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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79286 ***
+
+
+
+
+                               DESPISED &
+                                REJECTED
+
+
+                                   BY
+                             A. T. FITZROY
+
+
+                       LONDON: C. W. DANIEL, LTD.
+                   Graham House, Tudor Street, E.C.4.
+
+
+                                 TO YOU
+                         WHO MADE ME UNDERSTAND
+
+
+
+
+                                PART I.
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+“What I like about these small places,” remarked Mrs. Blackwood as she
+seated herself at one of the tea-tables in the lounge of the Amberhurst
+Private Hotel, “is that everybody gets to know everybody else quite
+informally, and that is such a blessing for the young people.”
+
+“Do you really think so?” queried Hester Cawthorn. It amused her to draw
+the older woman out. Mrs. Blackwood herself did not interest Hester at
+all; but Mrs. Blackwood as a type—the well-to-do, conventional,
+provincial type—interested her very much indeed. She could picture Mrs.
+Blackwood, queening it in her home-surroundings, the chatty little
+country town of Eastwold; near enough to London to allow Mr. Blackwood
+to travel up and down every day, and far enough removed from the
+metropolis to form a world to itself; a small and very gregarious world,
+no doubt, in which everybody certainly knew all about everybody else’s
+business, and minded it in preference to their own.
+
+Hester was not gregarious. In the dining-room, she sat alone at her
+small table, politely but firmly declining the manageress’s good-natured
+offer to “find some company for her.” Hester preferred her own company,
+both during meals, and on her long walks into the surrounding country.
+When all the hotel visitors, grouped according to their affinities, were
+seated upon the lawn, Hester would sit alone, reading; or armed with a
+masculine-looking walking-stick, and the brim of her felt hat turned
+down to shade her thin sombre face, would stalk off in the direction of
+the hills that formed a humped barrier upon the sky-line. At the end of
+a fortnight’s stay, Mrs. Blackwood who, true to the traditions of
+Eastwold, had discovered the leading features of interest in the lives
+of everyone else in the hotel, was still no wiser about Hester.
+
+She smiled now in answer to her question. “Why, yes, of course it’s a
+blessing. I think the company one is in makes all the difference to
+one’s enjoyment of a holiday—we always take ours in June, as Mr.
+Blackwood’s partner has to have his in August.” Mrs. Blackwood was as
+eager to impart information concerning herself and her family, as she
+was to elicit it from others. “Are you making a long stay, Miss
+Cawthorn?”
+
+“Possibly; I don’t know.” Hester spoke with perfect courtesy, though her
+tone implied that she was quite decided as to her future plans, but
+wished to discourage enquiries regarding them.
+
+“You’ve only been here a short while?”
+
+“Comparatively speaking.”
+
+Mrs. Blackwood abandoned the attack for the moment, and continued: “The
+children love it here, and even Ottilie seems to be enjoying herself,
+though of course it’s rather difficult for her.”
+
+“Is that the little German girl who is staying with you?”
+
+“Yes. It’s an exchange, you see. Herr Baumgartner is a
+business-connection of my husband’s, and Ottilie has been with us for
+nearly six months, learning English. Next year, Doreen is to go back
+with her to Heidelberg to study German. She’s a dear child, but her
+English isn’t very grand yet, though I’m glad to say that Mr. Griggs has
+given her a part in the theatricals in spite of it.”
+
+“He must be a very indulgent stage-manager.”
+
+“Oh, he’s charming, I assure you. At home at Eastwold, he’s the life and
+soul of the place, just as he is here; he always tries to join us, even
+if it’s only for a week, when we’re on our summer holiday.”
+
+At this juncture, the swing-doors leading into the recreation-room were
+flung open, and the life and soul of Eastwold, wearing velvet
+knee-breeches and a tricolor waistcoat, burst into the lounge.
+
+“Mrs. Blackwood—Miss Cawthorn—what do you think has happened? Miss
+Wright has suddenly been called away, and now there’s no one to play the
+incidental music for us to-night. I wonder if either of you two
+ladies——” tentatively Mr. Griggs glanced at Hester, of whom he was very
+much in awe.
+
+She shook her head, and Mrs. Blackwood replied: “Oh, you know I’m no
+good at the piano, Mr. Griggs. Dennis has monopolised all the musical
+talent there is in our family, and I’m afraid he won’t be here till too
+late. Can’t you get on without the music?”
+
+“Why, the music’s half the battle!” wailed Griggs, whose neat little
+moustache, neat little features, pince-nez, and hair growing rather thin
+on top, accorded strangely with his dashing costume. “It lends
+atmosphere—dignity. We can’t have Marry Anto’nett guillotined without a
+soft musical accompaniment. It makes all the difference, you know.”
+
+“Most unfortunate, isn’t it?” Mrs. Blackwood invited Hester’s
+commiseration, “of course Doreen strums the piano a little, but she’s in
+the play. I do wonder if Dennis——”
+
+“You can bet your boots that Dennis won’t!” A twelve-year-old schoolboy
+suddenly thrust his head through the swing-doors, “and anyway if he did,
+he’d play mouldy sort of stuff. He always does.”
+
+“Oh, Reggie,” his mother reproved him, “you musn’t speak like that about
+your brother’s music. You don’t understand it, that’s all.”
+
+“Well, it _is_ mouldy,” insisted the boy, “there’s no tune in it,
+however hard you listen for one.”
+
+Mrs. Blackwood privately endorsed this statement, but for the sake of
+discipline she resumed: “You’re a very rude little boy! And what are you
+doing with that air-gun? Haven’t I told you not to use it in the house?”
+
+“I’ve got to have it. I’m the Mob—in the French Revolution, you know,”
+he added for Hester’s edification.
+
+“Oh, darling,” exclaimed Mrs. Blackwood, “I thought you were to be the
+little Dauphin.”
+
+Reggie shook his head in silence.
+
+“_Aren’t_ you going to be the Dauphin?” his mother persisted. “I thought
+it would be such a nice part for you.”
+
+“It was a mouldy part, so I chucked it.”
+
+“Yes, but who’s going to play it, if you’re not?”
+
+“Doreen. She’s got to be both the Queen’s children rolled into one. _I_
+wasn’t going to have Miss Fayne blubbering all over me.... Much more
+sport to be the Mob, and stick her head up on a pike.... We haven’t got
+a pike, so the air-gun’s got to do.”
+
+Griggs shook his finger archly. “Well, Master Reggie, shall we tell them
+the truth about your defalcation—good word that, eh? You didn’t mind
+being the Dauphin, as long as Miss de Courcy was playing Marry
+Anto’nett, did you?”
+
+Reggie grew pink about the ears and muttered: “She’s a sport, and anyway
+_she_ chucked the Queen’s part, because she wanted to be Charlotte
+Corday, and have the bathroom bit.”
+
+“Ssh,” remonstrated Griggs, “you musn’t talk so much, or you’ll spoil
+the effect of our performance to-night. I don’t know what we shall do
+about the music, though. Don’t you think there’s any chance that Dennis
+will be here in time?”
+
+Dennis’s mother returned doubtfully: “You see, I don’t know exactly when
+he’s arriving; he didn’t say in his wire, he’s rather absent-minded. I
+suppose composers and people like that often are.”
+
+Hester noted that there was an undertone of pride in her voice now, as
+well as deprecation; a moment later, the pride was unconsciously echoed
+by Reggie, hovering between the swing-doors. “Dennis has got other
+things to think about than remembering to tell you if he’ll be home to
+dinner to-morrow, or whom he’s going out with the day after! His head’s
+always full of ideas, even if they do sound rotten when they come out.”
+Then, perhaps fearing that he had said too much in praise of his elder
+brother, Reggie added with seeming irrelevance: “Clive won the High Jump
+at Westborough three years running, and the Long Jump twice; not bad—was
+it?” Without waiting for an answer, he vanished through the door; and
+Griggs, after vainly scouring the drawing-room and the lawn in search of
+a pianist, returned to conduct the dress rehearsal.
+
+Mrs. Blackwood sighed. “Reggie and Clive are great friends in spite of
+the big difference in their ages. But Clive and Dennis don’t hit it off
+at all, though there’s only a year between them.”
+
+“Opposing temperaments?” suggested Hester.
+
+“Yes, indeed. Even as little boys they were quite different. We could
+never get Dennis to play with soldiers or steamers or any of the usual
+toys. His father used to get quite angry. He always wanted his boys to
+be _manly_ boys. Reggie is a great favourite of his, now. He loves to
+take the child along whenever he goes golfing or swimming. Mr. Blackwood
+has been such a keen sportsman all his life, and both Clive and Reggie
+seem to have inherited it from him. I’m sure it adds to his enjoyment of
+his holiday to have Reggie here, even though it’s only because they’ve
+got measles at his preparatory school. Yes, he and Mr. Blackwood are
+more like friends than father and son. But Dennis....” Again there was
+in her tone that mingling of pride and concern. “Dennis has never cared
+at all about sport.”
+
+“More his mother’s son than his father’s, perhaps?”
+
+There was a frown between Mrs. Blackwood’s eyes now. She appeared to be
+looking straight at Hester, yet without seeing her; and a second later,
+at the sunlit lawn and the first tee of the hotel golf links, yet
+without seeing them either. Her concentrated gaze evidently beheld
+something that had nothing whatever to do with Hester or the lawn or the
+golf links. She said in a troubled voice: “Yes—yes, perhaps he is, I
+don’t really know—of course as long as he’s happy—.” She broke off
+abruptly and fell silent. Hester watched her. So she had reserves after
+all, this provincial chatterbox, despite her readiness to discuss her
+own and other people’s affairs. But whatever it was that Hester imagined
+to have glimpsed, was hidden away again the next moment, beneath the
+flow of light conversation that had broken out afresh. “He’s been
+staying up in London with a friend, Mr. Burgess, for the Russian opera
+season, they’re both so interested in it. Mr. Burgess is musical
+too—plays the piano, but he doesn’t compose like Dennis does. Still,
+it’s nice for them to have something in common, isn’t it? And now
+they’re off on a walking tour through Devonshire, and as we’re on the
+Great Western line here, Dennis promised that they would spend the
+week-end with us on their way down.” She went on, “I wish they were
+staying longer; I’m sure Dennis would like it here, though he always
+says he hates hotels. But it’s the people who make the place, isn’t it?
+And I do think they’re such a nice set of people here, don’t you, Miss
+Cawthorn?”
+
+Hester’s “Oh, yes, I daresay they are,” was utterly impersonal and
+aloof, but not in the least discouraged, Mrs. Blackwood continued: “That
+Miss de Courcy, now—Antoinette—don’t you think she’s charming?”
+
+“I don’t think I’ve noticed her....” Hester was actuated by some demon
+of cussedness to pour cold water on poor Mrs. Blackwood’s enthusiasm. It
+was an untruth into the bargain: she had certainly noticed Antoinette de
+Courcy; one could not very well help noticing the most vivid and
+striking personality in the whole hotel.
+
+Mrs. Blackwood began again: “I believe she comes of a very good old
+French family; her people are very strict with her; I think she told
+Doreen that this is the first time she has stayed away from
+them—she’s here with the Faynes, you know; she and Rosabel were
+school-friends—Doreen is simply devoted to Antoinette and so is Reggie.”
+
+“What about Clive?” laughed Hester.
+
+“Oh, Clive’s engaged, you see. They may have to wait two years till they
+can marry—not that Mr. Blackwood wouldn’t be quite willing to help them
+to set up house now, but Clive is determined that he’ll make a position
+for himself before he marries. He’s always known his own mind; even as a
+little chap he wanted to be an engineer, and he’s stuck to it ever
+since; and he’s like that in his affections, too—absolutely settled,
+though he’s so young—just twenty-four—but Lily knows he wouldn’t change
+towards her, if she had to wait ten years for him; Reggie’s like Clive;
+once he gets an idea into his head nothing will move him. They’re both
+inclined to be obstinate, but then if one knows how to treat them!... I
+can read those two like an open book.” She ended with a sigh, in which
+satisfaction was blended with an indefinable regret. She was obviously
+thinking again of that other son, the first-born, whose psychology did
+not seem to present the facilities of the “open book.” It was curious
+that whereas she spoke of all her menfolk—of her husband, of Clive and
+Reggie—with affection, with admiration, with respect even, when she
+spoke of Dennis or, as at the present moment, remained silent about him,
+there was about her whole manner something which suggested that the love
+she bore him was more poignant, and therefore more secret.
+
+Presently, headed by Mr. Griggs, the other members of the theatrical
+company came through into the lounge. They had resumed their ordinary
+clothes, and flung themselves in various attitudes of weariness into the
+deep armchairs.
+
+Griggs’ repeated plea that they were not to spoil the effect of the play
+by talking about it now, was laughed down by Antoinette de Courcy,
+balancing her slender weight on the arm of a chair. “What does it
+matter? There’s no one about now. Mrs. Blackwood is the mother of three
+of the actors, so why shouldn’t she be in the know? And Miss Cawthorn
+won’t let out any of our secrets.” She smiled brilliantly across at
+Hester, who did not smile back, but answered shortly: “No, indeed not.”
+Her assurance was quite superfluous, as it was impossible to imagine her
+condescending to take sufficient interest in anyone’s secrets to lead
+her to betray them.
+
+Mrs. Blackwood laughed. “Well, I can only hope that the three actors for
+whom I’m responsible haven’t given you too much trouble, Mr. Griggs.”
+
+“Oh, how can you speak of ‘trouble,’ Mrs. Blackwood?” he expostulated,
+“it has only been a pleasure to work with them.”
+
+Mrs. Blackwood beamed upon him. “We all know you’ve got wonderful
+patience, as you need to have, I’m sure, for getting up amateur
+theatricals.”
+
+Griggs smiled with modest pride. “But it’s well worth it, well worth it.
+Nothing like theatricals for making people thoroughly at home with each
+other. Whist-drives and picnics aren’t in it! There’s something about
+theatricals, an _esprit de corps_, as you might say.”
+
+Reggie was causing a diversion by noisily testing the spring of his
+air-gun. By way of rebuke, his mother with less tact than could have
+been desired, remarked: “I do hope all Reggie’s chopping and changing
+didn’t put you out. I think he’s a naughty little boy not to have taken
+the part that was given him.”
+
+“Yes, and it means double work for me,” declared his seventeen-year-old
+sister Doreen. “I’ve got to say all his lines as well as my own.”
+
+“And jolly glad you are to get the chance!” retorted Reggie. Doreen
+threw back her pretty fair head and commanded him to “shut up”; and
+Antoinette checked the reprimand rising to Mrs. Blackwood’s lips with:
+“You really musn’t blame Reggie, he was only following my bad example.”
+
+Here Rosabel Fayne, author of the play, broke out: “Yes, Antoinette
+darling, I do think it’s such a pity—though of course you know best, and
+I’m sure you’re simply wonderful as Charlotte Corday—but I did write
+Marie Antoinette part on purpose for you—so sweet that you’ve got the
+same name, isn’t it? And I know I’m no good in the part....” She paused
+for breath, eyes fixed adoringly on her friend’s face. Rosabel’s
+appearance was a sore trial to herself. She yearned to be tall and
+willowy and languorous; imperious of manner, and regal of bearing ...
+instead of which she had an angular little figure, a pointed chin, and
+eyes which, despite the wistfulness of their expression, were somehow
+reminiscent of a robin’s. She was ready to lavish great floods of
+adoration on her friends or on characters in history or fiction. At
+present the said adoration was equally divided between Antoinette de
+Courcy and the “Unhappy Queen.”
+
+Antoinette laughed now. “You make an excellent Queen, Rosabel, and the
+Charlotte Corday part was really too tempting....”
+
+“It’s quite unhistorical,” remarked Clive Blackwood in a bored voice. He
+was bored with the theatricals altogether; had only consented to play a
+part, because he did not want to make himself conspicuous by refusing;
+and because if you were staying in a place like this, it behoved you,
+more or less, to do as the others did. So Clive was playing Louis XVI.
+with a wooden stolidity and lack of conviction partly responsible for
+Antoinette’s change of rôle.
+
+“Yes, it is gorgeously unhistorical,” she agreed with Clive, “Rosabel
+wasn’t even certain if it was Danton or Marat whom I had to murder in
+the bath, but Ottilie managed to enlighten us, didn’t you, Ottilie?”
+
+Ottilie, whose tartan blouse, fair basket plaits wound round her head,
+and sentimental blue eyes proclaimed her unmistakably a member of the
+Fatherland, exclaimed “_Augenblick!_” and removed her fingers from her
+ears. She had stuffed them in to shut out sound, while she earnestly
+pondered over the lines of her part.
+
+“Ottilie, you ought to know your words by now,” protested Doreen.
+
+“Och, I shall never know zem....” Ottilie’s voice was by nature loud,
+deep and gloomy, and her present despair had added considerably to its
+lugubrious quality.
+
+“You knew them well enough just now,” Doreen strove to cheer her, but
+Ottilie refused to be cheered.
+
+“_Ausgeschlossen_ that I remember myself von vord vhen ze curtain
+up-goes.... Only lately I exchanged ze vords. I said ‘ze’ when it is ‘a’
+in ze text.”
+
+“But little slips like that don’t matter, do they, Mr. Griggs?” Doreen
+appealed to the stage-manager.
+
+“Of course not, of course not,” he responded genially, “as long as you
+give us an impression of the character, we’ll be lenient about the
+words.”
+
+“And everybody will make allowances for you, dear,” Mrs. Blackwood put
+in, “knowing that you’re a foreigner.”
+
+“I am Madame Roland, governess of ze children of ze Qveen, and for my
+_Auffassung_ of ze char_ac_ter—how do you say ‘_Auffassung_’ in English,
+Doreen?”
+
+“‘Conception,’” translated Antoinette, who had travelled.
+
+“For my conception, zen, it is _unbedingt_ necessary zat my vords shall
+be exact.” Ottilie could not be induced to regard her part and
+responsibilities in any but the most serious light; and resumed her
+conscientious study of her lines. To Ottilie, brought up on her native
+Schiller and Goethe and Kleist, there was something almost sacred about
+the production of a historical drama, and she was grieved at the lack of
+seriousness with which the others approached it. Ever since she could
+remember, she had longed to play one of Schiller’s heroines, Maria
+Stuart, or Joan of Arc, bidding farewell to her mountains—
+
+“_Lebt wohl, Ihr Berge, Ihr geliebten Triften_—” or most of all
+Elisabeth in “Don Carlos”.... Yes, how she had longed to act that great
+scene with young Carlos, her step-son, manfully repressing his passion
+for her, going to his death.... It would have been rapturous to hear
+Heidmann, the romantic actor for whom she had a “_Schwärmerei_,” say to
+her:
+
+“_... Elisabeth, ich halte dich in meinen Armen und wanke nicht...._”
+
+But instead of all these imaginary glories, Ottilie was only playing a
+French governess with a German accent in an English play—a play in which
+historical facts had been shamelessly juggled with, and no one even
+cared if she did say “the” when it should be “a”....
+
+As the afternoon wore on, the other hotel visitors returned from their
+various outings, and began to fill up the lounge. Griggs scanned them
+with an eagle eye, in the hope of finding amongst them a pianist capable
+of supplying the “atmospheric” music.
+
+“Mrs. Greene—now I wonder if you would—no? Miss Harris—of course _you_
+play—no good denying it, you know, I can see it in your eyes, light of
+genius and all that! What? Cut your finger...? Isn’t that bad luck now!”
+Griggs mopped his forehead. “Dear, dear, whatever shall we do? All
+my—ah—blandishments seem to be of no avail.”
+
+Rosabel suggested dubiously: “Of course, darling Mother would play for
+us with pleasure—she’s always so sweet—but she hasn’t such an
+exquisitely _soulful_ touch as Miss Wright had—we’re spoilt, aren’t we?
+In fact, dance-music is really Mother’s strong point.”
+
+Antoinette gave a joyous laugh. “Well, why not, why not? By all means
+let us have the ‘Merry Widow’ waltz, while Marie Antoinette is being
+beheaded.”
+
+“Oh, Miss Antoinette!” exclaimed Griggs in an injured voice, “you’re
+making fun of us. This is a most serious matter.”
+
+Half amused and half impatient, Antoinette again glanced across at
+Hester who, this time, gave her in response a slow smile that made her
+pale, haggard face look strangely attractive. Antoinette flushed, shook
+back the short blonde _cendré_ curls that clustered about the nape of
+her neck, and looked away again.
+
+“Here’s Dad!” cried Reggie, and held the door open while his father and
+Mr. Fayne, returning from their round of golf, passed through into the
+lounge. In his youth, Mr. Blackwood had been extremely handsome; with
+his thick iron-grey hair and ruddy complexion, he was still striking in
+appearance, but his features had become coarse, and he played golf
+nowadays for the sake of his figure as well as for the sake of the game.
+
+“Well, you youngsters, getting ready for to-night?” Jovially Mr.
+Blackwood addressed the company in general. “No one’s offered _me_ a
+part, of course.... But if any of you had been out on the links this
+afternoon, you’d have seen a performance that would have rivalled your
+show, I can tell you.” He paused, then continued impressively: “I did
+the eleventh hole in three—one drive clean over the lake, one iron shot
+on to the green, and one putt. What do you say to that, my son?”
+
+“Pretty good,” said Reggie, glowing with pleasure, despite the studied
+indifference of his tones. “I don’t think much of the way they’ve
+cleaned your clubs, Dad, here—let me” ... he seized the bag, and
+retiring towards one of the windows, extracted the mashie and began
+vigorously polishing it with emery-paper.
+
+“That boy of mine’s all right, you know....” Mr. Blackwood was nearly
+bursting with paternal pride; then, having slapped Clive on the back,
+and pulled Doreen’s plait, he turned to his wife.
+
+“Dennis not here yet? When’s he coming?”
+
+Mrs. Blackwood became apologetic. “I don’t quite know; he didn’t say
+definitely. I expect he’ll be here by dinner-time, though.”
+
+“The least he can do,” commented her husband in a manner suddenly devoid
+of joviality. “I’ve no doubt he’ll contrive to be late, and put
+everybody out as usual, inconsiderate young beggar.”
+
+A painful flush mounted to Mrs. Blackwood’s cheeks, and Antoinette
+wished that she were not witnessing this little scene.
+
+“He doesn’t mean to be inconsiderate, Daddy dear,” said Dennis’s mother
+gently, “it’s just—that he doesn’t think.”
+
+“Too much else to think about, eh, with his theatre-going and his operas
+and what-not.... Well, if he misses the fun to-night, he’ll only have
+himself to blame.” Mr. Blackwood’s joviality was quite restored: “_I_
+wouldn’t miss it for a mint o’ money; I know when I’m in for a good
+thing!” He glanced approvingly at Antoinette, and she felt by instinct
+that had he been better acquainted with her, he would have winked, or
+dug her in the ribs. He was that sort of elderly gentleman....
+
+Reggie, from the window, suddenly cried: “Here they are!” and let the
+golf-clubs slide to the ground.
+
+“Oh, is it really...?” Doreen rushed towards the door. Antoinette
+reflected that the eldest son had indeed timed his entrance effectively;
+and she wondered if Hester also was aware of the dramatic possibilities
+of the situation. Antoinette herself was always keenly aware of dramatic
+possibilities; in fact she lived for the apprehension of them, and for
+the coping with them.
+
+As the door swung open to admit Dennis Blackwood and Crispin Burgess,
+Mrs. Blackwood made as if to rise from her chair, and then thought
+better of it. Her eyes, very bright in her flushed face, were fixed upon
+her son’s tall figure.
+
+“Hallo, Mother!” He came straight across the lounge to her and kissed
+her. The next minute, Doreen was affectionately hanging round his neck;
+and Mr. Griggs was exclaiming in transports of delight: “Splendid
+fellows to have come in time! And now they’re here, let’s rope ’em in,
+rope ’em both in—everybody’s got to do something—nothing like all
+working together—rope ’em in, I say.”
+
+Dennis laughed in good-humoured bewilderment, and put his arm round his
+little sister’s shoulders; but his companion, a lanky, sallow-faced
+youth of a gloomy and taciturn disposition, stammered: “N-noise....
+What’s all the n-noise about?” He always managed to enunciate the first
+consonant of a word, and then had to blow hard through his front teeth,
+after which the remainder of the word followed with comparative ease.
+Doubtless this impediment in his speech accounted both for its
+infrequency and its terseness.
+
+Griggs, rubbing his hands together, was still surrounding the newcomers
+with ecstatic pæans. “What’s all the noise about, indeed? We’ll soon
+show you. Everybody’s going to help in our little entertainment
+to-night. _Oh_, yes.... _You_, Mr. Burgess,” shaking a finger at the
+bemused Crispin, “are going to play the piano for us, Ah-ha!”
+
+Griggs gave a triumphant chuckle, and with arms folded, stood back to
+view the effects of his speech.
+
+After a prolonged interval for blowing, Crispin announced: “I d-don’t
+d-dream of it!” and looked reproachfully at Dennis, who only laughed,
+and turned to exchange solemn greetings with Reggie, still
+ostentatiously polishing the golf-clubs.
+
+Rosabel burst out: “Oh, Mr. Burgess, _won’t_ you...? We’ve heard so much
+about your playing, and what we want you to do is quite easy, really....
+Oh, dear, that sounds like an insult, doesn’t it? But I didn’t mean it
+like that. Of course I know you can play difficult things, but what I
+meant to say was that you needn’t bother to play difficult ones for us.
+Just any sort of accompaniment will do, as long as there’s _feeling_ in
+it.... Puccini, or—or anything of that kind.”
+
+There were sounds from Crispin that might have proceeded from one in the
+last stages of suffocation. He was nearly purple before
+he managed to get out: “P-puccini—I hate P-puccini—he’s
+obvious—ch-cheap—sugarandwater—G-r-r-r.” Crispin shook himself, “no one
+like B-bach or B-beethoven.”
+
+Ottilie brightened at the mention of the two familiar names. “Zey are ze
+biggest componistors zat ze world has!”
+
+The flexible Rosabel hastened to agree: “Yes, Beethoven is simply
+lovely, isn’t he? Well, you play just whatever you feel in the mood for,
+Mr. Burgess.”
+
+Mr. Burgess shook his head. “I’m not going to p-play,” then he added
+gloomily to Dennis: “If I’d known it was g-going to be like this, I
+w-wouldn’t have c-come ...” and in an attitude of profound dejection,
+sat down upon his suit-case.
+
+“Oh, be a sport, sir, be a sport! How can you refuse anything to such a
+fair petitioner?” Griggs strove to goad Crispin’s _amour propre_. But
+Crispin remained entirely unmoved.
+
+“Well, then, we shall have to ask our celebrated composer here to oblige
+us. No use hiding away there in the corner, Dennis, _I_ see you”—for
+Dennis, seeing that the general attention was centred round Crispin, had
+profited by the occasion to efface himself—“of course we all know you’re
+a shining light, but we hope you’re not too proud to shed a little of
+its radiance in our midst!” Griggs beamed, delighted with his own flow
+of language.
+
+Doreen whispered: “Oh, _do_, Denny, please ...” and Dennis, who all
+along had anticipated this onslaught upon himself, felt extremely
+awkward. “I’m no good to you, Griggs. Don’t think me a surly brute, it
+isn’t that I’m proud, or anything of that sort, but—” he broke off. It
+was really very difficult to refuse; all the more so in view of
+Crispin’s behaviour. He felt his mother’s eyes upon him; Doreen’s....
+But he could not play for all these people; not just now; he could not
+give them what they wanted, and they would not want what he had to give
+them.
+
+“You’ll play us some of your own compositions, I hope,” Griggs went on,
+disregarding his refusal. Dennis shook his head. This was exactly what
+he would not do. He was in the throes of composing an opera, his first
+opera. He loved it, this half-formed work of his, with a love that was
+at once passionate and tender, and intensely protective. He felt that he
+wanted to protect it now.... “I’m very sorry, Griggs, but I honestly
+don’t know anything suitable to the occasion.”
+
+His mother said tentatively: “But you know so many pieces, darling;
+can’t you think of any?”
+
+“I’m afraid not, Mother dear....” The thing that he was creating, for
+the moment obsessed him entirely; it swamped all thought of other
+people’s music; he could only think of his own; dream of it; live in
+it....
+
+Griggs, in an agitated aside, whispered to Mrs. Blackwood: “Do you think
+he’s offended because I asked Mr. Burgess before him?”
+
+Dennis said again: “I’m sorry.”
+
+Antoinette suddenly slid down from the arm of the chair on which she had
+been balancing. “Your mother is just coming up the drive, Rosabel: I’m
+going to ask her to play for us!”
+
+And before Dennis Blackwood’s look of gratitude could reach her,
+Antoinette had swung through the door to waylay Mrs. Fayne.
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+During dinner, both Dennis and Crispin were given to understand that
+they were “in disgrace.” Mr. Blackwood made frequent remarks to the
+effect that he was sorry he had ever allowed Dennis to take up such a
+nonsensical profession, if he couldn’t even make himself pleasant and
+turn his strumming to some account when the occasion arose. He supposed
+it was partly due to the influence of Dennis’s friends, “these
+new-fangled London young men,” who weren’t sporting enough to take part
+in anything that seemed beneath their dignity. And so on, _ad lib._ with
+variations....
+
+Dennis said nothing, and set his lips tightly, as was his way when Mr.
+Blackwood jarred upon his nerves more exquisitely than usual. He
+disliked his father, disliked the whole coarse overbearing masculinity
+of the man. There was between them an antagonism that was fundamental,
+and quite apart from the present source of grievance.
+
+It was an uncomfortable meal. Clive and Reggie were openly ranged upon
+their father’s side; but occasionally Doreen sent Dennis a look of
+unmistakable partisanship out of her soft dark eyes. Poor Mrs. Blackwood
+was torn between her conviction that her husband was in the right, and
+her fear that he was being rude to a guest. But she need not have
+worried on Crispin’s behalf. Crispin was quite used to Mr. Blackwood’s
+outbursts against the musical profession, having once spent a week with
+the family at Eastwold. He also possessed the faculty of making himself
+apparently deaf to sounds which displeased him. The sound of Mr.
+Blackwood’s voice displeased him, so he took no notice of it, and
+devoted himself exclusively to his dinner.
+
+The pervading gloom was only relieved by Ottilie trying half-aloud to
+memorise her part, and by Reggie and Doreen quarrelling over points in
+the forthcoming play. But the quarrelling and Mr. Blackwood’s grumbling
+were alike carried on in undertones, so that they might not be audible
+to the occupants of the other tables. Whatever the internal state of
+affairs might be, however strained the relations between one member and
+another, outwardly the semblance of a cheerful and united family-party
+must be preserved. To Dennis, the pink-shaded lamp on each table seemed
+to hold within its circle of light a whole complex world of subtle
+affinities, subtler strains and antagonisms; and each world seemed to be
+irrevocably cut off from the rest. He began to wish that he had not
+come. He was overwhelmed by the longing that always assailed him in a
+large gathering of strangers, namely to run away and hide ... a longing
+that was absurd and incongruous in conjunction with his broad shoulders
+and length of limb. Perhaps his mouth alone, curved and sensitive above
+the firm chin, betrayed a nature in which such a longing, and others
+equally freakish, might hold their sway.
+
+Dinner was over at last. Pleasantly conscious of their own importance,
+Doreen, Ottilie and Reggie had left the table before the dessert was
+served; Clive had reluctantly followed them; and now Dennis and Crispin,
+with Mr. and Mrs. Blackwood, were seated in the front row of chairs in
+the recreation-room.
+
+Mrs. Blackwood was saying to Dennis what a pity it was that Reggie
+wouldn’t play the Dauphin, and wouldn’t it have been nice if they’d had
+the whole thing in French—Doreen’s accent had so wonderfully
+improved.... Someone said “Ssh,” as the curtain rose.
+
+Rosabel’s drama should have been entitled “Charlotte Corday” rather than
+“Marie Antoinette.” Charlotte Corday alone did not appear to be
+suffering from nervousness, nor from the usual tendency of amateurs to
+get behind each other, and cluster together as if for shelter in one
+corner of the stage. She moved about with a total lack of
+self-consciousness, making the others seem awkward and lifeless by
+comparison. The impetus that carried her through the play must spring
+entirely from within herself, Dennis decided; for she got little enough
+support from the coy and timid Marie Antoinette, or from Marat, as
+played by Griggs rather staccato and apologetically with an intermittent
+French accent. She seemed to be giving out passion and vitality and
+emotion, just because she could not restrain them, and had to find vent
+for them somehow.
+
+“Who’s the girl, Mother?” Dennis in the entr’acte questioned Mrs.
+Blackwood, who launched into voluble descriptions of Antoinette’s
+psychology and parentage.
+
+“Don’t you think she’s remarkable, Denny?”
+
+“She’s inclined to over-act,” Dennis returned shortly. He was always on
+the defensive, even with his mother. Perhaps with his mother most of
+all, because he felt that she was most akin to him, and might at any
+moment come to touch the fringe of that secret world of his ... world
+that must remain secret even from the mother who loved him as perhaps no
+other woman on earth would ever love him.
+
+Tremendous applause greeted the end of the performance. And now the
+actors, mingling with the audience, were being congratulated on all
+sides, and assured that they were “born actors” who would make their
+fortunes on any stage.... Even Ottilie came in for her meed of praise,
+and was told by an amiable old gentleman who evidently had no objection
+to perjuring his soul, that he would never have guessed that she was not
+English.
+
+“_Och, was Sie nicht sagen_ ...” Ottilie, for sheer joy, relapsed into
+her native tongue.
+
+But the heartiest applause and the loudest congratulations were for
+Antoinette. She stood in the midst of the group that surrounded her, a
+slim, straight figure in her short striped petticoat and fichu, laughing
+with childish pleasure at the compliments that were being showered upon
+her. She had doffed her lace cap and was shaking her thick mop of fair
+curls back from her flushed face. Dennis made up his mind to speak to
+her. He owed her a debt of gratitude for having come to his assistance
+with her suggestion that Mrs. Fayne should play the piano. But for the
+present it was impossible to get anywhere within speaking distance of
+Antoinette. Griggs was at her side now, sharing the compliments and
+honours.
+
+“A wonderful stage-manager, Mr. Griggs, if I may say so, a _born_
+stage-manager....”
+
+“You should have been an actor, sir, you’re quite a loss to the
+profession....”
+
+Griggs laid his hand upon his tricolor waistcoat, and smilingly assured
+the audience in general that they were too kind, that he was nothing but
+a humble amateur, an amateur with just a little talent, perhaps.... Yes,
+sometimes he certainly did feel that he had missed his vocation; still,
+even stockbrokers had their uses, he supposed....
+
+And to Antoinette: “You and I must have a special glass of lemonade
+together, Miss Antoinette, just to show there’s no ill-feeling, after
+I’ve been murdered by you every day for the past week ... and very
+enjoyable too, very enjoyable indeed!”
+
+This was greeted with shouts of laughter, but Dennis saw that
+Antoinette’s smile was abstracted, and that her eyes were restlessly
+searching the crowded room. Then, quite suddenly, he saw the light go
+from them, and her whole figure relax its air of tense vitality, as if
+the motive-power that had kept her strung-up, had ceased to operate.
+Simultaneously he noticed that the dark woman with the sullen face and
+ungracious manner had sauntered out of the room.
+
+But a minute later, Antoinette had quite recovered herself. Someone
+suggested that they should end the evening with a dance, and already she
+was helping Reggie and another small boy to push the chairs back against
+the walls. Mrs. Fayne briskly made for the piano, but Crispin was there
+before her. Now that everyone had forgotten about Crispin and his
+talent, and no one had the least desire to listen to heavy music, he sat
+down and played a Bach fugue right through. And when he had finished it,
+he played another and another ... and he played very, very wonderfully,
+but what was the use of Bach fugues to young people longing to waltz and
+one-step? Oblivious of any such longing, Crispin played on and on, and
+out of deference to the great artistic value of his performance, no one
+dared suggest that he should terminate it.
+
+“Perhaps if we leave him alone, he’ll stop ...” sighed Reggie; so one by
+one the visitors trouped out of the recreation-room, trusting that the
+absence of an audience might bring Crispin to his senses. It did not....
+Crispin merely grunted with relief, and played on.
+
+“Of course I knew this would happen,” Dennis remarked to Antoinette in
+the lounge, “it’s a physical impossibility to keep Crispin and a piano
+apart for any length of time.”
+
+She laughed, grey eyes sparkling under a thick fringe of black lashes.
+“And you?” she said, “you evidently do not mind being kept apart from
+your piano!”
+
+“On the contrary, I want to be kept from it—to-night. I should like to
+say that I’m very grateful to you.”
+
+“Oh, don’t mention it,” she laughed again, and turned from him to
+Doreen, who was clamouring to be shown how to take the grease-paint off
+her face.
+
+“I don’t _really_ want to get it off, because it’s so _awfully_
+thrilling to have it on, but I s’pose I can’t come down to breakfast
+like this ...” the flapper cried excitedly.
+
+Antoinette went upstairs with her.
+
+Meanwhile a solitary figure crept back into the empty recreation-room,
+sat motionless with hands clasped and lips parted—Ottilie, rapturously
+listening to Bach and Beethoven and Brahms ... revelling in the
+sentimental ecstasy of “_Heimweh_” with which the music filled her. This
+was as it should be: at last in this frivolous and superficial England,
+she had found one who understood the deep solid works of her countrymen.
+Inspired by her presence, and by her sympathy, no doubt, he played on
+and on.... When, eventually, he paused to light a cigarette, she
+addressed him in her careful English: “I sank you heartiest, Herr
+Crispin, zat you for me so vonderful have played.”
+
+Crispin looked round at her and blew hard. “I d-didn’t even know you
+were here....”
+
+But Ottilie was not disheartened. She knew quite well that his
+brusqueness of manner was only a cloak for his true feelings. She must
+be patient with him, until he should have gained courage to throw off
+the disguise. Ottilie was in romantic mood.... There was no doubt that
+Herr Crispin did not fit into his English surroundings. But at home in
+her dear Heidelberg—and perhaps if Herr Crispin could be persuaded to
+grow a beard—Ottilie went to bed very happy that night.
+
+Antoinette, having superintended the removal of the grease-paint from
+Doreen’s face, and kissed her good-night, was making her way towards her
+own room on the second floor. Half-way down the corridor, she came face
+to face with Hester Cawthorn. They both stopped.
+
+Hester’s smile was half ironic, half bitter. “Tired?”
+
+Antoinette shook her head. She was feeling violently alive again now;
+strung up; ready for anything.
+
+“I’ve never seen anything like the vitality of you,” said Hester; and
+passed on.
+
+So Antoinette, also, went to bed happy....
+
+And while Ottilie was dreaming of a much-Germanised Crispin; and Doreen
+was deciding that she “simply must” go on the stage; and Clive was
+writing a not very inspired love-letter to his Lily—“not much time
+to-night, darling, because of the rotten theatricals”—Dennis Blackwood
+sat at the open window of his room, and gazed out at the dark country
+and wondered if he had at last found the answer to a riddle....
+
+But long after all the others were asleep, Mrs. Blackwood lay awake. In
+her mind, she was still turning over the jumbled happenings of the day,
+her thoughts darting restlessly from one point to another, without
+coherence or concentration. She still regretted that Reggie had been so
+obstinate over playing the Dauphin’s part; wondered if she were not
+strict enough with him; remembered having noticed that he was at least
+half an inch taller than Mrs. Greene’s little boy, who was three months
+older; wondered if Mrs. Thompsett would have thought that Doreen was too
+much made-up; wondered if Dennis would make friends with that nice
+little French girl ... wondered what it was that made him so different
+from the other boys, and that baffled all her attempts to fathom it.
+Dennis—Dennis—Dennis....
+
+Was he happy, and if not—why not? Why didn’t he tell her? But as far
+back as she could remember, he had clung to her and loved her, and never
+told her anything. Why...? Perhaps he had nothing to tell. Perhaps she
+only imagined that he wasn’t happy. Artists were sometimes peculiar—she
+clutched at that—and her boy was an artist: perhaps that accounted for
+it. Her reason, working in a peculiarly narrow circle, round and round,
+round and round, accepted this as the solution, and was at peace. But
+her instinct, less narrow, more subtle, blindly groping, refused to be
+thus pacified. There must be—something. But what? What...?
+
+The snoring of her husband at her side was not conducive to the
+elucidation of psychological mysteries.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+“Come for a walk with me—do!” The tone was half pleading, half
+commanding. Hester Cawthorn very slowly closed her book, and from the
+depths of her chair on the lawn, looked up at Antoinette’s eager face.
+She shook her head, and Antoinette repeated under her breath “Do....”
+
+Hester’s sullen mouth curved into a smile. “Why should I?”
+
+“Because I—I want you to.”
+
+“You seem to consider that an adequate reason!”
+
+“Well—isn’t it?”
+
+The hotel visitors, grouped upon the lawn to laze away the hot
+after-lunch hour, were surprised at seeing Miss Cawthorn and Antoinette
+de Courcy stroll down the drive together. It was the first time that
+Miss Cawthorn had been known to set out in company.
+
+“That child has such a way with her, she gets round everybody,” murmured
+Mrs. Blackwood, hoping that Dennis would take notice.
+
+Hester and Antoinette walked in silence down the length of the shady
+drive. Antoinette was not so sure of herself now; wondered what would be
+the result of her daring. It had certainly needed daring to ask Hester
+to come out with her. There was about Hester a nimbus of
+unapproachability that was recognised by everyone in the hotel, and that
+had aroused, firstly, curiosity and secondly, interest in Antoinette.
+Also, she was strangely attracted by this woman with the sombre hooded
+eyes and down-curved mouth that seemed to speak of much bitterness and
+disillusion. During her stay at Amberhurst, Antoinette had become
+amazingly intimate with all the hotel visitors; most of them, at one
+time or another, had been moved to tell her “the story of my life”; for
+she was a good listener, and waited with rapt eagerness for the
+picturesque or the dramatic note that should stamp each story with
+individuality. Everybody confided in her, petted her, spoilt her. Hester
+alone had held aloof from her, as she had held aloof from the others.
+But Antoinette was resolved to make herself the exception to Hester’s
+rule.
+
+“And now—what do you want?” Hester’s question, breaking the silence, was
+abrupt but not discourteous.
+
+Antoinette laughed. “To tell the truth, I don’t know. ‘_Je ne sais pas
+ce que je veux, mais je le veux absolument._’”
+
+“Well, then, believe me, you won’t get it.”
+
+“How can you say that, when you don’t know—when I don’t even know—what
+it is I want?”
+
+“I can only warn you that it’s useless to expect anything from me—I’ve
+nothing to give.” Hester’s voice was low and beautiful, despite its
+occasional harshness. Antoinette thrilled at the sound of it, and at the
+warning that had just been flung at her. Nothing to give—why, she must
+have worlds to give to one who knew how to claim her gifts. Or perhaps
+once already she had bestowed them, bestowed them royally upon one
+unworthy ... and was cautious now, distrustful of anyone attempting to
+approach the fortress-gates behind which was locked—herself. Antoinette
+would lay siege to the fortress with every weapon in her power, with
+daring and gentleness and subtlety, until the gates were opened to her.
+She felt confident of success, buoyantly happy as she strode along at
+Hester’s side, hands thrust deep into the pockets of her jersey, the
+noon-day sun beating down upon her bare head.
+
+“You’ll catch sun-stroke, child.”
+
+“Not I!”
+
+“Haven’t you anything to put on your head?”
+
+“I believe so, somewhere in my pocket,” Antoinette drew out a crumpled
+red silk cap and swung it in her hand.
+
+“Put it on,” commanded Hester curtly. Antoinette obeyed, enjoying the
+sensation of being ordered about by Hester.
+
+“Even if you do happen to be possessed of extraordinary vitality,” the
+latter continued, “there’s no need to squander it.”
+
+“Am I squandering it?” Antoinette asked innocently. She was not
+introspective, but she was always interested when people told her things
+about herself.
+
+“Are you squandering it, indeed...? Rushing along a dusty road at the
+rate of eight miles an hour, at the hottest time of the day——”
+
+“I’m so sorry! Is it too hot for you? Shall we go back?”
+
+“No, I’ve no objection to it. But then I’ve not been wearing myself out
+with emotional acting every night this week.”
+
+“Oh, the acting ... it was such fun! Absolute rot, of course, poor dear
+Rosabel hasn’t the faintest notion how to write a play, but she’s
+written half a dozen different ones about Marie Antoinette. In fact,
+whenever I meet her, she seems to be in the thick of writing one, and
+she falls upon my neck with: ‘Antoinette darling, I’m writing a tragedy
+about _her_—it’s to be something exquisite ... six acts and nineteen
+scenes ... no, don’t ask me anything about it ... the first scene is in
+a sort of inn and people come in and talk ... no, I can’t tell you any
+more, you’d think me so stupid.... Another time, perhaps....’”
+
+Hester was laughing outright by now; and thus encouraged, Antoinette
+went on: “We had an awful business with this particular masterpiece.
+Rosabel had left all the parts, except the Queen’s, quite sketchy; so we
+had to invent them at rehearsals, and make them fit together as well as
+we could. Rosabel is never quite successful with anything she attempts.
+There’s a certain blighted perkiness about her, that makes her rather
+like an early bird that hasn’t caught the worm—or perhaps she’s the
+early worm that always gets the bird....”
+
+“You’re too brilliant, my young friend.”
+
+“Am I? Why?”
+
+Hester smiled inscrutably and was silent.
+
+“Why am I too brilliant?” Antoinette was suddenly overwhelmed by the
+fear of disapproval. “I—I wasn’t trying to be.”
+
+“No, I daresay you weren’t. I was only thinking of that old proverb that
+was dinned into one’s ears in the nursery: ‘Sing before breakfast—cry
+before night!’”
+
+“Oh, do you mean that I shall—‘cry before night’?”
+
+Hester looked down at the eager laughing face, the boyish curls
+surmounted carelessly by the red cap. “You won’t, at all events, cry
+before—to-night.”
+
+“But you think I shall eventually? Can you tell the future, then?”
+
+“Most people’s futures are written on their faces, aren’t they?”
+
+“For those who are able to read them.... So that’s how you read mine!
+Well, I don’t care....” Antoinette flung her cap into the air and caught
+it again. “I assure you that if I do have to ‘cry before night,’ I shall
+‘sing before breakfast’ quite a lot _en attendant_.”
+
+“I’ve no doubt you will,” said Hester.
+
+“I’m doing it now—simply having the time of my life.”
+
+“And in what,” Hester’s tone was ironical, “in what, exactly, does the
+‘time of your life’ consist?” Then before Antoinette could answer, she
+covered up the question with: “Don’t tell me if you don’t want to—I’ve
+no wish to force confidence.”
+
+Antoinette smiled involuntarily at the notion that Hester should assume
+in her a reticence equal to her own. If she had told the truth, she
+would have answered: “I’m happy because there’s so much love in the
+world, and because so much of it comes to me, and mostly because I’m
+walking beside you now....”
+
+But she only said, “It’s not that I’m really doing anything
+extraordinary, but this is the first time I’ve ever stayed away from my
+people—would you believe it, and I’m nearly twenty-two—but Grand’mère
+has quite obsolete ideas as to what a _jeune fille_ should do and
+shouldn’t do, even though she’s lived over here for twenty-five years.”
+
+“Were you born in England, then?”
+
+“Yes. And I feel quite English. The others—Grand’mère and Mother and
+Father are terribly French, though....” Antoinette gave a sigh, and then
+laughed again. “Being away is such fun, I love sitting down to breakfast
+in the morning with a different set of faces, don’t you?”
+
+“I never sit down with a ‘set of faces’ at all.”
+
+“Don’t you? Not ever? Not even at home?”
+
+Hester was silent. Antoinette tried to imagine the family-circle from
+which she might have sprung, and gave it up as hopeless: she could not
+picture Hester in relation to a mother or father, sisters or brothers.
+She could only see her as an individual, detached from her surroundings,
+lonely and alone. Her whole heart went out in sympathy to this strange
+woman with the fierce reserve, and the sensitiveness that lay behind her
+brutally direct manner; in sympathy, and something that was more than
+sympathy.
+
+After a while, Hester said with quiet bitterness: “I have no home....”
+
+Impulsively Antoinette put out her hand to touch her arm. “I’m sorry—so
+dreadfully sorry—you must be lonely.”
+
+Hester made no movement in response, but replied coldly, “You make a
+mistake: I am not lonely.”
+
+Antoinette, baffled, dropped her hand and was silent. She had been
+tactless and deserved her rebuff; nevertheless it had hurt—rather. The
+conquest of Hester, impregnably immured in her fortress, was proving
+even more difficult than she had anticipated, and therefore ten times
+more desirable. Antoinette was accustomed to easy victories, victories
+so easy as scarcely to merit the name, and she was tired of them; but
+the prospect of difficulties only stimulated the fighting-instinct in
+her.
+
+Hester, with an air of detached amusement, was watching her absorbed
+face. “I warned you, didn’t I...?”
+
+Antoinette flashed out: “If you think I’m frightened of your
+prickliness——”
+
+“Oh, you hot-headed little fool.... What’s all this for? If you think
+I’m going to make a friend or a confidante of you, you’re mistaken. Real
+friendship is, in my experience, a treasure impossible to find, and I’ve
+no use for people who want to know my family-history, and whence I came
+and whither I’m going.... What concern of theirs can it be? No, I have
+no friends and I want none. You’re only wasting your time with me.”
+
+“I’m not—it isn’t waste!” cried Antoinette, “you’re so wonderful, and
+ever since I’ve been here I’ve wanted to talk to you, only I never quite
+dared till to-day, and then I simply couldn’t stop myself.... I noticed
+you the first evening I came—how could I help it? All the other people
+move about in lumps, three or four staying together, three or four at a
+table in the dining-room, three or four going out together—and only you
+were alone. That was remarkable to begin with.”
+
+“I shall always be alone,” said Hester.
+
+“Yes—and I know why!” Inspiration seemed suddenly to come to Antoinette.
+“Whereas the others want company, want to be together at any price, you
+only want what is really good enough for you. It’s—it’s as if it had to
+pass through fire before it could get to you.”
+
+“You’re fantastic,” Hester smiled, but not unkindly, and then, without
+interrupting her, she let Antoinette have her say.
+
+“I can understand your keeping the others out and hating them to ask
+questions—you know they’re only inquisitive, and not asking because it
+means a great deal to them. It means a great deal to me, I can’t tell
+you why, but it just does. Please won’t you let me come a little bit
+closer? You see, I’m not frightened of the prickles or the fire....”
+Quite unconsciously she was pleading as a very young boy might plead
+with his lady-love.
+
+Hester shook her head. “Even if you do ‘come closer,’ as you say, you’ll
+only be disappointed. Go and fall in love with that nice Blackwood boy:
+it will be much more profitable than this sort of thing.”
+
+“This sort of thing...?” Antoinette repeated with a puzzled frown.
+
+Hester looked at her sharply for a moment, then gave a curt laugh.
+“Never mind.... Do as I say. Stick to young Blackwood.”
+
+“To Clive?” Antoinette exclaimed contemptuously. “Why, he’s engaged,
+Doreen says, to a girl who studies economics and won’t powder her nose.”
+
+“I didn’t mean Clive, I meant the one who arrived yesterday—Dennis. At
+any rate, I’m certain that he’s going to fall in love with you.”
+
+Antoinette was not interested. Hester continued: “He’s quite a
+character-study. I should like to hear how the affair progresses.”
+
+“Would you...?” cried Antoinette, overjoyed at the idea that anything
+connected with herself could be of interest to Hester. “I’d better
+cultivate him, then.”
+
+“I’ll leave you my address,” said Hester.
+
+“Your address? But you’re not going away yet, surely?”
+
+“Going this very evening.”
+
+Antoinette stood stock-still in the middle of the road, and gasped.
+“Not—really?” In the case of anyone but Hester, her plans would have
+been known by the whole hotel for days in advance. It was but another
+proof of Hester’s aloofness, that the time of her departure came to
+Antoinette as an absolute shock.
+
+“Don’t look so bewildered: it can’t possibly matter to you.”
+
+“But it does—more than anything else in the world—more than ever now.
+When I started out with you this afternoon, I was only enormously
+interested in you, and I admired you—your brains, and the gorgeous way
+you have of choking off people you don’t want. I’ve watched you do
+it—Oh, often—but you’re not going to choke me off like that, because
+now, I—I love you....” She had not intended to say those words; a few
+moments ago they would not have entered her mind; now she had not only
+said them: she meant them.
+
+Hester looked at her gravely, without curiosity and without
+astonishment. “If that’s the case, I’ve no right to choke you off. But
+understand once and for all that you’re on a wild-goose chase. You’ll
+find none of the hidden depths in me that you seem to expect to find.”
+
+“Whether that’s true or not, I’ll never expect any confidence or
+anything that you don’t give me of your own free will. But there’s
+nothing on earth that I wouldn’t do for you, if I thought it would make
+you happy.”
+
+Hester said with that curious dignity that was hers: “Thank you....”
+
+They walked back then. After some time, Antoinette ventured to ask,
+“Where is it you’re going to-night?”
+
+The answer was: “To Bristol—if the gods are good to me!” and Antoinette
+saw that Hester’s dark eyes were illuminated by a gleam of light, and
+fixed straight ahead of her, as if in pursuance of some vision whence
+the light had come. Antoinette longed to know what was portended by that
+phrase: “If the gods are good to me ...” wondered what was drawing her
+to Bristol; if she lived there; if she ever came to London; why she had
+been staying at Amberhurst. But all these questions remained unasked.
+She would prove herself worthy of Hester by showing no curiosity, by
+accepting as a matter of course anything that she might do.
+
+Her offer to help Hester with her packing was declined; but she obtained
+permission to see her to the station.
+
+“I may be late for dinner,” Antoinette flung over her shoulder to
+Rosabel, as, for the second time that day, she left the hotel in
+Hester’s company. Rosabel stared open-mouthed.... Hester laughed. “You
+see, even your friend is struck by the incongruity of seeing us
+together!”
+
+“It isn’t incongruous really. At least I don’t think it is. I’m sure I
+should find much more in common with you, than with Rosabel.” Antoinette
+flushed, fearing that she had said too much; but Hester did not appear
+to think that she had been guilty of impertinence.
+
+“Perhaps I’m only letting you imagine that you could....” Antoinette
+pondered on this; then: “No, if you were only acting, just to give me
+that impression, you’d be so clever that I’d have to adore you all the
+same. It’s no earthly good trying to put me off by pretending you aren’t
+what I know you are.”
+
+“I don’t know that I am trying to put you off now.... I’m only trying to
+be honest and sincere with you, and to keep you from disappointment.”
+
+“Honest and sincere—I should just think you are! I’d follow your lead
+blindly through anything, and feel that I could trust you.”
+
+“Oh, child, child, don’t put all that trust in me. No one but a god
+could be worthy of so much. It’s too great a responsibility for a mere
+human being.”
+
+“No trust and no faith could be too great for me to give you—and—and
+I’ll never let you feel the responsibility of me as a drag. I can look
+out for myself. I want to walk level with you, not hanging on.”
+
+“You shall do as you wish,” said Hester.
+
+In silence they paced the platform of the little country station.
+Antoinette’s exaltation was shadowed now with the dread of parting from
+Hester. But she allowed no word of regret to pass her lips. She would be
+true to her assertion that she would not “hang on” to Hester. Hester’s
+happiness, apparently, lay in going; so, with all her heart, Antoinette
+tried to want her to go, even though Amberhurst would seem a deserted
+wilderness without her. She regretted the wasted days that had gone
+before she had made up her mind to speak to her; the last few hours of
+joy had passed so swiftly; and now—and now——
+
+Antoinette hastily shook back her curls and smiled, as the train came
+in. The door of the compartment was slammed between them.
+
+“Well, good-bye,” said Antoinette lightly, enjoying the self-imposed
+necessity of acting up to Hester, “good luck to you.”
+
+Hester leant out of the window, and, just as the train started, bent
+down and kissed her.
+
+... In a very agitated frame of mind, Antoinette wandered back to the
+hotel. What had been the most wonderful adventure of her life was at an
+end—no, she would not believe that it was at an end, even though she had
+received no promise that Hester would write to her, and had no idea when
+or if she would ever see her again. The adventure had only just begun;
+there must be an equally wonderful continuation to it—some time. And in
+the meantime, she would rest secure in the memory of that last second
+before the train started.... She could have shouted aloud with the joy
+of being alive, and in love: if Hester would only allow herself to be
+loved, she would try to make up to her for all the bitterness and
+disappointment that might have been in her life. Antoinette was young
+enough and mad enough at the moment to believe that anything was
+possible.
+
+The Faynes were half-way through dinner when she joined them at their
+table.
+
+Mrs. Fayne said, “Why, you’ve been out with that Miss Cawthorn nearly
+all day? So morose and unsociable, I always think her.”
+
+“She looks as if she had a secret sorrow,” Rosabel murmured soulfully,
+“did she tell you about it, Antoinette?”
+
+Antoinette smiled. “No, she didn’t tell me about it....”
+
+“Then whatever did you talk about, such a long time?”
+
+“Oh—books ...” Antoinette replied at random.
+
+Dinner was over, and most of the visitors were drinking coffee out on
+the lawn, glad of the breeze after the sweltering heat of the day. In
+couples or in groups they sauntered up and down the grounds, light
+dresses showing up against the sombre foliage of the trees; glowing
+cigarette-ends making pin-points of fire in the darkness. Antoinette
+looked at the couples and at the groups and thought of one who would
+have walked alone amongst them. There was certainly no pathos in
+Hester’s solitude, none of the pathos of the lonely woman of uncertain
+age, drifting from one hotel to another. Pathos would scarcely have
+appealed to Antoinette as did the compelling and magnetic dignity of
+Hester’s voluntary isolation.
+
+“Won’t you come for a stroll?” Dennis Blackwood was beside her now,
+looking down upon her from his superior height.
+
+“If you like....” She accepted the cigarette he offered her, and was
+ironically conscious of being quite in the picture now: two and two,
+smoking cigarettes, just like the others.
