+nestling in his arms as if he were its new-found father, and a peace
+was his, a peace he had never known, as if his soul had at last found
+its billet.…
+
+When Nurse Ferrier came up at last with the doctor, he smiled.
+
+“Do what you can for her, Doctor,” he said pleadingly.
+
+“Why wasn’t I called before?” Hodgson began angrily. Nurse Ferrier
+touched his arm. Ensor saw it.
+
+The doctor imperiously pulled the duster out of the window-hole to
+make more light for himself, and returning, laid the child down on the
+wretched pallet and methodically examined her. The examination over,
+he gently pulled the shawl into position so as to cover her, and rose
+from his knees.
+
+“Mr. Ensor, I must see Mrs. Ensor about this,” he said gravely.
+
+On the way down the narrow flight of stairs Ensor summoned breath to
+ask a question.
+
+“Is she dying?”
+
+“Probably,” was the doctor’s curt reply, and it was all he would
+vouchsafe.
+
+Adelaide was in the hall and came to meet them.
+
+“Where have you been, Doctor?” she asked suspiciously. Her eyes fell
+and rested scornfully on her husband.…
+
+“Wald, you look pretty bad. Go and get yourself a whiskey and soda.”
+
+“Yes, do,” said Hodgson. He turned to Adelaide, with a rough dignity
+of manner. “Mrs. Ensor, it is my duty to tell you both that if that
+child upstairs dies I shall refuse a certificate and order an
+inquest.”
+
+Wald almost admired Adelaide now for her pluck. A spasm of annoyance,
+no more, crossed her face, and turning, she led the way across the
+hall towards her morning-room. She said over her shoulder--
+
+“She’s only shamming. It seems to me you want a drink too, Doctor.
+That was thunder we heard just now. It’s upset you both. Wald, be good
+enough to send Nurse Ferrier straight to me here. I’m going to sack
+her.”
+
+She went into the portion of the hall that was screened off, and
+seeing that both the men disregarded her gesture of invitation to go
+further and stayed in the main hall, she shrugged her shoulders and
+flung herself on to her tiger-skin, turning her back, motionless.
+
+The doctor looked at Ensor, and spoke meditatively.
+
+“In Mrs. Ensor’s present state!…” he murmured. “Perhaps I had better
+speak to you, Mr. Ensor?…”
+
+“Certainly,” Ensor said, leading the way into the dining-room. “I may
+say before you speak that I know nothing of this. But that’s no
+matter,” he went on, “the blame is mine.”
+
+He rang the bell. “Ask Gertrude to come to me here,” he said to a maid
+who appeared at the service door at the end.
+
+The girl hesitated. She had something in her hand.…
+
+“What is it? What is it?” Ensor asked testily.
+
+“I was going to show the doctor, Sir, what Mary had to eat.”
+
+She held out a plate for their inspection with some toast rinds and
+the remains of dripping fat adhering to the sides.… In her other hand
+she held a mug, into which Dr. Hodgson peered.
+
+“H’m, a concoction of tea-leaves.…”
+
+“She was fed, Sir, worse than the dog,” the girl continued volubly.
+“Biscuits was bought for him. She never complained, not she--too
+frightened for that, for if she did she got the stick----”
+
+“Who beat her?” Ensor asked, furiously.
+
+“Mrs. Ensor, till she got ill. She used to take the poker to her.
+There’s all the marks on her back now--you’ve seen ’em, Doctor?”
+
+“Yes, yes. Hold your tongue now,” Hodgson said.
+
+He turned to Ensor who stood quietly beside him, receiving the
+unbearable douche of the servant-girl’s revelations with such
+fortitude as he was able to muster. “If the child dies there will have
+to be an inquest. I must give the nurse some directions. Where is she?
+Be off, back to your work!” he bade the kitchen-maid, “and ask Nurse
+to come to me.”
