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Title: The Return of the Prodigal

Author: May Sinclair

Release date: March 10, 2010 [eBook #31595]
                Most recently updated: January 6, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net







  THE RETURN OF
  THE PRODIGAL




  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

  NEW YORK--BOSTON--CHICAGO
  DALLAS--ATLANTA--SAN FRANCISCO

  MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

  LONDON--BOMBAY--CALCUTTA
  MELBOURNE

  THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

  TORONTO




  THE RETURN OF
  THE PRODIGAL


  BY
  MAY SINCLAIR

  AUTHOR OF "THE DIVINE FIRE," ETC.


  New York
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  1914




  Copyright, 1914

  By MAY SINCLAIR

  Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1914.




CONTENTS


                                                   PAGE

      THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL                      1

      THE GIFT                                       25

      THE FAULT                                      59

      WILKINSON'S WIFE                               81

      MISS TARRANT'S TEMPERAMENT                     97

      APPEARANCES                                   153

      THE WRACKHAM MEMOIRS                          177

      THE COSMOPOLITAN                              221




THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL


I

"Stephen K. Lepper, Pork-Packing Prince, from Chicago, U. S. A., by
White Star Line, for Liverpool." Such was the announcement with
which the _Chicago Central Advertiser_ made beautiful its list of
arrivals and departures.

It was not exactly a definition of him. To be sure, if you had
caught sight of him anywhere down the sumptuous vista of the
first-class sleeping-saloon of the New York and Chicago Express, you
would have judged it adequate and inquired no more. You might even
have put him down for a Yankee.

But if, following him on this side of the Atlantic, you had found
yourself boxed up with him in a third-class compartment on the
London and North-western Railway, your curiosity would have been
aroused. The first thing you would have noticed was that everything
about him, from his gray traveling hat to the gold monogram on his
portmanteau, was brilliantly and conspicuously new. Accompanied by a
lady, it would have suggested matrimony and the grand tour. But
there was nothing else to distract you from him. He let himself be
looked at; he sat there in his corner seat, superbly, opulently
still. And somehow it dawned on you that, in spite of some
Americanisms he let fall, he was not, and never could have been, a
Yankee. He had evidently forged ahead at a tremendous speed, but it
was weight, not steam, that did it. He belonged to the race that
bundles out on the uphill grade and puts its shoulders to the wheel,
and on the down grade tucks its feet in, sits tight, and lets the
thing fly, trusting twenty stone to multiply the velocity.

Then it would occur to you that he must have been sitting still for
a considerable period. He was not stout--you might even have called
him slender; but the muscles about his cheeks and chin hung a little
loose from the bony framework, and his figure, shapely enough when
he stood upright, yielded in a sitting posture to the pressure of
the railway cushions. That indicated muscular tissue, once developed
by outdoor exercise, and subsequently deteriorated by sedentary
pursuits. The lines on his forehead suggested that he was now a
brain-worker of sorts.

Other lines showed plainly that, though his accessories were new,
the man, unlike his portmanteau, had knocked about the world, and
had got a good deal damaged in the process. The index and middle
fingers of the left hand were wanting. You argued, then, that he had
changed his trade more than once; while from the presence of two
vertical creases on either side of a large and rather fleshy mouth,
worn as it were by the pull of a bit, you further inferred that the
energy he must have displayed somewhere was a thing of will rather
than of temperament. He was a paradox, a rolling stone that had
unaccountably contrived to gather moss.

And then you fell to wondering how so magnificently mossy a person
came to be traveling third-class in his native country.

To all these problems, which did actually perplex the clergyman, his
fellow-passenger, he himself provided the answer.

He had taken out his gold watch with a critical air, and timed the
run from Liverpool to Crewe.

"Better service of trains than they used to have," he observed.
"Same old snorer of an engine, though."

"You seem to know the line."

"It's not the first time I've ridden by it; nor yet the first time
I've crossed the herring-pond."

"Are you making any stay in this country?"

"I am, sir."

He lapsed into meditation evidently not unpleasing; then he
continued: "When you've got a mother and two sisters that you
haven't seen for over fifteen years, naturally you're not in such a
particular durned hurry to get away."

"Your home is in America, I presume?"

"My home is in England. I've made my pile out there, sir, and I've
come to stay. Like to see the _Chicago Advertiser_? It may amuse
you."

The clergyman accepted the paper gratefully. It did amuse him. So
much so that he read aloud several paragraphs, among others the one
beginning "Stephen K. Lepper, Pork-packing Prince."

It was a second or two before the horror of the situation dawned on
him. That dawn must have been reflected on his face, for his
fellow-passenger began to snigger.

"Ah," said he, "you've tumbled to it. Sorry you spoke? Don't
apologize for smiling, sir. I can smile, myself, now; but the first
time I saw that paragraph it turned me pretty faint and green.
That's the way they do things out there. Of course," he added, "I
_had_ to be put in; but I'm no more like a prince than I'm like a
pork-packer."

What was he like? With the flush on his cheeks the laughter in his
eyes he might have been an enormous schoolboy home for the
holidays, and genially impudent on the strength of it.

"Fact is," he went on, "you didn't expect to find such a high
personage in a third-class compartment. That put you off."

"Yes, I suppose it was that." It did seem absurd that a pork-packing
prince, who could probably have bought up the entire rolling stock
of the London and North-western, should be traveling third.

"You see, I never used to go anything but third on this old line or
any other. I'm only doing it now to make sure I'm coming home. I
_know_ I'm coming home, but I want the feel of it."

He folded the _Chicago Advertiser_ and packed it carefully in his
portmanteau. "I'm keeping this to show my people," he explained.
"It's the sort of thing that used to make my young sister grin."

"You have--er--a young sister?"

"I had two--fifteen years ago."

The clergyman again looked sorry he had spoken.

"All right--this time. They're not dead. Only one of them isn't
quite so young as she used to be. The best of it is, it's a surprise
visit I'm paying them. They none of them know I'm coming. I simply
said I might be turning up one of these days--before very long."

"They won't be sorry to have you back again, I imagine."

"Sorry?"

He smiled sweetly and was silent for some minutes, evidently
picturing the joy, the ecstasy, of that return. Then, feeling no
doubt that the ice was broken, he launched out into continuous
narrative.

"Going out's all very well," he said, "but it isn't a patch on
coming home. Not but what you can overdo the thing. I knew a man who
was always coming home--seemed as if he couldn't stop away. I don't
know that _his_ people were particularly glad to see him."

"How was that?"

"A bit tired of it, I suppose. You see, they'd given him about nine
distinct starts in life. They were always shipping him off to
foreign parts, with his passage paid and a nice little bit of
capital waiting for him on the other side. And, if you'll believe
me, every blessed time he turned up again, if not by the next
steamer, by the next after that."

"What became of the capital?"

"Oh, _that_ he liquidated. Drank it--see? We've all got our own
particular little foibles, and my friend's was drink."

"I don't wish to appear prejudiced, but I think I should be inclined
myself to call it a sin."

"You may _call_ it a sin. It was the only one he'd got, of any
considerable size. I suppose you'd distinguish between a sin and its
consequences?"

"Most certainly," replied the clergyman unguardedly.

"Well. Then--there were the women----"

"Steady, my friend, that makes two sins."

"No. You can't count it as two. You see, he never spoke to a girl
till he was so blind drunk he couldn't tell whether she was pretty
or ugly. Women were a consequence."

"That only made his sin the greater, sir."

"Ye--es. I reckon it did swell it up some. I said it was a big one.
Still, it's not fair to him to count it as more than one. But then,
what with gambling and putting a bit on here, and backing a friend's
bill there, he managed to make it do duty for half a dozen. He
seemed to turn everything naturally to drink. You may say he drank
his widowed mother's savings, and his father's life insurance; and,
when that was done, he pegged away at his eldest sister's marriage
portion and the money that should have gone for his younger sister's
education. Altogether he reduced 'em pretty considerably. Besides
all that, he had the cussedest luck of any beggar I know.

"Not that he cared for his luck, as long as he got enough to drink.
But he wore his friends out. At last they said they'd get up a
subscription and pay his passage out to the States, if he'd swear
never to show his ugly face in England again. Or at least not till
he knew how to behave himself, which was safe enough, and came to
the same thing, seeing that they didn't believe he'd ever learn. He
didn't believe it himself, and would have sworn to anything. So they
scraped together ten pounds for his passage, intermediate. He went
steerage and drank the difference. They'd sent on five pounds
capital to start him when he landed, and thought themselves very
clever. The first thing he did was to collar that capital and drink
it too. Then he went and worked in the store where he'd bought the
drink, for the sake of being near it--he loved it so. Then--this is
the queer part of the story--something happened. I won't tell you
what it was. It happened because it was the worst thing that could
have happened--it was bound to happen, owing to his luck. Whatever
it was it made him chuck drinking. He left the store where the stuff
was, and applied for a berth in a big business in Chicago. It was a
place where they didn't know him, else he wouldn't have got it.

"Then his luck turned. If it wasn't the same luck. Just because he
hadn't an object in life now--didn't care about drinking any longer,
nor yet about women, because of the thing that had happened, and so
hadn't got any reasonable sort of use for money--he began to make
it. That's the secret of success, that is. Because he didn't care
what he called a tinker's cuss about being foreman he was made
foreman--then, for the same reason, manager. Then he got sort of
interested in seeing the money come in. He didn't want it himself,
but it struck him that it wouldn't be a bad thing to pay back his
mother and his sisters what they'd lost on him, besides making up
for any little extra trouble and expense he might have been to them.
He began putting dollars by just for that.

"I suppose you think that when he'd raked together enough dollars he
sent them home straightaway? Not he. He wasn't such a blamed idiot.
He knew it was no manner of good being in a hurry if you wanted to
do a thing in style. He pouched those dollars himself and bought a
small share in the business. He bought it for _them_, mind you.
You'd have thought, now he was interested and had got back a sort of
object in life, that his luck would have turned again, just to spite
him. But it didn't. He rose and he rose, and after a bit they made
him a partner. They had the capital, and he had the brain. He'd
found out that he'd more brain than he knew what to do with. Regular
nuisance it was--so beastly active. Used to keep him awake at night,
thinking, when he didn't want to. However, it dried up and let him
alone once he gave it the business to play with. At last the old
partners dropped off the concern--gorged; and he stuck to it. By
that time he had fairly got his hand in; and the last year it was
just a sitting still and watching the long Atlantic roll of the
dollars as they came tumbling in. He stuck till he'd piled them up
behind him, a solid cold five million. And now he's ramping on the
home-path as hard as he can tear. The funny thing is that his people
are as poor as church mice--three brown mice in a fusty little
house like a family pew. But that's the house he's going to. And
that five million's just as much theirs as it is his, and perhaps a
little more."

"Ah," said his fellow-passenger, "that's pretty. That sort of thing
doesn't often happen outside a fairy tale."

"No," said Stephen Lepper simply, "but he made it happen."

"Well?"

"Well? Do you think they'll be _sorry_ to see him? I don't mean
because of the dollars--they won't care about them."

"Of course they won't. My dear sir, it's fine--that story of yours.
It's the Prodigal Son--with a difference."

"A difference? I believe you!"

At this point Stephen Lepper was struck with a humorous idea. It
struck him on the back, as it were, in such a startling manner that
he forgot all about the veil he had woven so industriously. (His
companion, indeed, judged that he had adopted that subterfuge less
as a concealment for his sins than as a decent covering for his
virtues.)

"That prodigal knew what to do with his herd of swine, anyhow. He
killed and cured 'em. And I reckon he'll order his own fatted
calf--and pay for it."

He stood revealed.

The clergyman got down at Rugby. In parting he shook Mr. Stephen K.
Lepper by the hand and wished him--for himself a happy home-coming,
for his friend a good appetite for the fatted calf.

His hand was gripped hard, so that he suffered torture till the
guard slammed to the door of the compartment and separated them.

Mr. Lepper thrust his head out of the window. "No fear!" he shouted.

The clergyman looked back once as the train moved out of the
station. The head was there, uncovered, but still shouting.

"No durned----"

He saw the gray hat waved wildly, but the voice was ravished from
him by the wind of the train.


II

The train reached Little Sutton at seven. Just as he had traveled
third-class, so he had preposterously planned to send his luggage on
by carrier, and plod the five miles between town and station on
foot. He wanted to keep up the illusion.

The station, anyhow, was all right. They had enlarged it a bit, but
it was still painted a dirty drab (perhaps there used to be a shade
more yellow ochre in the drab), and the Virginian creeper still
climbed over the station master's box, veiling him as in a bower. If
he could have swallowed up time (fifteen years of it) as the New
York and Chicago Express swallowed up space, he might have felt
himself a young man again, a limp young man, slightly the worse for
drink, handed down to the porter like a portmanteau by the friendly
arm of a fellow-passenger, on one of those swift, sudden, and
ill-timed returns that preceded his last great exodus. Only that,
whereas Stephen Lepper at thirty-nine was immaculately attired, the
coat of that unfortunate young man hung by a thread or two, and his
trousers by a button; while, instead of five million dollars piled
at his back, he had but eighteenpence (mostly copper) lying loose in
his front pockets. But Stephen Lepper had grown so used to his
clothes and his millions that he carried them unconsciously. They
offered no violence to the illusion. What might have destroyed it
was the strange, unharmonizing fact that he was sober. But he had
got used to being sober, too.

The road unrolled itself for two miles over the pale green downs. It
topped the spine of a little hog-backed hill and dipped toward the
town (road all right). To his left, on the crest of the hill, stood
the old landmark, three black elms in a field that was rased and
bleached after the hay-harvest. They leaned toward each other, and
between their trunks the thick blue-gray sky showed solid as paint
(landmark all right).

In the queer deep light that was not quite twilight things were
immobile and distinct, as if emphasizing their outlines before
losing them. The illusion was acute, almost intolerable.

Down there lay the town, literally buried in the wooded combe. Slabs
of gray wall and purple roof, sunk in the black-green like graves in
grass. A white house here and there faced him with the stare of
monumental marble. In the middle a church with a stunted spire
squatted like a mortuary chapel. They had run up a gaudy red-brick
villa or two outside, but on the whole Little Sutton was all right,
too. He had always thought it very like a cemetery--a place where
people lay buried till the Day of Judgment.

The man he had been was really dead and buried down there. It was as
if a glorified Stephen Lepper stood up and contemplated his last
resting-place. The clothes he wore were so many signs and symbols of
his joyful resurrection. If any doubted, he could point to them in
proof. Not that he anticipated this necessity. To be sure, his
people had once regarded the possibility of a resurrection as, to
say the least of it, antecedently improbable. They had even refused
to accept his authentic letters, written on the actual paper of a
temperance hotel, as sufficient proof of it. He had not altogether
blamed them for their Sadducean attitude, being a little skeptical
himself.

Nevertheless, the resurrection was an accomplished fact. There had
been a woman in it. She was to have been his wife if she had lived.
But she had not lived, and her death was the one episode as to
which he had been reticent. She was the sort of woman that drives
men to drink by marrying them; for she had a face like an angel and
a tongue like a two-edged sword, sheathed in time of courtship. The
miracle had happened so long ago that it had passed into the region
of things unregarded because admitting of no doubt. He had never
been what you might call a confirmed drunkard--he hadn't been
steady enough for that--and fifteen years of incontrovertible
sobriety had effaced the fitful record of his orgies. So it never
occurred to him now that his character could be regarded otherwise
than with the confidence accorded to such solid and old-established
structures as the Church or Bank. He dreaded no shrinking in the
eyes of the three women he had come to see. But supposing--merely
supposing--anything so unlikely as a mental reservation or
suspension of judgment on their part, there was that solid pile of
dollars at his back for proof. And because the better part of five
million dollars cannot be produced visibly and bodily at a moment's
notice, and because the female mind has difficulty in grasping so
abstract an idea as capital, he had brought with him one or two
little presents--tangible intimations, as it were, of its
existence.

He had had two hours to spare at Liverpool before his train left
Lime Street. They had flown in the rapture of his shopping. To
follow his progress through Castle Street and Bond Street, the
casual observer would have deemed him possessed by a blind and
maniac lust of miscellaneous spending. But there had been method in
that madness, a method simple and direct. He had stalked first of
all into a great silk-mercer's and demanded a silk suitable for an
old lady, a satin suitable for a young lady, another satin for a
lady--not so young. Then, suddenly remembering that his mother used
to yearn even in widowhood for plum color, while Minnie (who was
pretty and had red hair) fancied a moss-green, and Kate (who was not
pretty) a rose-pink, he neither paused nor rested till he had
obtained these tints. Lace, too--his mother had had a perfect
passion for lace, unsatisfied because of its ideal nature--a lace of
her dreams. He had decided on one or two fine specimens of old
point. He supposed this would be the nearest approach to the ideal,
being the most expensive. Then he had to get a few diamond pins,
butterflies, true-love knots, and so on, to fix it with. And, while
he was about it, a diamond necklace, and a few little trifles of
that sort for Minnie and Kate. Then their figures (dimly dowdy) had
come back to him across the years, one plain, the other pretty but
peculiar. He accounted for that by remembering that Kate had been
literary, while Minnie was musical.

So he had just turned in at a bookseller's and stated that he
wanted some books--say about twenty or thirty pounds' worth. The
man of books had gauged his literary capacity in a glance, and
suggested that he had better purchase the Hundred Best Books.
"Well," he had said (rather sharply, for time was getting on), "I
reckon I don't want any but the best." In the same spirit he had
approached the gentleman in the piano-forte emporium and ordered a
Steinway Grand to be forwarded when he knew his permanent address.
For as yet it was uncertain which county contained it, that
princely residence--the old manor-house or baronial hall--in which
henceforth they would live together in affluence. He didn't exactly
see them there, those three queer, dowdy little women. God forgive
him, it was his fault if they went shabby. He remembered how they
used to stint themselves, eating coarse food and keeping no
servant, so that Kate had never any time for her books nor Minnie
for her music. He would change all that now.

As he walked on he dreamed a dream.

In the foreground of his dream (rich parqueterie) three figures went
to and fro, one adorable in plum color and point lace; one, the one
with the red hair, still beautiful in green; and one, not beautiful,
but--well--elegant in pink. Now he saw a dining-room sumptuously
furnished, a table white with silver and fine linen, and the same
figures sitting at it, drinking champagne and eating the fool messes
that women love to eat, queer things cooked in cream, and
ice-puddings, and so on. And now it was a lofty music room, and
Minnie taking the roof off with one of her So-nahters on the
Steinway Grand; and now a library (the Hundred Best Books had grown
into a library), and Kate, studious, virgin, inviolate in leisure.
Then slap through it all went the little mother driving in her own
carriage, a victoria for fine weather, a brougham for wet. (It was
before the days of motor-cars.) Somewhere on the outskirts of his
dream (moorland for choice) there hovered a gentleman in shooting
clothes, carrying a gun, or on the uttermost dim verge, the sky-line
of it, the same vague form (equestrian) shot gloriously by. But he
took very little interest in him.

Ah, there were the cross-roads and the Bald-faced Stag at the
corner. Not a scrap changed since the last time he visited it--day
when he rode the Major's roan mare slap through the saloon bar into
the bowling-alley. Did it for a bet, and won it, too, and bought his
mother a stuffed badger in a glass case with the money, as a
propitiatory offering. Only another mile.

His road ran into the lighted High Street, through a black avenue of
elms as through a tunnel. Reality assailed him with a thousand
smells. No need to ask his way to the North End.

He turned off through an alley into a dark lane, bordered with
limes. The thick, sweet scent dropped from the trees, a scent dewy
with the childhood of the night. It felt palpable as a touch. It was
as if he felt his mother's fingers on his face, and the kisses of
his innocent girl-sisters.

He went slowly up the lane toward a low light at the end of it. At
the corner, where it turned, was a small house black with ivy and
fenced with a row of espalier limes. The light he made for came from
the farthest window of the ground floor. Through a gap in the lime
fence he could see into the room.

The house was sunk a little below the level of the lane, so that he
seemed to be looking straight down into a pit of yellow light
hollowed out of the blackness. Two figures sat knitting at the
window on the edge of the pit. His mother and Kate. A third, in the
center of the light, leaned her elbows on the table and propped her
head on her hands. He knew her for Minnie by her red hair. Beyond
them a side window was open to the night.

There were two ways by which he could approach them. He could go
boldly in at the iron gate and up the flagged path to the front
door. Or he could go round to the side, up the turning of the lane,
where the garden wall rose high, into the back garden. Thence,
through a thick yew arch into a narrow path between the end of the
house and the high wall. By the one way they would be certain to see
him through the front window. By the other he would see them
(through the side window) without being seen. Owing to a certain
moisture and redness about his eyes and nose he was not yet quite
ready to be seen. Therefore he chose the side way. Sitting on a
garden seat in the embrasure of the arch, he commanded a slanting
but uninterrupted view of the room and its inmates.

There, in the quiet, he could hear the clicking needles of the
knitters, and the breathing of the red-haired woman. And he longed
with a great longing for the sound of their voices. If one of them
would only speak!


III

"The question is"--it was the red-haired girl who spoke, and her
tone suggested that the silence marked a lull in some debate--"how
much do you mean to advance me this year from the housekeeping?"

The younger of the two knitters answered without looking up.

"I've told you before; it depends upon circumstances."

"I see no circumstances."

"Don't you? I thought it was you who were so sure about Stephen's
coming home?"

"That makes no difference. If he doesn't come I shall go away. If
he does I shall go away and stay away. In that case I shall want
more money, shan't I? not less." Minnie dug her sharp elbows into
the table and thrust out her chin.

"You'll have to want," said Kate. "You know perfectly well that if
he is here none of us can go away. We must keep together."

"Why must we?"

"Because it's cheaper."

"And suppose I choose to go? What's to keep me?"

"To _keep_ you?"

"I see. You mean there won't be a penny to keep me?"

Kate was silent.

"If it hadn't been for Stephen I could have kept myself long ago--by
my music. That's what I wanted."

"Well, you didn't get what you wanted. Women seldom do."

"I want to go to the Tanquerays. There's no reason why I shouldn't
get that."

"You can't go to the Tanquerays as you are."

Minnie gazed at her clothes, then at her reflection in the opposite
looking-glass.

She wore a shabby, low-necked gown of some bluish-green stuff, with
a collar of coarse lace; also a string of iridescent shells. Under
the flame of her hair her prettiness showed haggard and forlorn.

"Yes, you may well look at yourself. You must have new things if you
go. That means breaking into five pounds."

Minnie's eyes were still fixed on the face in the looking-glass.

"It would be worth it," said she.

"It might be if you stopped five months. Not unless."

"Look here, Kate. It's all very well, but I consider that the house
owes me that five pounds. Mayn't I have it, Stephen or no Stephen?"

"It's no use asking me now. It will depend on Stephen."

"And Stephen, I imagine, will depend on us."

"Probably. Do you hear what Minnie says, Mother?"

The old woman's hands knitted fiercely, while her sharp yellow face
crumpled into an expression half peevish, half resigned.

"I hear what you both say, and I think I've got enough to worry me
without you talking about Stephen coming home."

Her voice was so thin that even Minnie, not hearing, had missed the
point. As for the man outside, he was still struggling with emotion,
and had caught but a word here and there.

Kate's voice was jagged like a saw and carried farther. It was now
that he really began to hear.

"Do you suppose he's made any money out there?"

"Did you ever hear of Stephen making money anywhere?"

"If he has he ought to be made to pay something to the housekeeping.
It's only fair."

"If he's made anything," said Minnie, "he's spent it all. That's why
he's coming. Look at the supper!"

The table before her was laid for the evening meal. She pointed to
the heels of two loaves, a knuckle of ham, a piece of cheese, and
some water in a glass jug. Oatmeal simmered on a reeking oil-stove
in a corner of the room.

"How much will it cost to keep him?"

Kate's narrow, peaked face was raised in calculation. Kate's eyes
became mean homes for meaner thoughts of which she was visibly
unashamed.

"Ten shillings a week at the very least. Fifty-two weeks--that's
twenty-six pounds a year. Or probably fifteen shillings--a man eats
more than a woman, at any rate more butcher's meat--that's
thirty-nine pounds. That's only what he _eats_," she added
significantly. "_What_ did you say, Mother?"

The old lady raised her voice, and the man outside took hope. "I say
I think you're both very unfeeling. For all you know, poor fellow,
he may be quite reformed."

"He may be. I know the chances are he won't," said Kate.

"How do you know anything about it, my dear?"

"I asked Dr. Minify. He has a wide enough experience of these
cases."

Minnie turned fiercely round. "And what made you go and blab to him
about it? I think you might wash your dirty linen at home."

"It's only what you'd have done yourself."

"Not to him."

"Why not?"

There was terror in Minnie's face. "He knows the Tanquerays."

"Well--it's your own fault. You went on about it till it got on my
nerves, and the anxiety was more than I could bear. The porridge
will be boiling over."

"Well?"

"Well, I can't mind porridge and my knitting at the same time."

Minnie threw herself back, pushing her chair with her feet. She rose
and trailed sulkily across to the stove. As she moved a wisp of red
hair, loosened from its coil, clung to her sallow neck. She was
slip-shod and untidy.

She removed the porridge abstractedly. "What did he say?" she asked.

"He was extremely kind and sympathetic. He treated it as a disease.
He said that in nine cases out of ten recovery is impossible."

"Well, _I_ could have told you that. Anything more?"

"He says the chances are that he won't hold out much longer; his
health must have broken up after all these years. I don't know how I
_can_ stand it, if it is. When I think of all the things that may
happen. Paralysis perhaps, or epilepsy--that's far more likely. He's
just the age."

"Is he? How awful! But, then, he'll have to go somewhere. You know
we can't have him epilepsing all over the place here."

The old lady dropped her knitting to raise her hands.

"Minnie! Minnie! Have a little Trust. He may never come at all."

"He will. Trust _him_."

"After all," said Kate reflectively, "why should he?"

"Why? Why?" The girl came forward, spreading her large red hands
before her. "Because we've paid all his debts. Because we've saved
money and got straight again. Because we're getting to know one or
two decent people, and it's taken us fifteen years to do it. Because
we're beginning to enjoy ourselves for the first time in all our
miserable lives. Because I've set my heart on staying with the
Tanquerays, and Fred Tanqueray will be there. Because"--a queer,
fierce light came into her eyes--"because I'm happy, and he means to
spoil it all, as he spoilt it all before! As if I hadn't suffered
enough."

"You? What have you suffered?" Kate's sharp face was red as she
bent over a dropped stitch. Her hands trembled. "You were too young
to feel anything."

"I wasn't too young to feel that I had a career before me, nor to
care when it was knocked on the head. If it hadn't been for him my
music wouldn't have come to an end as it did."

"Your music! If it hadn't been for him my engagement wouldn't have
been broken off--as it was."

"Oh _that_? It was the one solitary good day's work Stephen ever
did."

The old lady nodded shrewdly over her needles. "Yes, my dear, you
might be thankful for that mercy. You couldn't have married Mr.
Hooper. I'm afraid he wasn't altogether what he ought to be. You
yourself suspected that he drank."

"Like a fish," interposed Minnie.

"I know"--Kate's hands were fumbling violently over her
stitch--"but--but I could have reclaimed him."

Her eyes lost their meanness with the little momentary light of
illusion.

Minnie laughed aloud. "If that's all you wanted, why didn't you try
your hand on Stephen?"

"Don't, Minnie."

But Minnie did. "Fred Tanqueray doesn't drink; I wouldn't look at
him if he did. What's more, he's a gentleman; I couldn't stand him
if he wasn't. Catch him marrying into this family when he's seen
Stephen."

"Minnie, you are _too_ dreadful."

"Dreadful? You'd be dreadful if you'd cared as much for Charlie
Hooper as I do for Fred Tanqueray."

"And how much does Mr. Tanqueray care for you?"

A dull flush spread over Minnie's sallow face; her lips coarsened.
"I don't know; but it's a good deal more than your Hooper man ever
cared for anybody in his life; and if you weren't such a hopeless
sentimentalist you'd have seen that much. Of course I shan't know
whether he cares or not--now."

And she wept, because of the anguish of her thirty years.

Then she burst out: "I _hate_ Stephen. I don't care what you say--if
he comes into this house I'll walk out of it. Oh, how I hate him!"
Her loose mouth dropped, still quivering with its speech. Her face
was one flame with her hair.

But Kate was cool and collected.

"Don't excite yourself. If it's only to influence Fred Tanqueray, he
won't come," said Kate.

Then the red-haired woman turned on her, mad with the torture of her
frustrate passion.

"He _will_ come! He _will_ come, I tell you. I've felt him coming.
I've felt it in my bones. I've dreamt about it night after night.
I've been afraid to meet the postman lest he should bring another
letter. I've been afraid to go along the station road lest I should
meet _him_. I'm afraid now to look out of that window lest I should
see him standing there with his face against the pane."

She crossed to the window and drew down the blind. For a moment her
shadow was flung across it, monstrously agitated, the huge hands
working.

The man outside saw nothing more, but he heard his mother's voice
and he took hope again.

"For shame, Minnie, for shame, to speak of poor Steevy so. One would
think you might have a little more affection for your only brother."

"Look here, Mother" (Minnie again!), "that's all sentimental humbug.
Can you look me in the face and honestly say you'd be glad to see
your only son?"

(The son's heart yearned, straining for the answer. It came
quavering.)

"My dear, I shall not see him. I'm a poor, weak old woman, and I
know that the Lord will not send me any burden that I cannot bear."

He crept from his hiding-place out into the silent lane. He had
drawn his breath tight, but his chest still shook with the sob he
had strangled. "My God!" he muttered, "I'll take off the burden."

Then his sob broke out again, and it sounded more like a laugh than
a sob. "The dollars--they shall have them. Every blessed one of the
damned five million!"

He looked at his watch by the light of the gas-lamp in the lane. He
had just time to catch the last train down; time, too, to stop the
carrier's cart with the gifts that would have told the tale of his
returning.

So, with a quick step, he went back by the way he had come, out of
the place where the dead had buried their dead--until the Day of
Judgment.




THE GIFT


I

He had not been near her for two months. It was barely five minutes'
walk from his house in Bedford Square to her rooms in Montagu
Street, and last year he used to go to see her every week. He did
not need the reminder of her letter, for he had been acutely aware,
through the term that separated them, of the date when he had last
seen her. Still, he was not sure how much longer he might have kept
away if it had not been for the note that told him in two lines that
she had been ill, and that she had--at last--something to show him.
He smiled at the childlike secrecy of the announcement. She had
something to show him. Her illness, then, had not impaired her gift,
her charming, inimitable gift.

If she had something to show him he would have to go to her.

He let his eyes rest a moment on her signature as if he saw it for
the first time, as if it renewed for him the pleasing impression of
her personality. After all, she was Freda Farrar, the only woman
with a style and an imagination worth considering; and he--well, he
was Wilton Caldecott.