+
+They walked to the end of the hotel-grounds, across some adjoining
+fields, and stood on a bridge that spanned a branch-line of the railway.
+The ridge of the hills was dim as a shadow; here and there showed the
+dull orange squares of cottage-windows, and on either side of the
+bridge, the railway-tracks stretched away into the greyness.
+
+Antoinette did not speak. She waited with a certain curiosity for Dennis
+to do so. It was he who had borne her off much as she had borne Hester
+off that afternoon. Decidedly, it was for him to begin.... She wondered,
+still ironically, how his methods of attack would compare with her own.
+In all probability, he would try to kiss her. It “belonged” to the whole
+scene and setting that he should do so, but it would be a nuisance. She
+hoped he would be a trifle more original, so that she could give Hester
+an interesting description of the proceedings....
+
+The complex scale passages of the Waldstein Sonata drifted out to them
+on the breeze.
+
+Dennis laughed. “That’s Crispin. He’s purloined the key of the
+recreation-room, locked himself in, and is now playing to rows of empty
+chairs. I bet it’s the first time he’s feeling happy since we arrived.”
+
+“Oh,” said Antoinette, “is he so very unhappy here, then?”
+
+Dennis shrugged his shoulders. “Well, not exactly unhappy. Just out of
+place. A square peg in a round hole—like so many of us ...” he mused.
+
+“So you, too, are a square peg?”
+
+He looked at her intently with his clear brown eyes, that were large and
+curiously soft under their jutting brows. “Yes.” Then, at a venture:
+“Like yourself ...” and still his eyes held hers, as if seeking some
+response, some sign by which he might know that she knew the answer to
+his riddle.
+
+She shook her head. “Oh, I’m not a square peg, I just fit in anywhere.
+It’s fun, trying to fit into different sorts of places; it must be
+beastly if you can’t. I’m sorry for your friend.”
+
+“He’ll be all right to-morrow. We’re off, you know, to Devon.”
+
+“Don’t I wish I were going too!” she breathed fervently.
+
+“Do you—do you really?” he cried. “I wish you were. You’d enjoy our long
+tramps, and the quaint little inn-places where we have to put up. Do you
+know that part of the country?”
+
+Her answer was not to the point. “I was thinking for the moment that
+Bristol was in Devon—my geography is shockingly hazy.”
+
+He knew better than to comment upon her irrelevant remark. She stood
+with her hands on the stone parapet of the bridge, and looked out at the
+railway-tracks that gleamed faintly for a short distance, and then lost
+themselves in the mist. He had the sudden desire to stroke her head,
+just on top where the hair was quite smooth before it broke into the
+mass of short curls bunched over her ears and around the nape of her
+neck. He wanted gently to turn her face towards him, and to look again
+into her clear grey eyes, and share the dreams that must lurk in their
+depths. He felt by instinct that they were strange dreams, which for
+him, however, would hold no strangeness. Even though she had evaded his
+first attempt to prove the existence of a common meeting-ground, that
+very evasiveness showed his instinct to be correct.
+
+She spoke then, rousing herself from her abstraction. “It seems so odd
+that we’ve never heard you play. Your mother has told me such a lot
+about your music—I’m really not trying to talk like Mr. Griggs—but it
+_is_ odd, knowing that you’re probably longing to play.”
+
+“Yes, of course I am; but I can’t here.”
+
+“Because of the people?”
+
+“Yes. I can’t bear showing off; making an exhibition of myself.”
+
+“Then why not do as your friend has done: lock the door?”
+
+Dennis laughed. “Oh, Crispin is a real child of nature. If he wants to
+do a thing, he just does it, regardless. I’m afraid I lack that happy
+faculty.”
+
+“You’ve got others instead, though. How I envy anyone who can
+compose—create—find an outlet for everything that’s bubbling and
+frothing inside their brain.”
+
+“Your acting last night—that was a sort of safety-valve, wasn’t it?”
+
+She gave him a quick, vivid smile in acknowledgment of his
+understanding. “Yes, but what’s the good of acting? Even if I did it
+properly, which I don’t. There’s nothing left of it to-day. You can’t
+compare it with being able to create something really lasting....” If
+only she could have borrowed Dennis’s creative powers to-night, just for
+to-night, Hester should have had some wondrous tribute to their few
+hours together!
+
+He said: “You needn’t envy me. I haven’t even started to compose
+properly yet. I’m still inarticulate. All that I really want to say,
+seems to lie beyond my reach, beyond mere terms of music; impossible to
+express, and impossible to set free.”
+
+“Those songs of yours, and the pieces you’ve published—what about them?”
+
+“Well, they were written, as you might say, with the top layer of my
+brain. But how did you know of them?”
+
+“Your mother showed them to me. She’s got them with her.”
+
+He smiled tenderly. “Poor darling ... fancy travelling my stuff around
+with her like that, and she doesn’t even know one note from another.”
+
+“She just adores you, doesn’t she?”
+
+“Yes. I could almost wish she didn’t.”
+
+“Oh—but why...?”
+
+He was silent for a moment. A train thundered under the bridge, sent up
+a shower of glowing red sparks, tore through the sleeping country, and,
+with a long-drawn shriek, vanished into a tunnel in the hills. Then the
+signals creaked and jerked into their places with a rattling sound; and
+all was still again.
+
+“I’m so afraid of hurting her,” he mused, “you see, from her point of
+view, I’m not very satisfactory.”
+
+“I don’t see that at all,” cried Antoinette, “she’s awfully proud of
+you, and quite convinced that you’re going to be famous.”
+
+“And do you imagine that it’ll satisfy her even if I _am_ famous—just
+famous? She wants something more for me than fame.”
+
+“And that is——?”
+
+“Happiness....”
+
+“Well, and why shouldn’t you have happiness too? I’m not foolish enough
+to imagine that it comes _through_ fame, but can’t you have it as well
+as fame?”
+
+He looked at her again. She seemed unsubstantial, wraith-like in the dim
+light; eyes very big in her white face; the breeze softly stirring her
+dull fair curls. He said, very low: “That depends....”
+
+Another train flew past, enveloping them for a moment in flame-lit
+billows of smoke; its tail-light was a slowly-diminishing point of red,
+till at last, like some animal seeking its burrow in the ground, it
+vanished into the tunnel. The earth seemed to quiver a little after its
+noisy passage; the wailing shriek of the engine was muted, by the
+distance, to a sound of unbearable yearning and beauty. Somewhere a
+church-clock struck ten. And somewhere in the world, there was—Hester. A
+sudden wave of feeling came over Antoinette; love so intense as to be
+almost pain....
+
+“Impossible to express and impossible to set free——” In her thoughts she
+was unconsciously echoing Dennis’s words. Then, half-aloud: “Perhaps
+some day it will be set free!”
+
+In the darkness she heard Dennis catch his breath, but already she had
+moved away from the bridge, was walking back towards the hotel. He
+followed in silence; drew level with her; and noticed, as her sleeve
+brushed against his, that the dew had soaked through the thin silk of
+her jersey. He would not risk destroying by the clumsy medium of speech,
+the fine web of affinity that was spun between them, and of the
+existence of which he was no longer in doubt.
+
+Antoinette reflected that the conversation had been more interesting
+than she had anticipated; and after all, he had not attempted to kiss
+her: she scarcely knew whether she was relieved or disappointed....
+
+The lawn was deserted now; they went straight into the lounge, and stood
+blinking in the sudden light.
+
+Mrs. Blackwood looked up eagerly at their entrance, held out her hand to
+Antoinette, and telling Reggie to bring a chair for her, drew her into
+the family-circle. Dennis announced his intention of climbing through
+the window of the recreation-room to rout out Crispin; and Mrs.
+Blackwood said to Antoinette, “You’ve made quite a conquest of Dennis,
+my dear. He’s not a bit a lady’s man, really. I suppose he’s always
+thinking of his work, and so he enjoys a chat with someone who
+_thoroughly understands_ music. You must come and stay with us at
+Eastwold, when he comes back from Devonshire, and then you’ll be able to
+have some nice long talks together.”
+
+“Thanks awfully, Mrs. Blackwood, I should love to come,” Antoinette
+replied with genuine enthusiasm. She was always thrilled by the prospect
+of new surroundings. Besides, Hester would doubtless be amused....
+
+Doreen squeezed Antoinette’s arm affectionately, and Reggie exclaimed:
+“Good egg! If you practise your iron-shots, and remember to keep your
+head down, you’ll be able to play with Dad whenever I can’t. He often
+likes a game when he comes back from the City.”
+
+Antoinette said hastily, “I’m afraid my golf will never be good enough
+for that, Reggie....”
+
+But Reggie responded with mingled impatience and gallantry, “You don’t
+expect a fellow to swallow such tosh, do you?”
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+A few days later, Antoinette returned to London; and old Madame de
+Courcy, her grandmother, was interrogating her on the subject of her
+stay with the Faynes.... Had she met many amiable young men? Had they
+admired her? Had she told them to come and visit her grandmother and her
+parents? And her friend, la petite Fayne, had she also been admired?
+
+Antoinette answered all these questions with a comprehensive “Oui,
+Grand’mère....” Conversation with Madame de Courcy was always difficult,
+firstly because she was very deaf and secondly because she was of an
+inquisitiveness and a lack of tact and discretion, that ruled out for
+Antoinette all possibility of confidence or affection. She could only
+see her grandmother as a comic figure; sometimes as a most irritating
+one; never by any chance as one to be loved or reverenced. Grand’mère
+frequently indulged in fits of hysteria, in which at the top of her
+voice, she would set forth the failings and shortcomings of three
+generations of the family, with a special notice for the particular
+offence of which each individual, whether dead or alive, had been guilty
+towards herself. The performance would usually be started by some quite
+irrelevant trifle—some slight breach of etiquette or imagined lack of
+consideration for her years and dignity. Part I would be purely personal
+and insulting; but Part II, transcending the limits of the personal,
+would be wider in range, epic and panoramic; while Part III was crudely
+effective through sheer noise and smashing of furniture, or whatever
+chanced to be most handy. But Madame de Courcy possessed the remarkable
+faculty of being able, without the slightest transition or modulation,
+to switch off her hysterics, if a change of front seemed desirable. Thus
+at one moment, with tears streaming down her face, she could rave
+_fortissimo_ because Antoinette had omitted to say good morning to her,
+or because her son-in-law René of Grenoble had once passed out of the
+dining-room in front of her ... and then when she had succeeded in
+working up everyone else to a similar pitch of excitement, she could on
+the instant turn round and smile, in dulcet tones demand of Antoinette
+the assurance that she “_aimait bien sa petite grand’mère_,” and resume
+the conversation where it had previously been abandoned. The audience—if
+audience there happened to be, and there usually did—was invariably
+staggered no less by the suddenness of the change than by the actual
+recital of the Family Saga.
+
+She was a marvellous old lady, despite her seventy years; and her fierce
+dark eyebrows met above her patrician nose, and the hairs upon her upper
+lip were many. She had a wonderful memory—for grievances. And she needed
+to have, as her family was very extensive and scattered about in all
+portions of the globe; and only by reciting the tale of their manifold
+iniquities could she draw them together in her mind’s eye.... At least,
+so thought Antoinette, who from childhood upwards had listened to
+Grand’mère’s outbursts, first in fear and trembling, and later on in
+pure artistic appreciation of a spectacular performance.
+
+Grand’mère’s chief hobbies and interests in life were births, deaths,
+marriages and operations; but especially marriages, the arrangement,
+furtherance and consequences of same. She combined the notion that a
+young girl should be brought up in darkest ignorance of the facts of
+life, with a fondness for discussing them publicly in intimate detail,
+and with a Rabelaisian virility of language. She had married off her six
+daughters, with more or less success, to gentlemen in suitable positions
+residing in France, Italy and Spain. But when Anatole, her darling only
+son, had come to England for business-reasons, she had accompanied him
+and his young wife, and lived with them ever since. Anatole de Courcy
+was a wholesale dealer in coffee, and a fairly astute man of business.
+In appearance he was lean, dark, rather yellow in the face, with
+projecting front teeth and a ragged moustache that he was in the habit
+of gnawing. He was the only one of her children whom Madame de Courcy
+had spoilt, and still manifested all the most objectionable
+characteristics of the nursery favourite. He was both obstinate and
+petty, and prone to outbursts of temper, not unlike his mother’s.
+Sometimes, indeed, mother and son would scream at each other for hours
+together, the duet only terminating when one of the vocalists fell dumb
+through exhaustion.
+
+On these occasions, Henriette de Courcy, who had long ago learnt the
+futility of interfering between her husband and her mother-in-law, would
+with a sweeping gesture of her beautiful hand, beckon Antoinette out of
+the room. “Come, my child, we are not needed here ...” which was
+obvious: Anatole and his mother, both weeping tears of rage, and hurling
+the bitterest taunts and recriminations at each other, were supremely
+happy.... But Henriette could never let the slightest occasion for
+theatricality pass unnoticed. In her youth she had studied elocution,
+and had even had dreams of going on the stage, dreams which she had been
+obliged to relinquish when her parents married her to Anatole de Courcy.
+Anatole was rich; Henriette was poor, and one of a great many
+sisters.... But she never allowed either herself or her environment to
+forget that but for her marriage, she might have become one of the
+leading _tragédiennes_ of France. Her whole bearing, her gestures, the
+flowing draperies she affected, were all reminiscent of the great
+actress who, in her own opinion, had been sacrificed to matrimony with a
+coffee-dealer. Perhaps the constant habit of the theatrical pose
+accounted for the fact that Antoinette never felt any real warmth of
+affection existing between herself and her mother. There was always at
+the back of her mind the suspicion that Henriette’s magnificent
+gestures, and deep thrilling inflections expressive of maternal passion,
+were really no more than gestures and inflections, practised, perfectly
+finished, but with nothing genuine behind them. Henriette was
+perpetually voicing lofty sentiments upon the true development of the
+soul, and had even been known, in the presence of her family, to extol
+free love and the beauties thereof. Needless to say Anatole and old
+Madame de Courcy did their best to counteract her evil influence upon
+her daughter. But Antoinette felt that they need not have troubled: here
+again she could not rid herself of the conviction that her mother was
+not sincere, and that her vaunted broad-mindedness would turn into the
+righteous indignation of the conventional _bourgeoise_, if ever it were
+put to the test.
+
+The house in Cadogan Gardens was hideously furnished; the rooms,
+spacious and gloomy, were crammed with dreadful ornaments and pictures
+that were either family heirlooms or had been Anatole’s wedding presents
+from his numerous sisters. Many small tables in the drawing-room were
+laden with photographs of the six sisters with their respective husbands
+and offspring; a most alarming exhibition, thought Antoinette, as
+neither her aunts nor her cousins were remarkable for their beauty. On
+the contrary. However, the plain young cousins made up in virtue what
+they so manifestly lacked in looks; witness the embroidered mats and
+doyleys and cushion-covers that had been worked as birthday or Xmas
+presents for Madame de Courcy, and testified to many hours of patient
+toil on the part of her grandchildren. Antoinette’s handiwork alone was
+not represented in this orgy of cross-stitch and crochet. Antoinette
+could do neither cross-stitch nor crochet, wherefore her grandmother
+argued that there must be something radically wrong with her.
+
+As long as she had been too young and helpless to protest against the
+outrage, she had always been made to recite on Madame de Courcy’s
+birthday. On one occasion she had been heavily coached by her mother in
+a long speech from “Athalie,” and Madame de Courcy, who was not
+interested in the classics, and too deaf to understand much anyway,
+began to chatter in the middle of the recitation. Antoinette stopped
+dead. Her mother signed to her to continue. Grand’mère went on
+chatting.... Antoinette fumed, shifting from one leg on to the other.
+“Go on, _chérie_,” whispered Henriette. “I’ll go on when that horrid old
+woman stops talking!” cried Antoinette, loud enough to be heard by the
+deafest of grandmothers.
+
+... In the course of the scene which ensued, Grand’mère hurled a book at
+her young grand-daughter’s head. It missed its mark and fell to the
+ground; Antoinette, obeying the histrionic instinct inherited from her
+mother, picked it up and with icy politeness handed it back: “I think
+you have dropped something....”
+
+Since that day, Madame de Courcy had realised that Antoinette was
+somehow different from her other grandchildren, and that she had “a
+difficult little character.” “_Tant pis_,” she was wont to reflect, “we
+will have to marry her young....” But so far Antoinette had refused to
+accept her grandmother’s sovereign cure for an unusual temperament.
+Grand’mère could not understand it. Why, she herself had manœuvred
+several meetings with suitable people, and the girl went out in that
+disgraceful free-and-easy English way with quite a lot of young men—by
+dint of some picturesque perversion of the truth, Antoinette had
+succeeded in obtaining a certain amount of liberty—but hitherto nothing
+had come either of Grand’mère’s efforts or of Antoinette’s gadding
+about. And it was not that Grand’mère was not vigilant, or that she
+failed in her duty towards her Anatole’s only child: no man could take
+Antoinette out to tea, or write or telephone to her, without Madame de
+Courcy enquiring into his financial position, and, after the second or
+third meeting had taken place: “_Eh bien, ma petite_, he has not yet
+spoken to you of marriage?”
+
+When Antoinette, after many discussions, had finally been allowed to go
+to Amberhurst, Grand’mère had propounded the theory that she had been
+invited because the Faynes knew of some rich young man who would be
+staying there at the same time, and that they were doubtless trying to
+bring about a match between him and Antoinette. Henriette languidly
+reminded her mother-in-law that the Faynes had a daughter of their own;
+but Madame de Courcy, who was wonderfully imaginative where her
+favourite topic of matrimony was concerned, argued that even if Miss
+Fayne _did_ get engaged to the “_parti_,” the “_parti_” might be struck
+by the charms of Miss Fayne’s friend, and remember that he also
+possessed a friend, rich and suitable like himself, who would wish to be
+introduced to the friend of his friend’s _fiancée_....
+
+Hence Grand’mère’s flood of questions on Antoinette’s return.
+
+As the family sat down to dinner that night, the old lady greeted her
+son as usual with: “_Eh bien, mon fils, comment vont les affaires?_” And
+he, also as usual, replied impatiently: “_Mal, mal_ ...” for he was a
+confirmed pessimist. This short duologue took place between mother and
+son every evening. Having performed the ritual, Grand’mère continued to
+question Antoinette with an air of false benignity that was intended to
+put her at her ease, and draw forth her artless confidence.
+
+“Tell me the names of the young men you have met. Do they live in
+London? Was there not one amongst them who pleased you more than the
+others?”
+
+Very demurely, with dark lashes sweeping her white cheeks, Antoinette
+launched forth into descriptions of Mr. Griggs and Clive Blackwood. She
+drew a particularly beautiful imaginary portrait of Griggs, and
+Grand’mère pricked up her ears.
+
+“He lives in the country, that one? He has estates? He has asked you to
+visit his family?”
+
+Antoinette immediately robbed Mr. Griggs of his vast country estates, by
+saying that alas, owing to the innate nobility of his character, he had
+renounced them in favour of a consumptive younger brother.... Grand’mère
+lost interest, until it struck her that the consumptive brother might
+die, and Griggs thus recover possession of the estates. Antoinette did
+not think it likely: the brother wasn’t as consumptive as all that....
+
+“You waste your time with the wrong people,” her father declared
+irritably, “people who can be of no use to you.”
+
+“She lacks the commercial instinct,” Henriette spoke very slowly and
+beautifully, and putting up her lorgnon, surveyed Antoinette through it.
+“_C’est bien ma fille...._”
+
+Anatole banged his fist upon the table. “It is the nonsense you put into
+her head, that makes her so difficult.”
+
+Henriette smiled her best smile of martyrdom and patient endurance.
+
+... And Antoinette was glad that this wasn’t all: that this hideous
+house and this family-party with its bickerings and discussions, did not
+represent the sum-total of her universe; glad that she had given a more
+or less fictitious account of her stay, and that she could keep to
+herself everything that had really mattered. This sense of having a
+secret which the others could not guess, made her feel wonderfully
+secure, invulnerable, almost: as if no irritation or annoyance could
+touch her, while she wrapped herself around with her memories of Hester.
+
+On the plea of fatigue after her journey, she soon escaped upstairs to
+her room; smiled at the tablecloth that had been embroidered by her
+cousin Marguerite from Lyons, and that Grand’mère had placed in
+Antoinette’s room, hoping it might exercise a beneficent influence upon
+her character. Antoinette laughed happily; went to bed, and was soon
+fast asleep, dreaming of Hester.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a long time since she had been as happy and as excited as she was
+now. Her schooldays had held occasional periods of a similar excitement,
+but the three years since she had left boarding-school, had been
+conspicuously barren, compared with what had gone before. When she was
+thirteen, there had been the melancholy-eyed young teacher of literature
+whom she had adored; a dreamy unpopular woman, who had been made to
+suffer horribly in the innumerable little ways in which schoolgirls can
+torment their victims. Antoinette had been seized with a kind of holy
+wrath, and desire to avenge and protect; she had flamed out against the
+whole class, almost wishing that they would turn and rend her, so that
+she might have the pleasure of sacrificing herself for her idol.... The
+idol very soon learnt to return the adoration of the fervent and
+hot-tempered worshipper; and simultaneously Antoinette began to lose
+interest. She had only enjoyed her rôle, as long as Miss Prescot had
+taken no notice of her: had been apparently unaware of the flutter and
+throb of excitement caused by her mere presence in the class-room, or
+her casual good-night kiss at bed-time. When Miss Prescot had come to
+single her out from the other girls and to linger fondly over that
+good-night kiss, Antoinette had had quite a fit of repulsion. She only
+enjoyed an up-hill battle; even at that age, the easy conquest had bored
+her. Also, she hated being touched, except in cases where her own
+feelings were aroused. She shook off the girls who sought to walk with
+their arms through hers, or to stroke her funny boyish head of hair; she
+would run away from them, revelling in the fun of the chase, yet
+dreading capture ... the fear in her eyes contradicted by the laughing
+curves of her mouth; the eyes of a nun, indeed, and the mouth of a
+voluptuary.
+
+And then, some time later, there was the Russian girl, Natasha.
+
+This time, Antoinette’s passion was not killed by easy reciprocity, but
+kept alive by a thousand subtle tortures, rekindled by a single look or
+gesture, whenever Natasha imagined that it showed signs of waning. Her
+beauty was her strongest weapon, and at seventeen she used it with a
+refinement of cruelty that would have done credit to a woman twice her
+years. Antoinette was fascinated by her long sleepy eyes, that were
+green as jade, and as hard; by the heavy black hair growing low down
+upon her forehead; by her indolent graceful body, and the coldly
+indifferent manner that seemed to express the disdain in which she held
+her schoolfellows and her teachers alike. She had many slaves and
+admirers in the school, but none so ardent, so abandoned in her
+devotion, as Antoinette. Therefore, seeing that this was the case,
+Natasha ignored her completely; avoided her on purpose when she knew
+that the younger girl was hovering about the stairs on the chance of
+being allowed to say good-night to her; ridiculed her adoration in front
+of the others; paraded ostentatiously with her favourites before
+Antoinette’s jealous eyes. And then, as she did not wish to forfeit
+altogether the entertaining spectacle of Antoinette’s passion, she would
+suddenly and unexpectedly be nice to her, making amends in five minutes
+for all the ill-treatment of the previous weeks. Antoinette forgave her
+gladly and generously, but the moment she imagined that her troubles
+were at an end, Natasha would with equal suddenness withdraw her favour,
+and treat her as badly as ever....
+
+Antoinette suffered greatly at the time, but when her passion had worn
+itself out, she began to look forward with new zest to being grown up.
+If already this world of women and girls, narrow though it was, could
+contain for her such a wealth of thrills and excitement, how much more
+wonderful must be that other world, the world beyond school, the world
+of men. So far, she was inclined to feel contemptuous of the world of
+men, as represented by the elderly masters who took some of the classes
+at the fashionable boarding-school, and by the coarse-looking schoolboys
+who grinned at the girls when they passed each other on their daily
+walks. But she knew that when she was grown-up, everything would be
+different. Antoinette, counting the months, the years—fifteen, sixteen,
+seventeen—indulging in occasional passing flickers of feeling for this
+girl or that mistress; Antoinette, young, eager and glowing with an
+exuberant vitality, could scarcely await her eighteenth birthday, and
+the meeting with the lover who, she knew, awaited her ... a lover to
+whom she could give all the passion of her soul, and whose touch would
+thrill her even more potently than had the touch of those women she had
+adored.
+
+But when at last she was released from school, the grown-up world of men
+proved singularly disappointing; totally devoid of that stimulus for
+which she craved. The wonderful lover of her imagination had certainly
+not yet appeared upon the scene. In the meantime, various supers tried
+to play the part, but with no success as far as she was concerned. She
+let them kiss her, because she hoped that thus she might find what she
+sought; but those that did not arouse active repulsion in her, merely
+bored her, left her with a sense of staleness and dissatisfaction. She
+began to fear that she would never be capable of feeling anything for
+anybody again. And now Hester had proved her fears to be groundless....
+Gladly, gratefully Antoinette welcomed her advent, and the rush of
+emotion which she had called forth; turned with relief from her
+fruitless search in the world of masculinity, to give herself up to
+whole-hearted worship of this proud silent woman, who had had the power
+to arouse her from her temporary lethargy. And in so doing, Antoinette
+was free from the least taint of morbidity; unaware that there was aught
+of unusual about her attitude—Hester herself had perceived this—she
+merely felt that she was coming into her own again, and was
+healthy-minded and joyous in her unquestioning obedience to the dictates
+of her inmost nature.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hester wrote, giving her address at Bristol; nothing more. Antoinette
+turned the scrawled half-sheet over and over in the hope of finding some
+other message, but in vain. She had to rest content with having the
+address, and hence, obviously, the permission to write to Hester.... She
+wrote by return a very long letter that was amusing as well as ardent,
+for she remembered that she had on occasions been able to arouse
+Hester’s caustic sense of humour. And fervently she hoped that by-and-by
+Hester would come to reveal herself in writing more intimately than she
+was ever likely to do in speech.
+
+The strain of waiting for Hester’s answer was almost unbearable; at last
+it came: a brief acknowledgment of the receipt of Antoinette’s letter,
+and the date of her departure from Bristol....
+
+Hereupon Antoinette wrote despairingly: “Won’t you for once write me a
+_real_ letter?” And Hester wrote back: “I never write what you call
+_real_ letters....”
+
+After the first disappointment, Antoinette was conscious of renewed
+stimulation. Hester was unlike anyone she had ever met. What must be the
+life-history, every clue to which was guarded from the merest chance of
+revelation by pen and paper? Antoinette determined that one day she
+would break through Hester’s reserve. In the meantime she continued to
+batter it with letters into which she put all the warmth and passion
+that were in her.
+
+About the time she received Hester’s second note, a letter came from
+Dennis Blackwood in Devonshire. Without a formal mode of address, it
+started straight away with a request for permission to write to her, and
+then rambled on for many pages in a particularly charming style, giving
+vivid bits of description of the places where he and Crispin were
+staying, and telling her little humorous incidents of the day’s tramp.
+Antoinette said that certainly he might write to her, if he pleased; but
+she did not write to him at any length, because her one-sided
+correspondence with Hester was absorbing all her spare time and
+interest. But apparently her letter was cordial enough to call forth an
+answer by return.
+
+Soon Dennis was writing to her every other day, then every day, then
+twice a day.... Regretfully she compared his long and truly delightful
+letters with Hester’s curt scrappy communications. It seemed such a
+waste not to be in love with Dennis. His veritable avalanche of letters
+undoubtedly pleased and flattered her, but did not cause one fraction of
+the palpitating excitement that she felt at the mere sight of Hester’s
+writing on an envelope.
+
+But her grandmother’s agitation alone would have made it worth
+Antoinette’s while to keep up the correspondence. Grand’mère had
+naturally demanded full details concerning the young man who wrote to
+her grand-daughter with such improper frequency. And Antoinette, more
+demure and “jeune fille” than ever, had modestly said that he was a
+great artist....
+
+“_Hein, hein_, an artist? That does not please me at all. He has
+doubtless not a farthing, and you know very well that _la vie de bohème_
+is nothing for you,” with a warning glance at Henriette, from whom
+Antoinette was assumed to have inherited all her immoral tendencies.
+
+Antoinette continued gleefully to foster in her grandmother’s mind the
+vision of Dennis as an impecunious artist with short nails and long
+hair, who would encourage her to dance upon tables, drink champagne for
+breakfast, associate with people who posed for “_L’ensemble_”—even if
+she did not actually pose for “_L’ensemble_” herself—and generally
+behave in a manner incompatible with Cadogan Gardens and the dignity of
+the de Courcys.
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+                                                      June 29th, 1914.
+
+“... We’re putting up to-night in rooms above a pastry-cook’s shop ...
+wonderful rooms. I know you’d love them. I’ve been taking for your
+benefit an inventory of the sitting-room furniture. There are yellow
+faded family-photographs on the walls, and wedding-groups with
+bridesmaids wearing hats with quills all pointing the same way. There’s
+a dusty wooden shelf with mugs that are all Presents from the Seaside,
+or else symbols of the Jubilee, the Coronation or other events of
+national unimportance. There’s a red plush anchor with shells round it;
+there’s a cardboard model of a ship under a glass bell; there’s a
+slippery horse-hair sofa, upon which Crispin is now reclining, fast
+asleep. And chiefly, there is a piano with a green silk front and a
+yellow keyboard so short that I find myself clawing the air if I venture
+too far away from the central C. There’s such a funny foreign look about
+the way the houses here grow in a square round the market-place. They
+are painted all different colours, too; there’s a bright blue one just
+opposite, with a tiny salmon pink one, half its height, leaning
+confidingly up against it; ours is a modest saffron yellow, with red
+bars under the window-ledges. There’s a pump in the middle of the
+market-square, and around it the most delightful mixed assorted
+collection of dogs doze in the sun. I’m going to fetch one of them in to
+talk to me when I’ve finished this letter. We don’t quite know if he’s
+meant to be a bull-dog or a spaniel, but he’s long and slobbery and
+brindled and adorable, and he’s going to lie across my lap, while I
+whisper absurdities into his long soft ears.
+
+I can’t get rid of the impression that this is a little foreign town.
+Between the houses are narrow passages that are spanned by tiny stone
+archways, dazzling white against an Italian blue sky; and from each
+archway flutter boldly the coloured banners of somebody’s washing. And
+the hotel, painted brownish pink and built round a triangular court
+planted with shrubbery, is just such as you might find in a small place
+in Switzerland.
+
+No, I think I’ve got it now: it’s not a foreign place, in fact it isn’t
+a real place at all.... It’s just a toy village that you’re allowed to
+take out of the nursery cupboard and play with, when you’ve been good.
+
+Please won’t you come and play with my toy village with me? I’ll be
+awfully nice about it, and even let you work the pump and hang up the
+washing when I’m tired of doing it myself.
+
+No, it isn’t a toy village either: it’s just a dream-place. I knew that,
+the instant we came in sight of it this afternoon. We’d been walking
+over the moors to the accompaniment of a tearing wind that swept
+magnificently up and down the scale, as it drove great lumpy golden
+clouds over the edge of the horizon, and roared in our ears and muttered
+in the hedgerows. And then suddenly the white road began to dip down and
+down into a hollow in which lay this handful of coloured roofs. And the
+sound of the wind became softer and softer, as if whoever was conducting
+the orchestra, had hushed all the brass-instruments. And by the time we
+reached the village-street, after a last faint murmur there was no sound
+at all, only the most wonderful thick sunny silence you’ve ever listened
+to. And I want you here in my dream-place. You belong in it. I may tell
+you that, mayn’t I? Besides, you know. Of course you know ... don’t
+you?”
+
+                                                             July 5th.
+
+“... You want my village for keeps? I’m afraid you can’t have it,
+because if I packed it in my suit-case to bring home to you, the water
+from the pump might get loose and make my collars damp. I’m sorry! I’m
+sending you a nice fat tin of cream instead, which will no doubt upset
+your grandmother—morally, of course. She must be a delightful old lady,
+according to your descriptions, and I look forward to making her
+acquaintance on my return.... We’re staying in quite a different sort of
+village this time; it has an old-world triangular village-green, planted
+with giant oak-trees, and enclosed on two sides by dear little thatched
+cottages with trim little gardens; and it has an ivy-clad church and the
+usual combination of Post Office and all-sorts shop, in which you may
+revel in the complex odour of boots, cheese, liquorice, soap, sawdust,
+biscuits, Fry’s chocolate and warm humanity. And best of all, this
+village of ours boasts an absolutely authentic Idiot, Vicar, Oldest
+Inhabitant, Lady of the Manor and Village Belle—I expect she’ll lose
+some of our socks, as she happens to be the laundress in private
+life—and they all come on and speak in character when the strings are
+pulled. Unfortunately, the Wicked Squire is lacking from the set; he
+must have been mislaid. But I hear they’ve got a Squire of sorts some
+miles away, and for the sake of tradition let us hope that his morals
+are infamous and his jowl unshaven and blue.
+
+We had a long tramp to get here from Chagford, and at every farm we
+encountered on the way, we halted so that Crispin might still his
+insatiable appetite for bread and cheese and beer. And while he sat and
+gorged in state in the parlour with the best antimacassars and the
+coloured prints of the Royal Family, I prowled round the farm-buildings,
+and had much speech with velvet-eyed calves, and watch-dogs straining at
+their chains, and sleepy kittens, and ducks sailing proudly on the pond
+in the orchard. I loved all their quacking and purring and barking and
+lowing, and the excited flutter in the poultry-yard and the rich deep
+sounds from the pig-sty. And oh, the farm-smell of earth and damp straw
+and clover and animals and hay....
+
+The fields are brown and red and green, and brown again; and scattered
+in the hollows, or perched on the hillsides are villages—mere clusters
+of whitewashed and pinkwashed cottages—gleaming in the sun. But even the
+tiniest cluster has its battered grey church-spire. The smoke from the
+gorse-fires floats in heavy blue clouds above the Tors, and I do so
+badly want someone to share it all with me...! Crispin? Yes, he’s a dear
+good sort and I like being with him. He’s so restful because he takes me
+so for granted; doesn’t ask questions; and there’s never the least
+strain between us. I believe Crispin is really wedded, heart and soul,
+to his Bechstein grand at home. Whilst I—Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps some
+day I’ll be able to tell you....
+
+I’m afraid we shall have to push on very quickly from this perfect spot,
+as Crispin has succeeded in getting us into trouble. We’ve got no piano
+here, and he was told on enquiring that the only one in the
+neighbourhood is up at the Manor. I had to restrain him forcibly from
+marching straight in and taking possession of the instrument. I put it
+to him that it couldn’t be done—no, not even if he pretended to be the
+piano-tuner.... So very morosely, he gave way, and consoled himself by
+borrowing the key of the church from the vicar, and playing the organ.
+That was all very nice, of course, but Crispin, from force of habit,
+locked himself in; and that afternoon there was to be a christening ...
+and he didn’t take the slightest notice when they came and hammered on
+the church-door; merely thundered away, louder than ever, on his wheezy
+old organ. The christening procession had to wait outside, with the baby
+catching cold, till Crispin got hungry, and came out to have his tea....
+Of course they might have entered by another door, but that spoils my
+story....
+
+I’m writing you such a lot of nonsense; you don’t mind, do you? If you
+only realised how difficult it is to stop writing to you! I want to go
+on and on and on, and tell you things—but they are just the things you
+know already.... You seem very near to me to-night. Perhaps you were
+thinking about me just a little, and have come here in a dream. I
+believe you’re beside me now, only if I turn to look you’ll vanish....”
+
+                                                             July 7th.
+
+“... It’s nice of you to ask about my opera. I haven’t worked at it much
+lately. I’ve been so lazy and happy, just walking and dreaming and
+eating and sleeping, and writing to you. But as regards the opera—do you
+remember Andersen’s fairy-tale, ‘Karen and the Red Shoes’? A friend of
+mine, Neil Barnaby, has turned it into a three-act play, and I’m writing
+the music for it. It’s the first time I’ve attempted anything quite so
+big. We want to have it put on with an entirely modern impressionistic
+setting—perhaps next opera-season at Covent Garden. Perhaps.... To-night
+I can almost believe that it will be so, and that the work that is
+nearest and dearest to my heart will actually be played before hundreds
+and hundreds of people. Perhaps they’ll acclaim it, go mad over it, as
+I’ve seen them go mad, and gone mad myself over the Russian Opera. And I
+know I shall have a ridiculous desire to cry, and there won’t be an
+ounce of conceit in me, because after all it’s just my child they’ll be
+making the fuss about—not me. And I’m glad that it should be like that,
+for I hate being taken notice of, and always want to run away and hide.
+But the child is different. The child, I think, is going to be strong.
+And I love it so.... And all the pleasure that my music may bring to the
+people who listen to it, won’t nearly equal some of the top-moments of
+joy I’ve had in creating it. Yes, to-night I can believe that the opera
+will be a success; to-night I can believe even more than that; to-night
+I can believe—anything, Antoinette.
+
+When I was at school, I was terrified of my musical gift; I hated it,
+and did my utmost to suppress it, because I thought it was that which
+made me different from the other boys. I loathed being ‘different’; it
+made me feel so alone, so I played hard games with the others, and tried
+to make friends with the others, and tried to forget that there was
+something inside my brain that turned everything I felt and experienced
+into music, which clamoured to be released, and which I refused to
+release, because I knew that if I did so, it would widen still more the
+gulf between me and the others. I built barrier upon barrier to shut in
+the fragments of music that sang in my ears all day and all night; I was
+powerless to keep them from entering, but at least I would give them no
+chance to escape. I wouldn’t take music-lessons at school; that would
+have been too dangerous; old Harper, the piano-master, was a pretty
+shrewd person, and might have spotted me. I resented having this thing
+to hide, and envied my brother Clive and the other boys, for not having
+to wage this perpetual war against part of their own selves. There were
+times when I did long so badly just to give in.... And if I did that, I
+could never again keep up the pretence of being like the others.
+Somehow, that pretence seemed the all-important thing: there was safety
+in it.
+
+When I was sixteen, a Jewish boy called Eric Rubenstein came to
+Westborough. He was clever as they’re made, but ugly and undersized, and
+appallingly sensitive; he had a rotten time of it. Everything about him
+seemed to lay him open to being ragged—his looks, his name (they called
+him Little-by-Little ‘for short’) and the way his people kissed him
+before the whole school, and brought him pineapples and grapes when they
+came down to see him. He used, for some unfathomable reason, to follow
+me around with his great intelligent eyes, that were like the eyes of a
+dog that expects to be kicked; but I didn’t even try to befriend him.
+You see, I realised that young Eric was likely to be dangerous too: he
+played the violin, and he played it like an artist....
+
+He fagged for a great loutish Sixth Form chap called Burnley, who did
+his best to make Eric’s life a misery. I was in Burnley’s study one
+Saturday afternoon, and he and some of his pals were banging away on the
+piano. Someone suggested that the Jew-boy, who was toasting muffins by
+the fire, should play his violin.... The Jew-boy refused, and I was glad
+that he had refused to play to them. Then I saw that Burnley was looking
+at him with a very evil gleam in his heavy eyes. The next instant the
+storm broke. ‘What—you won’t? Is there any law in your benighted
+religion to prevent you playing the fiddle on Saturdays?’
+
+Eric blazed out: ‘My religion’s as good as yours!’ and then relapsed
+into his usual attitude of defence.
+
+‘Oh, no, it isn’t, Ikey,’ Burnley grinned, ‘don’t make any mistake about
+that; you’re a Jew, that’s what you are, a dirty Jew ... ugh!’
+
+They went on badgering him about his religion and about his father, who
+was supposed to have kept a fried-fish shop before he got rich. And they
+threatened him with lickings, and with red-hot pokers down his back if
+he wouldn’t play.... I daresay most of it was bluff, but he must have
+had memories of previous tortures, for he turned absolutely white, and
+tried to hide his funk under a rather sickening smile.
+
+He kept on looking to me for help, but I just sat there, with the palms
+of my hands getting hot and sticky, and didn’t move. They forced him
+finally by threat of sheer physical violence, and I felt that it was
+indecent that he should play before those boys who didn’t really want to
+hear his music, and only wanted to make a mock of him; and indecent that
+I should be listening. But I had to stop and listen. I hadn’t interfered
+to protect him, but I couldn’t leave him quite alone while he played....
+And then I realised that Eric wasn’t really giving himself in his music;
+he seemed to be withholding himself from expression. I was terribly
+afraid that as he went on he’d overstep the borders of his reserve, but
+he didn’t. His playing was correct and polished; and absolutely
+soulless.
+
+When he had finished, I was unthinkingly whistling the Russian song he’d
+played; and he looked up and came across to me, seeing that the others
+were all busy round the piano. ‘Yes, of course that’s how it ought to
+have been played, but I couldn’t do it like that—could I—for them.’ I
+had to take care not to let him guess how heartily I agreed with him, so
+I said off-handedly: ‘I don’t see why not!’
+
+‘Oh, yes, you do,’ he persisted, ‘you _know_.... You must have a
+wonderful ear to be able to whistle it straight off like that. Don’t you
+love Wieniawski? I do....’ He was no longer the cringeing little Fourth
+Form fag addressing a senior boy; he was speaking as man to man, or as
+one artist to another. But I had to shut him up; told him I didn’t
+‘know,’ and hadn’t any ear at all, and hated Wieniawski and all other
+kinds of music, and advised him to stow his cheek.... Oh, I could talk
+the vernacular right enough! He just gave me one look, half reproachful
+and half apologetic; then he blurted out, under cover of the song that
+the others were bawling in chorus: ‘I—I suppose you thought me an utter
+worm just now—I know I am, but it makes me sick—pain does—even the idea
+of it—and being helpless and knowing that it isn’t going to stop—and it
+comes over you in waves each a bit more ghastly than the last. It isn’t
+what they do, though that’s bad enough sometimes.... It’s what they
+might do ... and you know exactly what it would feel like, and you lie
+awake at night and think about it, and wait——’
+
+It was all too horrible for words. I longed to shut him up again, but I
+saw that he’d reached the limits of his endurance, and simply had to
+talk.... He went on to tell me about his people at home. ‘My father
+thinks I’m ever so happy here, and popular, and good at games and all
+that—he’s so absurdly proud of me, you see—so in the holidays I have to
+keep it up—fib about cricket matches I’m supposed to have played in, and
+invent stories of practical jokes in which I figure as the hero instead
+of the victim ... and he drinks it all in, and loves it, and I can’t
+bear to let him know.’
+
+He said that, when I suggested that he should get his parents to take
+him away from Westborough. Plucky, wasn’t it? And heartbreaking. He was
+such a kid.... I had an insane desire to be nice to him, to make up for
+what the others were doing to him. But after that one outburst, I
+avoided him more than ever. With his subtle Jewish instinct he’d
+discovered well enough that I _was_ different from the others; but he
+never again attempted to speak to me about music, although he must have
+known all along. I was grateful to him for that; the barriers I had
+built were getting weaker and weaker; and I had the almost superstitious
+conviction that they would only stand firm as long as I didn’t tell
+anybody about myself, or let them give me the sympathy and understanding
+I craved for. I dared not let myself get fond of Eric, or I might
+have been swept away to heaven knows what headlong flights
+of—‘differentness.’ So the desire to be nice to him had to be fought
+down as well....
+
+And then one day—it was the half-term holiday, and pouring with rain. I
+went up to the practice-room at the top of the house to fetch something
+I’d been sent for—and the piano was open—and no one was about—and I
+thought I’d just see if I could remember one of the absurd pieces Clive
+and I had been taught by our nursery-governess.
+
+I don’t know how it happened: I had started by picking out ‘The Merry
+Peasant,’ but a while after, without realising what I was doing, I was
+finding chords that began to release, bit by bit, some of the music that
+was imprisoned inside my head, and that seemed to be spurring me on,
+impatient of my clumsy fingers that groped so slowly for the magic
+formula that would set it free....
+
+Later on, I was out on the Downs, running away from what I knew I should
+never be able to escape, now that I had let _it_ escape me ... given the
+thing that was in my mind a separate existence, by putting it outside
+myself. It was just that—putting it outside myself—that had swept me
+right over my own barriers. I knew then that come what might, I’d got to
+be a musician, even if it did mean being different and being lonely. I
+knew I’d got to suffer, and by suffering—create. I determined that the
+one person who should share that knowledge with me, should be Eric. I
+looked forward to being able to be decent to him at last....
+
+I wandered about for hours in the wind and rain, and when I got back,
+there was a little knot of boys whispering in the hall. ‘I say, have you
+heard?’ ‘No, what?’ ‘About the Jew-boy—appendicitis—awful agony, the
+Matron says, quickest case she’s ever heard of—_scream_—you should have
+heard him, fair blood-curdling, I can tell you.’ ‘It’s awfully quiet
+now; his people have come.... Will they take him—take _it_—away...?’
+
+That was the end of Eric, who dreaded the idea of pain.
+
+... After that, I didn’t make any attempt to crawl back behind my
+barriers; they weren’t strong enough anyway to stand against the
+flood-tide that had broken out. Everything that I felt about Eric would
+set itself to weird horrible music that drummed unceasingly in my ears,
+and demanded expression, and I was dead tired of choking it back. So I
+had to let myself become a musician. But I put up an awfully hard fight
+against it. It’s queer to think of it now....
+
+I don’t know how it is that I can talk to you like this. I’ve never told
+anyone else about Eric, and I know I couldn’t do it so easily if you
+were really here. But being miles away from you, there’s nothing to
+frighten me into shutting myself up, nothing to destroy my conviction
+that you _do_ understand.
+
+Good-night, dear. I’ve enjoyed talking to you....”
+
+                                                            July 12th.
+
+“We’re zig-zagging about the country in the most amazing style. And I
+wish I could collect all the things I’ve loved most, and bring them back
+to you. There’s the early-morning smell—such a foreign smell, too—of
+pines, and fresh-cut grass, and stone walls and burning wood. And there
+are the evenings when the scent of the earth and the trees after the
+day’s heat is so strong and sweet and poignant that it hurts you; and
+there’s a glamour over the whole world; and the lights begin to show in
+the cottage-windows; and a great golden moon swims up over the hard
+black edge of the moor.... Yesterday we found a river, gleaming silver
+in the depths of a forest—such a river.... It rushed onward at a tearing
+rate, hurling itself down over great moss-grown boulders, working itself
+into a white frenzy of foam as it fretted its way between them, and
+swirled around the outstanding tree-roots. And, oh, the colours of the
+water—crystal and gold where the sun touched it, clear amber and brown
+and green where it was flecked by the shadow of the branches. You’ve
+never heard such a wonderful orchestra of bird-voices: the low clear
+note of the blackbird as soloist, and all the warbling, trilling,
+chirping and whistling that went to make a harmonious accompaniment,
+together with the soothing monotone of the bees, and the hurry, hurry,
+hurry of the river—but what’s the good of trying to tell you about it in
+words? Perhaps I’ll put it into music for you some day. There’s such a
+lot to be done ‘some day,’ isn’t there? When I get back, you must come
+to Covent Garden with me. And there’ll be concerts, too. It’s a regular
+feast of good music in London this season. We’re taking the train to
+Exeter to-morrow, and I may be coming straight home from there, unless
+Crispin lures me on into Cornwall. I’m too sleepy and drunk with the air
+to make up my mind definitely to-night. But I’ll let you know to-morrow.
+
+Good-night....”
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+Antoinette smiled tenderly over those letters; he must be a queer
+person, Dennis Blackwood, to write to her like that, after having only
+spoken to her once. She liked his letters from an artistic point of
+view, and the bulk of them gave her a feeling of warmth and contentment;
+but once read, she put them aside; did not pore over them as she pored
+over Hester’s, striving to read between the lines, and to put into the
+words meanings which did not exist. Hester at a distance was most
+unsatisfactory, so much so, that it sometimes cost Antoinette a real
+effort to conjure up the image of her personality. She ventured to
+express the hope that she might soon be allowed to see Hester again; and
+to her infinite surprise, Hester replied that she was at Birmingham now,
+and that if Antoinette thought it worth while, she might come and spend
+a day with her there.
+
+Antoinette trembled with joy on receiving that letter. It lay beside the
+one in which Dennis had told her about Eric Rubenstein, and Grand’mère
+peered inquisitively over the silver coffee-pot. But Antoinette cared
+naught for Grand’mère that morning: she was going to see Hester, and
+Dennis was evidently in love with her, and the world was altogether an
+excellent place; gratefully Antoinette accepted the gifts that fate was
+showering upon her—gratefully as a flower opens its petals to the sun.
+
+Some days later, by dint of a series of lies and precautions, she set
+out for Birmingham. She could not tell the family where she was going.
+They knew nothing about Hester, and had they done so, would doubtless
+have deemed the two hours’ journey to see her, crazy and an unnecessary
+expense. She had stated that she was spending the day at Rosabel’s in
+Hampstead; and Rosabel, good soul, had been sworn to secrecy.
+
+What would the day give her? Antoinette wondered, as the train bore her
+northwards, her excitement growing and growing with every beat of the
+wheels. In what circumstances and in what state of mind would she find
+Hester? She was entirely in the dark, her imagination free to illuminate
+it with the most fantastic of pictures. It was fantastic enough in
+itself that she should be tearing across England just to spend a day
+with Hester. Just one day—that was the joy of it! One magic day standing
+out in high relief from the monotonous flat background of days all
+alike; one day to look back upon, robbed from the calendar.... Would
+Hester be as unapproachable as ever, or would she at last overcome her
+fierce reserve, and of her own free will admit Antoinette to her
+confidence? Antoinette’s heart beat faster, as she pictured this
+eventuality. She stood up in the corridor, too restless to sit down,
+feverish with anticipation....
+
+Then the train swung into the station, and Antoinette saw Hester on the
+platform; and suddenly all the fever and excitement that had been worked
+up to such a pitch died down, so that it required no special effort to
+greet Hester with nonchalant calm. It was as if her pulses had become
+tired of beating and hammering merely in anticipation, and had ceased to
+do so, now that anticipation was about to merge into realisation.
+
+“It was nice of you to come,” smiled Hester.
+
+“It was nice of you to let me,” responded Antoinette.
+
+They made their way through the crowd and out into the street.
+
+“You’ll lunch with me at my lodgings, won’t you?” said Hester.
+
+“Thanks very much.”
+
+After that they walked in silence. Obviously Hester waited for her to
+open conversation, but their unsatisfactory correspondence had
+established no link of intimacy between them, and Antoinette was at a
+loss, not knowing where or how to begin. Hester stopped in front of a
+boarding-house in a rather dingy side-street, and Antoinette followed
+her in through a dark and stuffy hall that smelt of roast mutton, and
+thence into a drawing-room with cheap lace curtains and bamboo tables
+ornamented with dusty ferns.
+
+“We can stop here for the present,” said Hester; “everybody seems to be
+out.”
+
+Antoinette glanced at the pretentious knick-knacks on the mantelpiece,
+the dirty crinkled paper round the flower-pots, the gaudily-framed
+pictures ... a third-rate boarding-house was about the last place in the
+world, in which she would have expected to find Hester. Her sense of the
+fitness of things was outraged.
+
+“Do you—do you live here?” she began at last tentatively.
+
+“For the moment, yes.”
+
+“But ... do you like it?”
+
+Hester shrugged her shoulders. “If you can’t be where you want to be,
+this place is as good as any other. And I’m not a millionaire, you
+know.”
+
+All the same, Antoinette reflected, millionaire or not, surely it was
+possible to live in surroundings less actively repellent than these!
+Apparently Hester carried her habitual detachment even to the lengths of
+being quite oblivious of their sordidness.
+
+She hunted in her mind for a suitable topic of conversation. “What was
+Bristol like?” But almost before the words were out of her mouth, she
+realised that she had infringed that unwritten law which decreed that
+she should display no curiosity with regard to Hester’s private affairs.
+
+She was prepared for the inevitable cold and evasive reply, when Hester
+said: “Bristol? Oh, good enough while it lasted. But what are two weeks
+in a year, compared with the fifty bad ones?”
+
+“Are they always bad—the odd fifty?”
+
+“More or less. He’s married, you see. His wife’s in an asylum; and
+things are difficult on account of his position; he’s a schoolmaster....
+The good times just have to be snatched.”
+
+Antoinette felt stunned—and then disappointed. Hester had revealed to
+her the secret of her life, but she had expected so much more drama from
+the actual moment of revelation. And the secret itself struck her as
+very commonplace; it seemed as if Hester, by taking Antoinette into her
+confidence, had forfeited some of her mysterious charm.... Antoinette
+tried in vain to fathom the reason why her burning love for Hester
+should be thus transformed into a feeling of faint repulsion—repulsion,
+no, that was absurd. What she felt was jealousy, perhaps; jealousy of
+the man to whom Hester gave all there was to be given, so that she had
+nothing left over for Antoinette.... It was not that, either. She had
+always dimly suspected the existence of such a man, and assuming that
+Hester’s happiness lay with him, she had been generous enough not to be
+jealous. And now that his existence was no longer a hypothesis but a
+certainty, she was less inclined than ever to be jealous—but she knew it
+was from indifference rather than from generosity.
+
+Hester was saying: “As you know, I never discuss my life with anyone,
+but I thought I had better tell you just the bare facts, as you’ve been
+foolish enough to honour me with a certain amount of your affection.”
+Her great eyes gazed straight into Antoinette’s with the old look, which
+only three weeks ago had stirred in her such depths of feeling. But now
+she could only flush and avert her eyes from Hester’s, so that Hester
+might not see that all the affection she had ever had for her was dead.
+Also, she had a shrinking fear that Hester would come to elaborate the
+“bare facts.” It struck Antoinette as indecent that Hester should do so
+now, when she lacked the tenderness with which she would once have
+received such confidence.... So she talked feverishly and brilliantly,
+and was all the while full of a pitiful amazement, because Hester’s
+appreciative laugh, that could so wonderfully transform her sullen face
+was powerless to rekindle the dead emotion. Antoinette was relieved when
+they sat down to lunch with the other inhabitants of the boarding-house
+at the one long table in the dining-room. She was getting tired of the
+strain.... And by the end of the day she was more tired of it still,
+tired of pretending to Hester, pretending to herself. And evidently she
+had not pretended so very well after all, because Hester said as she
+walked with her to the station: “You’re disappointed—but remember, I
+warned you....”
+
+“Oh, I’m _not_!” cried Antoinette, in a last attempt to delude herself
+even more than Hester.
+
+But Hester only smiled and shook her head. “It’s no use, my child, I
+know you are, as I knew you would be. People who pour out such great
+floods of feeling as you do are bound to suffer from disillusionment.
+Especially if they come up against people like me.”
+
+“How d’you mean—people like you?” stammered Antoinette.
+
+Hester laughed harshly. “I suppose I’m deceptive. Oh, you’re not the
+first person I’ve deceived—involuntarily, of course, because I’ve always
+warned them as I warned you. Imaginative people of your type are drawn
+to me because, apparently, I give the impression of having more in me
+than I have. That’s all. It’s not a tragedy. But I don’t think we’ll see
+each other again, you and I.”
+
+“Not...?”
+
+“Better not. And by the time you get home you’ll realise if you haven’t
+done so already, that you don’t want to either.”
+
+... The world would be a terribly dreary place, now that there was no
+one left in it to love. Even if Hester had been cruel to her, it would
+have been easier to bear, than just discovering that she no longer cared
+for Hester. The greatest cruelty on her part could not have killed the
+love that Antoinette had had for her only three weeks ago, only
+yesterday.... But Hester had been kind; kinder than ever before; and it
+was not her kindness that was to blame. Nor was it the mere fact of
+having found her in the wrong setting. Again, only yesterday,
+Antoinette’s adoration would have been proof against such
+trivialities—would have deepened at the thought of Hester in that
+depressing environment.
+
+It was not Hester’s fault. Antoinette knew that; Hester was unchanged.
+It was only she who had lost the power of endowing her with a charm that
+she had never possessed. The queer impetus that had made her love Hester
+had suddenly become paralysed, just as her pulses had ceased to hammer,
+the moment she arrived at the station.
+
+But if the whole of that brief magical passion had been but a fever of
+Antoinette’s own imagination, a temporary madness, and if her present
+state of mind heralded her return to sanity, then with all her soul she
+longed to become mad again, so that she might go on loving....
+
+Her wonderful day was over, and it had not held one single moment upon
+which it would be good to look back. She was returning empty-handed. And
+she would have to rouse herself into giving the family a chatty and
+fictitious description of how she had spent the day with Rosabel.
+
+In the midst of her desolation, it gave her a little comfort to remember
+that Dennis’s promised letter from Exeter would be awaiting her at home.
+She hoped it would be one of his specially nice ones. She was in a mood
+to appreciate it to-night....
+
+But that night there was no letter from Dennis; neither the next night;
+nor the one after.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+“And what now?” queried Dennis Blackwood, as they got out of the train,
+and stood upon the dripping wet platform at Crannack.
+
+“P-put up here for the night, and p-push on to-morrow,” Crispin
+responded. Dennis agreed that it was the only thing to be done.
+
+They had left Exeter that afternoon, Dennis having agreed to Crispin’s
+suggestion that they might sample the Cornish coast. Dennis was in no
+hurry to return to London. There was a dream-like quality about all his
+days just now, days shared with his dream-companion, Antoinette. And
+perhaps at the back of his mind lurked an indefinable fear of the moment
+when he must exchange dreams for reality. If he went on to Cornwall,
+there would be more days, and more, of hard walking and healthy sleep,
+and all the haphazard fun of eccentric stoppages at eccentric places—and
+above all, the dream-companionship would be prolonged....
+
+From Exeter, they had intended taking the train down to Penzance, and
+thence starting to explore the Land’s End district; but it had got late
+while they visited the Cathedral at Exeter, and on arriving at the
+station they found that they had missed the Cornish express, and had to
+be content with a very slow train that stopped at all stations, and
+finally stopped altogether at Crannack, the centre of the
+mining-district. They were informed that they could get no connection to
+Penzance the same night.