+
+Nurse Ferrier, quiet, composed, unsmiling, appeared in the doorway,
+and Ensor scrutinized her face for news as eagerly as if he had not
+possessed the gift of speech.
+
+“Is she dead?” he at last breathed.
+
+“No, Sir, no,” she answered kindly after a pause, recalled, as it
+were, from other thoughts. Ensor did not catch the almost
+imperceptible shake of the doctor’s head that came hard upon her
+words. The nurse continued, softly, appealing to her chief. “We won’t
+let her die, will we, Doctor!”
+
+“Not if we can help it,” he replied gruffly. “Get yourself a drink,
+Mr. Ensor, and buck up now! There will be a lot to do presently.”
+
+Ensor slowly walked away and the doctor turned to the nurse.
+
+“I wouldn’t give a farthing for that child’s life, _you_ know,” he
+said. “Have you-brought her down?”
+
+“Yes, she’s in the spare bedroom. Mr. Ensor would wish her to have the
+best of everything,… I think?…”
+
+Her long drooping eyes were raised to the doctor’s for a moment. She
+wanted to talk to him, and he knew it. But he did not, at this
+juncture, care to throw any deductions he might have made from facts
+patent to both of them, into the common fund, and he interposed the
+chill of professional etiquette between himself and her possible
+confidences.
+
+He walked quickly, meditating the while, down the narrow flagged way
+that led from the house door to the gate in the wall, where his horse
+was being held for him by James, the half idiotic manservant; the only
+male creature, excepting her husband, whom Adelaide would tolerate
+about the place. To-day, however, expecting as usual to have the whole
+of the path to himself, the doctor almost hustled a person of quite a
+different type from James’s, a smart, slight, efficient young fellow
+slipping briskly up to the house. Hodgson apologized. The stranger,
+who was dressed in some sort of uniform, looked curiously at him, as
+if about to speak, but thought better of it and passed on.
+
+
+After some little delay, Gertrude came to her master in the
+dining-room where he had summoned her. She looked hurried, portentous,
+but at the same time, armed with the indifference of fat people. Her
+wide apron was covered here and there with spots of gravy or blood; he
+supposed she had been “drawing” chickens or killing them. Her bib was
+pinned up at the corners over her ample bosom. She had no right to
+have a breast; she had no right to be made like a woman. He loathed
+her, the agent of Adelaide’s system, the janissary who with fiendish
+personal lust of cruelty had brutally carried out his poor wife’s
+unholy theories.
+
+And all the while, the uncomfortable consciousness was his, that
+whatever his contempt of Gertrude, it was equalled by her scorn of
+him. This abominable woman looked down on him; in her eyes lurked the
+conception of him as something mean and pitiful and likable, yes, she
+awarded him a certain amount of good-humoured commiseration. And she
+was his cook!
+
+“I couldn’t come before,” she said sturdily. “I’ve been up with
+Phillis, who’s left all alone because of this business. Be done as
+soon as you can, Sir, for I want to get back to the poor child.”
+
+“You will tell me before you go, please, how long this has been going
+on? How long have you been neglecting and ill-treating your own
+child?”
+
+The woman sneered.
+
+“Mary, d’ye mean? Well, you see, Mary all along was only allowed to be
+here, as you might say, through the kindness of Miss Adelaide, as
+being her cook’s child.” She continued, as if repeating a lesson
+learned by heart, “Miss Adelaide--Mrs. Ensor--has always been very
+good to me and I’ve been the same to her. But it stands to reason that
+Mrs. Ensor wasn’t going to bring up my bastard like a lady. Mary
+Adelaide--that’s her name--had to be trained to be a servant and work
+for her bread, like her mother’s always done, and when she didn’t
+work, she had to be beat.”
+
+“And what was the work you set a child of ten to do?” Ensor asked,
+striving at calmness.
+
+“Child of ten--she’s fifteen, same as Phillis! Well, let me see, she
+cleaned the silver, setting down to it every day, and swept a room, or
+may be two, and did down the steps, and her own sewing and mending.”