He would go over and see her now. He had an hour to spare before
dinner. It was her hour, between the lamplight and the clear April
day, when he was always sure of finding her at home.

He found her sitting in her deep chair by the hearth, her long,
slender back bent forward to the fire, her hands glowing like thin
vessels for the flame. Her face was turned toward him as he came in.
Its small childlike oval showed sharp and white under her heavy
wreath of hair--the face of a delicate Virgin of the Annunciation, a
Musa Dolorosa, a terrified dryad of the plane-trees (Freda's face
had always inspired him with fantastic images); a dryad in exile,
banished with her plane-tree to the undelightful town.

She did not conceal from him her joyous certainty that he would
come. She made no comment on his absence. It was one of her many
agreeable qualities that she never made comments, never put forth
even the shyest and most shadowy claim. She took him up where she
had left him, or, rather, where he had left her, and he gathered
that she had filled the interval happily enough with the practice of
her incomparable art.

The first thing she did now was to exhibit her latest acquisitions,
her beautiful new reading-lamp, the two preposterous cushions that
supported and obliterated her; while he saw (preposterous Freda, who
had not a shilling beyond what the gift brought her) that she had on
a new gown.

"I say," he exclaimed, "I say, what next?"

And they looked at each other and laughed. He liked the spirit in
which Freda now launched out into the strange ocean of expenditure.
It showed how he had helped her. He was the only influence which
could have helped a talent so obscure, so uncertain, so shy.

It was the obscurity, the uncertainty, the shyness of it that
charmed him most. It was the shyness, the uncertainty, the obscurity
in her that held him, made it difficult to remove himself when he
sank into that deep chair by her fireside, and she became silent
and turned from him her small brooding face. It was as if she
guarded obstinately her secret, as if he waited, was compelled to
wait, for the illuminating hour.

"It's finished," she said, as if continuing some conversation they
had had yesterday.

"Ah." He found himself returning reluctantly from his quest.

She rose and unlocked the cabinet where her slender sheaves were
garnered. He came and took from her a sheaf more slender than the
rest.

"Am I to read it, here and now?"

"If you will."

He sat down and read there and then. From time to time she let her
eyes light on him, shyly at first, then rest, made quiet by his
abstraction. She liked to look at him when he was not thinking of
her. He was tall and straight and fair; his massive, clean-shaven
face showed a virile ashen shade on lip and chin. He had keen, kind
eyes, and a queer mouth with sweet curves and bitter corners.

He folded the manuscript and turned it in his hands. He looked from
it to her with considering, caressing eyes. What she had written was
a love-poem in the divinest, the simplest prose. Such a poem could
only have been written by his listening virgin, his dreaming dryad.
He was afraid to speak of it, to handle its frail, half-elemental,
half-spiritual form.

"Has it justified my sending for you?"

It had. It justified her completely. It justified them both. It
justified his having come to her, his remaining with her, dining
with her, if indeed they did dine. She had always justified him,
made his coming to see her the natural, inevitable thing.

They sat late over the fire. They had locked the manuscript in its
drawer again, left it with relief.

They talked.

"How many years is it since I first saw you?"

"Three years," she said, "and two months."

"And two months. Do you remember how I found you, up there, under
the roof, in that house in Charlotte Street?"

"Yes," she said, "I remember."

"You were curled up on that funny couch in the corner, with your
back against the wall----"

"I was sitting on my feet to keep them warm."

"I know. And you wore a white shawl----"

"No," she entreated, "not a shawl."

"A white something. It doesn't matter. I don't really remember
anything but your small face, and your terrified eyes looking at me
out of the corner, and your poor little cold hands."

She wondered, did he remember her shabby gown, her fireless room,
the queer couch that was her bed, the hunger and the nakedness of
her surroundings?

"You sat," she said, "on my trunk, the wooden one with the nails on
it. It must have been so uncomfortable."

He said nothing. Even now, when those things were only a
remembrance, the pity of them made him dumb.

"And the next time you came," said she, "you made a fire for me.
Don't you remember?"

He remembered. He felt again that glow of self-congratulation which
warmed him whenever he considered the comfort of her present state;
or came into her room and found her accumulating, piece by piece,
her innocent luxuries. Nobody but he had helped her. It was
disagreeable to him to think that another man should have had a hand
in it.

Yet there would be others. He had already revealed her to two or
three.

"I wonder how you knew," she said.

"How I knew what?"

"That I was worth while."

He gave an inward start. She had made him suddenly aware that in
those days he had not known it. He had had no idea what was in her.
She had had nothing then "to show" him.

It was as if she were asking him, as if he were asking himself, what
it was that had drawn him to her, when, in the beginning, it wasn't
and couldn't have been the gift? Why had he followed her up when he
might so easily have dropped her? He had found her, in the
beginning, only because his old friend, Mrs. Dysart, had written to
him (from a distance that left her personally irresponsible), and
had asked him to look for her, to discover what had become of her,
to see if there was anything that he could do. Mrs. Dysart had
intimated that she hardly thought anything could be done; that there
wasn't, you know, very much in her--very much, that is to say, that
would interest Wilton Caldecott. They had been simply pitiful, the
girl's poor first efforts, the things that, when he had screwed his
courage to the point of asking for them, were all she had to show
him.

"I was too bad for words, you know," said she, tracking his thought.

"You were. You were."

"There wasn't a gleam, a spark----"

"Not one."

They laughed. The reminiscence of her "badness" seemed to inspire
them both with a secret exultation. They drew together, uncovering,
displaying to each other the cherished charm of it. Neither could
say why the thought of it was so pleasing.

"And look at you now," said Caldecott.

"Yes," she cried, "look at me now. What was it, do you think, that
made the difference?"

That he had never really known.

"Oh, well, I suppose you're stronger, you know; and things are
different."

"Things?" she repeated. Her lips parted and closed, as if she had
been about to say something, and recalled it with a sharp indrawing
of her breath.

"And so," she said presently, "you think that was it?"

"It may have been. Anyhow, you mustn't go getting ill."

"I don't think," she said, "there's any need. But don't be
frightened. It won't go away."

"What won't?"

"The gift."

They laughed again. It was their own name for it.

"I wasn't thinking of it. I was thinking of you."

"It's the same thing," said she. "No. It won't go. It can't go. I've
got it fast."

He rose. He looked down on her; he seemed to hesitate, to consider.

"I wonder," he said, "if I might ask my friend, Miss Nethersole, to
call on you? She's Mrs. Dysart's niece."

She consented, and with a terse good night he left her.

She, too, wondered and considered. She knew that she would some day
have to reckon with his life, with the world that knew him, with the
women whom he knew.


II

Freda and Miss Nethersole had met several times before the
remarkable conversation that made them suddenly intimate.

That she would have, sooner or later, some remarkable conversation
with Miss Nethersole was an idea that had dawned upon Freda from the
first. But until the hour struck for them their acquaintance had
been distant.

It had the fascination of deep distance. Freda had not been sure
that she desired to break the charm. It seemed somehow to hold her
safe. From what danger she would have found it hard to say, when
Miss Nethersole covered her with so large and soft a wing. Still,
they had come no nearer to the friendship which the older woman had
offered as the end of their approaches.

It was as if Miss Nethersole were also bound under the charm. When
Freda allowed herself to meditate profoundly she divined that what
drew them on and held them back was an uncertainty regarding Wilton
Caldecott. Neither knew in what place the other really held him. The
first day they met each had searched, secretly, the other's face for
some betrayal of his whereabouts; each, it had seemed to Freda, had
shrunk from finding what she looked for; shrunk even more from
owning that there might be anything to find.

And he had hoped that she would "like Julia."

If reticence were required of them, Freda felt that her poor little
face could never rival the inimitable reserves, the secure
distinction of Miss Nethersole's. There was nothing, so to speak, to
take hold of in Julia's dark, attenuated elegance; nothing that
betrayed itself anywhere, from the slender brilliance of her
deep-lidded, silent eyes, to her small flat chin, falling sheer from
the immobile lower lip. Miss Nethersole's features and her figure
were worn away to the last expression of a purely social intention.
Quite useless to look for any signs of Wilton Caldecott's
occupation. Freda was convinced that, if the lady possessed any
knowledge of him, she would keep it concealed about her to the end
of time. She was aware of Miss Nethersole's significance as a woman
of the larger world. It was wonderful to think that she held the
clue to the social labyrinth, in which, to Freda's vision, their
friend's life was lost. She knew what ways he went. She could follow
all his turnings and windings there; perhaps she could track him to
the heart of the maze; perhaps she herself was the heart of it, the
very secret heart. She sat alone for him there, in the dear silent
place where all the paths led. The very thickness and elaboration of
the maze would make their peace. Freda's heart failed her before the
intricacy of Miss Nethersole's knowledge of him, the security of her
possession. Miss Nethersole was valuable to him for her own sake, it
being evident that she had no "gift."

It was her personal sufficiency, unsustained as she was by anything
irrelevant, that made Julia so formidable.

She had never seemed more so to Freda than on this afternoon when
they sat together among the adornments of her perfect drawing-room.
Everything about Miss Nethersole was as delicate and finished as her
own perfection. She was finely unconscious of all that Freda
recognized in her. It seemed as if what she chiefly recognized in
Freda was her gift. She had been superbly impersonal in her praise
of it. It was the divine thing given to Freda, hers and yet not
hers, so wonderful, compared with the small pale creature who
manipulated it, that it could be discussed with perfect propriety
apart from her.

And to-day Wilton Caldecott's name had risen again in the
discussion, when Julia had the air of insisting more than ever on
the gift. It was almost as if she narrowed Freda down to that,
suggesting that it was the only thing that counted in her intimacy
with their friend.

"Yes," said Freda, "but the extraordinary thing is that I hadn't it
when first he knew me."

"He saw what was in you."

"He said the other day he saw nothing. I was too bad for words."

"Oh, I know all about that. He told me."

"What did he tell you?"

"That you were like a funny little unfledged bird, trying to fly
before its wing feathers were grown."

"I hadn't any. I hadn't anything of my own. Everything I have I owe
to him."

"Don't say that. Why should you pluck off all your beautiful
feathers to make a nest for his conceit?"

"Is he conceited?"

Freda said to herself, "After all, she doesn't count. She doesn't
know him."

Miss Nethersole smiled. "He's a male man, my dear. If you want him
to have an even higher idea of your genius than he has already, tell
him--tell him you owe it all to him."

"Ah," said Freda, "you don't know him."

"I have known him," said Miss Nethersole, "for fifteen years. I knew
him before he married."

She had proved incontestably the superiority of her knowledge. Freda
felt as if Miss Nethersole were looking at her to see how she would
take it. There was an appreciable moment in which she adjusted her
mind to the suddenness of the revelation. Then she told herself that
there was nothing in it that she had not reckoned with many times
before. It left her relations with Wilton Caldecott where they were.

There was nothing in it that could change for her the unique and
immaterial tie. She was even relieved by the certainty that it was
not Julia Nethersole, then, after all. She had an idea that she
would have grudged him to Julia Nethersole.

Julia was much too well-bred to show that she had the advantage. She
took it for granted that Miss Farrar was also acquainted with the
circumstances of Wilton Caldecott's marriage.

"That," said she, "is what makes him so extraordinarily
interesting."

"His marriage"--Freda hesitated. She wondered if Miss Nethersole
would really go into it.

"Some people's marriages are quite unilluminating. Wilton's, I
always think, is the key to his character, sometimes to his
conduct."

Freda held her breath. She saw that Miss Nethersole was about to go
in deep.

"He has suffered"--Miss Nethersole went on--"all his life, from an
over-developed sense of honor. He could see honor in situations
where you wouldn't have said there was the ghost of an obligation.
His marriage was not an affair of the heart. It was an affair of
honor. The woman--she's dead now--was in love with him."

"Did you know her?"

"No. She was not the sort of person you do know. She was simply a
pretty, underbred little governess. He met her--on the staircase, I
imagine--in some house he was staying in, and, as I say, she was in
love with him. She was a scheming little wretch, and she and her
people made him believe that he had compromised her in some shadowy
way. I suppose he _had_ paid her a little ordinary attention--I
don't know the details. Anyhow, he was so fantastically honorable
that he married her."

"Poor thing. It must have been awful for her, to be married in that
way--for honor!"

"She didn't consider it awful in the least. She didn't mind what she
was married _for_, so long as she _was_ married. She was that sort.
Do I bore you?"

"No. You interest me immensely."

"Of course they were miserable. He couldn't make her happy. Wilton
is, in his way, a rather spiritual person, and his wife was anything
but. Marriage can be an awful revelation to a nice woman. Sometimes
it's a shock to a nice man. Wilton never got over _his_ shock. It
left him with a morbid horror of the thing. That's what has
prevented him from marrying again."

Miss Nethersole drew a perceptible breath before going in deeper.

"I've heard people praising his faithfulness to his wife's memory.
They little know. He was loyal enough to the poor woman while she
lived, but he's giving her away now with a vengeance. Several very
nice women would have been more than willing to marry him; but as
soon as he knew it----"

"Knew it? How could he know it?"

"Well, the ladies were very transparent, some of them. And when they
weren't there was always some kind person there to make them so. And
when he saw through them--he was off. You could see the horror of it
coming over him, and his poor terrified eyes protesting--'I'd do
anything for you--anything, my dear girl, but that.'"

Julia paused, as if on the brink of something still profounder.
Evidently she abhorred the plunge, while Freda shrank from the
horrible exposure of the shallower waters.

"And those women," said Julia, after meditation, "wondered why they
lost their friend. They might have kept him if they'd only kept
their heads."

It was at this point that Freda felt that Julia was trying to drag
her in with her.

"How awful," said she, "to feel that you'd driven a man away!"

"It might be more awful," said Julia, "for him to feel he had to
go."

"That's it," said Freda. "_Had_ he?"

"Well, if he was honorable, what else was there for him to do?"

"To stay by those women, and see them through--if he was honorable."

"Oh--if they'd have been content with that. But you see, my dear,
they all wanted to marry him."

"If they did," said Freda, "that shows that they didn't really
care."

"They cared too much, I'm afraid."

"Oh, no. Not enough. If they'd cared enough they'd have got beyond
that. However much they wanted it, they'd have given it up, rather
than let him go."

As she said it she felt a blessed sense of relief. The deeper they
went the more the waters covered her.

"You'll never get a man," said Julia, "to understand that. If _he_
cares for a woman he won't be put off with anything short of
marrying her. So he naturally supposes----"

Julia had now gone as deep as she could go.

"Yes," said Freda. "It's in the things he naturally supposes that a
man goes so wrong."

"Is it?" Julia paused again. "I don't know whether you realize it,
but you and I are the only women Mr. Caldecott ever goes to see. I
dare say you were surprised when he told you about me. I was amazed
when he told me about you. I've no doubt he made each of us think we
were the one exception. You see, we are rather exceptional women,
from his unhappy point of view. He knows that I understand him, and
I'm sure he thinks that he understands you----"

"So he feels safe with me?"

"Gloriously safe. _You_ are a genius, above all the little feminine
stupidities that terrify him so. From you he expects nothing but the
unexpected. You're outside all his rules. I'm so much inside them
that he knows exactly what to expect. So he's safe with both of us.
It's the betwixt-and-between people that he dreads."

Julia rose up from the depths rosy and refreshed. Freda panted with
a horrible exhaustion.

"I see," she said. And presently she found that it was time for her
to go.


III

The cool, bright air out of doors touched her like a reminding hand.
She turned awkwardly into the street that led from Bedford Square to
her own place. Wilton Caldecott and she had often walked along that
street together. She felt like one called upon to play a new part on
a familiar stage, where every object suggested insanely,
irrelevantly, the older inspiration.

Not that her conversation with Julia, or, rather (she corrected
herself) Julia's conversation with her, had altered anything. It had
all been so natural, so unamazing, like a conversation between two
persons in a dream. They had both seemed so ripe for their hour
that, when it struck, it brought no sense of the unusual. Only when
she lit her lamp in her room, and received the full shock of the old
intimate reality, did it occur to her that it was, after all, for
Julia Nethersole, a rather singular outpouring. The more she thought
of it the more startling it seemed--Julia's flinging off of the
reticence that had wrapped her round. Freda was specially appalled
by the audacity with which Julia had dragged Wilton Caldecott's
history into the light of day. Her own mind had always approached it
shyly and tenderly, with a sort of feeling that, after all, perhaps
she would rather not know. To Freda Julia seemed to have taken leave
suddenly of her senses, to have abandoned all propriety. One did, at
supreme moments, leave many things behind one; but Freda was not
aware that any moment in their intercourse had yet counted as
supreme.

Could Julia have meant anything by it? If so, what was it that she
precisely meant? The beginning of their conversation provided no
clue to its end. What possible connection could there be between
her, Freda's gift, such as it was, and Wilton Caldecott's marriage?

But as she pieced together, painfully, the broken threads she saw
that it did somehow hang together. She recalled that there had been
something almost ominous in the insistence with which Julia had held
her to her gift. Julia's manner had conveyed her disinclination to
acknowledge Wilton's part in it, her refusal to regard him as
indispensable in the case. She had implied, with the utmost possible
delicacy, that it would be well for Freda if she could contrive to
moderate her enthusiasm, to be a little less grateful; to cultivate,
in a word, her independence.

It was then that she had gone down into her depths. And emerging,
braced and bracing from the salt sea, she had landed Freda safe on
the high ledge, where she was henceforth to stand solitary, guarding
her gift.

It was, in short, a friendly warning to the younger woman to keep
her head if she wished to keep their friend.

Freda remembered her first disgraceful fear of Julia, her feeling
that Julia would presently take something--she hardly knew
what--away from her. That came of letting her imagination play too
freely round Wilton Caldecott's friend. What was there to alarm her
in the candid Julia? Wasn't it as if Julia, in their curious
conversation, had given herself up sublimely for Freda to look at
and see for herself that there was nothing in her to be afraid of?

It was possible that Julia had seen things in _her_. Freda had a
little thrill of discomfort at that thought; but she rallied from it
bravely. What if Julia did see? She was not aware of anything that
she was anxious to conceal from her. Least of all had she desired to
hide her part in Wilton Caldecott. It was, if you came to think of
it, the link between her and Julia, the ground of their
acquaintance. She could not suspect Julia of any vulgar desire to
take _that_ away from her.

If there had been any lapse from high refinement it had been in her
own little cry of "Ah, you don't know him," into which poor Freda
now felt that she had poured the very soul of passionate possession.
But Julia had been perfect. She had in effect said: "I see--and you
won't mind my seeing--that your friendship for Wilton Caldecott is
your dearest and purest possession, as it's mine. I'm not ashamed to
own it. And I'll show you how to keep it. Take care of the
gift--the gift. It'll see you both through." Julia had been fine.
What else _could_ she be? Of course she had seen; and she had
sacrificed her reticence beautifully, because it was the only way.
It was, said Freda to herself, what _she_ would have done if she had
been in Julia's place, and had seen.

Having reconstructed Julia, she unlocked the drawer that held the
hidden treasure, the thing that he had said was so perfect, the last
consummate manifestation of the gift. They had found between them
the right word for it. It was only a gift, a thing that he had given
her, that if he chose he could at any moment take away. What had
come from her came only through him. She owned, with a sort of
exultation, that there was nothing in the least creative in her. She
had not one virile quality; only this receptivity of hers,
infinitely plastic, infinitely tender. What lay in the lamplight
under her caressing hand had been born of their friendship. It was
their spiritual child.

She bowed her head and kissed it.

She said to herself: "It is not me, but his part in me that he
loves. If I am true to it he will be true to me."

As she raised her head her eyes were wet with tears. She looked
round the room. Everything in it (but the thing that lay there under
her hand) seemed suddenly to have lost its interest and its charm.
Something had gone from it, something that had been living with her
in secret for many days, that could not live with her now any more.
It had dropped into the deep when Julia stripped herself (it now
seemed to Freda) and took her shining, sacrificial plunge.

"What, after all," said Freda, "has she taken from me? Nothing that
I ever really had."


IV

It was Sunday afternoon. Caldecott made a point of going to see Miss
Nethersole on Sunday afternoons. He felt so safe with Julia.

This particular Sunday afternoon was their first since Julia had
become acquainted with Miss Farrar. It was therefore inevitable that
their talk should turn to her.

"Your friend is charming," said Julia.

"Yes," he said, "yes." He seemed reluctant to acknowledge it. Julia
made a note of the reluctance.

"You must be very proud of her."

He challenged the assertion with a glance which questioned her right
to make it. Julia saw that his mind was balancing itself on some
fine and perilous edge, and that it was as yet unaware of its peril.

"Of course you're proud of her," said she, in a voice that steadied
him.

"Of course I am," he agreed.

"Is it really true that she owes everything to you?"

"No," he said, "it isn't in the least true."

"She says so."

"Oh, that's her pretty way of putting it."

"She thinks it."

"Not she. If she does it's because she's made that way. She's
awfully nice, you know."

"She's too nice--to be allowed to----"

"Well?"

"To throw herself away."

"She isn't throwing herself away. She's found the one thing she can
do, and she's doing it divinely. I never met a woman who was so sure
of herself."

"Oh, she's sure enough, poor child."

"I say, you don't mean to tell me you don't believe in her? Not that
it matters whether you do or not."

"Thank you. I'm not talking about her genius, or whatever the thing
is. I've no doubt it's everything you say. If she'd only keep to
that--the one thing she _can_ be sure of. Unless, of course, you've
made her sure."

"What do you mean?"

"Ah, if I only knew what _you_ meant."

"What I mean?"

"Yes, what you mean to do."

He laughed. "I don't mean to 'do' anything at present."

"Well, then----"

"Why, what do you suppose I ought to do?"

"I don't know that it's for me to say."

"You may as well, while you're about it."

"If I could only make you see----" She mentally drew back.

"Well? What do you want to make me see?"

"What you've done already to that unhappy woman."

"Unhappy? She's considerably happier than she was when I first knew
her."

"That's it," she said, "that's just it. Where are your eyes? Can't
you see she's in love with you?"

He did not meet her advancing gaze.

"What makes you think so?" he said.

"The way she talks about you."

He smiled. "You don't allow for picturesque exaggeration."

"My dear, when a woman exaggerates to that extent it generally means
one thing."

"Not with her. She wouldn't do it if it meant that. She'd be afraid
to let herself go. And she isn't afraid. She just piles it on
because she's so sure of herself--so sure that she isn't what you
say she is."

"I don't say she knows she's in love with you. She doesn't know it."

"Can you be in love without knowing it?"

"She could. If she knew it, do you think she'd have let me see it?
And do you think I'd have given her away? I wouldn't now, only I
know what you are, and she doesn't."

"No, indeed. You're right enough there."

They paused on that.

"You're quite sure," she said, "that you can't----"

It was as if she probed him, delicately, on behalf of their tragic
friend. She turned her eyes away as she did it, that she might not
see him shrink.

"No," he said. "Never again. Never again."

She withdrew the pressure of the gentle finger that had given him
pain. "I only thought--" she murmured.

"What did you think?"

"That it might be nice for both of you."

"It wouldn't be nice for either of us. Not nice at all."

"Well, then, I can only see one thing."

"I know. You're going to say I must leave off seeing her?"

"No. I don't say that."

"I do, though. If I were sure----"

"You may be sure of one thing. That she doesn't know what's the
matter with her--yet. She mustn't know. If you do go and see her,
you must be careful not to let her find out. I did my best to hide
it, to cover it up, so that she shouldn't see."

"Your suspicion?"

"What do you think we're made of? The truth--the truth."

"If this is the truth, I mustn't, of course, go near her. But I know
you're mistaken."

"Have I ever been mistaken? Have I ever told you wrong?"

"Well, Julia, you're a very wise woman, and I'll admit that, when
you've warned me off anybody, you've warned me for my good."

She colored. "I'm not warning you 'off' anybody now. I've warned you
before for your own sake. I'm warning you this time for hers."

"I see. I see that, all right. But--you never saw a woman like her,
did you? I wonder if you understand her."

"I do understand her. You can't look at her and not see that she has
a profound capacity for suffering."

"I know."

Of course he knew. Hadn't he called her the Musa Dolorosa?

"Just because," said Julia, "she has imagination."

He had said good-bye and was going; but at the doorway he turned to
her again.

"No," he said, "you're wrong, Julia. She's not like that."

Julia arched her brows over eyes tender with compassion--compassion
for his infinite stupidity.

"Oh, my dear!" she cried, and waved him away as a creature hopeless,
impossible to help.

He closed the door and stood with his back to it, facing her.

"Well," he said, "you may be right; but before I do anything I must
be sure."

"How do you propose to make sure?"

"I shall go and see her."

"Of course," said Julia, "you'll go and see her."


V

He went on to Montagu Street, so convinced was he that Julia was
mistaken.

Freda knew well what she was going to say to him. She had chosen her
path, the highest, the farthest from the abyss. Once there she could
let herself go.

He himself led her there; he started her. He brought praises of the
gift.

Other people, he said, were beginning to rave about it now.

"I wish they wouldn't," said she. "It makes me feel so dishonest."

"Dishonest?"

"As if I'd taken something that didn't belong to me. It doesn't
belong to me."

"What doesn't?"

"It--the gift! I feel as if it had never had anything--really--to do
with me."

"Ah, that's the way to tell that you've got it."

"I know, but I don't mean that. I mean--it does belong so very much
to somebody else, that I ought almost to give it back."

He had always wondered how she did it. Now for one moment he
believed that she was about to clear up her little mystery. She was
going to tell him that she hadn't done it at all, that somebody else
had borrowed her name for some incomprehensible purpose of
concealment. She was going to make an end of Freda Farrar.

"Of course," she said, "I know you don't want it back."

"I?"

"Yes. It's really yours, you know. I should never have had it at all
if it hadn't been for you."

"I'm very glad," he said gravely, "if I've helped you."

He was thinking, "She does really rather pile it on."

Freda went piling it on more. She felt continuously that the gift
would see them through. She would hold it well before him, and turn
it round and round, that he might see for himself that there was
nothing that could be considered sinister behind it. Her passionate
concentration on it would show that there _was_ nothing behind, no
vision of anything darker and deeper. It was as if she said to him,
"I know the dreadful thing you're afraid of. I'm showing you what it
is, so that you needn't think it's that."

Not that she was afraid of his thinking it. She had set her
happiness high, in a pure serene place, safe from the visitations of
his terror. She conceived that the peace of it might in time come to
constitute a kind of happiness for him. That gross fear could never
arise between him and her. All the same, she perceived that a finer
misgiving might menace his perfect peace. He might, if he were
subtle enough, imagine that she was giving him too much, and that he
owed her something. His chivalry might become uneasy. She must show
him how perfectly satisfied she was. He must see that the thing she
had hold of was great, was immense, that it filled her life to the
brim, so that there wasn't any room for anything else. How could he
owe her anything when he had given her that?

She must make him see it very clearly.

"It wasn't only that you _helped_," she said, "to bring it out of
me. It wasn't in me. When it came, it seemed to come from somewhere
outside. Somebody must have put it into me. I believe such a thing
is possible. And there wasn't anybody, you know, but you."

"I doubt," said he, "the possibility. Anyhow, you may safely leave
me out of it."

"Think," she said, "think of the time when you were left out of it,
when it was only me. It's inconceivable--the difference----"

"Let's leave it at that. Why rub the bloom off the mystery?"

"Do I rub the bloom off?"

"Yes, if you make out that I had anything to do with it."

"If it's mystery you want, don't you see that's the greatest mystery
of all--your having had to do with it?"

"But why should I, of all people? Is there any sign of Freda Farrar
in anything I did before I knew her?"

"Is there any sign of her in anything she did before she knew you?"

He was silent.

"Then," said Freda, "if it isn't you it's we. We've collaborated."

If he had not been illumined by the horrid light Julia had given him
he would have said that this was only Freda's way, another form of
her adorable extravagance. Now he wondered.

Poor Freda went on piling up her defenses. "Don't you see?" said
she. "That's why I feel so sure of it. If it had been just me, I
should never have been sure a minute. It might have gone any day,
and I should have known that there was no more where it came from.
But, if it's you, I can simply lean back on it and rest. Don't you
see?"

"No," he said, "I don't see."

(He was saying to himself: "I'm afraid Julia was right about her.
Only she doesn't know it.")

"You must leave me out of it. You mustn't let yourself think that
you rest on anything or anybody but yourself."

It was what Julia had said, searching her with her woman's eyes. He
did not look at her as he said it.

Her nerves still shook under Julia's distant and delicate admonition
to her to keep her head. It struck her that he was repeating the
warning in a still more delicate and distant manner. She wondered
was it possible that he was beginning to be afraid? Couldn't he see
that he was safe with her? That they were safe with one another?
What was she doing now but letting him see how safe they were?
Hadn't she just given to their relations the last touch of spiritual
completion? She had made a place for him where he could come and go
at will, and rest without terror. Couldn't he see that she had set
her house of life above all that, so high that nobody down here
could see what went on up there, and wonder at his going out and
coming in?

Keep her head, indeed! Her untroubled and untrammeled movements on
her heights proved how admirably she kept it.

"You see," he continued, "it's not as if I could be always here, on
the spot."

His voice still sounded the distant note of warning. It told her
that there was something that he wished to make _her_ see.

Her best answer to that was silence, and a sincere front intimating
that she saw everything, and that there was nothing to touch her in
the things _he_ saw.

"And as it happens" (Caldecott's voice shook a little), "I'm going
away next week. I shall be away a very long time."

She knew that he did not look at her now lest he should see her
wince. She did not wince.

"Well," said she, "I shall be here when you come back."

It was then that she saw the terror in his face.

"Of course," he said, "I hope--very much--you will be here."

She felt that he, like Julia, was leading her to the edge of the
deep dividing place, and that he paused miserably where Julia had
plunged. She saw him trying to bridge the gulf, to cover it, with
decent, gentle commonplaces and courtesies. Then he went away.

What had she done to make him afraid of her? Or was it what she had
said? The other day, before she had seen Julia, she could have said
anything to him. Now it seemed there was nothing that she could say.

What was it that he had seen in her?

That was it. With all his wonderful comprehension he had failed her
in the ultimate test--the ability to see what was in her. He had
seen nothing but one thing, the thing he was accustomed to see, the
material woman's passion to pursue, to make captive, to possess. He
would go thinking all his life that it was she who had failed, she
who, by her vulgarity, had made it impossible for him to remain her
friend. She supposed she _had_ piled it up too high. It was her very
defenses that had betrayed her, made her more flagrant and exposed.

She bowed herself for hours to the scourging of that thought till
the thought itself perished from exhaustion.

She knew that it was not so. He held her higher than that.

He was not afraid. He was only sorry for her. He had tried to be
more tender to her than she was herself. He was going away because
his honor, his masculine honor, told him that if he could not marry
her there was nothing else for him to do. He was trying to spare her
pain. It was very honorable of him, she knew.