+
+“Dismal-looking hole, isn’t it?” remarked Dennis, as they trudged up the
+High Street, through the rain, in search of lodgings. Crispin grunted
+assent, and turned up his coat-collar. He detested the wet. They took
+rooms at the first Commercial Hotel they reached; and had a belated
+supper in a dingy and badly-lighted dining-room. When they had finished,
+Dennis declared: “I’m going out for some air, rain or no rain,” but
+Crispin preferred to remain in the stuffy little smoking-room with a
+book and a pipe.
+
+Dennis resolved that before settling down to write to Antoinette, he
+would have a look round the place. It seemed unprepossessing enough,
+especially when contrasted with the clean cheerful Devonshire villages
+which they had just left. Crannack was neither clean nor cheerful; yet
+for Dennis there was a certain fascination about the way its little
+twisted streets ran steeply upwards from the docks, as if trying to
+scramble away from the perpetual harbour-noises; the rasping of chains,
+hooting of steam-sirens, rattling of coal-trucks. But the few
+upward-winding streets which Dennis explored attained to nothing more
+romantic or beautiful than a tin-roofed Methodist Chapel or Temperance
+Hotel. And as if in mockery of, or in opposition to, these hideous
+symbols of virtue, a great multitude of public-houses and
+drinking-saloons clustered about the centre of the town and straggled
+all along the wharf. From behind the blurred windows came the sound of
+drunken laughter and voices raised in discussion; voices raucous and yet
+mournful, that reminded Dennis of the screeching of sea-gulls. He
+strolled across the market-place, where the gas-flares over the stalls
+spluttered and wavered in the rain-laden wind, and cast fantastic lights
+and shadows—evil lights and shadows—upon the grimy faces of the men who
+hung about in groups, seemingly aimless, as if waiting to take their
+turn in the overcrowded drinking-saloons. Whenever any of the
+swing-doors were pushed open, giving a glimpse of sanded floor and
+iridescent bottles, and some figure reeled out, or was pushed out into
+the night air, his place was immediately filled by one of the waiting
+crowd. Dennis moved away from the noise and glare, and up a quiet
+side-street. The wet soft wind was in his face, bringing with it a faint
+tang of the sea. He walked on, while behind him the lights of the town
+became dimmer and more dim, and the sounds more and more muffled; and at
+last the monotonous outlines of the houses on either side of the narrow
+street merged into irregular humped shadows, that represented tumbledown
+barns and deserted cottages, and then fell away altogether. The wind
+blew harder now, and Dennis guessed that he must be in open country. The
+darkness was thick and moist; tangible almost. But further up the road,
+a red glow of light beckoned, that was neither the light of a
+public-house, nor yet the flare above a market-stall. It was the
+unmistakable glow of a blacksmith’s forge, that was luring him on
+through the darkness; and Dennis pressed forward, for there was
+something subtly attractive to him in these sudden alternations of
+blackest shadows and glaring light.
+
+The door of the smithy stood wide open. Dennis, rather dazzled, sat down
+upon a ramshackle fence on the opposite side of the road. Two
+swarthy-faced men stood facing the forge, and a third, a
+muscular-looking giant was holding by the bridle a great cart-horse,
+that impatiently pawed the ground and shook back its mane.
+
+A youth was at work at the anvil. He was stripped to the waist, and in
+the leaping light of the flames, his body seemed white and slender.
+Dennis reflected that it was a most effective picture: in the midst of
+the clammy surrounding darkness, this great square of blazing heat and
+light; crimson glow illuminating the men’s dark faces, the glossy coat
+of the horse, and the boy’s black head; and showing every ripple of the
+muscles under the fine skin, as he raised his arms to hammer the red-hot
+iron into shape. The three men watched him attentively, talking in their
+Cornish dialect that was almost incomprehensible to Dennis across the
+road.
+
+He caught snatches. “Coomin’ on fine, that be.”
+
+“What d’ I tell ee, la-ad? Slowly does ut—slowly.”
+
+“Ee doan’t want fur tu use all that strength—thur, I knew it’d ’appen
+...” as the boy brought down the hammer with a smashing blow upon the
+horseshoe, and a piece of the red-hot iron flew off and, before he had
+time to avoid it, landed upon his foot. He dropped the hammer and broke
+into a picturesque flow of bad language; but to Dennis’s surprise, his
+speech bore no trace of Cornish dialect, but every trace of the accent
+that is manufactured at Oxford....
+
+“All right, you needn’t crow over me, Tremayne! I tell you, that shoe
+would have been every bit as good as one of yours, if I hadn’t smashed
+it. Holy saints and martyrs, the touch of red-hot iron on the flesh is
+damnable, simply damnable. I wish my mother were here to ‘kiss the place
+and make it well’....”
+
+There was a burst of gruff laughter from the blacksmith and the man
+holding the horse, but the third, a round-shouldered little man with
+weak, kindly eyes, spoke with some concern. “And what’ll yer fa-ather be
+sayin’, Mr. Alan, if us let ee go knockin’ yerself tu bits like this?”
+
+“My father, Jenkins, would send down another army of chaperons and
+guardians to look after me, or would censure you most heartily for
+allowing me to play with the nasty fire.... Have any of you got a spare
+handkerchief? I want to tie up my foot and hobble home.”
+
+Several more or less grimy rags were produced simultaneously, and Dennis
+came forward across the road. “Here, take mine. Are you badly hurt?”
+
+“Oh, dear me, no, I’m not badly hurt. It’s fun, dropping pieces of
+red-hot metal upon portions of one’s anatomy. Especially if one isn’t
+accustomed to it.”
+
+“A fresh emotion, at any rate,” Dennis smiled.
+
+Alan looked up at him quickly from where he sat on the ground, nursing
+his foot. “I say, where do you come from? What are you? We don’t get any
+tourists here. You’re not another new inspector, sent down by my
+benighted parent, are you?”
+
+“Inspector?” Dennis repeated blankly, “inspector of what?”
+
+“Of coal-mines, of course. In this God-forsaken place we think of
+nothing but coal. We live in it, count in it, breathe it—lots of them
+die of it. Jenkins here has nearly lost his sight through it.... No one
+comes to Crannack who isn’t somehow or other connected with coal.”
+
+“I assure you solemnly, then, that I haven’t the least connection with
+it, and that I know nothing whatever about coal, barring the strictly
+domestic variety that appears in the family grate.”
+
+“Thank God at least for that! Well, if it isn’t coal that has brought
+you here, what is it?”
+
+“A train that refused to carry us on to Penzance, as we desired, and
+apparently preferred to deposit us here. We’re staying over night and
+going on to-morrow morning.”
+
+“I thought as much. It was too good to be true. No one stops at Crannack
+longer than they can help. Where are you putting up?”
+
+Dennis told him, and he replied: “That’s not far from my digs. Are you
+going back there now? If so, we may as well walk together, and you can
+support my fainting footsteps if necessary. I say—will you?”
+
+There was so much boyish eagerness in the tone, that Dennis laughed. “Of
+course I will. Come along.”
+
+Alan put on his coat, bade good-night to the three men, and he and
+Dennis set off together down the dark road. At the bottom of the hill,
+the clustered lights of the town twinkled sleepily.
+
+“It doesn’t look so bad at night,” remarked Alan, “but in the
+daytime—Lord, the ugliness and the filth of it! And the ugliness and the
+filth of the people, too. Not that it’s their fault, poor devils. The
+material is good enough in itself—it’s the use that’s being made of it.”
+
+“But,” said Dennis, “whatever are _you_ doing here, in this place that
+you hate, and among these people to whom you don’t belong?”
+
+Impatiently Alan replied: “My father sent me here to study
+mining-engineering after I left Oxford. He owns several more or less
+prosperous coal-mines up in Lancashire, and he’s having this one
+developed as a speculation. He wants me to take over the management of
+it. So I’m supposed to be learning the ropes—seeing how the thing’s
+done—or how the maximum of profit can be ground out of the minimum of
+expenditure; financial expenditure of course; not expenditure of human
+life.”
+
+“But I thought that everything in mortal power had been done to reduce
+the liability of accidents in mines; is the expenditure of life really
+so great?”
+
+“Greater than it need be. Oh, we have sanitary inspectors nosing around,
+and plastering up the Government regulations, and finding everything to
+their satisfaction—but all the same, every lump of coal that is burnt is
+soaked in blood, human blood....” The boy was talking with a curious
+vehemence and excitement—vehemence and excitement that seemed to have
+been long pent-up. “Sometimes we have quicksand, and sometimes we have
+floods, and sometimes we have fire-damp and explosions, and sometimes we
+have all the lot.... You can see the results: you’ve only to look at the
+blind and the cripples and the consumptive wrecks in the streets. It’s
+in the pits that they’ve lost their sight and their limbs and their
+health, grubbing in the dark, in the foul air, so that capitalists like
+my father may grow sleek.”
+
+“That’s socialist-talk, isn’t it?”
+
+“Not only talk; I’m going to _do_....”
+
+“What can you do—what is there to be done about it?”
+
+“That’s what I’m trying to find out; and the only way to find out is to
+do what I’m doing now.”
+
+“Well...?” Dennis looked at the boy limping along at his side; saw his
+face, white and dim, in the darkness, the clean line of the jaw and
+throat. It might have been the face of a young knight, Dennis thought; a
+young knight ardent and fearless, setting out to combat evils as old as
+the world....
+
+Alan replied: “I’m living with the people and among them and beside
+them. My father thinks I’m safely wrapped in cotton-wool, and that
+sometimes the head-engineer takes me round the mine in state, with very
+clean hands, while the miners touch their caps to me and say ‘Yes, sir,’
+when out of my graciousness I put the asinine questions that show I’m
+taking an intelligent interest in my father’s property.... But I’ve
+worked in the mine day by day myself, I tell you, and come out as grimy
+and ready for drink as the rest. It’s no use standing at the top of the
+shaft and wondering—I must get at things from the inside—discover
+exactly where these Labour conditions of ours are wrong, and how to
+improve them.”
+
+“You’ve got your work cut out! Forgive me for saying so, but you seem so
+young to be attempting so much.”
+
+Alan grinned and swung his arms a little. “I’ll give all the youth and
+nerves and strength that are in me, if by giving them I can achieve my
+ends.”
+
+“I think you will achieve them,” murmured Dennis. He was suddenly lost
+in admiration of the earnestness, the virility and the steadfastness of
+purpose on the part of one who still seemed—he could not help coming
+back to it—such a child.
+
+“Don’t you ever let yourself play?” he asked.
+
+Alan laughed. “Oh, Lord, yes. I go down to the harbour and mess about
+with the old boats, old iron and rusty cranes. And I watch the kids
+digging up winkles out of the mud at low tide. And I sit on barrels and
+let the seamen tell me their yarns, specially concocted on the spur of
+the moment for landlubbers like myself. That was play-time just now, up
+at the smithy.... Well, you saw how that ended!”
+
+He was limping badly now. Dennis put an arm through his as they crossed
+the glaring market-place, and once again found themselves in the
+darkness of a side-street, rising steeply from the wharf-side. Alan led
+the way into one of the houses, lit a candle-end which he found on a
+shelf in the hall and painfully climbed the wooden stairs to his room.
+Dennis followed. The light from the guttering candle wavered and
+flickered in the draught from under the front door, and cast grotesque,
+elongated shadows of the two men upon the opposite wall. Dennis had time
+to reflect that here indeed he had stumbled into a strange adventure,
+but he was in no mind to withdraw from it. Alan lit the candles in his
+room. It was small and bare, but the walls were covered with pen-and-ink
+sketches and caricatures nailed up with drawing-pins.
+
+“Are those yours?” asked Dennis, and Alan replied: “Yes; that’s how I
+keep myself from going crazy with depression.”
+
+“They’re good, by Jove,” said Dennis; the drawings, indeed, some of them
+only half-finished, were exceptionally strong. “Living in the wilds
+doesn’t seem to have spoilt your technique.”
+
+Alan looked pleased. “Greatest effect in the fewest possible
+lines—that’s what I tried to get.”
+
+“And that’s what you have got, no doubt of it. I must look at the
+drawings closer later on, but let me see to your foot first. One puts
+oil on a burn, doesn’t one? Have you got any?”
+
+The landlord eventually produced a doubtful-looking compound in a
+bottle; and Dennis removed his handkerchief from Alan’s foot, and began
+to bandage it afresh. As he did so, a quick spasm of pain passed across
+the boy’s face, and Dennis thought again with an odd pang of tenderness,
+how absurdly young he looked, and how his mother must love to stroke
+back the dark hair from his forehead. There was a photograph of her on
+the mantelpiece—a tired-looking woman with dull eyes and long slender
+hands. The father, from his portrait, was evidently thick-set, with
+side-whiskers and a self-assertive expression. A queer couple, they
+seemed, to have bred this finely-strung creature with the tanned face,
+sensitive level brows, and great black eyes that burned with a
+smouldering fire.
+
+“Thanks awfully,” said Alan, as Dennis finished his task; “you’ve been a
+god-send to me to-night. I was getting pretty near the end of my
+tether—I do sometimes, you know. It’s the loneliness, and being so
+completely cut off from everything down here. It’s been refreshing to
+talk to an absolute stranger who doesn’t understand any of the
+technicalities appertaining to this beastly mining-village.”
+
+Dennis smiled. “You’re right. I know nothing whatever about mining, and
+not much about any trade or profession outside my own. You make me feel
+fearfully narrow and selfish.”
+
+“Rot! What is your line?”
+
+“Music.”
+
+“Music? Oh, good.... I’ve not heard any music for over six months.
+Sometimes I’m positively hungry for it—any sort of music—even a
+barrel-organ.... If anyone played one of those tango-tunes that were all
+the rage in London before I came down here, I believe I’d weep!”
+
+“Poor kid,” said Dennis.
+
+Alan went on: “Do you come from London?”
+
+“Near enough to be there as often as I want to.”
+
+“Oh, lucky beggar! To think of being in London
+now—theatres—dancing—art-shows. They’ve got the Russian Ballet on too,
+haven’t they?”
+
+“Yes, and the opera. Chaliapine is just beyond all powers of
+description. I heard him in ‘Boris’ before I left.”
+
+Alan groaned. “We’re buried alive here. Not the humblest and shoddiest
+of touring-companies comes to alleviate our boredom—we haven’t as much
+as a picture-palace. The only diversions our people get are drink and
+women, women and drink. If it were ‘Woman, wine and song,’ it wouldn’t
+be so bad; but there’s no ‘song’ about the people’s lives in Crannack,
+and in all the other places like it, that are dead to all beauty, and
+are mere sores on the face of the earth.... And you come from London—I
+look at you positively with awe—and you’re going back there, when is it?
+To-morrow?”
+
+“We’re going to Penzance to-morrow.”
+
+“Oh, what’ll you do at Penzance?” Alan exclaimed impatiently, “it’s an
+awful hole, not much better than this—and without even me in it, as a
+redeeming feature....”
+
+“I am going to be shown the beauties of the Cornish coast, not to hunt
+for social reformers tossing red-hot horse-shoes in blacksmiths’ shops!
+And anyway,” Dennis added in a lower voice, “I shouldn’t find one like
+you. I shouldn’t find anything half as good....”
+
+Alan glanced up with a quick flush of pleasure. “You’ve liked meeting
+me, then.... Ah, but you can’t have liked it half as much as I’ve liked
+meeting you. Think of it—after all this time and among these people,
+suddenly to come across another human being from the world I’ve almost
+forgotten!”
+
+Dennis said half-aloud: “Consider the even greater wonder of meeting
+someone from a world that one didn’t know really existed—that one had
+scarcely dared to dream into existence.”
+
+Alan cried eagerly: “Then you’ll stop on here for a bit, won’t you? Give
+a poor starving wretch a chance! I want to hear you talk about London
+with the London voice; I want to be able to talk about ideas instead of
+machinery; and I want to hear your music—do you play the piano? I
+haven’t got one ... but I believe there’s one up at the Sunday-school.
+You will stop, won’t you?”
+
+It would be cruel to refuse Alan’s request. In spite of the magnitude of
+the task which the boy had set himself, and although he was engrossed in
+it heart and soul, he was still young enough to want his play-time,
+genuine play-time; not the play-time of which, ironically he had told
+Dennis.... He was asking for his play-time now, but Dennis knew that he
+must not yield; must tear himself away from a danger doubly dangerous,
+because, far from wishing to avoid it, he longed to succumb to it.
+
+He said, with an effort to play for safety: “I can’t tell you off-hand.
+I must consult my pal, and see what he says....” He could not quite
+bring himself to make his refusal absolutely definite just yet.... “But
+our train doesn’t leave till eleven in the morning, so perhaps if your
+foot’s well enough, you’ll come round and see what we’re doing.” He had
+quite decided that he must go, but at least by this arrangement, he
+would see Alan again before he left. “Ask for Dennis Blackwood, if you
+turn up.”
+
+“I’ll turn up all right,” said Alan.
+
+Dennis walked back to rejoin Crispin. He felt oddly stimulated, oddly
+excited. And all night long his heart throbbed to a new and strange
+music; and his brain found utterance for that music that was as virile
+and splendid as the one who had inspired it.
+
+It was not the music that he had promised to Antoinette. He did not
+write to Antoinette that night, nor the next night, nor the night
+after....
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alan came round to the hotel early next morning, and burst into Dennis’s
+room.
+
+“Well, what have you decided? Where’s your pal? I’ll murder him, if he
+doesn’t agree to your stopping.”
+
+Dennis was kneeling on the floor, packing his bag; and he spoke without
+looking up. “You needn’t murder him, Alan; but I’m not going to stop.”
+
+The boy said after a moment’s silence: “Why...?” Then hotly, almost
+pitifully he began to plead: “When I’ve only just found you—and when I
+needed you most.... Why must you go? Why?”
+
+Dennis picked up a roll of manuscript-music. “This will tell you why,
+Alan, if you can understand it. I wrote it out for you this morning. It
+will tell you all that I mustn’t tell you in words, or—or”—he clenched
+his hands desperately and continued: “You can play it to yourself, boy,
+on the piano at the Sunday-school, after I’m gone....”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The secret terror that had beset him ever since he was a boy, was upon
+him, urging him to flight; secret terror, unavowed, unshared, upon which
+even in thought he had scarcely allowed himself to dwell ... terror that
+nevertheless had been part and parcel of his being, since the first dawn
+of adolescence.
+
+Different from the others, even in his schooldays; different, not only
+by reason of his music. It was not his music alone that he had striven
+to keep out, when he had avoided Eric Rubenstein.... He must be for ever
+an outcast amongst men, shunned by them, despised and mocked by them. He
+was maddened by fear and horror and loathing of himself.
+
+Abnormal—perverted—against nature—he could hear the epithets that would
+be hurled against him, and that he would deserve. Yes, but what had
+nature been about, in giving him the soul of a woman in the body of a
+man?
+
+And beyond all powers of reasoning; beyond the fear, and the horror, and
+the loathing, the thought of Alan reasserted itself, and the blinding
+pain that had been inflicted at parting from him.
+
+The train pounded onwards—westwards—Dennis cared little enough whither
+it bore him. He knew only that it carried him away from that which all
+his life long he had sought, and from which he now must flee, in order
+that it might not become shameful.
+
+Shameful—strange that such a word might ever be applied to love such as
+his for Alan; love that had grown up in one night of happiness, and that
+every instinct bade him welcome with glad lips and eyes and heart ...
+love that was so strong that it would not die even under the torture
+that was in store.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+“... It will be such a nice surprise for Dennis,” mused Mrs. Blackwood,
+as she stamped the letter inviting Antoinette de Courcy to spend the
+following week-end at Eastwold. “If I tell Mrs. Ryan she’s a great
+friend of Doreen’s, and staying in the house, she can’t possibly object
+to our bringing her along to the dance.” Mrs. Blackwood reflected
+further that in the event of Mrs. Ryan’s proving averse from the
+prospect of having yet another to add to her list of girls, she must be
+propitiated by the offer of the loan of lemonade-glasses or fish-forks.
+Perhaps even, if necessary, Susan, her inestimable parlour-maid, might
+be thrown in as a make-weight. One was always neighbourly about these
+little things in Eastwold.
+
+It was Mrs. Blackwood’s “At Home” that afternoon; she expected Mrs. Ryan
+and her daughters; and no doubt they could come to some satisfactory
+arrangement, whereby Antoinette’s invitation to the fancy dress ball
+could be secured. But she would not send off the letter to Antoinette
+until she had made quite sure. Mrs. Ryan, as the wife of the richest
+stockbroker in Eastwold, was considered a very important personage; and
+her dance was undoubtedly a fitting climax to the season of 1914, and
+one not to be lightly trifled with.... To-day was July 16th, the dance
+was on the 24th. Dennis would be back by then. In her last letter, Mrs.
+Blackwood had asked him to make a point of being back, but of course she
+had not said why.... She was well pleased with her little scheme, as she
+waited in the pretty sun-flooded drawing-room for her guests to arrive.
+The chintz furniture-covers that had just come back from the cleaner’s
+gave the room a bright and cheerful appearance; there were flowers out
+of the garden in all the vases; and the piano was heavily laden with
+silver-framed photographs of the four children at various ages and
+stages of development. The French windows stood wide open, and the
+shouts of the tennis-players were clearly audible in the still air.
+Doreen and Ottilie, and their partners, Tom Sanderson and Hugh
+Clavering, were trying to finish a set before tea. Mrs. Blackwood could
+hear Doreen’s pretty laugh; and Tom’s noisy exhortation to Ottilie to
+“run for her life”; and Hugh’s praise of Doreen’s neat strokes; and
+Ottilie’s punctilious counting, as vigorously she served into the net.
+“Lof-fifteen—lof-zirty—lof-forty—Ach, such a camel _ist noch nicht
+dagewesen_!”
+
+Mrs. Blackwood wondered if it wouldn’t be possible to get up a tennis
+tournament while Antoinette was staying with them. They could have it on
+the Saturday after the dance; then there would be Clive and Lily to
+play; Antoinette and Dennis; one of the Ryan girls and Tom Sanderson;
+Doreen and Hugh—Doreen and the doctor’s handsome son from next door
+always seemed to pair off together automatically, so why thwart the
+designs of nature? The 25th—Reggie would be home from school by then;
+perhaps he could be bribed to pick up the balls, if it was a very hot
+day; she wondered how many socks and handkerchiefs would have been lost
+in the wash again this term, and if he had already grown out of those
+coloured shirts she had bought him last holidays....
+
+Her reflections were cut short by the entrance of Mrs. Ryan with her
+daughters Millie and Amy. They were followed by Miss Simpkins, a funny
+little old maid, wearing stout boots and a multitude of charms and
+bangles, with which she continually fidgeted.
+
+Mrs. Blackwood shook hands with her guests. “This is nice of you, Mrs.
+Ryan. And you’ve brought the girls, too. Doreen and Ottilie will be here
+directly—they’re just finishing a game. Dear Miss Simpkins, how are you?
+You’ve had a very long way to come.”
+
+“Oh, not so very long,” chirped the little spinster. “I met Mrs. Ryan,
+and she gave me a lift in her carriage. Wasn’t it _kind_ of her?”
+
+“Very kind,” assented Mrs. Blackwood.
+
+“Not at all,” Mrs. Ryan pronounced with dignity, “if one happens to be
+fortunately placed oneself, one naturally likes to do what one can for
+others.” She had very white hair, a very red face, and very thick black
+brows; a combination that was awe-inspiring rather than pleasing; and
+she wore an obviously expensive, but quite unsuitable hat which, by
+means of a high bandeau, was prevented from entertaining any definite
+relations with her head. Her elder daughter, Millie, was pretty in an
+insignificant way, with yellow hair and a good complexion, but she had a
+slightly strained expression that made her look older than her age. She
+wore a coat and skirt of light grey cloth, and an unbecoming straw hat
+with a feather. Amy was nineteen and a fluffier edition of her sister.
+She spoke with a lisp, and wore a costume cut like Millie’s, only in
+pale blue, and the same kind of hat with a wreath of daisies round it,
+instead of a feather.
+
+“I expect you are all getting very excited about the dance,” Mrs.
+Blackwood began, “I’m sure my young people are.”
+
+“We won’t ask you what they’re wearing,” said Millie, “the costumes are
+all to be surprises. It adds to the fun.”
+
+“Oh, certainly,” Mrs. Blackwood agreed. “And it was so thoughtful of you
+to make the fancy dress optional for the men. Of course, my boys don’t
+mind a bit, but I know some who hate putting on fancy dress—they think
+it makes them look ridiculous.”
+
+“It’th a pity,” lisped Amy, “becauthe it’th tho much prettier if
+everybody ith drethed up, ithn’t it? I mean—for the thpirit of the
+thing.”
+
+“My dear, it’s hard enough to get sufficient men, as it is....” Millie,
+rather bitterly, voiced the preponderating sentiment of a community in
+which there were never enough men to go round.
+
+“I’m sure _you_ never suffer from lack of partners, Millie,” her mother
+interposed, and Millie quickly took her cue.
+
+“No—no, of course not; I’m always all right.”
+
+“Tho am I!” giggled Amy.
+
+“So I should think,” said Mrs. Ryan proudly, “after having seen the
+programme you brought home from the last subscription dance at the Town
+Hall. It was scrawled all over with ‘T.S.’—that’s Tom Sanderson, you
+know ... he’s been most attentive ever since; drops in quite informally
+at all hours of the day. And,” with an arch glance at her younger
+daughter, “I think it’s easy to tell the reason why!”
+
+“That was my dance-programme you saw, Mamma....” Millie had listened to
+the foregoing with a gradually stiffening face.
+
+“Was it, my dear?” Mrs. Ryan laughed indulgently, “well, you really
+can’t expect me to remember all your conquests apart, can you, now?”
+Millie looked sullen and her mother continued: “I met Tom yesterday and
+told him we were coming here this afternoon, and he said he might be
+calling in too.”
+
+“Yes, he’s playing tennis with the girls now ...” said Mrs. Blackwood,
+making her point.
+
+Mrs. Ryan’s face dropped; then she recovered herself with a swift
+counter-attack. “Of course we’re delighted that you are allowing Doreen
+to come to the dance, Mrs. Blackwood, even though she’s not really ‘out’
+yet. But don’t you think it’s rather a pity to let her pretend to be
+grown-up before her time?”
+
+Little Miss Simpkins sighed sentimentally. “Yes, a young girl’s bloom is
+her chief charm, isn’t it? Her freshness....”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know that it’s so very much before her time,” Mrs.
+Blackwood smiled, “she’s seventeen and a half ... and putting her hair
+up, too, for the first time, in honour of your dance.”
+
+Mrs. Ryan thought that this was an honour with which she could easily
+have dispensed; it was most undesirable that a child like Doreen should
+enjoy the same privileges as girls who really had a right to them.
+Doreen was quite unnecessarily pretty, and it wasn’t fair on the other
+girls that she, at her age, should already absorb a quantity of the male
+attention, that should have been directed towards her elders and
+betters.... But before Mrs. Ryan could say anything more, the
+tennis-players came in from the garden, all very flushed, and Ottilie
+still inclined to be argumentative with herself about the badness of her
+playing.
+
+“Well, young people, have you had a nice game?” Mrs. Blackwood beamed
+upon the quartette.
+
+“Splendid!” cried Hugh Clavering, looking at Doreen, “hot work, though,
+when you’ve got to live up to a partner like mine.”
+
+Doreen blushed and murmured: “Oh, Hugh ...” as she shook hands with the
+Ryans.
+
+“Not nearly such hot work as dancing these days,” remarked Tom
+Sanderson, gulping down his tea. He was a nice, fresh-faced boy of
+twenty-two; reputed to be the best rider in the county; and endowed with
+a divine gift for saying the wrong thing, and appearing utterly
+oblivious of having done so.
+
+“Do you really find dancing such hard work, Tom?” queried Mrs. Ryan with
+some acerbity.
+
+“Yes, rather, don’t you?” retorted the ingenuous youth; “takes it out of
+you, you know, luggin’ your partner round and round, especially if you
+can’t get into each other’s stride.”
+
+“Well, I trust you won’t find much difficulty with your partners on the
+24th....”
+
+“The 24th—why, I’d almost forgotten. Going to be great sport, what?
+Weather looks settled, too. You’ll be able to use the garden for
+sitting-out.”
+
+Amy nodded vigorously. “Yeth, all decorated with fairy-lighth and
+Chinethe lanternth and thingth.”
+
+Mrs. Ryan turned to her hostess. “Dennis is sure to be here for the
+dance, isn’t he? One likes to know how many to count on, even though, as
+I say, when you’ve got to beyond fifty, another half dozen or so doesn’t
+make any difference.”
+
+“Oh, yes, Dennis will be back,” replied Mrs. Blackwood, “but you can’t
+count on him as a dancing-man, you know.”
+
+“Non-starter, eh?” said Tom with his mouth full.
+
+“Oh, Denny likes different things to what we do,” Doreen was always
+ready to rise in defence of her favourite brother, “he prefers getting
+up early in the morning and going for long walks by himself, to dancing
+or playing tennis.”
+
+“I thpothe that’th when he geth hith inthpirathionth—early in the
+morning,” suggested Amy.
+
+“How wonderful the artistic temperament is ...” sighed Miss Simpkins,
+“don’t you sometimes feel quite _overawed_, Mrs. Blackwood, to think
+that you’ve got such a clever composer for your own son?”
+
+“I must admit that the dear boy doesn’t try to make his family feel
+small beside him,” Mrs. Blackwood laughed, “he’s most modest about his
+work.”
+
+“A charming young fellow,” concurred Mrs. Ryan, “but it’s a pity he’s
+not a dancer. Perhaps we can persuade him to play us some of his
+compositions, though, while the band has supper.”
+
+Remembering Amberhurst, Mrs. Blackwood thought this extremely unlikely;
+but passed the matter over in silence, and suggested that as Doreen
+would be having a friend to stay with her next week—
+
+But before the words were out of her mouth, and before she had time to
+dangle Susan and the cutlery in front of Mrs. Ryan’s eyes, the door
+opened to admit Mr. Griggs.
+
+He was greeted on all sides by shouts of welcome, to which he replied,
+beaming and rubbing his hands: “Really, this is too much—I am
+overwhelmed—so much kindness.... I expected I should find a large
+gathering here, all chatting about the dance next Friday, and I’m not
+disappointed!”
+
+“Of course we’re relying on you, as one of our best dancers, to make
+things go,” said Mrs. Ryan graciously.
+
+Griggs sat down beside Amy, who was looking very animated. “You can
+trust me for that, Mrs. Ryan.”
+
+“You’ll come early, won’t you?” pleaded Amy, “it thayth nine o’clock on
+the invitathionth, but it’th nithe to thtart booking up before the
+danthe really beginth, tho we athk all our thpethial friendth to come at
+ten _to_ nine.”
+
+“Ten to nine it shall be, Miss Amy,” cried Griggs, “or I might come at
+half past eight and be mistaken for a waiter or part of the orchestra!”
+
+“But the waiters and the orchestra won’t be in fancy dress, as I hope
+_you_ will be, Mr. Griggs,” said Mrs. Ryan, very benign.
+
+“Your hopes are not unfounded, Mrs. Ryan.... Of course I shall be in
+fancy dress, I’m not one of your ‘optional’ shirkers. I wouldn’t dream
+of missing such an opportunity to—ah—improve my noble features. I’m
+coming as——”
+
+“Don’t tell, don’t tell,” Amy broke in excitedly, “let it be a
+thurprithe.”
+
+“Very well, Miss Amy, I will be mute as the grave.... What about
+starting the advance-booking right away? Let me see, have I got any
+paper in my pocket? No? Well, what’s a cuff for? May I claim the honour
+of the first lancers, Miss Millie?”
+
+“... Such a dear girl,” Mrs. Blackwood started for the second time,
+“Doreen is so fond of her.”
+
+“It’s her first dance in England, isn’t it?” responded Mrs. Ryan,
+thinking she meant Ottilie; “well, I hope she’ll be favourably
+impressed.”
+
+“Could she be otherwise, Mrs. Ryan...?” Griggs’ voice vibrated with
+emotion.
+
+“Ach, I shall remain sitting all ze night,” said Ottilie in accents of
+gloom.
+
+Tom chuckled irrepressibly. “How will you manage that?”
+
+Ottilie repeated with conviction: “I shall remain sitting—I know it
+_ganz gewiss_.”
+
+“She means she’ll be a wallflower,” translated Doreen, and Griggs cried:
+“We Britishers aren’t the people to let a fascinating foreign lady be a
+wallflower for long. When Miss Ottilie returns to the Fatherland, she’ll
+be able to tell them so, won’t she?... And now, Miss Simpkins, what may
+I have the pleasure of booking with you?”
+
+Miss Simpkins blushed and giggled. “Why, Mr. Griggs, I shan’t be
+there—what do you imagine? An old woman like me....”
+
+“Oh, Miss _Simpkins_ ...” with gallant indignation.
+
+“It’s just a boy-and-girl affair, Mr. Griggs,” put in Mrs. Ryan, and
+thought it just as well to make no mention of the fact that some of the
+parents of the “boys and girls” were being invited to watch their
+progeny disporting themselves, and perhaps to have a quiet game of
+Bridge. The cosmogony of Eastwold fell naturally into two groups;
+elderly married people, and young people to be married. There was no
+room in the scheme for Miss Simpkins and her like, who did not come
+under either of these headings....
+
+For the third time, Mrs. Blackwood came forward with her request, and
+this time Mrs. Ryan was left under no illusion as to its nature.
+“Another girl, and a very good dancer, you say? We shall be
+delighted....” For the sake of her prestige, she had to pretend that
+this was the case. “Any friend of Doreen’s is welcome, and I’m sure _my_
+girls won’t mind sitting out a dance now and then, if it’s to give a
+visitor a chance.”
+
+“Oh, you needn’t fear that Miss de Courcy will be a drag upon the
+market,” exclaimed Griggs with less tact than enthusiasm, “there’ll be
+no difficulty in getting partners for _her_!”
+
+Mrs. Ryan said that she was glad to hear it, and inwardly boiling with
+annoyance, turned to Mrs. Blackwood to exact her full toll of
+fish-knives, lemonade-glasses, Susan, and whatever else Mrs. Blackwood
+had to offer her.
+
+The invitation to Antoinette was sent that night; and Antoinette,
+receiving it next morning, was conscious of a reawakened interest in
+life. It had indeed been depressingly dull and flat, ever since Hester
+had ceased to fill her thoughts, and there had been no word from Dennis.
+His sudden silence was strange to the verge of uncanniness. That last
+letter of his had not given the slightest indication of the silence that
+was to follow it; the conversation—his letters were really more like
+very intimate conversations, than like written epistles—was to have been
+continued the next day. And it had not been continued. It was as if
+someone, in the middle of a sentence, had been struck dumb.
+
+And now his mother had invited her to Eastwold—asked her to bring a
+fancy dress for the dance—_good!_ It would be great fun to see Dennis
+Blackwood again, and dance with him—she assumed that he would be
+there—and to solve the mystery of his extraordinary behaviour. She
+decided to go as a Bacchante; and Grand’mère raised her hands and her
+voice in horror at the unmaidenly abandonment of a costume that would
+assuredly frighten away all the prospective “partis” her hostess
+intended her to meet at the dance....
+
+Henriette, who secretly shared Madame de Courcy’s opinion of the
+costume, but did not like to say so, talked in a large, vague manner
+about not cramping a young soul’s development; and Grand’mère, with one
+of her not infrequent lapses into coarseness, replied that it wasn’t
+Antoinette’s soul which the prospective “partis” would be thinking of.
+
+Anatole, for the sake of keeping up his parental authority, remarked
+that he didn’t care for his daughter going to stay with people he did
+not know. But Antoinette paid no heed to any of them. She set out once
+more with a light heart, brimful of high spirits, and ready for anything
+in the shape of an adventure, which the gods might see fit to offer her.
+
+She was met at the station by Doreen and Reggie; and was greeted by the
+former with affectionate enthusiasm, and by the latter with becoming
+restraint. Doreen explained volubly that Reggie had come down from his
+preparatory school that morning; that Clive was expected by a later
+train from London; that Dennis hadn’t turned up at all—wasn’t it a
+shame?—and that she hoped Antoinette wouldn’t mind having tea in the
+nursery—they always had it in the nursery to please Nanna, on Reggie’s
+first day home from school....
+
+Antoinette replied that she would love to have tea in the nursery, but
+secretly regretted that Dennis had not arrived. It looked as if her
+anticipations were doomed to disappointment after all.
+
+They walked through the little town, and up a steep sunny road, bordered
+on either side by neat villa residences with neat carriage-drives and
+neat gardens planted with neat shrubbery and flower-beds. Further on,
+there were larger houses, separated from each other by wider spaces of
+garden, houses built in imitation of the old-fashioned cottage-style,
+with gabled roofs and rough white walls with black beams running across
+them. These houses represented the imaginative flights of Tom
+Sanderson’s father, the architect; and the one which bore upon its gate
+the words “The Hermitage,” was the home of the Blackwoods.
+
+Mrs. Blackwood’s welcome was hearty enough, but Antoinette thought that
+she seemed worried and restless, and that beneath her continuous light
+chatter, some real trouble or disturbance lay concealed. Doreen
+conducted her to the spare bedroom with its little wooden balcony and
+wide view of the Downs. Appreciatively Antoinette took in the details of
+the room; the bright flowered wall-paper; the names of the books on the
+revolving stand—“Wild Kitty,” by L. T. Meade; “What Katy Did at School”;
+... one or two Hentys; “Alice in Wonderland,” of course ... a room,
+reflected Antoinette, in which to feel very girlish and happy.
+
+Half an hour later, a large party was enjoying nursery tea, presided
+over by the old nurse who had brought up all the four Blackwood
+children. The long table was richly spread with home-made cakes and
+jams; Nanna sat at the head of it, with Reggie and Clive on either side
+of her; Lily Hallard, Clive’s fiancée, was between him and Doreen; and
+Antoinette was between Ottilie and Reggie. Mrs. Blackwood had said that
+she would not join the nursery party, as she had already had tea, and
+was busy. She would see them all later on....
+
+Nanna brooded fondly upon their faces, occasionally admonishing her
+favourite with: “Now, Master Reggie, my lamb, remember you’re not at
+school: it’s butter _and_ jam in the holidays....”
+
+Reggie responded: “Good job!” but the reminder was superfluous, in view
+of the thickly-buttered and jam-smeared slice of bread that he was
+conveying to his lips during conversation as well as in the intervals.
+He and Clive were at present engaged in trying to disguise from each
+other their pleasure at seeing each other again; and their talk was
+conducted with the careful indifference worthy of the traditions of
+Westborough and all the other Westboroughs in the United Kingdom.
+
+Reggie said: “Some of our fellows did rifle-practice this term.”
+
+Clive said: “Daresay we could fix up a target in the garden.”
+
+Reggie said: “Daresay we could.”
+
+After a pause, Clive re-opened: “Your last term at the prep. school,
+isn’t it?”
+
+Reggie nodded with his mouth full.
+
+“Like to have that old bat of mine to take to Westborough?”
+
+“The one you made a century with in the house-match against St.
+Winstan’s—ra-ther!” for one instant Reggie defied tradition by showing
+enthusiasm; then quickly he retrieved himself: “Daresay I could do with
+it....”
+
+Antoinette decided that she did not like Clive’s fiancée. She had an
+aggressive personality, a shiny complexion, large hands and untidy dark
+hair. Doreen had previously explained that all these were outward and
+visible signs of “brains.” Lily went up to town daily to a School of
+Economics, and usually came back in the evening by the same train as
+Clive and Mr. Blackwood, and the other male denizens of Eastwold, whom
+business and the excellent train service took to London for the day, and
+restored to their families at night.
+
+“I had to cut a class this afternoon,” Lily was grumbling, “all because
+of that beastly dance to-night. I do think dancing’s rot!”
+
+Clive agreed with her, but Doreen protested. “How can you say so? I
+think dancing’s simply ripping—at least, I’ve only been to parties and
+the dancing-class ... but real grown-up dances, like this one, must
+be—Oh, just perfect!” Doreen’s eyes were very bright, her lips
+tremulously parted. She was thinking of Hugh Clavering from next door.
+He had engaged her for the supper-dance, and for ever so many other
+dances besides, and he was so strong and fair and sunny, with his golden
+hair and laughing grey eyes.
+
+The whole atmosphere of the house appealed to Antoinette, typically
+English atmosphere different enough from that of her own foreign
+home—the old nurse at the head of the table; the schoolboy just home for
+the holidays; Doreen’s excitement over her first dance.... But she did
+wish that Dennis were here: she wondered how he fitted into the picture.
+
+Ottilie, for the hundredth time that week, was expressing the conviction
+that she would “remain sitting.”
+
+“And when my dancers see I cannot dance in ze English vay, zey vill bow
+zemselves and leave me.”
+
+“They can’t do that,” Antoinette consoled her. “In England, once a man
+is engaged to a girl for a dance, he’s got to stick to her for better or
+for worse. He can’t just plant her there and run away, if he doesn’t
+like her.”
+
+“Not?” queried Ottilie doubtfully.
+
+“Of course not.”
+
+“_Verrückt_ ...” muttered Ottilie.
+
+“It’s different in Germany,” Antoinette went on, “I’ve been to dances
+there myself, so I know. A man introduces himself to a girl, whirls her
+twice round the room, and throws her back again into the arms of her
+chaperone where she waits for her next partner. But here it’s one dance,
+one partner. You can’t give bits of the same dance to different men.”
+
+Ottilie looked puzzled. “And to supper? In Heidelberg sometimes sree and
+four dancers have me to supper engaged.”
+
+“In Eastwold, Ottilie,” Clive spoke with authority from his end of the
+table, “you will have one supper-partner, and one only.”
+
+“And lucky if you get him ...” muttered Reggie. Ottilie as a type did
+not appeal to him.
+
+“Don’t be rude, Reg,” cried Doreen, but he continued irrepressibly:
+“Ottilie’s going as ‘Britannia’ ... what a rag!”
+
+“Well, and I’m going as a Dresden Shepherdess—there’s nothing funny
+about that, stupid.” Doreen was staunch in her defence of her friend.
+
+“What a nice idea,” said Antoinette, “a compliment to each other’s
+nationality. It’s like foreign potentates wearing the uniform of which
+ever country they’re visiting—oh, Reggie, dear, have you swallowed a
+plum-stone?” For Reggie, in the simultaneous appreciation of her remark,
+and an extra large mouthful of bread and jam, was slowly but surely
+choking himself into an apoplectic fit.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Blackwood had not had tea; neither did she want any. She sat alone
+in the drawing-room, as she had done for the greater part of the
+afternoon, hoping against hope, and wondering and wondering if the next
+train would bring Dennis, or the next. She had had no definite word to
+say that he was coming; still, he knew that she expected him to-day ...
+she was used to his indefiniteness in the matter of letters or telegrams
+... perhaps he wanted to surprise her.... He was sure to come, knowing
+that she expected him. She had to cling to the certainty of his coming,
+to stave off as long as possible her inevitable disappointment if he did
+not come.
+
+But when at last Dennis himself stood in the opening of the French
+window, just for one second she wondered if it were really he, or if all
+her wishing had conjured up an image that would vanish....
+
+“My dear, dear boy,” her arms were round him now, “so you’ve come in
+time after all. What a fright you gave me. I’d promised Mrs. Ryan that
+you were coming, and it would have been so awkward if you hadn’t turned
+up.”
+
+He repeated in a dazed kind of way: “In time for what? Turned up—where?”
+And she saw that his face was drawn, and that his eyes were full of an
+unutterable weariness.
+
+“Mrs. Ryan’s dance, of course, dear.” She was making a pitiful attempt
+to ignore the things that she saw, “it’s to-night—I wrote to you; didn’t
+you get my letter?”
+
+He shook his head. “No—or perhaps I did, and—and forgot. I don’t
+know....”
+
+They looked at each other; he battling with the longing to go to her,
+and hide his head on her breast, and tell her everything; and she,
+struggling against this strange terror of something unknown, not
+understood, that had befallen her son.
+
+“It’s a fancy dress dance ...” she faltered with stiff lips.
+
+He almost smiled. A fancy dress dance—well, why not? Since the whole of
+his life henceforth must be a masquerade, a travesty to disguise every
+impulse, thought and feeling; to make them appear not different from
+other people’s impulses, thoughts and feelings....
+
+The dread in his mother’s heart, shadowy and shapeless, tightened its
+grip. What had been done to him? What shuddering depths of unhappiness
+had brought that look to his face? But all her love for him could not
+give her sight where she was blind. Was there nothing with which she
+could heal him? She clutched at a faint hope. “I’ve got a surprise for
+you, dear. I’ve asked Miss de Courcy down for the dance—she’s here
+already—in the nursery with the others. Won’t you go up to them?”
+
+He heard himself saying: “Oh, good ...” and walked away, because he
+could no longer bear to feel his mother’s troubled, searching gaze upon
+him. He would go up to the nursery, and to the dance, and pretend that
+he had come back on purpose for it, and pretend that he was glad to see
+Antoinette—
+
+_Antoinette_.... If at least he had been spared—that.
+
+The shouts of the party in the nursery fell upon his ears, as he went
+upstairs....
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+Dennis, Clive and the three girls motored over to the dance, and sent
+the car back for Mr. and Mrs. Blackwood, who were to come on later. It
+was a very silent drive; Doreen tremulous with anticipation; Ottilie
+despondent as usual. The symbolism of her costume was powerless to
+disguise her true Teutonic instincts—no sooner was she arrayed in helmet
+and shield, than Britannia immediately saw herself as Brunhilde, and
+this despite the Union Jack swathed around her buxom figure.
+
+Antoinette was feverishly excited by that queer restraint that had
+characterised Dennis’s manner ever since his first appearance in the
+nursery that evening. If it was acting, she reflected, it was
+phenomenally bad acting—too tense and white-lipped; altogether overdone.
+But he had kept it up all through dinner, and he was keeping it up now,
+though they sat opposite each other in the car, their knees almost
+touching. He was not looking at her, but out of the window, and the
+moonlight showed up the strained set expression of his face. What lay
+behind it all, she wondered. When that elaborate restraint was broken
+down, as undoubtedly it would be during the evening, what would she
+find?
+
+Dinner had been an awkward meal. Mr. Blackwood had insisted on telling
+Antoinette stories that made Mrs. Blackwood say reproachfully: “Oh,
+Daddy _dear_ ...” and that left Antoinette in doubt as to whether it
+were better to incur her hostess’s displeasure by laughing at them, or
+that of her host by pretending not to understand them....
+
+When they had almost reached their destination, Ottilie broke the
+silence by saying to Dennis: “Your friend who so excellent piano
+plays—comes he also to ze ball?”
+
+“I’m afraid not, Ottilie. I left him up in town this morning. Wild
+horses wouldn’t drag Crispin to a dance, you know.”
+
+“_Schade_ ...” sighed Ottilie, regretting the wasted opportunities which
+her costume, and Crispin’s appreciation of Wagner might have offered.
+
+When Doreen introduced Antoinette to Mrs. Ryan, that lady favoured the
+bacchante with a glance not unlike the one with which Grand’mère had
+surveyed her. Antoinette argued from this that she was looking her best,
+and prepared to enjoy herself. Her clinging draperies of warm reds and
+browns and purples, and the vine-leaves in her hair, made her look
+distinctive enough among the crowd of pierrettes, fairy-queens, peasants
+and columbines who clustered around the doorway of the drawing-room,
+booking up their programmes.
+
+“I am delighted to welcome you here—Millie—Amy, this is Doreen’s friend,
+Miss de Courcy; will you see that she gets some partners?”
+
+Amy, Queen of Hearts, with a golden paper crown upon a head of hair that
+had been vigorously treated with curling-irons, rushed up to Antoinette.
+“Tho glad to meet you—let me introduthe Mr. Thanderthon,” presenting a
+very chubby Arab, “we’ve jutht been out in the garden to thee if
+everthing ith all right, we’ve had flagth put on the theat in the
+arbour, tho we than’t thpoil our dretheth....”
+
+Tom having booked his dance with Antoinette, she was handed on to
+Millie, who wore a composite “national” costume, of which the main
+ingredients were Dutch sabots, a black velvet bodice, a red gypsy
+head-dress with coins attached to it, and two straggly little yellow
+plaits reaching just to her shoulders. She introduced to Antoinette
+several men whose programmes were already full, and turned to speak to
+Mr. Griggs, resplendent in a hired “Charles II” costume, several sizes
+too large, and a very luxuriant wig. The moment he espied Antoinette, he
+hurried to her side, his would-be majestic gait somewhat impeded by his
+sword, to which he was not yet accustomed. “Miss Antoinette, I am
+charmed—charmed—to meet you again. The memory of Charlotte Corday still
+lingers in my heart, I assure you, and though this time we meet in a
+different guise, I trust we shall be as good friends as ever.... May I
+have the pleasure of the second waltz?” suddenly reverting to the
+business on hand.
+
+Antoinette accorded him the pleasure of the second waltz, and he
+continued raptly to gaze at her. “That’s a very pretty dress you have
+on—worthy of its wearer, if I may say so. There’s what you might call a
+laissay-allay about it——”
+
+“Mr. Griggs,” interrupted the voice of Mrs. Ryan, “would you mind seeing
+that Miss Holt has a supper-partner? I think she’s in the garden
+now—dressed as a Draught Board, you know,” she added in a confidential
+undertone, “we always have difficulty with her, and her people will be
+so offended if they see her sitting out.”
+
+“She shall have a partner, if I have to bring her one by the scruff of
+his neck,” vowed the gallant Griggs, and made for the iron stairs that
+led down into the garden.
+
+“Oh, and—Mr. Griggs!” his hostess recalled him, “you will see they don’t
+lift the girls off their feet in the third figure of the lancers, won’t
+you?”
+
+“Your commands shall be obeyed, dear lady,” declared Griggs, and
+promptly fell down the stairs.
+
+In the meantime Clive had dutifully booked two dances with Antoinette.
+Handsome in his sullen, black-browed way, he looked very effective as an
+Indian Chief. Lily had come as a Squaw to match him, but as she
+disdained the use of external aids to nature, her complexion retained
+its blameless European hue.
+
+The first waltz had already been played, Antoinette had been whirled
+round by a perspiring Neptune, and her programme was nearly full, before
+Dennis made any attempt to approach her.
+
+“Have you anything left for me?” His tone was carefully conventional.
+She gave him a quick amused look, but as there was no answering twinkle
+in his eye, assumed that he was not yet prepared to throw off the
+restraint that was a more effectual disguise than any of the fancy
+dresses could hope to be. Undoubtedly he was working up to a scene, and
+had quite definite notions as to how the scene should be played. It was
+far from her to complain. She appreciated the histrionic instinct
+wherever she encountered it; and she was quite capable of giving him all
+the support that he needed.
+
+She answered demurely: “Yes, I think I have one or two dances to spare.”
+
+“May I see?”—he scanned her programme—“I’m not a dancer, but perhaps
+you’ll sit out the lancers with me?”
+
+“I shall be delighted,” murmured Antoinette.
+
+Mrs. Ryan tapped Dennis’s arm with the end of her ostrich feather fan.
+“Naughty boy, not to have come in fancy dress.”
+
+He smiled. “I didn’t know in time, Mrs. Ryan.”
+
+“Didn’t you? What a pity. Of course you were on a walking tour. Cornwall
+or somewhere like that, wasn’t it? Did you have a pleasant time?”
+
+“Very pleasant, thanks.”
+
+“I’m glad ... but I thought your mother had written to tell you it was a
+_fancy dress_ dance?”
+
+“I think her letter must have been lost,” he lied piously.
+
+“Or perhaps it was you who lost it ... well, well, we must make
+allowances for these great composers, I suppose. Tell me if there’s
+anyone you’d like to be introduced to, won’t you? You know you’re quite
+at home here.”
+
+Released from Mrs. Ryan’s expressions of unwonted amiability, Dennis
+wandered down into the garden. The trees were hung with Chinese
+lanterns; the paths picked out with coloured fairy-lights; on the lawn,
+deck-chairs awaited the couples who, between the dances, would sit there
+and whisper under the sighing trees. For him the whole scene was imbued
+with that feeling of horror and oppression which characterizes a
+nightmare; if he cried out, his voice would not be heard; if he
+attempted to run away, his limbs would refuse to obey him.... Some
+volition other than his own, was compelling him to act and speak as he
+was doing, while part of himself was being tortured, beating against
+prison bars ... crying out for help, for understanding to a world that
+would neither help nor understand, but condemn him to eternal
+suppression, eternal loneliness. This nightmare-sense had overlain the
+whole of the last dreadful fortnight since he had left Crannack.
+Passively he had let Crispin drag him round the Cornish coast. He had
+not wanted to come home just yet, and Crispin at least was restful,
+because he asked no questions ... no questions, even, concerning a
+vivid-looking brown boy, who had burst into the little hotel at
+Crannack, and asked to see Mr. Blackwood, and left again a few minutes
+later with all the light gone out of his eyes.... And Mrs. Blackwood’s
+letter, mentioning the dance, lay with some of her other letters in the
+pocket of Dennis’s tweed suit; he had read them; but the names, the
+dates, the local gossip she retailed, had conveyed absolutely nothing to
+him. It was only by chance that he had returned to-day, returned because
+he was tired of perpetually striving to banish from his mind a companion
+who asked so much, and to whom he longed to give so much, and to whom he
+might give—nothing.
+
+At home, at least there would not be those long hours of silent, hard
+walking, dangerous hours when he had felt that he must take the next
+train back to Crannack.... He could only keep away, by resolutely
+shutting Alan out of his thoughts, admitting him but for rare seconds,
+precious seconds, when the danger of returning to him was minimised by
+the absence of such things as railway-connections. Even his imagination
+must be forbidden too much free play.... And all the while, he felt that
+he was being cruel to the boy in thus keeping him out; pleaded with him
+in the nights when he lay sleepless and through the days when,
+unheeding, he tramped along the beautiful Cornish roads: “Don’t you
+understand that I can’t? That I daren’t? That it isn’t because I don’t
+love you enough...?”
+
+Very tiring, this eternal struggle.... He had imagined that it might be
+easier at home. And at home there had been Antoinette.... She fitted
+into the nightmare well enough; he might have expected that she would be
+in the very centre of it. But so far he had betrayed nothing; he had
+done the correct thing, asked her for a dance ... and heaven alone knew
+what he would say to her, when it was his turn to claim her for Number
+6!
+
+Voices reached him where he sat in the shadow of a clump of trees.
+
+“That’s all right—I think we’re safe now. Griggs has been dogging me all
+the evening with a Draught Board, he can’t get rid of her at any price.”
+It was Neptune who spoke, and his companion, arrayed as Father
+Christmas, responded: “Yes, for the Lord’s sake, let’s get a quiet
+smoke. Griggs is the very dickens.... Always trying to introduce me to
+Little Bo-peep. I don’t know if there are two of her, or if I’ve been
+introduced twice over, or if I’m seeing double, but I don’t like either
+of them.”
+
+“Awful rot, these fancy dress hops,” mused Neptune. Father Christmas
+gloomily assented. “My sisters rigged me up like this—there was no
+getting out of it.”
+
+“Whatever am I to do with this beastly trident thing? Every time I
+forget it somewhere on purpose, some silly ass brings it after me and
+says: ‘I think you’ve lost this.’”
+
+“Oh, just drop it here, and the crowd who call themselves Harvesters can
+use it as a hay-fork. I wish to goodness I could leave this ghastly
+beard behind too....”
+
+They strolled off into the more secluded portions of the garden,
+grotesque figures moving across the background of Dennis’s nightmare.
+
+“Denny darling, I’m having a simply lovely time—even lovelier than I
+knew it was going to be!” Doreen’s voice now.... The dainty little
+Dresden Shepherdess tripped across the lawn to where her brother sat
+smoking, “it’s such a pity you don’t dance, dear old thing, you do miss
+a lot.”
+
+“Do I, Kid?” He smiled up at her radiant face.
+
+She breathed “Yes ...” and young Hugh, a slim and golden-haired Black
+Knight from “Ivanhoe,” came and joined them.
+
+“Doreen and I both agree that it’s top-hole, being grown-up.”
+
+“Yes, but I’m only pretending just for to-night,” replied Doreen, “I
+shan’t be really grown-up till I come back from Heidelberg next year.”
+
+“It’s rotten luck, your having to go there,” said Hugh.
+
+“I know, but you see, I must. I’m the exchange for Ottilie. She says
+that girls of seventeen can go to grown-up dances over there, but being
+grown-up in Germany isn’t the same as being grown-up here, is it?”
+
+“The insularity of your views is something appalling, my child,” teased
+Dennis.
+
+Doreen pouted. “Well, it’s not the same, is it?” she appealed to Hugh.
+
+“Rather not!” he concurred, his eyes resting tenderly on her; then he
+said to Dennis: “You and I are in luck to-night—I’ve got half the dances
+on the programme with Doreen, and you’re out of it altogether. The other
+poor chaps are having an awful thin time, trying to remember whom
+they’re engaged to. There are so many duplicates—half a dozen Ophelias,
+four Red Riding Hoods, innumerable Snow Queens, and two Queens of
+Sheba—I thought there’d be murder there: did you see them glare at each
+other when they first met?”
+
+“I suppose each thought the other was a distorted figment of her own
+imagination, and was properly resentful on discovering that she wasn’t,”
+said Dennis.
+
+Hugh gave his hearty, boyish laugh, and Doreen said, “I think
+Antoinette’s costume is one of the prettiest, don’t you, Denny?”
+
+“And even that’s been duplicated three times over,” Hugh broke in,
+“rotten imitations, I grant you. As Amy says, ‘they’re all drethed in
+thkinth’.... I’ve booked dances with all of them—got ’em down on my
+programme as ‘Tiger-skin,’ ‘Bunny-skin’ and ‘Hearthrug,’ to be able to
+tell the difference.”
+
+“And ‘Hearthrug’s’ father is in the fur trade,” Doreen giggled
+delightedly. “I heard Daddy say that she was a very bad
+advertisement....”
+
+“Ah well, I daresay there wasn’t enough tiger-skin to go round,” mused
+Dennis, “let us not be uncharitable.”