+
+“And what did she have to eat?”
+
+“What the girl showed you…” Gertrude said, throwing up her chin in
+sullen pride of evil-doing. “Scraps what was left over from the day
+before. That is, if I would remember to give it her, and she never
+reminded me. Too soft, shameful lazy she was, too, and one had to take
+a stick or a poker to her to make her bustle. Whoap! Go ’long! was all
+the kind words she got. And a neat cut across her back. She was that
+lazy they never had time to heal before there was a new stripe laid
+over the last one.”
+
+“My God! A young child!” He covered his face with his hands.
+
+Gertrude regarded him. Some shifting of values took place in her heavy
+brain. She came a step nearer, and her voice lost its tone of coarse
+bravado.
+
+“You must know, Sir, I had my orders?”
+
+“Your orders, woman! Your orders to play the murderess! You, the
+unnatural mother----”
+
+“You may look a little nearer home for the unnaturalness, if you will
+have it? Some folks is very blind, and deaf, too.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+His tone was violent. The cook said, patiently, raising her apron to
+her face--
+
+“I’ll say no more, Sir. I must be going----”
+
+“Stop!” cried Ensor furiously. “You brute----”
+
+“Call me brute, Sir!” Gertrude answered, almost modestly.…
+
+Then her temper rose, she flushed.
+
+“Do you know who’s awaiting for me in my back kitchen where I told him
+to stop?” she said passionately. “No one won’t go away from here,
+Mister, I said, so long as I give you my word. But I’d something I’d
+like to say to Mr. Ensor first before he saw him, I said, and it would
+be best for all parties if I could get it said. So he let me come,
+though he’s not a-going back without seeing you!”
+
+She produced a dirty card, from the bosom of her dress, and handed it
+to her master.…
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+The nurse met the doctor on the doorstep when he came back half an
+hour later. Her manner was instructive as she came forward, her finger
+on her lip, and he knew what she would tell him.
+
+“Mary’s gone, Doctor. Half an hour ago. And Mrs. Ensor has bolted
+herself into her bedroom, and won’t answer to any one. I’m afraid
+she’s bad. And”--she dropped her voice--“there’s a man shut in the
+library with Mr. Ensor. Here’s what he brought. I found it on the
+floor of the dining-room just now.”
+
+She produced the card, stained with blood where Gertrude’s fingers had
+grasped it. “Only fowl’s!” she said apologetically. The doctor took
+it.
+
+“The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Inspector G.W.
+Kelson!” he exclaimed. “That’s Mrs. Marrable! She said she was going
+to put the Society on to them.”
+
+“She’s a bit late,” the nurse said.
+
+“By half an hour,” he echoed her, as they went in together.
+
+“You never heard anything like it,” the nurse continued, as they
+proceeded upstairs; “Gertrude, the cook here has been telling me. And
+who she is and all. They’ve just killed her--by inches.”
+
+“Not by inches, by yards,” corrected Dr. Hodgson. He was very
+indignant. “The child’s back is covered with unhealed
+sores--suppurating. She doesn’t weigh more than forty-eight pounds.
+Sixty-two she should have. Systematic neglect and outrageous cruelty!
+They’ll have to answer for it.”
+
+“Mr. Ensor knew nothing of it, I’ll swear,” the nurse said quickly.
+
+“Yes. His wife leads him by the nose,” replied Hodgson.
+
+“She’s a caution!” exclaimed the nurse, with virulence.
+
+“And she’ll get off, because of her condition. They always admit
+that.”
+
+“When it’s her own child, Doctor? Of course you know it’s her own
+child?”
+
+“I suspected it,” he said quietly.