But it would have been more honorable still if he had stayed; if he
had trusted her to keep her friendship incorruptible by pain. Or
rather, if he had seen that no pain could touch her, short of the
consummate spiritual torture he was inflicting now.

There were moments when she stood back from the torture
self-delivered. When she heard herself saying to him: "I know why
you're going. It's because you think I wanted you to give me
something that you can't give me. Don't you see that if you can't
give it me it doesn't matter? It's, after all, so little compared
with what you have given me. Is it honorable to take that away?
Don't you see how you're breaking faith with me? Don't you see that
you've made me ashamed, and that nothing can be worse to bear than
that?"

Then she knew that she would never be able to say that to him. She
would never be able to say anything to him any more. She wondered
whether he had made those other women ashamed when he broke loose
from them. Was she ashamed, did she suffer, the woman who had caught
and held him, and hurt him so?

At the thought of his hurt her passion had such pity that it cried
out in her, "What have they done to you that you can't see?"


VI

He went away the following week to the North, and remained there for
six months. His honor prescribed a considerable term of absence. It
compelled him to keep away from her for some time after his return.
He told himself that she had the consolation of her gift.

Meanwhile no sign of it had reached him since the day he left her.
Julia could give him no news of her; she believed, but was not
certain, that Freda was away. When he called in Montagu Street he
was told that Miss Farrar had given up her rooms and gone abroad.

He wrote to the address given him, and heard from her by return. She
told him that she was very well; that San Remo was very beautiful;
that she was sure he would be glad to hear that a small income had
been left to her, enough to relieve her from the necessity of
writing--she had not, in fact, written a line in the last
year--otherwise, of course, he would have heard from her. "It rather
looks," she added, "as if poverty had been my inspiration."

In every word he read her desire to spare him.

It had not stayed with her, then? The slender flame had died in her,
the sudden spirit had fled. Well, if it had to go, it was better
that it should go this way, all at once, rather than that they
should have had to acknowledge any falling-off from the delicate
perfection of her gift.

Three months later a letter from his friend, Mrs. Dysart, informed
him of Freda's death at San Remo early in the spring.

Mrs. Dysart had seen her there. She was now staying with her niece,
Julia Nethersole, and desired to see him. She was sure that he would
want to hear about their friend.

He remembered Mrs. Dysart as a small, robust, iron-gray
woman--sharp-tongued, warm-hearted, terrifically observant. Though
childless, she had always struck him as almost savagely maternal.
He dreaded the interview, for he had had some vague idea that she
had not appreciated Freda. Besides, his connection with Miss Farrar
was so public that Mrs. Dysart would have no delicacy in approaching
it.

Mrs. Dysart proved more reticent than he had feared. The full flow
of her reminiscences began only under pressure.

The news of Miss Farrar's death, she said, came to her as a shock,
but hardly as a surprise.

"You were not with her, then?" he said.

"No one was with her."

The words dropped into a terrible silence. A sound broke it, the
sound of some uneasy movement made by Julia.

"When did you see her last?" he asked.

"I saw her last driving on the sea front at San Remo. If you could
call it seeing her. She was all huddled up in furs and rugs and
things. Just a sharp white slip of a face and two eyes gazing at
nothing out of the carriage window. She looked as if something had
scared her."

And it was of her that he had been afraid!

"Do you know," he said presently, "what she died of?"

"No. It was supposed that, some time or other, she must have had
some great shock."

Caldecott shifted his position.

"The doctors said there was no reason why she should have died. She
could have lived well enough if she had wanted to. The terrible
thing was that she didn't want. If you ask me what she died of I
should say she was either scared to death or starved."

"Surely," he said, "surely she had enough?"

"Oh, she had food enough to eat, and clothes enough to cover her,
and fire enough to warm her. But she starved."

"What do you suppose," said Julia, "the poor girl wanted?"

"Nothing, my dear, that you would understand."

He was at a loss to account for the asperity of the little lady's
tone; but he remembered that Julia had never been a favorite with
her aunt.

"I'm convinced," said Mrs. Dysart, "that woman died for want of
something. Something that she'd got used to till it was absolutely
necessary to her. Something, whatever it was, that had completely
satisfied her. When she found herself without it, _that_, I imagine,
constituted the shock. And she wasn't strong enough to stand it,
that was all."

Mrs. Dysart spoke to her niece, but he felt that there was something
in her, fiery and indignant, that hurled itself across Julia at him.

He changed the subject.

"She--she left nothing?"

"Not a note, not a line."

"Ah, well, what we have is beautiful enough for anybody."

"I wonder if you have any idea what you might have had? If you even
knew what it was you had?"

"I never presumed," he said, "to understand her. I've hardly ever
known any woman properly but one."

"And knowing one woman--properly or improperly--won't help you to
understand another. _I_ never knew there was so much in her."

"She didn't know it herself. She used to say it wasn't in her. It
was the most mysterious thing I ever saw."

It was his turn to shelter himself behind Freda's gift. He piled up
words, and his mind cowered behind them, thinking no thought,
seeing nothing but Freda's dead face with its shut eyes.

"What was it?" he said. "Where did it come from?"

"It came," said Mrs. Dysart, "from somewhere deep down in her heart,
a part of her that had only one chance to show itself." She rose and
delivered herself of all her fire. "There was something in Freda
infinitely greater, infinitely more beautiful, than her gift. It
showed itself only once in her life. When it couldn't show itself
any more the gift left her. We can't account for it."

He followed her to the door. She pressed his hand as she said
good-bye to him, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

"I told you," she said, "to do all you could for her. She knew that
you had done--all you could."

He bowed his head to her rebuke.


VII

Upstairs Julia was waiting for him. Her pale face turned to him as
he came in.

He saw a hunger in it that was not of the soul.

He had never been greatly interested in Julia's soul, and till now
her face had told him nothing of it. It had clipped it tight, like
the covers of a narrow book. He had never cared to open it. Freda's
soul was like an illuminated missal, treasured under transparence;
its divine secret flamed, unafraid, in scarlet and gold.

He did not take his seat beside her, but stood off from her, distant
and uneasy. She rose and laid her hand upon his arm, and he drew
back from her touch.

"Wilton," she said, "you are not going to let this trouble you?"

"What's the good of talking? It won't undo what we did."

"What _we_ did?"

"I, then."

"What else could you do?"

He did not answer, and she murmured, "Or I? I was right. She _was_
in love with you."

He turned on her.

"I wish," he said, "you had never told me."




THE FAULT


I

Gibson used to say that he would never marry, because no other woman
could be half as nice as his own mother. Then, of course, he broke
his mother's heart by marrying a woman who was not nice at all.

He was a powerful fellow with a plain, square face, and a manner
that was perfection to the people whom he liked. Unfortunately they
were very few. He did not like any of the ladies whom his mother
wanted him to like, not even when they reproduced for him her
gentle, delicate distinction.

The younger Mrs. Gibson had none of it. But she had ways with her,
and a power that was said to reside supremely in her hands, her
arms, and her hair. Especially her hair (she was the large white and
golden kind). It was long as a lasso and ample as a cloak. Gibson
loved her hair. The sight and the scent of it filled him with folly.
He liked to braid and unbraid it, to lay his face against it, to
plunge his hands through the coolness into the warmth of it.

It seemed to him to give out the splendor and vitality of her, to
have a secret sympathy with the thought that stirred beneath it.

She had a trick, when she was thinking of caressing it, of winding
and unwinding the little curls that sprang, aureolewise, above her
temples. That was one of her ways, and it brought her hands and
arms into play with stupendous effect.

He would sit opposite her a whole evening, watching it, dumb with
excess of happiness.

It took him six months to find out that the trick he admired so much
was a sign that his wife was bored to extinction.

"Is there anything you want?" he said.

She laughed hysterically.

"You've only to say what you want, and I'll get it for you, if it
can be got."

"It could be got all right," said she. "But I doubt whether you'd
care very much to get it."

"What is it? Tell me--tell me."

"Well--you're very nice, my dear, I know. But before I married you I
used--though you mightn't think it--to be received in society."

He took her back to it. He said he was a selfish brute to want to
keep her to himself. That speech amused Mrs. Gibson immensely. She
had a curious and capricious sense of humor. It made her very
adaptable and tided them both over a sharp season of infelicity.

Hitherto Mrs. Gibson had been merely bored. Now she was seized with
a malady of unrest. Any other man but Gibson would have been driven
mad with her nerves.

"You're doing too much, you know," he said, soothing her. "You're
tired."

She raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, no," she said, "not _tired_."

He meditated.

"What you want," said he, "is a thorough change."

"My dear," said she, "I didn't know you were so clever."

"Would you like me to take a cottage in the country?"

"A cottage? In the country?"

"Well, of course, not too far from town. Some place where I could
run down for the week-ends."

"You couldn't," said she, "be running down oftener?"

"No," he said, "I'm afraid I couldn't just at present."

"Don't you think it might be a trifle lonely?"

"You can have anyone you like to stay with you."

She smiled.

"And you really want to take it? This cottage?"

"Yes."

"Well, then," said she, "take it by all means, and lose no time."

He took it, and went down with her for the first week-end.

It was a tiny place. But some one had built a comfortable
smoking-room at the back. It opened by glass doors into the garden.

One Sunday evening they were sitting together in the smoking-room
when she flung herself down on the floor beside him and laid her
head on his knee. She seized his hand and drew it down to her.

"As you are going to leave me to-morrow," she said, "you can stroke
my hair to-night."

He went down every week-end. And every week-end he found an
improvement in his wife's health. When he complimented her upon her
appearance, she told him she had been gardening. He took it as an
excellent sign that she should be fond of gardening.

Then one day Gibson (who worked like ten horses to provide all the
things that his wife wanted) got ill and was told to take a month
off in the country.

That was in the middle of the week. He saw his doctor early in the
evening and took the last train down. The cottage was several miles
from the nearest telegraph office, so that he arrived before the
wire that should have announced his coming.

A short cut from the station brought him to the back of the house
through a little wood that screened it. The wood path led into his
garden by a private gate which was always locked.

He climbed the gate and crossed the grass plot to the glass doors of
the smoking-room. The lamps were lit there, and Gibson, as he
approached, could see his wife sitting in the low chair opposite
his. His heart bounded at the sight of her. He was glad to think
that she sat in his room when he was away. He walked quickly over
the grass and stood at the glass doors looking in.

She was lying back in the low chair. In _his_ chair, which a curtain
had concealed from him until now, there sat a man he knew. He
recognized the narrow shoulders and the head with the sleek brown
hair, showing a little sallow patch of baldness at the back. From a
certain tenseness in the man's attitude he knew that his gaze was
fastened on the woman who faced them. Her left arm was raised, its
long, loose sleeve fell back and bared it. Her fingers twisted and
untwisted a little straying curl.

The man could bear it no longer. He jumped up and went to her. He
knelt beside her. With one hand he seized her arm by the full white
wrist and dragged it down and held it to his lips. The other hand
smoothed back her hair into its place and held it there. His fine,
nervous fingers sank through the deep, silky web to the white,
sensitive skin. The woman threw back her head and closed her eyes,
every nerve throbbing felinely under the caress she loved.

The man rose with an uneasy movement that brought him to the back of
her chair. He stooped and whispered something. She flung up her arms
and drew down his face to hers under the white arch they made.

Gibson did nothing scandalous. He went round quietly to the front
door and let himself in with his latch-key. When he entered the
smoking-room he found his wife there alone. She stood on his hearth,
and met him with hard eyes, desperate and defiant.

"What have you to say for yourself?" he said.

"Everything," said she. "Of course you will divorce me."

"Will a separation not satisfy you?"

"No," she said, "it will not. If you haven't had proof enough I can
give you more. Or you can ask the servants."

He had always given her what she wanted. He gave it her now.


II

Gibson went back to his mother.

The incident left him apparently unscathed. He showed no signs of
trouble until four years after, when his mother died. Then the two
shocks rolled into one, and for a year Gibson was a wreck.

At last he was told, as he had been told before, to stop work and go
away--anywhere--for a rest. He went to a small seaside town in East
Devon.

The man's nature was so sound that in a month's time he recovered
sufficiently to take an interest in what was going on around him.

He was lodged in one of a row of small houses facing the esplanade.
Each had its own plot of green garden spread before it, and a
flagged pathway leading from the gate to the door. Path and garden
were raised a good half-foot above the level of the sidewalk, and
this half-foot, Gibson observed, was a serious embarrassment to his
next-door neighbors.

Twice a day a bath-chair with an old gentleman in it would emerge
from the doorway of the house next door. It was drawn by two little
ladies, a dark one and a fair one, whom Gibson judged to be the old
gentleman's daughters. He must have weighed considerably, that old
gentleman, and the ladies (especially the dark one) were far too
young and small and tender for such draft-work. Four times a day at
the garden-gate a struggle took place between little ladies and the
bath-chair. Gibson could see them from his window where he lay,
supine in his nervous apathy. Their going out was only less fearful
than their coming in. Going out, it was very hard to prevent the
back wheels from slipping down with a bump on to the pavement and
shaking the old gentleman horribly. Coming in, they risked
overturning him altogether.

You would not have known that there was any struggle going on. The
old gentleman bore himself with so calm and high a heroism; the
little ladies were sustained by so pure a sense of the humors of the
bath-chair. No sharp, irritating cries escaped them. They did
nothing but laugh softly as they pulled and pushed and tugged with
their women's arms, and heaved with delicate shoulders, or hung on,
in their frenzy, from behind while the bath-chair swayed ponderously
and perilously above the footway.

Gibson sometimes wondered whether he oughtn't to rush out and help
them. But he couldn't. He didn't really care.

His landlady told him that the old gentleman was a General
Richardson, that he was paralyzed, that his daughters waited on him
hand and foot, that they were too poor to afford a man-servant to
look after him and push the bath-chair. It wasn't much of a life,
the woman said, for the two young ladies. Gibson agreed that it
wasn't much of a life, certainly.

What pleased him was the fine levity with which they took it. He was
always meeting them in their walks on the esplanade. Sometimes they
would come racing down the wind with the bath-chair, their serge
skirts blown forward, their hair curling over the brims of their
sailor hats. (The dark one was particularly attractive in a high
wind.) Then they would come back much impeded, their skirts wrapped
tight above their knees, their little bodies bent to the storm,
their faces wearing still that invincible gaiety of theirs.
Sometimes, on a gentle incline, they would let the bath-chair run on
a little by itself, till it threatened a dangerous independence,
when they would fly after it at the top of their speed and arrest it
just in time. Gibson could never make out whether they did this for
their own amusement or the old gentleman's. But sometimes, when the
General came careering past him, he could catch the glance of a
bright and affable eye that seemed to call on him to observe the
extent to which an old fellow might enjoy himself yet.

Gibson's lodging gave him endless opportunity for studying the
habits of his little ladies. He learned that they did everything in
turns. They took it in turns to pull the bath-chair and to push it.
They took it in turns to read aloud to the old gentleman, and to put
him to bed at night and get him up in the morning. They took it in
turns to go to church (did they become suddenly serious, he
wondered, there?), and in turns to air themselves on a certain
little plateau on the cliffside.

He was next to find out that they nursed the monstrous ambition of
urging the bath-chair up the hill and landing it on the plateau.
Gibson was sorry for them, for he knew they could never do it. But
such was their determination that each time he encountered them on
the hill they had struggled a little farther up it.

The road had a sort of hump in it just before it forked off on to
the cliff. That baffled them.

At last, as he himself was returning from the plateau, he came upon
the sisters right in the middle of the rise, locked in deadly combat
with the bath-chair. Pressed against it, shoulder to shoulder, they
resisted its efforts to hurl itself violently backward down the
hill. The General, as he clung to the arms of the chair, preserved
his attitude of superb indifference to the event.

Gibson leaped to their assistance. With a threefold prodigious
effort they topped the rise, and in silence, in a sort of solemn
triumph, the bath-chair was wheeled on to the plateau.

He liked the simplicity with which they accepted his aid, and he
liked the way they thanked him, both sisters becoming very grave all
at once. It was the fair one who spoke. The dark one only bowed and
smiled as he lifted his cap and turned away.

"It's all very well," he heard her saying, "but how are we going to
get him down again?"

How were they?

He hung about the cliffside till the time came for them to return,
when he presented himself as if by accident.

"You must allow me," he said, "to see you safe to the bottom of the
hill."

They allowed him.

"You see" (the General addressed his daughters as they paused
halfway), "we've accomplished it, and no bones are broken."

"Yes," said Gibson, "but isn't the expedition just a little
dangerous?"

"Ah," said the General, "I've risked my life too many times to mind
a little danger now."

Gibson's eyebrows said plainly, "It wasn't _your_ life, old boy, I
was thinking of."

The sisters looked away.

"You must never attempt that again," he said gravely, as he parted
from them at the foot of the hill.

Gibson felt that he had done a good morning's work. He had saved the
lives of the three Richardsons, and he had found out that the fair
one's name was Effie, and the dark one's Phoebe.

After that the acquaintance ripened. They exchanged salutes whenever
they met. Then Gibson, moved beyond endurance by their daily strife
with the bath-chair, was generally to be seen at their gateway in
time to help them.

As the days grew longer the Richardsons began to take their tea out
of doors on their grass-plot. And then it seemed to strike them all
at once that the gentleman next door was lonely, and one afternoon
they invited him to tea.

Then Gibson had his tea served on _his_ grass plot, and invited the
Richardsons, and the Richardsons (they were so absurdly grateful)
invited him to supper and to spend the evening. They thanked him for
coming. "It was such a pleasure," Effie said (Effie was the elder),
"such a great pleasure to Father."

Gibson hardly thought his society could be a pleasure to anyone, but
he tried to make himself useful. He engaged himself as the General's
bath-chair man. He bowled him along at the round pace he loved,
while the little ladies, Effie and Phoebe, trotted after them,
friendly and gay.

And he began to go in and out next door as a matter of course, till
it was open to the little sisters to regard him as their own very
valuable property. But they were not going to be selfish about him.
Oh, no! They took him, as they took everything else, in turns. They
tried hard to divide him fairly. If he attached himself to Effie
(the fair one), Effie would grow uneasy, and she would get up and
positively hand him over to Phoebe (the dark one). If Phoebe
permitted herself to talk to him for any while, her eyes would call
to Effie, and when Effie came she would slip away and take up her
sad place by the General's armchair. In their innocent rivalry it
was who could give him more up to the other. And, as Phoebe was
the more determined little person, it was Phoebe who generally had
it her own way. "Father," too, came in for his just share. Gibson
felt that he would not be tolerated on any footing that kept
"Father" out of it. There was also a moment in the evening when he
would be led up to the armchair, and both Effie and Phoebe would
withdraw and leave him to that communion.

There was a third sister he knew now. She was the eldest, and her
name was Mary. She was away somewhere in the north, recovering, he
gathered, from "Father" (of course, they took it in turns to recover
from him), while Father wandered up and down the south coast,
endeavoring, vainly, to recover from himself. They told Gibson that
the one thing that spoiled it all (the joy, they meant, of their
intercourse with him) was the thought that Mary was "missing it."
Had Mary been there she would have had to have her share, her
fourth.

Presently he realized that Phoebe (he supposed because of her
superior determination) had effaced herself altogether. She was
always doing dreary things, he noticed, out of her turn. Then he
perceived a change in her. Little Phoebe, in consequence of all
the dreary things she did, was beginning to grow thin and pale. She
looked as though she wanted more of the tonic air of the cliffside.
She did still take her turn at climbing to the plateau and sitting
there all alone. But that, Gibson reflected, was after all, for
Phoebe, a very dreary thing to do.

One evening he took courage, and asked Phoebe to come for a walk
to the cliffside with him.

Phoebe did not answer all at once. She shrank, he could see, from
the enormity of having him all to herself.

"Go," said Effie, "it will do you worlds of good."

"_You_ go."

Effie laughed and shook her head.

"Come too, then. Mr. Gibson, say she's to come too."

"You know," said Effie, "it's my turn to stay with Father."

She said it severely, as if Phoebe had been trying unfairly to
deprive her of a privilege and a delight. They were delicious,
Phoebe and Effie, but it was Phoebe that he wanted this time.

They set out at a brisk pace that brought the blood to Phoebe's
cheeks and made her prettier than ever. Phoebe, of course, had
done her best to make her prettiness entirely unobtrusive. She wore
a muslin skirt and a tie, and a sailor hat that was not specially
becoming to her small head, and her serge skirt had to be both wide
and short because of pushing the bath-chair about through all kinds
of weather. But the sea wind caught her; it played with her hair;
it blew a little dark curl out of place to hang distractingly over
Phoebe's left ear; it blew the serge skirt tight about her limbs,
and showed him, in spite of Phoebe, how prettily Phoebe was
made.

"Why didn't you back me up?" said Phoebe. "She wanted to come all
the time."

He turned, as he walked, to look at her.

"Why didn't I back you up? Do you really want to know why?"

Whenever he took that tone Phoebe looked solemn and a little
frightened. She was frightened now, too frightened to answer him.

"Because," said he, "I wanted you all to myself."

"Oh----" Phoebe drew a long, terrified breath.

There are many ways of saying "Oh," but Gibson had never, never in
his whole life heard any woman say it as Phoebe said it then. It
meant that she was staggered at anybody's having the temerity to
want anything all to himself.

"Do you think me very selfish?"

Phoebe assured him instantly that that had never been her idea of
him.

"Shall I tell you who is selfish?"

Phoebe's little mouth hardened. She was so dreadfully afraid that
he was going to say "Your father."

"You," he said, "you."

"I'm afraid I am," said she. "It's so hard not to be."

He stood still in his astonishment, so that she had to stand still,
too.

"Of course it's hard not to give up things, when you like giving
them up. But your sister likes giving them up, too, and it's selfish
of you to prevent her, isn't it?"

"Oh, but you don't know what it's been--Effie's life and Mary's."

"And yours----"

"Oh, no, I'm happy enough. I'm the youngest."

"You mean you've had a year or two less of it."

"Yes. They never told me, for fear of making me unhappy, when
Father's illness came."

"How long ago was that?"

"Five years ago. I was at school."

He made a brief calculation. During the two years of his married
life Phoebe had been a child at school.

"And two years," said Phoebe, "is a long time to be happy in."

"Yes," he said, "it's a long time."

"And then," she went on presently, "I'm so much stronger than Effie
and Mary."

"Not strong enough to go dragging that abominable bath-chair about."

"Not strong enough? Look----"

She held out her right arm for him to look at; under her muslin
blouse he saw its tense roundness, and its whiteness through the
slit above her wrist.

His heart stirred in him. Phoebe's arms were beautiful, and they
were strong to help.

"I wish," he said, "I could make it better for you."

"Oh, but you _have_ made it better for us. You can't think what a
difference you've made."

"Have I? Have I?"

"Yes. Effie said so only the other day. She wrote it to Mary. And
Mary says it's a shame she can't be here. It is, you know. It makes
us feel so mean having you all to ourselves like this."

He laughed. He laughed whenever he thought of it. There was nobody
who could say things as Phoebe said them.

"I wish," said she, "you knew Mary. You'd like her so."

"I'm sure I should if she's at all like you."

(Her innocence sheltered him, made him bold.)

"Oh, but she isn't."

And he listened while she gave him a long list of Mary's charms.
(Dear little, tender, unconscious Phoebe.)

"She sounds," he said, "very like you."

"She isn't the least bit like me. You don't know me."

"Don't I?"

"Mary's coming back at the end of the month. Then either I or Effie
will go away. Do you think you'll still be here?"

He seemed to her to answer absently.

"Which of you, did you say, was going away?"

"Well--it's Effie's turn."

"Yes," he said, "I think I shall still be here."

One night, a week later, the two sisters sat talking together long
after "Father" had been put to bed.

"Phoebe," said Effie, "why did you want me to come with you and
Mr. Gibson?"

"Because----" said Phoebe.

"My dear, it's you he likes, not me."

"Don't, Effie."

"But it's true," said Effie.

"How can you tell?" said Phoebe, and she felt perfidious.

"Isn't he always going about with you?"

But Phoebe was ingenious in the destruction of her own joy.

"Oh," said she, "that's his cunning. He likes you dreadfully. He
goes about with me, just to hide it."

"You goose."

"Are you sure, Effie, you don't care?"

"Not a rap."

"You never have? Not in the beginning?"

"Certainly not in the beginning. I only thought he might be nice for
you."

"You didn't even want to divide him?"

Effie shook her head vehemently.

"Well--he's the only thing I ever wanted all to myself. If----" Then
Phoebe looked frightened. "Effie," she said, "he's never said
anything."

"All the same, you _know_."

"Can you know?"

"I think so," said Effie.


III

Gibson had been talking a long time to Phoebe. They were sitting
together on the beach, under the shadow of the cliff. He was trying
to form Phoebe's mind. Phoebe's mind was deliciously young, and
it had the hunger and thirst of youth. A little shy and difficult to
approach, Phoebe's mind, but he had found out what it liked best,
and it pleased him to see how confidingly and delicately it, so to
speak, ate out of his hand.

He puzzled her a good deal. And she had a very pretty way of closing
her eyes when she was puzzled. In another woman it would have meant
that he was boring her; Phoebe did it to shut out the intolerable
light of knowledge.

"Ah!--don't," he cried.

"Don't shut my eyes? I always shut my eyes when I'm trying to
think," said Phoebe.

He said nothing. That was not what he had meant when he had said
"Don't."

"Am I boring you?" he said presently. His tone jarred a little on
Phoebe; he had such a nice voice generally.

"No," said she. "Why?"

"Because you keep on doing that."

"Doing what?"

"That."

"Oh!--this?"

She put up her hand and untwisted the little tendril of brown hair
that hung deliciously over her left ear.

"I always do that when I'm thinking."

He very nearly said, "Then, for God's sake, don't think."

But Phoebe was always thinking now. He had given her cause to
think.

He began to hate the little brown curl that hung over her left ear,
though it was anguish to him to hate anything that was Phoebe's.
He looked out with nervous anxiety for the movement of her little
white hand. He said to himself, "If she does it again, I can't come
near her any more."

Yet he kept on coming; and was happy with her until Phoebe (poor,
predestined little Phoebe) did it again. Gibson shuddered with the
horror of the thing. He kept on saying to himself, "She's sweet,
she's good, she's adorable. It isn't her fault. But I can't--I can't
sit in the room with it."

And the next minute Phoebe would be so adorable that he would
repent miserably of his brutality.

Then, one hot, still evening, he was alone with her in the little
sitting-room. Outside, on the grass plot, her father sat in his
bath-chair while Effie read aloud to him (out of her turn). Her
voice made a cover for Gibson's voice and Phoebe's.

Phoebe was dressed (for the heat) in a white gown with wide, open
sleeves. Her low collar showed the pure, soft swell of her neck to
the shoulder-line.

She was sitting upright and demure in a straight-backed chair, with
her hands folded quietly in her lap.

"That isn't a very comfortable chair you've got," he said.

He knew that she was tired with pushing the bath-chair about all
day.

"It's the one I always sit in," said Phoebe.

"Well, you're not going to sit in it now," he said.

He drew the armchair out of its sacred corner and made her sit in
that. He put a cushion at her head and a footstool at her feet.

"You make my heart ache," he said.

"Do I?"

He could not tell whether the little shaking breath she drew were a
laugh or a sigh.

She lay back, letting her tired body slacken into rest.

The movement loosened the little combs that kept the coil of her
brown hair in place. Phoebe abhorred dishevelment. She put up her
hands to her head. Her wide sleeve fell back, showing the full
length of her white arms.

He saw another woman stretching her arms to the man who leaned above
her. He saw the movement of her hands--hands of the same texture and
whiteness as her body, instinct with its impulses. A long procession
of abominations passed through the white arch of her arms--the arch
she raised in triumph and defiance, immortalizing her sin.

He was very tender with Phoebe that night, for his heart was wrung
with compunction.

"She's adorable," he said to himself; "but I can't live with
_that_."

Gibson left by the early train next day. He went without saying
good-bye and without leaving an explanation or an address.

Phoebe held her head high, and said, day after day, "There's sure
to be a letter."

Three weeks passed and no letter came. Phoebe saw that it was all
over.

One day she was found (Effie found her) on her bed, crying. She was
so weak she let Effie take her in her arms.

"If I only knew what I had done," she said. "Oh, Effie! what could
have made him go away?"

"I can't tell, my lamb. You mustn't think about him any more."

"I can't help thinking. You see, it's not as if he hadn't been so
nice."

"He couldn't have been nice to treat you that way."

"He didn't," said Phoebe fiercely. "He didn't treat me any way. I
sometimes think I must have made it all up out of my own head. Did
I?"

"No, no. I'm sure you didn't."

"It would have been awful of me. But I'd rather be awful than have
to think that he was. What is my worst fault, Effie?"

"Your worst fault, in his eyes, is that you have none."

Phoebe sat up on the edge of the bed. She was thinking hard. And
as she thought her hand went up, caressing unconsciously the little
brown curl.

"If I only knew," said she, "what I had done!"

Gibson never saw Phoebe Richardson again. But a year later, as he
turned suddenly on to the esplanade of a strange watering-place, he
encountered the bath-chair, drawn by Effie and another lady. He
made way, lifting his cap mechanically to its occupant.

The General looked at him. The courteous old hand checked itself in
the salute. The affable smile died grimly.

Effie turned away her head. The other lady (it must have been
"Mary") raised her eyes in somber curiosity.

Phoebe was not with them. Gibson supposed that she was away
somewhere, recovering, in her turn.




WILKINSON'S WIFE


I

Nobody ever understood why he married her.

You expected calamity to pursue Wilkinson--it always had pursued
him--; but that Wilkinson should have gone out of his way to pursue
calamity (as if he could never have enough of it) really seemed a
most unnecessary thing.

For there had been no pursuit on the part of the lady. Wilkinson's
wife had the quality of her defects, and revealed herself chiefly in
a formidable reluctance. It was understood that Wilkinson had
prevailed only after an austere struggle. Her appearance
sufficiently refuted any theory of unholy fascination or disastrous
charm.

Wilkinson's wife was not at all nice to look at. She had an
insignificant figure, a small, square face, colorless hair scraped
with difficulty to the top of her head, eyes with no lashes to
protect you from their stare, a mouth that pulled at an invisible
curb, a sallow skin stretched so tight over her cheek-bones that the
red veins stood stagnant there; and with it all, poor lady, a dull,
strained expression hostile to further intimacy.

Even in her youth she never could have looked young, and she was
years older than Wilkinson. Not that the difference showed, for his
marriage had made Wilkinson look years older than he was; at least,
so it was said by people who had known him before that unfortunate
event.