+
+“Let’s go across to the arbour, Doreen,” suggested the Black Knight,
+“I’ll carry you, because you’ll get your shoes damp.”
+
+Doreen argued that as she had been standing on the grass all this time,
+her shoes were already as damp as they were ever likely to be; but Hugh,
+with a gallant show of mastery, picked her up in his arms and carried
+her across the lawn. The figure of the Black Knight and the light blur
+of Doreen’s dress receded from Dennis’s vision, as the sound of their
+mingled voices faded from his hearing.
+
+He reflected quite dispassionately that it was odd that he should still
+be able to talk to the others as if he were one of them; odd that they
+should not divine the gulf that yawned between himself and them. But it
+was a strain.... He became conscious afterwards of how great the strain
+had been. He was alone again now, and could relax, grant himself a few
+moments’ respite from effort. Wearily he wondered when and how the next
+demand would be made upon him. He could hear voices not far off.
+
+“Shall we stay here for a little while, Miss Millie?”
+
+“Yes, I should like to, Mr. Griggs. I’m sure you deserve a rest after
+all your hard work.”
+
+“Everything that I do in your service, is pleasure, Miss Millie.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Griggs....”
+
+A very cross Little Boy Blue here interrupted the budding tête-à-tête.
+“I say, Griggs, can you tell me whom I’m dancing the next with? I can’t
+read what I’ve got on my programme.” He presented the crumpled programme
+to Charles II, who rallied him in debonair fashion. “Now—now—now, what’s
+all this? Someone’s always in trouble and coming to me for help. Can’t
+say I admire your calligraphy, old chap—are these the lady’s initials?”
+He deciphered slowly: “‘Goggle—eyes—and—flat—feet——’”
+
+Little Boy Blue snatched away the programme: “Not there, man, not
+there—here!”
+
+“Oh, _here_ ... why, that’s Miss Baumgartner, surely—Britannia—or is it
+the Queen of Sheba?”
+
+“I didn’t know we’d got the next one together too,” Little Boy Blue
+stared reproachfully at his partner.
+
+“We haven’t,” retorted she coldly, “I’m engaged to Neptune.”
+
+“And Neptune’s dancing with Dolly Dickson, the other Queen of Sheba—I
+just saw them go in,” said Millie.
+
+“If two people _will_ come as the same thing——” began Little Boy Blue
+with resentment.
+
+“I should have thought it was easy enough to tell us apart,” said the
+Queen of Sheba haughtily, “her costume’s home-made and mine came from
+Clarkson’s.”
+
+“Yes, that was what the other one said too ...” murmured Little Boy
+Blue, and evaporated into the shrubbery. Griggs palmed off the Queen of
+Sheba on to an unsuspecting Highwayman, who had come out to have a
+peaceful cigarette. Then he sank back into his chair and mopped his
+manly forehead.
+
+“Poor Mr. Griggs,” cooed Millie, “how tired you must be.”
+
+“Oh, Miss Millie, I would willingly incur far greater fatigues if only
+to hear you say ‘poor Mr. Griggs’ in just that tone....” He put his hand
+to where the hilt of his sword should have been, but finding that he had
+mislaid the sword, arrested the gesture half-way. “I love that costume
+you’re wearing. National, isn’t it?”
+
+“Yes, national.”
+
+The voices became inaudible for a space, then—“I don’t know very many of
+the steps—there are such different ways of doing it, aren’t there? But
+perhaps if you’ll teach me....”
+
+“It will be a labour of love, Miss Millie.”
+
+... Retreating footsteps and silence. Then the music, faintly audible,
+struck up again; but instead of the accustomed beat of waltz or
+two-step, came the less familiar, haunting rhythm of a tango.
+
+“_If anyone played one of those tango-tunes that were all the rage in
+London before I came down here, I believe I’d weep...._”
+
+Piercing through the stupor which, for the moment had numbed pain, came
+memory, keen and poignant as a rapier-thrust. Alan was before him again,
+looking up into his face with eager, burning eyes.
+
+“You can stay with me a minute, boy,” Dennis whispered to him, “there’s
+nobody looking.... Would you like to be dancing the tango in there? I
+could easily introduce you to Mrs. Ryan—she’d think you a delightful
+acquisition.... How we could have laughed over all this together, you
+and I.... Are you eating your heart out in loneliness, Alan, as I am—as
+I am? You must go now—I—the others are coming....”
+
+Obediently the vision faded.
+
+The dancers were straggling out into the garden again, grouping
+themselves upon the lawn. Griggs picked up the trident from the ground.
+“What have we here? Anybody claim this valuable article? Is it yours,
+Madam?” offering it to the home-made Queen of Sheba, who paused,
+wondering perhaps if she could not use the weapon upon her rival from
+Clarkson’s.
+
+“No, it’s not mine; it’s yours, isn’t it, Neptune?”
+
+“I’ve been trying to lose it all the evening,” he groaned, “can’t you
+raffle it or use it as a tooth-pick or a toasting-fork? I don’t care
+what you do with the damn thing!”
+
+Mrs. Ryan’s opulent aigrette appeared upon the balcony.
+
+“Not catching cold, any of you, I hope?” ... and in answer to the chorus
+of: “Oh, no, Mrs. Ryan....” “It’s lovely out here....” “The garden looks
+ripping....” “It’s such a perfect evening ...” the hostess nodded
+benignly. “That’s right. I like to see you all enjoying yourselves—Oh,
+what is it, Susan?” She turned to Mrs. Blackwood’s faithful retainer who
+had been lent to her for the occasion, and who had come out on to the
+balcony to speak to her.
+
+“Please, M’m, it’s the freezing-salt,” Susan announced in sepulchral
+tones.
+
+“Well, what about it?”
+
+“It’s got into the strawberry ice, M’m.”
+
+“Dear me, how very careless. What can we do?”
+
+“We can’t do anything, M’m, the ices’ll just have to taste salt, only I
+thought I’d better tell you.”
+
+Susan withdrew and there was a burst of laughter from the group on the
+lawn.
+
+“Never mind, Mrs. Ryan, they’ll be cold even if they are salt,” cried
+Tom Sanderson.
+
+“Some people like them better that way—more piquant,” from Hugh.
+
+“Yeth, quite a novelty, ithn’t it?” from Amy.
+
+“Yes, rather ...” from the chorus.
+
+Mrs. Ryan was very distressed. “You’re dear, sweet children to take it
+like that, still there are plenty of other good things for you, so you
+won’t starve.... Now, have you all got your partners for the lancers?”
+
+Dennis waited till the group on the lawn had re-assorted itself and
+paired off into different combinations of incongruity; then, as the last
+couple disappeared into the house, he went across to fetch his partner.
+
+Father Christmas, with whom she had just been dancing, was taking his
+leave of her, and as Dennis appeared at the foot of the steps, his
+father, together with Mr. Ryan and Dr. Clavering, came out on to the
+balcony.
+
+“Here’s Romeo come to fetch his Juliet,” Mr. Blackwood jovially
+apostrophised his son, “lucky young dog—I wish I were your age!” with an
+appreciative glance at Antoinette.
+
+“Yes, that’s all very well—all very well when you’re young”—Mr. Ryan was
+a stout little red-faced man with a wheezy voice—“but I can’t understand
+this preference for sitting about in the damp, with next to nothing on.
+It would kill me!”
+
+The doctor smiled and Mr. Blackwood guffawed. “It wouldn’t kill me, but
+then perhaps I’ve got a stronger constitution, eh, Doctor?” He threw out
+his chest and positively winked at Antoinette.
+
+“You needn’t boast,” snapped Mr. Ryan, “your gout is as bad as mine any
+day, isn’t it, Clavering?”
+
+“There’s not a pin to choose between you,” declared the doctor, a
+twinkle in his humorous grey eyes. He was clean-shaven and soldierly in
+appearance; a very pleasant type to look upon. Young Hugh could be glad
+if he resembled his father in twenty years’ time.
+
+Mr. Blackwood began again: “That boy of yours, Doctor, and my little
+girl ... hitting it off very well, eh? Haven’t seen the young rascals
+all the evening....”
+
+“One is only young once,” smiled Clavering.
+
+“... Trio of dear old gentlemen,” murmured Dennis, as he and Antoinette
+walked across the lawn. The “trio of dear old gentlemen,” after a little
+more facetious banter, and digging of each other in the ribs, returned
+to their game of cards.
+
+In silence they entered the arbour. Dennis swept aside the flags with
+which the seats were draped. “I don’t like the patriotic decorations in
+conjunction with your costume.”
+
+She laughed with easy response to his mood. “Isn’t it rather a waste of
+Amy’s forethought?”
+
+He did not answer, and she wondered, not without a trace of impatience,
+when at last he was going to throw aside his pose. Antoinette herself
+was feverishly strung-up; every nerve in her craving the relief of some
+violent scene, some violent emotion. The whole dance, dull enough in
+itself from her point of view, was but a preliminary, an accompaniment,
+a working-up to this moment.
+
+Still he sat silent; and at last, unable any longer to bear the strain,
+she took the initiative. “You have quite a genius for making dramatic
+entrances, just in the nick of time, when everybody has given you up for
+lost. Your arrival at Amberhurst was good enough, but to-day was more
+effective still.”
+
+He said: “Amberhurst—yes, I remember. They were hoping I’d play for the
+theatricals, and I wouldn’t. It’s a pity that anticlimax seems
+inevitably to succeed what you call my dramatic entrances.”
+
+“You shouldn’t let it, then!” she cried, “surely it’s in your power to
+prevent it.”
+
+“Not always.”
+
+She became aware then, of the utter weariness of his tone, the weariness
+of his deep-set brown eyes. It seemed incredible that this was the man
+who had written her those wonderful letters. Where was the promised
+continuation of the long, intimate talks that had been started in them?
+Where was his anticipated delight at seeing her again? Had he ever
+really told her about himself and Eric Rubenstein? Taken for granted her
+understanding of all his moods? Said to her: “I want you here beside me
+in my dream-place....”
+
+Well, she was beside him now, and there was nothing wrong with the
+place—stars twinkling in a pale blueish sky, wind rustling faintly in
+the trees, and swaying the Chinese lanterns to and fro—but he made no
+attempt to break the oppressive silence, or in any way to shatter that
+impalpable barrier which seemed to have arisen between them. Curiously,
+critically almost, she watched him, as she leant back in her corner of
+the arbour, and smoked her cigarette.
+
+... And to him also the silence was becoming oppressive. He had not
+found, in talking to the other figures in the nightmare, the same
+appalling difficulty as he found in trying to talk to Antoinette. The
+soft light of the lantern, swinging from the roof of the arbour, fell
+upon the slim, lithe curves of her body; on the white throat and
+shoulders above the wine-coloured draperies; on the flushed face and
+hair tumbled to a riotous mass of curls. The face and hair and body of a
+bacchante, indeed.
+
+He was fully aware of her decorative value; admitted it at every point;
+but of the appeal which she might once have made to his senses, nothing
+remained. Alan, with his virile personality, had blotted out for Dennis
+the fainter magic of Antoinette, so that he could no longer perceive
+it—or if he did perceive it, then but dimly, remotely, as something not
+felt at all, but just seen through a misty glass. He had wondered
+once—it seemed a very long time ago, now—if Antoinette were not the one
+girl in a thousand, in a million, with whom he could find happiness and
+rest from the ceaseless internal wars of his own nature. And while he
+had still been doubting, wondering, playing with the idea, writing
+letters to a girl of his dreams, Alan had come....
+
+Yet he knew that he owed her some explanation; that she expected one of
+him. But what was he to tell her? What could he tell her? The truth...?
+He suddenly felt a mad desire to tell her the truth. Groping back to his
+first impression of her at Amberhurst, he was still convinced that she
+would understand. She too, or so it had seemed to him, was different
+from other girls, just as he—And it would be just a little less lonely,
+if he could tell her....
+
+The strains of the “Chocolate Soldier” lancers floated out to them with
+bursts of clapping and laughter between the figures. Antoinette sat
+listening with concentrated attention to the music. The fourth figure
+was nearly over now; soon the dancers would come swarming into the
+garden, encroaching upon their solitude, which might have been such a
+thing of wonder ... and had merely been a thing of emptiness. She
+resented the waste of the good moment, of the good setting—of
+herself....
+
+Dennis seemed suddenly to awaken from his stupor. He said, “I’m
+sorry—about anticlimaxes, but believe me, they’re not my fault. They
+happen—just happen—like everything else in this world that’s crazy and
+cussed and without rhyme and reason. I——”
+
+But already the dancers were pouring down the stairs into the garden,
+and the voice of Britannia, deep and lugubrious, uprose upon the still
+night air. She was addressing a Pierrot, whom Griggs had jockeyed into
+asking her for the supper-dance, not knowing that Little Boy Blue, in
+self-defence against the joint Queens of Sheba, had previously engaged
+her for it. “Ach, no, I cannot. I have got von man already, and zey say
+I must not have more zan von ...” as regretfully she refused the second
+offer. “Ach, to zis England shall I never myself accustom....”
+
+“Poor Ottilie,” murmured Dennis, “it’s a hard life.” He was secretly
+relieved at the diversion that had checked the confession on his lips.
+After all, it would have been a great mistake to tell her—he must have
+been crazy even to have contemplated it. He must guard against these
+incalculable impulses in future. For the present he was safe, thanks to
+Ottilie.
+
+“They might have let her have her Pierrot as well—what would it have
+hurt?”
+
+But Antoinette made no answer. She was possessed by a dull fury, her
+nerves strained to snapping-point.
+
+He had cheated her of a sensation.
+
+
+
+
+                                PART II
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+But Ottilie had no occasion “herself to zis England to accustom”;
+neither was Doreen obliged to put to the test her assertion that being
+grown-up in Germany wasn’t the same as being grown-up in Eastwold. A
+European war intervened in time to prevent a further exchange of
+daughters between Herr Baumgartner and Mr. Blackwood. Ottilie, wailing
+bitterly, was bundled off post-haste and with considerable difficulty,
+to her native land. Mr. Blackwood was taking her as far as Dover, and
+the rest of the family saw her off at Eastwold station; where she kissed
+them all, including Reggie, much to the latter’s disgust. And they put
+her into the train, together with the brand-new English hold-all, of
+which she was so proud, and the large canvas bag on which were
+embroidered in red cotton the words: “_Glückliche Reise_”.... And up
+till the last, she craned her head, surmounted by its absurd little
+straw hat, out of the window, and assured the Blackwoods repeatedly that
+she loved them, and loved England; and enjoined Doreen to “Greet me Mr.
+Griggs—greet me all dear friends....” Then, as the train began to move
+out of the station: “Ach, zis vor.... _Jammerschade_!” The rest was
+smothered by the noise of the engine.... Doreen cried all the way home,
+and Reggie was compelled to remind her with some severity that Ottilie
+was a German—the term “Hun” in these early days of the war had not yet
+become incorporated in the language, or he would certainly have used it.
+Ottilie was a German, and hence, obviously, a spy; Reggie expressed the
+devout hope that he had said nothing in her presence that might lead to
+giving information to the enemy; and tried to obliterate the shame of
+her parting embrace by assiduous rifle-practice in the garden.
+
+And young Hugh Clavering, looking very elated, climbed over the wall
+into the Blackwoods’ garden that afternoon, and told Doreen how awfully,
+awfully glad he was that she couldn’t go to Heidelberg now, even if she
+wanted to ... but he might be there himself, with any luck—Heidelberg
+would do just as well as Berlin, he wasn’t particular—yes, of course
+he’d enlisted; was going straight into camp; fine sport ... and he’d
+bring her a German helmet for Christmas.
+
+And Doreen said how awfully, awfully proud of him she was, and she did
+hope he wouldn’t get hurt, and yes, of course she’d write to him, and
+would he send her a photograph of himself in uniform?
+
+And Griggs and Tom Sanderson and Clive Blackwood, and all the clowns,
+pierrots, highwaymen and the rest of the motley crew from the fancy
+dress dance, had likewise enlisted; and of each one of them it was
+proudly claimed by his family that he was the first man in Eastwold—the
+first man in the county to have done so. Be this as it may, Eastwold
+made gallant response to the call of King and Country. Clive applied for
+a commission in the Royal Engineers; Tom gravitated naturally towards a
+cavalry regiment; Griggs appeared in the modest uniform of a private,
+and bore himself with that ingratiating charm of manner that had
+distinguished his impersonation both of Marat and Charles II.
+
+“Only a simple Tommy—but ready to do his bit with the best of ’em. We’ll
+show Fritz the stuff Old England is made of!”
+
+So, with a great deal of excitement, and metaphorical clanking of spurs,
+and generally with the sensation of taking part in a picturesque
+pageant, the manhood of Eastwold, very pleased with itself, left the
+sunny, sleepy little town for the various camps and headquarters, where
+it was to be instructed in the art of “showing Fritz the stuff old
+England was made of....”
+
+“And what is Dennis going to do?” Mrs. Ryan at last voiced the question
+which had agitated the whole of Eastwold ever since the outbreak of war.
+Dennis’s mother replied that for the present she didn’t know that he was
+going to do anything, and rather hastily changed the subject. Eastwold,
+with a tolerance and forbearance which later it was to lose, assumed
+that Dennis, being an artist, and hence possessing a certain right to be
+“peculiar,” would take longer than the others to realise his duty
+towards his King, country and family. But inspired by the example of his
+brother Clive and the rest of Eastwold, he would no doubt soon long to
+feel his hand upon the hilt of his sword, as did every true-born Briton
+in times like these....
+
+Little Miss Simpkins ventured to suggest that the Blackwoods, in giving
+one of their sons to the army, were adequately fulfilling the dictates
+of patriotism.
+
+“We women of England must give _all_ our sons,” returned Mrs. Ryan who
+had no sons to give; and reiterated the ominous catch-phrase that had
+just been coined: “in times like these....”
+
+The war had run the course of four horror-stricken months, and still the
+Blackwoods’ eldest son had made no move towards the recruiting-office.
+Nor had he any intention of doing so. The thought of war inspired in him
+none of those feelings with which convention decreed that every true
+Briton should be inspired—in times like these. He had no desire to feel
+his hand upon the hilt of his sword; no desire to help to bring the “day
+of victory” nearer. The whole thing was damnable and stupid, and cruel;
+and so was all the talk and the bombast with which everyone strove to
+gloss over the fact that it was damnable, and stupid, and cruel ...
+pretended that it was a noble thing, a glorious game, a game which every
+Englishman should be proud to be playing.
+
+“A little blood-letting won’t do the nation any harm.” Often and often
+Dennis had heard that phrase upon his father’s lips, as comfortably Mr.
+Blackwood smoked his after-dinner cigar, and fixed his son with a
+baleful eye. Dennis at all events would not give himself up to become
+part of the machinery of nations trying to prove which could stand the
+most blood-letting; machinery that organised the murder of individuals
+by individuals who had no personal quarrel with each other. And greater
+even than his repugnance to the “great war game” as a whole; greater
+even than his revolt against the senselessness of it, and the pity of
+it; greater than any personal physical fear of death or wounds was his
+fear of being sent out to inflict death or wounds on others ...
+deliberately to maim and shatter the bodies of men as young as himself,
+the bodies of men as young as Alan.
+
+He would not enlist. And Eastwold might do its worst.... Eastwold was,
+in fact, already growing restive.
+
+Mrs. Ryan took him to task one day when she met him in the town. She had
+just come out of the grocer’s shop, where she had been complaining
+because the price of bacon had gone up again; and the grocer had replied
+that in times like these.... She was therefore considerably ruffled when
+she met Dennis outside. After a preliminary exchange of hostilities, and
+a meaning glance at his civilian clothes, she said: “Well, I should like
+to know where the war would be if everyone thought like that!”
+
+“Presumably there would be no war at all,” he returned gently.
+
+“Nonsense! The Germans would have been here long ago.”
+
+“Not if _everyone_ thought like that.”
+
+“The Germans would never think like that, even if the English did—and
+I’m thankful to say they don’t. It’s the Germans who wanted the war.”
+
+“And now the English want it every bit as much as they do.”
+
+“Well, now they’ve started it, we’ve got to go on with it—we didn’t want
+war.”
+
+“I daresay they think and say exactly the same, only the other way
+round....” Dennis walked away, weary of the argument. He would have been
+wearier still, if he could have foreseen the countless times he was to
+repeat that argument with different people, in different places, with
+variations and amplifications. These were still the early days of the
+war, and the crusade against pacifism was not so strenuous as it became
+later on.
+
+But Mrs. Ryan reported that conversation to Mrs. Clavering who reported
+it back to Mrs. Blackwood; and Mrs. Blackwood, half uneasily, told
+Dennis that it had been reported. “Of course Mrs. Ryan thinks you ought
+to go, Denny.”
+
+“Everybody does, Mother,” he smiled at her.
+
+“And—shall you...?”
+
+“Do you think I ought to, Mother?”
+
+She was troubled by the direct question. “I suppose every man ought to
+go, but it’s difficult to want them to. I suppose one can’t help being
+selfish.... Daddy thinks you ought to go, Dennis.”
+
+He ignored this, being already acquainted with his father’s views on the
+subject. “And you Mother?” he persisted.
+
+“I know it’s very wrong of me,” she murmured, as if apologising to the
+wrathful spirits of her husband and Mrs. Ryan and the rest of the
+community; apologising for being a mother first, and a “woman of
+England” afterwards.
+
+Dennis laughed, and took her in his arms. “You dear....”
+
+She returned his kiss, but repeated: “Mind you, I know it’s wrong.”
+
+“Wrong that you should want me not to go out and kill people whose
+mothers love them every bit as much as you love me?”
+
+She was silent, disconcerted by a point of view unfamiliar to Eastwold.
+
+“Or do you think that because they’re Germans, they love their sons
+less?” he teased her, and she pretended to be indignant.
+
+“You’re trying to make fun of me, and to muddle me, and I—I’m sure you
+ought to go, really....”
+
+“That’s all right,” laughed Dennis.
+
+But all the same, life at “The Hermitage” was far from ideal just now.
+Mr. Blackwood reading the paper aloud to his family every morning, dwelt
+with reproachful emphasis upon those portions detailing the atrocities
+committed by the German soldiery in Belgium—as if to make Dennis
+responsible for them. “Inhuman brutes—savages—devils! No Englishman
+should rest till the last one of them has been wiped off the face of the
+earth.”
+
+“And I suppose no mention is made of the atrocities our Russian allies
+have probably committed in Germany,” said Dennis, “don’t you see that
+once the ‘dogs of war’ are loose, there’s bound to be that sort of thing
+all round? For the baser elements of all nations alike? Debauch and
+beastliness on the part of people sent mad by blood-lust?”
+
+Mr. Blackwood turned purple. “Your views are disgraceful, sir. Why, to
+hear you, anyone would think you were pro-Hun.”
+
+“I’m not pro-Hun any more than I’m pro-British. I’m not pro-anything
+that’s driving millions of innocent people to slaughter and be
+slaughtered by each other. I’m for the first people who’ve got the
+courage to put down their arms and end the whole thing.”
+
+“You say that because you don’t want to fight yourself. Must I own that
+a son of mine is a coward and a shirker?”
+
+“That’s as you please....”
+
+Mr. Blackwood turned to vent his fury upon his wife. “This is your
+doing—you always did bring him up to be a spoilt namby-pamby!”
+
+Between Mr. Blackwood’s spluttering rage, and Clive’s cold contempt for
+Dennis, and her own secret relief at the attitude which he had taken up,
+Mrs. Blackwood had no easy time. The house was divided against itself.
+Doreen had as yet not declared herself openly on one side or the other.
+She was sincerely convinced that every man ought to go, but she was half
+inclined to think that an exception might be made in Dennis’s favour. It
+was different somehow, for Dennis, though she had not the faintest idea
+why....
+
+But Reggie, taking no heed of any psychological subtleties, wrote from
+Westborough, saying that he jolly well hoped Dennis would have joined up
+by Christmas, and that he ought to be jolly well ashamed of himself if
+he didn’t, and that he—Reggie—jolly well hoped that the war would last
+long enough to allow him to enlist.
+
+About the middle of December, Dennis realised that he could no longer
+stand the strain of guerilla warfare in the home-circle, and decided to
+go to London for a while. No doubt the strain upon his mother, too,
+would be lessened, once his own irritating presence was removed from the
+house. Mrs. Blackwood approved his decision; told him to be sure and
+write if he wanted anything; and hoped he would often run down for the
+week-end.
+
+Then, very tentatively, she said: “Will you see anything of Antoinette
+when you’re in London?”
+
+He answered without looking at her: “I daresay I shall.”
+
+“I’ll give you her address.”
+
+He smiled. “I know it, thanks.”
+
+It was the first time that they had mentioned Antoinette since she had
+stayed with them for the dance. Mrs. Blackwood still did not know why
+nothing had come of that little scheme of hers. It seemed just to have
+fallen flat.... Dennis had been in such a queer mood when he came back
+from Cornwall.... Perhaps Antoinette had been capricious or unkind to
+him; he was so absurdly sensitive. Of course she had never ventured to
+ask him about it. But perhaps if they met again in London——
+
+Dennis certainly went to London with his mother’s blessing....
+
+He was very glad of the £150 a year which had been left to him and his
+sister and brothers by Mrs. Blackwood’s father, and that enabled him to
+live as he pleased. He made a little money out of the sale of his
+compositions, but not sufficient to keep himself entirely; and he would
+have hated to be dependent upon his father.
+
+He took a room in Tavistock Square, and went the next day to see his
+friend Neil Barnaby.
+
+Barnaby was sitting at a writing-table littered with papers when Dennis
+entered. He looked up at him with a casual “Hallo?” and a funny, twisted
+smile that seemed confined to one corner of his mouth only.
+
+“Hallo?” responded Dennis.
+
+Barnaby put down his pen, and swung round in his revolving chair. “It’s
+six months, or thereabouts, since I saw you here last. Shall we pass
+over the intervening time in silence, or do you wish to make statement
+of it in detail?”
+
+“Oh, pass it over in decent silence, I think,” laughed Dennis, “the best
+of you is, Barnaby, that after six months’ separation, one can take up
+the threads of intercourse as easily as if they’d been dropped
+yesterday.”
+
+Barnaby grunted. “Nevertheless you might have had the decency to report
+upon the progress of your opera, considering that the libretto is mine.
+Have you finished it yet?”
+
+Barnaby, in his time, had tried his hand at nearly all branches of
+literature; had perpetrated plays, a novel or two, an occasional set of
+verses and newspaper articles. But he retained a special fondness for
+the fairy-tale of “Karen and the Red Shoes,” which he had turned into a
+play for which Dennis was writing the music.
+
+He answered Barnaby: “No, it isn’t finished. I haven’t been able to do
+any work at home of late. That’s partly why I’ve come up here for a
+bit.”
+
+“Can’t work at home, eh?” Barnaby fixed him with a critical glance.
+“What is it—white feathers?”
+
+Dennis nodded. “More or less.”
+
+“H’m,” reflected Barnaby, “I at least am immune from that delicate sort
+of attention.”
+
+Dennis glanced quickly away from the crutches that lay beside his
+friend’s chair. He was conscious of almost physical pain whenever
+Barnaby made allusion to his deformity; fine massive head sunk between
+rounded shoulders; one leg shorter than the other....
+
+Dennis said: “Supposing you hadn’t been immune—that way?”
+
+“You mean, if my physical disabilities hadn’t been so blatantly apparent
+to the naked eye? In that case, my dear Dennis, I should be doing
+exactly what you’re doing now—or rather, what you’re not doing.”
+
+“You think I’m right in refusing to go, then?”
+
+“If only they’d all refuse....” The concentrated fierceness of despair
+was in Barnaby’s voice.
+
+“‘Then,’” Dennis parodied Mrs. Ryan, “‘where would the war be?’”
+
+“Nowhere! That’s the obvious answer to that riddle.”
+
+“I know it’s the answer. I’ve given it myself over and over again.”
+
+Barnaby continued impatiently: “The brute stupidity of the thing ... and
+all the waste of art and intellect! Don’t give in, Dennis. Don’t let
+white feathers and the opinion of your next-door neighbours drive you
+into it. Get on with your opera. That’s the ‘bit’ for you to do, and a
+‘bit’ which only you _can_ do.... Let’s at least preserve art from the
+general wreckage.”
+
+“I doubt if the old ladies at home would agree with you,” said Dennis,
+“they’d say that art, too, must be sacrificed ‘in times like these.’”
+
+“The Vandals.... I’d rather be a Hun than a Vandal any day! If the old
+ladies at home get too much for you, for heaven’s sake don’t bring the
+conflict of your opinions to me. I’m not interested in psychology at
+present: I’m doing free-lance journalism just now, for which it isn’t
+necessary. And keep in mind that it’s better to write music that will
+live, than to help to fill the world with things that look like me—and
+worse....”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Dennis had no need of Barnaby’s reminder. The sight of the wounded
+in the streets was enough; and the thought of the wounded in the
+hospitals, being tended and mended, so that they might be sent out
+again, and broken again.... And already one saw those who could not be
+sent out again: armless, legless, blind; wreckage that could not be
+utilised either on the field of battle, or on any other.
+
+He plunged into his work, taking it up where he had left it before he
+went to Devonshire. But the horror that was all around and about him,
+got into his music and became part of it. The ideas that came to him,
+found expression in harmonies that had an ominous and sinister beauty.
+He knew that they had beauty, despite the horror with which they were
+impregnated. He never lost his critical faculty where his work was
+concerned, nor yet a certain detached surprise with regard to it.
+Sometimes he wondered from what strange sub-region of consciousness
+issued these visions—yes, that was the right word—visions of sound,
+audible to himself alone, and that he had the power to translate and
+transmit to others. And sometimes he was afraid of this music of his,
+that sprang from he knew not whence, and over the going and coming of
+which, he had no control. He was afraid now.... The clamour in those
+submerged regions of his brain was so great and so complex that it
+obsessed his every thought; waking or sleeping he heard the tortured
+dissonances and weird scurrying arpeggios, that left him no peace until
+he had found the right form of expression for them.
+
+... Music such as might have been heard in a nightmare ... music
+horrible and unreal, that in itself constituted a nightmare from which
+there was no escape. Like Karen, the girl in the fairy-tale who was
+compelled to dance on and on in the red shoes which she had so ardently
+desired—on and on past the loves with whom she would fain have
+lingered—so was Dennis compelled to listen without respite to this
+nightmare-music, that was like an evil spell upon him.
+
+As a child, some haunting phrase of music, suddenly remembered; or the
+sound of a coach-horn heard in the stillness of the night, had had this
+power to fill him with helpless terror. He had stuffed his fingers into
+his ears, hidden his head under the bedclothes, but still the sound had
+pursued him.... He was equally helpless now, equally terrified; lonely,
+too; a loneliness that could be banished neither by talks with Barnaby,
+nor by the long musical evenings he spent at Crispin’s flat.
+
+... And the little khaki-clad processions marched gallantly through the
+streets; shopboys and bank-clerks and grocers’ assistants, weedy and
+pasty-faced, with a smile on their lips, and a joke to be tossed at the
+girls they passed on the pavements.... Arms swinging, caps set rakishly
+upon their heads ... a bit of swank and a bit of curiosity and a great
+deal of heroism. And here and there for Dennis some face would stand
+out, upon which there was neither swank, nor curiosity, nor heroism;
+only wonder, dazed wonder; or a stupefied kind of patience.... And he
+would long to drag that man out of the marching ranks, to ask him what
+madness possessed him, or what ideal inspired him, that he must thus go
+out and offer up his all to the Juggernaut of war.... And the answer
+would always have been the same: he didn’t really know; but everybody
+was in it, and he supposed that a fellow ought to do his bit.
+
+And sometimes, Dennis caught sight of some face, some figure that
+remotely recalled Alan’s. And the pain that had never quite ceased, only
+lain temporarily dormant, awoke anew: pain, and a new panic-fear....
+Supposing Alan were to be in one of those marching processions! He had
+probably joined up by now, and with his democratic ideas, he would have
+gone in the ranks. Alan was the type that could not be held back, that
+would be eager and impatient to go. Dennis was certain of it.... He
+would be crazily brave on the battlefield; would storm trenches in the
+face of enormous odds.... And he would not return. People like Alan did
+not return. He would lie out there with his body torn and shattered;
+piteous unseeing eyes open to the pitiless heavens. Dennis turned sick
+as his fancy painted for him the things that might befall Alan; things
+that had perhaps already befallen him.
+
+Consciously and unconsciously, Dennis scanned the faces of those who
+marched past him, his heart throbbing hotly at the discovery of every
+fugitive resemblance of look or feature. Soon he hunted for Alan not
+only amongst the passing soldiers, but amongst the crowds thronging the
+streets, pouring out of restaurants and tea-shops, waiting outside
+theatres ... lived for the momentary thrill of encountering that chance
+resemblance.
+
+... Deeper and deeper into the crazy depths of the nightmare—nightmare
+set to his own horrible music, and filled with strange faces, figures,
+voices; and, almost like a futurist picture, with bits of streets,
+buildings, bridges, where he had caught a glimpse of this one, and
+that.... There was danger in his present mood, as there had been danger
+that night at Crannack.... Deeper and deeper into the nightmare, sinking
+in it, drowning in it....
+
+With a last remnant of sanity, and obeying a wild impulse to fling out a
+hand for safety while yet there was time, he rang up Antoinette, and
+asked if he could come and see her next day.
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+Of the astonishment which his sudden appearance caused her, Antoinette
+betrayed no sign when she received Dennis in the particularly hideous
+drawing-room of the house in Cadogan Gardens. The resentment which she
+had felt against him at the dance, had long ago died down, leaving only
+an insatiable curiosity with regard to the cause which could have
+engendered in him that queer dazed mood. The way he had seemed to clutch
+at her at Amberhurst—and then his letters—and then the sudden
+silence—the anti climax of the dance—and now his re-appearance after
+nearly six months—he was really rather an extraordinary person!
+Antoinette felt distinctly “intrigued,” and hoped that this time her
+anticipation of dramatic developments would be justified.
+
+He began without preliminaries: “I’m not going to apologise for not
+having communicated with you before. There were reasons—I’ll explain
+some time, and I’m sure you’ll understand. But for the present, may I
+just pretend that I’m still talking to you on the bridge at Amberhurst
+and that there’s been nothing in between?”
+
+“Certainly,” she smiled, suppressing her curiosity regarding the “in
+between,” and noticing that he also suppressed all mention of his
+letters to her. “Pretend anything you like, and keep the apologies for
+Grand’mère. She likes them—thrives on them, in fact.”
+
+Dennis laughed. “Is she at home?”
+
+“No, but she will be soon, don’t fret. You shall be introduced to her.”
+
+“Won’t she be shocked at your receiving the visit of a gentleman not in
+khaki?”
+
+“She’ll be shocked at my receiving the visit of a gentleman in anything
+at all,” sighed Antoinette, “so it really doesn’t make much difference.”
+
+She had flung herself back upon the stiff and unresponsive sofa, one arm
+stretched along the side, in a posture that seemed literally to crave
+the yielding softness of cushioned divans. But there were no cushioned
+divans in the house of the de Courcys; and to Dennis it seemed that
+Antoinette with her short mass of hair and supple boyish figure, was
+absurdly incongruous with her surroundings.
+
+“You can contradict as much as you please,” he said, “but you _are_ a
+square peg in a round hole.”
+
+“Oh, I should just think so—here!” she assented quickly.
+
+“Is it very bad?”
+
+“Sometimes.”
+
+“Spiked railings, and ‘Please don’t touch,’ and plenty of witches and
+dragons to see that the rules are enforced—poor little enchanted
+princess, I’m so sorry....”
+
+She thought she caught a faint echo of something that had been in his
+letters, and that had been lacking that night at the dance. Eagerly she
+responded to it: “Sometimes the witches and dragons can be put to sleep
+with fairy-tales, and the enchanted princess comes and dances outside
+the spiked railings.”
+
+“Will she dance with me, I wonder”—Dennis began, then burst out
+laughing. “Metaphorically, of course. I wouldn’t dream of really
+inflicting on you a sample of my terpsichorean art.”
+
+“No, I remember you were kind enough to spare me at the fancy dress
+ball....” She could not resist getting in this little thrust, and
+wondered how he would parry it. He did not parry it; merely left it
+alone; and she went on: “How are they all down at Eastwold? Very full of
+good works?”
+
+“Very! The Ryans, needless to say, have started a sewing-class—two
+sewing-classes, one for the matrons and one for the maidens of the
+neighbourhood. Mother and Doreen attend them, and Lily is at the local
+V.A.D. hospital. She hopes in time to appear in a khaki uniform, with
+initials on her shoulders, and a strap under her chin.... There was some
+talk of Millie Ryan’s taking up nursing too, but that project was
+knocked on the head, I believe, when her esteemed mother discovered that
+there were only Tommies at the hospital and not officers!”
+
+Antoinette laughed, and then sighed. “Yes, it’s all very well, ...
+personally, I haven’t as much as knitted a muffler. It’s an awful
+confession to make, but I loathe the idea of nursing (even officers!),
+my sewing is beyond description, and I don’t feel drawn towards
+scrubbing floors in a hospital.”
+
+“Go on,” said Dennis.
+
+She leant forward, clasping her hands around her knee, and shook back
+her rebellious hair. “If I took up any of those things, it wouldn’t be
+because I believed it was my sacred duty to my country to do them: it
+would only be so that when people start with the inevitable: ‘And what
+sort of war-work are _you_ doing?’ I could fling them my mufflers or my
+dish-washing or my entirely superfluous secretaryship as a sop. And
+that’s not quite good enough, is it?”
+
+“Not nearly good enough,” smiled Dennis. He was discovering, somewhat to
+his surprise, that he was really very glad to see Antoinette again. He
+must have forgotten her peculiar exuberant charm during the time that he
+had not seen her; but he was fully aware of it now—and glad that he was
+aware....
+
+“So you’re a rebel too, Antoinette.”
+
+She flashed out: “Yes, I won’t make buttonholes just because Mrs.
+So-and-so thinks I ought to! One must do war-work from genuine
+patriotism or not at all.”
+
+“And you haven’t any genuine patriotism?”
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. “I believe I had—once; only I’ve seen and
+heard so much of the artificial kind, that it’s been spoilt for me.”
+
+She fell silent, brows slightly contracted. He was more and more
+convinced that she fitted into her environment as little as he did into
+his, and that somewhere they would find a common meeting-ground, he and
+she....
+
+He glanced from her to the photographs of the numerous aunts and
+cousins. “There’s not much family-likeness between you and these,
+Antoinette,” pointing to a group of three plain girls with arms stiffly
+twined about each other’s persons, in a manner indicative of sisterly
+devotion, and one dear to the heart of every conventional-minded
+photographer. “They may be very worthy, but they don’t appeal to me.”
+
+“My cousins Sidonie, Jeanne and Hélène from Grenoble,” Antoinette
+introduced them, “and Grand’mère would tell you that the lack of
+resemblance between us is much to be regretted.”
+
+“But surely even grandmothers—even your grandmother, Antoinette—has eyes
+in her head?”
+
+“I repeat that Grand’mère would beg you to remember that appearances are
+deceptive, and that embroidered cushion-covers are more maidenly than
+short hair, and would clinch the argument with the remark that Sidonie,
+at least, has found a husband!”
+
+“However did she do that?” murmured Dennis, still intent upon the
+photograph.
+
+“They had an awful time, doing it for her,” Antoinette’s eyes sparkled
+with mischief, “there was once a young man of blameless antecedents but
+of impecunious means, who was brought to the house, and proposed to
+her—or rather her ‘dot’—and was refused by her father. The young man
+wreaked a horrible and subtle vengeance by going across the road and
+paying court to Sidonie’s cousin, Adèle. Adèle is, if possible, even
+plainer than Sidonie—that’s her photograph over there, between Raoul and
+Jacques, wearing English Eton suits, seven sizes too big for them.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Dennis, gazing transfixed at the likeness of a fat
+young thing with a yearnful expression, leaning over a stucco balustrade
+with a tennis racket in her hand.
+
+Antoinette continued: “Adèle accepted the young man: her dowry being
+slightly larger than Sidonie’s, she could afford the luxury. But
+hereupon Sidonie’s parents began to realise what they had missed, and to
+scheme to get the young man back again. This was easily effected by
+clapping a few thousand more francs on to Sidonie’s dowry.... They’re
+the happiest couple in Grenoble now, I believe.”
+
+“There is, of course, also Adèle’s point of view to be considered.”
+
+“Well, she has at least the consolation of having started a family-feud
+so bloodthirsty that it will not end as long as there is a single one of
+them left to carry it on. And think how difficult it will be for my
+uncle and aunt to get their two remaining daughters married, with
+Nemesis—or rather Adèle’s parents—watching from the other side of the
+road!”
+
+“Antoinette, I’m enjoying you most awfully....” Enjoying, also, a
+feeling of security in her presence—in this absurd, hideous room with
+the family-photographs. He had escaped from the danger that threatened.
+He was safe—with Antoinette.
+
+The door opened to admit old Madame de Courcy and her daughter-in-law.
+Grand’mère’s pleasurable anticipation of interviewing her
+grand-daughter’s suitor—it was doubtless in this capacity that young
+Blackwood was making his visit—was tempered by the thought that this
+suitor was not one of her own selection. She was therefore prepared to
+regard Dennis with a critical, not to say a disparaging eye. There was
+also the little matter of his income: Madame de Courcy had
+cross-questioned Antoinette very closely on the subject, without
+obtaining any results whatever. Apparently Dennis had been reticent
+concerning his financial position, a point greatly in his disfavour. A
+young man in a _good_ financial position, had no need to be reticent
+about it. “_Il doit y avoir quelque chose de louche_,” as she had
+suspiciously remarked to Anatole, who agreed with her.
+
+It therefore behoved Grand’mère first of all, to put the young man at
+his ease, and then with her usual tact and discretion, to make him admit
+the exact figure of his income.
+
+With this end in view, she commenced by assuring Dennis how much
+Antoinette had enjoyed herself at Eastwold, and how kind it was of his
+mother to have invited her. Dennis replied with becoming courtesy, that
+his mother had been delighted to have her. Which ended the first round.
+The next was more directly personal.
+
+“I see, Monsieur, that you are not in uniform.”
+
+“No, Madame,” Dennis replied superfluously.
+
+Henriette was gazing out of the window, a look of profound abstraction
+in her cavernous dark eyes. Suddenly the sound of her voice vibrated
+through the room. “When I think of martyred Belgium, my heart
+bleeds....” Her hand was clenched against her breast.
+
+Dennis began to understand why Antoinette had said that genuine
+patriotism had been spoilt for her: small wonder, if she had to listen
+to much of this sort of thing! He glanced at her, as she sat beside her
+grandmother on the hard sofa, hands sedately folded in her lap, eyelids
+lowered, the picture of the typical “jeune fille” decorously awaiting
+the advances of her suitor. She was adorable, he thought with a warm
+glow of affection ... and again something within him consciously
+registered that glow, and was satisfied....
+
+Madame de Courcy once more took up the thread of conversation. “My
+grand-daughters in Grenoble occupy themselves with cooking for the
+soldiers, and nursing them.”
+
+“Not specifying if the latter is necessitated by the former,” murmured
+Antoinette, who was on the old lady’s deafer side.
+
+Madame de Courcy, catching the murmur but not the drift of it, yet being
+convinced of its seditiousness, continued severely: “Antoinette does not
+occupy herself with anything....” To which Dennis, in the manner of the
+best French exercise, responded: “Er—no, but my sister knits socks.”
+
+Henriette embarked upon a monologue directed seemingly to the atmosphere
+in general. “Would that I had a son to give to France.... Gladly would I
+have sent him forth to do his duty, though my maternal heart had been
+torn with anguish!”
+
+Madame de Courcy took the occasion to remind her daughter-in-law that it
+was indeed regrettable that she had no son; and that she and Anatole had
+always said so; and that it must be entirely her—Henriette’s—fault, as
+all the other members of the house of de Courcy had been blessed with
+male offspring.
+
+Antoinette hastily changed the subject by asking Dennis what had become
+of Crispin.
+
+“Crispin—no, he’s not in the Army. He’s engaged upon a private and
+personal war against the people who are trying to bar Wagner and Bach
+from our concert programmes.”
+
+Madame de Courcy broke in again: “I hear you are an artist, Monsieur, a
+sculptor, is it not?”
+
+“No, a musician,” Antoinette corrected her, and the old lady nodded her
+head.
+
+“Ah, he visits the museums? But that is indeed interesting.”
+
+“He is a musician, I tell you!” shouted Antoinette.
+
+“_Comment_—he gives piano-lessons?” cried Grand’mère in great
+consternation. Dennis, very gently, succeeded in making her understand
+that he “wrote pieces for the piano”; she looked relieved; asked him if
+he were well paid; and in a loud aside demanded of Henriette if musical
+conductors received pensions from the State in England....
+
+Henriette languidly shrugged her shoulders. “Who thinks—who has the
+heart to think of music now? For me, if I were a man, there would be but
+one music thrilling my soul: the roar of cannons—” crescendo—“and the
+beat of drums....” She let the sound of her deep voice slowly die away
+on the word.
+
+Dennis was sorrier than ever for Antoinette.
+
+When he took his leave, Madame de Courcy pressed him to come again, and
+Antoinette gave him a most decorous “Good-bye, Mr. Blackwood,” with a
+blush and lowered lids, and then one second’s impish gleam from the grey
+eyes under their thick black lashes.
+
+Dennis walked away with a light heart. “It’s all right,” he told
+himself, “quite all right....” He was struggling up out of the nightmare
+into which he had been sinking, as a person sinks into a dark,
+weed-clogged pool. The weeds still clung about him: there were several
+things from which he must avert his mental gaze—or, better still, he
+must pretend that they were not there. The picture of a boy’s lean body,
+lit by the glow of a forge, was one of them.... But he could pretend
+quite easily, and it would be all right, he repeated—if only Antoinette
+would give him a hand.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Antoinette felt stimulated by Dennis’s visit. She was liking him more
+than ever before. His whimsical sense of humour appealed to her, also
+his delight in the eccentricities of the de Courcy family, as recounted
+by herself. And there was still about him that air of mystery which
+offered food for the wildest speculations. Half idly, and yet not
+without a certain thrill, she began to wonder what sort of a lover he
+would make.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was two nights later, and he had taken her to a theatre. They had
+laughed a great deal, and had had a very good evening, but now, as they
+drove in the taxi towards Cadogan Gardens, a silence fell upon them.
+Antoinette’s heart throbbed with excitement that was mingled with a
+remote inexplicable dread; but she did not know whether it was the dread
+of a repeated anticlimax, or dread of the climax for which she longed,
+and which she sensed near at hand. Yes, she decided, she _did_ want
+it—but still the oppression remained.
+
+Abruptly he ended the strain; put his arms round her. “Antoinette, will
+you marry me? It will be quite all right, dear ... really it will.”
+
+And now that it had come, that for which she had waited, she was
+conscious only of a feeling of withdrawal, that amounted almost to
+recoil.
+
+“Will you, Antoinette...?”
+
+She wished that after all, he had not come to the point so quickly;
+wished he had prolonged the rather charming uncertainty of their
+intercourse; wished that he were not already claiming a definite
+answer.... All this, while his arms were around her, his lips very
+gently straying over her cheeks, her eyelids. As one soothes a child, he
+murmured again: “You’ll see, it will be all right.”
+
+Of what was he thus persistently reassuring her, she wondered with a
+touch of impatience; and freed herself from his arms. “I’m not sure,
+Dennis ... d’you know,” with a little burst of hysterical laughter,
+“I’ve an awful longing to say that this is so sudden.”
+
+“But you must have always known that it was bound to come,” he pleaded.
+
+“Y-yes, but—” She could not put into words the feeling of flat
+disappointment that was upon her. He had kissed her—asked her to marry
+him: climax stirring enough; and yet something in her that was not
+satisfied, protested: “This can’t be all! Is this really all...?”
+
+“Well?” he smiled down at her, and she was irritated by his calm. Surely
+a man who cared deeply for her must have behaved differently in the face
+of her vague answer; must have sought by his passion to kindle a like
+passion in her.
+
+“I don’t love you,” she said very low, knowing that she spoke the truth,
+and wondering what effect this statement would have upon him. He
+considered it in silence, as the cab drew up at the door. He helped her
+out and dismissed the driver. Antoinette, on the door-step, had one
+moment of fear lest Dennis should take his dismissal to be final. She
+had not meant to be quite so drastic as all that; she liked him too much
+to want to hurt him.
+
+... To her relief he was beside her on the door-step now, and in the
+darkness, his arms were round her again. “Dear child, believe me—it will
+be all right....” Very lightly he kissed her lips, and as he ran down
+the steps: “I’ll write to you to-night.”
+
+Antoinette, rather dazed, rather irritated, and more disappointed than
+ever, let herself into the house. She reflected, quite irrelevantly,
+that Dennis had omitted to lay stress on the fact that he loved her. Now
+she came to think of it, he had not even mentioned it.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+“... I didn’t think it was possible to be quite so happy as this. I want
+to thank you for it again and again, but I simply can’t find words.
+You’ve made me so glad and triumphant. I know now that nothing else
+matters, and that nothing can ever come between us. Please say you know
+it too, because you do, deep down in your heart, don’t you? Oh, I can’t
+say one fraction of what I want to, but I can hardly wait till
+to-morrow, to have you in my arms again.... God bless you, my dear....”
+
+The sight of the scrawled phrases sent the blood rushing to Antoinette’s
+cheeks; and yet—she had given him no reason to burst into these pæans of
+joy. Was he so dense, then, that he did not perceive that there was no
+answering joy in her? Dense and selfish he must be, with that peculiar
+masculine denseness and selfishness that she had always abhorred in the
+men who had hitherto flirted with her—men who had taken for granted that
+her pleasure in receiving their attentions must equal their pleasure in
+bestowing them. What right had Dennis to take so much for granted? She
+had credited him with more subtlety of insight than was common to the
+average male. His caresses had lacked the masculine brutality that had
+always frightened her. Dennis had not frightened her: he had merely
+bored her.
+
+She read the letter through again, and again thrilled at the sight of
+the words. Which of her impressions of him was correct? How was it that
+his letter could thrill her, when under his kisses she had remained as
+cold as ice? Obviously, there was still some mystery that awaited
+solution.
+
+Perhaps it would be solved this morning! He had rung her up, and asked
+her to meet him for a good long talk ... and at the sound of his voice,
+tense and controlled, over the telephone, she was aware of an intense
+desire to avoid hurting him, and to find that everything was really “all
+right.”
+
+He took her to a little underground tea-shop in the Strand much
+frequented by Barnaby and his journalistic friends. It was empty at this
+hour of the morning, and no sooner had Dennis given his order for
+coffee, than he took Antoinette in his arms, kissed her and kissed
+her.... And Antoinette let him kiss her and kissed him back, trying to
+act the part, shamming the passion she was far from feeling, and that
+she longed so genuinely to call into existence by shamming if it could
+not be otherwise, and wondered all the while that he did not seem to
+notice the coldness beneath this sham passion of hers, and that he could
+still murmur brokenly between their kisses: “I’m so glad—so very
+glad....”
+
+“Let’s go and tell your people when we leave here, shall we?” he cried,
+as he released her, “do you think your grandmother will die of the
+shock?”
+
+“Oh, she needn’t know just yet. There’s not such a hurry, is there?” ...
+Again that twinge of alarm. She must know that she could still escape in
+case of need. If her people were told at once, and an engagement between
+herself and Dennis formally announced, all possibility of escape would
+be barred.
+
+“But there’s no need to keep it a secret,” he protested, “I feel I can’t
+keep it to myself a moment longer. I want to tell everybody I
+meet—Crispin—Barnaby—and to wire to them at home—Mother will be ever so
+glad. I may just tell her, mayn’t I?”
+
+“I’d much rather you didn’t, Dennis....” More and more real her alarm,
+now. She must succeed in combating this desire of his to take people
+into his confidence. For once his family knew, and her family, and his
+friends, and her friends, she would be bound hand and foot to carry out
+her portion of an agreement into which she had not yet entered. Not
+yet.... She was frightened of being rushed into a decision; determined
+to play for time.
+
+“I’m not sure of myself, Dennis. I told you so last night, and it’s
+true. Won’t you give me a chance to be really sure?”
+
+He avoided answering the direct question and argued: “We could tell them
+all the same, couldn’t we? Whether we tell them now, or in six months,
+doesn’t make much difference.”
+
+“Yes, it does. It makes all the difference in the world to me—it should
+make all the difference in the world to you, if you care that I should
+really care for you.”
+
+He said sadly, “But don’t you, Antoinette?”
+
+“Not yet.... Not as I want to be able to care for the man I marry. Not
+as I have cared for—other people.” A fleeting recollection of some of
+her feelings for Hester crossed her mind.
+
+“Oh, don’t talk like that,” Dennis begged her.
+
+“But I must!” she cried impatiently, “not to make you jealous, or
+anything as absurd as that, but just to get things clear, to show you
+that I do know the difference between the real thing, and what isn’t the
+real thing.”
+
+“And this—isn’t the real thing?” He spoke without looking at her.
+
+“I’ve told you it isn’t—yet.”
+
+“But it may be? You think it will be?”
+
+For the sake of the eagerness in his voice and eyes, she smothered
+doubt, and replied, “Give me six months, and I’ll tell you then.”
+
+As they climbed the little stairway that led from the tea-shop to the
+street-level, she had the ridiculous sensation of having been
+reprieved....
+
+He had to rest content with her decision. His belief that all was well
+was still unshaken; but it was a pity that she had chilled his first
+enthusiasm; a pity, also, that she had not let him tell his mother. Once
+his family knew, and her family, and his friends, and her friends,
+withdrawal would be made impossible. Not that he had the slightest
+desire to withdraw: this _was_ the real thing, he assured himself over
+and over again, as he held her in his arms and kissed her.
+
+All the same it would have been safer to make withdrawal absolutely out
+of the question....
+
+In order to avoid the curiosity which her family would have displayed,
+had it been known that she was seeing Dennis three or four times a week,
+Antoinette stated airily that he had returned to Eastwold; and accounted
+for her frequent outings, by manufacturing an entirely fictitious set of
+invitations from an entirely fictitious set of friends. Sometimes, to
+vary the monotony, she threw in some equally fictitious friends of
+Rosabel’s, with the result that she was able, in comparative peace, to
+continue her experiment with Dennis.
+
+It certainly was an experiment from Antoinette’s point of view, but she
+wished with all her heart, that it was something more than that, or that
+it would become something more.... At present there was not much hope.
+He seemed incapable of arousing her, even though on their long drives
+home through the darkened streets she lay in his arms and returned his
+kisses, and tried so hard, for his sake as well as for her own, to catch
+fire. She resented the lack of mastery in him—mastery that should have
+demanded and compelled love, instead of gently pleading for it. Was it
+love, though, for which he pleaded? She was still aware that he did not
+reiterate that he loved her; did not use the words that love would have
+used, and that she longed to hear.... But he wanted to marry her; he was
+taking for granted that at the end of six months she would marry him.
+
+Of that queer glamorous mystery that had once enshrouded his
+personality, nothing remained. All the promise that he had held out in
+his letters from Devonshire was yet unfulfilled. When she tried to lead
+him to talk openly of himself, he fell silent, or changed the
+subject—and kissed her. It seemed to her that she knew even less about
+him now than at the beginning. And he knew nothing about her. She was
+convinced of that. He never made any attempt to fathom her moods and
+feelings; to discover what her thoughts had been in the past, or what
+were her ideas concerning the future. Nor would he discuss their
+relations to each other; always silenced her questionings with: “It must
+be all right—it was meant to be.”
+
+“I don’t feel that it was,” she argued uneasily.
+
+“You will—in time.”
+
+“And ... if I don’t?”
+
+“Oh, don’t let’s think of that.”
+
+“But why do you wilfully blind yourself like this?” she cried.
+
+He said mournfully, “Because life is so full of cruelties, that the less
+one sees of them the better.”
+
+“It’s cowardly, just to pretend that they aren’t there!”
+
+He flushed and started at that; and she hoped it might lead to some
+further explanation.
+
+“Much better to face them out.”
+
+He shook his head. “No ...” and relapsed into silence.
+
+Exasperated, she gave it up.
+
+Often she wondered what his relations with other women had been, and
+tried to sound him on the subject.
+
+He answered: “There’s never been any other woman,” and she knew by
+instinct that he did not say this merely to please her, or to assuage a
+non-existent jealousy, but that it was the truth ... and she could not
+tell why it filled her with a new uneasiness. Yet she could not bear to
+sever their connection entirely. Sometimes, for days together, he did
+not see her; left her without news of his whereabouts. Then she began to
+believe that he would never return, and was conscious of a fear quite
+disproportionate to her real feelings for him. It was always with
+immense relief that she welcomed him back. There were so many little
+things for which she liked him. On rare occasions, she released him from
+his fictitious exile in Eastwold, and he was allowed to lunch in state
+at Cadogan Gardens. Antoinette enjoyed watching him as he made
+conversation with her grandmother, who thought him a very backward young
+man, and strove by an increased amiability to give him the courage
+necessary to demand Antoinette’s hand in marriage. Grand’mère was not at
+all sure that she would accede to such a demand, but then, from her own
+point of view, it was almost as enjoyable to refuse as to accept an
+offer of marriage for her grand-daughter. Antoinette had explained the
+subtlety of Grand’mère’s attitude to Dennis, who, sharing her delight in
+it, solemnly acted up to it. It added, also, to the pleasant feeling of
+truancy appertaining to all her expeditions with him. Yes, in their
+lighter moods, they harmonized well enough. It was only in moods that
+were not light—
+
+And yet she could never quite rid herself of the hope that they must one
+day stumble upon the thing which would dispel, as if by magic, the
+mental fog that had descended between them. Some quite little thing ...
+something equivalent to a mere click or switching-on of machinery that
+would be in perfect working-order, if only one knew how to set it in
+motion. The hope that one day it would be set in motion, sprang up
+afresh whenever she was not with him, but it died down inevitably at
+their next meeting, died under his queer silences and evasions, and
+under his kisses....