+
+They had come into the great, wide, lightly-papered, spare bedroom,
+with three tall windows looking out over the grey gravel sweep in
+front of the house. The windows were wide open. The gardener could be
+heard sharpening his old-fashioned instrument ready for cutting the
+scrap of lawn beyond the gravel. Professionally, perfunctorily, the
+doctor looked at and examined what lay on the bed. Then, while the
+nurse finished her work, he strolled to a window and stared out,
+waiting to see the master of the house, whose voice could be heard
+urgently talking in the room immediately below.
+
+The nurse, dabbling sponges in hot water, going backwards and forwards
+with towels, talked. She had not talked for weeks.
+
+“The likeness!” she said. “Don’t you see it strong now she’s dead,
+Doctor? I must say I noticed it the very first moment he came up into
+that garret where they had put the poor child away to sleep--or to
+die, as it happened. Nobody’d been near her for days. Gertrude thought
+Mrs. Ensor had, and she thought--God knows what she thought!” She
+shuddered. “There wasn’t so much as a jug of water there. Mrs. Ensor
+hoped Mary would die, and Gertrude didn’t care. She’s a regular bad
+one. She was cook to Mrs. Ensor before she married and had a baby
+there, and Miss Adelaide’s father, he was a doctor, and he gave her a
+certificate of death. He was a wicked old man, by all accounts. So
+when Miss Adelaide got into trouble, this woman helped her.…”
+
+All the while she talked, she was busying herself about the wretched
+little body of Mary. The doctor stood at his post near the window,
+waiting for Mr. Ensor’s visitor to go, listening to the nurse’s talk
+as he lightly slashed his top-boots with his riding-whip, and decided
+what he would do. He liked Ensor, and wanted to make it easy for him.
+
+“And,” Nurse Ferrier continued, “she says they bought this house with
+its high walls all round, because Miss Adelaide didn’t care to be seen
+about much. She was ashamed, not so much because she had had a baby
+without being married, but because it was such a wretched little
+specimen. She called herself Mrs. Dibben--that was the name of
+Gertrude’s man--he was a prize-fighter. I make out that he was in
+prison at the time. Any way, he was never seen again.… Gertrude says
+they were all going on quite quietly, and the two children brought up
+like sisters.… Mrs. Ensor had almost come to think, Gertrude says,
+that it was the other way about, and that the beautiful child was
+hers, and the wretched one the cook’s.… Gertrude didn’t care--her
+child was the gainer.… But that the day Mr. Ensor came, Mrs. Ensor
+rushed into the kitchen like a mad thing, and said she’d told him
+Phillis was hers and Mary Gertrude’s, and that was the way it had to
+be, for he was coming to live here. Doctor, what do you think of
+that?”
+
+“I think, if it’s true, it’s a disgusting business. But I don’t quite
+believe it.”
+
+“I do,” said the nurse stoutly. “I am coming to believe it. That
+woman--Mrs. Ensor--is bad enough for anything and she simply couldn’t
+have had a nice simple child like Phillis, not if she tried ever so!”
+
+“There, he’s gone!” said Hodgson, leaving the window. He came to the
+bedside and surveyed the child’s small body lying straight, neatly,
+fairly disposed. The nurse stood proudly away from her work--
+
+“She looks nice, now, doesn’t she, Doctor? I’ve put her on one of Miss
+Phillis’s smart nightgowns. Gertrude went in to Mrs. Ensor’s room and
+got it for me. She’s not so bad, you know, Gertrude; she only did as
+she was told. Mrs. Ensor did the beating and wouldn’t let
+her--positively wouldn’t let her give the child nourishing food.”
+
+“How is Mrs. Ensor? Did you gather?”
+
+“Quite calm, Gertrude says, though she knows everything.”
+
+“She’s absolutely determined not to let herself have a miscarriage,
+that’s about it,” said Hodgson, buttoning his coat. “She’s got plenty
+of self-control and courage of a kind.”