It was not even as if she had been intelligent. Wilkinson had a
gentle passion for the things of intellect; his wife seemed to exist
on purpose to frustrate it. In no department of his life was her
influence so penetrating and malign. At forty he no longer counted;
he had lost all his brilliance, and had replaced it by a shy,
unworldly charm. There was something in Wilkinson that dreamed or
slept, with one eye open, fixed upon his wife. Of course, he had his
blessed hours of deliverance from the woman. Sometimes he would fly
in her face and ask people to dine at his house in Hampstead, to
discuss Roman remains, or the Troubadours, or Nietzsche. He never
could understand why his wife couldn't "enter," as he expressed it,
into these subjects. He smiled at you in the dimmest, saddest way
when he referred to it. "It's extraordinary," he would say, "the
little interest she takes in Nietzsche."

Mrs. Norman found him once wandering in the High Street, with his
passion full on him. He was a little absent, a little flushed; his
eyes shone behind his spectacles; and there were pleasant creases in
his queer, clean-shaven face.

She inquired the cause of his delight.

"I've got a man coming to dine this evening, to have a little talk
with me. He knows all about the Troubadours."

And Wilkinson would try and make you believe that they had threshed
out the Troubadours between them. But when Mrs. Norman, who was a
little curious about Wilkinson, asked the Troubadour man what they
_had_ talked about, he smiled and said it was something--some
extraordinary adventure--that had happened to Wilkinson's wife.

People always smiled when they spoke of her. Then, one by one, they
left off dining with Wilkinson. The man who read Nietzsche was quite
rude about it. He said he wasn't going there to be gagged by that
woman. He would have been glad enough to ask Wilkinson to dine with
him if he would go without his wife.

If it had not been for Mrs. Norman the Wilkinsons would have
vanished from the social scene. Mrs. Norman had taken Wilkinson up,
and it was evident that she did not mean to let him go. That, she
would have told you with engaging emphasis, was not her way. She had
seen how things were going, socially, with Wilkinson, and she was
bent on his deliverance.

If anybody could have carried it through, it would have been Mrs.
Norman. She was clever; she was charming; she had a house in
Fitzjohn's Avenue, where she entertained intimately. At forty she
had preserved the best part of her youth and prettiness, and an
income insufficient for Mr. Norman, but enough for her. As she said
in her rather dubious pathos, she had nobody but herself to please
now.

You gathered that if Mr. Norman had been living he would not have
been pleased with her cultivation of the Wilkinsons. She was always
asking them to dinner. They turned up punctually at her delightful
Friday evenings (her little evenings) from nine to eleven. They
dropped in to tea on Sunday afternoons. Mrs. Norman had a wonderful
way of drawing Wilkinson out; while Evey, her unmarried sister, made
prodigious efforts to draw Wilkinson's wife in. "If you could only
make her," said Mrs. Norman, "take an interest in something."

But Evey couldn't make her take an interest in anything. Evey had no
sympathy with her sister's missionary adventure. She saw what Mrs.
Norman wouldn't see--that, if they forced Mrs. Wilkinson on people
who were trying to keep away from her, people would simply keep away
from them. Their Fridays were not so well attended, so delightful,
as they had been. A heavy cloud of dulness seemed to come into the
room, with Mrs. Wilkinson, at nine o'clock. It hung about her chair,
and spread slowly, till everybody was wrapped in it.

Then Evey protested. She wanted to know why Cornelia allowed their
evenings to be blighted thus. "Why ask Mrs. Wilkinson?"

"I wouldn't," said Cornelia, "if there was any other way of getting
him."

"Well," said Evey, "he's nice enough, but it's rather a large price
to have to pay."

"And is he," cried Cornelia passionately, "to be cut off from
everything because of that one terrible mistake?"

Evey said nothing. If Cornelia were going to take him that way,
there was nothing to be said!

So Mrs. Norman went on drawing Wilkinson out more and more, till one
Sunday afternoon, sitting beside her on the sofa, he emerged
positively splendid. There were moments when he forgot about his
wife.

They had been talking together about his blessed Troubadours. (It
was wonderful the interest Mrs. Norman took in them!) Suddenly his
gentleness and sadness fell from him, a flame sprang up behind his
spectacles, and the something that slept or dreamed in Wilkinson
awoke. He was away with Mrs. Norman in a lovely land, in Provence of
the thirteenth century. A strange chant broke from him; it startled
Evey, where she sat at the other end of the room. He was reciting
his own translation of a love-song of Provence.

At the first words of the refrain his wife, who had never ceased
staring at him, got up and came across the room. She touched his
shoulder just as he was going to say "Ma mie."

"Come, Peter," she said, "it's time to be going home."

Wilkinson rose on his long legs. "Ma mie," he said, looking down at
her; and the flaming dream was still in his eyes behind his
spectacles.

He took the little cloak she held out to him, a pitiful and rather
vulgar thing. He raised it with the air of a courtier handling a
royal robe; then he put it on her, smoothing it tenderly about her
shoulders.

Mrs. Norman followed them to the porch. As he turned to her on the
step, she saw that his eyes were sad, and that his face, as she put
it, had gone to sleep again.

When she came back to her sister, her own eyes shone and her face
was rosy.

"Oh, Evey," she said, "isn't it beautiful?"

"Isn't what beautiful?"

"Mr. Wilkinson's behavior to his wife."


II

It was not an easy problem that Mrs. Norman faced. She wished to
save Wilkinson; she also wished to save the character of her
Fridays, which Wilkinson's wife had already done her best to
destroy. Mrs. Norman could not think why the woman came, since she
didn't enjoy herself, since she was impenetrable to the intimate,
peculiar charm. You could only suppose that her object was to
prevent its penetrating Wilkinson, to keep the other women off. Her
eyes never left him.

It was all very well for Evey to talk. She _might_, of course, have
been wiser in the beginning. She might have confined the creature to
their big monthly crushes, where, as Evey had suggested, she would
easily have been mislaid and lost. But so, unfortunately, would
Wilkinson; and the whole point was how not to lose him.

Evey said she was tired of being told off to entertain Mrs.
Wilkinson. She was beginning to be rather disagreeable about it. She
said Cornelia was getting to care too much about that Wilkinson man.
She wouldn't have minded playing up to her if she had approved of
the game; but Mrs. Wilkinson was, after all, you know, Mr.
Wilkinson's wife.

Mrs. Norman cried a little. She told Evey she ought to have known it
was his spirit that she cared about. But she owned that it wasn't
right to sacrifice poor Evey. Neither, since he _had_ a wife, was it
altogether right for her to care about Wilkinson's spirit to the
exclusion of her other friends.

Then, one Friday, Mrs. Norman, relieving her sister for once, made a
discovery while Evey, who was a fine musician, played. Mrs.
Wilkinson did, after all, take an interest in something; she was
accessible to the throbbing of Evey's bow across the strings.

She had started; her eyes had turned from Wilkinson and fastened on
the player. There was a light in them, beautiful and piercing, as if
her soul had suddenly been released from some hiding-place in its
unlovely house. Her face softened, her mouth relaxed, her eyes
closed. She lay back in her chair, at peace, withdrawn from them,
positively lost.

Mrs. Norman slipped across the room to the corner where Wilkinson
sat alone. His face lightened as she came.

"It's extraordinary," he said, "her love of music."

Mrs. Norman assented. It _was_ extraordinary, if you came to think
of it. Mrs. Wilkinson had no understanding of the art. What did it
mean to her? Where did it take her? You could see she was
transported, presumably to some place of chartered stupidity, of
condoned oblivion, where nobody could challenge her right to enter
and remain.

"So soothing," said Wilkinson, "to the nerves."

Mrs. Norman smiled at him. She felt that, under cover of the music,
his spirit was seeking communion with hers.

He thanked her at parting; the slight hush and mystery of his manner
intimated that she had found a way.

"I hope," she said, "you'll come often--often."

"May we? May we?" He seemed to leap at it--as if they hadn't come
often enough before!

Certainly she had found the way--the way to deliver him, the way to
pacify his wife, to remove her gently to her place and keep her
there.

The dreadful lady thus creditably disposed of, Wilkinson was no
longer backward in the courting of his opportunity. He proved
punctual to the first minute of the golden hour.

Hampstead was immensely interested in his blossoming forth. It found
a touching simplicity in the way he lent himself to the sympathetic
eye. All the world was at liberty to observe his intimacy with Mrs.
Norman.

It endured for nine weeks. Then suddenly, to Mrs. Norman's
bewilderment, it ceased. The Wilkinsons left off coming to her
Friday evenings. They refused her invitations. Their behavior was so
abrupt and so mysterious that Mrs. Norman felt that something must
have happened to account for it. Somebody, she had no doubt, had
been talking. She was much annoyed with Wilkinson in consequence,
and, when she met him accidentally in the High Street, her manner
conveyed to him her just resentment.

He called in Fitzjohn's Avenue the next Sunday. For the first time
he was without his wife.

He was so downcast, and so penitent, and so ashamed of himself that
Mrs. Norman met him halfway with a little rush of affection.

"Why have you not been to see us all this time?" she said.

He looked at her unsteadily; his whole manner betrayed an extreme
embarrassment.

"I've come," he said, "on purpose to explain. You mustn't think I
don't appreciate your kindness, but the fact is my poor wife"--(She
knew that woman was at the bottom of it!)--"is no longer--up to it."

"What is the wretch up to, I should like to know?" thought Mrs.
Norman.

He held her with his melancholy, unsteady eyes. He seemed to be
endeavoring to approach a subject intimately and yet abstrusely
painful.

"She finds the music--just at present--a little too much for her;
the vibrations, you know. It's extraordinary how they affect her.
She feels them--most unpleasantly--just here." Wilkinson laid two
delicate fingers on the middle buttons of his waistcoat.

Mrs. Norman was very kind to him. He was not very expert, poor
fellow, in the fabrication of excuses. His look seemed to implore
her pardon for the shifts he had been driven to; it appealed to her
to help him out, to stand by him in his unspeakable situation.

"I see," she said.

He smiled, in charming gratitude to her for seeing it.

That smile raised the devil in her. Why, after all, should she help
him out?

"And are you susceptible to music--in the same unpleasant way?"

"Me? Oh, no--no. I like it; it gives me the very greatest pleasure."
He stared at her in bewilderment and distress.

"Then why," said Mrs. Norman sweetly, "if it gives you pleasure,
should you cut yourself off from it?"

"My dear Mrs. Norman, we have to cut ourselves off from a great many
things--that give us pleasure. It can't be helped."

She meditated. "Would it be any good," she said, "if I were to call
on Mrs. Wilkinson?"

Wilkinson looked grave. "It is most kind of you, but--just at
present--I think it might be wiser not. She really, you know, isn't
very fit."

Mrs. Norman's silence neither accepted nor rejected the preposterous
pretext. Wilkinson went on, helping himself out as best he could:

"I can't talk about it; but I thought I ought to let you know. We've
just got to give everything up."

She held herself in. A terrible impulse was upon her to tell him
straight out that she did not see it; that it was too bad; that
there was no reason why she should be called upon to give everything
up.

"So, if we don't come," he said, "you'll understand? It's better--it
really is better not."

His voice moved her, and her heart cried to him, "Poor Peter!"

"Yes," she said; "I understand."

Of course she understood. Poor Peter! so it had come to that?

"Can't you stay for tea?" she said.

"No; I must be going back to her."

He rose. His hand found hers. Its slight pressure told her that he
gave and took the sadness of renunciation.

That winter Mrs. Wilkinson fell ill in good earnest, and Wilkinson
became the prey of a pitiful remorse that kept him a prisoner by his
wife's bedside.

He had always been a good man; it was now understood that he avoided
Mrs. Norman because he desired to remain what he had always been.


III

There was also an understanding, consecrated by the piety of their
renunciation, that Wilkinson was only waiting for his wife's death
to marry Mrs. Norman.

And Wilkinson's wife was a long time in dying. It was not to be
supposed that she would die quickly, as long as she could interfere
with his happiness by living.

With her genius for frustrating and tormenting, she kept the poor
man on tenter-hooks with perpetual relapses and recoveries. She
jerked him on the chain. He was always a prisoner on the verge of
his release. She was at death's door in March. In April she was to
be seen, convalescent, in a bath-chair, being wheeled slowly up and
down the Spaniard's Road. And Wilkinson walked by the chair, his
shoulders bent, his eyes fixed on the ground, his face set in an
expression of illimitable patience.

In the summer she gave it up and died; and in the following spring
Wilkinson resumed his converse with Mrs. Norman. All things
considered, he had left a decent interval.

By autumn Mrs. Norman's friends were all on tiptoe and craning their
necks with expectation. It was assumed among them that Wilkinson
would propose to her the following summer, when the first year of
his widowhood should be ended. When summer came there was nothing
between them that anybody could see. But it by no means followed
that there was nothing to be seen. Mrs. Norman seemed perfectly sure
of him. In her intense sympathy for Wilkinson she knew how to
account for all his hesitations and delays. She could not look for
any passionate, decisive step from the broken creature he had
become; she was prepared to accept him as he was, with all his
humiliating fears and waverings. The tragic things his wife had done
to him could not be undone in a day.

Another year divided Wilkinson from his tragedy, and still he stood
trembling weakly on the verge. Mrs. Norman began to grow thin. She
lost her bright air of defiance, and showed herself vulnerable by
the hand of time. And nothing, positively nothing, stood between
them, except Wilkinson's morbid diffidence. So absurdly manifest was
their case that somebody (the Troubadour man, in fact) interposed
discreetly. In the most delicate manner possible, he gave Wilkinson
to understand that he would not necessarily make himself obnoxious
to Mrs. Norman were he to approach her with--well, with a view to
securing their joint happiness--happiness which they had both earned
by their admirable behavior.

That was all that was needed: a tactful friend of both parties to
put it to Wilkinson simply and in the right way. Wilkinson rose from
his abasement. There was a light in his eye that rejoiced the
tactful friend; his face had a look of sudden, virile determination.

"I will go to her," he said, "now."

It was a dark, unpleasant evening, full of cold and sleet.

Wilkinson thrust his arms into an overcoat, jammed a cap down on his
forehead, and strode into the weather. He strode into Mrs. Norman's
drawing-room.

When Mrs. Norman saw that look on his face she knew that it was all
right. Her youth rose in her again to meet it.

"Forgive me," said Wilkinson. "I had to come."

"Why not?" she said.

"It's so late."

"Not too late for me."

He sat down, still with his air of determination, in the chair she
indicated. He waved away, with unconcealed impatience, the
trivialities she used to soften the violence of his invasion.

"I've come," he said, "because I've had something on my mind. It
strikes me that I've never really thanked you."

"Thanked me?"

"For your great kindness to my wife."

Mrs. Norman looked away.

"I shall always be grateful to you," said Wilkinson. "You were very
good to her."

"Oh, no, no," she moaned.

"I assure you," he insisted, "she felt it very much. I thought you
would like to know that."

"Oh, yes." Mrs. Norman's voice went very low with the sinking of her
heart.

"She used to say you did more for her--you and your sister, with her
beautiful music--than all the doctors. You found the thing that
eased her. I suppose _you_ knew how ill she was--all the time? I
mean before her last illness."

"I don't think," said she, "I did know."

His face, which had grown grave, brightened. "No? Well, you see, she
was so plucky. Nobody could have known; I didn't always realize it
myself."

Then he told her that for five years his wife had suffered from a
nervous malady that made her subject to strange excitements and
depressions.

"We fought it," he said, "together. Through it all, even on her
worst days, she was always the same to me."

He sank deeper into memory.

"Nobody knows what she was to me. She wasn't one much for society.
She went into it" (his manner implied that she had adorned it) "to
please me, because I thought it might do her good. It was one of the
things we tried."

Mrs. Norman stared at him. She stared through him and beyond him,
and saw a strange man. She listened to a strange voice that sounded
far off, from somewhere beyond forgetfulness.

"There were times," she heard him saying, "when we could not go out
or see anyone. All we wanted was to be alone together. We could sit,
she and I, a whole evening without saying a word. We each knew what
the other wanted to say without saying it. I was always sure of her;
she understood me as nobody else ever can." He paused. "All that's
gone."

"Oh, no," Mrs. Norman said, "it isn't."

"It is." He illuminated himself with a faint flame of passion.

"Don't say that, when you have friends who understand."

"They don't. They can't. And," said Wilkinson, "I don't want them
to."

Mrs. Norman sat silent, as in the presence of something sacred and
supreme.

She confessed afterward that what had attracted her to Peter
Wilkinson was his tremendous capacity for devotion. Only (this she
did not confess) she never dreamed that it had been given to his
wife.




MISS TARRANT'S TEMPERAMENT


I

She had arrived.

Fanny Brocklebank, as she passed the library, had thought it worth
while to look in upon Straker with the news.

Straker could not help suspecting his hostess of an iniquitous
desire to see how he would take it. Or perhaps she may have meant,
in her exquisite benevolence, to prepare him. Balanced on the arm of
the opposite chair, the humor of her candid eyes chastened by what
he took to be a remorseful pity, she had the air of preparing him
for something.

Yes. She had arrived. She was upstairs, over his very head--resting.

Straker screwed up his eyes. Only by a prodigious effort could he
see Miss Tarrant resting. He had always thought of her as an
unwinking, untiring splendor, an imperishable fascination; he had
shrunk from inquiring by what mortal process she renewed her
formidable flame.

By a gesture of shoulders and of eyebrows Fanny conveyed that,
whatever he thought of Philippa Tarrant, she was more so than ever.
She--she was simply stupendous. It was Fanny's word. He would see.
She would appear at teatime. If he was on the terrace by five he
would see something worth seeing. It was now a quarter to.

He gathered that Fanny had only looked in to tell him that he
mustn't miss it.

Not for worlds would he have missed it. But the clock had struck
five, and Straker was still lingering in the library over the
correspondence that will pursue a rising barrister in his flight to
the country. He wasn't in a hurry. He knew that Miss Tarrant would
wait for her moment, and he waited too.

A smile of acclamation greeted his dilatory entrance on the terrace.
He was assured that, though late, he was still in time. He knew it.
She would not appear until the last guest had settled peaceably into
his place, until the scene was clear for her stunning, her
invincible effect. Then, in some moment of pause, of expectancy----

Odd that Straker, who was so used to it, who knew so well how she
would do it, should feel so fresh an interest in seeing her do it
again. It was almost as if he trembled for her and waited, wondering
whether, this time, she would fail of her effect, whether he would
ever live to see her disconcerted.

Disconcerting things had happened before now at the Brocklebanks',
things incongruous with the ancient peace, the dignity, the grand
style of Amberley. It was owing to the outrageous carelessness with
which Fanny Brocklebank mixed her house parties. She delighted in
daring combinations and startling contrasts. Straker was not at all
sure that he himself had not been chosen as an element in a daring
combination. Fanny could hardly have forgotten that, two years ago,
he had been an adorer (not altogether prostrate) of Miss Tarrant,
and he had given her no grounds for supposing that he had changed
his attitude. In the absence of authentic information Fanny could
only suppose that he had been dished, regularly dished, first by
young Reggy Lawson and then by Mr. Higginson. It was for Mr.
Higginson that Philippa was coming to Amberley--this year; last year
it had been for Reggy Lawson; the year before that it had been for
him, Straker. And Fanny did not scruple to ask them all three to
meet one another. That was her way. Some day she would carry it too
far. Straker, making his dilatory entrance, became aware of the
distance to which his hostess had carried it already. It had time to
grow on him, from wonder to the extreme of certainty, in his passage
down the terrace to the southwest corner. There, on the outskirts of
the group, brilliantly and conspicuously disposed, in postures of
intimate communion, were young Laurence Furnival and Mrs. Viveash.
Straker knew and Fanny knew, nobody indeed knew better than Fanny,
that those two ought never to have been asked together. In strict
propriety they ought not to have been at Amberley at all. Nobody but
Fanny would have dreamed of asking them, still less of combining
them with old Lady Paignton, who was propriety itself. And there was
Miss Probyn. Why Miss Probyn? What on earth did dear Fanny imagine
that she could do with Mary Probyn--or for her, if it came to that?
In Straker's experience of Fanny it generally did come to that--to
her doing things for people. He was aware, most acutely aware at
this moment, of what, two years ago, she would have done for him. He
had an idea that even now, at this hour, she was giving him his
chance with Philippa. There would no doubt be competition; there
always had been, always would be competition; but her charming eyes
seemed to assure him that he should have his chance.

They called him to her side, where, with a movement of protection
that was not lost on him, she had made a place for him apart. She
begged him just to look at young Reggy Lawson, who sat in agony,
sustaining a ponderous topic with Miss Probyn. He remembered Reggy?
Her half-remorseful smile implied that he had good cause to remember
him. He did. He was sorry for young Reggy, and hoped that he found
consolation in the thought that Mr. Higginson was no longer young.

He remarked that Reggy was looking uncommonly fit. "So," he added
irrelevantly, "is Mrs. Viveash. Don't you think?"

Fanny Brocklebank looked at Mrs. Viveash. It was obvious that she
was giving her her chance, and that Mrs. Viveash was making the very
most of it. She was leaning forward now, with her face thrust out
toward Furnival; and on her face and on her mouth and in her eyes
there burned visibly, flagrantly, the ungovernable, inextinguishable
flame. As for the young man, while his eyes covered and caressed
her, the tilt of his body, of his head, of his smile, and all his
features expressed the insolence of possession. He was sure of her;
he was sure of himself; he was sure of many things. He, at any rate,
would never be disconcerted. Whatever happened he was safe. But
she--there were things that, if one thing happened, she would have
to face; and as she sat there, wrapped in her flame, she seemed to
face them, to fling herself on the front of danger. You could see
she was ready to take any risks, to pay any price for the chance
that Fanny was giving her.

It really was too bad of Fanny.

"Why did you ask them?" Straker had known Fanny so long that he was
privileged to inquire.

"Because--they wanted to be asked."

Fanny believed, and said that she believed, in giving people what
they wanted. As for the consequences, there was no mortal lapse or
aberration that could trouble her serenity or bring a blush to her
enduring candor. If you came a cropper you might be sure that
Fanny's judgment of you would be pure from the superstition of
morality. She herself had never swerved in affection or fidelity to
Will Brocklebank. She took her excitements, lawful or otherwise,
vicariously in the doomed and dedicated persons of her friends.
Brocklebank knew it. Blond, spectacled, middle-aged, and ponderous,
he regarded his wife's performances and other people's with a
leniency as amazing as her own. He was hovering about old Lady
Paignton in the background, where Straker could see his benignant
gaze resting on Furnival and Mrs. Viveash.

"Poor dears," said Fanny, as if in extenuation of her tolerance,
"they _are_ enjoying themselves."

"So are you," said Straker.

"I like to see other people happy. Don't you?"

"Yes. If I'm not responsible for their--happiness."

"Who _is_ responsible?" She challenged.

"I say, aren't you?"

"Me responsible? Have you seen her husband?"

"I have."

"Well----" she left it to him.

"Where _is_ Viveash?"

"At the moment he is in Liverpool, or should be--on business."

"You didn't ask him?"

"Ask him? Is he the sort you can ask?"

"Oh, come, he's not so bad."

"He's awful. He's impossible. He--he excuses everything."

"I don't see him excusing this, or your share in it. If he knew."

"If he knew what?"

"That you'd asked Furny down."

"But he doesn't know. He needn't ever know."

"He needn't. But people like Viveash have a perfect genius for the
unnecessary. Besides----"

He paused before the unutterable, and she faced him with her smile
of innocent interrogation.

"Well," he said, "it's so jolly risky. These things, you know, only
end one way."

Fanny's eyes said plainly that to _their_ vision all sorts of ways
were possible.

"If it were any other man but----" He stopped short at Furnival's
name.

Fanny lowered her eyes almost as if she had been convicted of
indiscretion.

"You see," she said, "any other man wouldn't do. He's the one and
only man. There never was any other. That's the awful part of it for
her."

"Then why on earth did she marry the other fellow?"

"Because Furny couldn't marry her. And he wouldn't, either. That's
not his way."

"I know it's not his way. And if Viveash took steps, what then?"

"Then perhaps--he'd have to."

"Good Lord----"

"Oh, it isn't a deep-laid plan."

"I never said it was."

He didn't think it. Marriages had been made at Amberley, and
divorces, too; not by any plan of Fanny's, but by the risks she
took. Seeing the dangerous way she mixed things, he didn't, he
couldn't suspect her of a plan, but he did suspect her of an unholy
joy in the prospect of possible explosions.

"Of course," she said, reverting to her vision, "of course he'd have
to."

She looked at Straker with eyes where mischief danced a fling. It
was clear that in that moment she saw Laurence Furnival the profane,
Furnival the scorner of marriage, caught and tied: punished (she
scented in ecstasy the delicate irony of it), so beautifully
punished there where he had sinned.

Straker began to have some idea of the amusement Fanny got out of
her house parties.

For a moment they had no more to say. All around them there was
silence, born of Mrs. Viveash and her brooding, of young Reggy's
trouble with Miss Probyn, and of some queer triangular complication
in the converse of Brocklebank, Lady Paignton, and Mr. Higginson. In
that moment and that pause Straker thought again of Miss Tarrant. It
was, he said to himself, the pause and the moment for her
appearance. And (so right was he in his calculation) she appeared.


II

He saw her standing in the great doorway of the east wing where the
three steps led down on to the terrace. She stood on the topmost
step, poised for her descent, shaking her scarf loose to drift in a
white mist about her. Then she came down the terrace very slowly,
and the measured sweep of her limbs suggested that all her movements
would be accomplished to a large rhythm and with a superb delay.

Her effect (she had not missed it) was to be seen in all its wonder
and perfection on Laurence Furnival's face. Averted suddenly from
Mrs. Viveash, Furnival's face expressed the violence of his shock
and his excitement. It was clear that he had never seen anything
quite like Philippa Tarrant before, and that he found her incredibly
and ambiguously interesting. Ambiguously--no other word did justice
to the complexity of his facial expression. He did not know all at
once what to make of Philippa, and, from further and more furtive
manifestations of Furnival's, Straker gathered that the young man
was making something queer. He had a sort of sympathy with him, for
there had been moments when he himself had not known exactly what to
make. He doubted whether even Fanny Brocklebank (who certainly made
the best of her) had ever really known.

Whatever her inscrutable quality, this year she was, as Fanny had
said, more so than ever. She _was_ stupendous; and that although she
was not strictly speaking beautiful. She had no color in her white
face or in her black hair; she had no color but the morbid rose of
her mouth and the brown of her eyes. Yet Mrs. Viveash, with all her
vivid gold and carmine, went out before her; so did pretty Fanny,
though fresh as paint and burnished to perfection; as for the other
women, they were nowhere. She made the long golden terrace at
Amberley a desert place for the illusion of her somber and solitary
beauty. She was warm-fleshed, warm-blooded. The sunshine soaked into
her as she stood there. What was more, she had the air of being
entirely in keeping with Amberley's grand style.

Straker saw that from the first she was aware of Furnival. At three
yards off she held him with her eyes, lightly, balancing him; then
suddenly she let him go. She ceased to be aware of him. In the
moment of introduction she turned from him to Straker.

"Mr. Straker--but--how delightful!"

"Don't say you didn't expect to see me here."

"I didn't. And Mr. Higginson!" She laughed at the positive absurdity
of it. "_And_ Mr. Lawson and Miss Probyn."

She held herself a little back and gazed upon the group with her
wide and wonderful eyes.

"You look," she said, "as if something interesting had happened."

She had seated herself beside Straker so that she faced Mrs. Viveash
and young Furnival. She appeared not to know that Furnival was
staring at her.

"_She's_ the only interesting thing that's happened--so far," he
muttered. (There was no abatement of his stare.) Mrs. Viveash tried
to look as if she agreed with him.

Miss Tarrant had heard him. Her eyes captured and held him again, a
little longer this time. Straker, who watched the two, saw that
something passed between them, between Philippa's gaze and
Furnival's stare.


III

That evening he realized completely what Fanny had meant when she
said that Philippa was more so than ever. He observed this increase
in her quality, not only in the broad, massive impression that she
spread, but in everything about her, her gestures, her phrases, the
details of her dress. Every turn of her head and of her body
displayed a higher flamboyance, a richer audacity, a larger volume
of intention. He was almost afraid for her lest she should overdo it
by a shade, a touch, a turn. You couldn't get away from her. The
drawing-room at Amberley was filled with her, filled with white
surfaces of neck and shoulders, with eyes somber yet aflood with
light, eyes that were perpetually at work upon you and perpetually
at play, that only rested for a moment to accentuate their movement
and their play. This effect of her was as of many women,
approaching, withdrawing, and sliding again into view, till you were
aware with a sort of shock that it was one woman, Philippa Tarrant,
all the time, and that all the play and all the movement were
concentrated on one man, Laurence Furnival.

She never let him alone for a minute. He tried, to do him justice he
tried--Straker saw him trying--to escape. But, owing to Miss
Tarrant's multiplicity and omnipresence, he hadn't a chance. You saw
him fascinated, stupefied by the confusion and the mystery of it.
She carried him off under Mrs. Viveash's unhappy nose. Wherever she
went she called him, and he followed, flushed and shamefaced. He
showed himself now pitifully abject, and now in pitiful revolt. Once
or twice he was positively rude to her, and Miss Tarrant seemed to
enjoy that more than anything.

Straker had never seen Philippa so uplifted. She went like the
creature of an inspiring passion, a passion moment by moment
fulfilled and unappeased, renascent, reminiscent, and in all its
moments gloriously aware of itself.

The pageant of Furnival's subjugation lasted through the whole of
Friday evening. All Saturday she ignored him and her work on him.
You would have said it had been undertaken on Mrs. Viveash's
account, not his, just to keep Mrs. Viveash in her place and show
her what she, Philippa, could do. All Sunday, by way of revenge,
Furnival ignored Miss Tarrant, and consoled himself flagrantly with
Mrs. Viveash.

It was on the afternoon of Sunday that Mr. Higginson was seen
sitting out on the terrace with Miss Tarrant. Reggy Lawson had
joined them, having extricated himself with some dexterity from the
toils of the various ladies who desired to talk to him. His attitude
suggested that he was taking his dubious chance against Mr.
Higginson. It was odd that it should be dubious, Reggy's chance; he
himself was so assured, so engaging in his youth and physical
perfection. Straker would have backed him against any man he knew.

Fanny Brocklebank had sent Straker out into the rose garden with
Mary Probyn. He left Miss Tarrant on the terrace alone with Mr.
Higginson and Reggy. He left her talking to Mr. Higginson, listening
to Mr. Higginson, behaving beautifully to Mr. Higginson, and
ignoring Reggy. Straker, with Mary Probyn, walked round and round
the rose garden, which was below Miss Tarrant's end of the terrace,
and while he talked to Mary Probyn he counted the rounds. There were
twenty to the mile. Every time he turned he had Miss Tarrant full in
view, which distracted him from Mary Probyn. Mary didn't seem to
mind. She was a nice woman; plain (in a nice, refined sort of way),
and she knew it, and was nice to you whether you talked to her or
not. He did not find it difficult to talk to Mary: she was
interested in Miss Tarrant; she admired her, but not uncritically.

"She is the least bit too deliberate," was her comment. "She
calculates her effects."