+
+Once, in one of his more clear-sighted moments, he cried out to her:
+“Oh, why can’t you care for me more?”
+
+And all the longing of her soul was in her voice, as she replied: “My
+dear—if only I could....”
+
+Dennis’s music alone thrilled her, as could nothing else about him. In
+it, he seemed to give something of himself that he otherwise withheld;
+and yet she felt that it was not to her that it was being given. He
+played her his old songs or bits of his opera, but nothing that had been
+dedicated to her or that had been composed because of her. Lacking the
+power to inspire him, she was completely shut out of his music.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus they drifted, for the six months and over the six months. He was no
+longer pressing her to make a decision, as he had done at first. She was
+guiltily aware that she ought to do so, that the situation was absurd,
+anomalous, and that she ought to end it—one way or another. But which
+way? She was no nearer to loving him than she had been six months ago;
+but she dreaded the idea of the blank there would be in her life, if she
+put him out of it altogether, as she surely must do, once she spoke the
+decisive word. So she did not speak it....
+
+More and more silences and evasions now; the fog between them thicker
+and thicker.... And always he kissed her; kissed her with a fervour that
+seemed to increase in the same proportion as their mental affinity
+seemed to diminish.
+
+At the end of a hot August day, they drifted in their punt down one of
+the backwaters at Wargrave. Antoinette had done most of the punting; and
+now, deliciously tired, she lay back among the cushions, while he
+paddled down-stream. Through half-closed eyes she watched him, noted the
+contrast between his athletic build and sensitive features. He was
+gazing straight ahead, into the green-gold tunnel formed by the
+overhanging branches. What was he thinking of, she wondered. Was it some
+new musical inspiration that had come to him, and that was absorbing his
+entire thoughts? He was rather a wonderful person altogether;
+good-looking, and a genius. She was musician enough herself to recognise
+that he was a genius. It was absurd that she should not love him....
+Perhaps, unbeknown even to herself, already she was beginning to love
+him? Perhaps—with a sudden quickening of her pulses—perhaps someone had
+spoken the magic password...?
+
+He put down the paddle, tied up the boat, and came and flung himself
+down on the cushions beside her. He had chosen his moment well. For the
+first time she was glad of the storm of kisses that he showered upon
+her. No need to complain of his gentleness now—not now, with his hands
+clenched into the short warm tangle of her hair, his hard kisses beating
+down upon her lips and upon her throat. She lay passive under the storm,
+rejoicing in this new fierceness and mastery that had come to
+him—fierceness and mastery that in any other man would have terrified
+her—and thought: “It’s going to be all right—it _is_ all right now....”
+
+Suddenly, without a word, he pulled himself away from her, untied the
+punt and paddled back to the landing-stage. All the way to Paddington,
+their compartment was crowded and conversation impossible; but
+Antoinette was satisfied with what the day had already given
+her—knowledge that it would be easy to make her decision now. Should she
+tell him to-night, she debated as the taxi bore them homewards, or
+should she leave it till to-morrow, and let to-day be sufficient unto
+itself? She decided on the latter course, convinced that it would
+harmonize better with his mood. He was exceptionally silent; and on her
+door-step, he bade her good-bye without kissing her again, without so
+much as touching her. And she was well pleased with his behaviour that
+showed a fine appreciation of a mood for once shared.
+
+Oh, but she was looking forward to seeing him to-morrow!
+
+And to-morrow, at breakfast, there was a letter from him waiting beside
+her plate. Joyfully she swooped down upon it. After all, he had been
+quicker than herself to seize the moment. This would be one of his
+perfect letters, and at last she would be able to give in response to
+it, all that he might ask of her.
+
+Grand’mère, who had of course recognised the handwriting, looked
+inquisitively over the tops of her spectacles.
+
+“What has he to tell you, the young Blackwood? Would it not be time to
+ask him to lunch again?” And aside to Henriette: “_Cela lui donnerait
+peut-être l’entrain qui lui manque...._”
+
+... One of his perfect letters: Antoinette’s heart fluttered wildly—and
+then stopped.
+
+“... I’m sorry, but we can’t go on like this. I’ve known it for a long
+time, and I am to blame for not having acted on my knowledge sooner. You
+were right and I was wrong—it wasn’t the ‘real thing.’ I should have
+broken with you completely when I first began to realise it, but for
+your sake I tried to go on pretending, long after I knew it was useless.
+So I’m afraid it must be good-bye.”
+
+“_Eh bien_,” persisted Grand’mère, “he has at last made you his
+declaration...?”
+
+But Antoinette sat staring at the letter, stunned and bewildered as from
+a blow between the eyes. This—after yesterday.... She was dazed with the
+sheer incredibility of the thing; too dazed, even, to be conscious of
+pain. That would come later.
+
+“For your sake I tried to go on pretending——”
+
+So yesterday, also, had been mere pretence on his part, yesterday, when
+for the first time she had been genuine in her response to his
+passion—his sham passion. It was fantastic, this reversal of their
+original positions!
+
+“So I’m afraid it must be good-bye.”
+
+The words, read and re-read till they seemed to become devoid of all
+meaning, swam before her eyes. If only he had indeed chosen to break
+sooner, he would have left a blank in her life; but no more. Why must he
+have waited until this moment, when it meant leaving far more than a
+blank? One did not suffer when it was only a blank, but when it was
+more....
+
+“For your sake I tried to go on pretending, long after I knew it was
+useless.”
+
+That was the answer; and it stung. Between the lines, she thought she
+read contempt of herself; contempt and dislike.
+
+But was it entirely her fault that she had never possessed the key to
+any of his moods? He had always shut himself away, hidden from her the
+workings of his mind, so no wonder that this revelation of an attitude
+that must have been crystallizing gradually during the past months came
+as such a shock.
+
+She folded up the letter, and put it away with the one he had written
+the night he had asked her to marry him.
+
+“I know now that nothing else matters, and that nothing can ever come
+between us....”
+
+As contrasts, she reflected, the two letters were quite effective.
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+At last, thank goodness, he had found sufficient energy to break away
+from this deadlock, to end this weary game of pretence! He had thought
+that with Antoinette he could escape definitely from his abnormality;
+escape from his loneliness; from the ever-present terror of himself;
+from the nightmare of his own music; and his thoughts of Alan.... From
+all these things he had sought refuge in Antoinette’s arms; she would
+make him forget that they existed. And besides, Antoinette was of those
+who understood; he had not the slightest intention of deceiving her;
+some day they would talk everything out openly together.
+
+But Antoinette had failed him; failed him in her moments of recoil, as
+she had failed him in her moments of insincere passion. He knew all
+along that her passion was insincere, and it frightened him. Was he,
+then, in truth so abnormal, so different from other men, that he was
+incapable of rousing real passion in a woman, real love? She did not
+love him; yet she would not let him go, even when he begged her to make
+her decision.
+
+“We must go on, dear—or go back.”
+
+“I can’t go on yet, and ... and I don’t want to go back. It’ll leave
+such a big hole in my world if you’re not there, Dennis.” ... Always
+appearing to give herself with one hand, and to withhold herself with
+the other.
+
+He began more and more to doubt the possibility of her understanding,
+and to revise his previous judgment of her—judgment based upon some
+flimsy illusion created that night at Amberhurst. She was after all just
+an ordinary normal girl, who would turn from him in shuddering aversion,
+if she knew.... And she was rather immoral, he thought, in her
+simulation of passion that she did not feel; and endowed too, with the
+ordinary woman’s vanity, that could not bear to lose an admirer, and
+must keep him dangling, even though he meant nothing to her.
+
+But it became more and more difficult to break as time went on; he knew
+that there would have to be scenes and explanations. And he dreaded the
+idea of explanations now.... Of mental kinship between them, there was
+no longer any trace; neither of the warm tenderness which he had felt
+for her at first. He shut his inner self away from her, and, when they
+met, since they could not talk—he kissed her. It was evidently what she
+wanted, now that she had overcome her first distaste, and what he—well,
+not what he wanted, but what for the moment, could in some small measure
+content him.
+
+He was rapidly sinking back into the nightmare out of which he had hoped
+to rise; nightmare of loneliness and strangeness and being different....
+And the old hunting-mood had him again, when for hours together he paced
+the streets, courting danger and the thrill of danger from a flung
+glance or smile or whispered word ... and with burning cheeks and
+beating heart, fleeing danger ... and courting it again.
+
+And all Antoinette’s kisses could not content him now, even though she
+gave them so lavishly in response to the passion that was not for her,
+but only venting itself on her. That last day at Wargrave—surely some
+instinct must have told her? Was she so dense or so insatiable that she
+had really perceived nothing? She must have perceived nothing, or she
+could not for an instant have endured his kisses. More than time for
+them to break—so at last he had broken with her; and his letter would
+eliminate all possibility of a further compromise—of further drifting.
+He was not hurting her, at the most her vanity; and that did not matter.
+She would console herself easily enough; find some other man to fill his
+place.
+
+And now he was free—for what, though? Free to take anybody, anything
+that could reach him through his charmed circle of isolation. For in
+this isolation of a soul terrified of itself, and doomed to eternal
+misunderstanding and misjudgment, lay the greatest temptation of all:
+the temptation to stretch out a hand to others like himself, and to own
+himself frankly to be one of them. It would be so much easier.... But
+his abhorrence of himself, and his honest desire to be as other men;
+above all, the æsthete in him insisted on a perpetual wearying struggle
+between his principles and instincts for the existence of which he was
+no more responsible than for the colour of his eyes. He had done his
+best to fight them down, only sometimes he was very tired, tired of
+having to keep this ceaseless watch over himself, tired of having to
+suppress and thwart desires that were natural to him, but would be
+classified as vicious and perverted by the world of ordinary people,
+lacking understanding of his peculiar temperament. Yet, even while he
+craved for understanding, he dreaded it: for this reason he had not been
+near Barnaby for weeks. He guessed that Barnaby’s attitude would not be
+one of conventional intolerance, and therefore deliberately avoided him.
+Once he allowed himself the luxury of confiding in someone, he could not
+tell what effect this greater freedom might have upon him. Fear, mingled
+with some strain of asceticism, made him deny himself that luxury, even
+as in his schooldays, it had prevented him from accepting Eric
+Rubenstein’s sympathy and friendship.
+
+But London was too dangerous to him in his present condition. He almost
+welcomed a letter from his mother, asking him to come down to Eastwold.
+Hugh Clavering was expected home on leave, and his engagement to Doreen
+was to be made public. Dennis went; but Hugh’s leave was several times
+postponed, so that he did not actually arrive till after Christmas.
+
+Dennis soon realised that the ladies of Eastwold were experiencing
+considerable difficulty in the matter of how to treat his mother. Of
+course if Mrs. Blackwood had only been _his_ mother, one could quite
+simply have cut her; but as she was also Clive’s mother and Hugh’s
+future mother-in-law, it complicated things. Clive was in the trenches
+and had been mentioned in dispatches.... But there was Dennis who
+steadily refused even to attest under the Derby scheme, and who thought
+that all war was wrong (which was ridiculous, at least as far as the
+British were concerned) and said so on every possible occasion.
+
+Some of the ladies argued that one should condole with Mrs. Blackwood on
+the subject of Dennis, rather than reproach her; some thought that his
+disgraceful views more than outweighed Clive’s deeds of valour, so that
+they felt justified in cold-shouldering Mrs. Blackwood. But the majority
+contented themselves when they met her, with enquiring enthusiastically
+after each individual member of her family, and leaving a frigid gap in
+the conversation to mark the place where Dennis would have been enquired
+after, had he been worthy of such enquiries....
+
+Lily Hallard, very military indeed in her V.A.D. uniform, openly
+confessed that she didn’t like the prospect of having a shirker for a
+brother-in-law; and in her loud-voiced aggressive manner tried to
+convert Dennis to a proper frame of mind.
+
+“How you can bear to sit at home, while other men—while your own brother
+is in the trenches!”
+
+“They’re doing what they think is right—or rather, they don’t think at
+all.”
+
+“And you think it’s right to let others go out and be killed for you?”
+
+“Killed for me.... Good Lord, do you think I _want_ them to go out into
+that infernal mess and muddle? I’d hold every one of them back with my
+own hands, if it were in my power!”
+
+“You make me sick,” said Lily. “That’s not a man’s way of talking. Look
+at Tom Sanderson—he’s exchanged into an infantry regiment, because he
+says there’s nothing doing in the cavalry, and he’s so eager to get to
+the Front. That’s the proper spirit.”
+
+“Not unless you can believe, with all your intellect and soul, that
+you’re doing some good by taking part in that wholesale butchery.”
+
+“A fat lot most of our boys think of ‘intellect and soul.’ They just go
+and do their bit, and don’t talk about it.”
+
+“If they did—if people talked and thought about it more, there might be
+some hope of ending the war altogether.”
+
+“We don’t want the war ended that way!”
+
+“No, you want it to be ended by fighting, rather than by thinking.... To
+hear you, one would positively imagine that you enjoyed the idea of the
+war going on and on.”
+
+“It must go on till we win. Oh, if only I were a man! I’d give anything
+to lead a fine cavalry charge....”
+
+Dennis did not doubt that she was quite competent to do so.
+
+Altogether, he suffered no lack of attempts to convert him.
+
+There was Griggs—Lance-corporal Griggs—who had not been out yet, but was
+dying to go, and expecting to do so next week, as he had been expecting
+every week since the outbreak of war.
+
+“What—not yet in khaki, Dennis, old man? What’s all this about pacifism?
+Come, come, come, that’s nonsense—artistic temperament, that’s all.
+You’ll make as good a soldier as anyone, just the same. We’re all in
+this—don’t let anyone stand out. What I say is, rope ’em all in—rope ’em
+all in.”
+
+Dennis was reminded of the day at Amberhurst, when Griggs with just as
+much fervour, had sought to induce him to play the piano during the
+theatricals. “Rope ’em all in—everybody’s got to do something....”
+
+No one must stand out. No one must be an exception. Not even if they had
+no leanings towards the particular form of entertainment advocated by
+Griggs.
+
+Even Doreen, gentlest of sisters, did her best with Dennis.
+
+“Don’t you think you ought to go, Denny dear, now that everybody else
+has gone?”
+
+“Do you imagine, Doreen darling, that I should have waited till
+now—waited till everybody else had gone—if I had intended to go at all?”
+
+A letter from Ottilie had come through _via_ Switzerland, saying that
+“she herself with a hotly-beloved Bavarian officer on the West Front
+engaged had;” also that she hoped to see her dear friend Doreen again
+“as soon as the dreadful war over was.”
+
+Dennis went on: “Surely you’d rather that your Hugh and Ottilie’s
+soldier-man didn’t have the chance of shooting each other to bits?”
+
+“But the Army’s so big, Denny: they’re not likely to meet.”
+
+“In all probability they won’t. But there are thousands of others in the
+same respective positions, facing each other in battle. Don’t you wish
+they weren’t?”
+
+“Y-yes, of course I do, but ... everybody’s going, Denny.”
+
+And then the Ryan girls.... Millie cut him dead when she met him in the
+town, but Amy, not prompt enough to achieve the cut direct, had begun to
+smile before she realised what she was doing ... tried to retrieve the
+smile, blushed, and finally stopped to say: “We all think it’th thuch a
+pity about you, Dennith. All really nithe men go and fight, don’t they?”
+Then, having said so much, she could not resist the temptation to
+continue: “I’m keeping up a Correthpondeth with _three_ Lonely
+Tholdierth—jutht ordinary Tommieth, of courthe, but being in khaki
+maketh all the differenth, doethn’t it? Ethpethially if you never thee
+them ...” with which somewhat ambiguous statement, she vanished.
+
+The only one who made no assaults upon Dennis’s convictions, was young
+Hugh himself, very tanned and handsome, very much the hero of his native
+village, and the same unspoilt and charming boy he had always been.
+
+“Doesn’t want to kill the Huns? Well, neither do we—part of the time.
+Some of them are awful decent little chaps, quite pally with our men.
+Still, I suppose it’s our job to do ’em in, if we can.”
+
+The biggest discussion took place at the Blackwoods’ Sunday lunch party,
+the occasion on which the engagement was officially announced. Lily and
+her mother came, and Hugh and his parents, and Griggs, and the
+Ryans—poor Millie had to exchange a few civil words with Dennis after
+all, thus marring the effect of the previous cut.
+
+The ladies had retired from the dinner-table; Hugh had vanished in
+Doreen’s wake; and Griggs, as a non-smoker, had been accorded the
+freedom of the drawing-room. Dennis was alone with his father, Mr. Ryan
+and Dr. Clavering. Griggs, on his exit, gazing after Hugh and Doreen,
+provided the old gentlemen with the necessary cue.
+
+“There they go—the gallant and the fair! Doesn’t it make your heart
+envious to see them, Dennis? It’s the uniform that does it, my lad, the
+uniform....” He slapped his narrow chest, and went off, beaming.
+
+“Yes, we believe you right enough,” grumbled Mr. Blackwood, “if I were a
+young man, I’d be ashamed to be seen about in anything but khaki.”
+
+“They say conscription’s coming in,” Mr. Ryan wheezed hopefully.
+
+“That’ll be the end of all our slackers and shirkers, and a good job
+too. What’ll you do then, my son?”
+
+“Precisely what I’m doing now.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“Refuse to fight.”
+
+“But you can’t,” cried Mr. Blackwood, “they’ll put you in prison, or
+shoot you as a deserter.”
+
+“Let them.”
+
+“You mean to tell me,” expostulated Mr. Ryan, “that you’re afraid to go
+out to the Front and die like a gentleman, and yet you’ve no objection
+to staying at home and being shot like a dog? It’s monstrous, sir,
+monstrous.”
+
+“My objection to going to the Front isn’t entirely fear for my own skin,
+Mr. Ryan, though I know you’re convinced that that is my sole reason for
+staying behind. I don’t suppose I’m any more or less afraid of death
+than the average man of my age.”
+
+“Prove it,” muttered his father, “prove it....”
+
+“I daresay I shall prove it, when conscription comes in. I would rather
+be shot, as Mr. Ryan says, ‘like a dog,’ than submit to a law that
+orders me to murder men with whom I’ve no personal quarrel. And if I did
+have a quarrel with a man, I shouldn’t murder him.”
+
+“There would be some cases in which it would be your duty to do so: what
+would you do if a German attacked your mother?”
+
+Dennis smiled as Mr. Ryan put the inevitable question. “I could defend
+my mother by incapacitating him for the moment, without resorting to the
+extreme measure of taking his life.”
+
+“Tommy-rot!” snorted Mr. Blackwood, “when a man’s blood is up, he
+kills.”
+
+“Perhaps in the case of a personal quarrel. But you can’t say it’s his
+duty to kill when he has no quarrel at all.”
+
+“It’s his duty to his country——” began Mr. Blackwood, and Mr. Ryan’s
+breathless voice broke in: “His country’s quarrel should be good enough
+for him.”
+
+“But it’s not the quarrel of the whole of this country, any more than
+it’s the quarrel of the whole of Germany. Why not try and restrict the
+quarrel to those who made it, without dragging in millions of innocent
+people on either side ... people, some of whom don’t even know what the
+quarrel is about, and what they’re fighting for? German peasant boys
+taken straight from the plough—English lads raked out of remote sleepy
+villages: how much do you think they know?”
+
+“There can be no doubt that every Englishman knows what he’s fighting
+for,” declared Mr. Blackwood.
+
+“Yes, he’s told that he’s fighting for honour and glory and freedom, and
+to defend his home and country from a dastardly enemy. And the German
+boy is told exactly the same. And they both believe it, bless them. When
+they’re both out there, dying a foul death side by side, perhaps they
+may wonder if it was true, and if it was worth while, and why they let
+themselves be driven out to kill and kill and be killed by each other.”
+
+“Yes, yes, yes,” said Mr. Ryan testily, “we all know that war is very
+dreadful——”
+
+“Yet you won’t even attempt to stop it!” cried Dennis. “You encourage it
+to go on. It’s like a fire that instead of confining to the smallest
+area possible, you’re fanning and fanning till it spreads from one end
+of the country to the other, and flinging on more material every day to
+feed it. Why in heaven’s name won’t you try to stamp out the blaze?”
+
+“Yes, it’s all very well to talk like that,” said Mr. Blackwood, “but
+there always have been wars, and there always will be. Nations that have
+had no wars have become degenerate, and gone to the wall.”
+
+“Oh, I can’t stick all this humbug about war being necessary, and war
+being good for us! How can people talk such stuff, if they have the
+slightest conception of what war really implies?”
+
+“Well, you won’t alter human nature,” answered Mr. Blackwood, “man is a
+fighting animal, and for my part I should be very sorry to see the
+fighting instinct knocked out of him.”
+
+“That’s setting yourself deliberately against all idea of progress,
+Father: because certain evils have existed up to the present, is that a
+reason to declare categorically that they are bound to exist in the
+future? Why not root them out? What is there to be proud of in the
+instinct that leads one man to kill another? Why deny all possibility of
+conquering an instinct that can only make for misery?”
+
+He looked from one to the other of the two red-faced elderly gentlemen;
+his father angrily fingering the stem of his wine-glass; Mr. Ryan
+glowering at him through the heavy wreaths of his cigar-smoke. Only the
+doctor, on the opposite side of the table, gave the impression of an
+impartial spectator.
+
+“I’ve no patience with all this rot!” cried Mr. Blackwood, “if a man’s
+got no fight in him, he’s unnatural, that’s what I say, unnatural.”
+
+“You’ll allow a man to conquer nature with his ships and his
+railways—you’ll allow him to widen as much as possible the gulf that
+separates him from the beast; but when it comes to rooting out the
+war-instinct—_No!_ He can’t overcome that. Why should he? It’s always
+been there, always will be. In fact, you’re rather proud of it: it’s
+part of a gentleman’s equipment. You want progress and the conquest of
+natural difficulties in every possible direction, and yet you won’t
+admit that a man can conquer _himself_. You’re shouted down as
+‘unnatural,’ if you as much as speak of overcoming an instinct that is
+nothing but a hindrance to civilisation and progress.”
+
+“Oh, you and your artist friends, I daresay you talk a lot of twaddle,
+but you won’t convince _me_.” Mr. Blackwood drained his glass of port,
+and rose from the table. Mr. Ryan followed him. Dr. Clavering remained
+where he was.
+
+Dennis smiled at him across the table. “Well, Doctor, you’ve been very
+silent all through this.”
+
+“I was umpiring.”
+
+“They were two to one.”
+
+“Oh, you were quite capable of holding your own. But you’ll never
+convince them, Dennis, my boy.”
+
+“And you, Doctor?”
+
+“I don’t say that you’ve convinced me, but I can understand why, as an
+artist, you take that point of view.”
+
+“Yes, but I don’t want to have excuses made for me on that ground,”
+cried Dennis, “nor am I pretending for a moment that Clive and Hugh and
+others like them, can go out and kill, because they’re more brutalised
+than I am. It’s their belief that I’m up against—their belief that
+they’re doing right.”
+
+“Dennis, Dennis, you’re fighting a losing battle! It’s too late for
+pacifism now. The war’s started and the only thing for us to do is to
+make every effort in our power to end the unfortunate business; and that
+can only be done by fighting to a finish.”
+
+“And what then? Doctor, it’s no use pretending that ‘this is a war to
+end war.’ I don’t believe it. Do you believe that the British are
+fighting for disarmament, for democracy, for world-peace, any more than
+the Germans are? The governments of the big nations—not the
+mass-peoples, because they weren’t asked—but the governments of all big
+nations organise warfare with the same ends in view—extension of power;
+consolidation of empire; commercial and political advantages. If we go
+on fighting till Germany has to cry ‘Pax’ from exhaustion, it simply
+means that the balance of military power will be shifted, and that _we_,
+instead of the Germans, will be the war-lords of Europe. Do you call
+that a goal worth the sacrifice of one man’s life-blood—let alone of
+millions?”
+
+“But that’s only a hypothesis, Dennis: you can’t be certain what will
+happen after the war. We must end it first and then see. And surely, on
+the strength of a mere hypothesis, you wouldn’t wish to see the Germans
+win?”
+
+“Of course not. It’d be a tragedy for any one of the great powers to
+attain the complete military victory they’re each striving for.”
+
+“But, my dear boy,” the doctor protested with some heat, “now that
+we—now that all the nations—have sacrificed so much, we can’t go back.
+Think of the utter futility of the whole thing ending in a draw!”
+
+“I still maintain that that’s better than fighting till one side
+(whichever it is) is beaten to its knees, and the other in the position
+to dictate terms of bondage; and free to go on, through the years,
+preparing for wars more terrible even than this one.”
+
+“Well: and if it’s a draw?”
+
+“If the so-called fruits of victory are withheld from them all alike,
+there’s some chance that the people of each nation, seeing the true
+nature of the war-machine by which they’ve been driven, will clamour to
+have it broken up; will protest against the maintenance of great armies
+and navies for their mutual destruction. There’ll be some chance of an
+era of real peace—not the sham peace of the lull before the storm, which
+will exist if the powers can be definitely divided into conquerors and
+conquered, with the conquered merely biding their time to reverse those
+titles, and the conquerors ever on the watch to see that they shan’t do
+so. A lasting peace can never be achieved by war, because war only
+breeds war.”
+
+Dr. Clavering smiled. “You’re a Utopian dreamer, Dennis, but I sincerely
+respect you, just as I respect my own boy, and all the other boys who do
+their bit in their particular way.” He added after a moment: “And I
+doubt if you’ll find your way easier than theirs....”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later that afternoon, Dennis wandered out for a walk in the hills
+surrounding Eastwold, thus cheating Mrs. Ryan of the opportunity to draw
+him into a renewed discussion on militarism versus pacifism.
+
+The first breath of Spring lay upon the land; just a breath, and no
+more. The woods were not even faintly misted over with the green of
+budding foliage, but stood out as massed shadows of purple and bronze
+against the pale sky. Except for the deeper colouring of the woods, it
+was entirely a day of half-tints; light fawn of the ploughed fields;
+light green of the pastures where the cattle grazed; tenderest blue of
+the sky. The hedges that separated the fields were lines of brown,
+curving rhythmically about the undulations of the hills. Scattered farms
+nestled in the hollows, and from them went up a medley of animal sounds;
+lowing of cattle; barking of dogs; bleating of lambs; sounds that were
+blended with the rapturous outpourings of larks, and the drowsy distant
+peal of church bells, rippling eight notes down the scale.
+
+Dennis lay at full length on a ridge above a chalk-pit, and looked out
+at the hazy blue view, while the soft wind blew in his face, and flung
+up the good strong scent of freshly-ploughed earth and young grass.
+Railway-tracks gleamed in the sun; chalk-white roads wound their crazy
+way up and down the hilly country; and across fields to meet them, just
+as the brooks and rivulets, born of the winter’s heavy rains, meandered
+along to join the placid shining river that followed its leisurely
+course to the sea.
+
+And Dennis thought of all the roads and railways that had been made
+throughout Europe to connect one country with another; of how these same
+roads and railways had been torn up or blocked and barred to form
+frontiers and sever the connection between one country and another. And
+he thought of the rivers that flowed through one country and another;
+rivers, some of which ran red now with the mingled blood of nations
+locked in this death-grapple of hatred and lust and vengeance—nations
+each and all inspired by the thought that they were fighting in
+self-defence for justice, for glory, for their honour, for their
+fatherland, for their God ... each and all fighting blindly against each
+other for the same abstract principles.
+
+And the rivers flowed on, imperturbable; calm; oblivious of all
+artificial frontiers; oblivious if it was French or German or British or
+Austrian blood that reddened them.
+
+If there remained enough sane people in this world gone hideously mad,
+could they not put an end to it all? Could they not open the eyes of
+those blindly fighting—of those in government who organised and were
+responsible for the fighting? Surely it must be the aim of every
+rational human being to stop the war: not to secure the victory of this
+nation or that, but to lay the foundations of a lasting peace for all
+humanity? But people holding such views were looked upon as cowards,
+shirkers, traitors. And if they stood rigidly by their views, allowing
+themselves to be deviated neither by scorn nor insults; allowing
+themselves to be persuaded into no weak compromise or half-measures,
+they would in all probability be shot or put in prison.
+
+It must come to that for him too. For months, the Harmsworth press had
+been agitating for conscription; the Bill would be passed that _ordered_
+every man to go out and shed the blood of his fellow-men. And then....
+
+If only sufficient people had the courage to fight against the war, then
+might the other countries of Europe lie as peacefully as this spread,
+misty landscape at his feet. The roads and the railways might link them
+together again; the barriers of racial hatred and racial envy be swept
+away; art and civilisation arise once more in place of murder and
+barbarity.
+
+Already, as was usual with him, thought was translating itself into
+sound, into music that was no longer morbid as a nightmare, but strong,
+triumphant, a pæan of peace—the peace of all nations. Into it would be
+blended the characteristics of each; the steadfastness of the English
+and the indomitable fire of the French; the depth and the innate
+good-heartedness of the German people; and the easy tears and laughter
+of the Austrians; the Italians’ hot-blooded rhetorical love of their
+country, and the incurable melancholy of the Irish, the Russians and the
+Poles.
+
+The voice of each he would transfuse into his music. He would make
+himself the medium through which their individuality, their thoughts,
+their dreams, their yearnings should be expressed. His brain teemed with
+the new bold harmonies into which they would be orchestrated. This
+symphony of his should be as international as art itself; as
+international as the heart of the man who, seeing beyond hedges and
+frontiers and class-distinctions, claims the whole world as his
+“country,” and claims kinship with all people who walk upon the face of
+it.
+
+He got up and wandered back into the straggling little town. A new
+recruiting-poster on one of the hoardings caught his eye: a pink-kneed
+Highlander with arm outflung against a highly-coloured patchwork of
+field and hedge, demanding: “Isn’t this worth fighting for?”
+
+Dennis smiled as he answered the question: “It’s worth more than that;
+it’s worth—_not_ fighting for!”
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+He was in London again now, and the Conscription Bill had been passed.
+All men must go, except those who were medically unfit, indispensable in
+their present occupations, or had religious or conscientious scruples
+against the taking of life. These could appeal for exemption, and their
+cases would be heard before tribunals set up for the purpose. It sounded
+rational enough and humane enough that no man should be forced to fight
+against his convictions; but already there were howls of protest and
+indignation at this clause in the Military Service Act. It was offering
+a loophole of escape to cowards and shirkers ... easy enough for a man
+who was afraid to fight, to fake up scruples that would keep him safely
+at home, while better men went out and shed their blood for him.... The
+Government was too soft-hearted altogether ... scruples, indeed ...
+pampering a lot of weaklings.... Thus the “Daily Mail” and others of its
+kind. When it came to it, Dennis wondered, would the tribunals do
+justice, and how?
+
+He was walking up the Strand one Saturday afternoon to meet Barnaby at
+Miss Mowbray’s tea-shop. The matinée crowd from the Vaudeville Theatre
+was just pouring out on to the pavement when he came face to face with
+Antoinette and Rosabel Fayne. For a second he and Antoinette stared at
+each other, both blushing furiously, each doubtful as to whether the
+other intended to stop or pass on.
+
+Rosabel ended their indecision for them. “Oh, Mr. Blackwood, what a
+surprise, meeting you ... isn’t it a surprise, Antoinette? Do come along
+to tea with us, won’t you? It’s my tea-party—I mean it’s Antoinette’s
+birthday, and we’ve been to the theatre—only the pit, of course, but
+very dissipated in war-time, isn’t it? Shall we go to Fuller’s?”
+
+Dennis, very embarrassed, glanced at Antoinette, but her eyes were
+obstinately downcast, and she gave him no assistance whatever.
+
+“Do come,” Rosabel rattled on, “it’ll make it so jolly. This is my
+afternoon off, but I have to be back at the hospital by six.”
+
+“Then I think you’d both better come and have tea with me,” said Dennis.
+“I was on my way to meet a friend at Miss Mowbray’s.” He expected that
+Antoinette would protest here, or make some excuse not to follow his
+suggestion, but still she said nothing, and in silence walked along
+beside the talkative Rosabel.
+
+It was nearly six months since he had last seen her. In the interval,
+after his first bitter resentment had died down, he had scarcely thought
+of her, and he assumed that she had thought equally little of him.
+Everything had been over between them when he had made his final cut,
+long before that, really ... so it was quite ridiculous that he should
+now feel so constrained in her presence. Why had she given her tacit
+consent to this three-cornered party? What was her attitude? One of
+curiosity, no doubt, he reflected sardonically, curiosity as to what his
+own attitude might be. She wanted a fresh sensation; Antoinette was like
+that.... He decided that at all events he would not gratify that desire.
+
+They turned up a stone-flagged passage between the back of a theatre and
+a row of small shops, entered a narrow doorway, and descended the steep
+stairs into the tea-room. It was neither square nor oblong, neither
+circular nor octagonal; but seemed to be made up of a variety of odd
+corners of different shapes. A big fire burnt in the grate, and six or
+seven little tables of dark stained wood were spread for tea.
+
+Rosabel gave a cry of delight. “Oh, how lovely ... isn’t it too Bohemian
+for words? Such a quaint shape ... and the dim light ... and that cosy
+little table in the alcove ... have you ever been here before,
+Antoinette?”
+
+“Yes,” said Antoinette, speaking for the first time, “I’ve been here
+once before.” Once.... The day after he had asked her to marry him. Did
+he remember that, too, she wondered, as, much to Rosabel’s glee, they
+ensconced themselves at the table in the alcove, where Barnaby was
+already seated. She had met the crippled journalist several times
+before, and talked to him rather hectically while Dennis vanished behind
+the curtain which divided the tea-room from Miss Mowbray’s private
+sanctum and the kitchen. He was rather a long time chatting to Miss
+Mowbray and ordering the tea.... So much the better. When he came back
+she would no longer be able to talk; the beating of her heart choked her
+when she could actually look at him and hear his voice.
+
+This accidental meeting had been anticipated and mentally dramatised a
+thousand times over. One swift look between them, one touch: “It was all
+a mistake, Antoinette, I had to come back—It’s all right now ...
+dear....” Herein the imaginary meeting had invariably culminated;
+meeting longed for, almost prayed for during six weary months.
+
+He returned to their table, and still without seeking Antoinette’s eyes,
+and without speaking to her directly, embarked upon a desultory
+conversation with Barnaby. Through the small barred window near the
+ceiling, that was on a level with the street, Antoinette watched the
+legs and feet of the passers-by; legs and feet without bodies or heads,
+continually passing and passing. She remembered that thus, with an odd
+sort of fascination, she had watched them that first time, while Dennis
+had stumblingly tried to assure her that it was all right—that he was so
+glad. How much did he remember, she wondered again. And the footsteps of
+those strange bodiless legs on the pavement outside, echoed: how
+much—how much—how much?
+
+“Oh, but you’re not seeing this place at its best,” Dennis was informing
+Rosabel in answer to her enthusiastic praise of the tea-shop, “it’s
+empty to-day, but as a rule it’s crammed full of actors, journalists,
+artists and rebels of all descriptions.”
+
+(Thus he had played up to Grand’mère, when he had lunched at Cadogan
+Gardens, giving his audience what it wanted!)
+
+“Oh, how _exquisite_,” cried Rosabel, feeling that here indeed she was
+having her money’s worth, or rather Dennis’s; “I do so love rebels.
+Sometimes I think I’m one myself ... but it’s rather naughty of you not
+to be in khaki, isn’t it, Mr. Blackwood?”
+
+“Oh, you mustn’t try to air any military views here, Miss Fayne,”
+Barnaby twinkled at her from under his shaggy brows, “this is entirely a
+haunt of pacifists.”
+
+“What a sweet idea,” murmured Rosabel, who could always adapt her views
+to the needs of the moment; with equal flexibility she had transferred
+her one-time adoration for Marie Antoinette to the present Queen of the
+Belgians as being just as unfortunate and more up-to-date. “And how
+clever of you to have discovered this ‘haunt,’ as you call it, tucked
+away behind the theatre like this.”
+
+“I knew Kitty Mowbray before ever the tea-shop existed,” Barnaby
+explained, “she was on the staff of the ‘Daily Standard’ at the same
+time as I was; then the paper went bust, and she took up this instead.
+She does a roaring trade now.”
+
+Antoinette puffed nervously at her cigarette, and, through the haze of
+smoke, cast occasional surreptitious glances at Dennis. Often enough,
+during those six months, she had wondered if, when she saw him again,
+she would discover, as she had once discovered with Hester, that he
+meant nothing to her. He should by rights mean nothing to her. The love
+that he had awakened one day, and had not even come to claim the next,
+should indeed have been a short-lived emotion; short-lived as those few
+fleeting hours in the punt ... memory upon which, in view of his letter,
+she could only dwell with shame-flushed cheeks ... memory upon which,
+nevertheless, she dwelt again and again, striving to draw from it a
+little warmth with which to animate the dull, lifeless present. That
+love had not died during dreary days and nights of self-reproach, and
+longing for him to return, and conviction that he would not return, and
+more self-reproach ... days and nights of hope that to-morrow, at last,
+would bring the letter, the wire, the telephone-call that said that he
+was coming back to her.
+
+It was not dead now, but very acutely and painfully alive, as she sat
+looking at him; tracing with a half-fearful joy the familiar outline of
+his chin and jaw; listening to the familiar tones of his voice. She was
+grateful to the others for talking; she felt incapable of taking part in
+the conversation herself.
+
+Miss Mowbray entered with the tea.
+
+“Has O’Farrell been here to-day, Kitty?”
+
+The ex-newspaper-reporter, a sunny little woman in a blue linen overall,
+shook her head in reply to Barnaby’s question. “He’s broke again, poor
+dear. He had his last lot of sausages and mashed on tick last Friday,
+and I haven’t seen him since.”
+
+“Well, if he turns up after I’m gone, tell him, with my love, that he’s
+a confounded idiot, and that if he doesn’t deliver that cartoon of his
+in time we shall never be able to get it into this week’s ‘Dove.’”
+
+“I’ll tell him all right,” smiled Miss Mowbray.
+
+“‘The Dove’ is the name of the pacifist paper Barnaby is editing,”
+Dennis explained for Rosabel’s benefit.
+
+Rosabel clasped her hands ecstatically. “‘The Dove’—Oh, what a _sweet_
+name!”
+
+Barnaby grunted. “Yes, that’s all that is sweet about it. It’s a very
+vehement peace-dove, I assure you. We expect our office to be raided
+every day. O’Farrell’s political cartoon will do the trick, I should
+think, if he delivers it in time, instead of indulging in riotous orgies
+of sausages and mashed. It’s Lord Derby and the Kaiser playing a game of
+Oranges and Lemons while a stream of unfit recruits passes under their
+outstretched arms to their death.”
+
+Later on, a very bad-tempered Crispin joined the group, nodded curtly to
+the two girls, and sat down between Dennis and Barnaby. “F-fools!” he
+ejaculated, when at last he became articulate. “N-narrowminded idiots!”
+
+“There, there, what’s the matter now?” Miss Mowbray, who had come to
+take his order for tea, tried to soothe him.
+
+Crispin spluttered: “A b-beauty. F-full-sized g-grand. P-perfect tone.”
+Then, with a rush: “S-said they wouldn’t have it in the house any more.”
+
+“Who wouldn’t have what in the house any more?” queried Rosabel, quite
+bewildered, but very interested.
+
+“My uncle and aunt. Their B-blüthner piano. Because it was a Hun m-make.
+So I said they n-needn’t have me in their b-beastly house any more
+either. And n-no more they shan’t!” concluded the irate musician. After
+a deep draught of Dennis’s tea he found strength to add: “D-don’t
+deserve to win the war—p-people like that.”
+
+Antoinette smiled at the vision of Crispin and the Blüthner grand
+homeless upon the pavement in Fitzjohn’s Avenue; but she began to wish
+that the party would diminish in size, instead of increasing. The larger
+the party, the easier for Dennis to avoid meeting her eyes. Perhaps if
+she were alone with him—was it possible that he was really so impervious
+to memory as he seemed, absorbed in some political discussion with
+Barnaby, while Rosabel strove to assure Crispin that she, too, was a
+rebel? ... assurance pathetically incongruous with her peaked little
+face under the hideous flat felt hat that constituted part of her
+nurse’s uniform. If only the others would go—the thought choked her. If
+they went, would he throw off this pose of indifference? Was it only a
+pose, though? What if it were genuine? Or what if it hid—not agitation
+caused by this sudden meeting, but actual dislike of her presence? There
+had been dislike between the lines of that last letter, perhaps
+something even stronger than dislike. And while all his other letters,
+his charming letters, seemed mere faded ghosts, that one letter had
+never lost its power to sting. Did he still hate her? She must know. She
+could not possibly make matters worse than they were already by knowing
+the truth.
+
+Eventually the others began to disperse. Barnaby hobbled up the stairs
+on his crutches, and returned to his office in Fleet Street; Crispin
+took his grievance into Miss Mowbray’s sanctum; Rosabel, suddenly aware
+that it was long past six, scuttled off in the direction of her
+hospital.
+
+Dennis and Antoinette were left standing at the foot of the stairs.
+
+“I must go, too,” she said, hoping that he would give some sign at last,
+or make some attempt to detain her.
+
+“Is Grand’mère waiting for you with an inquisition as to how and where
+the afternoon has been spent, and isn’t there a lie ready to meet the
+situation?”
+
+So he remembered that much! She gave him one swift look to ascertain if
+he were about to betray how much else he remembered. But his smile was
+quite inscrutable. For very shame at having been mistaken in her
+impression that he was on the point of behaving as he had always done in
+the imaginary version of this meeting, she flushed scarlet as she
+answered: “I have almost forgotten how to lie to Grand’mère.”
+
+“A pity that a practice which you have really brought to a fine art
+should be allowed to rust,” he commented cynically; and his cynicism
+hurt her, as had his previous indifference and apparent lack of memory,
+and one or two other things, absurd little things ... like seeing that
+he had a new slouch hat and brushed his hair straight back, instead of
+parting it at the side ... things that she would scarcely have noticed
+in the days when she did not care for him. She felt as if she had been
+mentally skinned; as if every nerve were exposed and quivering, and as
+if there were nothing about him that had not some mysterious power to
+hurt her.
+
+She said in reply to his remark: “You see, there has been no need to
+keep in practice.”
+
+He raised his eyebrows in amused astonishment. “Do you mean to tell me
+that you have altogether ceased to cast a veil of fiction over your
+goings and comings?”
+
+She was silent. She could not tell him that she had expended all her
+store of unveracity on the invention of excuses that had to be plausible
+enough to account for the cessation of letters, outings and
+telephone-calls, and that yet had to be calculated not to put him in a
+bad light, so that in case he ever came back—she had not wanted to make
+the severance seem too abrupt, so for a while she let it be assumed that
+they were still seeing each other occasionally, and the hardest lies of
+all were those she had to tell when she went out with quite irrelevant
+people, and allowed the family to take it for granted that she was with
+Dennis.
+
+“_Eh bien, il était aimable, le jeune Blackwood?_”
+
+And for pride’s sake: “_Oui, Grand’mère, très aimable_.” Easy enough to
+fib about a good time that one had had; difficult beyond belief to fib
+about a good time that one had not had. Antoinette had lost her taste
+for fibbing since then. Besides, as she had told him, there had been
+nothing and no one in her life to justify or necessitate it. And she was
+too much of an artist to waste a good lie, when the truth would do as
+well.
+
+She repeated: “I must go now ...” and thought how grotesque it was that
+they should be standing side by side, laboriously making conversation,
+when a year ago in this same place, he had held her in his arms and
+kissed her. Why couldn’t he kiss her now, while there was no one about?
+Once, he would have been quick enough to seize the opportunity. And now,
+not one of those unwanted kisses that she was not paying for with a
+separate stab of longing.
+
+“I’ll see you to your station,” he said, since he could not very well do
+otherwise. “Charing Cross Metropolitan for Sloane Square, isn’t it?”
+
+“Yes.” She smiled in memory of the innumerable times that he had seen
+her home by that route.
+
+They walked down the Strand together. After a while, he broke the
+silence with, “Does your mother’s heart still bleed for France? It was
+France, wasn’t it, or was it Belgium?”
+
+She laughed feverishly. “It doesn’t matter. Her heart is always bleeding
+for something—symbolically. Actually, she’s never been as happy in her
+life as now.”
+
+“How’s that?”
+
+“She recites patriotic poems—the ‘_Carillon_’ and ‘_Belgique meurtrie_’
+at all the fashionable charity performances.”
+
+Dennis laughed aloud. He could so well imagine Henriette de Courcy with
+her deep voice and her dramatic gestures and her symbolically bleeding
+heart, reciting with much relish to an audience composed chiefly of
+foreign ambassadors and English ladies of title.
+
+“Mother tried ever so hard to make me take it up, too,” said Antoinette,
+“I suppose it would have made quite an effective picture, mother and
+daughter, both with Parisian accents, both moaning for their lost
+Belgium. But I really couldn’t bear it.”
+
+“I should think not;” for the first time she detected a note of genuine
+interest in his tone. “And have they tried to persuade you into other
+sorts of war-work?”
+
+“Oh, yes ... translating French into English (because you know both
+languages so well, dear), or cutting bread and butter in a canteen, or
+emptying slops in a hospital. I’ve not done anything.”
+
+“From conviction?”
+
+“Oh, no, not from conviction,” she said in a listless way, “more from
+laziness.” She added wistfully, “I wish I had convictions—any sort of
+convictions. Just to have them.” If one had convictions, one had at
+least something in one’s life that would stand rock-firm; something by
+which to steer; one was not helplessly buffeted about upon shoreless
+seas of emotion.
+
+Dennis smiled. “You seem to consider convictions a luxury: they have to
+be paid for pretty dearly, I can tell you, if one stands by them.”
+
+She had been so absorbed in the conflicting sensations of the moment
+that she had not realised what might be in store for Dennis if he stood
+by his convictions.
+
+“What—what is going to happen to you?” she asked tentatively.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. “I wait till I’m called up; then I lodge my
+appeal; then I appear before the tribunal; and then—heaven only knows!”
+
+“I see,” she murmured, too shy, almost too afraid of him to say more, or
+to express the hope that he would get his exemption.
+
+Silence fell upon them again. They were nearly at the station now. And
+there he would take his leave of her, with that new, half-cynical
+politeness; and he would not ask if he could see her again, and she
+would not see him again until chance flung them together once more,
+perhaps in another six months, perhaps in a year, perhaps never. And
+there would be one horrible moment when she would have to watch him
+disappearing into the crowd, knowing that in this vast town, and amongst
+these vast shoals of people, the odds were a million to one against
+their meeting again. With every second the hope diminished that he would
+still say something, do something that would spare her that one moment.
+
+He took her ticket at the booking-office and presented it to her.
+“Well—good-bye.”
+
+She disregarded his extended hand, yielded to her fear and to her
+frantic desire not merely to be dependent upon blind chance for her next
+glimpse of him. “Please—Dennis....”
+
+Something of her desperate anguish pierced at last through his
+assumption that all she wanted of him was a fresh sensation. He looked
+at her white face and quivering mouth. “Why, Antoinette, what is it?”
+
+She shook her head, not daring to speak, lest the tears that scorched
+her downcast eyelids should fall.
+
+“What is it?” he repeated gently.
+
+She tried to smile; made a great effort to gain self-control, but
+nevertheless it sounded lame and piteous as she stammered: “C-can’t
+we—just be friends?”
+
+He knew then that it was not friendship that she asked of him; saw also
+that he was face to face with some very real emotion. A certain amount
+of curiosity, blended with a slight softening of his attitude towards
+her, was responsible for his next sentence.
+
+“We can’t very well leave things like this, can we? There’s a great deal
+to be talked about.”
+
+A sigh of relief escaped her. She was to be spared the moment she had so
+dreaded; spared at least for a while. She had been reprieved, and memory
+mocked her with a vivid picture of the last time she had experienced
+that sensation: going up the stairs of the tea-shop, after Dennis had
+unwillingly acceded to her plea for six months’ time in which to make
+her decision.
+
+“Come for a stroll now—it’s nearly your dinner-time, though, isn’t it?
+Hadn’t you better telephone to say you’re not coming home?”
+
+She laughed tremulously, and found her voice again. “Yes, if you can
+think of a suitable lie for me to tell them. They mustn’t know I’m with
+you.”
+
+“Oh, you’ve met a friend of my mother’s, who insists on your dining and
+going to the theatre with her. That’s the usual sort of tale, isn’t it?
+And it’ll cover all emergencies in case we’re late.”
+
+Antoinette nodded and disappeared into the telephone-box, where she
+spent considerable time placating a resentful father at the other end.
+Anatole declared that she ought to come home to dinner on her birthday,
+as she had been out the whole afternoon.
+
+“I had to say that your mother’s friend was sailing for America
+to-morrow, and that this was my last chance of seeing her,” Antoinette
+told Dennis when she rejoined him, “and when Father began to argue, I
+rang off....” She did not know what was in store for her now, but at
+least she had enjoyed those few uneasy minutes of lying to the irate
+Anatole.
+
+They left the station, and walked down towards the Embankment.
+
+“Have I been a brute to you, Antoinette?”
+
+“No—Oh, no ...” fervently she denied his self-accusation. “It wasn’t
+your fault, not any of it. It was all my fault. I made you hate me.”
+
+“Yes,” he admitted, “I did hate you. But it wasn’t entirely your fault
+either. There were so many other difficulties and complications that
+helped.”
+
+She said: “Yes, I know....”
+
+“Do you know—do you?” At the intense eagerness of his voice, some
+instinct warned her to banish all trace of interest or curiosity from
+her own. She replied in dead level tones: “Yes, of course I know ...”
+and wondered what had prompted her to the lie.
+
+“Are you sure?” he persisted, as if he very much wanted her to be sure.
+
+And again she repeated: “Yes ...” and waited in breathless tension for
+what he would say next. She had no idea as to the nature of the
+difficulties and complications to which he alluded; had vainly sought an
+explanation of them during the last six months. But she knew now why she
+had lied: perhaps he would solve the mystery for her, if she pretended
+that already she had solved it for herself.
+
+“That makes things very much easier,” he said, “it was that which first
+drew me to you at Amberhurst—thinking you’d understand, that you must
+understand, because you had the same kink of abnormality as I had.”
+
+“Just the same,” she murmured, still utterly ignorant of his meaning.
+
+“You see I always knew I was hopelessly different from other men. Women
+never appealed to me. All the attraction I ever felt was for——” He
+stopped, still uncertain of her, but it was beginning to dawn on her at
+last, and she helped him out again.
+
+“Yes—I know.”
+
+“Well: then you came along, and I spotted you at once. And seeing that
+the taint was in you too, I thought it must make you as lonely and
+miserable as it made me, and I imagined that the two of us could fight
+the loneliness better together.”
+
+He broke off to let some people pass between them; and she, confused and
+bewildered, but also strangely excited by this revelation, wondered if
+she could succeed in hiding from him the fact that she had never been
+aware of any particular taint in herself!
+
+“It might have been all right if you’d said ‘yes’ at once,” he resumed,
+“only you hung back.”
+
+“I’m sorry, Dennis.”
+
+“Ah, don’t say that. You were only being true to yourself; I see that
+now, but at the time, it made me furious. You wouldn’t go on and you
+wouldn’t go back. You just kept me dangling.”
+
+He set these accusations forth in a mournful, passionless way, as if
+merely stating his case, and with no desire to wound her. But she felt
+the wound nevertheless, and the pain of it gave her a queer thrill of
+elation. Better a thousand times that he should hurt her like this, than
+that there should be between them that dense impenetrable veil of
+silences and evasions. Even now, whenever for a moment she lost the
+sound of his voice amid the noise of wheels and the blaring of
+motor-horns, she feared that he would say nothing more, and that the
+veil would fall again before it had been properly lifted. And strung up
+to an almost unbearable pitch of excitement, she waited to catch his
+jerked-out sentences again.
+
+“I always thought that one day I’d be able to tell you all about
+myself——”
+
+“Oh, if you had, if only you had.... I tried so often to make you tell
+me, and you never would.”
+
+“Yes, that was where I made my mistake. I let my first impression of
+you, the correct one, become obscured....” Subtle fascination in the
+knowledge that only by reason of his discovery of some taint or kink
+which they had in common, could he at last reveal all that the veil had
+hidden of dark turmoil, dark moods and impulses.
+
+“We couldn’t go on as we were. I felt dishonourable and loathed myself
+for not telling you, or breaking with you, but one seemed as difficult
+and impossible as the other.”
+
+“I wouldn’t let you break,” she said softly, “I remember.... And of
+course you couldn’t tell me anything. And you must have hated me more
+and more for making you hate yourself.”
+
+“You understand well enough now,” he cried, “I was a fool ever to doubt
+that you would.”
+
+On and on they walked, and the rumble of traffic and the hurrying
+footsteps made a strange accompaniment to words that were more strange
+yet. On and on, dodging other pedestrians, plunging across roads. But
+she was stimulated beyond all consciousness of fatigue.
+
+“What was it,” hesitatingly she spoke, choosing her words with care, so
+that he might not divine her ignorance, “what was it, that time at
+Amberhurst, that showed you?”
+
+“My child, the way you looked at that woman, was quite enough.”
+
+Hester.... So that was it!
+
+“You were in love with her, weren’t you?”
+
+“Yes....”
+
+“And there had been others, hadn’t there? Other women?”
+
+“Yes—Oh, yes.” Rapidly she cast her mind over those school-girl passions
+of her early youth—Miss Prescot—Natasha—passing flickers of emotion
+aroused here and there by the beauty or attraction of women she had met
+in hotels abroad—finally Hester.... This, then, was the taint of which
+he spoke; the taint that they shared, he and she. Only whereas he had
+always striven against these tendencies in himself, in herself she had
+never regarded them as abnormal. It had seemed disappointing, but not in
+the least unnatural, that all her passionate longings should have been
+awakened by women, instead of by members of the opposite sex.
+
+“And you were thinking of them, weren’t you, when you said you’d known
+what the real thing was like?”
+
+“Yes....” This, at all events, was the truth.
+
+“You’ve never known it with a man, have you?”
+
+“Never, Dennis....” Never until now.
+
+“I’ve known it, once, with one of my own sex ... that was a long time
+ago. It was terrible ... and rather wonderful, but it had to be beaten
+down, and beaten down again, and the scar has never quite healed.”
+
+She stole a glance at him, as he strode along at her side, a furrow
+between his deep-set eyes. A wave of burning tenderness and longing came
+over her. It was a shame that he should have to suffer so horribly from
+the consciousness of his abnormality, while her own had never caused her
+the slightest uneasiness. She understood now all the misery of his
+schooldays, everything that he had half-told her in his letters. He had
+put the key into her hands, hoping that she would be able to fit it into
+the lock ... only she had never been able to do so. She had not even
+tried—furiously she lashed herself with reproach—she had been far too
+indifferent to him, far too much absorbed in her love for Hester, that
+very love which proved her so closely akin to him. But he had always
+suffered, as a boy, as a man ... and she had gone scot-free. If only she
+could make up to him for all that he had been through, for the times
+that he had in vain asked her for understanding, for the times that she
+had thought of him without love, and kissed him without love. She had
+been blind and insensible before, because she did not love him; but now
+it seemed that every pang he had suffered, every tortured desire that
+had been his, found its reflection and counterpart in her.
+
+“I’ve never known what it was to love a woman. Not really. I didn’t love
+you, Antoinette ... you know that. And you didn’t love me, either, did
+you?”
+
+“No ...” she added under her breath: “Not until it was too late.”
+
+She saw him flush; caught his murmured: “Oh, my dear ...” but if he said
+more, it was lost in the rumble of wheels. Heedless of the direction in
+which they had been walking, they had almost worked their way back to
+Trafalgar Square. Overhead the searchlights were flashing rapier-blades,
+continually crossed and re-crossed upon the background of thick dark
+blue. Whitehall was crowded. She had a moment’s panic, lest she should
+lose sight of Dennis. In this bewildering sea of faces and figures that
+pressed in upon her from all sides, she would never be able to find him
+again. They would go different ways, each hunting for the other ... but
+they would never find each other again in the sickly half-light of the
+darkened streets. There were so many different ways that they might go.
+
+The next minute she was reassured by the pressure of his arm against
+hers. “Shall we go into Lyons’ for a meal? I saw you didn’t eat anything
+at tea.”
+
+Nor could she eat anything now. She was too tired and excited; but she
+was touched by his concern for her, and followed him through the
+swing-doors into the crowded and garishly-lighted Corner House. The
+strains of a rag-time band fell upon their ears; the sound of mingled
+voices and laughter, rattle of crockery, footsteps of waiters....
+
+“Not quite the right _mise-en-scène_ for a psychological dissertation,”
+Dennis smiled as they seated themselves at a small corner table.
+
+“Oh, it’s good enough as a contrast,” she laughed, and reflected that
+she was indeed having an uncommon birthday-party ... uncommon
+birthday-presents, too. Meeting him had been the first; that moment at
+the station when she had had her reprieve, had been the second; the way
+he had suddenly taken her arm in the crowd, was another. Were there more
+to come, she wondered? She dared not hope for more, but accepted with
+gratitude each as it came.
+
+“It’s a case of ‘like to like’ with us.” He had given his order for
+dinner and they faced each other across the narrow table. “And because
+there’s a certain amount of the masculine element in you, and of the
+feminine element in me, we both have to suffer in the same way.”
+
+She felt suddenly compelled to honesty. “I haven’t suffered—because I
+didn’t quite realise ... about myself.”
+
+“And I’ve made you realise...? Oh, I’m sorry.”
+
+“Don’t be sorry,” she implored, “I should have had to know sooner or
+later.” And she was glad that it was he who had made her realise ...
+glad....
+
+“Yes,” he assented, “of course you would. Not much peace of oblivion for
+people like us. Not much happiness either, so far as I can see. Not when
+one always has to fight and watch and take care, and pay the penalty for
+having instincts that aren’t like other people’s.”