+
+“Courage--to be cruel!” exclaimed the nurse, glancing at the human
+piece of wreckage on the bed. “And I should say that if she thinks it
+necessary to starve her children to death if they happen to be born
+weaklings, that the chances are she’ll have to kill the next too, even
+if she does manage to get it born all right, and I have my doubts
+about that. She’s far too keen about it, too----”
+
+“What’s that?” Hodgson interrupted, cocking his ear.
+
+“Mrs. Ensor’s door!”
+
+“He’s gone in to her, then!”
+
+They looked at each other.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+Ensor, speaking urgently to his wife at the closed door of her room,
+anxious to impart some intelligence he had just received, could get no
+reply from her. He did not give it up, but continued to call her by
+her name--Adelaide. She had a pet name, chosen by herself. He
+remembered it, but he could not bring himself to use it.
+
+Half an hour seemed to elapse. He heard a groan.
+
+Though he hated her, it frightened him, for there was no one with her.
+He changed the tenor of his appeals.
+
+“Adelaide, if you are ill, you must not shut yourself up like this.
+You may do harm to yourself--and to the child. If you won’t see me, at
+least let me send Gertrude to you.”
+
+Then she spoke.
+
+“Wald, I am not very ill--not more ill than I expect to be. For I am
+going to have a child. It will not be quite yet. As soon as it is
+born, I shall kill myself, but not till then. So you need not be
+afraid.”
+
+Her voice sounded fainter, she had turned away from the door. He was
+astonished at her self-control--“not more ill than I expect to be!” He
+felt that he ought to see for himself how she was. Bitterly,
+dispassionately, he made the attempt.
+
+“Let me see you, then,” he said gently. “Just for one moment!”
+
+“Is it to scold me?” Her voice sounded close to the door. “I am not to
+be scolded--now.”
+
+The key was turned in the lock, and he made his way in. His wife stood
+there on the threshold, half defiant, half apologetic. As he knew
+Adelaide, the deprecation was much for her. Her beautiful mournful
+eyes sought his. They held no cruel gleams, such as had lurked there
+so lately, when they had talked of Mary. Her dull black silk
+_peignoir_ was gathered round her; she held it looped pathetically in
+one thin hand. Yet he was not moved. He only thought of her health,
+pathologically, as a doctor might. It was his duty. He had neglected
+his other duty lately.
+
+She put up her sharp chin. Her hand let slip the folds of black, they
+fell all round her, trailing.…
+
+“Kiss me, Wald!” she said.
+
+“No, I cannot.”
+
+She turned, and moved towards the sofa that stretched across the foot
+of her bed. Her stumble over the long embarrassing folds of the
+garment she wore was a mute reproach, but it could not affect him, to
+the extent of inducing him to comply with her request.… She breathed
+heavily and sat down on the sofa.…
+
+“See Gertrude, then. She will tell you all you want to know.”
+
+“Your cook! Adelaide, tell me yourself. Oh, why----?”
+
+She rocked backwards and forwards and nursed her knees.
+
+“I could not bear the sight of her, I tell you!” she answered him
+passionately. “She was a degenerate. She disgraced me. She wasn’t fit
+to live, she ought never to have been born--never even have been
+conceived! But she shames her father, not me!… I am a normal healthy
+woman and all disease is repugnant to me. It’s a law--a law that was
+infringed.… She pays the penalty.… And to see her going about day by
+day, the living testimony of unfitness--of beastliness.… Why, the
+sight of her peaked, suffering face, old and yellow--she looked like
+that even in her cradle--from the very first moment that Gertrude
+showed her to me--that finished me! For I insisted on seeing her at
+once, I was fit enough, I was about in a week.… Then when I came to
+look closer--her awful hand--did you know that she had a finger less
+on her right hand?… Still, I nursed her myself, I--faugh!”
+
+She put her handkerchief to her bitten lips--there was blood on it
+when she took it away.