"She does," said Straker, "so that she never misses one of them.
She's a consummate artist."

He had always thought her _that_. (Ninth round.) But as her friend
he could have wished her a freer and sincerer inspiration. After
all, there _was_ something that she missed.

(Tenth round.) Miss Tarrant was still behaving beautifully to Mr.
Higginson. Mary Probyn marveled to see them getting on so well
together. (Fifteenth round.)

Reggy had left them; they were not getting on together quite so
well.

(Twentieth round.) They had risen; they were coming down the steps
into the garden; Straker heard Miss Tarrant ordering Mr. Higginson
to go and talk to Miss Probyn. He did so with an alacrity which
betrayed a certain fear of the lady he admired.

Miss Tarrant, alone with Straker, turned on him the face which had
scared Mr. Higginson. She led him in silence and at a rapid pace
down through the rose garden and out upon the lawn beyond. There she
stood still and drew a deep breath.

"You had no business," she said, "to go away like that and leave me
with him."

"Why not? Last year, if I remember----"

He paused. He remembered perfectly that last year she had contrived
pretty often to be left with him. Last year Mr. Higginson, as the
Liberal candidate for East Mickleham, seemed about to achieve a
distinction, which, owing to his defeat by an overwhelming majority,
he had unfortunately not achieved. He had not been prudent. He had
stood, not only for East Mickleham, but for a principle. It was an
unpopular principle, and he knew it, and he had stuck to it all the
same, with obstinacy and absurdity, in the teeth, the furiously
gnashing teeth, of his constituency. You couldn't detach Mr.
Higginson from his principle, and as long as he stuck to it a
parliamentary career was closed to him. It was sad, for he had a
passion for politics; he had chosen politics as the one field for
the one ponderous talent he possessed. The glory of it had hung
ponderously about Mr. Higginson last year; but this year, cut off
from politics, it was pitiable, the nonentity he had become.
Straker could read that in his lady's alienated eyes.

"Last year," he continued, "you seemed to find him interesting."

"You think things must be what they seem?"

Her tone accused him of insufficient metaphysical acumen.

"There is no necessity. Still, as I said, last year----"

"Could Mr. Higginson, in any year, be interesting?"

"Did you hope," Straker retorted, "to make him so by cultivating
him?"

"It's impossible to say what Mr. Higginson might become
under--centuries of cultivation. It would take centuries."

That was all very well, he said to himself. If he didn't say that
Miss Tarrant had pursued Mr. Higginson, he distinctly recalled the
grace with which she had allowed herself to be pursued. She _had_
cultivated him. And, having done it, having so flagrantly and
palpably and under Straker's own eyes gone in for him, how on earth
did she propose to get out of it now? There was, Straker said to
himself again, no getting out of it. As for centuries----

"Let us go back," he persisted, "to last year."

"Last year he had his uses. He was a good watch-dog."

"A _what_?"

"A watch-dog. He kept other people off."

For a moment he was disarmed by the sheer impudence of it. He smiled
a reminiscent smile.

"I should have thought his function was rather, wasn't it, to draw
them on?"

Her triumphing eyes showed him that he had given himself into her
hands. He should have been content with his reminiscent smile.
Wasn't he, her eyes inquired, for a distinguished barrister, just a
little bit too crude?

"You thought," she said, "he was a decoy-duck? Why, wouldn't you
have flown from your most adored if you'd seen her--with Mr.
Higginson?"

Thus deftly she wove her web and wound him into it. That was her
way. She would take your own words out of your mouth and work them
into the brilliant fabric, tangling you in your talk. And not only
did she tangle you in your talk, she confused you in your mental
processes.

"You didn't seriously suppose," she said, "that I could have had any
permanent use for him?"

Straker's smile paid tribute to her crowning cleverness. He didn't
know how much permanence she attached to matrimony, or to Mr.
Higginson, but he knew that she had considered him in that
preposterous relation. She faced him and his awful knowledge and
floored him with just that--the thing's inherent, palpable
absurdity. And if _that_ wasn't clever of her!----

"Of course not." He was eager in his assent; it was wrung from him.
He added with apparent irrelevance, "After all, he's honest."

"You must be something."

She turned to him, radiant and terrible, rejoicing in her murderous
phrase. It intimated that only by his honesty did Mr. Higginson
maintain his foothold on existence.

"I think," said Straker, "it's time to dress for dinner."

They turned and went slowly toward the house. On the terrace, watch
in hand, Mr. Higginson stood alone and conspicuous, shining in his
single attribute of honesty.

That evening Furnival sought Straker out in a lonely corner of the
smoke-room. His face was flushed and defiant. He put it to Straker
point-blank.

"I say, what's she up to, that friend of yours, Miss T-Tarrant?"

He stammered over her name. Her name excited him.

Straker intimated that it was not given him to know what Miss
Tarrant might or might not be up to.

Furnival shook his head. "I can't make her out. Upon my honor, I
can't."

Straker wondered what Furny's honor had to do with it.

"Why is she hanging round like this?"

"Hanging round?"

"Yes. You know what I mean. Why doesn't somebody marry her?" He made
a queer sound in his throat, a sound of unspeakable interrogation.
"Why haven't you married her yourself?"

Straker was loyal. "You'd better ask her why she hasn't married me."

Furnival brooded. "I've a good mind to."

"I should if I were you," said Straker encouragingly.

Furnival sighed heavily. "Look here," he said, "what's the matter
with her? Is she difficult, or what?"

"Frightfully difficult," said Straker, with conviction. His tone
implied that Furnival would never understand her, that he hadn't the
brain for it.


IV

And yet, Straker reminded himself, Furnival wasn't an ass. He had
brain for other things, for other women; for poor Nora Viveash quite
a remarkable sufficiency of brain, but not for Philippa Tarrant.
You could see how he was being driven by her. He was in that state
when he would have done anything to get her. There was no folly and
no extravagance that he would not commit. And yet, driven as he was,
it was clear that he resented being driven, that he was not going
all the way. His kicking, his frantic dashes and plunges, showed
that the one extravagance, the one folly he would not commit was
matrimony.

Straker saw that very plainly. He wondered whether Miss Tarrant
would see it, too, and if she did whether it would make any
difference in her method.

It was very clear to Straker that Miss Tarrant was considering
Furnival, as she had considered him, as she had considered young
Reggy Lawson, as she had considered Mr. Higginson, who was not so
young. As for Reggy and his successor, she had done with them. All
that could be known of their fatuity she knew. Perhaps they had
never greatly interested her. But she was interested in Laurence
Furnival. She told Straker that he was the most amusing man of her
acquaintance. She was, Straker noticed, perpetually aware of him.
All Monday morning, in the motor, Miss Tarrant in front with
Brocklebank, Furnival with Mrs. Viveash, and Straker behind, it was
an incessant duel between Furnival's eyes and the eyes that Miss
Tarrant had in the back of her head. All Monday afternoon she had
him at her heels, at her elbow. With every gesture she seemed to
point to him and say: "Look at this little animal I've caught. Did
you ever see such an amusing little animal?"

She was quite aware that it was an animal, the creature she had
captured and compelled to follow her; it might hide itself now and
then, but it never failed to leap madly forward at her call. The
animal in Furnival, so simple, so undisguised, and so spontaneous,
was what amused her.

Its behavior that Monday after tea on the terrace was one of the
most disconcerting things that had occurred at Amberley. You could
see that Mrs. Viveash couldn't bear it, that she kept looking away,
that Brocklebank didn't know where to look, and that even Fanny was
perturbed.

As for Mr. Higginson, it was altogether too much for him and his
honesty. He was visibly alienated, and from that moment he devoted
himself and his honesty to Mary Probyn.

Young Reggy was alienated, too, so profoundly that he spoke about it
aside to Straker.

"Between you and me," said young Reggy, "it's a bit too strong. I
can't stick it, the way she goes on. What does she _mean_ by it,
Straker?"

People were always appealing to Straker to tell them what women
meant by it. As if he knew.

He was glad to see that young Reggy had turned, that he _could_
turn. He liked Reggy, and he felt that he owed him a good deal. If
it had not been for Reggy he might, two years ago, have been
numbered as one of the fallen. He had been pretty far gone two years
ago, so far that he had frequently wondered how it was that he had
not fallen. Now it was clear to him. It had been her method with
Reggy that had checked his own perilous approaches. It had offended
his fine sense of the fitting (a fastidiousness which, in one of her
moods of ungovernable frankness, she had qualified as "finicking").
For Reggy was a nice boy, and her method had somehow resulted in
making him appear not so nice. It nourished and brought to the
surface that secret, indecorous, primordial quality that he shared,
though in less splendor and abundance, with Laurence Furnival. He
had kept his head, or had seemed inimitably to have kept it. At any
rate, he had preserved his sense of decency. He was incapable of
presenting on the terrace at Amberley the flaming pageant of his
passion. Straker was not sure how far this restraint, this
level-headedness of young Reggy, had been his undoing. It might be
that Miss Tarrant had required of him a pageant. Anyhow, Reggy's
case had been very enlightening to Straker.

And it was through Reggy, or rather through his own intent and
breathless observation of the two, that Straker had received his
final illumination. It had come suddenly in one inspiring and
delivering flash; he could recall even now his subsequent
sensations, the thrilling lucidity of soul, the prodigious swiftness
of body, after his long groping in obscurities and mysteries. For it
had been a mystery to him how she had resisted Reggy in his young
physical perfection and with the charm he had, a charm that
spiritualized him, a charm that should have appealed to everything
that was supersensuous in Philippa Tarrant (and Philippa would have
had you believe that there was very little in her that was not). It
was incomprehensible therefore to Straker how any woman who had a
perfect body, with a perfect heart in it, could have resisted Reggy
at his best--and for Mr. Higginson.

To be sure, compared with Mr. Higginson he was impecunious; but
that, to Straker's mind, was just what gave him, with the other
things, his indomitable distinction. Reggy's distinction stood
straight and clean, naked of all accessories. An impecuniousness so
unexpressed, so delicate, so patrician could never have weighed with
Philippa against Reggy's charm. That she should deliberately have
reckoned up his income, compared it with Mr. Higginson's, and
deducted Reggy with the result was inconceivable. Whatever Straker
had thought of her he had never thought of her as mercenary. It
wasn't that. He had found out what it was. Watching her at play with
Reggy's fire (for to the inconspicuous observer the young man had
flamed sufficiently), it had struck Straker that she herself was
flameless.

It was in the nature of Reggy's perfection that it called, it
clamored for response. And Philippa had not responded. She hadn't
got it in her to respond.

All this came back vividly to Straker as he watched her now on the
terrace, at play with the fiercer conflagration that was Laurence
Furnival.

She was cold; she had never kindled, never would, never could
kindle. Her eyes did, if you like; they couldn't help it--God made
them lights and flames--but her mouth _couldn't_. To Straker in his
illumination all the meaning of Philippa Tarrant was in her mouth.
The small, exquisite thing lacked fulness and the vivid rose that
should have been the flowering of her face. A certain tightness at
the corners gave it an indescribable expression of secrecy and
mystery and restraint. He saw in it the almost monstrous denial and
mockery of desire. He could not see it, as he had seen Nora
Viveash's mouth, curved forward, eager, shedding flame at the brim,
giving itself to lips that longed for it. Philippa's mouth was a
flower that opened only at the touch, the thrill of her own gorgeous
egoism. He read in it the triumph of Philippa over the flesh and
blood of her race. She had nothing in her of the dead. That was the
wonder of her. The passion of the dead had built up her body to the
semblance and the promise of their own delight; their desire, long
forgotten, rose again, lightening and darkening in her amazing eyes;
the imperishable instinct that impelled them to clothe her in their
flesh and blood survived in her, transfigured in strange impulses
and intuitions, but she herself left unfulfilled their promise and
their desire.

Yes--that was what her mouth meant; it was treacherous; it betrayed
the promise of her body and her eyes. And Furnival was feeding his
infatuation on the meanings of her eyes and of her body--meanings
that were unmistakable to Straker.

As if she had known what the older man was thinking of her, Philippa
rose abruptly and turned her back on Furnival and began to make
violent love to old Lady Paignton. Her eyes challenged Straker's
across the terrace. They said: "Look at me. I will be as beautiful
for this old lady as for any male thing on earth. More beautiful.
Have I ever set my cap so becomingly at any of you as I am setting
it now at her? Have you ever seen finer eyes than these that I make
at her, that I lavish on her out of the sheer exuberance of my
nature? Very well, then; doesn't that prove that you're wrong in all
things you've been thinking about me. _I_ know what you've been
thinking!"

As if she knew what he was thinking she made herself beautiful for
him. She allowed him presently to take her for a walk, for quite a
long walk. The woods of Amberley lured them, westward, across the
shining fields. They went, therefore, through the woods and back by
the village in the cool of the evening.

He had seldom, he might say he had never, seen Philippa in so
agreeable a mood. She had sunk her sex. She was tired of her
terrible game, the game that Straker saw through; she was playing
another one, a secret, innocent, delightful game. She laid herself
out to amuse Straker, instead of laying _him_ out (as he put it), on
the table, to amuse herself.

"Philippa," he said, "you've been adorable for the last half hour."

"For the last half hour I've been myself."

She smiled as if to herself, a secret, meditative smile. The mystery
of it was not lost on Straker.

"I can always be myself," she said, "when I'm with you."

"For half an hour," he murmured.

She went on. "You're not tiresome, like the others. I don't know
what there is about you, but you don't bore me."

"Perhaps not--for half an hour."

"Not for millions of half hours."

"Consecutive?"

"Oh, yes."

She tilted her head back and gazed at him with eyes narrowed and
slanting under their deep lids.

"Not in an immortality," she said.

She laughed aloud her joyous appreciation of him.

Straker was neither uplifted nor alarmed. He knew exactly where
he stood with her. She was not considering him; she was not
trying to get at him; she was aware of his illumination and his
disenchantment; she was also aware of his continuous interest in
her, and it was his continuous interest, the study that he made
of her, that interested Philippa. She was anxious that he should
get her right, that he should accept her rendering of herself.
She knew at each moment what he was thinking of her, and the
thing that went on between them was not a game--it was a duel, an
amicable duel, between her lucidity and his. Philippa respected
his lucidity.

"All the same," said Straker, "I am not the most amusing man you
know. You don't find me exciting."

"No." She turned it over. "No; I don't find you at all exciting
_or_ very amusing. How is it, then, that you don't bore me?"

"How can I say?"

"I think it is because you're so serious, because you take me
seriously."

"But I don't. Not for a moment. As for an immortality of
seriousness----"

"At least," she said, "you would admit that possibly I might have a
soul. At any rate, you behave as if you did."

He dodged it dexterously.

"That's where the immortality comes in, is it?"

"Of _course_," said Philippa.


V

She went on amusing Straker all evening, and after dinner she made
him take her into the conservatory.

The conservatory at Amberley is built out fanwise from the big west
drawing-room on to the southwest corner of the terrace; it is
furnished as a convenient lounge, and you sit there drinking coffee,
and smoking, and admiring Brocklebank's roses, which are the glory
of Amberley. And all among Brocklebank's roses they came upon
Furnival and Mrs. Viveash.

Among the roses she shimmered and flushed in a gown of rose and
silver. Among the roses she was lovely, sitting there with Furnival.
And Straker saw that Miss Tarrant was aware of the loveliness of
Mrs. Viveash, and that her instinct woke in her.

She advanced, trailing behind her the long, diaphanous web of her
black gown. When she was well within the range of Furnival's
sensations she paused to smell a rose, bending her body backward and
sideward so that she showed to perfection the deep curved lines
that swept from her shoulders to her breasts, and from her breasts
downward to her hips. A large diamond star hung as by an invisible
thread upon her neck: it pointed downward to the hollow of her
breasts. There was no beauty that she had that was not somehow
pointed to, insisted on, held forever under poor Furnival's excited
eyes.

But in a black gown, among roses, she showed disadvantageously her
dead whiteness and her morbid rose. She was aware of that. Mrs.
Viveash, glowing among the roses, had made her aware.

"Why did we ever come here?" she inquired of Straker. "These roses
are horribly unbecoming to me."

"Nothing is unbecoming to you, and you jolly well know it," said
Furnival.

She ignored it.

"Just look at their complexions. They oughtn't to be allowed about."

She picked one and laid it against the dead-white hollow of her
breast, and curled her neck to look at it there; then she shook her
head at it in disapproval, took it away, and held it out an inch
from Furnival's face. He recoiled slightly.

"It won't bite," she murmured. "It'll let you stroke it." She
stroked it herself, with fingers drawn tenderly, caressingly, over
petals smooth and cool as their own skin. "I believe it can feel. I
believe it likes it."

Furnival groaned. Straker heard him; so did Mrs. Viveash. She
stirred in her seat, causing a spray of Dorothy Perkins to shake as
if it indeed felt and shared her terror. Miss Tarrant turned from
Furnival and laid her rose on Mrs. Viveash's shoulder, where it did
no wrong.

"It's yours," she said; "or a part of you."

Mrs. Viveash looked up at Furnival, and her face flickered for a
moment. Furnival did not see her face; he was staring at Miss
Tarrant.

"Ah," he cried, "how perfect! You and I'll have to dry up, Straker,
unless you can go one better than that."

"I shouldn't dream," said Straker, "of trying to beat Miss Tarrant
at her own game."

"If you know what it is. I'm hanged if I do."

Furnival was tearing from its tree a Caroline Testout, one of
Brocklebank's choicest blooms. Miss Tarrant cried out:

"Oh, stop him, somebody. They're Mr. Brocklebank's roses."

"They ain't a part of Brockles," Furnival replied.

He approached her with Brocklebank's Caroline Testout, and, with his
own dangerous, his outrageous fervor, "You say it f-f-feels," he
stammered. "It's what you want, then--something t-tender and living
about you. Not that s-scin-t-tillating thing you've got there. It
tires me to look at it." He closed his eyes.

"You needn't look at it," she said.

"I can't help it. It's part of you. I believe it grows there. It
makes me look at it."

His words came shaken from him in short, savage jerks. To Straker,
to Mrs. Viveash, he appeared intolerable; but he had ceased to care
how he appeared to anybody. He had ceased to know that they were
there. They turned from him as from something monstrous,
intolerable, indecent. Mrs. Viveash's hands and mouth were
quivering, and her eyes implored Straker to take her away somewhere
where she couldn't see Furnival and Philippa Tarrant.

He took her out on to the terrace. Miss Tarrant looked after them.

"That rose belongs to Mrs. Viveash now," she said. "You'd better go
and take it to her."

Furnival flung the Caroline Testout on the floor. He trod on the
Caroline Testout. It was by accident, but still he trod on it; so
that he seemed much more brutal than he was.

"It's very hot in here," said she. "I'm going on to the terrace."

"Let's go down," said he, "into the garden. We can talk there."

"You seem to be able to talk anywhere," said she.

"I have to," said Furnival.

She went out and walked slowly down the terrace to the east end
where Straker sheltered Mrs. Viveash.

Furnival followed her.

"Are you coming with me or are you not?" he insisted. "I can't get
you a minute to myself. Come out of this, can't you? I want to talk
to you."

"And I," said Miss Tarrant, "want to talk to Mrs. Viveash."

"You don't. You want to tease her. Can't you leave the poor woman
alone for a minute? She's happy there with Straker."

"I want to see how happy she is," said Miss Tarrant.

"For God's sake!" he cried. "Don't. It's my last chance. I'm going
to-morrow." Miss Tarrant continued to walk like one who did not
hear. "I may never see you again. You'll go off somewhere. You'll
disappear. I can't trust you."

Suddenly she stood still.

"You are going to-morrow?"

"Not," said Furnival, "if you'd like me to stay. That's what I want
to talk to you about. Let's go down into the east walk. It's dark
there, and they can't hear us."

"They have heard you. You'd better go back to Mrs. Viveash."

His upper lip lifted mechanically, but he made no sound. He stood
for a moment staring at her, obstructing her path. Then he turned.

"I shall go back to her," he said.

He strode to Mrs. Viveash and called her by her name. His voice had
a queer vibration that sounded to Miss Tarrant like a cry.

"Nora--you'll come with me, won't you?"

Mrs. Viveash got up without a word and went with him. Miss Tarrant,
standing beside Straker on the terrace, saw them go down together
into the twilight of the east walk between the yew hedges.

Philippa said something designed to distract Straker's attention;
and still, with an air of distracting him, of sheltering her sad
sister, Mrs. Viveash, she led him back into the house.

Furnival returned five minutes later, more flushed than ever and
defiant.

That night Straker, going down the long corridor to his bedroom, saw
Fanny Brocklebank and Philippa in front of him. They went slowly,
Fanny's head leaning a little toward Philippa's. Not a word of what
Philippa was saying reached Straker, but he saw her turn with Fanny
into Fanny's room. As he passed the door he was aware of Fanny's
voice raised in deprecation, and of Philippa's, urgent, imperative;
and he knew, as well as if he had heard her, that Philippa was
telling Fanny about Furnival and Nora Viveash.


VI

It was as if nothing had happened that Philippa came to him on the
terrace the next morning (which was a Tuesday) before breakfast.
As if nothing had happened, as if she had hardly met Furnival, as
if she were considering him for the first time, she began
cross-questioning Straker.

"You know everybody. Tell me about Laurence Furnival. _Is_ he any
good?"

Straker replied that she had better inquire at the Home Office, the
scene of Furnival's industry.

Philippa waved the Home Office aside. "I mean, will he ever _do_
anything?"

"Ask Fanny Brocklebank."

He knew very well that she had asked her, that she had got out of
Fanny full particulars as to Furnival's family and the probable
amount of his income, and that she had come to him as the source of
a finer information.

"Fanny wouldn't know," said she.

"Then," said Straker, "ask Mrs. Viveash."

She turned on him a cold and steady gaze that rebuked his utterance.
How dare he, it said, how dare he mention Mrs. Viveash in her
presence?

She answered quietly: "There will hardly be time, I think. Mrs.
Viveash is going to-day."

Straker turned on her now, and his look expressed a sort of alien
and repugnant admiration. He wondered how far she had gone, how much
she had told, by what intimations she had prevailed with Fanny to
get Mrs. Viveash out of the house. Mrs. Viveash, to be sure, had
only been invited for the week-end, from the Friday to the Tuesday,
but it had been understood that, if her husband prolonged his
business in Liverpool, she was to stay till his return. Viveash was
still in Liverpool--that had been known at Amberley yesterday--and
Mrs. Viveash had not been asked to stay. It had been quite simple.
Mrs. Viveash, not having been asked to stay, would be obliged to go.

"And is Furnival going, too?" he asked.

"I believe not," said Philippa.

An hour later Mrs. Viveash joined them in the avenue where he waited
for Miss Tarrant, who had proposed that he should walk with her to
the village.

In the clear and cruel light of the morning Mrs. Viveash showed him
a blanched face and eyes that had seen with miserable lucidity the
end of illusion, the end of passion, and now saw other things and
were afraid.

"You know I'm going?" she said.

Straker said that he was sorry to hear it; by which he meant that he
was sorry for Mrs. Viveash.

She began to talk to him of trifles, small occurrences at Amberley,
of the affair of Mr. Higginson and Miss Probyn, and then, as by a
natural transition, of Miss Tarrant.

"Do you like Miss Tarrant?" she asked suddenly, point-blank.

Straker jibbed. "Well, really--I--I haven't thought about it."

He hadn't. He knew how he stood with her, how he felt about her; but
whether it amounted to liking or not liking he had not yet inquired.
But that instant he perceived that he did not like her, and he lied.

"Of course I like her. Why shouldn't I?"

"Because"--she was very slow about it--"somehow I should have said
that you were not that sort."

Her light on him came halting, obscured, shivering with all the
vibrations of her voice; but he could see through it, down to the
sources of her thinking, to something secret, luminous, and
profound--her light on Philippa.

She was instantly aware of what she had let him see.

"Oh," she cried, "that was horrid of me. It was feline."

"It was a little," he admitted.

"It's because I know she doesn't like me."

"Why not say at once it's because you don't like her?"

Her eyes, full, lucid, charged with meaning, flashed to him. She
leaped at the chance he offered her to be sincere.

"I don't," she said. "How can I?"

She talked again of trifles, to destroy all cohesion between that
utterance and her next.

"I say, I want you to do something for me. I want you to look after
Furny."

"To look after him?"

"To stand by him, if--if he has a bad time."

He promised her. And then Miss Tarrant claimed him. She was in her
mood of yesterday; but the charm no longer worked on him; he did not
find her adorable that morning.

After a longish round they were overtaken by Brocklebank in his
motor-car. He and Furnival were returning from the station after
seeing Mrs. Viveash off (Furny had had the decency to see her off).
Brocklebank gave a joyous shout and pulled up two yards in front of
them.

As they stood beside the car Straker noticed that Furnival's face
had a queer, mottled look, and that the muscles of his jaw were set
in an immobility of which he could hardly have believed him
capable. He was actually trying to look as if he didn't see Miss
Tarrant. And Miss Tarrant was looking straight at him.

Brocklebank wanted to know if Miss Tarrant cared for a run across
the Hog's Back before luncheon.

Miss Tarrant did care--if Mr. Straker did.

Furnival had got down from his seat beside Brocklebank and had
opened the door of the car, ignoring Straker. He had managed in his
descent to preserve his attitude of distance, so much so that
Straker was amazed to see him enter the car after Miss Tarrant and
take his, Straker's, place beside her. He accomplished this maneuver
in silence, and with an air so withdrawn, so obscurely predestined,
that he seemed innocent of all offense. It was as if he had acted
from some malign compulsion of which he was unaware.

Now Brocklebank in his motor was an earnest and a silent man.
Straker, left to himself, caught fragments of conversation in the
rear. Miss Tarrant began it.

"Why did you give up your seat?"

"You see why," said Furnival.

Straker could see him saying it, flushed and fervent. Then Furnival
went one better, and overdid it.

"There's nothing I wouldn't give up for a chance like this."

Straker heard Philippa laughing softly. He knew she meant him to
hear her, he knew she was saying to him, "Could anything be more
absurd than the creature that I've got in here?"

There was a pause, and then Furnival broke out again:

"I've seen Mrs. Viveash off."

"That," said Miss Tarrant reprovingly, "was the least you could
do."

Furnival made that little fierce, inarticulate sound of his before
he spoke. "I hope you're satisfied. I hope I've done enough to
please you."

"Oh, quite enough. I shouldn't attempt to do _anything_ more if I
were you."

After that there was silence, in which Straker felt that Furnival
was raging.


VII

Fanny Brocklebank came to him the next morning in the library, where
he had hidden himself. She was agitated.

"Put that book down," she said. "I want to talk to you."

Straker obeyed.

"Jimmy--I'm fond of Philippa. I am, really."

"Well--what's up?"

"Philippa's making a fool of herself and she doesn't know it."

"Trust Philippa!"

"To know it?"

"To make a fool of anybody on earth--except herself."

"This is different. It's Larry Furnival."

"It is. And did you ever see such a spectacle of folly?"

"He doesn't understand her. That's where the folly comes in."

"He's not alone in it."

But Fanny was past the consolations of his cynicism. Her face, not
formed for gravity, was grave.

"He's got an idea in his head. An awful one. I'm convinced he thinks
she isn't proper."

"Oh, I say!"

"Well, really--considering that he doesn't know her--I can't
altogether blame him. I told her so straight out."

"What did she say?"

"She said how funny it will be when he finds out how proper she is."

"So it will, won't it?"

Fanny considered the point.

"It's not half as funny as she thinks it. And, funniness and all,
she didn't like it."

"You can hardly expect her to," said Straker.

"Of course," said Fanny, musing, "there's a sort of innocence about
him, or else he couldn't think it."

Straker admitted that, as far as Philippa went, that might be said
of him.

"That's why I hate somehow to see him made a fool of. It doesn't
seem fair play, you know. It's taking advantage of his innocence."

Straker _had_ to laugh, for really, Furny's innocence!

"He always was," Fanny meditated aloud, "a fool about women."

"Oh, well, then," said Straker cheerfully. "She can't make him----"

"She can. She does. She draws out all the folly in him. I'm fond of
Philippa----"

That meant that Fanny was blaming Philippa as much as she could
blame anybody. Immorality she understood, and could excuse; for
immorality there was always some provocation; what she couldn't
stand was the unfairness of Philippa's proceeding, the inequality in
the game.

"I'm very fond of her, but--she's bad for him, Jimmy. She's worse,
far worse, than Nora, poor dear."

"I shouldn't worry about him if I were you."

"I do worry. You see, you can't help liking him. There's something
about Furny--I don't know what it is, unless it's the turn of his
nose----"

"Do you think Philippa likes him? Do you think she's at all taken
with the turn of his nose?"

"If she only would be! Not that he means to marry her. That's the
one point where he's firm. That's where he's awful. Why, oh, why did
I ever ask them? I thought he was safe with Nora."

"Did you?"

"Something must be done," she cried, "to stop it."

"Who's to do it?"

"You or I. Or Will. Anybody!"

"Look here, Fanny, let's get it quite clear. What are you worrying
about? Are you saving Philippa from Furnival, or Furnival from
Philippa?"

"Philippa," Fanny moaned, "doesn't want saving. She can take care of
herself."

"I see. You are fond of Philippa, but your sympathies are with
Furny?"

"Well he can _feel_, and Philippa----"

She left it there for him, as her way was.

"Precisely. Then why worry about Philippa?"

"Because it's really awful, and it's in my house that it'll happen."

"How long are they staying?"

"Lord knows how long."

"Poor Fanny. You can't get them to go, can you?"

"I've thought of things. I've told Will he must have an illness."

"And will he?"

"Not he. He says, as I asked them, I ought to have the illness. But
if I did she'd stay and nurse me. Besides, if we ousted the whole
lot to-morrow, _they'll_ meet again. He'll see to that; and so will
Philippa."

There was a long pause.

"I want _you_ to do it. I want you to tell her."

"Good Lord, what am I to tell her?"

"Tell her it isn't nice; tell her it isn't worth while; tell her
Furny isn't fair game; tell her anything you can think of that'll
stop her."

"I don't see myself----"

"I do. She won't listen to anybody but you."

"Why me?"

"She respects you."

"I doubt it. Why should she?"

"Because you've never made yourself a spectacle of folly. You've
never told her you're in love with her."

"But I'm not," said poor Straker.

"She doesn't know that. And if she did she'd respect you all the
more."

"Dear Fanny, I'd do a great deal for you, but I can't do that. I
can't, really. It wouldn't be a bit of good."

"You could speak," Fanny said, "to Furny."

"I couldn't."

"Why _not_?" she cried, in desperation.

"Because, if I did, I should have to assume things--things that you
cannot decently assume. I can't speak to him. Not, that is, unless
he speaks to me."


VIII

He did speak to him that very night.