+
+Yet she had been happy, blissfully happy during her brief passion for
+Hester. She had not fought nor watched nor taken care, for she had never
+realised the need of doing either. She felt as if she had not been
+justified in being happy, as if it were unfair to him that she should
+have escaped paying the penalty. But in future she would not escape.
+Suffering must inevitably accompany realisation. Again she was glad: for
+by suffering shared, she would earn the right to stand by him in his
+loneliness.
+
+Clatter of plates; the continual coming and going of people between the
+tables; the rattle of money on the cashier’s desk; the cloying sweetness
+of “Until,” played by the band. And Dennis’s low voice reaching her
+across all the other conflicting sounds.
+
+“We’re disinherited from the legitimate ways of happiness, you and I.
+We’re Ishmaelites, outcast for ever from the world of normal men and
+women. Yet it isn’t our fault that we were born with unusual natures any
+more than it’s a cripple’s fault that he’s born with a deformed body.
+But they turn from us as if we were lepers. What do they know of the
+continual struggle to be decent, and to keep decent, with something
+always tugging you the other way? They don’t know the ghastliness of
+having to pretend to be as normal as they, and all the while to be
+stifling and suppressing the most vital side of yourself—the love-side.
+And they don’t know what it’s like to go in perpetual fear of discovery,
+and fear of your own condemnation as well as theirs.... I’m twenty-six,
+Antoinette, and I’ve known, or almost known ever since I was fifteen;
+and in all those eleven years I’ve never told a soul.”
+
+“I’m glad you’re telling me now....”
+
+“My dear, whom should I tell, if not you?”
+
+Swiftly she raised her eyes to his and dropped them again. “Thank you,
+Dennis....”
+
+... They stood outside the swing-doors and shivered in the night air.
+The music and light and voices were cut off behind them, and they were
+caught up in the dark swirl of traffic again. He piloted her across the
+road and into a taxi; gave the address to the driver; slammed the door.
+
+And then his arms were round her, his lips clinging to hers ... and the
+shock of joy was so poignant, that she averted her face and buried it
+against his coat-sleeve, so that he might not find her lips again, nor
+kiss them again just yet—not just yet.... Let her hold this moment fast,
+hold it and hold it against memory of all the days and nights of
+fruitless yearning, against the dread of days and nights that might
+perhaps still be to come.
+
+She stirred a little in his arms, and he kissed her again.
+
+“Dennis—I love you....”
+
+Strange for him also, to hear this from a woman. “My dear....”
+
+Her arm stole round his neck, drew his cheek down beside hers. And she
+remembered how with just these gestures she had formerly counterfeited
+passion.
+
+“I love you, Dennis....” Words breathed scarcely above a whisper; words
+that she had not spoken to him before; words that she derived a queer
+sort of delight from repeating now, as if only by admitting and
+re-admitting her love for him could she atone for her past insincerity.
+
+After a while she said: “Will you tell me what it means, Dennis, that I
+can care for you like this?” She really meant: “Doesn’t it prove me
+perfectly normal after all?”
+
+And he understood and answered the unspoken part of her question. “It’s
+only another proof of your abnormality, my poor child. No normal woman
+could care for me, I’m sure. You only do, because you are what you are,
+and I am what I am. It’s ‘like to like,’ as I said.”
+
+“Then I’m glad I’m like that.” Glad of anything that enabled her to love
+him so well.
+
+“You mustn’t be glad; it’s a curse, a terrible curse. You’ll know some
+day!”
+
+Yes, some day she might know, but what matter now, while he held her
+close, and between his warnings kissed her, and kissed her again, so
+that her face and throat and hands alike burned with the touch of his
+lips.... Exhausted, finally, she leant back against his shoulder.
+
+“Tired, dear?”
+
+She nodded; too tired even for speech now; dead tired with tramping up
+and down the streets while they talked; and with the nervous tension and
+excitement; dead tired, but happy, she told herself triumphantly, even
+if she were never to be happy again.
+
+He almost lifted her out of the cab. “You’ve had a strenuous day—your
+birthday, too, isn’t it? Many happy returns.... Did your grandmother
+give you a needle-case or a pair of embroidery-scissors? Good-night, my
+dear....”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+She asked no questions of the future; scarcely allowed herself to wonder
+into what strange channels they were about to drift. Not for a moment
+did she delude herself into belief that she could save him from the
+shadowy danger which had always threatened him, nor into belief that he
+loved her, or could ever love her. But at least all was clear between
+them; it was to her that he had first spoken after his years of
+self-imposed silence; he no longer hated her.... Therefore she was
+happy, even though she knew that her hold on happiness was as precarious
+as that of a person clinging to a very small raft in a very stormy sea.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“It’s wrong of me to do this, and wrong of you to let me,” he declared
+at their next meeting, when without an instant’s hesitation, they found
+their way into each other’s arms.
+
+She laughed up at him. “Why is it wrong? I know, and you know, and we
+each know that the other knows, so nobody is deceiving anybody.”
+
+“You’re an immoral woman,” he teased her.
+
+“I don’t care if I am!”
+
+“Yes, but what’s going to become of us, Antoinette?”
+
+With fast-beating heart, she yet managed to say lightly: “I’m sure I
+don’t know, dear.”
+
+As it was she who had been responsible for bringing about yesterday’s
+situation, she must not let him imagine for an instant that she thought
+she had any claim upon him, or that she expected him to marry her.
+_Marry_ her—she had forgotten: marriage was not for such as she,
+Antoinette reminded herself severely.... Only it was a pity that she
+could not take the same serious view of her “taint” as he did of his. It
+seemed so absolutely normal and right that she should love him. But she
+must remember that she was an outcast and an Ishmaelite, and it was all
+great fun, as long as they could be outcasts and Ishmaelites together!
+She seemed to have recaptured some of the exuberant joyousness and
+vitality of the Amberhurst days.
+
+“And I’m sure I don’t know either,” he replied, “there’s all this
+military business hanging over me, too; it’s impossible to decide
+anything yet.”
+
+“Quite impossible,” she agreed; and finally, to put him at his ease and
+free him from all sense of responsibility towards her: “So don’t let’s
+bother.”
+
+“Idiot-child,” he laughed and kissed her.
+
+She had to cloak her outings with him now under a most elaborate set of
+falsehoods. Already Dennis was in the family’s bad books for having
+taken no decisive steps towards proposing for her hand in marriage; and
+since that explanation the other night, it was more necessary than ever
+that he should be kept a “guilty secret” from the family. She revelled
+in having this secret to keep. It heightened her enjoyment of the good
+hours with him, as contrasted with the dull ones spent with her family.
+If, as he had said, people like themselves were “disinherited from the
+legitimate ways of happiness,” then it behoved her to snatch what
+happiness she could, when and where she could.
+
+They had had dinner at Lyons’ one night and were walking up Shaftesbury
+Avenue towards the Coliseum. She always loved these evening expeditions;
+loved the mingled excitement and security that she felt in knowing that
+he was beside her in the shifting crowds.
+
+They had to halt on the kerb at Charing Cross Road, while the stream of
+traffic flowed past them; and suddenly, from the crowd on the opposite
+side of the street, a figure detached itself for Antoinette; a man,
+stalking hurriedly in the direction of Trafalgar Square. Something in
+the walk, graceful and yet athletic, attracted her notice. She turned to
+Dennis, and saw that his eyes were riveted to the same figure, now
+rapidly vanishing from sight.
+
+“Is that someone you know?” she asked.
+
+He started, like a person awakened from heavy slumbers. “Someone
+I—thought I knew....”
+
+He said nothing more, but all that evening remained abstracted and
+curiously restless.
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+Some days later, Dennis and Antoinette, on their way to Miss Mowbray’s,
+fetched Barnaby from his office.
+
+“We’ve got a new acquisition at the tea-shop,” he said, “a man called
+Rutherford. He’s an absolute firebrand.”
+
+“Pacifist?” queried Dennis.
+
+“Of course. The most passionate pacifist I’ve ever encountered. Your
+most eloquent tirades, and mine, and even O’Farrell’s pale to
+insignificance beside his. He’s a friend of O’Farrell’s—came down the
+other day with him and the Taylor woman.”
+
+Dennis laughed. “How is the O’Farrell _ménage_ progressing?”
+
+“Don’t ask me,” returned Barnaby, “it’s Benny Joseph’s affair just now.
+He’s been acting as go-between for the two parties. I believe the spirit
+of melodrama which they exhale appeals to him as an actor.”
+
+“I hope they’ll be there to-day,” said Antoinette. She was enjoying more
+and more these afternoons at Miss Mowbray’s, and the haphazard meetings
+with people different enough from her family’s set of acquaintances. “I
+love melodrama.”
+
+Barnaby smiled at her eagerness. “They can supply you with plenty of it.
+She’s a mad Irishwoman, married to an intensely worthy British husband.
+They live with his people in Chelsea, and they’ve let the studio that’s
+attached to their house, to Conn O’Farrell, who is also Irish, also mad,
+and a bit of a genius into the bargain.... Well, you can do the rest in
+your head, can’t you?”
+
+“Some of it, perhaps,” laughed Antoinette, “but not all.”
+
+“No, you’re right, there is rather a lot. This Rutherford man has been
+lecturing Conn on the folly of wasting his time with a woman, when he
+ought to be devoting himself entirely to the Cause—and then the woman
+goes and weeps on Benny Joseph’s shoulder, and says she’s going to
+commit suicide because Conn doesn’t love her any more—and then Conn
+comes and weeps on Benny’s other shoulder, and says he’s going to commit
+suicide because _she_ doesn’t love him any more. And so on _ad
+infinitum_. If Benny has succeeded in snatching them both back
+simultaneously from the brink of suicide, I expect they’ll be there
+to-day.”
+
+They were. When Dennis, Barnaby and Antoinette descended into the
+tea-shop they found Conn O’Farrell and Mrs. Taylor seated at a table
+with Benny Joseph and Everard Walters, a very handsome, dark-eyed young
+man who was acting at the theatre next door.
+
+Dennis introduced Antoinette all round, adding: “You’d better sit down
+and talk to Benny, child. He’s got a perfectly respectable family in
+Hampstead, even if he _is_ on the stage.”
+
+“I don’t see why a family in Hampstead should render me entirely
+innocuous,” protested the young Jew.
+
+“Oh, but it does, Benny. You know that your wild Bohemian ways are only
+skin-deep, and that one day you’ll settle down with some nice little
+girl of your own people, and forget that you ever knew the smell of
+grease-paint.”
+
+Benny looked hurt, and Antoinette said: “Never mind; I’ll talk to you,
+even if you are respectable.”
+
+“That’s nice of you!” Benny turned to Dennis: “Is the lady a
+sympathiser?”
+
+Dennis laughed. “She hasn’t got any convictions, or if she has, they’re
+entirely plastic, aren’t they, Antoinette? But we’ll make a real convert
+of her before we’ve done. Here’s the one before last!” He broke off to
+greet the lank-haired undersized youth who had entered shortly after
+them, “you’re a first-rate advertisement for the Cause, Oswald.”
+
+Oswald Forsyth turned a pair of mournful grey eyes up to the ceiling,
+and struck an attitude. “Plucked from the very doors of the
+recruiting-office,” he declaimed, “and made to see the light of the true
+faith by Barnaby’s persuasive eloquence. Now on the staff of ‘The Dove,’
+and one of the most inspired pacifist poets of the age, eh, Barnaby?”
+
+“Not so bad,” grunted Barnaby, and disposed his crutches under the
+table, “not so bad, considering you’ve only just left your slate and
+copy-books behind you. Have you had tea yet, O’Farrell, or shall I order
+it?”
+
+“You may order it,” laughed the Irishman, “but it’s divil a chance that
+you’ll get it. I did order a pot of China tea and some cakes, but Miss
+Mowbray has forgotten us the day, and Pegeen here starving for sight of
+a penny bun. It’s Roy Radford and his performing Flappers that have
+consumed all the food, and there’s himself in the midst of them,
+devouring the last muffin in the establishment!”
+
+The plump little theatrical producer, who had overheard this from his
+table in the far corner, looked up and beamed; and the half dozen
+long-haired, long-legged and very pretty flappers who were with him,
+protested hotly against Conn’s accusation of greed.
+
+“You story!” ... “When Flossie hasn’t even had her third cup of tea
+yet!” ... “And I’ve only had four cakes—teeny ones.” ... “You’re a mean
+cat, Mr. O’Farrell!”
+
+Miss Mowbray bustled in with a heavily-laden tray. “Sorry to keep you
+waiting, Mr. O’Farrell. Here’s your Welsh Rarebit.”
+
+“That’s m-my Welsh Rarebit,” declared Crispin Burgess, sitting in lonely
+grandeur at a table all by himself, “I ordered it y-yesterday.”
+
+“I don’t care if you ordered it last year,” returned Conn, “I’ll keep it
+in pawn till our tea and cakes appear.”
+
+“It’ll be s-stone-cold by then.”
+
+“It will not,” said Pegeen, “for I will eat it this very minute. I like
+Welsh Rarebit. Mr. Burgess can have our cakes, if they come this side of
+Christmas.”
+
+Crispin spluttered: “I hate c-cakes,” and came over to dispute his claim
+upon the Welsh Rarebit, which Pegeen was already in the act of
+demolishing, the while she twinkled mischievously across at the six
+flappers, who one and all smiled back at her. There was something about
+her that irresistibly drew smiles, Antoinette thought; not beauty, for
+there was little enough of that in the wide generous mouth, the tilted
+nose, and the untidy tangle of black hair, but something more subtle
+than beauty; fascination, perhaps.
+
+“Dear me, have I made a muddle again?” enquired Miss Mowbray sunnily,
+returning with relays of cake and jam for Roy Radford’s voracious
+troupe, “doesn’t Mr. Burgess look cross? Was it baked beans and tomatoes
+you ordered? I do hope not, because I gave them to Mr. Walters, and he’s
+eaten them up long ago.”
+
+“I took what the gods gave me—in lieu of the fruit-salad and wafers I
+had ordered—and was content,” said the actor in his beautiful purring
+voice.
+
+“There now, isn’t that too tiresome of me? But I do wonder whom those
+baked beans can have belonged to....” Miss Mowbray, balancing a trayful
+of crockery, relapsed into a profound reverie, from which she presently
+emerged to say: “There’s Vera Mansfield, I must go and talk to her. She
+was married two days ago, just before Mr. Mansfield was arrested. Wasn’t
+it splendid of her?”
+
+Antoinette looked up with eager interest; caught an impression of a
+plain little woman with earnest eyes; and she was thrilled and rather
+awe-struck at the idea that this woman had “stood by” the conscientious
+objector, up to the very gates of prison.
+
+Evidently it appealed in just the same way to young Oswald.
+“Splendid”—with shining eyes he echoed Miss Mowbray, “it’s great,
+it’s—it’s almost unbelievable, people going through with it like that to
+the last.”
+
+Antoinette smiled. “Well, you’re going through with it too, aren’t you?”
+
+“Me? Oh, rather! None of your half-and-half for this child....” He added
+with a slightly wistful expression: “But it is splendid, isn’t it?”
+
+Mrs. Mansfield spent a few minutes in conversation with Miss Mowbray,
+and went out again; and as she did so, a short young man wearing a
+yellow felt hat and a green muffler, pelted down the stairs, fell over
+Barnaby’s crutches, and announced in a breathless, husky voice:
+“_Everard_—_Benny_—I’ve got it, actually got it!”
+
+“Got what?” Everard enquired languidly.
+
+“My exemption, you ass, three months’ exemption.”
+
+“And on whatever grounds did you appeal?” demanded Barnaby, “you haven’t
+any convictions that I’m aware of.”
+
+“Sole-support-of-widowed-mother,” said Harry Hope glibly, “but if
+someone doesn’t give me a part in something soon, my widowed mother will
+be the sole support of _me_!”
+
+“A pity they’ve only allowed her three months of existence,” mused
+Everard.
+
+Harry looked perturbed. He was fond of his mother.
+
+“I expect he can appeal again,” said Benny.
+
+“I can—they said I could—but that won’t prolong the old lady’s life.”
+
+“It is you who will have to seek to prolong it with every care and
+attention in your power.”
+
+Harry burst into peals of raucous laughter, and Everard winced. “For
+heavens’ sake, curb that high-explosive laugh. It shatters the nerves,
+Harry, it grates....”
+
+The flappers looked over at him and giggled, and wearily Everard
+shrugged his shoulders. During his career on the stage, he had
+specialised in playing the parts of cardinals; majestic cardinals; wily
+cardinals; jovial cardinals; suave cardinals. And although at present,
+work being scarce, he was playing a German spy in the farce next door,
+and masking his beautiful diction with a guttural Teutonic accent, the
+peculiar pussy-cat manner that had made him invaluable as the cardinal
+in “Pippa Passes,” still clung to him in everyday life.
+
+Pegeen, in the intervals of consuming Crispin’s Welsh Rarebit, was
+taking Antoinette into her confidence. “Is it a friend of Dennis
+Blackwood’s you are, my dear? Then you must come and see Conn and me in
+the studio one day. We’ll have a party, we will that. I am so happy this
+day, that I could kiss everybody. I could kiss Benny Joseph this very
+minute, for glory be to God, we owe it all to him!”
+
+“Oh, I don’t wish to compete with the deity, Mrs. Taylor,” murmured
+Benny.
+
+“‘Mrs. Taylor,’ indeed; My name’s Pegeen. I would just as soon you
+called me ‘Margaret,’ as my parents-in-law do, and my husband, God rest
+his soul——”
+
+“D-didn’t know he was d-dead,” pronounced Crispin.
+
+“He’s not, dearie, he’s not ... but he may be by to-night, for all we
+know. ’Tis a dangerous job, it is, walking up and down the King’s Road,
+Chelsea, and flashing a wee bull’s-eye lantern up at all the houses and
+into all the gardens.”
+
+“And not knowing that all the while we’re in the studio together, Pegeen
+and I,” Conn put in, “talking of this and of that, and of the great day
+that’s coming for Ireland; and I doing a bit of a drawing of her,
+perhaps, and she getting a bit of supper for the two of us.”
+
+The two “Irish lunatics,” as Barnaby called them, gazed at each other in
+undisguised adoration; then Pegeen resumed: “He is a stick, is William,
+my husband. A real English stick. I said to him one night when the moon
+was full, ‘William,’ I said, ‘will we be taking a Thermos flask and a
+packet of sandwiches up on to Hampstead Heath for a picnic?’ And he
+looked at me, my dear ... he just looked, and said, ‘Margaret, are you
+mad?’”
+
+Antoinette, convulsed with laughter, could not resist the temptation to
+ask: “Whatever made you marry him?”
+
+“I thought I might be able to do him good,” Pegeen replied simply, “but
+that man is past doing good to.”
+
+“He is that ...” O’Farrell concurred.
+
+“But now we know what true happiness is, thanks to that ungrateful
+Jew-boy, who won’t even let me kiss him!”
+
+Dennis and Antoinette exchanged a look of amusement and again, as
+previously in the crowd, she felt conscious of a delicious feeling of
+security. It was good to be with him, and to be enjoying these people
+with him. Outside, the strange bodiless legs passed and passed; the
+cries of the newspaper boys echoed down the stone passage; and inside,
+the atmosphere became smokier and smokier, and bits of _risqué_ stories
+became mingled with political arguments, theatrical jargon with the
+orders for meals; and the mournful lilt of the Irish voices was a queer
+contrast to the high-pitched shrieks and giggles of the flappers. And it
+was all very delightful and unconventional and unlike Cadogan Gardens.
+And Dennis was being nice to her. And she was very happy.
+
+The door to the street banged, and quick footsteps came down the stairs.
+A voice, youthful and eager, was heard asking: “Is Mr. Barnaby in
+there?”
+
+Dennis started. Was it hallucination again that made him believe it was
+Alan’s voice, the same hallucination that only a few days ago had made
+him believe that it was Alan’s figure he had seen in the crowd? He had
+suffered from so much of this kind of hallucination at one time....
+
+“Yes, we’re all here, Rutherford, come in,” cried Barnaby. Antoinette
+glanced at Dennis’s face. And had no need to be told that already her
+precarious hold on happiness was threatened.
+
+“This is the man I was telling you about, Dennis, I wanted you to
+meet——”
+
+Alan cut him short. “We met ages ago. I’ve still got one of his
+handkerchiefs in my possession. Do you remember tying up my gory wound
+for me, Dennis?”
+
+“I remember,” said Dennis, and Alan grinned at Conn and Pegeen, flung
+off his hat, and seated himself between Everard and Barnaby.
+
+“What about your tribunal?” asked the journalist.
+
+“The local tribunal has already passed me for Combatant Service,”
+replied Alan, “but I’m appealing again at the House of Commons next
+week. And then—good-bye to freedom for me, I suppose! But I’ll tell ’em
+a few home-truths before I’m locked up. Beefy, sanctimonious old men,
+sitting there to tell me it’s my duty to go out and take my share in
+murdering peasant-boys and students and labourers.... And the same sort
+of old men on their side, egging _them_ on to fight us, with just the
+same platitudes about duty and honour and self-defence, saying that we
+declared war first, just as we say they sprung the war on us! And the
+capitalists of all countries coining money out of bloodshed.... Do they
+want the war to stop, those government contractors, making their
+millions by supplying munitions or boots or food for the armies?”
+
+Dennis watched him through narrowed eyes. He had not altered much. He
+was eighteen months older, that was all. But there was the same quick
+impatience in phrase and gesture, the same vivid look.
+
+He went on: “The only way to stop the war—not only this war, but all
+future wars, is by opposing conscription. You’re all for the good cause
+here, I suppose?”
+
+Barnaby answered for the company in general: “Yes, they’re all appealing
+on different grounds. Everard, I forget what yours are?”
+
+“I’ve not had the honour of being called up yet,” the actor replied
+evasively.
+
+“And yours, Crispin?”
+
+By a series of grunts, Crispin made it known that he did not intend to
+fight against the nation that had produced Beethoven and Bach.
+
+“I’d like to appeal on every ground there is!” Oswald cried excitably,
+“one can’t do enough to keep the horror from going on.”
+
+“I’m appealing on racial and personal grounds,” declared Benny, “I won’t
+be made to fight the Jews of other countries, even to avenge Brave
+Little Belgium, or prove myself a true patriot!”
+
+Oswald began:
+
+   “‘Breathes there a man with soul so dead
+   Who never to himself has said——’”
+
+“I’ve said ‘This is my own, my native land’ at least half a dozen times
+in half a dozen different lands,” Benny interrupted, “I have relatives
+scattered about in allied, enemy and neutral countries alike. And how
+can a man fight for any particular country, when he’s got an aunt in
+every port?”
+
+“And England talks of defending the honour of small nations,” murmured
+Conn, “has she forgotten Ireland at her very door, Ireland that she’s
+oppressed and ground under her heel these many years? Let her recognise
+Ireland as an equal and raise her up from the thraldom of a vassal
+before she takes Belgium’s name in vain to hide her desire for gain.”
+
+“Well, at least you’re free from the necessity of appealing,” said
+Barnaby, “they’ll never dare introduce conscription into Ireland. It’ll
+mean revolution if they do.”
+
+“And may I be the first to fly the _Sinn Féin_ flag in the streets of
+Dublin that day!”
+
+“What about you, Dennis?” said Alan.
+
+“Humanitarian grounds.”
+
+“Good!” For a second their eyes met, and then parted again. There was
+chaos in Dennis’s mind. Alan’s personality had lost none of its potent
+spell ... and there was Antoinette beside him ... and he longing and
+longing to have the boy all to himself.... And he knew that all his
+energies must go to the concealment of that desire. He leant back in his
+chair and listened to Alan’s voice—and was aware that Antoinette’s gaze
+rested always on himself.
+
+“Conscription has got to be fought,” Alan repeated, “without
+conscription, Germany could never have gone to war. And the people have
+got to be made to see reason, those who say that we must go on with the
+war ‘for the sake of the men who have fallen.’ What sense is there in
+that? Because we have wasted a million good lives already, why should we
+throw another million on to the same refuse-heap? ‘To make their
+sacrifice worth while!’ As if anything could make their sacrifice in
+such an iniquitous cause worth while! ‘They died gladly for their
+country’—it’s all cant, cruel sickening cant to make the people at home
+see the war through rose-coloured spectacles. If they saw it without the
+spectacles, they wouldn’t be so willing to go on paying for the
+continuation of it. ‘We must fight until the whole of Germany is
+crushed’—is the whole of Germany to blame for this war, any more than
+the whole of England? Blame it on the German High Command, if you like,
+and on the Prussian Junkers and their kind, but not on the people—people
+as straight and decent as ours, only maddened by this artificially
+worked-up hatred, this dizzy vision of world-power and world-empire. But
+in Germany, just as in every other country, there are people who don’t
+let themselves be dazzled by that vision, and who are ready to work for
+the overthrow of governments that can organise wholesale butchery as a
+means by which to extend dominion.”
+
+“The pity of it is, that we’re so few,” said Benny, “such a small and
+unpopular minority.”
+
+Alan returned impatiently: “We’re not out for laurels.”
+
+“No, it’s more likely to be the broad arrow,” said Oswald.
+
+“Let it be the broad arrow, then! It’ll be the badge of freedom of the
+future, badge of honour for those who have struggled against the tide of
+public opinion. The militarists’ hatred of us is much more bloodthirsty
+than their hatred of the Germans; we are the cowards and the traitors
+who are deliberately delaying victory. ‘If we don’t give Germany a
+knock-out blow now, the war will start all over again for the next
+generation’—you hear the ignorant and the thoughtless reiterating that
+catch-phrase like a lot of parrots. The war all over again—that’s
+exactly what they will have if they do win their complete military
+victory. When the ‘knock-out blow’ has been dealt, they’ll have to go on
+keeping big armies and building big ships, to consolidate their position
+as top-dog. And as long as we have big armies and navies, we shall
+always have wars. The pretty toys have to be used—they can’t be kept for
+show.... People call us ‘Pro-Germans’—it’s laughable. If I’d been in
+Germany or anywhere else, I’d have fought just as hard against being
+turned into a cog in the infernal machinery of war. It’s the whole
+system of militarism I’m up against, not the individual wrongs of one
+country or another. No civilised industrial population of any country
+wants war. Miners in Cornwall and Lancashire or Galicia and Siberia;
+poor devils sweating in our factories and in _their_ factories;
+railwaymen, schoolmasters, farmers—what do they want with war? Nothing
+... until the idea is drilled into them by those in power. The people
+who want war and believe that war is good, should be allowed to make a
+private picnic of it. The government officials and cabinet ministers and
+war profiteers on both sides; the people who say they’d rather lose all
+their sons, than that they shouldn’t go out and fight——”
+
+“The khaki-clad females who say they wish they were men, so that they
+could kill a few Huns themselves,” Dennis put in.
+
+“Yes, if only that small handful who started the war, and are continuing
+it, could finish it up amongst themselves, without implicating the
+masses!”
+
+“Without the masses, there would be no war,” said Barnaby.
+
+“Exactly!” cried Alan, “without the masses, there _could_ be no war, and
+that is the solution of it all, and the end and the aim of socialism—to
+free the masses from the tyranny of governments that can drive them like
+cattle to be slaughtered in this crazy campaign of greed and hatred.
+Look at the wonderfully organised man-power of all the nations, with all
+the woman-power behind it; look at the scientific miracles and the
+ceaseless labour and energy that go to the production of big guns,
+submarines, aeroplanes, poison-gas; think of all this employed in the
+cause of destruction.... And think of the heroism and self-sacrifice of
+those who really ‘die gladly’ for a mistaken ideal; and the tremendous
+flame of patriotism that’s burning in the hearts of all the peoples
+alike: if all these tangible and intangible splendours could have been
+used in the furtherance, instead of in the destruction of civilisation!
+
+“And you’re expected to take your share in the destruction, without
+asking if it’s right or wrong. All honour to the men who, when war broke
+out, almost as a matter of course left their homes and their loves and
+their careers, because they thought it was the only decent thing to
+do.... And all blame to the old men at home, and to the narrow-minded
+women and unimaginative girls who made it appear the only decent thing!
+We’re convinced that it isn’t, and _we must stand firm_, cost what it
+may! We’re few: that doesn’t matter. We shall be pilloried: that doesn’t
+matter. All that matters is that we shall have striven against what our
+brains and our hearts recognised as evil—Oh, not only evil, but stupid
+and petty and beastly—and that we shall have done our bit towards
+bringing nearer the day when militarism will be supplanted by industry,
+and we may hope to have an international system of legislation that’ll
+knock out the possibility of disputes having to be settled by the
+barbarous and unintelligent means of bloodshed.”
+
+“Unintelligent, good Lord, yes!” cried Barnaby, “the whole thing is
+unintelligent, even from the militarist point of view. There are
+thousands of men being forced to fight, who are physically and mentally
+unfit to be of the least use in battle, but whose brains might have
+given us scientific inventions that would have benefited humanity, works
+of art, books, music.... No, they won’t let them stop at home and do
+what they _can_ do, but must send them out to do incompetently things
+against which their whole nature rises in revolt. From the general
+utility standpoint: in which capacity is the artist of more value to the
+nation? As a creator of a work that may live, or as a mass of shattered
+nerves, totally incapable either of fulfilling the requirements of the
+army or of carrying out his own ideas?”
+
+“Oh, how much does the general public care about art or the artist these
+days?” exclaimed Dennis.
+
+“They may not care now,” rejoined Barnaby, “but it’s the sacred duty of
+everyone who’s got the gift of creation to try and keep it intact. When
+the war is over we shall be grateful to those who through the long night
+of destruction have kept alight the torch of art and intellect. That’s
+rendering a greater service to mankind than putting your life at the
+disposal of the war-machine.”
+
+“And the sight of all those war-shrines makes me sick!” cried Alan.
+“‘_Greater love hath no man_——’ How dare they profane the words? It’s
+not that a man is merely ‘laying down his life for his friends,’ but
+trying to do some other man in at the same time. How does that fit in
+with ‘_Thou shalt not kill_?’”
+
+An unobtrusive-looking spectacled man, who all this while had sat silent
+at the corner table which Crispin had vacated, looked over at the group.
+“It does not fit in, and it never will, but the Church has become untrue
+to herself, as those who serve her have become untrue, perverting her
+words until they seem to serve the ends of the State.”
+
+Alan asked eagerly: “Are you appealing on religious grounds, then?”
+
+The man replied, “Yes. And I daresay I’ll get partial exemption.
+Non-Combatant Service. The despicable compromise that some men can make
+with their conscience. ‘_Thou shalt not kill_’—they think they’re
+obeying the letter of the law if they don’t bear arms and go to the
+fighting-line; but they’re scarcely obeying the spirit when they accept
+work in munition-factories, or otherwise help to release men to be
+killed in their place.”
+
+“Yes, I’m up against people of that sort, as much as I’m up against
+rabid militarists,” said Alan; “they are the cowards and shirkers who
+deserve all the onus heaped upon the community of pacifists and
+socialists as a whole. Men whose conscience won’t let them kill, but who
+haven’t the courage to back their opinions—I’ve no use for them. Passive
+pacifism won’t do any good. What we want is active pacifism, fearless
+and unashamed, ready to join hands with the workers of all other
+countries; to stand firm against their immoral, gain-seeking
+governments; and ready to suffer the utmost penalty of their idiotic and
+benighted law.”
+
+Crispin rose from his chair. “You b-bloody pacifists make as much noise
+as b-bloody militarists. One c-can’t hearoneselfthink....” And on this
+cryptic utterance he made his exit.
+
+The cloud of smoke became denser and more dense. Roy Radford and the
+flappers had long since departed, and the remaining company, having
+abandoned their separate tables, formed one collective straggling group.
+Through the smoke, Antoinette watched them; O’Farrell’s fine sensitive
+features and visionary eyes shadowed by a thatch of wild auburn hair;
+Barnaby’s rough-hewn head and hunched shoulders; Everard’s sleek good
+looks; Harry Hope’s chubbiness; Benny Joseph’s dark eyes and Semitic
+profile; the nondescript appearance of the religious “objector” who had
+joined in the conversation; Oswald’s thin pale face and jerkiness of
+movement; Pegeen’s tilted nose, and the cigarette stuck impertinently in
+one corner of her mouth.... Picturesque enough, the whole group, only
+now Antoinette dared not glance at that slim boy with his dark flaming
+eyes, nor at Dennis ... not since she had seen that look on his face
+when Alan had entered.
+
+Barnaby was saying: “From every possible point of view, whether from
+religion, art, socialism or humanity, war is a disgrace to any civilised
+nation. Personally, I’m out of the running, altogether, but I envy you
+fit men for having the chance to do your bit in the cause of peace.”
+
+Antoinette got up to go, wondering if Dennis would accompany her as
+usual. He followed her up the stairs, but it was evidently his intention
+to return to the others when he had said good-bye to her.
+
+At the top of the stairs she faced him.
+
+“Is that—is that the boy we saw the other night?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“It’s the one you told me about?”
+
+“Yes....”
+
+“You’re still in love with him...?”
+
+And again: “Yes....”
+
+With one hand she was clutching the wooden balustrade. He saw her
+knuckles whiten under the strain, as she said in a dead, unemotional
+voice: “D-do you want me to back out altogether?”
+
+“My dear, it’s for you to say.”
+
+He could not bring himself to make a quick, clean end to the situation
+then and there. He was too dazed and bewildered to think. He only knew
+that he could not speak the word that would hurt her so much, not now,
+although her head was defiantly raised, her eyes downcast, as if she
+were determined that nothing should be visible to him of the pain he
+might choose to inflict.
+
+“It’s for you to say.”
+
+She relaxed the tenseness of her attitude, and seemed suddenly to go
+limp. “Oh, I don’t know what to say....” The situation had come upon
+them both as a shock. Neither of them felt capable of coping with it at
+the moment, and in the doorway....
+
+“Meet me down here one day, and we’ll talk it all out,” he whispered
+hurriedly.
+
+She nodded and turned away.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+“I had quite made up my mind that you were dead,” said Dennis when,
+later on, he and Alan walked back to his rooms in Tavistock Square.
+
+Alan laughed. “Did you think I’d been storming trenches single-handed,
+and that my V.C. had been sent home to my weeping mother?”
+
+“Something of the sort. I knew well enough that you’d expose yourself to
+every possible risk—as you are doing, only on the right side, thank
+heaven, instead of the wrong.”
+
+“I’m running no greater risks than you are: perhaps imprisonment,
+perhaps death. I should think the latter quite probable if they attempt
+to force us to do war-work in prison—dirty trick, that, but they are
+quite capable of it.”
+
+Dennis said nothing. For himself, he had long ago contemplated these
+possibilities. It was different to contemplate them for Alan. He wished
+somehow that Alan need not incur such risks, and yet was proud of him
+for incurring them ... and realised that on the other side, the
+militarist side, they felt precisely the same: those who sent their
+lovers and sons to the fighting-line and dreaded their going, yet would
+not hold them back....
+
+“It’s all a bloody shame,” he said aloud, “such a bloody shame....”
+
+“Yes, and when you think of all the labour and ingenuity that are being
+spent in the invention of more and yet more diabolical means of
+destruction.... I’ve watched big guns being made, and shells in
+munition-factories.”
+
+“And how did you contrive to get into a munition-factory?”
+
+“The name of my never-sufficiently-to-be-respected father was disguise
+enough for my revolutionary tendencies when I was up North,” said Alan,
+“but when I was going about the country, trying to get at the people’s
+outlook in various branches of industry, I had to assume alternately the
+disguise of a sanitary inspector, a newspaper-reporter or a workman.
+I’ve been temporary railway-porter and ship-builder’s apprentice, and
+followed all manner of trades since I saw you last.”
+
+“And hasn’t your father cast you off for ever yet? Mine would like to,
+but he can’t quite do it because of mother. She, poor dear, is the
+victim of the complicated Eastwold table of weights and measures,
+namely: Do one son and one son-in-law in the trenches outweigh one
+conscientious objector, or do two in the trenches equal one in quod?”
+
+“My father’s done more than cast me off,” said Alan, “he’s tried to get
+me run in before now—beery old buffer, making pots of money out of the
+war; sitting at home and joining in the hue-and-cry: ‘We want more
+men—more ships—more munitions....’ They’re tearing up the young manhood
+fast enough to make soldiers, and tearing up the forests to get wood to
+line the trenches and dug-outs. There was a pine-forest I passed through
+in Devon—or rather the remains of a pine-forest ... a wilderness of
+prostrate tree-trunks, with sticky pale-red stumps, lying crippled and
+bruised, with their branches crushed under them. And the sight and the
+smell of the resin oozing from where the boughs had been sawn off was a
+thing that hurt you—a damnable thing!”—his voice suddenly tightened—“it
+was like seeing the forest bleed to death before your very eyes. And all
+the time men were at work hacking, hacking and sawing ... you couldn’t
+get away from the rasping of those saws and the dull blows of the
+choppers. While I watched they were stabbing at the trunk of a great
+giant of a tree, and I saw its crown waver and rock and sway, and heard
+a sort of groaning crash as it fell to the ground among the litter of
+mutilated boughs and bleeding roots.... And all around were neat piles
+of stacked-up logs and sawn planks, ready to be despatched to France.
+The glory of that forest once—and now——”
+
+“I know,” replied Dennis, “they’re felling the old beech-trees around my
+home, too—trees that have taken centuries and centuries to grow; and
+when I’ve cried out at the pity of it—‘_Every tree that can be of
+service to the country must come down!_’ It’s terrible and wonderful,
+this ruthless, relentless concentration of will and effort. The men
+going out, and the women taking over their jobs—even inanimate nature
+pressed into service to ‘help to win the war!’”
+
+Alan nodded. “Yes, and with all that force pushing against us, we’ve got
+to use the same concentration of will and effort to win peace.”
+
+They had reached Tavistock Square. Dennis opened the door with his
+latch-key and went up to his room. Alan followed him. And thus he had
+once followed Alan, by the light of a guttering candle, up a rickety
+wooden staircase at Crannack. And thus, in imagination, he had often
+felt himself being followed by Alan. As they were about to enter the
+room, Dennis wheeled sharply round. Alan smiled back at him with
+half-impudent confidence. “Well?”
+
+“All right, I only wanted to see if you were really there—you’ve had
+such a way of dogging my heels, just like that, and then vanishing when
+I turned to look at you.”
+
+Alan said: “You were a coward to run away that time at Crannack,
+Dennis.”
+
+“You know why I had to run away—why I had to make myself run away. It
+wasn’t easy, Alan.”
+
+“It’s no use running away. Because you’ll never _get_ away. We’re made
+like that; why not look things straight in the face?”
+
+“Antoinette said something of that kind a long while ago, without having
+the vaguest idea what she was talking about.”
+
+“Antoinette?”
+
+“The girl who was with me at the tea-shop to-day. The girl with whom I
+sought safety from you.”
+
+“And did you find it?”
+
+“Do you need to ask?”
+
+Alan sat down on the floor, and with hands clasped round his knees,
+gazed into the fire.
+
+“Then what do you want with the girl now?”
+
+Dennis shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“She’s mad on you,” Alan persisted, “I could see that. But you don’t
+want her, Dennis—we don’t want her.... Cut her out altogether!”
+
+Dennis answered sadly: “She is out altogether, poor Antoinette, to all
+intents and purposes.”
+
+Alan turned his head with a slow smile. “Good ...” he murmured.
+
+“Damn you, don’t talk and look like that!” Dennis blazed out in sudden
+rage, “you might be a woman, intolerant of all favourites but yourself!”
+
+“I am intolerant of other favourites. And they’re no good to you, no
+earthly good ... are they?”
+
+“No ...” said Dennis dully.
+
+“You admit it! Then why continue to strive after what can’t really
+satisfy you?”
+
+“Because I mustn’t take what would really satisfy me.”
+
+“Then at least accept the fact that you are as you are, and don’t try to
+pervert yourself into something you never will be. We’re both right over
+the border-line of the normal—I more than you, because no woman could
+ever attract me in the least—and we’ve got to have the courage to face
+out that knowledge and, above all, to be true to ourselves. You want to
+make our love an abstraction. Believe me, you’ll only succeed in making
+it unnatural.”
+
+“Unnatural, good Lord! Isn’t it that already?”
+
+“You’ve been brooding too much in secret, Dennis, you’ve grown morbid.
+Why will you persist in regarding it as something vicious and
+degenerate? For people made as we are it’s natural and it’s beautiful to
+love as we love, and it’s perversion in the true sense to try and force
+ourselves to love differently.”
+
+“I know ... I know all that, yet I can’t accept it as justification ...
+even though love like this is little short of crucifixion, as long as
+some remote principle nails us to the cross and forbids expression.”
+
+“Then in God’s name, Dennis, why deny yourself and torture yourself like
+this?”
+
+Dennis flung out his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
+
+Alan looked at him....
+
+Then, very softly, he spoke. “All right, Dennis, it shall be as you say.
+Hang on to your foolish Quixotic principles, if you must ... if you must
+... but you’ll never get away like that—never, no, never in this
+life....”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+So now the shadowy danger, that she had perhaps not taken so very
+seriously, just because it was shadowy, had materialised in the shape of
+that boy. Dennis had warned her, and she had said: “Yes, I know....”
+With her brain she had accepted his warning, with her brain understood
+what it implied. But she had not felt anything. Even now the poison had
+not begun properly to work.... It was still difficult to overcome the
+initial sense of absurdity, of having to be jealous of a—man. Certainly,
+if Dennis had chosen to make love to her at Amberhurst, she would have
+given him every right to be jealous of—Hester. Crazy world ... and all
+these years she had lived with her eyes shut, never perceiving how crazy
+it was! She could not hazard any conjecture as to the future. All her
+previous experience was powerless to assist imagination. She was on
+entirely new ground now, ignorant of the significance of such landmarks
+as she might encounter; instinct her sole guide, and one whom her reason
+and her sense of humour were still half-inclined to mistrust.
+
+At least she was glad that no decisive action was called for on her
+part. On the spur of the moment she had offered to back out, and he had
+not accepted her offer. She could remain passive now, and await
+developments.
+
+Mrs. Taylor rang her up while she was awaiting them, and invited her to
+tea at the studio. Antoinette went, and found the Taylors’ house a low,
+rambling building in a tree-shaded street in Chelsea. The studio was
+connected with the house by a glass corridor, but it had another
+entrance that led through a walled passage into the street. A third door
+opened into a tangled garden, overgrown with weeds.
+
+Pegeen met Antoinette at the side-entrance, and impressed her to keep
+silence during the brief transit from the street to the studio. She
+explained in her inimitable fashion that since the studio had been let
+to Conn O’Farrell, her husband and parents-in-law did not think it
+suitable for her to frequent it.
+
+“But glory be to God, I have a latch-key of my own, so I say I’m taking
+a walk, and just pop out of the front door and into here by this
+side-entrance, when no one’s about. It’s like watch-dogs they are over
+me, my dear.... William’s at the office all day and Special-Constabling
+most nights, but he’s always telling his mother and his father to look
+after his ‘little floweret’—that’s me, dearie—while he’s gone.”
+
+“So they do their duty by you!” laughed Antoinette.
+
+“They do that, in the true Christian-martyr spirit; for it is a very,
+very bitter thing for Mother Taylor to have a wild Irish scaramouch like
+me for a daughter-in-law. Her Willie should have married one of the
+Vicar’s daughters from next door; they play croquet all the
+afternoon.... It is really a vicarage next door, my dear, and that’s the
+truth of it!”
+
+Antoinette was taking in every detail of her environment. A square of
+blue was visible through the big skylight; an oak chest, left untidily
+open, disclosed a collection of gorgeous-coloured fabrics; garments of
+all hues and all periods; a very old carved table was littered with
+paints, cigarette-ends, lip-salve, pencil-stumps and chocolates; the
+originals of Conn’s political cartoons were upon the walls, and formed a
+queer contrast to the more imaginative examples of his art—the
+illustrations to old Irish fairy-tales and the designs for scenic
+decorations. And then Pegeen, with a childish and charming absence of
+false shame, exhibited Conn’s drawings of herself in all manner of
+poses....
+
+“But aren’t you afraid that someone will see them and find out?” said
+Antoinette.
+
+“Oh, there’s never a soul in here but Conn and me and our friends. The
+servants from the house aren’t allowed in. I do all his dusting for him,
+bless the lad! We want no strangers here, and for another reason that
+I’ll be telling you now....” Pegeen cast a glance over her shoulder,
+lowered her voice to a mysterious whisper, and kicking aside one of the
+rugs on the polished floor, disclosed a sliding panel. “Look!”
+
+Antoinette looked, and as the panel slid back beheld a cavity some six
+feet deep. “A trap-door, Pegeen, a real trap-door?”
+
+“Hush, my dear ... there are papers in there that could get the whole
+lot of us put in prison this very minute—” (Surely this was all a
+child’s game of “conspirators?”)—“we must get them safely over to
+Ireland and into the hands of our leaders before the month is out. We’re
+going together, Conn and I, when the time comes.”
+
+... This was more lurid even than anything Antoinette had anticipated
+from Barnaby’s descriptions. Pegeen replaced the rug, offered her the
+cigarettes, and curled herself up in one of the deep armchairs.
+“To-night there’ll be company in the house—they have a bishop to dinner,
+my dear, all in gaiters, and I talking to him as if butter wouldn’t melt
+in my mouth.... And Conn will stand in the glass passage, just this side
+of the curtain, and strain his ears for a sound of my voice among the
+other voices ... and after dinner maybe I’ll slip away and steal down
+the passage for one minute and feel his arms round me in the dark—then
+back again to old Gaiters, and the talk of how they’d like to have the
+parish church restored, and how well this bloody England is doing in the
+war.”
+
+“How marvellous, Pegeen, that’s better than anything I’ve ever
+accomplished!” Antoinette told her of her own campaign of lies invented
+to elude Grand’mère’s vigilance. “It’s so neat, pretending to your
+parents-in-law that you are miles away, when you’re really in here,
+separated from them only by a curtain.”
+
+“Yes, it was a happy thought, that curtain. I advised my mother-in-law
+to have it put there when we let the studio to Conn, because I said,
+’tis for the look of the thing, and with artists you never know.... And
+she said I was after showing a bit of proper feeling at last!”
+
+“Where did you meet Conn?” queried Antoinette, and was rewarded with the
+entire history of Pegeen’s life.
+
+“I was left an orphan at the age of six, my dear, and I had two aunts in
+Ireland and one in England. And they played battledore and shuttlecock
+with me right enough, for not one of them was pleased to have me in the
+house with her own brats. You see,” Pegeen added with delightful
+simplicity, “they were never quite sure if my mother had been married to
+my father, so they thought it best not to give me the benefit of the
+doubt....” Followed the account of her marriage to Mr. Taylor, and the
+freakish impulse that had led her into it.
+
+“It made me laugh so the way he said: ‘Margaret, I don’t understand
+you,’ every time I opened my mouth ... and when he asked me to marry him
+I said ‘Yes’ just to annoy my aunts, who said they never would have
+believed it of me.”
+
+Antoinette suggested that in the course of Pegeen’s married life she
+might have heard that remark of Mr. Taylor’s once too often.
+
+“Yes, indeed, my dear. And the night I met Conn, I felt I’d be
+suffocated dead by the morning if something didn’t happen! So I wandered
+out for a walk by myself, and there in the middle of Trafalgar Square
+there was a recruiting-meeting, and a man with a big banner telling all
+those poor fools of Englishmen to go and fight for their country.... I
+made a face at him—I did that! And Conn—he was in the crowd, too, with
+his friend Rutherford—he saw me make that face, and came and spoke to
+me. And, dearie, when I heard that boy’s voice, I could have put my arms
+round his neck and wept....”
+
+“When Irish meets Irish,” murmured Antoinette, “it must have been rather
+wonderful.”
+
+Pegeen’s greenish eyes shone. “It was that....”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later on Conn came in, having just returned from Rutherford’s tribunal
+at the House of Commons. “They’ve not heard his case yet, but I thought
+I’d have time to slip down here for a cup of tea, and back again.” He
+drew Pegeen towards him and kissed her lips. “I’ve brought you these
+primroses, the first I’ve seen this spring—let’s have that great green
+bowl, and I’ll be arranging them while you get the food.”
+
+Pegeen disappeared into the pantry adjoining the studio, and called to
+Antoinette to come and watch her fry the eggs. Conn was left dreamily
+putting the primroses one by one into the jade bowl.
+
+“Wouldn’t you rather I went?” Antoinette suggested to Pegeen, “I’m sure
+you want to have him all to yourself.”
+
+Pegeen laughed. “What a child for talking nonsense! We like to have you
+here. It’s a poor sort of hospitality that wishes one friend to go, when
+another arrives.”
+
+But all the same when Conn joined them in the pantry, and kissed
+Pegeen’s neck as she bent over the gas-ring, Antoinette felt that she
+was an intruder—a feeling which, to do them justice, neither Conn nor
+Pegeen seemed to share. They had a composite meal of eggs and tea and
+cakes, all among the cigarette-ends and the lip-salve, with the massed
+bowl of primroses as table-decoration in the centre. Then Conn declared
+that he must go. “I don’t want to miss Rutherford’s speech; it’ll be
+worth the hearing.”
+
+Pegeen made a grimace. “I hate that person.”
+
+Conn said warmly: “You’ve no need to say that now, Pegeen, love....”
+
+Antoinette asked, “Is anyone else at the tribunal, Mr. O’Farrell?”
+
+“Barnaby’s there and Dennis Blackwood. Will I give him your love, Miss
+de Courcy?”
+
+“Oh, never mind about it ...” she laughed; but the thought of Dennis as
+a spectator at Alan’s tribunal made her heart give a sudden painful
+jump.
+
+“Good-bye, Pegeen; it’s William’s night on duty, isn’t it? Will I leave
+the side-door open...?”
+
+Pegeen shook her ruffled head. “It’s the footsteps I’m thinking of,
+Conn, the two lots of footsteps all down the gravel-path. You’ve no idea
+how they show up!”
+
+“Then I’ll have to carry you”—Conn’s eyes rested fondly on her—“that’ll
+only make one lot.”
+
+“There’s another way, too,” Pegeen broke into her impish laughter, “the
+house on the left of this stands empty. If I can get into that garden
+from the street and over the wall into ours——”
+
+Conn laughed. “Then William will spot you with his lantern, burgling
+your own house! Well, I don’t care how you find your way in, as long as
+you do—after the bishop’s left....”
+
+The door banged behind him. Antoinette reflected that here indeed were
+combined melodrama and romance and farce of the most highly-coloured
+variety. Oh, certainly romance for those two mad, delightful people who
+loved each other; romance in the need for secrecy, and their peculiar
+methods of ensuring it; melodrama in the existence of the trap-door
+concealing the papers; farce in the idea of the respectable household
+adjoining this anything but respectable studio, the vicarage next door,
+the stolid Special Constable patrolling the streets.
+
+“And to think I might never have known this happiness!” said Pegeen,
+“that objectionable person Rutherford was for ever advising my Conn not
+to take the studio. He said I was a harpy and that I didn’t really love
+him. So Conn believed him, and would not come near me, and I thought I
+would kill myself.... I told that to Benny Joseph, that nice Jew-boy
+when he came to tea here. And I cried into his handkerchief. And he made
+it all right, speaking to Conn and saying I was not a harpy, and did
+really love him truly. Now, I’m asking you, do I look like a harpy?”
+
+“You’re a darling,” laughed Antoinette, and Pegeen gave her a warm broad
+smile. “I liked you the first time I set eyes on you. I don’t know why
+Dennis Blackwood didn’t bring you here before; he and Mr. Barnaby often
+come to see Conn.... I like Dennis,” she mused, “he’s a dear fine
+fellow, he is that, and he plays the piano like an angel. Aren’t you of
+the same opinion, my dear?”
+
+Antoinette said softly: “I am....”
+
+“It’s glad I am to hear that! It means that there’s a great day of
+happiness coming for you just as it’s come for me.”
+
+“I’m afraid not, Pegeen.”
+
+“But why, my dear?” Pegeen came and sat on the arm of Antoinette’s
+chair. “Why not?”
+
+“It—it’s difficult to say....” Incredibly difficult.
+
+Pegeen put her arms round her with a gesture impulsive and almost
+maternal. “Oh, my dear, won’t you tell me what it is?” She seemed to
+have lost for the moment her elfin devilry, and to have become softer,
+less of an imp, more of a woman. “I’ve had to go through sorrow too, to
+know happiness.... Tell me, dear: is it another woman that’s come
+between you?”
+
+“No, Pegeen, it’s not another woman....” She was beginning to feel
+frightened. Dennis was at the tribunal, every nerve drawn tense with the
+hope that Alan would get his exemption. Quickly she chased from her mind
+the half-hope that he would not get it. That ... was ungenerous.... Was
+it, though, in the face of such a dangerous enemy? How dangerous,
+exactly, was Alan? Could he be fought on equal terms, or was his
+advantage over her so great that the conflict was already decided in his
+favour? If only she knew.... But how, and by what standards was she to
+measure the power of this strange enemy? She was oppressed by fear of
+the unknown; longed to be able to confide in Pegeen.
+
+“It’s not another woman, it’s——”
+
+But that was the sort of thing one could not say. Not to anyone. Not
+ever.
+
+“Then it’ll all come right in the end, you’ll see”—Pegeen was still
+gently stroking her hair—“he’s a silly fellow and perhaps doesn’t know
+his own mind yet, but one day you’ll be as happy as Conn and me, and
+that’s what I’m wishing you with all my heart.”
+
+Antoinette raised her head, and with an effort smiled. “Yes, I expect
+it’ll all come right....” She would not spoil the picture of herself and
+Dennis pairing off as a secondary couple to Pegeen and Conn. But it had
+been hard not to tell Pegeen. Pegeen’s warm-hearted sympathy would have
+soothed, if not comforted her. It would have been such a relief to tell
+someone. But—_one could not tell that sort of thing_. However much one
+longed to. However frightened one was. However lonely.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+By what standards was she to measure Alan’s power...? Instinct answered:
+by the power that Hester had once had over herself. There would have
+been little enough hope for Dennis pitted against Hester, or any of
+those other women; little enough, if it had come to it, against—Pegeen.
+Antoinette was fully alive to Pegeen’s attraction, and realised that she
+might have had one of her swift burning passions for her, had she not
+been so entirely absorbed in Dennis, the greater love blotting out all
+possibility of a lesser. But if she had not cared for Dennis so much, he
+would have stood a poor chance against Pegeen; and according to that
+analogy, Antoinette stood a poor chance against Alan. She had not heard
+from Dennis; neither did she know the result of Alan’s appeal. Inaction
+was becoming intolerable. If matters were decided one way or another, at
+least she would be rid of the uncertainty, and could try and adapt
+herself to the altered conditions. He had told her to meet him at Miss
+Mowbray’s to discuss the position ... and it would be better, once she
+knew. This she told herself repeatedly, and it gave her a sort of
+spurious courage as she walked up the passage between the theatre and
+the tea-shop, and with fast-beating heart descended the stairs.
+
+Her hope that she would find Dennis alone was immediately dashed. The
+usual group was complete, save for Conn and Pegeen, and to-day it
+included Mrs. Mansfield and Ernest Strickland, the religious objector.
+Antoinette slipped into the vacant place that Dennis had made for her
+between himself and Everard. She gave an exclamation of surprise on
+seeing that the latter was in khaki. “Why—what’s happened?”
+
+“He’s ratted!” cried Alan, “that’s what’s happened. Couldn’t stand out,
+and took the easy way. The play has come off next door, and I suppose he
+fancies himself in the new part—‘A better and a worthier part, laddie,
+than the one you used to play’—can’t you hear ’em?”
+
+Everard stroked the cuffs of his ill-fitting private’s uniform. “This is
+all so stupid ...” he remarked to the ceiling, leaving it doubtful as to
+whether he meant the war in general or Alan’s gibes in particular.
+
+“I can’t say the costume suits you,” Benny taunted him, “you were
+fastidious enough about the fit of your stage-clothes, and look at you
+now!”
+
+Everard, with magnificent dignity, feigned complete ignorance of his too
+short sleeves and coat that had a baggy look about the waist-line; and
+turning to Antoinette, wondered aloud in his beautiful mellow voice,
+what effect war would have upon his psychology.
+
+“Speaking of costumes,” said Alan, “I hear there are dozens of C.O.s at
+the various camps arrayed only in blankets. When they’re handed over to
+the military and commanded to put on uniform they refuse to do so. Then
+their own clothes are taken away from them.... _Then_ they tear up the
+nice khaki that the good kind Government gives them and wrap themselves
+in the blankets off their beds.”
+
+“As we’re in England, I suppose the authorities won’t remove the
+blankets?” murmured Benny.
+
+“Oh, hardly.... But one really ought to practise beforehand how to wear
+one’s blanket in the most artistic and effective manner. You’ll look
+hideous in yours, Benny, you’re the wrong shape. By next week I shall no
+doubt be quite an authority on the latest fashions in bedclothes.”
+
+“So you are passed for General Service?” said Strickland.
+
+“Yes. I knew I hadn’t any chance of getting off entirely, and I wasn’t
+playing for Non-Com.... They actually asked me what I’d do if I saw my
+mother attacked by a German soldier.... I told ’em I was tired of that
+old chestnut and that I’d go to the defence of the soldier!”
+
+There was a burst of laughter, but to Antoinette it sounded rather
+strained and hectic. She saw that Alan’s eyes were feverishly bright,
+his cheeks flushed; and that Dennis’s gaze rested upon him with an
+anxiety barely concealed by the laughter.
+
+“Two policemen called at my rooms yesterday when I was out, waited three
+hours for me, and then got fed-up and said they’d call again to-morrow
+and wait till I _did_ appear, if they didn’t cop me during the day.”
+
+“You can’t dodge them for long, though,” said Barnaby.
+
+“I don’t intend to—’tisn’t dignified. But just for a while it is a most
+stimulating experience to be Wanted by the Police, and one which may
+never repeat itself in the future course of my blameless career.”
+
+“Child ...” murmured Dennis under his breath, but Antoinette caught the
+murmur, and the rueful tenderness of it.