+
+“Then when you came--I saw you look at her, in the car, and again,
+when we got out, and you carried the rugs for her as we walked up the
+drive--that was enough! I made up my mind then, and I have never
+repented it. Never, never, I tell you. You would never have married
+me, if you had known, for you have the same ideas as me. Wald, that’s
+what I liked in you, only I didn’t know that you were a coward--a
+mean, canting, respectable, conventional coward--what they used to
+call lily-livered--or is it pigeon-livered?”
+
+“Sneer at me if you like, Adelaide, but explain. Damn you, explain!”
+he cried, forgetting himself, forgetting her state, forgetting
+everything under the stress of the terrible, nearly formulated horror.
+
+“What’s there to explain?” she said. “I hated the child, and I beat
+her. I beat her to death, that’s all!”
+
+He groaned in helplessness, overcome by her fierce self-sufficiency.
+
+“But had you no sort of human feeling, no woman’s tenderness? You’ve
+been a mother--there’s surely such a thing as a mother’s heart…?”
+
+Adelaide looked at him wearily, shuddering.…
+
+“Been a mother--yes. And you?--what about your tenderness--your heart?
+We used to wonder that your heart didn’t tell you when you heard her
+calling out--screaming--yelling? I beat her, I tell you, I beat her
+within an inch of her life, filthy, hateful object that I’d brought
+into the world--through you! Pah!”
+
+She flung herself down. Her tone was so piercing, so foreign, so
+unknown to him, who had learned to expect every variation in Adelaide,
+that he cried, in panic fear merely--
+
+“For God’s sake, keep your head, Adelaide! Don’t go mad now, on top of
+it all!”
+
+“Oh, I’m not mad, not a bit of it, can’t you see, you fool? But, no,
+you can’t see, you can’t see anything, unless it’s under your nose. It
+_was_ under your nose, and you worried and worried, and yet you didn’t
+see it! Here you are--Mary’s your own child--and mine! Mine! Yours!
+Don’t you remember that night--that night after ‘Tristan’----?”
+
+“No, I remember nothing. Be quiet, now!” He held up his hand, as if to
+ward off a blow. “Where is she?”
+
+“My God, _I_ don’t know.”
+
+She fell back. Her pains had begun. He took no notice.
+
+“I’m going to Mary,” he murmured.
+
+She rushed forward, and bolted the door behind him.
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+The doctor and the nurse were still waiting by the body of Mary. Aware
+of the portentous visit of Inspector Kelson, Hodgson fancied he might
+be of some use. He might do Ensor a good turn in allocating much of
+the blame, which the husband was so generously anxious to take on his
+own shoulders, on to the wife’s, where it belonged. There were reasons
+why she should be better able to bear it than he, the law would be
+merciful to her in her then condition.
+
+Hodgson could not fathom her. He was merely an overworked, overdriven
+country doctor, riding about daily from one case to another. That the
+maladies of the hardy, normal, if worn-out wives of the labouring
+classes were of a painful and dreary similarity, and completely
+relieved him of the necessity of keeping himself up to date with the
+new departures in medicine, was perhaps the reason that he did not
+break down from obvious overwork. His old mare who carried her
+sleeping master on her back along the same old roads to the same old
+cottages to attend to Hodge’s same wife’s seventh baby was as well
+preserved as he.
+
+A complicated, abnormal case like Mrs. Ensor’s; circumstances so
+dramatic as this affair at High Walls seldom or never came his way.
+And events in this house had in the last twenty-four hours succeeded
+each other with such a bewildering rapidity that he felt himself
+excused from keeping up too rigid an attitude with the nurse, who,
+like himself, was humanly and professionally interested, and he
+permitted himself a certain relaxation in talking to her.
+
+Nurse Ferrier, on the other hand, having been shut up in High Walls
+for many days under the rigorous rule of Adelaide, was enjoying
+herself thoroughly. All the while that Ensor was closeted with Mrs.