It was after ten o'clock, and Straker, who ought to have been in the
drawing-room playing bridge, or in the billiard-room playing
billiards, or in the smoking-room talking to Brocklebank--Straker,
who ought to have known better, had sneaked into the library to have
a look at a brief he'd just got. He ought to have known better, for
he knew, everybody knew, that after ten o'clock the library at
Amberley was set apart as a refuge for any two persons who desired
uninterrupted communion with each other. He himself, in the library
at Amberley--but that was more than two years ago, so far before
Philippa's time that he did not associate her with the library at
Amberley. He only knew that Furnival had spent a good deal of time
in it with Nora Viveash, and poor Nora was gone. It was poor Nora's
departure, in fact, that made him feel that the library was now open
to him.

Now the library at Amberley was fitted, as a library should be, with
a silent door, a door with an inaudible latch and pneumatic hinges.
It shut itself behind Straker with a soft sigh.

The long room was dim and apparently deserted. Drawn blinds obscured
the lucid summer night behind the three windows opposite the door.
One small electric globe hung lit under its opaline veil in the
corner by the end window on the right.

Straker at the doorway turned on the full blaze of the great ring
that hung above the central table where he meant to work. It
revealed, seated on the lounge in the inner, the unilluminated
corner on the right, Miss Tarrant and Laurence Furnival.

To his intense relief, Straker perceived that the whole length of
the lounge was between the two. Miss Tarrant at her end was sitting
bolt upright with her scarf gathered close about her; she was
looking under her eyelids and down her beautiful nose at Furnival,
who at his end was all huddled among the cushions as if she had
flung him there. Their attitudes suggested that their interview had
ended in distance and disaster. The effect was so marked that
Straker seized it in an instant.

He was about to withdraw as noiselessly as he had entered, but Miss
Tarrant (not Furnival; Furnival had not so much as raised his
head)--Miss Tarrant had seen him and signed to him to stay.

"You needn't go," she said. "_I'm_ going."

She rose and passed her companion without looking at him, in a sort
of averted and offended majesty, and came slowly down the room.
Straker waited by the door to open it for her.

On the threshold she turned to him and murmured: "Don't go away. Go
in and talk to him--about--about anything."

It struck him as extraordinary that she should say this to him, that
she should ask him to go in and see what she had done to the man.

The door swung on her with its soft sigh, shutting him in with
Furnival. He hesitated a moment by the door.

"Come in if you want to," said Furnival. "I'm going, too."

He had risen, a little unsteadily. As he advanced, Straker saw that
his face bore traces of violent emotion. His tie was a little
crooked and his hair pushed from the forehead that had been hidden
by his hands. His moustache no longer curled crisply upward; it hung
limp over his troubled mouth. Furnival looked as if he had been
drinking. But Furnival did not drink. Straker saw that he meant in
his madness to follow Philippa.

He turned down the lights that beat on him.

"Don't," said Furnival. "I'm going all right."

Straker held the door to. "I wouldn't," he said, "if I were you. Not
yet."

Furnival made the queer throat sound that came from him when words
failed him.

Straker put his hand on the young man's shoulder. He remembered how
Mrs. Viveash had asked him to look after Furny, to stand by him if
he had a bad time. She had foreseen, in the fierce clairvoyance of
her passion, that he was going to have one. And, by Heaven! it had
come.

Furnival struggled for utterance. "All right," he said thickly.

He wasn't going after her. He had been trying to get away from
Straker; but Straker had been too much for him. Besides, he had
understood Straker's delicacy in turning down the lights, and he
didn't want to show himself just yet to the others.

They strolled together amicably toward the lounge and sat there.

Straker had intended to say, "What's up?" but other words were given
him.

"What's Philippa been up to?"

Furnival pulled himself together. "Nothing," he replied. "It was
me."

"What did you do?"

Furnival was silent.

"Did you propose to her, or what?"

"I made," said Furnival, "a sort of p-proposal."

"That she should count the world well lost--was that it?"

"Well, she knew I wasn't going to marry anybody, and I knew she
wasn't going to marry me. Now was she?"

"No. She most distinctly wasn't."

"Very well, then--how was I to know? I could have sworn----"

He hid his face in his hands again.

"The fact is, I made the devil of a mistake."

"Yes," said Straker. "I saw you making it."

Furnival's face emerged angry.

"Then why on earth didn't you _tell_ me? I asked you. Why couldn't
you tell me what she was like?"

"You don't tell," said Straker.

Furnival groaned. "I can't make it out _now_. It's not as if she
hadn't got a t-t-temperament."

"But she hasn't. _That_ was the mistake you made."

"You'd have made it yourself," said Furnival.

"I have. She's taken me in. She _looks_ as if she had
temperament--she behaves as if she had--oceans. And she hasn't, not
a scrap."

"Then what does she do it for? What does she do it for, Straker?"

"I don't know what she does it for. She doesn't know herself.
There's a sort of innocence about her."

"I suppose," said Furnival pensively, "it's innocence."

"Whatever it is, it's the quality of her defect. She can't let us
alone. It amuses her to see us squirm. But she doesn't know, my dear
fellow, what it feels like; because, you see, she doesn't feel. She
couldn't tell, of course, the lengths _you'd_ go to."

Straker was thinking how horrible it must have been for Philippa.
Then he reflected that it must have been pretty horrible for Furny,
too--so unexpected. At that point he remembered that for Philippa it
had not been altogether unexpected; Fanny had warned her of this
very thing.

"How--did she--take it?" he inquired tentatively.

"My dear fellow, she sat there--where you are now--and lammed into
me. She made me feel as if I were a cad and a beast and a
ruffian--as if I wanted k-kick-kicking. She said she wouldn't have
seen that I existed if it hadn't been for Fanny Brocklebank--I was
her friend's guest--and when I tried to defend myself she turned
and talked to me about things, Straker, till I blushed. I'm
b-blushing now."

He was.

"And, of course, after that, I've got to go."

"Was that all?" said Straker.

"No, it wasn't. I can't tell you the _other_ things she said."

For a moment Furny's eyes took on a marvelous solemnity, as if they
were holding for a moment some sort of holy, supersensuous vision.

Then suddenly they grew reminiscent.

"How could I tell, Straker, how could I possibly tell?"

And Straker, remembering the dance that Philippa had led him, and
her appearance, and the things, the uncommonly queer things she had
done to him with her eyes, wondered how Furny _could_ have told, how
he could have avoided drawing the inferences, the uncommonly queer
inferences, he drew. He'd have drawn them himself if he had not
known Philippa so well.

"What I want to know," said Furnival, "is what she did it for?"

He rose, straightening himself.

"Anyhow, I've got to go."

"Did she say so?"

"No, she didn't. She said it wasn't necessary. _That_ was innocent,
Straker, if you like."

"Oh, jolly innocent," said Straker.

"But I'm going all the same. I'm going before breakfast, by the
seven-fifty train."

And he went. Straker saw him off.


IX

That was far and away the most disconcerting thing that had happened
at Amberley within Straker's recollection.

It must have been very disagreeable for Philippa.

When, five days ago, he had wondered if he would ever live to see
Philippa disconcerted, he had not contemplated anything like this.
Neither, he was inclined to think, had Philippa in the beginning.
She could have had no idea what she was letting herself in for. That
she had let herself in was, to Straker's mind, the awful part of it.

As he walked home from the station he called up all his cleverness,
all his tact and delicacy, to hide his knowledge of it from
Philippa. He tried to make himself forget it, lest by a word or a
look she should gather that he knew. He did not want to see her
disconcerted.

The short cut to Amberley from the station leads through a side gate
into the turning at the bottom of the east walk. Straker, as he
rounded the turning, saw Miss Tarrant not five yards off, coming
down the walk.

He was not ready for her, and his first instinct, if he could have
yielded to it, would have been to fly. That was his delicacy.

He met her with a remark on the beauty of the morning. That was his
tact.

He tried to look as if he hadn't been to see Furnival off at the
station, as if the beauty of the morning sufficiently accounted for
his appearance at that early hour. The hour, indeed, was so
disgustingly early that he would have half an hour to put through
with Philippa before breakfast.

But Miss Tarrant ignored the beauty of the morning.

"What have you done," she said, "with Mr. Furnival?"

It was Straker who was disconcerted now.

"What have I done with him?"

"Yes. Where is he?"

Straker's tact was at a disadvantage, but his delicacy instantly
suggested that if Miss Tarrant was not disconcerted it was because
she didn't know he knew. That made it all right.

"He's in the seven-fifty train."

A light leaped in her eyes; the light of defiance and pursuit, the
light of the hunter's lust frustrated and of the hunter's ire.

"You must get him back again," she said.

"I can't," said Straker. "He's gone on business." (He still used
tact with her.) "He had to go."

"He hadn't," said she. "That's all rubbish."

Her tone trod his scruples down and trampled on them, and Straker
felt that tact and delicacy required of him no more. She had given
herself away at last; she had let herself in for the whole calamity
of his knowledge, and he didn't know how she proposed to get out of
it this time. And he wasn't going to help her. Not he!

They faced each other as they stood there in the narrow walk, and
his knowledge challenged her dumbly for a moment. Then he spoke.

"Look here, what do you want him for? Why can't you let the poor
chap alone?"

"What do you suppose I want him for?"

"I've no business to suppose anything. I don't know. But I'm not
going to get him back for you."

Something flitted across her face and shifted the wide gaze of her
eyes. Straker went on without remorse.

"You know perfectly well the state he's in, and you know how he got
into it."

"Yes. And I know," she said, "what you think of me."

"It's more than I do," said Straker.

She smiled subtly, mysteriously, tolerantly, as it were.

"What did you do it for, Philippa?"

Her smile grew more subtle, more tolerant, more mysterious; it
measured him and found him wanting.

"If I told you," she said, "I don't think you'd understand. But I'll
try and make you."

She turned with him and they walked slowly toward the house.

"You saw," she said, "where he was going before I came? I got him
out of that, didn't I?"

He was silent, absorbed in contemplating the amazing fabric of her
thought.

"Does it very much matter how I did it?"

"Yes," said Straker, "if you ask me, I should say it did. The last
state of him, to my mind, was decidedly worse than the first."

"What do you suppose I did to him?"

"If you want the frankness of a brother, there's no doubt you--led
him on."

"I led him on--to heights he'd never have contemplated without me."

Straker tried to eliminate all expression from his face.

"What do you suppose I did to him last night?"

"I can only suppose you led him further, since he went further."

By this time Straker's tact and delicacy were all gone.

"Yes," said Miss Tarrant, "he went pretty far. But, on the whole,
it's just as well he did, seeing what's come of it."

"What _has_ come of it?"

"Well, I think he realizes that he has a soul. That's something."

"I didn't know it was his soul you were concerned with."

"He didn't, either. Did he tell you what I said to him?"

"He told me you gave him a dressing down. But there was something
that he wouldn't tell. What _did_ you say to him?"

"I said I supposed, after all, he had a soul, and I asked him what
he meant to do about it."

"What does he?"

"That's what I want him back for," she said, "to see. Whatever he
does with it, practically I've saved it."

She turned to him, lucid and triumphant.

"Could any other woman have done it? Do you see Mary Probyn doing
it?"

"Not that way."

"It was the only way. You must," she said, "have temperament."

The word took Straker's breath away.

"You didn't like the way I did it. I can't help that. I had to use
the means at my disposal. If I hadn't led him on how could I have
got hold of him? If I hadn't led him further how could I have got
him on an inch?"

"So that," said Straker quietly, "is what you did it for?"

"You've seen him," she answered. "You don't seriously suppose I
could have done it for anything else! What possible use had I for
that young man?"

He remembered that that was what she had said about Mr. Higginson.
But he confessed that, for a lady in a disconcerting situation, she
had shown genius in extricating herself.

Fanny's house party broke up and scattered the next day. A week
later Straker and Will Brocklebank saw Furnival in the Park. He was
driving a motor beyond his means in the society of a lady whom he
certainly could not afford.

"Good God!" said Brocklebank. "That's Philippa."

By which he meant, not that Furnival's lady in the least resembled
Philippa, but that she showed the heights to which Philippa had led
him on.


X

Brocklebank agreed with Straker that they had got to get him out of
that.

It was difficult, because the thing had come upon Furnival like a
madness. He would have had more chance if he had been a man with a
talent or an absorbing occupation, a politician, an editor, a
journalist; if he had even been, Brocklebank lamented, on the London
Borough Council it might have made him less dependent on the
sympathy of ruinous ladies. But the Home Office provided no
competitive distraction.

What was worse, it kept him on the scene of his temptation.

If it hadn't been for the Home Office he might have gone abroad with
the Brocklebanks; they had wanted him to go. Straker did what he
could for him. He gave him five days' yachting in August, and he
tried to get him away for week-ends in September; but Furnival
wouldn't go. Then Straker went away for his own holiday, and when he
came back he had lost sight of Furnival. So had the Home Office.

For three months Furnival went under. Then one day he emerged. The
Higginsons (Mary Probyn and her husband) ran up against him in
Piccadilly, or rather, he ran up against them, and their forms
interposed an effective barrier to flight. He was looking so
wretchedly ill that their hearts warmed to him, and they asked him
to dine with them that evening, or the next, or--well, the next
after that. He refused steadily, but Mary managed to worm his
address out of him and sent it on to Fanny Brocklebank that night.

Then the Brocklebanks, with prodigious forbearance and persistence,
went to work on him. Once they succeeded in getting well hold of him
they wouldn't let him go, and between them, very gradually, they got
him straight. He hadn't, Fanny discovered, been so very awful; he
had flung away all that he had on one expensive woman and he had
lost his job. Brocklebank found him another in an insurance office
where Fanny's brother was a director. Then Fanny settled down to the
really serious business of settling Furnival. She was always asking
him down to Amberley when the place was quiet, by which she meant
when Philippa Tarrant wasn't there. She was always asking nice girls
down to meet him. She worked at it hard for a whole year, and then
she said that if it didn't come off that summer she would have to
give it up.

The obstacle to her scheme for Furny's settlement was his
imperishable repugnance to the legal tie. It had become, Fanny
declared, a regular obsession. All this she confided to Straker as
she lunched with him one day in his perfectly appointed club in
Dover Street. Furny was coming down to Amberley, she said, in July;
and she added, "It would do you good, Jimmy, to come, too."

She was gazing at him with a look that he had come to know, having
known Fanny for fifteen years. A tender, rather dreamy look it was,
but distinctly speculative. It was directed to the silver streaks in
Straker's hair on a line with his eyeglasses, and he knew that Fanny
was making a calculation and saying to herself that it must be quite
fifteen years or more.

Straker was getting on.

A week at Amberley would do him all the good in the world. She
rather hoped--though she couldn't altogether promise him--that a
certain lady in whom he was interested (he needn't try to look as if
he wasn't) would be there.

"_Not_ Philippa?" he asked wearily.

"No, Jimmy, not Philippa. You know whom I mean."

He did. He went down to Amberley in July, arriving early in a golden
and benignant afternoon. It was precisely two years since he had
been there with Philippa. It was very quiet this year, so quiet that
he had an hour alone with Fanny on the terrace before tea.
Brocklebank had taken the others off somewhere in his motor.

She broke it to him that the lady in whom he was interested wasn't
there. Straker smiled. He knew she wouldn't be. The others, Fanny
explained, were Laurence Furnival and his Idea.

"His Idea?"

"His Idea, Jimmy, of everything that's lovable."

There was a luminous pause in which Fanny let it sink into him.

"Then it's come off, has it?"

"I don't know, but I think it's coming."

"Dear Mrs. Brockles, how did you manage it?"

"I didn't. That's the beauty of it. He managed it himself. He asked
me to have her down."

She let him take that in, too, in all its immense significance.

"Who is she?"

"Little Molly Milner--a niece of Nora Viveash's. He met her there
last winter."

Their eyes met, full of remembrance.

"If anybody managed it, it was Nora. Jimmy, do you know, that
woman's a perfect dear."

"I know you always said so."

"_He_ says so. He says she behaved like an angel, like a saint,
about it. When you think how she cared! I suppose she saw it was the
way to save him."

Straker was silent. He saw Nora Viveash as he had seen her on the
terrace two years ago, on the day of Philippa's arrival; and as she
had come to him afterward and asked him to stand by Furnival in his
bad hour.

"What is it like, Furny's Idea?" he asked presently.

"It's rather like Nora, only different. It's her niece, you know."

"If it's Nora's niece, it must be very young."

"It is. It's absurdly young. But, oh, so determined!"

"Has she by any chance got Nora's temperament?"

"She's got her own temperament," said Fanny.

Straker meditated on that.

"How does it take him?" he inquired.

"It takes him beautifully. It makes him very quiet, and a little
sad. That's why I think it's coming."

Fanny also meditated.

"Yes. It's coming. There's only one thing, Jimmy. Philippa's coming,
too. She's coming to-day, by that four-something train."

"My dear Fanny, how you _do_ mix 'em!"

It was his tribute to her enduring quality.

"I asked her before I knew Laurence Furnival was coming."

"_She_ knew?"

"I--I think so."

They looked at each other. Then Fanny spoke.

"Jimmy," she said, "do you think you could make love to Philippa?
Just, _just_," she entreated (when, indeed, had she not appealed to
him to save her from the consequences of her indiscretions?), "until
Furny goes?"

Straker's diplomatic reply was cut short by the appearance of
Laurence Furnival and Molly Milner, Nora's niece. They came down the
long terrace with the sun upon them. She was all in white, with here
and there a touch of delicate green. She was very young; and, yes,
she was very like Mrs. Viveash, with all the difference of her youth
and of her soul.

Furnival was almost pathetically pleased to see Straker there; and
Miss Milner, flushed but serene in the moment of introduction, said
that she had heard of Mr. Straker very often from--she hesitated,
and Straker saw what Fanny had meant when she said that the young
girl had a temperament of her own--from Mr. Furnival. Her charming
smile implied that she was aware that Straker counted, and aware of
all that he had done for Furnival.

As he watched her he began to see how different she was from Nora
Viveash. She was grave and extraordinarily quiet, Furnival's young
girl. He measured the difference by the power she had of making
Furnival--as Straker put it--different from himself. She had made
him grave and quiet, too. Not that he had by any means lost his
engaging spontaneity; only the spontaneous, the ungovernable thing
about him was the divine shyness and the wonder which he was
utterly unable to conceal.

It was at its height, it had spread its own silence all around it,
when, in that stillness which was her hour, her moment, Philippa
appeared.

She came down the terrace, golden for her as it had been two years
ago; she came slowly, more slowly than ever, with a touch of
exaggeration in her rhythm, in her delay, in the poise of her head,
and in all her gestures; the shade too much that Straker had
malignly prophesied for her. But with it all she was more beautiful,
and, he could see, more dangerous, than ever.

She had greeted the three of them, Fanny, Brocklebank, and Straker,
with that increase, that excess of manner; and then she saw Furnival
standing very straight in front of her, holding out his hand.

"Mr. Furnival--but--how _nice_!"

Furnival had sat down again, rather abruptly, beside Molly Milner,
and Fanny, visibly perturbed, was murmuring the young girl's name.

Something passed over Miss Tarrant's face like the withdrawing of a
veil. She was not prepared for Molly Milner. She had not expected to
find anything like that at Amberley. It was not what she supposed
that Furnival had come for. But, whatever he had come for, that, the
unexpected, was what Furnival was there for now. It was
disconcerting.

Philippa, in fact, was disconcerted.

All this Straker took in; he took in also, in a flash, the look that
passed between Miss Tarrant and Miss Milner. Philippa's look was
wonderful, a smile flung down from her heights into the old dusty
lists of sex to challenge that young Innocence. Miss Milner's look
was even more wonderful than Philippa's; grave and abstracted, it
left Philippa's smile lying where she had flung it; she wasn't
going, it said, to take _that_ up.

And yet a duel went on between them, a duel conducted with proper
propriety on either side. It lasted about half an hour. Philippa's
manner said plainly to Miss Milner: "My child, you have got hold of
something that isn't good for you, something that doesn't belong to
you, something that you are not old enough or clever enough to keep,
something that you will not be permitted to keep. You had better
drop it." Miss Milner's manner said still more plainly to Philippa:
"I don't know what you're driving at, but you don't suppose I take
you seriously, do you?" It said nothing at all about Laurence
Furnival. That was where Miss Milner's manner scored.

In short, it was a very pretty duel, and it ended in Miss Milner's
refusing to accompany Furnival to the Amberley woods and in
Philippa's carrying him off bodily (Straker noted that she scored a
point there, or seemed to score). As they went Miss Milner was seen
to smile, subtly, for all her innocence. She lent herself with great
sweetness to Brocklebank's desire to show her his prize roses.

Straker was left alone with Fanny.

Fanny was extremely agitated by the sight of Furnival's capture.
"Jimmy," she said, "haven't I been good to you? Haven't I been an
angel? Haven't I done every mortal thing I could for you?"

He admitted that she had.

"Well, then, now you've got to do something for me. You've got to
look after Philippa. Don't let her get at him."

"No fear."

But Fanny insisted that he had seen Philippa carrying Furnival off
under Molly Milner's innocent nose, and that her manner of
appropriating him, too, vividly recalled the evening of her arrival
two years ago, when he would remember what had happened to poor
Nora's nose.

"She took him from Nora."

"My dear Fanny, that was an act of the highest moral----"

"Don't talk to me about your highest moral anything. _I_ know what
it was."

"Besides, she didn't take him from Nora," she went on, ignoring her
previous line of argument. "He took himself. He was getting tired of
her."

"Well," said Straker, "he isn't tired of Miss Milner."

"She's taken him off _there_," said Fanny. She nodded gloomily
toward the Amberley woods.

Straker smiled. He was looking westward over the shining fields
where he had once walked with Philippa. Already they were returning.
Furnival had not allowed himself to be taken very far. As they
approached Straker saw that Philippa was pouring herself out at
Furnival and that Furnival was not absorbing any of it; he was
absorbed in his Idea. His Idea had made him absolutely impervious to
Philippa. All this Straker saw.

He made himself very attentive to Miss Tarrant that evening, and
after dinner, at her request, he walked with her on the terrace.
Over the low wall they could see Furnival in the rose garden with
Miss Milner. They saw him give her a rose, which the young girl
pinned in the bosom of her gown.

"Aren't they wonderful?" said Philippa. "Did you ever see anything
under heaven so young?"

"She is older than he is," said Straker.

"Do you remember when he wanted to give _me_ one and I wouldn't take
it?"

"I have not forgotten."

The lovers wandered on down the rose garden and Philippa looked
after them. Then she turned to Straker.

"I've had a long talk with him. I've told him that he must settle
down and that he couldn't do a better thing for himself than----"

She paused.

"Well," said Straker, "it _looks_ like it, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Philippa. "It looks like it."

They talked of other things.

"I am going," she said presently, "to ask Miss Milner to stay with
me."

Straker didn't respond. He was thinking deeply. Her face was so
mysterious, so ominous, that yet again he wondered what she might be
up to. He confessed to himself that this time he didn't know. But he
made her promise to go on the river with him the next day. They were
to start at eleven-thirty.

At eleven Fanny came to him in the library.

"She's gone," said Fanny. "She's left a little note for you. She
said you'd forgive her, you'd understand."

"Do _you_?" said Straker.

"She said she was going to be straight and see this thing through."

"What thing?"

"Furny's thing. What else do you suppose she's thinking of? She said
she'd only got to lift her little finger and he'd come back to her;
she said there ought to be fair play. Do you see? She's gone
away--to save him."

"Good Lord!" said Straker.

But he saw.


XI

It was nearly twelve months before he heard again from Miss Tarrant.
Then one day she wrote and asked him to come and have tea with her
at her flat in Lexham Gardens.

He went. His entrance coincided with the departure of Laurence
Furnival and a lady whom Philippa introduced to him as Mrs.
Laurence, whom, she said, he would remember under another name.

Furnival's wife was younger than ever and more like Nora Viveash and
more different. When the door closed on them Philippa turned to him
with her radiance (the least bit overdone).

"_I_ made that marriage," she said, and staggered him.

"Surely," he said, "it was made in heaven."

"If this room is heaven. It was made here, six months ago."

She faced him with all his memories. With all his memories and her
own she faced him radiantly.

"You know now," she said, "_why I did it_. It was worth while,
wasn't it?"

His voice struggled with his memories and stuck. It stuck in his
throat.

Before he left he begged her congratulations on a little affair of
his own; a rather unhappy affair which had ended happily the week
before last. He did not tell her that, if it hadn't been for the
things dear Fanny Brocklebank had done for him, the way she had
mixed herself up with his unhappy little affair, it might have ended
happily a year ago.

"But," said Philippa, "how beautiful!"

He never saw Miss Tarrant again. Their correspondence ceased after
his marriage, and he gathered that she had no longer any use for
him.




APPEARANCES


I

All afternoon since three o'clock he had sat cooling his heels in a
corner of the hotel veranda. And all afternoon he had been a
spectacle of interest to the beautiful cosmopolitan creature who
watched him from her seat under the palm tree in the corresponding
corner.

She had two men with her, and when she was not occupied with one or
both of them she turned her splendid eyes, gaily or solemnly, on
Oscar Thesiger. And every time she turned them Thesiger in his
corner darkened and flushed and bit his moustache and twirled it,
while his eyes answered hers as he believed they meant him to
answer. Oscar Thesiger was not a cosmopolitan himself for nothing.

And all the time while he looked at her he was thinking, thinking
very miserably, of little Vera Walters.

She had refused him yesterday evening without giving any reason.

Her cruelty (if it wasn't cruelty he'd like to know what it was)
remained unexplained, incomprehensible to Oscar Thesiger.

For, if she didn't mean to marry him, why on earth had they asked
him to go abroad with them? Why had they dragged him about with them
for five weeks, up and down the Riviera? Why was he there now,
cooling his heels in the veranda of the Hôtel Méditerranée, Cannes?
That was where the cruelty, the infernal cruelty came in.

And her reasons--if she had only given him her reasons. It was all
he asked for. But of course she hadn't any.

What possible reason could she have? It wasn't as if he'd been a bad
lot like her French brother-in-law, Paul de Vignolles (good Lord,
the things he knew about de Vignolles!). He was, as men go, a decent
sort. He had always known where to draw the line (de Vignolles
didn't). And he wasn't ugly, like de Vignolles. On the contrary, he
was, as men go, distinctly good looking; he knew he was; the glances
of the beautiful and hypothetical stranger assured him of it, and he
had looked in the glass not half an hour ago to reassure himself.
Solid he was, and well built, and he had decorative points that
pleased: a fresh color, eyes that flashed blue round a throbbing
black, a crisp tawny curl in his short moustache and shorter hair.
He was well off; there wasn't a thing she wanted that he couldn't
give her. And he was the admired and appreciated friend of her
admired and appreciated sister, Agatha de Vignolles.

And for poor little Vera, as far as he could see, the alternatives
to marrying him were dismal. It was either marrying a Frenchman,
since Agatha had married one, or living forever with that admired
and appreciated woman, looking after the little girls, Ninon and
Odette. She had been looking after them ever since he had first met
her and fallen, with some violence, in love with her.

It was a bit late now to go back on all that. It had been an
understood thing. Vera herself had understood it, and she--well, she
had lent herself to it very sweetly, shyly, and beautifully, as Vera
would. If she hadn't he wouldn't have had a word to say against her
decision.

It wasn't as if she had been a cold and selfish woman like her
sister. She wasn't cold; and, as for selfish, he had seen her with
Agatha and the little girls. It was through the little girls that he
had made love to her, that being the surest and shortest way. He had
worked it through Ninon and Odette; he had carried them on his back
by turns that very afternoon, in the heat of the sun, all the way,
that terrible winding way, up the Californie Hill to the Observatory
at the top, where they had sat drinking coffee and eating brioches,
he and Vera and Ninon and Odette. What on earth did she suppose he
did it for?

But she hadn't supposed anything; she had simply understood, and had
been adorable to him all afternoon. Not that she had said much (Vera
didn't say things); but her eyes, her eyes had given her away; they
had been as soft for him as they had been for Ninon and Odette.

Why, oh why, hadn't he done it, then?

He couldn't, because of those two infernal, bilingual little
monkeys. They were clinging to her skirts all the way down the hill.

They were all going to Nice the next day; and that evening the de
Vignolles had gone down to the Casino and Vera hadn't gone. It would
have been all right if the children had not been allowed to sit up
to see the conjuror conjuring in the lounge. But they had sat up;
and that had brought it to ten o'clock before he had Vera for a
minute to himself.

He may have chosen his moment badly (it wasn't easy to choose it
well, living, as the de Vignolles did, in public), and perhaps, if
they hadn't had that little difference of opinion, he and she---- It
was in the evening that they had had it, between the conjuring
tricks and the children's chatter, in the public, the intolerably
public lounge, and it was only a difference of opinion, opinion
concerning the beauty of the beautiful and hypothetical lady who was
looking at him then, who had never ceased to look at him and Vera
and the children when any of them were about.

Thesiger couldn't get Vera to say that the lady was beautiful, and
the little that she did say implied that you couldn't be beautiful
if you looked like that. She was not beautiful (Thesiger had
admitted it) in Vera's way, and on the whole he was glad to think
that Vera didn't look like that; but there was, he had contended, a
beauty absolute and above opinion, and the lady had it. That was
all. Perhaps, now he came to think of it, he ought not to have drawn
Vera's attention to her; for he knew what Vera had thought of her by
the things she hadn't said, and, what was worse, he knew what Paul
de Vignolles thought by the things he _had_ said, things implying
that, if the lady were honest, appearances were against her. Of her
and of her honesty Thesiger didn't feel very sure himself. He found
himself continually looking at her to make sure. He had been looking
at her then, across the little table in the lounge where she and her
two men sat drinking coffee and liqueurs. She kept thrusting her
face between the two as she talked; she had a rose in her bronze
hair, which made him dubious; and when their eyes met, as they were
always meeting (how could he help it?), his doubt leaped in him and
fastened on her face. Her face had held him for a moment so with all
his doubt, and he had stared at her and flamed in a curious
excitement born of Vera's presence and of hers, while he smiled to
himself furtively under the moustache he bit.

And then he had seen Vera looking at him.

For a moment she had looked at him, with wide, grave eyes that
stayed wide until she turned her head away suddenly.

And the lady, who was the cause of it all, had got up and removed
herself, softly and, for her, inconspicuously, taking her two men
with her out into the garden and the night.

Of course he had understood Vera. He had seen that it was jealousy,
feminine jealousy. And that was why, in the drawing-room afterward,
he had hurried up with his proposal, to make it all straight.

And she had refused him without giving any reasons. She had gone off
to Nice by the one-forty-four train with the de Vignolles, Paul and
Agatha and Ninon and Odette; she had left him in the great, gay,
exotic hotel above the palm trees, above the rose and ivory town,
above the sea; left him alone with the loveliness that made him mad
and miserable; left him cooling his heels on the veranda, under the
gaze, the distinctly interested gaze, of the beautiful and
hypothetical stranger.