+
+“At any moment I may feel a heavy hand upon my shoulder—handcuffs on my
+wrists! I thought I was being shadowed by a plain-clothes detective this
+afternoon. I gave him a couple of hours’ healthy exercise, dodging him
+up and down the Strand, and finally shook him off when I reached
+sanctuary here.... Oh, I’d rather run with the hare than hunt with the
+hounds, any day. There’s something so smug and self-righteous about the
+hounds, and the hare has all the sport!”
+
+“The hounds win in the end ...” said Dennis, and Everard quoted softly:
+
+“_A la fin de l’envoi, je touche...._”
+
+Alan threw his head back and laughed. “Well, never mind for the moment.
+Let’s have cakes in vast quantities, and regardless of expense, please,
+Miss Mowbray, since this may be my last meal in freedom.”
+
+Miss Mowbray begged him not to talk like that, and expressed her
+willingness to hide him from the police among the jam-jars in her
+store-cupboard.
+
+“Oh, this place of yours is bound to be raided sooner or later as it is,
+Kitty,” said Barnaby, “some outsider will stray in and, overhearing our
+conversation, will warn the authorities that it’s a hornet’s nest of
+nihilists, anarchists, socialists, and other dangerous and seditious
+elements!”
+
+“I expect you’re right, Neil,” Miss Mowbray returned placidly, “but even
+if the worst comes to the worst, I shall be glad that all you boys have
+had some place where you could be together and air your views in peace.”
+
+“And we can never be grateful enough to you for supporting the cause of
+freedom as you’ve done by letting us congregate here!” cried Alan
+warmly. “When this country is proclaimed a democratic republic, we’ll
+erect a statue to you on what was once the site of Buckingham Palace.”
+
+Harry Hope plunged into the group, bursting with the news that he had
+got a part at last. “Round town, too, and no commission to pay!”
+
+Benny Joseph offered him heartfelt congratulations. “You lucky beggar,
+being able to take work. I daren’t settle anything till my beastly
+appeal is over.... When do you open?”
+
+Even Everard was roused to a languid display of professional interest,
+and sighed: “It is a beautiful thing to have a widowed mother to
+support. Her life should be very sacred to you.”
+
+“It is. Oh, it is,” Harry assured him with husky eagerness. “I’m
+thankful to say the old lady’s keeping wonderfully well.” He joined a
+small group of actors seated at the table in the alcove, and proceeded
+to answer more questions concerning his new part.
+
+Barnaby asked Mrs. Mansfield if she had news of her husband, and she
+replied that he had contrived to communicate with her. “It’s too
+terrible, the way they’re treated; worse than ordinary criminals. He was
+kept in irons for twelve hours; he drew a design of them—cruel-looking
+instruments that cut into the flesh.”
+
+“Oh, yes, we’re a civilised and cultured race, we English,” cried Alan,
+“it’s only the Huns who are barbarians....”
+
+Antoinette saw Dennis flush. Easy enough to guess that he was dreading
+that barbarous things might also befall Alan. Already he seemed to be
+quivering to the least shade of pain that Alan might have to undergo.
+But was it nothing to him, she wondered in a sudden surge of revolt, was
+it nothing to him that she should be thus compelled to watch him
+suffering for Alan and because of Alan? To watch him alternately
+brooding over the boy with absorbed gaze, and then averting his eyes, as
+if the sight of him there, laughing and vivid, were too poignant to be
+borne?
+
+“They have to go to chapel every Sunday,” Mrs. Mansfield pursued;
+“that’s the only time when the prisoners who are in solitary confinement
+catch sight of each other. Maurice says there’s a perfectly hateful man
+who preaches to them—it’s a degradation to call it preaching! He was
+actually brute enough to say to those poor wretches: ‘God has turned His
+face away from a lot like you....’”
+
+“It’s difficult to believe that a man of God could so profane the word
+of God to those dependent upon him for spiritual consolation,” said
+Strickland, “but he’s not the only one of his kind. So many of the
+clergy, who call themselves followers of the Prince of Peace, deny Him,
+by abuse of their power—by preaching war from the pulpit and joining
+hands with the misleaders of the people to exhort them to take part in
+bloodshed and strife.”
+
+“Yes, it beats me how devout Christians can believe in war,” said Benny,
+“don’t they see it’s the negation of all that their Christ ever taught?”
+
+“They don’t see now. It’s they who have turned their faces away from
+God. Christ wasn’t thinking of the Germans when He told us to turn the
+other cheek.... That’s a very favourite line of argument, I believe; it
+tends to make the Bible seem old-fashioned and out of date; a good
+excuse for going behind its teachings. If people had lived up a little
+more closely to these antiquated teachings, the world wouldn’t be
+plunged in darkness and misery now.”
+
+“Well, look what they do to those who strive against the darkness and
+misery,” said Barnaby. “How long has your husband got, Mrs. Mansfield?”
+
+“Six months penal servitude. But still I’m glad he didn’t give in and
+take Non-Com. It’s an unworthy compromise, and the men in the N.C.C. are
+being treated in the most despicable way.”
+
+“Yes, some of them, unarmed men, have actually been sent out to France,”
+said Alan. “I’ve little sympathy with the Non-Coms., but it’s a dirty
+trick all the same. It’s an easy way, of course, for the authorities to
+get rid of them altogether: simpler to shoot them for disobeying
+military orders out there than it is here.... Downright murder! Oh, it’s
+better by far to stick out your time in quod than to compromise, Mrs.
+Mansfield. It’s accepting no favours from a rotten, sneaking government
+that can’t keep its word.”
+
+“Six months is a long time, and it may be longer ...” said Dennis. And
+Antoinette knew that he was thinking neither of Mansfield nor of
+himself. It would be a long time—for Alan. A long time for her, if
+Dennis.... And if the war went on and on.... Suddenly she hated the
+whole group, working upon each other’s nerves, exhorting each other to
+stand out at all costs. What did she care for pacifism if Dennis had to
+go to prison for it? She cared frankly only for her man, and it seemed
+appalling to her that he should thus subordinate his life to his
+convictions.
+
+... And Dennis had no eyes and no thoughts for her now. It was not
+difficult to see wherein Alan’s attraction lay: he _was_ attractive, no
+doubt of it, with his feverish dark eyes and sensitive well-cut mouth.
+He gave her the impression of a very high-spirited race-horse. She could
+quite well imagine how he would appeal to Dennis ... this terrible boy
+against whom she was utterly powerless, for he seemed to possess all the
+fascination of her own sex as well as of his.
+
+“There’s a good time ahead the day the C.O.s come out of prison!” cried
+Alan, “we’ll have a word to say then, in the name of freedom and
+democracy, and we’ll have earned the right to say it. We’ll eat and
+drink to the day! Let’s toss down one Welsh Rarebit after the other, in
+the true spirit of devil-may-care recklessness....”
+
+How much of this burlesque was genuine, Antoinette wondered, and how
+much a disguise to hide real terror? With a shudder she realised that
+most of those who sat here, laughing, smoking, arguing, blaspheming,
+would sooner or later be in prison. Small wonder if terror lurked
+beneath these spasmodic bursts of laughter. If Alan were afraid—small
+blame to him. And if Dennis were afraid for Alan—small blame to him. And
+if she were afraid for Dennis....
+
+She was studying Alan carefully; and came to the conclusion that no
+terror would ever be great enough to deflect him from his purpose. Alan
+would never “rat”.... Perhaps his present attitude betokened an
+inability to resist obeying the highly theatrical demands of the
+situation. She could appreciate and understand that ... funny to have
+discovered something in common with Alan. Very funny.... She must hang
+on tight to her sense of humour, and not allow herself to wonder if the
+world contained anything else for her to hang on to!
+
+The men were deep in political conversation now; none of the sense of it
+penetrated her mind. She only knew that Alan, in his explosive, jerky
+sentences, was doing most of the talk, with occasional interruptions
+from Benny Joseph and Barnaby; that Strickland sat silent and
+thoughtful; and that Dennis’s troubled eyes rested ever on Alan.
+
+No chance for her to have her talk with Dennis to-day. He had hardly
+spoken to her at all. And already it was time to go.
+
+She rose from her chair. Dennis, as if suddenly becoming aware of her
+presence, said: “You’re off...? I’ll ring you up to-morrow morning.”
+
+She nodded without looking at him, and Alan got up and held out his
+hand. “Good-bye, Miss de Courcy, and in case we never meet again, which
+is more than probable, don’t hate me too much, will you?”
+
+“Why should I hate you?” she parried with ironic politeness. For a
+second their eyes met ... surely thus might a victorious rival smile
+down into the eyes of one whom she had beaten off the field!
+
+“I couldn’t hate you if I tried,” said Antoinette very softly. She had
+passed through the stage of incredulity, and through the stage of
+growing uneasiness; and through that of raging jealousy and hatred. And
+having got beyond all these, there was nothing left; no jealousy or
+hatred big enough to express what she felt for this intruder with the
+insolent smile, who with his every look and gesture could thrill Dennis,
+as she had never been able to thrill him. Hatred was quite inadequate.
+
+“I couldn’t hate you if I tried——” She had spoken the truth.
+
+She felt mazed and bewildered by the traffic and the raucous shouts of
+the paper-boys, as she began to make her way to the Underground station.
+If at least he had accompanied her, she would have had him to herself
+for a few minutes. She would not have had to say good-bye to him before
+all the others, before ... Alan. Good-bye for always, in that futile,
+unsatisfactory fashion. She did not believe that he would ring her up,
+as he had said. It was already the end—such a miserable, dribbled-out
+ending. Once before he had given her this nauseating sense of
+anticlimax: only it had not really mattered then.... Perhaps he had not
+accompanied her to the station for fear that she should make a scene.
+Once before, at that very station——she shuddered back from pursuing that
+memory any further. She must inevitably come to dwell on that moment in
+the cab, when she had felt the touch of his lips again.... But this time
+he need not have feared that she would provoke a scene: she was too
+fully conscious of defeat; useless to fight for what was already lost.
+
+She had not gone very far when she came face to face with Oswald
+Forsyth.
+
+“Are they all down at the tea-shop, talking as usual?” He spoke wearily
+and there were great dark rings under his eyes.
+
+Antoinette nodded. “Yes, much as usual.”
+
+Oswald gave an impatient laugh. “Much good all their talking will do! It
+can’t prevent you from being caught between the two mill-stones.” He
+went on rapidly as he turned and walked along beside her: “It’s either
+the war or prison—you’re caught anyhow.”
+
+Antoinette said: “I thought you had made up your mind...?”
+
+“Made up my mind.... Oh, I’ve made it up and unmade it a thousand times
+ever since I met Barnaby and all his crew. Standing out with the C.O.s
+seemed to me the finest thing in the world, and—and it meant not going
+into the trenches.... You see, I’m a coward—the genuine article; not the
+magazine-type, who is really only a hero in disguise. I’m just an abject
+funk. The horror of pain—even when it’s more or less humane—the dentist
+boring down to the exposed nerve—and then to think of pain inflicted
+purposely in a hundred different hideous ways.... When you know of all
+that can happen while you’re still conscious of it happening, how _can_
+you go out and face it? How can all those others...? It’s marvellous,
+and it’s beyond me, utterly. I can only think of what it feels like to
+have your inside torn open by a jagged bit of shrapnel, or to have a
+limb amputated without chloroform....”
+
+“Oh, stop!” Antoinette implored him, but overwrought as he was, he
+continued: “I thought I was getting away from all that and helping all
+the others to get away by fighting for pacifism. I’ve sent in my appeal,
+but Heaven knows if I’ll be able to go through with it. It
+means—prison.... Doesn’t the very word convey a nightmare of being
+confined in a small space, with light and air shut out, and you beating
+yourself to death against stone walls...? You’ve heard them talk about
+prison down at Miss Mowbray’s, haven’t you?”
+
+“They were talking about it to-day....”
+
+“And all the other days, when I’ve sat there listening—and imagining....
+I—I just can’t go to prison any more than I can go to the Front. It
+drives you mad, slowly, day by day, while you feel your reason slipping
+from you. I don’t know which I dread most! And there’s the one lot of
+people goading you to fight and the other lot goading you not to fight,
+and I’m dead sick of it all.”
+
+“Then why don’t you take Non-Combatant Service?” The others might well
+say that she was being a traitor to the Cause, but Antoinette did not
+care. She understood too well this boy’s loathing of the extremes of
+pacifism and militarism alike, and a wave of thankfulness came over her
+for the happy accident of having been born a woman. But for this
+accident, and lacking all definite convictions, she like the rest would
+have been placed between those two equally dreaded alternatives.
+
+“Why not take Non-Com.?” she urged again, but Oswald shook his head.
+“That’s no good. They’d probably send me out to France just the same—to
+pick up bits of the dead, perhaps.... There’s no real escape. You’re not
+meant to escape. There’s something rapacious and cruel and inevitable
+waiting to torture your mind and your body and twist them out of shape
+... and whichever way you take, it’s bound to get you in the end! And I
+thought—I thought life was going to be so splendid.... Oh, I know I
+oughtn’t to be talking to you like this, but I’ve not slept for nights,
+and I’m half crazy.”
+
+Antoinette cut him short. One did not need apologies from a human soul
+_in extremis_.
+
+“Are you going back to the tea-shop?” she said, as they reached the
+station.
+
+He looked up at her with his big, weary eyes. “Yes, I suppose so—I don’t
+know”—and hovered indecisively in the entrance.
+
+Antoinette asked with sudden irrelevance: “How old are you?”
+
+There was a whimsical twist to his smile as he answered: “Eighteen—just
+eighteen—it’s waiting for you now, when you’re eighteen....”
+
+She saw him wander off in the direction leading away from Miss
+Mowbray’s. And all the way to Cadogan Gardens, one of his phrases rang
+in her ears: “And I thought life was going to be so splendid....” She
+might have echoed it.
+
+She arrived home only a few minutes before dinner-time and was met in
+the hall by a wrathful grandmother. Why had she chosen to be late just
+to-night? Had she, then, forgotten that Monsieur Lefèvre, from Grenoble,
+was coming to dinner? Antoinette had forgotten.... Would she as quickly
+as possible attire herself in the pink satin dress that Grand’mère had
+given her, and in which she looked a trifle less “_outrée_” than in some
+of the garments of her own choosing.
+
+“Make yourself look nice, and above all, be amiable,” were Madame de
+Courcy’s final injunctions, as Antoinette vanished into her room, and
+reflected that she might have been spared the pink satin dress and
+Monsieur Lefèvre just to-night. She had never seen him before, but from
+Grand’mère’s attitude it was safe to infer that he was coming in the
+capacity of a possible suitor. It might have been fun—if it hadn’t been
+just to-night....
+
+She appeared in the drawing-room as the gong rang, and was presented by
+Grand’mère to a stout and middle-aged personage with shiny black hair, a
+waxed moustache, and a pince-nez. This engaging creature bowed low over
+Antoinette’s hand and warmly congratulated Madame de Courcy on the
+possession of such a grand-daughter.
+
+“She is our only one—our little treasure,” said Henriette, and laid an
+arm caressingly about Antoinette’s shoulders.
+
+“Tableau—family-life ...” muttered Antoinette under her breath, and was
+almost grateful to her father for not taking part in the tableau, but
+grumbling in his usual irritable manner: “You are always late: will you
+never learn to be punctual?”
+
+They went in to dinner.
+
+“_Eh bien_, Monsieur Lefèvre, you bring us news of our family in
+Grenoble?”
+
+Monsieur Lefèvre hastened to deliver the messages which seemed to
+consist mainly of: “_Saluts affectueux de la part de——_”
+
+But he became more explicit when mentioning that in the near future an
+engagement was likely to be announced between Madame de Courcy’s
+grand-daughter Hélène, and the “lonely soldier,” to whom since months
+she had acted as “_marraine_.”
+
+“Letters had passed between them. Then the young man arrived _en
+permission_. The young people appeared to please each other. It seems
+that he is of good family. _Mais c’est tout de même un jeu bizarre...._”
+
+Grand’mère agreed that it was very bizarre, and announced her intention
+of sending a letter to her daughter and son-in-law in Grenoble,
+advising, or better, commanding the rupture of these highly irregular
+“_fiançailles_.”
+
+... If only she could have caught Dennis’s eye now! How he had laughed
+over that story of Sidonie’s engagement.... How he would have relished
+this feat on the part of Sidonie’s youngest sister. Dennis—Dennis—would
+they never laugh together again...?
+
+M. Lefèvre was seeking to make excuses for Hélène. One must not forget
+that it was war-time. The glamour of the uniform—doubtless every
+patriotic daughter of France felt the same about the glamour of the
+uniform. Doubtless Mademoiselle Antoinette also—“_Et il y en a de très
+chics, parmi les officiers anglais...._”
+
+Grand’mère remarked curtly that Antoinette had no interest in English
+officers, and M. Lefèvre looked relieved. Since the outbreak of war,
+being over military age, he had regretted his civilian clothing; but
+to-day for the first time—with a beaming smile at Antoinette—he no
+longer found reason to deplore it.
+
+... In the name of freedom and democracy—ready to stand out till the
+last—rights of the people—international federation—Broken phrases and
+words shot through her mind. She would have liked to throw M. Lefèvre
+into the tea-shop—a very timorous Daniel into the lions’ den—he was a
+war-profiteer, manufacturing leather goods for the French Government;
+they would make short work of him down at Miss Mowbray’s! She could hear
+Alan——
+
+Alan.... They were together to-night, she supposed. Dennis would not
+leave him now till he was arrested. She found no difficulty in picturing
+what might pass between them ... Alan’s provocations ... Dennis’s
+battles against desire that might prove stronger than himself. Only a
+few days ago her imagination had halted, incredulous, uncomprehending.
+It was amazing now, the ease with which it swung forward and found its
+way about in these forbidden regions. Because the taint was in herself,
+too, it had needed but the slightest touch to awaken her sleeping
+imagination. The awakening had been complete. There was nothing
+unfamiliar now in the thought that her man should be passionately in
+love with another man.
+
+“Mademoiselle is interested in music?”
+
+“But yes, Monsieur....”
+
+Questions and answers ... and she knew that M. Lefèvre’s eyes rested
+appraisingly on her. Perhaps he was wondering if she would make a good
+wife and mother to his children.... What a pity he could not have read
+her thoughts of two minutes ago! She had a great longing to speak them
+aloud, to watch the effect, the stunned consternation, incredulity and
+disgust spreading upon his bland, fat face. That _she_, a _jeune fille_
+of good family.... And very likely her own mother would not understand
+what she was talking about; and Grand’mère would scream and rave,
+whether she understood or not; and her father would turn her out of the
+house. It was a pity that she could not allow herself the luxury of
+giving a dramatic climax, a super-climax, to the dinner-party....
+
+“Yes ...” said Henriette, “there were two hundred persons present, I
+think. It was too much. The whole audience was so _ému_ by my first
+recitation that their feelings reacted upon me. _J’étais toute
+bouleversée...._”
+
+“Madame is so sensitive.”
+
+“_Hélas_, yes.”
+
+“And so generous, to give so much of her time and of her talent.”
+
+Henriette endorsed this. “But I give them gladly in the great cause.
+Would that I could give more, and that with impassioned rhetoric I could
+fire the blood of every coward who lags behind and does not avail
+himself of the glorious privilege of dying for his country!” (... And a
+terrified boy had said only that afternoon: “It’s waiting for you now,
+when you’re eighteen!”)
+
+“‘_En avant, Belgique, pays martyrisée mais toujours glorieuse_’—when I
+said those words my voice was strangled with sobs; and there were many
+ladies in the front row who also sobbed. I noticed especially the wife
+of the Spanish Secretary of State....”
+
+M. Lefèvre made sympathetic sounds in his throat. “A well-merited
+tribute to your powers, Madame. And has Mademoiselle inherited her
+mother’s great gift?”
+
+Mademoiselle replied: “Unhappily not, Monsieur.”
+
+Henriette looked at her daughter through her lorgnon. “She lacks the
+temperament.”
+
+... Yes, but whence or from whom had she inherited the particular
+temperament that was hers? The idea that it might have been the bequest
+of either of her parents or her grandmother, filled her with the
+hysterical desire to laugh. She was an anomaly and a freak in her
+family, just as Dennis was an anomaly and a freak in his.
+
+Grand’mère was enquiring after the welfare of her grand-daughter
+Sidonie; and M. Lefèvre, by dint of arch smiles and hesitations, managed
+to convey the interesting news that Sidonie was once again in a delicate
+state of health. Antoinette smiled. Out of consideration for her youth
+and virginity, M. Lefèvre could not mention in a natural manner, one of
+the natural facts of life ... but he would probably regale her father
+with stories of the usual dubious French type once they were alone in
+the smoking-room. Dennis had not been so careful of her sheltered,
+girlish innocence and ignorance, but suddenly M. Lefèvre, normal,
+typical man that he was, struck her as being much more perverse than
+Dennis! Again she longed to say so aloud. And to have Dennis here to
+watch M. Lefèvre’s face.... How was she to go on living in a world
+turned upside down, world in which what was usually accepted as natural
+seemed to her inverted, and only the unnatural seemed natural?
+Certainly, she had exulted in being led by Dennis into this inverted
+world—she saw it as a kind of maze—but she had not anticipated being
+left alone in it. And she would never be able to find her way out again.
+Perhaps there was no way out for people like her.
+
+And her mother would continue to calculate the dramatic effect of
+strangled sobs at fashionable charity concerts; and her father would
+continue to be fretful and irritable; and her grandmother would continue
+to attempt periodically to get her married to suitable people, until she
+was too old, and they gave her up as a hopeless case.
+
+“Mademoiselle looks a trifle pale. Perhaps the air of London does not
+agree with her.”
+
+“Oh, I’m quite well, thank you ...” with a false sprightliness of
+manner.
+
+“She does not eat enough,” grumbled Anatole.
+
+“She runs about too much,” supplemented her grandmother.
+
+“The air of Grenoble is said to be famed for giving appetite. May I
+express the hope that soon Mademoiselle will prove it for herself?”
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+Would he telephone this morning? Even if it were only to make final and
+absolute the severance between them? She felt that she must at all costs
+speak to him once again, and then unquestioningly she would accept her
+dismissal. She vowed that she would not in any way attempt to clutch at
+him, but he could not expect her to be superhuman ... and it would be
+superhuman to be content to drop out of his life, with never a word of
+farewell.
+
+All that morning she was on the alert to catch the sound of the
+telephone, ready to run and answer it immediately, so as not to waste
+the precious moments he might have set aside for her. Other sounds there
+were; deceptive sounds that jerked at her taut nerves; bicycle-bells in
+the streets; the whirr of the telephone in the house next door; jingle
+of bells on a passing cart; bells that existed only in her imagination.
+The whole world seemed to be full of bell-sounds.... The telephone alone
+remained dumb, as if under an enchantment.... But later on it threw off
+this spell, and rang with persistent and diabolical frequency during the
+whole afternoon. And each time Antoinette was convinced that it must be
+Dennis, and with her heart beating wildly, flew to take off the
+receiver; and was told that she was the “wrong number,” or else lured
+into chatty conversation with some friend of her mother’s.
+
+She raged impotently against these people who kept the line engaged,
+while Dennis was perhaps trying in vain to get on.... The exhausting day
+wore to its finish; and after one more “Sorry you’re troubled,” and a
+somewhat tactless enquiry on the part of the Exchange as to whether the
+telephone was “in order,” the instrument relapsed into silence.
+
+And no letter, no word from him next morning.
+
+... Scorching eyeballs and aching head; the sick, hot swell of tears in
+the throat, and the unremitting effort required to swallow them down, to
+appear natural, to deny herself the luxury of unrestrained emotion. If
+once she broke down, there would be questions ... questions that she
+could not answer. How much understanding could she expect from her
+environment? They were strangers to her, strangers all—her father, her
+mother, her grandmother.
+
+Even despite her really gallant efforts at self-control, it was apparent
+to her relatives that she was looking ill. Grand’mère, of course, took
+this to be a piece of personal cussedness on Antoinette’s part: did not
+the presence of M. Lefèvre in London render it eminently desirable that
+she should appear at her best?
+
+“She is anæmic,” said Henriette.
+
+“She smokes too much,” declared Anatole.
+
+“We should have found her a husband when she was younger,” Grand’mère
+wagged her head sagaciously.
+
+“There is still time,” muttered Anatole; “Jean Lefèvre had quite a good
+impression of her, though one must admit that she made very little
+effort to please him.”
+
+Grand’mère brightened, and expressed the hope that M. Lefèvre would soon
+come to pay his “_visite de digestion_.”
+
+“He will come soon enough,” grumbled Anatole, who discouraged enthusiasm
+on principle.
+
+Of course he would come. And more than probably he would propose to her.
+Antoinette knew that type from past experience. And the family would be
+indignant if she refused him—just as they had been indignant on previous
+occasions. Only this time the indignation would be greater, because, as
+Grand’mère had said, they should have married her off when she was
+younger; they were getting uneasy about her future; wanted to see her
+safely settled.... Perhaps they would make it difficult—impossible for
+her to refuse him. Perhaps her own strength of resistance would give
+way. She felt as if she were being slowly strangled to death.
+
+There was no one in whom she could confide, except, perhaps, Pegeen.
+Pegeen might not understand, but she would be good to her, and that, for
+the moment, was all that she asked; someone to be good to her, and
+before whom she could relax her wearisome pretence. She was to go to
+supper at the studio that evening; and the thought of it somehow helped
+her through the first part of the third day without news of Dennis.
+
+But when she reached the studio, Pegeen was not there. The side-entrance
+had been left open, and on the table she found a scrawled note from
+Pegeen, saying that she had gone out to tea with Conn and would be back
+soon, and in the meantime would Antoinette help herself to the
+cigarettes.... Antoinette was bitterly disappointed, her nerves already
+fretted with over-much waiting. She had no idea of the time. The hands
+of the three clocks—an antique bronze, a little painted Bavarian one,
+and a cuckoo-clock—all pointed to different hours and ticked at variance
+with one another; through the window that stood open to the garden, a
+flood of orange sunset-light poured in, and lit up the colours in the
+gorgeous brocades and fabrics that lay strewn about. From the
+vicarage-garden next door came the sound of voices, and the smart dry
+crack of croquet balls in collision. Antoinette wondered if Pegeen and
+Conn were at Miss Mowbray’s, and if Dennis and Alan were there too.
+Perhaps Pegeen would bring her some news, some message. But why was she
+so late? Perhaps, with characteristic absent-mindedness, while she
+listened to the usual vehement sort of talk in the tea-shop, she had
+forgotten that Antoinette was waiting for her.
+
+Already the sunset had faded, and the skylight showed a square of dull
+grey. Restlessly she went to the window and looked out. The garden with
+its unkempt lawn and tangled shrubbery, had a sinister appearance:
+effect heightened by a yellow-eyed cat, crouching motionless among the
+bushes.
+
+She returned to her armchair by the fireplace; selected at random a book
+from one of the shelves; discovered after five minutes that she had not
+taken in a single word that she had read. Why didn’t Pegeen come? Yet,
+even if she came, Antoinette realised again that it would not be
+possible to tell her anything. How could she tell without implicating
+Dennis? Pegeen might turn away in shuddering disgust, or she might
+repeat Antoinette’s story to Conn.... No, one could not tell that sort
+of thing. That was law that could not be infringed, even though
+infringement might bring such relief.
+
+Terror and loneliness of the Ishmaelite, outcast among men and women....
+She was coming to know by her own experience every stage of the
+suffering he had foreshadowed for her, suffering that she was not big
+enough, not strong enough to bear alone.
+
+Still the noise of the croquet balls persisted. Idly she wondered how
+the players could see in this dim light. It was getting cold, but she
+dared not go to close the door leading into the garden. To do so she
+would have to cross the whole length of the studio ... and shadows were
+beginning to lurk in the corners now, shadows that it would be horrible
+to know behind one. As long as one faced them, it was bearable. Just
+bearable.... The square of the skylight was changing from grey to dark
+blue. The primroses that Conn had brought Pegeen the other day still
+filled the green bowl, but they had faded to a hideous shrivelled mass
+of brown. The sounds from the next door garden had ceased entirely, but
+the studio was full of strange little sounds—creakings, whisperings,
+mutterings.... From the walls, the figures in the cartoons leered
+grotesquely down at her. There was something sinister about the designs
+and the crude, brutal colouring of the brocades, just as there was
+something sinister in that neglected garden with the weed-grown paths
+and the crouching cat. She could not switch on the electric lamp at her
+elbow; in accordance with the Lighting Regulations, the blind had to be
+drawn over the skylight before the lamp could be lit ... and she knew
+that she could never get even as far as the skylight. Those shapes in
+the corners would creep up behind her, padding soft-footed at her
+heels.... Soon it would be quite dark, and she would be alone with her
+terrible thoughts, alone with the shadows and the mutterings and
+creakings.
+
+“Pegeen, come—please—please—please....”
+
+No possibility of getting a sane grip of herself now. If Pegeen came she
+would confess to her everything—everything—not caring if she infringed
+the law. Only to have sight and sound of a human being among these
+inanimate things imbued suddenly with a mysterious spirit of evil.
+
+Footsteps at last, coming down the path towards the entrance.... With a
+sob of relief, she rushed to the door.
+
+“_Dennis!_”
+
+She was clinging to him, laughing and crying hysterically. “I—I didn’t
+know you were coming here.”
+
+“And I didn’t know I’d find you here—I came for a book that Alan lent
+Conn—‘_Towards Democracy_’—he wants it,” he spoke in rapid, jerky
+sentences.
+
+“Conn’s out. Pegeen too. I’ve been waiting for her for hours and
+hours.... Dennis, it was dreadful!” Still she clung to his hand,
+trembling.
+
+“Poor child.... Antoinette, I know you expected me to ring up—I’ve
+behaved despicably, oh, worse than that, but what’s the use of piling on
+adjectives? I couldn’t ring up because there was nothing to say. You see
+how it is with me, my dear.”
+
+“I see, Dennis....”
+
+“And doesn’t it make you hate me?”
+
+“Could anything do that?”
+
+He took her by the shoulders and kissed her again and again.
+
+With a horrible flash of insight, she cried: “You’re kissing me—and
+thinking of Alan.”
+
+He answered “Yes” ... determined that at least there should be no
+deception between them. “You shouldn’t let me do this, Antoinette.”
+
+“I love you....”
+
+“I’m a cad and a beast to let you let me.”
+
+She laughed a little as the pressure of his hands tightened around her.
+“I love you, Dennis.”
+
+She was aware that her self-respect, her sense of moral degradation
+should have risen in revolt against his treatment of her. Yet she knew
+no shame in taking and returning his kisses, would have known no shame
+in giving herself to him entirely, if by so doing she could have brought
+him an instant’s fleeting delight, appeased the hunger of his senses.
+
+“The waste, the utter futile waste of you.... Oh, God, why can’t I care
+for you more?”
+
+It might have been the cry of a person drowning, and it filled her with
+immense pity and despair—pity and despair beyond all consciousness of
+her own suffering.
+
+“What is it that he can give you, and that I can’t?”
+
+“You mustn’t want to give me anything. I’m not worth it. To-morrow I’m
+seeing Alan for the last time. He’s pledged his word to be ready when
+the police come for him next morning. I’m ... spending the last evening
+with him, Antoinette....”
+
+A sound of pain broke from her lips as he drew her closer to him. “I’ve
+done my best to make you hate me. I’m doing it now.... I shall be with
+Alan to-morrow, I tell you! Don’t you hate me now, Antoinette, and now?”
+
+Thus might a different man, the phantom lover of her school-girl dreams,
+have sought to wring from her the admission that she loved him. “Don’t
+you love me now, Antoinette, and now...?”
+
+Yet in this inverted world it could still seem natural that he should
+try to wring from her the assurance of her hatred, using the most cruel
+weapon in his power—the name of Alan.
+
+“Don’t you hate me, Antoinette? It would be so much better if you
+could!”
+
+Through her torture she cried, “No!”
+
+He kissed her roughly and passionately then, in a sort of fury at her
+inability to satisfy him. And she, perceiving this, was yet happy after
+a distorted fashion; happy despite her sad knowledge and lack of all
+illusions. While she was in his arms her terrors could still be kept at
+bay; she could laugh at the menace of M. Lefèvre or of continued
+existence at Cadogan Gardens. It might be the last time that she would
+feel secure.... Sudden conviction came upon her, that this _was_ the
+last time that his arms would be around her; and now as once before, she
+knew that the moment must be held and held—even though past experience
+had proved that the memory of it would be powerless to soften the
+inevitable pain that was to come.
+
+“Dennis—it’s no good, you can’t make me hate you. And I can’t make
+myself hate you—I’ve tried.... And I can’t do without you. I’ve tried
+that too. Seeing what it felt like.... Yes, I know you’re in love with
+Alan, and that I’m nothing to you and that you’d rather be rid of me
+altogether—Oh, don’t interrupt me—let me say all I have to say, for
+once.... I know if I had any pride or decent feeling I shouldn’t be
+saying anything at all. You called me an immoral woman once, in fun.
+Perhaps you were right. I’d rather kiss you like this, knowing
+everything, than be respectably married to a respectable man. I suppose
+I’m not good enough to be able to care for a respectable man. But is it
+immoral to care for one man only, and for him so much, that nothing he
+is or does, and nothing he can make you be or do, can ever make you hate
+him?”
+
+“And all this wasted on a wretched freak who can’t take it—but who’d
+give his soul to be able to take it—bear that in mind, Antoinette,
+perhaps it’ll help just a little.”
+
+“It’s undignified of me to ask you not to cut me off entirely, but I do
+ask you, all the same. Dignity and pride don’t seem to convey very much
+to me now. They’re just words. But I know that I can’t do without you.
+That’s real.”
+
+He bent over her and murmured: “Forgive me, dear, for hurting you so
+much....”
+
+She answered with a half smile: “Forgive me, Dennis, for loving you so
+much ...” and added in a whisper: “As I forgive you for loving me so
+little....”
+
+He said after a while: “Perhaps it’s just as well that Alan came when he
+did; otherwise you might not have believed me. Seeing was believing,
+wasn’t it?”
+
+“No,” she said softly, “feeling was believing.”
+
+“It’s monstrous that I should have had to drag you through all this!”
+
+“I went gladly, Dennis—at first, anyway. So it was just as much my
+fault. And I’m still willing to go wherever you’ll lead, if only you
+_will_ lead, and not leave me stranded and alone. So it’s still my fault
+now.”
+
+He said sorrowfully: “It’s not your fault—and it’s not my fault—we’re
+both unfortunates....”
+
+As they left the studio, they heard footsteps scurrying down the walled
+passage between the gardens, and almost collided with Pegeen. “I’m so
+sorry to have kept you waiting,” she whispered breathlessly, “but I
+couldn’t help it. We had to arrange things—we’re off to-morrow, Conn and
+I—so good-bye to the two of you, and all the best luck in the world!”
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+
+“Such decent chaps they were,” said Alan reflectively, “we had a most
+delightful conversation. They don’t really want to arrest me in the
+least. Not with any conviction. Still, they’re coming to discharge their
+painful duty at 8 a.m. to-morrow morning. Don’t look so wretched,
+Dennis. I’m glad to be really up against it at last.”
+
+Dennis made no answer. He was mentally calculating how many hours of
+freedom still remained to Alan. It was 2 a.m. now. Not many hours more.
+
+“And they’re mistaken if they think that imprisonment can make me
+forswear my creed, or declare that I believe in war as a means of
+regeneration of nations, or that the duties of citizenship lie in taking
+the lives of other citizens, rather than in trying to promote pacific
+relations between them. Benny was complaining the other day that we’re
+so few, and I know some of us have ratted on that score alone, given up
+the battle because they think it’s no use against such odds. Being in
+the minority doesn’t imply being in the wrong. But capitulating means
+admitting that we believe that black is white, just because the majority
+says so. Poor devils all over Europe are being told that black is white,
+and are dying in proof of it. Dying gallantly and splendidly and
+wastefully for the sake of a lie.”
+
+“And when we try to assert our truth, we’re condemned to the
+death-in-life of prison.”
+
+“I wouldn’t call it so much death-in-life, as so many years that a
+benighted State unlawfully robs out of our lives, and it’s our business
+to prove that even that theft can’t daunt us.”
+
+“You needn’t be afraid that I shall let it daunt me.” To logic and
+commonsense and humanity; to every argument, reason and motive that had
+hitherto impelled Dennis to take up his stand as a pacifist, was now
+added the greatest of all these—love. “A couple of weeks hence I expect
+I shall be safely under lock and key too.”
+
+Alan grinned. “Locked up because we’re considered a danger to
+humanity.... Almost humorous, isn’t it?”
+
+“Well, at least we shall both be going through the same hell, Alan.”
+
+“The same hell, and the same good fight; I think we fought side by side
+before now. In ancient Greece, perhaps, or Rome. Sometimes I have dreams
+... and in those dreams you are always my comrade in battle, my comrade
+in love.”
+
+“And always will be, Alan, always....”
+
+“You’re sure, Dennis—sure that it will be, when we come out on the other
+side of this infernal tunnel?” There was a note of anxious pleading in
+the boy’s voice. For all his keen determination and courage, he looked
+suddenly even younger than he was—as young as he had looked that night
+at Crannack.
+
+“Alan....” Dennis dug the nails into the palms of his hands as he tried
+to master the choking sob that rose in his throat. But at that note in
+Alan’s voice all his laboriously built-up self-control and restraint
+gave way....
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Square was very still, flooded in the cold bluish light of the moon.
+The two stood a moment in silence on Dennis’s door-step.
+
+Then Alan smiled up at his friend. “Good-night, Dennis....”
+
+“Good-night, boy....” He tightened the pressure of his hand round Alan’s
+arm. “If only I could keep you safe....”
+
+“Nothing matters now,” murmured Alan, “I’m glad it’s been like this—the
+last time....”
+
+
+
+
+                                PART III
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+“And do you mean to tell me,” Mrs. Ryan said severely, “that Dennis is
+appealing for exemption _again_?”
+
+Mrs. Blackwood looked troubled. “You see, the local tribunal passed him
+for General Service, so he’s appealing against that at the House of
+Commons.”
+
+“I should have thought that being refused once would have brought him to
+his senses,” persisted Mrs. Ryan. Mrs. Blackwood glanced helplessly
+across at Antoinette. They had met at Dennis’s tribunal, for which Mrs.
+Blackwood and Doreen had come up to London; and they had invited
+Antoinette to England for the following week-end. Dennis had remained in
+town pending his new appeal.
+
+In answer to Mrs. Blackwood’s look, Antoinette rose in his defence.
+“Naturally he’s appealing again. The local tribunal scarcely listened to
+what he had to say.”
+
+“I should think not,” snorted Mrs. Ryan.
+
+“But surely the object of a tribunal _is_ to listen to what people have
+to say...?”
+
+Momentarily routed, Mrs. Ryan occupied herself with the sleeve of the
+pyjama she was sewing. All the ladies present were either sewing or
+knitting, and Doreen was busy with the tea. Antoinette found it both
+amusing and stimulating to be championing Dennis’s views in his own
+home-circle. Mrs. Blackwood was too worried, and also a little
+shamefaced before her visitors to do much in the championing line; and
+Doreen apparently shared this attitude. It therefore devolved upon
+Antoinette alone to defend the conscientious objector against these
+female militarists—Mrs. Ryan and Mrs. Hallard the most rabid ones; Mrs.
+Griggs merely woolly and futile; little Miss Simpkins torn between
+admiration of “our gallant boys,” and a reluctant personal admiration
+for Dennis. Unlike Mrs. Blackwood and Doreen, Antoinette had no regard
+whatever for the susceptibilities of the old ladies of Eastwold, and so
+felt quite equal to her task.
+
+Mrs. Ryan returned to the offensive. “I suppose if he appeals long
+enough he will get himself put into that Non-Combatant Corps. A shame, I
+call it, for a healthy young man.”
+
+“Oh, he wouldn’t dream of accepting Non-Com,” Antoinette replied
+loftily, “that’s only a compromise.” She was glad that she had picked up
+enough at Miss Mowbray’s to enable her to carry on the argument—carry it
+on clumsily, perhaps, but with Dennis’s own weapons.
+
+Mrs. Hallard, biting off the end of her cotton, said with brisk
+cheerfulness: “Well, there’s always Work of National Importance for him
+to undertake if he won’t fight. Plenty of that going, isn’t there?”
+
+“Dennis won’t undertake anything that means releasing another man to be
+killed in his place,” said Antoinette, and Mrs. Blackwood supported her
+weakly with: “You see, Dennis is a socialist.”
+
+“One of those horrid people who wear red ties and are always having
+riots ...” quavered Mrs. Griggs.
+
+“Dennis doesn’t wear a red tie!” declared his mother.
+
+“As he doesn’t believe in war himself, he won’t help others to wage it,”
+Antoinette ignored the asides.
+
+“So selfish ...” murmured Mrs. Griggs.
+
+“He might at least make munitions,” was Mrs. Hallard’s next bright
+suggestion.
+
+“Isn’t that helping to kill people, just as much as going to the Front?
+It’s doing it at home in comfort, instead of out there in danger.”
+
+“But—but the Germans _have got_ to be killed,” expostulated Mrs. Ryan,
+“how else are we to win the war?”
+
+Antoinette plunged round for some of the remembered arguments.
+“Pacifists don’t see why we should win it, any more than the Germans.
+They think a decisive victory for either side wouldn’t mean lasting
+peace, but would only be the foundation for future wars. Nothing will
+move Dennis from that belief!” she added proudly.
+
+“It’s quite a wrong-headed belief and someone ought to talk it out of
+him,” said Mrs. Ryan, “I hope you’ve used all your influence, Mrs.
+Blackwood?”
+
+“Oh, I can’t argue with him,” the mother shook her head, “his brains are
+so much better than mine ... and of course he must do as he thinks
+right.”
+
+“But do you realise that if he persists in upholding such nonsense, he
+runs the risk of being put in prison?”
+
+Mrs. Blackwood did realise. To anyone observing under her eyes the dark
+hollows that told of many sleepless nights, the fact would have been
+obvious.
+
+“Think of the disgrace!” said Mrs. Ryan in sepulchral tones.
+
+“Yes, the disgrace that a man _should_ be put in prison for standing by
+his convictions!” Antoinette blazed out.
+
+Mrs. Ryan glared at her. “Well, really ... these people are put in
+prison for being cowards, and quite right too.”
+
+“But the C.O.s who stand out aren’t cowards: cowards take the easy
+way—they commit suicide.” She was thinking of young Oswald Forsyth, who,
+maddened by fear of that which awaited him no matter in which direction
+he turned, had found a solution by taking his own life. “They’re not all
+cowards—there are some exceptions to the rule.”
+
+“I always distrust the exception to the rule.”
+
+“But you can’t have a world with everyone in it absolutely true to type,
+and built upon the same model by the dozen. Think how dull and tidy it
+would be—how German, in fact.”
+
+“I trust that my ideas do not in any respect savour of the _Kultur_ of
+that despicable country,” said Mrs. Ryan with dignity; “but I maintain
+that anything that puts itself outside the general rule and diverges too
+widely from the ordinary type, is an undesirable element, and should be
+barred out.”
+
+“That means that you’d bar out genius too, and lots of other fine
+qualities that only exist in the brains of people who are exceptions to
+the rule.”
+
+“... Such a very gifted young man,” sighed Miss Simpkins, smoothing her
+buttonhole with her thimble, “it seems such a pity....”
+
+“In times like these,” pronounced Mrs. Ryan, “if he can find nothing
+else to do, he should at least devote his gifts solely to composing
+Battle-Hymns for our men....”
+
+“... And she won’t be budged from her opinion any more than Dennis will
+be from his,” reflected Antoinette. It suddenly made her feel tired to
+think of the perpetual clash and battle of opposing belief and opposing
+opinion going on all over the world now—and no party ever coming round
+to see the point of view of the other.
+
+Mrs. Ryan, by way of intimating that the discussion was at an end,
+pointedly asked Doreen if she had news from Hugh, who was in the
+trenches.
+
+“I haven’t heard for some days, Mrs. Ryan. He was all right when he
+wrote last, but the post comes so irregularly now....” Doreen also was
+paler and thinner with the strain of waiting for letters, and dreading a
+certain kind of telegram from the War Office.
+
+There was a sympathetic murmur from all the ladies; then Mrs. Hallard
+spoke with her habitual brightness: “Never mind, dear. Just think how
+you and Lily will value the boys when they do come home to you for good.
+I expect we shall have a double wedding, sha’n’t we, Mrs. Blackwood?
+Clive and Lily, and Doreen and Hugh.”
+
+“There’s nothing so pretty as a really pretty wedding, I always think,”
+came Miss Simpkins’ gentle voice.
+
+“Arthur was the first man to enter Combles,” said Mrs. Griggs for the
+tenth time that afternoon. “He entered it at the head of his men,
+although he was badly wounded in the knee, which I am sure was very
+painful indeed, though he made light of it at the time.”
+
+“Yes, he’s quite a hero, isn’t he?” said Mr. Blackwood, and Mrs. Ryan
+put in: “He sent the girls a letter the other day; it had been opened by
+the censor, and they were ever so proud of it.”
+
+In imagination Antoinette could hear Amy’s excited lisp: “Fanthy the
+thenthor reading all our thecreth—doethn’t it make one feel important?”
+
+Later on Lily Hallard made her appearance. Hands plunged deep in the
+pockets of her khaki coat, she greeted the assembled company with:
+“Afternoon, everybody!” and helping herself to the sandwiches sat down
+between her mother and Doreen.
+
+“I’ve had a letter from Clive, so I thought I’d better toddle round with
+it at once and show you. Says he’s feeling awfully fit. Killed three
+Huns all on his own—sniped ’em. Good man!”
+
+“Oh, well done, well _done_!” cried Mrs. Hallard, “that ought to mean a
+decoration of some sort. Well, if he gets it or not, he’ll have deserved
+it. Your boy has given you something to be proud of, Mrs. Blackwood.”
+
+“Yes—yes, indeed....” But Mrs. Blackwood’s mind was troubled by an echo
+of something her other boy had once said to her: “Do you think because
+they’re Germans they love their sons less?”
+
+“Oh, by the way,” Lily continued with her mouth full, “Tom Sanderson’s
+been rather badly smashed up. I met his mother this morning. They had to
+amputate both legs—the one only as far as the knee, though. They say
+he’s wonderfully cheerful—learning to knit and make himself useful with
+his hands, now he’ll never be able to ride or walk again. I won’t tell
+Clive when I write; he’d be so cut up. He’s awfully fond of Tom. Rotten
+shame, isn’t it?”
+
+“The brutes!” exclaimed Mrs. Ryan.
+
+... Those who had maimed Tom were brutes; but Clive, who had sniped
+three of the enemy, was a hero. And to the other side Clive was the
+brute, and Tom’s assailants were heroes. Antoinette marvelled that the
+one-sided absurdity of it all should be apparent to no one save herself.
+But she recognised that it would not even have been apparent to her were
+she not seeing the world through Dennis’s eyes. And had he been a
+soldier she would have collected his badges and buttons, and listened to
+his stories from the Front with just as much zest as Doreen or Lily. But
+while she utterly lacked convictions of her own, there was a certain
+pride in taking up the attitude which she knew would have been his if he
+had been here.
+
+Mrs. Blackwood’s invitation to Eastwold had been a god-send. Ever since
+Alan’s arrest, two months ago, she had felt strangely shy of Dennis; had
+feared that he might think she was taking an unfair advantage over Alan.
+He might hate her and recoil from her, just because she was there, and
+he did not want her; and Alan, whom he did want, was inaccessible. All
+she prayed for now was not that Dennis should love her, but that he
+should not hate her.
+
+And at Eastwold, surrounded by people and things that belonged to him,
+she was continually being reminded of his personality. There were the
+old photographs of him as a baby, as a boy ... such a serious-eyed
+little boy. There were his books which she was invited to borrow if she
+liked. There was in Doreen that faint family-likeness to Dennis; an
+expression in the big light-brown eyes; the curve of the lips. There was
+the fascination of listening to Mrs. Blackwood’s stories of him as a
+child.... Antoinette felt nearer to him here than when she was actually
+with him in London.
+
+After the sewing-party had broken up, Lily, Antoinette and Doreen sat
+talking in the latter’s bedroom.
+
+Doreen appealed to Antoinette: “Can’t you do anything to make Dennis
+give up his dreadful ideas?”
+
+Antoinette smiled inwardly at the assumption that she had some influence
+over Dennis; but thought it just as well to keep up the illusion before
+Dennis’s sister. “Why should I, Doreen? Surely every man has a right to
+his opinions, and I think it’s splendid of Dennis to stand by his, as
+he’s doing.”
+
+“Splendid!” cried Lily, “sheer theatricality, I call it. They should
+never have had the chance of making such an exhibition of themselves.
+I’d shoot ’em all if I had my way.”
+
+“When so many are being shot already—and some are shooting themselves
+for fear of being shot—and some are shooting themselves rather than
+shoot others?”
+
+“Oh, I like your so-called humanitarian who is so squeamish that he
+won’t take the lives of his country’s enemies, and yet doesn’t scruple
+to take his own, rather than let it be of service to the State.”
+
+“Rather than use it for a purpose which he considers vile!” Antoinette
+broke in. “There’s some heroism in that too, even if there isn’t in the
+suicide of the person who’s just afraid. That’s only pitiful ...” she
+added softly.
+
+“Why concern yourself with such riff-raff? The C.O.s and all their like
+are just a lot of contemptible weaklings.”
+
+“You’re not very complimentary to your future brother-in-law, are you?”
+
+“Doreen knows well enough what I think of Dennis’s behaviour; there is
+no need for compliments. People of his sort are no good to the nation.
+Cut ’em out I say!”
+
+“You can’t call a man who’s ready to go to prison for his convictions a
+weakling or a coward.”
+
+“Prison’s safe. What’s prison compared with the trenches?”
+
+“They do queer things to the C.O.s in prison—forcing food through tubes
+up their noses if they won’t eat, putting them in chains and painful
+irons—yes, you _shall_ listen, Doreen.... The officials have more or
+less got a free hand with them, and backed up by public opinion they can
+wreak their spite upon them as they please, giving them ghastly
+punishments that may injure them for life.”
+
+Lily shrugged her shoulders. “If a man disobeys orders he’s got to be
+punished. The men in the trenches run other risks—real risks.”
+
+“The men in the trenches also stand a sporting chance of escape. Those
+in prison don’t. They have to undergo deliberate, cold-blooded torture.
+It—it’s like atrocities!”
+
+Lily snorted. “Well, it would be a nice thing if these precious
+pacifists of yours were allowed to run loose and enjoy themselves while
+all the really decent people have to suffer.”
+
+“No, you’d like to see them punished just for having ideas that are
+different from other people’s. You rampant militarists at home can’t
+endure the thought of any joy or freedom being left in the world. You
+seem to take a ghoulish pleasure in crushing it all out. It galls you to
+think of anyone escaping with a lesser share of the general misery.”
+
+“Frankly I don’t see why the C.O.s should escape. Why should men enjoy
+the freedom and the rights of citizenship that they won’t fight for?”
+
+“They’re not given their rights of citizenship as a free gift or a
+charity; they pay for them in rates and taxes: that’s fair. But why
+should they also be expected to pay in flesh and blood?”
+
+“You’ve a very lofty idea of patriotism, I must say!”
+
+“I hate all the talk about ‘a man’s duty to the State.’ Why should the
+State have the right to claim a man’s life when it can’t _give_ him
+life—when it can’t give him back as much as a finger-nail that he may
+lose in the war? Why has the State the right to take more than it can
+give?”
+
+“You’re mad,” said Lily; and having thus clinched the argument,
+departed.
+
+Doreen sighed. “Dennis can’t stop the war by keeping out of it, so I do
+wish he’d join in like everybody else, and help to win it.”
+
+“Of course one man can’t stop the war by standing out, any more than one
+man by joining in can win it. Each man can only answer for himself, and
+do what he thinks right.”
+
+Doreen cried impulsively, “I love you for sticking up for Denny like
+that, but only because I love him too—not because I think he’s right. I
+think it’s right to do what Hugh’s doing, even though I sometimes feel I
+just can’t bear it a second longer—the waiting for news—and knowing he’s
+in danger always—and hating the sight of a telegraph-boy.”
+
+“Yet you wouldn’t want him not to be at the Front, would you?”
+
+Doreen shook her head.
+
+“And I don’t want Dennis not to stand by his views, either.”
+
+“Oh, that’s different,” said Doreen childishly.
+
+Antoinette smiled. “Is it...? And supposing Hugh had been a pacifist,
+Doreen?”
+
+“Oh, he never could have been ... but if he had,” Doreen softened, “if
+he had, I suppose I should have tried to find excuses for him.” She
+added after a moment: “But how I should have hated having to!”
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+He was adrift again now, while he waited for his tribunal, perilously
+adrift: wandering down to Miss Mowbray’s and half-heartedly joining in
+the talk, with his thoughts elsewhere; wandering into theatres when the
+performance was nearly over, seeking in vain that which might distract
+and hold him. Hold him.... Was there anything on earth that could hold
+him, now that Alan had gone? And now that Alan had gone, his life was
+one stupendous aching regret that what had happened that last night had
+not happened sooner. The senselessness of all his repression and
+self-denial stood revealed to him. Seeing at last with Alan’s eyes, and
+in the light of his own experience, he recognised that herein had lain
+the real perversion: in the continuous struggle between brain and body,
+the continuous struggle to suppress his instincts and force them into
+ways not natural to them. It had not lain in his passion for Alan. That,
+and that alone, given the peculiarities of his nature, had been right,
+had been beautiful, because it was truthful. He could curse himself now
+for the short-sightedness, for the principle of imagined æstheticism
+that had made him for so long resist his own impulses.
+
+If only.... And now it was too late. Alan was behind the bars, and
+Dennis left with the burning knowledge of all that he had missed. What,
+indeed, was there that could hold him now? Yet despite his desire to be
+held, at times he longed with weary irritability, to be able to sever
+all ties; to break from his family; from Antoinette; perhaps, like
+O’Farrell, to escape to Ireland; to live in truth the life of the outlaw
+and outcast that he was.
+
+Perpetual argument, achieving no result, and ending always in the same
+inevitable deadlock, was carried on between the two conflicting strains
+of his nature.
+
+“It would break your mother’s heart.”
+
+“She’s got the three others, and they are more satisfactory than I am.”
+
+“She loves you more than the others—and differently.”
+
+Dennis groaned, impatient of this wealth of affection to which he could
+make no adequate return. He loved his mother—but she was not the pivot
+of his existence, as he was of hers.
+
+There was Antoinette, too, with her useless gifts, with her useless
+pleading that he might accept them. Sometimes he hated her for his very
+inability to accept them; and sometimes he could laugh at the futility,
+the grotesque, ludicrous futility of these ties that held him—and held
+him—and did not hold him. But if he broke them, he asked himself, what
+then? What then?
+
+Doubtless the Central Appeal Tribunal would in some measure furnish the
+reply.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+“Clear the court!”
+
+The people were hustled out into one of the long stone corridors of the
+House of Commons, and the door closed upon them. Behind that door the
+fate of two of the applicants for exemption was being decided.
+Antoinette groaned at the delay. Dennis had been called for 2.30 that
+afternoon, but it was nearly 4 o’clock now, and so far only five out of
+the twelve cases had been heard. The fact that one did not know in what
+order they were to be heard, added to the suspense of waiting. In the
+first case there had only been a brief interval between the applicant’s
+statement and the delivery of judgment. The spectacled, obviously
+highly-strung young man had appealed on socialistic grounds. His speech
+was both virile and vehement, and he quoted Tolstoy and Wells and Karl
+Marx and Philip Gibbs in a breathless Cockney voice that told of
+self-education and the night-school. When he had finished, he still
+stood tense and rigid, although he had the Board’s permission to be
+seated. And when the blow fell—“Appeal dismissed. Applicant passed for
+Foreign Service”—he crumpled up quite suddenly into his chair in a way
+that made Antoinette’s throat feel tight.
+
+The two next appeals had been decided in much the same manner; but the
+last two had evidently presented greater difficulties and were now being
+considered behind the closed doors.
+
+In the corridor a crowd of men and women, friends and supporters of the
+applicants, were huddled together, talking in low voices. Amongst them
+there were representatives of both pacifist and militarist newspapers, a
+plain-clothes detective, and two policemen. There was only one bench,
+and that was occupied by a youth in khaki and three white-faced women in
+black. The others had to stand, shifting restlessly to and fro, yet not
+daring to move too far from those doors that might open again at any
+moment. People who had never met before drifted into whispered
+conversation with each other, linked together by an outlook and an
+anxiety common to them all.
+
+An elderly woman was talking to Dennis, and Antoinette was glad that his
+attention was engaged. His behaviour to her had been entirely aloof and
+impersonal ever since Alan’s arrest. Perhaps he thought—thus she
+interpreted his mood—that if he were less aloof and impersonal he would
+be guilty of treachery towards Alan. Even now, though she had
+accompanied him here, and was outwardly quite in the picture—“the woman
+at his side”—there was no intimacy of thought between them. She knew
+well enough who it was who really “stood by” him.
+
+She heard the woman say to Dennis: “I shall _will_ you to get total
+exemption. I am a great believer in will-power, aren’t you? If they
+offer you Non-Combatant Service, I do hope you won’t take it! Yes, I’ve
+been to prison three times—look!” She lowered her voice to a whisper and
+pointed to the suffragette badge she wore inside her jacket. Then,
+turning to Antoinette: “I shall will him to get off for both your sakes,
+my dear....”
+
+Antoinette thanked her gravely.
+
+The doors were flung open again, and the people pressed back into the
+court, struggling to regain their old places on the benches that ran,
+three deep, along the walls. Would it be Dennis’s turn now to face those
+twenty-five men upon whom his fate depended?
+
+Judgment was delivered upon the previous applicants. Then a name was
+called: not Dennis’s. The young man in khaki stepped forward and took
+his place at the desk, and a murmur of astonishment went through the
+crowd at the sight of his uniform. He stated that when the military
+authorities had come to remove him, he had told them that he had an
+appeal pending, but they had taken no notice....