+Ensor she continued freely to develop her physiological views, leaving
+the room, only for a moment, to get some white flowers to lay upon the
+child’s breast. They heard voices from the next room, and her open,
+and his professionally concealed, curiosity was wrought up to the
+highest pitch when suddenly these voices ceased, and they heard the
+click of a latch and a step in the corridor.…
+
+Then the door of the room they were in was opened with deliberation
+and the hero of their surmises and of their sympathy walked into the
+room.
+
+He did not really seem to see them, as they observed afterwards,
+although he moved his head slightly as he passed the doctor and made
+what might pass as a grunt of recognition. His politeness survived in
+the overthrow of all his standards and hopes and ambitions. They stood
+humbly aside; it was his hour. No one, so far as they knew, had told
+him that Mary was dead, but he could not help knowing it when his eyes
+had rested for a moment on what lay on the bed.
+
+At a sign from Hodgson, the nurse left the room. The doctor followed
+her. The two stood in the corridor outside, looking nervously, now at
+that door of the room they had just vacated, now at that which gave
+admittance to Mrs. Ensor’s apartments, whence came no sound of
+stirring.
+
+Five minutes later, Wald Ensor came out of the bedroom, carrying the
+body of the child in his arms very carefully. As he passed his wife’s
+door, with his burden, it was opened sharply and as suddenly closed
+again. Mrs. Ensor had looked out.
+
+Hodgson and Ferrier followed Ensor downstairs, wondering what he was
+going to do, afraid that he had gone suddenly mad and that they would
+have to interfere.
+
+But so far he was perfectly quiet, restrained, and measured in his
+movements. He walked steadily, balancing what he carried as a nurse
+does a baby, down into the hall, where the autumn fire leaped on the
+hearth, and the charred logs tinkled as they fell. He went through it
+into the portion railed off with screens and arm-chairs, and,
+stooping, deposited the corpse of his child on the tiger-skin which
+lay spread over the sofa--the old yellow sofa from Portland Place. The
+creases were in the skin that his wife had made when she was lying
+there only yesterday. Her bag--one of her bags--lay on it, and with a
+violent gesture of his occupied hand, Ensor swept it off.
+
+Then, deliberately, as if he were in church, he knelt down beside the
+little white-robed form, smoothed the folds of the nightgown his hands
+had disarrayed, and half raising her, taking her in his arms, covered
+her with kisses long and deep.
+
+He did not lift his head when Gertrude, her apron cast aside, a
+puzzling figure with her unaccustomed black surfaces displayed, pushed
+open the red baize door, and stood, savagely poised, her bony, floury
+arms resting on her hips.…
+
+“Go back!” the doctor said, in a loud whisper.
+
+Gertrude paid no heed. Her dull faithful eyes were raised, fixed on
+something she saw at the head of the staircase. It was her mistress
+who was even now descending. The nurse darted forward, and in so doing
+her dress caught in an accidental nail in one of the screens and made
+it fall over the end of the couch. Wald Ensor looked up, he kept hold
+of the child’s hand.… Adelaide continued to descend. Gertrude went a
+step to meet her, but Adelaide waved her away.…
+
+Then Ensor rose, for Adelaide had reached the bottom of the staircase
+and was coming to him, and Mary.… She tottered, but she came on.…
+
+Her husband raised his finger and pointed it at her, and she ceased,
+trembling, to advance.… Gertrude strode up to her and held her
+shoulder. Her state was obvious--she no longer took pains to conceal
+it.
+
+“Listen, all of you!” Ensor was saying, in the same gloomy, intent
+voice he had used all day. “I pray to Almighty God that this woman may
+never live to bear another child!”
+
+ * * * * * * *
+
+He stayed for the inquiry into the death of Mary; he bore himself like
+a man. Then he left England, and his wife never saw him again. She
+survived the birth of her child, stillborn.
+
+ THE END
+
+
+
+
+ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. farmhouse/farm-house,
+tea-gown/tea gown, etc.) have been preserved.
+
+Alterations to the text:
+
+Merge disjointed contractions.
+
+[End of text]
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78605 ***