II

How beautiful she was he realized after a dinner which figured in
his memory as one of those dinners which he had not enjoyed, though
as a matter of fact he _had_ enjoyed it or the mere distraction of
it. By way of distraction he had taken the table next to hers,
facing her where she sat between her two men.

She was an American; that fact had at first made his doubt itself a
little dubious. And she was probably from the South (they were
different there). Hence her softness, her full tone, her richness
and her glow. Hence her exotic strain that went so well with the
false tropics of the scene. But whether she were a provincial or an
urban, or, as she seemed, a cosmopolitan splendor, Thesiger was not
cosmopolitan enough to tell. She might have been the supreme flower
of her astounding country. She might have been, for all he knew,
unique.

She was tall, and her body, large and massive, achieved the grace of
slenderness from the sheer perfection of its lines. Her attire,
within the bounds of its subservience to Paris, was certainly
unique. It was wonderful the amount of decoration she could carry
without being the worse for it. Her head alone, over and above its
bronze hair, coil on coil and curl on curl, sustained several large
tortoise-shell pins, a gold lace fillet, and a rose over each ear.
It was no more to her than a bit of black ribbon to a young girl.
Old rose and young rose mingled delicately in the silks and gauzes
of her gown; here and there a topaz flashed rose from her bodice and
from the dusk of her bared neck. There was a fine dusk in her
whiteness and in the rose of her face, and in the purplish streaks
under her eyes, and deeper dusks about the roots of her hair. And
gold sprang out of her darkness there; gold and bronze and copper
gleamed and glowed and flamed on every coil and curl. Her eyes held
the light gloriously; they were of a luminous, tawny brown, wide
apart, and slightly round, with a sudden fineness at the corners.
The lids had thick black lashes, so short that when they drooped
they had the effect of narrowing her eyes without darkening them.
Her nose, small and straight, was a shade too broadly rounded at the
tip, but that defect gave a sort of softness to her splendor. Of her
mouth Thesiger could not judge; he hadn't seen it at rest; and when
she talked her white teeth flashed at him and disturbed him.

As he looked at her, disturbed, and he hoped, disturbing, he
thought of little Vera Walters, of her slender virginal body, of her
small virginal face, smooth, firm, and slightly pointed like a bud,
of her gray eyes, clear as water, and of the pale gold and fawn of
her hair. He thought of her tenderness and of her cruelty. He caught
himself frowning at it over the _mousse de volaille_ he was eating;
and just then he thought that the other woman who was looking at him
smiled. Most certainly she gazed.

The gaze was condoned and allowed by the two men who followed it.

She was superb; but the men, the men were awful. To begin with, they
were American, altogether too American for Thesiger. One, whom the
lady addressed with some ceremony as Mr. Tarbuck, was the big, full
type, florid, rough-hewn, civilized by the cut of his clothes and
the excessive cleanness of his shaving. From the first he had
oppressed and offended Thesiger by his large and intolerably genial
presence. The other, whom she familiarly and caressingly called
Binky, was small and lean and yellow; he had a young face with old,
nervous lines in it, the twitching, tortured lines of the victim of
premature high pressure, effete in one generation. The small man
drank, most distinctly and disagreeably he drank. He might have been
the wreck of saloon bars, or of the frequent convivial cocktail, or
of savage, solitary drinking.

The lady seemed to be traveling under Tarbuck's awful wing, while
the outrageous Binky wandered conspicuously and somewhat
mysteriously under hers. She was attentive to the small man and
peeled his peaches for him, while the large man, smiling largely and
with irrepressible affection, peeled hers. The large man (flagrantly
opulent) had ordered peaches. He supposed they'd be the one thing
that durned hotel hadn't got.

Thesiger conceived a violent hatred for him and for the small man,
too. He always had hated the male of the American species. He looked
on him as a disagreeable and alien creature; at his best a creature
of predatory instincts who appropriated and monopolized all those
things of power and beauty that belonged, properly speaking, to his
betters; at his worst a defiler of the sacred wells, a murderer and
mutilator of the language, of his, Oscar Thesiger's, language.

The two were murdering it now, the large man with a terrible slow
assurance in the operation; the small man, as it were, worrying it
between his teeth, disposing of it in little savage snaps and jerks
and nasal snarlings. He would stop eating to do it. That was when
his beautiful and hypothetical companion left him to himself.

For the lady had a curiously soothing and subduing effect on the
small man. Sometimes, when his snarls were too obtrusive, she would
put out her hand, her small, perfect hand, and touch his sleeve, and
he would cease snarling and begin to peck feebly at the things
before him, or at the things before her, as the case might be.
Thesiger actually saw her transferring the _entrée_ she had just
tasted from her own plate to his; he heard her coaxing and cajoling
him, calling on him by his offensive name of Binky. "Eat, little
Binky! Little Binky, eat!"

There seemed to be some rule in a game they had, by which, if she
first touched or tasted anything, Binky could not honorably refuse
it.

It was clear that she had a hold on the small man. Thesiger had
noticed that when she cancelled his orders for drinks he made no
resistance, while he bitterly resented Mr. Tarbuck's efforts at
control. She would then inquire gaily of Mr. Tarbuck whether he was
in command of this expedition or was she?

To-night, her fine eyes being considerably occupied with Thesiger,
the small man asserted his independence and was served,
surreptitiously as it were, with a brimming whisky and soda.

He had got his hand on it when the lady shot out a sudden arm across
the table, and with a staggering dexterity and impudence possessed
herself of his glass. Over the rim of it she kept her eyes on him,
narrowed eyes, darting mockery of Binky under half-closed lids; and,
with her head tilted back, she drank; she drank daintily, about an
inch down, and then she gave the glass to the large man, and he, as
if honor and chivalry compelled him also, emptied it.

"Did you that time, Binky," she murmured.

Thesiger heard her. She was looking at him, obviously to see how his
fastidiousness had taken it. She leaned forward, her elbows on the
table, and her head, propped on her hands, tilted slightly backward,
and she gazed at him under her lowered eyelids with her narrowed,
darting eyes. Then suddenly she lowered her chin and opened her
eyes, and he met them full.

Her gaze, which had first fascinated, now excited him; very
curiously it excited him, seeing that he was thinking about Vera
Walters all the time. So unabashed it was, and so alluring, it sent
such challenge and encouragement to the adventurous blood, that
under it the passion that Vera would have none of detached itself
from Vera with a fierce revulsion, and was drawn and driven, driven
and drawn toward that luminous and invincible gaze. And Thesiger
began to say to himself that the world was all before him, although
for him Vera had walked out of it; that he was a man of the world;
and that he didn't care.

It seemed to him that the beautiful American smiled again at him.
Then she got up, and swept down the dining-hall, swinging her rosy
draperies. The two men followed her, and Thesiger was left alone in
that vast place, seated at his table, and staring into a half-empty
wineglass, to the embarrassment of the waiter who hovered by his
chair.

After all, she left him an ultimate scruple; he could not altogether
trust his doubt.


III

It was a fine night, and the lounge was almost deserted. Thesiger,
searching it for some one he could speak to, counted four old ladies
and their middle-aged companions, three young governesses and their
charges only less young, and one old gentleman, fixed by an extreme
corpulence in his armchair, asleep over _Le Figaro_, while one
ponderous hand retained upon his knee _Le Petit Journal_. Nowhere
any sign of the transatlantic mystery and her companions. It
occurred to Thesiger that it might interest him to know her name (he
hadn't heard it), and even the number of her room.

He strolled to the racks on each side of the great staircase where
the visitors' names were posted, and after a prolonged investigation
he came upon the three: Miss Roma Lennox, Mr. Frank Bingham-Booker,
and Mr. Theobald G. Tarbuck, of New York City, U. S. A. Their
respective numbers were 74, 75, and 80. What was odd, the opulent
Tarbuck (number 80) occupied a small room looking over the garage at
the back, while 74, Mr. Frank Bingham-Booker, who was visibly
impecunious, and 75, Miss Roma Lennox, luxuriated.--Thesiger shook
his head over the social complication and gave it up.

The lounge was no place for him. He went out, down the Californie
Hill and along the Avenue des Palmiers, with some idea of turning
eventually into the Casino. He was extraordinarily uplifted. He
thought that he was feeling the enchantment of the lucid night above
the sea, the magic of the white city of the hills, feeling the very
madness of the tropics in the illusion that she made with her palm
trees and their velvet shadows on the white pavement.

He had come to the little Place before the Casino, set with plane
trees. Under the electric globes the naked stems, the branches,
naked to the tip, showed white with a livid, supernatural, a
devilish and iniquitous whiteness. The scene was further
illuminated, devilishly, iniquitously, as it were, through the doors
and windows of the Casino, of the restaurants, of the brasseries, of
the omnipresent and omnipotent American Bar. If there were really
any magic there, any devilry, any iniquity, it joined hands with the
iniquity and devilry in Oscar Thesiger's soul, and led them forth
desirous of adventure. And walking slowly and superbly, under the
white plane trees, the adventure came.

As the light fell on her superb and slow approach, he saw that it
was Roma Lennox; Roma Lennox walking, oh Lord! by herself, like
that, after ten at night, in Cannes, on the pavement of the Place.
She was coming toward him, making straight for him, setting herself
unavoidably in his path. He had been prepared for many things, but
he had not been prepared for that, for the publicity, the flagrance
of it. And yet he was not conscious of any wonder; rather he had a
sense of the expectedness, the foregoneness of the event, and a
savage joy in the certainty she gave him, in his sudden absolution
from the ultimate scruple, the release from that irritating,
inhibiting doubt of his doubt.

He raised his hat and inquired urbanely whether he might be
permitted to walk with her a little way.

She had stopped and was regarding him with singular directness.

"Why, certainly," she said.

They walked the little way permitted, and then, at her suggestion,
they sat together under the plane trees on one of the chairs in a
fairly solitary corner of the Place.

He saw now that she had changed her gown and that, over some
obscurer thing, she wore a long, dull purple coat with wide hanging
sleeves; her head was bound and wound, half-Eastern fashion, in a
purple veil, hiding her hair. In her dark garb, with all her colors
hidden, her brilliance extinguished, she was more wonderful than
ever, more than ever in keeping with the illusion of the tropics.

His hands trembled and his pulses beat as he found himself thus
plunged into the heart of the adventure. He might have been put off
by the sheer rapidity and facility of the thing, but for her serious
and somber air that seemed to open up depths, obscurities.

She sat very still, her profile slightly averted, and with one
raised hand she held her drifting veil close about her chin. They
sat thus in silence a moment, for her mystery embarrassed him. Then
(slowly and superbly) over her still averted shoulder she half
turned her head toward him.

"Well," she said, "haven't you anything to say for yourself? It's up
to you."

Then, nervously, he began to say things, to pay her the barefaced,
far from subtle, compliments that had served him once or twice
before on similar occasions (if any occasion could be called
similar). Addressed to her, they seemed somehow inadequate. He said
that, of course, inadequate he knew they were.

"I'm glad you think so," said Miss Lennox.

"I--I said I knew it."

"Oh--the things you know!"

"And the things _you_ know." He grew fervid. "Don't pretend you
don't know them. Don't pretend you don't know how a man feels when
he looks at you."

"And why should I pretend?"

She had turned round now with her whole body and faced him squarely.

"Why should you? Why should you?"

Lashed, driven as he judged she meant him to be by her composure,
his passion shook him and ran over, from the tips of his fingers
stroking the flung sleeve of her coat, from the tip of his tongue
uttering the provoked, inevitable things--things that came from him
hushed for the crowd, but, for her, hurried, vehement, unveiled.

She listened without saying one word; she listened without looking
at him, looking, rather, straight in front of her, and tilting her
head a little backward before the approach of his inflamed,
impetuous face.

He stopped, and she bent forward slightly and held him with the full
gaze of her serious eyes.

"What--do you think--you're doing?" she asked slowly.

He said he supposed that she could see.

"I can see a good deal. I see you _think_ you're saying these things
to me because you've found me here at this peculiar time, in this
peculiar place, and because I haven't any man around."

"No, no. That wasn't it, I--I assure you."

A terrible misgiving seized him.

"Why did you do it?" she asked sweetly.

"I--upon my word, I don't know why."

For it seemed to him now that he really hadn't known.

"I'll tell you why," said Roma Lennox. "You did it because you were
just crazy with caring for another woman--a nice, sweet girl who
won't have anything to say to you. And you've been saying to
yourself you're durned if she cares, and you're durned if you care.
And all the time you feel so bad about it that you must go and do
something wicked right away. And taking off your hat to me was your
idea of just about the razzlingest, dazzlingest, plumb wickedest
thing you could figure out to do."

He rose, and took off his hat to her again.

"If I did," he said, "I beg your pardon. Fact is, I--I--I thought
you were somebody else."

"I know it," said she, and paused. "Was it a very strong likeness
that misled you?"

"No. No likeness at all. It's all right," he added hurriedly. "I'm
going--I--I can't think how I made the mistake."

He looked at the scene, at the nocturnal prowlers and promenaders,
at the solitary veiled and seated figure, and he smiled. In all his
agony he smiled.

"And yet," he said, "somebody else will be making it if I leave you
here. Somebody who won't go. I'll go if you like, but----"

"Sit down," she said; "sit down right here. _You_'re not going till
you and I have had a straight talk. Don't you worry about your
mistake. I _meant_ you to come up and speak to me."

That staggered him.

"Good Lord! What on earth _for_?"

"Because I knew that if I didn't you'd go up and speak to somebody
else. Somebody who wouldn't let you go."

She was more staggering than he could have thought her.

"But, dear lady, why----?"

"Why? It's quite simple. You see, I saw you and her together, and I
took an interest--I always do take an interest. So I watched you;
and then--well--I saw what you thought of me for watching. At first
I was just wild. And then, afterward, I said to myself I didn't know
but what I'd just as soon you _did_ think it, and then we'd have it
out, and we'd see what we could make of it between us."

"Make of it?" he breathed.

"Well--I suppose you'll have to make something of it, won't you?"

"Between us?" He smiled faintly.

"Between us. I suppose if I've made you feel like that I've got to
help you."

"To help _me_?"

"To help anyone who wants it.--You don't mind if I keep on looking
at the Casino instead of looking at you? I can talk just the
same.--And then, you see, it was because of me she left you--by the
one-forty-four train."

"Because of you?"

"Because of the way you looked at me last night. She saw you."

He remembered.

"She saw that you thought I wasn't straight; and she saw that that
was what interested you."

"Ah," he cried. "I was a cad. Why don't you tell me so? Why don't
you pitch into me?"

"Because I fancy you've got about enough to bear. You see, I saw it
all, and I was so sorry--so sorry."

She left it there a moment for him to take it in, her beautiful,
astounding sorrow.

"And I just wanted to start right in and help you."

He murmured something incoherent, something that made her smile.

"Oh, it wasn't for the sake of _your_ fine eyes, Mr.
I-don't-know-your-name. It was because of her. I could see her
saying to her dear little self, 'That woman isn't straight. He isn't
straight, either. He won't do.' That's the sort of man she thought
you were."

"But it wasn't as if she didn't know me, as if she didn't care. She
did care."

"She did, indeed."

"Then why," he persisted, "why did she leave me?"

"Don't you understand?" (Her voice went all thick and tender in her
throat.) "She was thinking of the children. You couldn't see her
with those teeny, teeny things, and not know that's what she would
think of."

"But," he wailed, "it wasn't as if they were her own children."

"Oh, how stupid you are! It was her own children she _was_ thinking
of."


IV

"So that was her reason," he said presently.

"Of course. Of course. It's the reason for the whole thing. It's the
reason why, when a young man like you sees a young woman like me--I
mean like the lady you thought I was--in an over-stimulating and
tempestuous place like this, instead of taking off his silly hat to
her, he should jam it well down over his silly ears and--quit!"

"You keep on saying 'what I thought you were.' I can't think how I
could, or why I did."

"I know why," she replied serenely. "You fancied I had more
decorations in my back hair than a respectable woman can well
carry."

She meditated.

"I thought I could afford a rose or two. But it seems I couldn't."

"You? You can afford anything--anything. All the same----"

"Well, if I can afford to sit with you, out here, at a quarter past
ten, on this old heathenish piazza, I suppose I can."

"All the same----" he insisted.

She meditated again.

"All the same, if it wasn't those roses, I can't think what it was."

"Dear lady, it wasn't the roses. You are so deadly innocent I think
I ought to tell you what it was."

"Do," she said.

"It was, really, it was seeing you here, walking by yourself. It's
so jolly late, you know."

She drew herself up. "An American woman can walk anywhere, at any
time."

"Oh, yes, of course, of course. But for ordinary people, and in
Latin countries, it's considered--well, a trifle singular."

She smiled.

"You puzzle me," he said. "Just now you seemed perfectly aware of
it. And yet----"

"_And_ yet?" she raised her eyebrows.

"And yet, well--here you are, you know."

"Here I am, and here I've got to stay, it seems. Well--before that?"

"Before that?"

"Before this?" She tapped her foot, impatient at the slow movement
of his thought. "Up there in the hotel?"

"Oh, in the hotel. I suppose it was seeing you with----"

It was positively terrible, the look with which she faced him now.
But his idea was that he had got to help her (hadn't she helped
him?), and he was going through with it. It was permissible; it was
even imperative, seeing the lengths, the depths, rather, of intimacy
that they had gone to.

"Those two," he said. "They don't seem exactly your sort."

"You mean," said she, "they are not exactly yours."

She felt the shudder of his unspoken "Heaven forbid!"

"I suppose," she continued, "if a European man sees any woman alone
in a hotel with two men whom he can't size up right away as her
blood relations, he's apt to think things. Well, for all you know,
Mr. Tarbuck might be my uncle and Mr. Bingham-Booker my
half-brother."

"But they aren't."

"No. As far as blood goes, they aren't any more to me than Adam. You
have me there."

There was a long pause which Thesiger, for the life of him, could
not fill.

"Well," she reverted, "Mr. Whoever-you-are, I don't know that I owe
you an explanation----"

"You don't owe me anything."

"All the same I'm going to give you one, so that next time
you'll think twice before you make any more of your venerable
European mistakes. It isn't every woman who'd know how to turn
them to your advantage. Perhaps you've seen what's wrong with Mr.
Bingham-Booker?"

He intimated that it was not practicable not to see. "If I may say
so, that makes it all the more unfitting----"

"That's all you know about it, Mr.----"

"Thesiger," he supplied.

"Mr. Thesiger. That boy had to be taken care of. He was killing
himself with drink before we came away. He'd had a shock to his
nerves, that's what brought it on. He was ordered to Europe as his
one chance. Somebody had to go with him, somebody he'd mind, and
there wasn't anybody he _did_ mind but me. I've known him since he
was a little thing in knickerbockers, that high. So we fixed it that
I was to go out and look after Binky, and Binky's mother--he's her
only son--was coming out too, to look after me. We cared for
appearances as much as you do. Well, the day before we sailed her
married daughter was taken sick, in the inconsiderate way that
married daughters have, and she couldn't go. And, do you know, there
wasn't a woman that could take her place. They were afraid, every
one of them, because they knew." She lowered her voice to utter it.
"It makes him mad."

"My dear lady, it was a job for a trained nurse."

"Trained nurse? They couldn't afford one. And we didn't want a
uniform hanging around and rubbing it into the poor boy and
everybody else that he was an incurable dipsomaniac."

"But you--_you_?"

"It was my job. You don't suppose I was going back on them?"

She faced him with it, and as he looked at her he took the measure
of her magnificence, her brilliant bravery.

"Going back on _him_? Poor Binky, he was so good and dear--except
for that. You never saw anything so cute. Up to all sorts of
monkey-shines and beautiful surprises. And then"--she smiled with a
tender irony--"he gave us _this_ surprise." From her face you could
not have gathered how far from beautiful his last had been. "I was
going to see that boy through if I had to go with him alone. I said
to myself there are always people around who'll think things,
whatever you do, but it doesn't matter what people who don't matter
think. And then--Mr. Tarbuck wouldn't let me go alone. He said I'd
have to have a man with me. A strong man. He'd known me--never mind
how long--so it was all right. I don't know what I'd have done
without Mr. Tarbuck."

She paused on him.

"That man, whom you don't think fit for me to have around,
is--well--he's the finest man I've ever known or want to know. He
does the dearest things."

She paused again, remembering them. And Thesiger, though her
admiration of Tarbuck was obscurely hateful to him, owned that, fine
as she was, she was at her finest as she praised him.

"Why," she went on, "just because Binky couldn't afford a good room
he gave him his. He said the view of the sea would set him up better
than anything, and the garage was all the view _he_ wanted, because
he's just crazy on motors. And he's been like that all through.
Never thought of himself once."

"Oh, didn't he?" said Thesiger.

"Not once. Do you know, Mr. Tarbuck is a very big man. He runs one
of the biggest businesses in the States; and at twenty-four hours'
notice he left his big business to take care of itself, and came
right away on this trip to take care of me."

"Is he taking care of you now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well--if he can leave you--here----?"

"Why, he's here somewhere, looking for Mr. Bingham-Booker. He's
routing about in those queer saloons and places."

"And you?"

"I'm keeping my eye on the Casino. It's my fault he got away. You
can't always tell when it's best to give him his head and when it
isn't. I ought to have let him have that whiskey and soda. Do you
see either of them?"

He looked round. "I think," he said, "I see Mr. Tarbuck."

She followed his gaze. Not five yards from them, planted on the
pavement as if he grew there, was Mr. Tarbuck. His large back was
turned to them with an expression at once ostentatious and discreet.
Thesiger had the idea that it had been there for some considerable
time, probably ever since his own appearance. Mr. Tarbuck's back
said plainly that, though Mr. Tarbuck neither looked nor listened,
that he would scorn the action, yet he was there, at his friend's
service if she wanted him.

"I'm afraid," said Roma Lennox, "he hasn't found him."

"He doesn't seem to be looking."

(He didn't.)

"Oh, I fancy," said she, "he's just squinting round."

"Can I do anything?"

"Why, yes, you could sit here and watch the Casino while I go and
speak to Mr. Tarbuck."

She went and spoke to him. Thesiger saw how affectionately the large
man bent his head to her.

She returned to Thesiger, and Mr. Tarbuck (whom she had evidently
released from sentry-go) stalked across the Place toward the
American Bar.

"He is not in the Casino," she said.

"Have you tried the American Bar?"

"Of course; we've tried all of them."

"I say, I want to help you. Can't I?"

She shook her head.

"If I stayed on in the hotel, could I be of any use?"

"You're not going to stay."

"Why shouldn't I? I've nothing else to do."

"Oh, haven't you? What _you_ have to do is to take that
one-forty-four train to Nice, to-morrow afternoon."

"It's no good," he muttered gloomily. "I'm done for. You've made me
see that plain enough."

"All I made you see was why she turned you down. And now that you do
see----"

"What difference does it make, my seeing it?"

"Why, all the difference. Do you think I'd have taken all this
trouble if it wasn't for that--to have you go right away and make it
up with her?"

"And with you--can I ever make it up?"

"Don't you worry."

She rose. "I suppose appearances were against me; but----"

She held him for a moment with her eyes that measured him; then, as
if she had done all that she wanted with him, she gave him back to
himself, the finer for her handling.

"It wasn't for appearances you really cared."




THE WRACKHAM MEMOIRS


I

The publishers told you he behaved badly, did they? They didn't know
the truth about the "Wrackham Memoirs."

You may well wonder how Grevill Burton got mixed up with them, how
he ever could have known Charles Wrackham.

Well, he did know him, pretty intimately, too, but it was through
Antigone, and because of Antigone, and for Antigone's adorable sake.
We never called her anything but Antigone, though Angelette was the
name that Wrackham, with that peculiar shortsightedness of his, had
given to the splendid creature.

Why Antigone? You'll see why.

No, I don't mean that Wrackham murdered his father and married his
mother; but he wouldn't have stuck at either if it could have helped
him to his literary ambition. And every time he sat down to write a
book he must have been disgusting to the immortal gods. And Antigone
protected him.

She was the only living child he'd had, or, as Burton once savagely
said, was ever likely to have. And I can tell you that if poor
Wrackham's other works had been one half as fine as Antigone it
would have been glory enough for Burton to have edited him. For he
_did_ edit him.

They met first, if you'll believe it, at Ford Lankester's funeral.
I'd gone to Chenies early with young Furnival, who was "doing" the
funeral for his paper, and with Burton, who knew the Lankesters, as
I did, slightly. I'd had a horrible misgiving that I should see
Wrackham there; and there he was, in the intense mourning of that
black cloak and slouch hat he used to wear. The cloak was a fine
thing as far as it went, and with a few more inches he really might
have carried it off; but those few more inches were just what had
been denied him. Still, you couldn't miss him or mistake him. He was
exactly like his portraits in the papers; you know the haggard,
bilious face that would have been handsome if he'd given it a
chance; the dark, straggling, and struggling beard, the tempestuous,
disheveled look he had, and the immortal Attitude. He was standing
in it under a yew tree looking down into Lankester's grave. It was a
small white chamber about two feet square--enough for his ashes. The
earth at the top of it was edged with branches of pine and laurel.

Furnival said afterward you could see what poor Wrackham was
thinking of. _He_ would have pine branches. Pine would be
appropriate for the stormy Child of Nature that he was. And
laurel--there would have to be lots of laurel. He was at the height
of his great vogue, the brief popular fury for him that was absurd
then and seems still more absurd to-day, now that we can measure
him. He takes no room, no room at all, even in the popular
imagination; less room than Lankester's ashes took--or his own, for
that matter.

Yes, I know it's sad in all conscience. But Furnival seemed to think
it funny then, for he called my attention to him. I mustn't miss
him, he said.

Perhaps I might have thought it funny too if it hadn't been for
Antigone. I was not prepared for Antigone. I hadn't realized her.
She was there beside her father, not looking into the grave, but
looking at him as if she knew what he was thinking and found it, as
we find it now, pathetic. But unbearably pathetic.

Somehow there seemed nothing incongruous in _her_ being there. No, I
can't tell you what she was like to look at, except that she was
like a great sacred, sacrificial figure; she might have come there
to pray, or to offer something, or to pour out a libation. She was
tall and grave, and gave the effect of something white and golden.
In her black gown and against the yew trees she literally shone.

It was because of Antigone that I went up and spoke to him, and did
it (I like to think I did it now) with reverence. He seemed, in
spite of the reverence, to be a little dashed at seeing _me_ there.
His idea, evidently, was that if so obscure a person as I could be
present, it diminished _his_ splendor and significance.

He inquired (for hope was immortal in him) whether I was there for
the papers? I said no, I wasn't there for anything. I had come down
with Burton, because we---- But he interrupted me.

"What's _he_ doing here?" he said. There was the funniest air of
resentment and suspicion about him.

I reminded him that Burton's "Essay on Ford Lankester" had given him
a certain claim. Besides, Mrs. Lankester had asked him. He was one
of the few she had asked. I really couldn't tell him she had asked
me.

His gloom was awful enough when he heard that Burton had been asked.
You see, the fact glared, and even he must have felt it--that he,
with his tremendous, his horrific vogue, had not achieved what
Grevill Burton had by his young talent. He had never known Ford
Lankester. Goodness knows I didn't mean to rub it into him; but
there it was.

We had moved away from the edge of the grave (I think he didn't like
to be seen standing there with me) and I begged him to introduce me
to his daughter. He did so with an alacrity which I have since seen
was anything but flattering to me, and left me with her while he
made what you might call a dead set at Furnival. He had had his eye
on him and on the other representatives of the press all the time he
had been talking to me. Now he made straight for him; when Furnival
edged off he followed; when Furnival dodged he doubled; he was so
afraid that Furnival might miss him. As if Furnival could have
missed him, as if in the face of Wrackham's vogue his paper would
have let him miss him. It would have been as much as Furny's place
on it was worth.

Of course that showed that Wrackham ought never to have been there;
but there he was; and when you think of the unspeakable solemnity
and poignancy of the occasion it really is rather awful that the one
vivid impression I have left of it is of Charles Wrackham; Charles
Wrackham under the yew tree; Charles Wrackham leaning up against a
pillar (he remained standing during the whole of the service in the
church) with his arm raised and his face hidden in his cloak. The
attitude this time was immense. Furnival (Furny was really dreadful)
said it was "Brother mourning Brother." But I caught him--I caught
him three times--just raising his near eyelid above his drooped arm
and peeping at Furnival and the other pressmen to see that they
weren't missing him.

It must have been then that Burton saw, though he says now he
didn't. He won't own up to having seen him. We had hidden ourselves
behind the mourners in the chancel and he swears that he didn't see
anybody but Antigone, and that he only saw her because, in spite of
her efforts to hide too, she stood out so; she was so tall, so white
and golden. Her head was bowed with--well, with grief, I think, but
also with what I've no doubt now was a sort of shame. I wondered:
Did she share her father's illusion? Or had she seen through it? Did
she see the awful absurdity of the draped figure at her side? Did
she realize the gulf that separated him from the undying dead? Did
she know that we couldn't have stood his being there but for our
certainty that somewhere above us and yet with us, from his high
seat among the Undying, Ford Lankester was looking on and enjoying
more than we could enjoy--with a divine, immortal mirth--the rich,
amazing comedy of him. Charles Wrackham there--at _his_ funeral!

But it wasn't till it was all over that he came out really strong.
We were sitting together in the parlor of the village inn, he and
Antigone, and Grevill Burton and Furnival and I, with an hour on our
hands before our train left. I had ordered tea on Antigone's
account, for I saw that she was famished. They had come down from
Devonshire that day. They had got up at five to catch the early
train from Seaton Junction, and then they'd made a dash across
London for the 12.30 from Marylebone; and somehow they'd either
failed or forgotten to lunch. Antigone said she hadn't cared about
it. Anyhow, there she was with us. We were all feeling that relief
from nervous tension which comes after a funeral. Furnival had his
stylo out and was jotting down a few impressions. Wrackham had edged
up to him and was sitting, you may say, in Furny's pocket while he
explained to us that his weak health would have prevented him from
coming, but that _he had to come_. He evidently thought that the
funeral couldn't have taken place without him--not with any decency,
you know. And then Antigone said a thing for which I loved her
instantly.

"_I_ oughtn't to have come," she said. "I felt all the time I
oughtn't. I hadn't any right."

That drew him.

"You had your right," he said. "You are your father's daughter."

He brooded somberly.

"It was not," he said, "what I had expected--that meager following.
Who _were_ there? Not two--not three--and there should have been an
army of us."

He squared himself and faced the invisible as if he led the van.

That and his attitude drew Burton down on to him.

"Was there ever an army," he asked dangerously, "of 'us'?"

Wrackham looked at Burton (it was the first time he'd taken the
smallest notice of him) with distinct approval, as if the young man
had suddenly shown more ability than he had given him credit for.
But you don't suppose he'd seen the irony in him. Not he!

"You're right," he said. "Very right. All the same, there ought to
have been more there besides Myself."