+
+There were groans of “Shame....” “A disgrace!” which were instantly
+quelled. The Chairman declared that the man must be put back into
+civilian ranks before his case could be heard.
+
+The next applicant claimed exemption on the grounds that he was the sole
+support of his mother, his grandmother and a paralysed sister. His
+father was dead, and his brother had been killed in the war. While the
+Chairman enquired into the details of the circumstances, Antoinette
+looked at the woman who had accompanied the applicant; the mother,
+probably. Her hands were clenched in her lap, her eyes fixed imploringly
+upon the Chairman’s face. Impossible to tell from the perfect
+impartiality of his manner in which direction he was biased, if at all.
+Antoinette found herself following this case, as she had followed most
+of the others: not impersonally, but as if all her own hopes and
+longings were centred in the desire that the man should get his
+exemption. She shared the breathless painful suspense of the mother, and
+the feeling that the agony was being unnecessarily prolonged, when
+judgment was for the moment deferred, and the next man called.
+
+This one stated that he had religious scruples against the taking of
+life. In proof of this he had relinquished his post with a firm of
+motor-tyre manufacturers on discovering that they were working for the
+Government. He put his case badly, halting and stammering; but his
+underlying determination seemed to be inflexible.
+
+“The Lord said: ‘_Thou shalt not kill._’”
+
+Here the Military Representative, to whose smooth fat face and sneering
+expression Antoinette had taken an instantaneous dislike, rose to his
+feet and asked the applicant with affected politeness if he were aware
+that one or two of the Germans—yes, let us say one or two of them—had
+already broken that commandment, and that it was his duty to his country
+to retaliate?
+
+“If the Germans do wrong, sir, I can’t help it. I can’t get beyond the
+words of God.”
+
+“You wish to interpret them in the manner most convenient to yourself.
+Since you are so well up in the Bible, what about the passage that
+demands ‘_An eye for an eye_’?”
+
+“The God of vengeance may have demanded that, sir—never the God of
+love.”
+
+“Ask the Germans how much the God of love enters into their
+calculations!” sneered the Military Representative; “it must be obvious
+to every normal intellect that we were never meant to love hordes of
+barbarians like those we have at present to combat.”
+
+The man hesitated; fumbled for words; opened his mouth once or twice;
+then: “But the laws of the Almighty weren’t meant to hold good only in
+times of peace, sir!”
+
+A ripple of laughter and applause ran through the crowd and was severely
+repressed. The applicant was told that exemption would be granted him if
+he returned to his employment with the Government-firm, or took up other
+work of national importance. He shook his head in answer to both
+suggestions, and his appeal was dismissed.
+
+And then Dennis’s name was called.... They were both actually to go
+through it now, he and she; no longer mere spectators of other people’s
+anguish and suspense. She would have liked to touch his hand and whisper
+“Good luck ...” as the other women did to their men, but he did not even
+glance down at her as he passed by, with sombre, preoccupied gaze and
+furrowed brow. He took his place. She could see him in profile—if she
+looked. But at first she could not bear to look, knowing him there
+before the twenty-five, defenceless and at bay. Nor did she take in the
+meaning of his words, when he began to speak.
+
+With all her faculties and thoughts concentrated upon the final issue,
+she sat tense and rigid—as Dennis must have sat through Alan’s tribunal.
+Alan had been in prison for three months already. If they offered him
+release now, at the price of abandonment of his principles, she wondered
+if he would accept it. Gladly, perhaps how gladly.... Always at Miss
+Mowbray’s one heard tales of the things that were being done to the
+conscientious objectors in prison. Could those fat, bald-headed old
+gentlemen who sat there in judgment really be callous enough to condemn
+Dennis to things of that sort?
+
+The Chairman was saying: “So you think all warfare is wrong: I daresay a
+good many people share that view, but most of them are fighting all the
+same, realising that that is the only way to end this particular war.”
+
+Dennis replied: “It is my firm belief that I should not in any way be
+benefiting humanity by taking part in this war, as I am convinced that
+there is no such thing as a ‘war to end war,’ and that victory would
+only lead to successive wars, each more terrible than the last; also
+that the solution of international disputes should be sought in
+arbitration and diplomacy, rather than in bloodshed.”
+
+The old gentleman sitting nearest to Dennis truculently demanded if he
+had held these views previous to August, 1914.
+
+“Certainly,” he answered.
+
+“How can you prove that? Have you ever written or stated in public
+anything of the sort before 1914?”
+
+“No; but most of my friends were acquainted with my views. I’m afraid I
+can’t offer you any more definite proof. You must take my word for it.”
+
+The old gentleman grunted, and relapsed into silence. Antoinette hoped
+and thought that this was the end, but immediately another interlocutor
+rose in place of the first.
+
+“Does the applicant not differentiate between a righteous war, a war of
+self-defence—and one waged for gain and greed, with the sole object of
+crushing smaller nations?”
+
+“I’m afraid I can’t think of any war as a righteous war—war in all its
+essentials being so profoundly unrighteous. And as to the comparison of
+the respective war-aims of the Allies and of Germany—who can say at this
+stage that England is only fighting to avenge Belgium, and with no view
+to the conquest of enemy territory or the extension of power? What about
+the conquest of German colonies in East Africa? The French say they
+won’t make peace till they’ve got Alsace-Lorraine back. Have they the
+right to it? Alsace-Lorraine was German territory before ever it became
+French—before they got it back again in 1870.”
+
+“Yes, yes, young man, you’re not here to teach us history,” the first
+speaker cut him short, and the second rejoined: “Nor to give us your
+highly unpatriotic views of your country’s war-aims. It’s your business
+to fight for your country, not to criticise it.”
+
+“If I am sent out to kill, surely I have the right to question the cause
+that requires me to convert myself into a murderer.”
+
+“‘Right or wrong, my country’—that’s the line for every true Briton to
+take up.”
+
+“I am a humanitarian before I am a ‘true Briton,’ then, if either the
+‘right’ or the ‘wrong’ of my country involves the deliberate slaughter
+of human beings.”
+
+The suffragette who had spoken to them in the passage signified her
+approval of this by nodding and smiling across at Antoinette. The girl
+flushed. Her man was making a good fight, and she was proud of him, even
+while she knew that she had no right to think of him as her man, and
+hence no right to her pride. But she could almost have wished that he
+were being just a little less vehement: it was obvious that the general
+attitude was hostile towards him; only the Chairman still appeared
+impartial, as he said: “You categorically refuse in any way to help to
+carry on the war?”
+
+“I do. I want to help to stop the war, and all possibility of future
+wars. My justification for being here is my confirmed belief that I am
+doing more towards that end by adhering to my refusal to fight than by
+unthinkingly and unquestioningly going out to kill.”
+
+Again there was a murmur of applause; and a moment’s silence followed.
+Antoinette glanced from one to the other of the men’s faces; she longed
+to tackle each of the twenty-five separately, to beseech and implore him
+to be merciful. She tried to pick out at least one, whose physiognomy
+held a promise of tolerance or understanding; but there seemed to be an
+absurd family-likeness between them: they all looked pompous,
+comfortable, overfed; and at the present moment, righteously indignant.
+These old men had lived their lives; they would neither be called upon
+to shed their blood for their country, nor to go to prison, if they
+upheld opposing views; they had probably sent their sons to the war, but
+of themselves no personal sacrifice would be demanded. They were
+old—they were safe—and what right had they to send out the young men to
+kill each other? What right to sit in judgment upon one with all the
+potentialities of life still before him? To decree whether he was to be
+allowed to act according to his principles, or faced with the
+alternative of being forced to violate them or cast into prison?
+
+Like the suffragette, Antoinette tried to “will” them into the required
+frame of mind. Perhaps some of her “willing” was having its effect. That
+moment’s silence could surely be taken as a good sign?
+
+But already the unctuous tones of the Military Representative had
+terminated the silence.
+
+“The applicant is so very anxious to end the war at all costs: does he
+realise that there are not two ways but only one way in which he can
+help to do so?”
+
+“I’ve declared the reasons for my unwillingness to take that one way,”
+returned Dennis.
+
+Another endless-seeming pause; looks and inaudible remarks exchanged
+between the old gentlemen.
+
+Antoinette held her breath.
+
+“_Total exemption granted_”—could not all her wishing or “willing” force
+the Chairman to speak those words? He was about to speak now:
+
+“Clear the court!”
+
+With sighs of exasperation at the renewed delay, the people rose and
+crowded into the passage again. The young man’s mother was crying. The
+reporters scribbled ceaselessly in their notebooks.
+
+The suffragette was congratulating Dennis. “You made a splendid stand,
+splendid, but they’re prejudiced against the ‘conscience’ men; it’s easy
+to see that.”
+
+Yes, he had made a splendid stand, but Antoinette would have liked him
+to come to her for reassurance ... to whisper to her in the crowd: “I
+was all right, wasn’t I?”
+
+He evidently had no need of her reassurance. With an abstracted smile,
+he thanked the suffragette for her congratulations, and stood gazing out
+of the window, as if determined to keep unshared whatever turmoil of
+fear and hope might be passing in his mind. But perhaps if the words
+were spoken, that they both longed to hear, and the appalling strain
+snapped, he would turn to her....
+
+The bank-clerk’s mother was moaning: “If only they’d be quick and tell
+us—can’t they see we need him more than the army does?”
+
+But at present the Board showed no signs of “being quick.” A man
+carrying a tray laden with tea-things had just unceremoniously jostled
+aside the crowd and entered the court. He was followed by a boy with a
+very large cherry cake. The old gentlemen were going to have tea....
+Antoinette suddenly understood some of the feelings that had given rise
+to the French Revolution! Soon the sound of hearty laughter mingled with
+the rattle of cups. The old gentlemen were apparently telling each other
+funny stories, while the people waited outside in suspense and agony of
+mind.
+
+For a weary half-hour they were still kept in the passage. Then at last
+the doors were flung open again.
+
+The Chairman stated that in the case of the bank-clerk who was the sole
+support of his family, the Board had decided to grant three months’
+exemption, with leave to appeal again. The decision was cheered, and the
+mother cried hysterically: “Oh, thank you—thank you so much ...” and was
+led out on her son’s arm.
+
+“In the case of Mr. Dennis Blackwood—Non-Combatant Service.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+In dead silence they walked to the Charing Cross Tube station, the
+strain between them almost intolerable. If only he were to break down,
+so that she might comfort him....
+
+Non-Combatant Service—that, as far as Dennis was concerned, amounted to
+a sentence to penal servitude. Quite shamelessly she wished that he
+would compromise now; hated with all her might the principles and
+convictions that would not allow him to do so.
+
+He said at last: “Good girl, to have stood by me.”
+
+“I’d stand by you through worse than that,” she cried, “if only you
+wanted me to.”
+
+Another long silence. Then: “I’ll let you know when I get my notice to
+join up—I suppose it’ll be in a day or two. I won’t go without saying
+good-bye to you.”
+
+“Dennis.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Dennis ... must you—are you really going to...?”
+
+He laughed drearily. “You ask that now? Why, what would Alan say, if I
+ratted at the eleventh hour?”
+
+“Alan wouldn’t know ...” was her thought. But she was glad that she
+cared enough for Dennis to keep it to herself.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+From day to day he waited now, expecting his call. Alan’s had come
+within four days of the rejection of his appeal, but there seemed to be
+no definite rule as to the length of time that might elapse. He might be
+left in peace for a week, or the call might come to-morrow. The
+uncertainty seemed an additional and superfluous refinement of cruelty,
+a veritable sword of Damocles, the presence of which sometimes preyed on
+his nerves to such an extent that he felt inclined to precipitate its
+fall by giving himself up to the police without further delay....
+
+Abysmal terror dogged his heels by day and by night; terror of being
+held, actually held to one place, when he had longed to throw off all
+bonds, tangible and intangible; terror of monotony and brutality, and
+the depths to which his own mind, thrust back upon itself, might sink.
+Day after day went by, and still the call did not come. But he was too
+heavily oppressed to be able to appreciate this added span of freedom.
+It might be ended at any moment. The uncertainty precluded all
+possibility of enjoyment.
+
+Day after day he waited; and waited....
+
+And then the creative impulse which had temporarily lain dormant stirred
+in him anew. At first he struggled against it, knowing the futility of
+starting upon any great composition now; but as usual the power within
+him proved stronger than himself. He was its slave, and he had to obey.
+
+His opera, “Karen and the Red Shoes,” was still unfinished, but he
+recognised that the ideas which crowded his brain now could not be used
+to complete it; they were too big, too heavy for the subject. Almost
+independent of his own volition, they began to build themselves into a
+great symphonic poem: “War.”
+
+A chaos of conflicting motives bewildered him; he could hear each
+instrument clamouring at cross-purposes with all the others in the
+orchestra; clashing rhythms and counter-rhythms battled for supremacy.
+It seemed at first a labour for giants to bring order into this chaos,
+to select and reject wisely among the dissonant themes. Then he began to
+perceive that he must eliminate none, reject none; each must have its
+place in the scheme, for each stood for one of the innumerable beliefs
+and reasons, ideals and madnesses that had led the peoples into war ...
+all must be woven in until, in the final solution and climax, he had
+succeeded in showing their fundamental unity, converting strife and
+turmoil and the sorrows of all the nations into the transcendent harmony
+of peace.
+
+And throughout, the image of Alan stood to him for inspiration. Into his
+work he poured all the love and the tenderness and the passion that the
+boy had kindled in him. Feverishly he worked now, fearing that in the
+space of time that remained—and it could not possibly be long—he would
+not be able to accomplish his task. It was of necessity written for a
+very large orchestra, and many months, if not years, might go to the
+scoring of it.
+
+He perceived his goal ahead, knowing that he would not be able to reach
+it in time; not before that steadily-approaching shadow entirely blotted
+out the light.... He could have prayed for more days, and more in which
+to work: and awoke every morning to the knowledge that this might be his
+last day of freedom.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+And for Antoinette, also, this knowledge.
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+“Hallo, Dennis, still at large? That’s one’s habitual form of greeting
+nowadays, isn’t it?” Benny Joseph joined Dennis and Antoinette at their
+table in the tea-shop.
+
+“Still at large, thanks for kind enquiries. I think they must have
+forgotten all about me. It’s nearly two months now ... what about you?”
+
+“I’ve just had my appeal dismissed by the local tribunal,” replied Benny
+with an affectation of indifference.
+
+“We all share the same fate, apparently. What happened, Benny?”
+
+“I started off, of course, by telling them that I was a Jew, but that I
+wasn’t claiming exemption on religious, but on socialistic grounds. I
+really didn’t get much further than that. The Chairman said he didn’t
+think my case worthy of a moment’s consideration as I had admitted
+myself to be an atheist, and could therefore scarcely lay claim to have
+a conscience!”
+
+“Well, if that isn’t the limit!” cried Dennis, and Antoinette asked:
+“Are you going to appeal again?”
+
+“Oh, yes. Same old programme of delights for all of us. Local
+tribunal—Central Court of Appeal—arrival of police—prison! By the way,
+they refused to renew Harry Hope’s exemption when he appealed the second
+time.”
+
+“What—has his widowed mother died in the meantime?”
+
+“No, I don’t think so, but the Board seemed to think that he had
+supported her long enough, and that it was time he devoted his efforts
+to work of greater importance than keeping a harmless old lady in
+Chiswick from starvation. He’ll look simply fantastic in uniform, like
+poor Everard, do you remember?”
+
+The impersonator of many cardinals had been killed during his first
+month at the Front. Antoinette could not but help wondering in what
+manner he had died. She was haunted by memory of a languid voice,
+saying: “This is all—so—stupid....” Haunted by memory of other voices,
+too; Alan’s vigorous speech; the youthful bombast with which Oswald used
+to mask his terror; the heavy lilt of Pegeen’s and Conn’s tones. And
+Conn had been shot down in the streets of Dublin during Easter week,
+proclaiming with his last breath, that Ireland would never bend the knee
+“to England’s bloody red”.... And of Pegeen, no one had heard; perhaps
+she had shared her man’s fate—but no one knew for certain.
+
+“Our ranks are getting sadly depleted,” said Benny, “I see your friend
+Crispin has deserted us.”
+
+Dennis laughed and Antoinette exclaimed: “Has Crispin ratted, then? I
+didn’t know.” She saw Dennis so rarely now, that it was small wonder
+that she was not quite _au courant_.
+
+“Crispin, yes, he ratted some time ago. Of course, not a word of his
+appeal at the local tribunal was audible, only a wild gurgling and
+spluttering. But they thought it quite safe to dismiss the appeal though
+they hadn’t heard it; and he didn’t like the idea of going through it
+all again, so he just drifted into the army, and now guards
+railway-bridges or stands drearily at the end of a pier, reciting long
+Beethoven symphonies to himself.”
+
+Benny murmured: “‘_Lieb Vaterland, kannst ruhig sein_’—while Crispin
+guards our coasts.”
+
+“You’re right. All the Zeppelins and submarines in the world wouldn’t
+disturb him when he’s listening to classical music played inside his own
+head.”
+
+“Poor Crispin,” said Antoinette, “I suppose he never gets anywhere near
+a piano now.” She had a quite absurd sentimental regard for Crispin:
+Crispin had played the Waldstein Sonata during her first talk with
+Dennis at Amberhurst; Crispin had figured throughout those letters from
+Devonshire....
+
+Dennis replied: “Oh, don’t make any mistake, he’s amply provided for in
+that respect. He spends all his time getting himself adopted by old
+ladies possessing pianos—grand pianos only, of course, he won’t touch an
+upright.... And each of the old ladies thinks that this marvellously
+gifted Tommy is her own special discovery, and cherishes him
+accordingly. Crispin lets them cherish. It gives them pleasure, and
+doesn’t hurt him. He merely walks into the room, sits down at the piano,
+and plays for the full extent of his leave, with intervals for meals.”
+
+Antoinette glanced surreptitiously at Dennis. Whence arose this rather
+hectic animation on his part? There was about his whole manner to-day an
+air of suppressed excitement for which she was at a loss to account. A
+few minutes later, it was explained to her.
+
+Benny said: “Mansfield’s doing hard labour; he shared the common lot at
+his tribunal. I really don’t know why they go through the farce of
+offering a man Non-Com., they might just as well arrest him straight
+away.... What about Rutherford, Dennis: have you heard anything of him?”
+
+“He’s coming out for a few days next week,” said Dennis, “I shall see
+him then....”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Four weeks had elapsed for Antoinette without sign or sound from Dennis.
+She scarcely thought that he had been arrested, as he had promised to
+let her know when he received his call; but she dared not attempt to
+make sure by writing or telephoning, lest he should think her
+importunate. On the rare occasions when she was with him, he seemed to
+keep her both mentally and physically at a distance. She chafed at the
+waste of the days drifting by.
+
+If he had cared for her the least bit in the world; if he had shared
+with her his terrors, how good those days might have been, even while
+they knew that each day might be his last. But he would not share with
+her, terrors that were for another as much as for himself. Dennis had
+kept staunch faith with Alan, as far as Antoinette was concerned.
+
+But though she might have Dennis perpetually before an imaginary
+tribunal of her own; though she might hurl the bitterest accusations at
+him—“You’ve ruined my life ... you’ve made it impossible for me to care
+about ordinary people ... you’ve forced me to live in a crazy inverted
+world that I didn’t know existed, till you led me into it—” neither
+these accusations, nor his confessed love for Alan, nor his aloof
+treatment of her, could call forth the least flicker of hatred or
+condemnation. His defence was always ready to hand: how could she hate
+or condemn the only man for whom, with her peculiar temperament, she was
+capable of feeling love? Love without any of its usual corollaries;
+without faith, without glamour, without illusion; without the slenderest
+hope of fulfilment; just love alone, all the stronger, perhaps, for
+being stripped to its barest essentials.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was surprised one day by a telephone-call from Doreen
+Blackwood—Doreen agitated and incoherent. Clive was at Denmark Hill
+Hospital, seriously wounded, and had Antoinette any idea where Dennis
+was?
+
+“Mummy and I came up yesterday to be with Clive, and we wired Dennis
+that we were staying at the Grosvenor Hotel, and he never turned up
+there, so Mummy went to his lodgings this morning, and the landlady said
+he hadn’t been there for nearly three weeks. We thought perhaps you
+might know something about him.”
+
+“I don’t, Doreen, I’ve not seen him for ages.”
+
+“Oh, you don’t think he’s been put in prison, do you? Surely he’d have
+had time to let us know. He hasn’t written home for ever so long, but
+then he often does that. Antoinette, what _can_ have happened to him...?
+As if it wasn’t bad enough, having Clive like this....”
+
+They arranged finally that whichever of them first succeeded in
+discovering Dennis’s whereabouts, should inform the other. When she had
+rung off, it struck Antoinette that Barnaby might know; she therefore
+dashed off to Fleet Street, glad that she had at last a valid excuse for
+trying to ascertain what had become of Dennis. But on arriving at the
+office of “The Dove,” she was told that Mr. Barnaby had gone to
+Manchester to attend a socialist meeting, and would not be back for a
+few days. Antoinette determined to try Miss Mowbray’s next; perhaps Miss
+Mowbray herself, or one of the _habitués_ could shed some light upon the
+mystery. It was three o’clock, the hour at which the tea-shop was
+usually empty. If Miss Mowbray could tell her nothing, she would have to
+wait till the others began to straggle in.
+
+As she had anticipated, the tea-room was deserted save for one man who
+sat at a table with his back to the door, head buried in his hands.
+
+“Dennis!”
+
+At her cry, he slowly raised his head, looked at her with a dazed
+stupefied expression.
+
+Involuntarily she drew back from him. “Dennis—what’s the matter?”
+
+Still he sat looking at her.
+
+“Is it—have you had your call?” But even while she asked, she knew that
+it was not that—not that alone.
+
+“I’ve seen him,” Dennis said at last, “in the prison hospital. They
+moved him there from the cells because he had a bad attack of fever. And
+when he’s better, he’s got to go back again—back to that hell....”
+
+He went on, as if unable to stop, now that he had begun: “He’s been in
+solitary confinement—think what that means to an active brain like his!
+The gnawing everlasting boredom and terror, the helpless exasperation at
+it all.... He tries to draw on the walls of his cell with his
+finger-nails—or counts the flies crawling up the bars of the
+windows—invents foolish games just to keep his mind from giving
+way—talks aloud to himself for fear of losing the use of his voice. Then
+there are senseless cruel punishments—sleep made impossible by having
+his bed removed; nothing but bread and water to eat; hours in a dark
+underground cell infested by rats—this in a country that calls itself
+civilised! Sometimes they ask him if he’ll join the army if he’s let
+out—rather like using thumb-screws to force a man into confession. He
+kicked one of the men who asked him, and was given twenty-four hours in
+the strait-jacket. The militarist papers declare that the strait-jacket
+doesn’t injure the man, and is merely good discipline. Good discipline,
+Oh, God.... Do you know what it’s like, Antoinette? It’s a narrow strip
+of canvas as long as a man’s body, but not as wide, and it’s laced
+tightly round him with cords, usually with one of the warders digging a
+knee into his back, so as to prevent him from holding his breath and so
+gaining an extra inch of space. Then he’s left, trussed up like that,
+alone on the floor of his cell, gasping for breath, the cords cutting
+into his flesh, all the organs of his body being squeezed and
+tortured——”
+
+“Dennis, Dennis, don’t—I can’t bear it....”
+
+“Alan’s had to bear it—more than once. The governor of the prison seems
+to have a special spite against him. There’s no escape unless he
+promises to give in. And he won’t do that. He’s an emaciated wreck, but
+he’s determined that they sha’n’t crush him, even though he’s going
+through things more devilish than any your imagination could have
+devised for him, Antoinette, when you hated him most!”
+
+She was stung to reply: “I never hated him like that. You’re unjust and
+cruel to think that I should.”
+
+“Yes, I daresay I am ... I’m sorry.... But I’m at the end, just at the
+end of everything, and I hardly know what I’m saying.”
+
+And at the utter misery of him, she knew only one longing: to break down
+all the artificial barriers that had arisen between them, and to take
+his head between her hands.... “Say what you like, my dear, go on
+telling me, if it helps at all.”
+
+“I’d heard some weeks ago that he’d got special permission to go and see
+his mother, who was ill, and I’d arranged to meet him and spend all his
+spare time with him. He never turned up, and I discovered that his
+permission had been withdrawn—for goodness knows what petty breach of
+the regulations—and that he was in the punishment-cells. The next thing
+I heard was that he and nine others were being removed to Princetown.
+Through miles and miles of red tape I tried to get permission to see
+him. I stayed down there waiting and waiting for it. Well, it came at
+last ...” his voice sank almost to a whisper; “I can’t sleep at night,
+for thinking of the look in his eyes, and knowing that when his brief
+respite is over, they’ll send him back to go through all their vile
+indignities and privations and cruelties again. It’s the idea of his
+going back, Antoinette——!”
+
+“Oh, don’t—don’t ...” she was sobbing outright now, in an agony of pity
+for that vivid, brilliant boy, in an agony of fear for the man before
+her. Helplessly she cast about in her mind for something that might
+bring comfort to Dennis.
+
+“Even if they make him endure all that, they’re not winning really—not
+succeeding in making him give himself to the army. So he’s winning in
+the end, Dennis, he’s beating them.”
+
+He gave her a look of gratitude. “But what a price to pay for
+victory.... And he’ll have to go on paying as long as this cursed war
+lasts. We shall all have to go on paying. I’ve had my call, too, you
+know, for the day after to-morrow. I ought to see mother.”
+
+She told him then the reason that had sent her to look for him here.
+
+“Clive wounded? What’s happened, did they say?”
+
+“Doreen wasn’t very explicit over the telephone. He’s got a poisoned
+arm, I think, and a wound in the face.”
+
+“Poor mother—I’m sorry for her.... But Clive will have his family and
+his girl at his bedside, and every possible care and attention....” He
+fell into brooding silence, thinking of a bare prison hospital, and an
+unsympathetic prison doctor. “Well, as they’re in town I’ll spend
+to-morrow with them. And I’ll say good-bye to you now, Antoinette.”
+
+“Yes....”
+
+He looked at her with great unhappy eyes. “There’s nothing we can either
+of us say, is there?”
+
+“Nothing....”
+
+Of all that she longed to say to him—nothing, now that this moment of
+parting had been thrust upon her with such suddenness. Useless to make
+any attempt to say anything. But because it was the last time, she
+wondered, would he at least leave her memory of his lips on hers—just
+for the last time?
+
+Already his thoughts had rushed many miles away from her. “It’s as if
+some particularly terrible fate were always reserved for the people I
+love most. There was Eric—he had his hell to go through. And now
+Alan....” Almost inaudibly he added: “And he’s such a kid....”
+
+His voice held the pain and tenderness of a mother whose child has been
+stricken to death.
+
+“Good-bye, Dennis....” She turned quickly away so that he might not see
+the tears that blinded her, and left him standing there, gazing fixedly
+at the walls that had once echoed with Alan’s rhetoric.
+
+And at the top of the stairs she was met by an insolent smiling wraith.
+
+“In case we never meet again ... don’t hate me too much....”
+
+She acknowledged the completeness of her rival’s victory. Alan could
+triumph over her still.
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+“_Chérie_, it is most inconsiderate of you always to go out without
+telling anyone where you are going. Madame la Comtesse de Froment rang
+you up on the telephone—doubtless she wished to invite you to her big
+concert in aid of the French Red Cross—and I could not tell her where
+you were, nor when you would be in, because I did not know. I agree for
+once with your father and your grandmother, that it is not _convenable_
+for a _jeune fille_ to run about London as you do.”
+
+“You allow yourself more freedom than I as a young man was allowed at
+your age.”
+
+“It is that young Blackwood who has taught you these Bohemian manners.”
+
+“After all, we never knew his family.”
+
+“As I have always said, you cultivate the wrong people.”
+
+“Yes, if you would try to make yourself a little more amiable to my
+friends....”
+
+“Your behaviour towards M. Lefèvre was disgraceful. No wonder he did not
+press his suit more ardently. You are spoiling your life. It will be
+your own fault if you remain an old maid.”
+
+“Till now one has let you do as you pleased. But it is agreed that in
+future one will have to be more severe.”
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+It was pouring with rain when Antoinette reached Haywards Heath, where
+she had to change for Eastwold. She had had considerable difficulty with
+her people before being allowed to undertake this journey. They were by
+now quite convinced that the Blackwoods were a bad influence for her,
+and that sooner or later she would contrive to become engaged to that
+very eccentric young man....
+
+Antoinette did not think it necessary to mention that the very eccentric
+young man was in prison, but pleaded her friendship with Doreen, and her
+need of a change of air ... pleaded very gently, for these were not the
+days when she felt capable of facing a hard conflict of wills.
+
+In the old days she had relished a good up-hill fight; the harder the
+battle the more valuable the victory. So she had thought years ago when
+she had met Hester. Hester....
+
+“Sing before breakfast—cry before night”—Hester had been wise. Those
+early years had held enough song and laughter and sunshine. But now the
+years seemed drained for her of all song and laughter and sunshine, just
+as she herself felt drained of all the exuberant vitality that had once
+led her to rejoice in battle. She was tired now, and there was nothing
+left in all the world worth fighting for.
+
+The train for Eastwold drew up at the platform, its windows so blurred
+with the rain that it was impossible to see into the compartments.
+Gripping her suit-case with one hand, Antoinette struggled to open the
+door nearest to her, and immediately a soldier from the far end of the
+compartment sprang forward, helped her to lift the suit-case on to the
+rack, and then resumed his seat beside the girl who sat huddled by the
+window. Antoinette wished that she could have drawn back and chosen a
+different compartment. It was a shame that she should have obtruded
+herself upon their solitude. But already the guard was blowing his
+whistle, and several other Tommies had entered the compartment too, so
+that in any case the couple in the corner would not have remained
+undisturbed. They sat without speaking, arms interlaced, occasionally
+looking at each other. And the girl had a pretty, pasty, tear-sodden
+face under a gaudy hat with red roses on it; and he had round boyish
+eyes and a rather stupid expression....
+
+The other Tommies had disposed themselves and their kit about the
+compartment. Above the rattle of the wheels Antoinette caught scraps of
+their conversation.
+
+“When we were way over home, we thought this war was a grand fine thing,
+and not one of us wanted to be left out of it,” a dapper young Canadian
+spoke, running his fingers through his upstanding brush of hair, “but
+now I’ve been out there a year, I tell you straight, _next_ time my King
+and Country call, I’m going to be lame, blind, dumb, _and deaf_. Yes,
+when you’ve bin out and seen some of the sights and smelt some of the
+smells, and lived in a trench full of ver-_mine_, you find war isn’t the
+gala garden-party you thought it was, with the band and the music and
+the flags flying.”
+
+One of his companions, a long-limbed Irishman, grunted assent. “I’ve
+lost an eye in this bloody war, but do you think they’d be afther givin’
+me my discharge? ‘Ho,’ sez the docthor, ‘you’re still plenty of use to
+your counthry’....”
+
+“Guess they won’t be satisfied till you’ve lost the other eye to match,”
+remarked the Canadian cheerfully.
+
+“And fwhat’s ut all for, that’s fwhat I’m askin’, fwhat’s ut all for?
+I’m no revolutionist; I’m only askin’ fwhy.... Divil a bit did we care
+about the _Sinn Féin_ rebellion out there in the thrinches as long as we
+had enough cigarettes to smoke. Which we had not....” The melancholy
+cadence of his voice reminded Antoinette poignantly of Pegeen and Conn.
+
+The third man, a little Cockney chap, tilted his cap to a rakish angle.
+“They say as it’ll all be over in the spring.”
+
+“_Which_ spring?” demanded the Canadian, and the Cockney embarked
+irrelevantly upon a personal reminiscence: “It was near Am-an-tears, we
+got to a village that the ’Uns ’ad evacuated. Least-ways, they’d
+evacuated wot was left of it, and that’s not sayin’ much. Bin up to some
+o’ their usual tricks, they ’ad, with wimmen and kids and wot-not....
+One o’ their snipers got left be’ind—swarmed up a tree, and four of us
+yanked ’im dahn; and first we said a few things to ’im ... and then we
+did a few things to ’im, just for luck, as you might say, and because of
+wot ’e and ’is pals ’ad bin up to in that village. War’s a funny thing
+...” he continued musing, “you could ’ave knocked me dahn with a feather
+two years ago if you’d told me I’d ’elp to cut aht that bloomin’ ’Un’s
+’eart with my bloomin’ jack-knife!”
+
+“Yes, war’s a funny thing,” the Irishman broke out again, “and they
+don’t want ut to end—them that make the war. ‘Your pals in the thrinches
+are callin’ to you’—’tis a lie! Your pals in the thrinches would say:
+‘Keep out of this if you can, we’d never have gone into it if we’d
+known.’ We know well enough _who_ calls to us and _who_ sends us out to
+ut. ’Tis the Government sitting at home, and never your pals out
+there.... And ’tis the same on the other side. I took a prisoner once.
+The man was wounded and I looked after him a bit; got quite fond of him,
+too. I was sorry when he died.... He said that their men are as dead
+fed-up with it as we are.”
+
+The couple in the corner seemed quite oblivious of the conversation.
+They might have been deaf to it. Only the silent fervour with which they
+gazed into each other’s eyes increased....
+
+At the next station the man opened the door of the compartment and
+helped the girl out; then he kissed her, and got into the train again.
+
+She said: “Good-bye, Gawd bless you, Dickie,” and he answered: “So long!
+See you again when the war’s over—perhaps....”
+
+The train moved on. Alone in his corner the man sat staring straight
+before him, inarticulate misery incarnate. “When the war’s
+over—perhaps....”
+
+Antoinette choked, and wished again that he and the girl who had been
+left on the platform could have had this last journey to themselves. In
+the circumstances he might have been forgiven for showing less
+willingness to help her in with her suit-case.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Arthur Griggs, home on leave, had come with his _fiancée_, Millie Ryan,
+to call upon the Blackwoods; and Antoinette, on her arrival, fell
+straight into the tea-party, as she had once fallen into the nursery
+party held in Reggie’s honour the day of the dance. Reggie was home from
+school now, and sat at the foot of the couch on which Clive was
+reclining.... Clive with one empty sleeve and a badly scarred face and
+mouth.
+
+“Well, well, you’ve at least got plenty to show for it, plenty to show
+for it,” Griggs rallied him. “I’m often sorry that my honourable scars
+aren’t—ah—on exhibition.”
+
+“I’m sure Millie isn’t sorry,” smiled Mrs. Blackwood.
+
+Millie looked coy, and Lily who was sitting at Clive’s side, and helping
+him to manipulate his teacup, exclaimed: “What does it matter what they
+look like when they come back to us, as long as we know they’ve done
+their bit? I’d rather have Clive as he is than the greatest Adonis in
+the world.”
+
+Clive smiled wryly up at her with his twisted lip. “I could do with the
+other arm all the same, you know, Lil.”
+
+“Never mind, my boy,” cried Mr. Blackwood, “when your children ask you
+what you did in the great war, they won’t have far to look.”
+
+“And one can really say here that your wife will be your right hand,”
+said Griggs, “I can only hope that you and Miss Hallard will be as happy
+as Millie and I intend to be.”
+
+“And we hope you’ll be as happy as _we’re_ jolly well going to be!”
+returned Lily, boisterously.
+
+“Quite a competithion of happineth, ithn’t it?” giggled Amy.
+
+“I think there can be no doubt that where there is sympathy there is
+happiness,” mused Griggs; “sympathy is a beautiful thing, don’t you
+agree?” His audience assented collectively, and he went on: “Millie, of
+course, calls forth sympathy as naturally as the sun draws out the scent
+of the flowers....”
+
+There was a murmur of approval, and Millie said: “Why, Arthur, you’re
+quite a poet this afternoon.”
+
+“Not a poet, Millie, not a poet. Just an ordinary man. But might not
+even an ordinary man turn poet for your sake?”
+
+Millie blushed. “Oh, you’re flattering me.”
+
+“You doubt my sincerity?” exclaimed Griggs, very injured. “I assure you
+that I place sincerity on the same high level as sympathy. Sincerity and
+sympathy—my twin ideals....”
+
+Millie, quite embarrassed by now, turned to ask Clive how he had
+received his wounds, but Reggie interrupted with: “Clive hates talking
+about them—it looks like swank.”
+
+“Clive doesn’t need to swank,” said Lily, “we all know what he’s done.
+Those three Huns—not bad, that, not bad!”
+
+Griggs beamed upon the assembled company. “Who would have thought two
+years ago when we were getting ready for the fancy dress dance that we
+should all come together again like this? Seeing you here, Miss
+Antoinette, reminded me of that happy occasion. Little Miss Ottilie was
+there too—but I suppose the least said about her the better; Reggie’s
+looking at me so fiercely....”
+
+“Her _fiancée_ has been killed,” said Doreen, “I got such a sad, funny
+letter from her through Switzerland. She said that her ‘truest-loved
+Joachim for his Fatherland has died, and that her heart broken was’....”
+
+“Poor little Britannia,” cried Antoinette, “I wonder if he was one of
+the three whom Clive sniped?”
+
+“Good job,” muttered Reggie.
+
+“War’s war,” said Lily tersely, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+“All I can hope is,” the irrepressible Griggs continued, “that two years
+hence we shall be as complete as we are now.”
+
+Clive grunted, and Griggs strove to cheer him. “Come—come—come—we all
+know you don’t really mind having lost your arm. Not a bit. Proud of it.
+And quite right too! When I said ‘complete,’ I meant as far as numbers
+go. Here we all are—” Suddenly he recollected himself; floundered;
+coughed behind his hand, and repeated rather feebly: “I mean here we
+are....”
+
+“Yes, of course, we are, Mr. Griggs.” With admirable tact Mrs. Blackwood
+came to his assistance ... and Antoinette wondered if it could bring
+Dennis’s mother the slightest degree of comfort to know that her
+thoughts also were with the one who was not included in the “all.”
+
+She could not rid herself of the impression that Dennis might be
+expected at any moment to enter with dramatic suddenness, as he had
+entered the night of the dance. It seemed as if they were all laughing
+and talking here, just to mark time in anticipation of his arrival. And
+when, sharply, the drawing-room door was flung open, her heart gave a
+great leap.
+
+“The maid from Dr. Clavering’s would like to speak to you, please,
+sir....” The parlour-maid addressed Mr. Blackwood in an undertone, but
+already Doreen was on her feet.
+
+“What is it? Where is she? Is there any news?” She freed herself from
+her father’s detaining hand, and rushed to the door. “Oh, what is it?
+What is it?”
+
+The little servant who had been told to “break it gently” to Mr.
+Blackwood, completely lost her head on seeing Doreen, and sobbed out:
+“It’s Mr. Hugh, Miss—killed in action. Oh, the poor young master....”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed to be the general impulse to rush towards Doreen, as if by
+actual contact, by stroking, patting, embracing, to draw nearer to her
+in her isolation of grief. But there was something in the way she stood
+there, her back to the door, her eyes dead, mouth and hands twitching,
+that forbade further approach ... and Antoinette remembered on whose
+face she had seen just that same baffling expression. For a second, but
+it might have been an eternity, the group stood poised, alert, watching
+the rigid, dry-eyed little figure in the doorway.
+
+Then at last Doreen’s voice, a woman’s voice and yet piteously childish,
+cut into the stillness.
+
+“And I—I loved him so....”
+
+She turned and broke from the room.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Blackwood followed her. The others remained as they were,
+talking in low voices.
+
+“Thall I go and thee if they want anything?”
+
+“No, better leave them alone together now.”
+
+“A good cry, you know, will do her all the world of good ...” this from
+Griggs.
+
+“Ithn’t thith war dreadful? You never know from one minute to the other,
+do you?”
+
+“Poor old Hugh, I wonder how it happened. I expect some of his men will
+be able to give details. I think I ought to go to Doreen. Mrs. Blackwood
+will only encourage her to give way.” Thus the sternly practical Lily.
+
+Clive muttered: “Poor little kid ...” and Reggie, still sitting
+motionless on the end of the couch, looked at his boots and scowled
+heavily.
+
+“And to think that only two years ago—what a handsome couple at your
+dance, eh, Millie? The Black Knight and the Dresden Shepherdess....”
+
+Millie collapsed into tears. “I can’t bear it, Arthur, I can’t bear
+it....”
+
+Arthur patted her hand. “There, there, little woman, there, there.”
+
+“Doreen’s got plenty of grit,” said Lily, “she’ll pull round all right.
+I’m sure he died game and she’ll be able to be proud of him. That’ll
+stiffen her backbone right enough.”
+
+But Clive only repeated: “Poor little kid....”
+
+Griggs said: “Well, I suppose we’d better be going,” and followed by
+Amy, led his weeping bride away. Reggie, even at this juncture mindful
+of “good form,” went to see them to the gate.
+
+As Antoinette turned to go up to her room, she heard Clive say: “Lily
+...” and saw him put out his remaining hand to draw her down to his
+level.
+
+“Dear old man....”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late that evening Antoinette sat at the window of her room, and watched
+the last of the sunset fading behind the dark ridge of the Downs. The
+crimson light still stained the white walls, and danced upon the gay
+flowered chintz ... a room in which to feel very girlish and happy, so
+she had reflected on her first arrival here, so she had reflected as she
+donned her “Bacchante” costume....
+
+She shuddered and turned from the window to face Mrs. Blackwood.
+
+“My dear child, I am so sorry that it should have happened just during
+your visit.” Still obedient to the instincts of the good hostess, she
+was apologising to her guest for an unfortunate _contretemps_ that had
+marred her stay....
+
+Antoinette said: “Oh, don’t ...” and got no further.
+
+Mrs. Blackwood sat down and wiped her eyes.
+
+“Poor little Doreen—and they were to have been married next time he got
+leave—we’d begun to get one or two things together, though I always
+thought that was wrong, my family were always inclined to be
+superstitious—but of course Daddy laughed me out of it.... Poor Hugh, he
+would have made her so happy—I feel as if I’d lost a son, too.” She
+paused a moment, then went on in a lower voice: “Antoinette, do you
+think he’ll be all right? He’s in solitary confinement now, but that’s
+better than being together with a lot of other horrid people, isn’t it?”
+
+“Much better,” Antoinette assented without looking at her.
+
+“I can talk to you about him, because you were always such good friends,
+and of course I daren’t mention him before Clive or Daddy. Dennis was a
+great disappointment to his father, even as a little chap, when he
+wouldn’t go out shooting with him, because he couldn’t bear to see the
+animals hurt.... And now—it’s dreadful, my dear: Daddy has struck his
+name out of the Family Bible, where we’ve got all the children’s names
+and the date of their birth written down....”
+
+“Oh, what does that matter?” cried Antoinette, “that can’t make him your
+boy any the less, can it?”
+
+Mrs. Blackwood shook her head. “Nothing could ever do that. Denny would
+just be my boy, whatever he’d done, but his father has such high
+principles.... Lily keeps on saying that the people in prison are safe.
+You do think he’s safe, don’t you, Antoinette, although I lie awake
+sometimes wondering if they give them enough blankets on their beds.”
+
+Safe ... in solitary confinement!
+
+Oh, well, it was fortunate at least that Dennis’s mother did not seem
+quite to realise. Did she suffer, perhaps, from a providential lack of
+imagination?
+
+Antoinette gave the assurance required of her. “Yes, of course he’s
+safe—quite safe.”
+
+But Mrs. Blackwood was uneasy. “If one knew for certain—how they are
+treated....”
+
+Antoinette was grateful to the increasing darkness that hid her face.
+
+Mrs. Blackwood repeated: “If only one knew....”
+
+“He’ll be quite safe,” she could only trust herself to speak in a very
+low voice.
+
+“Of course Daddy says they’re well treated, and you do think so, too,
+don’t you—really?”
+
+Antoinette made a final effort. “He’ll come out all right ... when the
+war’s over——”
+
+Her voice snapped.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+At the table in the alcove at Miss Mowbray’s, Antoinette sat with
+Barnaby a few weeks later. He had let her know that he had heard from
+Dennis, and would pass on the news if she cared to meet him at the usual
+haunt.
+
+“He’s doing hard labour now, breaking stones in a quarry, but he says
+even that’s a relief after solitary confinement. They put them into that
+at first, as if they were wild animals that had to be tamed.”
+
+“Does he—say anything else?” she asked tentatively, hoping that Dennis
+might have sent her some word or message.
+
+Barnaby shook his head. “No, he doesn’t say much, except that his hands
+will never be fit to play the piano again, and that one of the greatest
+torments is not being able to write down his music. You know what he was
+like over that—directly he’d got an idea, down it had to go, or he was
+afraid of losing it. He must be losing a good many now. Rather a waste.”
+He pulled at his pipe, and continued more vehemently: “The silly waste
+of it all.... That boy Alan—hot-headed young devil he was, but he had
+the right stuff in him, and the personality and the understanding to
+make him a good leader of the people. Only instead of utilising his
+brains they have to let them rot!”
+
+Antoinette sighed. “The utter futility of hoping that anyone from the
+other side will ever see our point of view.... When I was in the country
+with Dennis’s people, I did try to make them see, but I couldn’t budge
+one of them; not an inch. And then his little sister’s _fiancé_ was
+killed at the Front—gassed—such a good-looking, golden-haired boy—and it
+was too ghastly ... and suddenly I felt—I mean, I understood how they
+might feel towards pacifists. They don’t seem to realise that going to
+prison isn’t fun.... ‘Prison’s safe,’ that’s their argument. Or ‘What
+are their sufferings compared with what the men in the trenches have to
+go through?’ They almost made one feel—as if one hadn’t the right....”
+
+Barnaby broke in: “It’s not a case of measuring the sufferings of the
+men in the trenches with those of the men in prison. No one can be
+childish enough to pretend that shrapnel-wounds and poison-gas aren’t a
+hundred times worse than whatever the conscientious objectors may have
+to endure in prison. The point is, that men who genuinely objected to
+take part in warfare, because they could see no possible good that would
+result therefrom; men who refused to shelter themselves by enabling
+others to go in their place, and who exposed themselves to ridicule and
+vilification, loss of friends and loss of financial position, rather
+than be faithless to their principles, should be flung into prison, and
+in some cases treated worse than ordinary criminals. This, mark you, in
+spite of the assertion that they would be given a fair hearing! The
+Government regretted that clause relating to the conscience-men in the
+Military Service Act, as soon as it was out. They realised the folly of
+giving a loophole of escape to any man, when the need of cannon-fodder
+was so great. So the whole business became a mockery—mock trials at
+which the men, having been invited to state their views, stood condemned
+before their cases were heard. How many of them were given the total
+exemption to which they had the right, according to the clause? And
+England is said to be fighting to uphold justice...! Look at the uproar
+created by the so-called murder of Edith Cavell: the woman was a spy,
+and they were strictly within their military rights to shoot her. But it
+doesn’t seem to strike people that shutting up some of these C.O.s in
+prison is deliberate, wilful murder of brains that were fine, sensitive
+instruments which might have brought some lasting beauty, some lasting
+wonder into the world. These men might be rendering far greater service
+to their country by following their natural bent than by doing navvies’
+work or performing silly brutalising tasks in prison.
+
+“Of course the press is eager enough to make the public believe that
+prison is a sort of slacker’s paradise, where they have quite a
+delightful time of it.... We know differently. Alan’s isn’t the only
+case of systematic brutality wreaked upon a defenceless victim. Only
+that kind of thing is carefully kept out of the papers. However
+magnificently England may think to figure in the world’s history after
+the war, the gross stupidity and cruelty of the way she has treated the
+genuine pacifists should stand as an eternal blot upon her honour.”
+
+Antoinette did not interrupt him. She sat watching the bodiless legs
+that passed and passed in front of the blurred window, remembering the
+many different moods in which she had watched them. The tea-room was
+empty, save for the ghosts that sat grouped at the tables; almost she
+could have expected them to take part in the conversation.... Dennis;
+Alan; Everard, with his languid drawl; Crispin’s stammer; O’Farrell’s
+Irish phrasing; the whole chorus of familiar voices. But the chorus was
+silent now.
+
+“And the war goes on, and day by day the torture of those at the Front
+and those in the prisons goes on; and the schoolboys, the striplings of
+sixteen and seventeen, are growing up to face the choice of the two
+alternatives—children cherished and carefully reared, so that when they
+are still little more than children they may be ready for this....”
+
+“Oh, I know, I know,” cried Antoinette, “there was poor little
+Oswald.... He talked to me once in a queer burst of confidence, and he
+said almost the same thing: ‘It’s waiting for you now, when you’re
+eighteen....’ And I’m glad he’s dead,” she passed her hand over her
+eyes, as if to shut out some horror. “He took the cowards’ way out, if
+you like, but I’d rather know him dead than think of him like the
+others, going on, and on....”
+
+Suddenly the door to the street was opened and banged. Footsteps came
+pelting down the crooked stairs, and Benny Joseph hurled himself into
+the tea-room.
+
+“I’ve been turned down!” he cried incoherently, “turned down by the
+doctor after I was arrested. I’m a free man, Barnaby, do you hear?
+Totally exempt.... And I’ve got a part—this is my lucky day—I just
+walked into it—I’m going on tour in musical comedy for eighteen weeks!”
+
+Benny was radiant and breathless, but he spoke to an audience of ghosts;
+ghost of Everard, long dead on the field in Flanders; ghost of Harry
+Hope, drilling drearily on Salisbury Plain; ghosts of the many
+professionals of all grades who had once frequented Miss Mowbray’s, and
+been gradually sucked into the army, and who would have overwhelmed him
+with a flood of questions. Which towns was he doing? Who was in the
+company? Did he want addresses of rooms?
+
+“I’m so awfully glad, Benny ...” Antoinette said warmly; she could not
+bear that he should shout his joyful tidings into unresponsive space;
+“do let me know if you’re anywhere near London; I’d love to see you in
+your show.”
+
+“Thanks ever so much. Yes, I’ll let you know. I say, I wish the others
+could have been as lucky.... Well, I must be off now—millions of things
+to do—letters to write—we start rehearsing next week. Lord, it’s a queer
+sensation not to have it hanging over you any more.... And when the
+war’s over, I’ll be able to go to Vienna and Paris and Berlin and
+Budapest again, without feeling I’ve helped to muck up any of the
+countries I’m staying in. I _must_ be off. Good-bye....”
+
+He was gone.
+
+Barnaby smiled. “So Benny’s aunts in the various parts of Europe will at
+least be safe from Benny’s ridiculously inadequate shooting.”
+
+But Antoinette was not thinking of Benny’s aunts: she was thinking of
+the girl whose existence she had once heard rumoured—the little Jewish
+girl, somewhere in Hampstead, to whom he would ultimately turn.
+Antoinette envied that girl the moment when she heard Benny’s news.
+
+“So they’ve all found their destiny,” mused Barnaby; then he bent his
+shaggy brows to a kindlier scrutiny of Antoinette herself. “And what
+about you...?”
+
+She did not answer. Her thoughts were with the couples, the many couples
+who had the right to each other: Lily, who had the right to cherish her
+battered, broken Clive; Doreen, who through all her pain, still had the
+right to cling to her memory of Hugh; Millie, who could actually cling
+to Griggs; Pegeen, who had probably died at her man’s side; little Mrs.
+Mansfield, staunchly awaiting her husband’s release from prison; even
+the pasty-faced girl in the train ... her man would write her illiterate
+love-letters from the Front, for a little while, perhaps....
+
+And all these women had the right to stand by their men, in prison or at
+the Front; in the cause of rebellion or in the cause of stamping out
+rebellion; wounded or even after death, they had this right because
+their men loved or had loved them.
+
+Doreen, by virtue of being on the popular, the militarist side, had had
+the right to an official joy and an official sorrow; to official
+congratulation and official condolence. Antoinette’s joy and sorrow had
+alike been “unofficial.” Not that she minded being on the unpopular
+side. She could have enjoyed being an Ishmaelite outside the gates of
+Eastwold, enjoyed the rebel-sense of her unofficial right to stand by
+him, if only he had loved her. But—by his lack of love, he debarred her
+from this right, just as she had been debarred from official
+congratulation and condolence. She was an outcast in a double sense; an
+Ishmaelite twice over.
+
+“Well?” said Barnaby.
+
+“I? Oh, I don’t know where I come in. I think I don’t come in at
+all....”
+
+He nodded. “I understand. May I say I’m sorry for you? You know I don’t
+mean it as an insult.... What is to become of you, though?”
+
+She smiled wearily. “I suppose I too—just go on....”
+
+“Yes. I’m afraid you’re the symbol of what has to be sacrificed to the
+love between man and man.”
+
+“He couldn’t have done otherwise”—loyally she was prepared to defend
+Dennis against anything that even his friend might have to say about
+him. “He was made like that, and he made things more difficult for
+himself by bottling up all his thoughts and feelings, and being terribly
+afraid of them, and never telling anyone about them—till he told me.”
+
+“He never told me,” said Barnaby, “at least not in so many words. But I
+could see for myself. He’s got a queer strain of the maternal in him.
+It’s obvious in the way he looks upon his work, and in the way he looks
+upon that boy.... It’s a woman’s passion as well as a man’s that he
+feels for Alan; virile and yet tender; stronger even than death or
+madness; a wonderful motive-force that might accomplish much ... only
+the world would condemn it as an evil, vicious growth that should be
+stamped out! We want more light, more breathing-space, more tolerance
+and understanding: not this narrow-minded wholesale condemnation and
+covering-up; this instinctive shuddering and turning away from a side of
+nature that, like every other side, has its right to a hearing, its
+right to open discussion.”
+
+“Everybody seems to imagine that you’re abnormal because you _like_
+being abnormal,” Antoinette burst out, “just as they imagine that men go
+to prison because they like it better than going to the Front. As if
+being different from normal people weren’t curse enough in itself,
+without having them think it’s your own choice, and that you enjoy being
+different!”
+
+“Of course there are those who enjoy it—who wallow in the perverted
+sensations of their abnormality, as normal sensualists wallow in their
+own ‘permissible’ lusts. And by these, the worst types—or perhaps the
+most to be pitied—the multitude judges them all, just as they judge the
+whole class of conscientious objectors by those actuated only by fear
+for their own skins. They don’t attempt to separate the grain from the
+chaff: the innocent have to suffer with the guilty.”
+
+“It’s a pity no one thinks of saving the guilty for the sake of the
+innocent!” she cried.
+
+“Christ thought of it, my dear girl, many long years ago; and look what
+a mess they’re making of His teachings now.... But perhaps these men who
+stand mid-way between the extremes of the two sexes are the
+advance-guard of a more enlightened civilisation. They’re despised and
+rejected of their fellow-men to-day. What they suffer in a world not yet
+ready to admit their right to existence, their right to love, no normal
+person can realise; but I believe that the time is not so far distant
+when we shall recognise in the best of our intermediate types the
+leaders and masters of the race.”
+
+He paused, and went on: “They _do_ wander through dark ways at present,
+there’s no denying it; and some of them understand themselves and the
+eternal conflicts of their nature as little as others understand them.
+The normal person cries: ‘Don’t encourage them—stamp them out—imprison
+them—crush them——’ You can’t crush them; you can’t stamp them out;
+they’ve got to be reckoned with. From them a new humanity is being
+evolved, and in the process of evolution Nature produces all sorts of
+poor little deformities and abnormalities as samples. They’re necessary
+to the production of the higher type, though, the bad specimens put out
+from every factory or workshop. Bad specimens—and yet forerunners! For
+out of their suffering, out of pain and confusion and darkness, will
+arise something great—something God-given: the human soul complete in
+itself, perfectly balanced, not limited by the psychological bounds of
+one sex, but combining the power and the intellect of the one with the
+subtlety and intuition of the other; a dual nature, possessing the
+extended range, the attributes of both sides, and therefore loving and
+beloved of both alike.”
+
+With brimming eyes she listened to him; and then she put the question
+that Mrs. Blackwood had so often put to her:
+
+“Do you ... think Dennis will be all right?”
+
+“I think he’ll keep his reason, if that’s what you mean, even if he’s
+never able to write a note of music again. But even so—one can’t say
+that it is all for nothing: those train-loads and boat-loads of cheery
+boys taken from the land, the workshops, the universities, who go out
+singing and joking to their death; who never did anything remarkable in
+their life before, and yet who do incredibly plucky things on the
+battlefield; the patient heroes on both sides who do their bit and much
+more than their bit, because it’s been instilled into their faithful
+hearts that it’s right that they should do it—it is for love of these,
+and to save these and such as these in the generations to come that Alan
+and Dennis and others like them are making their sacrifice! And then to
+label the lot of them cowards——” He broke off, and sat a while silently
+brooding. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, well: people don’t
+think....”
+
+
+                                THE END.
+
+
+
+
+                          Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public
+domain.
+
+The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical
+and punctuation errors as well as variations in hyphenation were
+silently amended. All other changes are shown here (before/after):
+
+   [p. 59]:
+   ... At least, so though Antoinette, who from childhood ...
+   ... At least, so thought Antoinette, who from childhood ...
+
+   [p. 83]:
+   ... I’d got to be musician, even if it did mean being ...
+   ... I’d got to be a musician, even if it did mean being ...
+
+   [p. 116]:
+   ... it’th nithe to thart booking up before the danthe ...
+   ... it’th nithe to thtart booking up before the danthe ...
+
+   [p. 118]:
+   ... be a drug upon the market,” exclaimed Griggs with ...
+   ... be a drag upon the market,” exclaimed Griggs with ...
+
+   [p. 237]:
+   ... she’s takes Belgium’s name in vain to hide her ...
+   ... she takes Belgium’s name in vain to hide her ...
+
+   [p. 273]:
+   ... “Letters has passed between them. Then the ...
+   ... “Letters had passed between them. Then the ...
+
+   [p. 321]:
+   ... him accordingly. Crispin led them cherish. It ...
+   ... him accordingly. Crispin lets them cherish. It ...
+
+   [p. 339]:
+   ... her so happy—I feel is if I’d lost a son, too.” She ...
+   ... her so happy—I feel as if I’d lost a son, too.” She ...
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79286 ***