There was a perfectly horrible silence, and then Antigone's voice
came through it, pure and fine and rather slow.

"There couldn't be. There couldn't really be anybody--there--_at
all_. He stood alone."

And with her wonderful voice there went a look, a look of
intelligence, as wonderful, as fine and pure. It went straight to
Burton. It was humble, and yet there was a sort of splendid pride
about it. And there was no revolt, mind you, no disloyalty in it;
the beauty of the thing was that it didn't set her father down; it
left him where he was, as high as you please, as high as his vogue
could lift him. Ford Lankester was beyond him only because he was
beyond them all.

And yet we wondered how he'd take it.

He took it as if Antigone had been guilty of a social blunder; as if
her behavior had been in some way painful and improper. That's to
say he took no notice of it at all beyond shifting his seat a little
so as to screen her. And then he spoke--exclusively to us.

"I came," he said, "partly because I felt that, for all Lankester's
greatness, _this_--" (his gesture indicated us all sitting there in
our mourning)--"_this_ was the last of him. It's a question whether
he'll ever mean much to the next generation. There's no doubt that
he limited his public--wilfully. He alienated the many. And, say
what you like, the judgment of posterity is not the judgment of the
few." There was a faint murmur of dissent (from Furnival), but
Wrackham's voice, which had gathered volume, rolled over it. "Not
for the novelist. Not for the painter of contemporary life."

He would have kept it up interminably on those lines and on that
scale, but that Antigone created a diversion (I think she did it on
purpose to screen him) by getting up and going out softly into the
porch of the inn.

Burton followed her there.

You forgive many things to Burton. I have had to forgive his cutting
me out with Antigone. He _says_ that they talked about nothing but
Ford Lankester out there, and certainly as I joined them I heard
Antigone saying again, "I oughtn't to have come. I only came because
I adored him." I heard Burton say, "And you never knew him?" and
Antigone, "No, how _could_ I?"

And then I saw him give it back to her with his young radiance.
"It's a pity. He would have adored _you_."

He always says it was Ford Lankester that did it.

The next thing Furnival's article came out. Charles Wrackham's name
was in it all right, and poor Antigone's. I'm sure it made her sick
to see it there. Furny had been very solemn and decorous in his
article; but in private his profanity was awful. He said it only
remained now for Charles Wrackham to die.


II

He didn't die. Not then, not all at once. He had an illness
afterward that sent his circulation up to I don't know what, but he
didn't die of it. He knew his business far too well to die then. We
had five blessed years of him. Nor could we have done with less.
Words can't describe the joy he was to us, nor what he would have
been but for Antigone.

I ought to tell you that he recovered his spirits wonderfully on our
way back from Chenies. He had mistaken our attentions to Antigone
for interest in _him_, and he began to unbend, to unfold himself, to
expand gloriously. It was as if he felt that the removal of Ford
Lankester had left him room.

He proposed that Burton and I should make a pilgrimage some day to
Wildweather Hall. He called it a pilgrimage--to the shrine, you
understand.

Well, we made it. We used to make many pilgrimages, but Burton made
more than I.

The Sacred Place, you remember, was down in East Devon. He'd built
himself a modern Tudor mansion--if you know what that is--there and
ruined the most glorious bit of the coast between Seaton and
Sidmouth. It stood at the head of a combe looking to the sea. They'd
used old stone for the enormous front of it, and really, if he'd
stuck it anywhere else, it might have been rather fine. But it was
much too large for the combe. Why, when all the lights were lit in
it you could see it miles out to sea, twinkling away like the line
of the Brighton Parade. It was one immense advertisement of Charles
Wrackham, and must have saved his publishers thousands. His
"grounds" went the whole length of the combe, and up the hill on the
east side of it where his cucumber frames blazed in the sun. And
besides his cucumbers (anybody can have cucumbers) he had a yacht
swinging in Portland Harbor (at least he had that year when he was
at his height). And he had two motor-cars and a wood that he kept
people out of, and a great chunk of beach. He couldn't keep them off
that, and they'd come miles, from Torquay and Exeter, to snapshot
him when he bathed.

The regular approach to him, for pilgrims, was extraordinarily
impressive. And not only the "grounds," but the whole interior of
the Tudor mansion, must have been planned with a view to that alone.
It was all staircases and galleries and halls, black oak darknesses
and sudden clear spaces and beautiful chintzy, silky rooms--lots of
them, for Mrs. Wrackham--and books and busts and statues everywhere.
And these were only his outer courts; inside them was his sanctuary,
his library, and inside that, divided from it by curtains, was the
Innermost, the shrine itself, and inside the shrine, veiled by his
curtains, was Charles Wrackham.

As you came through, everything led up to him, as it were, by easy
stages and gradations. He didn't burst on you cruelly and blind you.
You waited a minute or two in the library, which was all what he
called "silent presences and peace." The silent presences, you see,
prepared you for him. And when, by gazing on the busts of
Shakespeare and Cervantes, your mind was turned up to him, then you
were let in. Over that Tudor mansion, and the whole place, you may
say for miles along the coast, there brooded the shadow of Charles
Wrackham's greatness. If we hadn't been quite so much oppressed by
that we might have enjoyed the silent presences and the motor-cars
and things, and the peace that was established there because of him.
And we did enjoy Antigone and Mrs. Wrackham.

It's no use speculating what he would have been if he'd never
written anything. You cannot detach him from his writings, nor would
he have wished to be detached. I suppose he would still have been
the innocent, dependent creature that he was: fond, very fond of
himself, but fond also of his home and of his wife and daughter. It
was his domesticity, described, illustrated, exploited in a hundred
papers, that helped to endear Charles Wrackham to his preposterous
public. It was part of the immense advertisement. His wife's gowns,
the sums he spent on her, the affection that he notoriously lavished
on her, were part of it.

I'll own that at one time I had a great devotion to Mrs. Wrackham
(circumstances have somewhat strained it since). She was a woman of
an adorable plumpness, with the remains of a beauty which must have
been pink and golden once. And she would have been absolutely simple
but for the touch of assurance that was given her by her position as
the publicly loved wife of a great man. Every full, round line of
her face and figure declared (I don't like to say advertised) her
function. She existed in and for Charles Wrackham. You saw that her
prominent breast fairly offered itself as a pillow for his head. Her
soft hands suggested the perpetual stroking and soothing of his
literary vanity, her face the perpetual blowing of an angelic
trumpet in his praise. Her entire person, incomparably soft, yet
firm, was a buffer that interposed itself automatically between
Wrackham and the bludgeonings of fate. As for her mind, I know
nothing about it except that it was absolutely simple. She was a
woman of one idea--two ideas, I should say, Charles Wrackham the
Man, and Charles Wrackham the Great Novelist.

She could separate them only so far as to marvel at his humanity
because of his divinity, how he could stoop, how he could
condescend, how he could lay it all aside and be delightful as we
saw him--"Like a boy, Mr. Simpson, like a boy!"

It was our second day, Sunday, and Wrackham had been asleep in his
shrine all afternoon while she piloted us in the heat about the
"grounds." I can see her now, dear plump lady, under her pink
sunshade, saying all this with a luminous, enchanting smile. We were
not to miss him; we were to look at him giving up his precious, his
inconceivably precious time, laying himself out to amuse, to
entertain us--"Just giving himself--giving himself all the time."
And then, lest we might be uplifted, she informed us, still with the
luminous, enchanting smile, that Mr. Wrackham was like that to
"everybody, Mr. Simpson; everybody!"

She confided a great many things to us that afternoon. For instance,
that she was greatly troubled by what she called "the ill-natured
attacks on Mr. Wrackham in the papers," the "things" that "They"
said about him (it was thus vaguely that she referred to some of our
younger and profaner critics). She was very sweet and amiable and
charitable about it. I believe she prayed for them. She was quite
sure, dear lady, that "They" wouldn't do it if "They" knew how
sensitive he was, how much it hurt him. And of course it didn't
really hurt him. He was above it all.

I remember I began that Sunday by cracking up Burton to her, just to
see how she would take it, and perhaps for another reason. Antigone
had carried him off to the strawberry-bed, where I gathered from
their sounds of happy laughter that they were feeding each other
with the biggest ones. For the moment, though not, I think,
afterward, Antigone's mother was blind and deaf to what was going on
in the strawberry-bed. I spoke to her of Burton and his work, of the
essay on Ford Lankester, of the brilliant novel he had just
published, his first; and I even went so far as to speak of the
praise it had received; but I couldn't interest her in Burton. I
believe she always, up to the very last, owed Burton a grudge on
account of his novels; not so much because he had so presumptuously
written them as because he had been praised for writing them. I
don't blame her, neither did he, for this feeling. It was
inseparable from the piety with which she regarded Charles Wrackham
as a great figure in literature, a sacred and solitary figure.

I don't know how I got her off him and on to Antigone. I may have
asked her point-blank to what extent Antigone was her father's
daughter. The luminous and expansive lady under the sunshade was a
little less luminous and expansive when we came to Angelette, as she
called her; but I gathered then, and later, that Antigone was a
dedicated child, a child set apart and consecrated to the service
of her father. It was not, of course, to be expected that she should
inherit any of his genius; Mrs. Wrackham seemed to think it
sufficiently wonderful that she should have developed the
intelligence that fitted her to be his secretary. I was not to
suppose it was because he couldn't afford a secretary (the lady
laughed as she said this; for you see how absurd it was, the idea of
Charles Wrackham not being able to afford anything). It was because
they both felt that Antigone ought not to be, as she put it,
"overshadowed" by him; he wished that she should be associated,
intimately associated, with his work; that the child should have her
little part in his glory. It was not only her share of life which he
took and so to speak put in the bank for her, but an investment for
Antigone in the big business of his immortality. There she was,
there she always would be, associated with Charles Wrackham and his
work.

She sighed under the sunshade. "That child," she said, "can do more
for him, Mr. Simpson, than I can."

I could see that, though the poor lady didn't know it, she suffered
a subtle sorrow and temptation. If she hadn't been so amiable, if
she hadn't been so good, she would have been jealous of Antigone.

She assured us that only his wife and daughter knew what he really
was.

We wondered, did Antigone know? She made no sign of distance or
dissent, but somehow she didn't seem to belong to him. There was
something remote and irrelevant about her; she didn't fit into the
advertisement. And in her remoteness and irrelevance she remained
inscrutable. She gave no clue to what she really thought of him.
When "They" went for him she soothed him. She spread her warm
angel's wing, and wrapped him from the howling blast. But, as far
as we could make out, she never committed herself to an opinion. All
her consolations went to the tune of "They say. What say they? Let
them say." Which might have applied to anybody. We couldn't tell
whether, like her mother, she believed implicitly or whether she saw
through him.

She certainly saw beyond him, or she couldn't have said the things
she did--you remember?--at Ford Lankester's funeral. But she had
been overwrought then, and that clear note had been wrung from her
by the poignancy of the situation. She never gave us anything like
that again.

And she was devoted to him--devoted with passion. There couldn't be
any sort of doubt about it.

Sometimes I wondered even then if it wasn't almost entirely a
passion of pity. For she must have known. Burton always declared she
knew. At least in the beginning he did; afterwards he was not clear
about it any more than I was then. He said that her knowledge, her
vision, of him was complete and that her pity for him was
unbearable. He said that she would have given anything to have seen
him as her mother saw him and as he saw himself, and that all her
devotion to him, to it, his terrible work, was to make up to him for
not seeing, for seeing as she saw. It was consecration, if you like;
but it was expiation too, the sacrifice for the sin of an unfilial
clarity.

And the tenderness she put into it!

Wrackham never knew how it protected him. It regularly spoilt our
pleasure in him. We couldn't--when we thought of Antigone--get the
good out of him we might have done. We _had_ to be tender to him,
too. I think Antigone liked us for our tenderness. Certainly she
liked Burton--oh, from the very first.


III

They had known each other about six months when he proposed to her,
and she wouldn't have him. He went on proposing at ridiculously
short intervals, but it wasn't a bit of good. Wrackham wouldn't give
his consent, and it seemed Antigone wouldn't marry anybody without
it. He _said_ Burton was too poor, and Antigone too young; but the
real reason was that Burton's proposal came as a shock to his
vanity. I told you how coolly he had appropriated the young man's
ardent and irrepressible devotion; he had looked on him as a
disciple, a passionate pilgrim to his shrine; and the truth, the
disillusionment, was more than he could stand. He'd never had a
disciple or a pilgrim of Burton's quality. He could ignore and
disparage Burton's brilliance when it suited his own purpose, and
when it suited his own purpose he thrust Burton and his brilliance
down your throat. Thus he never said a word about Burton's novels
except that he once went out of his way to tell me that he hadn't
read them (I believe he was afraid to). Antigone must have noticed
_that_, and she must have understood the meaning of it. I know she
never spoke to him about anything that Burton did. She must have
felt he couldn't bear it. Anyhow, he wasn't going to recognize
Burton's existence as a novelist; it was as if he thought his
silence could extinguish him. But he knew all about Burton's
critical work; there was his splendid "Essay on Ford Lankester"; he
couldn't ignore or disparage that, and he didn't want to. He had had
his eye on him from the first as a young man, an exceptionally
brilliant young man who might be useful to him.

And so, though he wouldn't let the brilliant young man marry his
daughter, he wasn't going to lose sight of him; and Burton continued
his passionate pilgrimages to Wildweather Hall.

I didn't see Wrackham for a long time, but I heard of him; I heard
all I wanted, for Burton was by no means so tender to him as he used
to be. And I heard of poor Antigone. I gathered that she wasn't
happy, that she was losing some of her splendor and vitality. In all
Burton's pictures of her you could see her droop.

This went on for nearly three years, and by that time Burton, as you
know, had made a name for himself that couldn't be ignored. He was
also making a modest, a rather painfully modest income. And one
evening he burst into my rooms and told me it was all right.
Antigone had come round. Wrackham hadn't, but that didn't matter.
Antigone had said she didn't care. They might have to wait a bit,
but that didn't matter either. The great thing was that she had
accepted him, that she had had the courage to oppose her father. You
see, they scored because, as long as Wrackham had his eye on Burton,
he didn't forbid him the house.

I went down with him soon after that by Wrackham's invitation. I'm
not sure that he hadn't his eye on me; he had his eye on everybody
in those days when, you know, his vogue, his tremendous vogue, was
just perceptibly on the decline.

I found him changed, rather pitiably changed, and in low spirits.
"They"--the terrible, profane young men--had been "going for him"
again, as he called it.

Of course when they really went for him he was all right. He could
get over it by saying that they did it out of sheer malevolence,
that they were jealous of his success, that a writer cannot be great
without making enemies, and that perhaps he wouldn't have known how
great he was if he hadn't made any. But they didn't give him much
opportunity. They were too clever for that. They knew exactly how to
flick him on the raw. It wasn't by the things they said so much as
by the things they deliberately didn't say; and they could get at
him any time, easily, by praising other people.

Of course none of it did any violence to the supreme illusion. He
was happy. I think he liked writing his dreadful books. (There must
have been something soothing in the act with its level, facile
fluency.) I know he enjoyed bringing them out. He gloated over the
announcements. He drew a voluptuous pleasure from his proofs. He
lived from one day of publication to the other; there wasn't a
detail of the whole dreary business that he would have missed. It
all nourished the illusion. I don't suppose he ever had a shadow of
misgiving as to his power. What he worried about was his prestige.
He couldn't help being aware that, with all he had, there was still
something that he hadn't. He knew, he must have known, that he was
not read, not recognized by the people who admired Ford Lankester.
He felt their silence and their coldness strike through the warm
comfort of his vogue. We, Burton and I, must have made him a bit
uneasy. I never in my life saw anybody so alert and so suspicious,
so miserably alive to the qualifying shade, the furtive turn, the
disastrous reservation.

But no, never a misgiving about Himself. Only, I think, moments of a
dreadful insight when he heard behind him the creeping of the tide
of oblivion, and it frightened him. He was sensitive to every little
fluctuation in his vogue. He had the fear of its vanishing before
his eyes. And there he was, shut up among all his splendor with his
fear; and it was his wife's work and Antigone's to keep it from
him, to stand between him and that vision. He was like a child when
his terror was on him; he would go to anybody for comfort. I
believe, if Antigone and his wife hadn't been there, he'd have
confided in his chauffeur.

He confided now in us, walking dejectedly with us in his "grounds."

"They'd destroy me," he said, "if they could. How they can take
pleasure in it, Simpson! It's incredible, incomprehensible."

We said it was, but it wasn't in the least. We knew the pleasure,
the indestructible pleasure, he gave us; we knew the irresistible
temptation that he offered. As for destroying him, we knew that they
wouldn't have destroyed him for the world. He was their one bright
opportunity. What would they have done without their Wrackham?

He kept on at it. He said there had been moments this last year
when, absurd as it might seem, he had wondered whether after all he
hadn't failed. That was the worst of an incessant persecution; it
hypnotized you into disbelief, not as to your power (he rubbed that
in), but as to your success, the permanence of the impression you
had made. I remember trying to console him, telling him that he was
all right. He'd got his public, his enormous public.

There were consolations we might have offered him. We might have
told him that he _had_ succeeded; we might have told him that, if he
wanted a monument, he'd only got to look around him. After all, he'd
made a business of it that enabled him to build a Tudor mansion with
bathrooms everywhere and keep two motor-cars. We could have reminded
him that there wasn't one of the things he'd got with it--no, not
one bathroom--that he would have sacrificed, that he was capable of
sacrificing; that he'd warmed himself jolly well all over and all
the time before the fire of life, and that his cucumbers alone must
have been a joy to him. And of course we might have told him that he
couldn't have it both ways; that you cannot have bathrooms and
motor-cars and cucumber-frames (not to the extent _he_ had them)
_and_ the incorruptible and stainless glory. But that wouldn't have
consoled him; for he wanted it both ways. Fellows like Wrackham
always do. He wasn't really happy, as a really great man might have
been, with his cucumbers and things.

He kept on saying it was easy enough to destroy a Great Name. Did
they know, did anybody know, what it cost to build one?

I said to myself that possibly Antigone might know. All I said to
him was, "Look here, we're agreed they can't do anything. When a man
has once captured and charmed the great Heart of the Public, he's
safe--in his lifetime, anyway."

Then he burst out. "His lifetime? Do you suppose he cares about his
lifetime? It's the life beyond life--the life beyond life."

It was in fact, d'you see, the "Life and Letters." He was thinking
about it then.

He went on. "They have it all their own way. He can't retort; he
can't explain; he can't justify himself. It's only when he's dead
they'll let him speak."

"Well, I mean to. That'll show 'em," he said; "that'll show 'em."

"He's thinking of it, Simpson; he's thinking of it," Burton said to
me that evening.

He smiled. He didn't know what his thinking of it was going to
mean--for him.


IV

He had been thinking of it for some considerable time. That
pilgrimage was my last--it'll be two years ago this autumn--and it
was in the spring of last year he died.

He was happy in his death. It saved him from the thing he dreaded
above everything, certainty of the ultimate extinction. It has not
come yet. We are feeling still the long reverberation of his vogue.
We miss him still in the gleam, the jest gone forever from the
papers. There is no doubt but that his death staved off the ultimate
extinction. It revived the public interest in him. It jogged the
feeble pulse of his once vast circulation. It brought the familiar
portrait back again into the papers, between the long, long columns.
And there was more laurel and a larger crowd at Brookwood than on
the day when we first met him in the churchyard at Chenies.

And then we said there had been stuff in him. We talked (in the
papers) of his "output." He had been, after all, a prodigious, a
gigantic worker. He appealed to our profoundest national instincts,
to our British admiration of sound business, of the self-made,
successful man. He might not have done anything for posterity, but
he had provided magnificently for his child and widow.

So we appraised him. Then on the top of it all the crash came, the
tremendous crash that left his child and widow almost penniless. He
hadn't provided for them at all. He had provided for nothing but his
own advertisement. He had been living, not only beyond his income,
but beyond, miles beyond, his capital, beyond even the perennial
power that was the source of it. And he had been afraid, poor
fellow! to retrench, to reduce by one cucumber-frame the items of
the huge advertisement; why, it would have been as good as putting
up the shop windows--his publishers would instantly have paid him
less.

His widow explained tearfully how it all was, and how wise and
foreseeing he had been; what a thoroughly sound man of business. And
really we thought the dear lady wouldn't be left so very badly off.
We calculated that Burton would marry Antigone, and that the simple,
self-denying woman could live in modest comfort on the mere proceeds
of the inevitable sale. Then we heard that the Tudor mansion, the
"Grounds," the very cucumber-frames, were sunk in a mortgage; and
the sale of his "effects," the motor-cars and furniture, the books
and the busts, paid his creditors in full, but it left a bare
pittance for his child and widow.

They had come up to town in that exalted state with which courageous
women face adversity. In her excitement Antigone tried hard to break
off her engagement to Grevill Burton. She was going to do
typewriting, she was going to be somebody's secretary, she was going
to do a thousand things; but she was not going to hang herself like
a horrid millstone round his neck and sink him. She had got it into
her head, poor girl, that Wrackham had killed himself, ruined
himself by his efforts to provide for his child and widow. They had
been the millstones round _his_ neck. She even talked openly now
about the "pot-boilers" they had compelled Papa to write; by which
she gave us to understand that he had been made for better things.
It would have broken your heart to hear her.

Her mother, ravaged and reddened by grief, met us day after day (we
were doing all we could for her) with her indestructible, luminous
smile. She could be tearful still on provocation, through the smile,
but there was something about her curiously casual and calm,
something that hinted almost complacently at a little mystery
somewhere, as if she had up her sleeve resources that we were not
allowing for. But we caught the gist of it, that we, affectionate
and well-meaning, but thoroughly unbusiness-like young men, were not
to worry. Her evident conviction was that he _had_ foreseen, he
_had_ provided for them.

"Lord only knows," I said to Burton, "what the dear soul imagines
will turn up."

Then one day she sent for me; for me, mind you, not Burton. There
was something that she and her daughter, desired to consult me
about. I went off at once to the dreadful little lodgings in the
Fulham Road where they had taken refuge. I found Antigone looking,
if anything, more golden and more splendid, more divinely remote and
irrelevant against the dingy background. Her mother was sitting very
upright at the head and she at the side of the table that almost
filled the room. They called me to the chair set for me facing
Antigone. Throughout the interview I was exposed, miserably, to the
clear candor of her gaze.

Her mother, with the simplicity which was her charming quality, came
straight to the point. It seemed that Wrackham had thought better of
us, of Burton and me, than he had ever let us know. He had named us
his literary executors. Of course, his widow expounded, with the
option of refusal. Her smile took for granted that we would not
refuse.

What did I say? Well, I said that I couldn't speak for Burton, but
for my own part I--I said I was honored (for Antigone was looking at
me with those eyes) and of course I shouldn't think of refusing, and
I didn't imagine Burton would either. You see I'd no idea what it
meant. I supposed we were only in for the last piteous turning out
of the dead man's drawers, the sorting and sifting of the rubbish
heap. We were to decide what was worthy of him and what was not.

There couldn't, I supposed, be much of it. He had been hard pressed.
He had always published up to the extreme limit of his production.

I had forgotten all about the "Life and Letters." They had been only
a fantastic possibility, a thing our profane imagination played
with; and under the serious, chastening influences of his death it
had ceased to play.

And now they were telling me that this thing was a fact. The letters
were, at any rate. They had raked them all in, to the last postcard
(he hadn't written any to us), and there only remained the Life. It
wasn't a perfectly accomplished fact; it would need editing, filling
out, and completing from where he had left it off. He had not named
his editor, his biographer, in writing--at least, they could find no
note of it among his papers--but he had expressed a wish, a wish
that they felt they could not disregard. He had expressed it the
night before he died to Antigone, who was with him.

"Did he not, dearest?"

I heard Antigone say, "Yes, Mamma." She was not looking at me then.

There was a perfectly awful silence. And then Antigone did look at
me, and she smiled faintly.

"It isn't you," she said.

No, it was not I. I wasn't in it. It was Grevill Burton.

I ought to tell you it wasn't an open secret any longer that Burton
was editing the "Life and Letters of Ford Lankester," with a
Critical Introduction. The announcement had appeared in the papers a
day or two before Wrackham's death. He had had his eye on Burton. He
may have wavered between him and another, he may have doubted
whether Burton was after all good enough; but that honor, falling to
Burton at that moment, clinched it. _There_ was prestige, _there_
was the thing he wanted. Burton was his man.

There wouldn't, Mrs. Wrackham said, be so very much editing to do.
He had worked hard in the years before his death. He had gathered in
all the material, and there were considerable fragments--whole
blocks of reminiscences, which could be left, which _should_ be left
as they stood (her manner implied that they were monuments). What
they wanted, of course, was something more than editing. Anybody
could have done that. There was the Life to be completed in the
later years, the years in which Mr. Burton had known him more
intimately than any of his friends. Above all, what was necessary,
what had been made so necessary, was a Critical Introduction, the
summing up, the giving of him to the world as he really was.

Did I think they had better approach Mr. Burton direct, or would I
do that for them? Would I sound him on the subject?

I said cheerfully that I would sound him. If Burton couldn't
undertake it (I had to prepare them for this possibility), no doubt
we should find somebody who could.

But Antigone met this suggestion with a clear "No." It wasn't to be
done at all unless Mr. Burton did it. And her mother gave a little
cry. It was inconceivable that it should not be done. Mr. Burton
must. He would. He would see the necessity, the importance of it.

Of course _I_ saw it. And I saw that my position and Burton's was
more desperate than I had imagined. I couldn't help but see the
immense importance of the "Life and Letters." They were bound, even
at this time of day, to "fetch" a considerable sum, and the dear
lady might be pardoned if she were incidentally looking to them as a
means of subsistence. They were evidently what she had had up her
sleeve. Her delicacy left the financial side of the question almost
untouched; but in our brief discussion of the details, from her
little wistful tone in suggesting that if Mr. Burton could undertake
it at once and get it done soon, if they could in fact launch it on
the top of the returning tide--from the very way that she left me to
finish her phrases for her I gathered that they regarded the "Life
and Letters" as Wrackham's justification in more ways than one. They
proved that he had not left them unprovided for.

Well, I sounded Burton. He stared at me aghast. I was relieved to
find that he was not going to be sentimental about it. He refused
flatly.

"I can't do him _and_ Lankester," he said.

I saw his point. He would have to keep himself clean for _him_. I
said of course he couldn't, but I didn't know how he was going to
make it straight with Antigone.

"I shan't have to make it straight with Antigone," he said. "She'll
see it. She always has seen."


V

That was just exactly what I doubted.

I was wrong. She always had seen. And it was because she saw and
loathed herself for seeing that she insisted on Burton's doing this
thing. It was part of her expiation, her devotion, her long
sacrificial act. She was dragging Burton into it partly, I believe,
because he had seen too, more clearly, more profanely, more terribly
than she.

Oh, and there was more in it than that. I got it all from Burton. He
had been immensely plucky about it. He didn't leave it to me to get
him out of it. He had gone to her himself, so certain was he that he
could make it straight with her.

And he hadn't made it straight at all. It had been more awful, he
said, than I could imagine. She hadn't seen his point. She had
refused to see it, absolutely (I had been right there, anyhow).

He had said, in order to be decent, that he was too busy; he was
pledged to Lankester and couldn't possibly do the two together. And
she had seen all that. She said of course it was a pity that he
couldn't do it now, while people were ready for her father, willing,
she said, to listen; but if it couldn't be done at once, why, it
couldn't. After all, they could afford to wait. _He_, she said
superbly, could afford it. She ignored in her fine manner the
material side of the "Life and Letters," its absolute importance to
their poor finances, the fact that if _he_ could afford to wait,
_they_ couldn't. I don't think that view of it ever entered into her
head. The great thing, she said, was that it should be done.

And then he had to tell her that _he_ couldn't do it. He couldn't do
it at all. "That part of it, Simpson," he said, "was horrible. I
felt as if I were butchering her--butchering a lamb."

But I gathered that he had been pretty firm so far, until she broke
down and cried. For she did, poor bleeding lamb, all in a minute.
She abandoned her superb attitude and her high ground and put it
altogether on another footing. Her father hadn't been the happy,
satisfied, facilely successful person he was supposed to be. People
had been cruel to him; they had never understood; they didn't
realize that his work didn't represent him. Of course she knew (she
seems to have handled this part of it with a bold sincerity) what
he, Burton, thought about it; but he did realize _that_. He knew it
didn't do him anything like justice. He knew what lay behind it,
behind everything that he had written. It was wonderful, Burton
said, how she did that, how she made the vague phrase open up a vast
hinterland of intention, the unexplored and unexploited spirit of
him. He knew, Burton knew, how he had felt about it, how he had felt
about his fame. It hadn't been the thing he really wanted. He had
never had that. And oh, she wanted him to have it. It was the only
thing she wanted, the only thing she really cared about, the only
thing she had ever asked of Burton.

He told me frankly that she didn't seem quite sane about it. He
understood it, of course. She was broken up by the long strain of
her devotion, by his death and by the crash afterward, by the
unbearable pathos of him, of his futility, and of the menacing
oblivion. You could see that Antigone had parted with her sense of
values and distinctions, that she had lost her bearings; she was a
creature that drifted blindly on a boundless sea of compassion. She
saw her father die the ultimate death. She pleaded passionately with
Burton to hold back the shadow; to light a lamp for him; to prolong,
if it were only for a little while, his memory; to give him, out of
his own young radiance and vitality, the life beyond life that he
had desired.

Even then, so he says, he had held out, but more feebly. He said he
thought somebody else ought to do it, somebody who knew her father
better. And she said that nobody could do it, nobody did know him;
there was nobody's name that would give the value to the thing that
Burton's would. That was handsome of her, Burton said. And he seems
to have taken refuge from this dangerous praise in a modesty that
was absurd, and that he knew to be absurd in a man who had got
Lankester's "Life" on his hands. And Antigone saw through it; she
saw through it at once. But she didn't see it all; he hadn't the
heart to let her see his real reason, that he couldn't do them both.
He couldn't do Wrackham after Lankester, nor yet, for Lankester's
sake, before. And he couldn't, for his own sake, do him at any time.
It would make him too ridiculous.

And in the absence of his real reason he seems to have been
singularly ineffective. He just sat there saying anything that came
into his head except the one thing. He rather shirked this part of
it; at any rate, he wasn't keen about telling me what he'd said,
except that he'd tried to change the subject. I rather suspected him
of the extreme error of making love to Antigone in order to keep her
off it.

Finally she made a bargain with him. She said that if he did it she
would marry him whenever he liked (she had considered their
engagement broken off, though he hadn't). But (there Antigone was
adamant) if he didn't, if he cared so little about pleasing her, she
wouldn't marry him at all.

Then he said of course he did care; he would do anything to please
her, and if she was going to take a mean advantage and to put it
that way----

And of course she interrupted him and said he didn't see her point;
she wasn't putting it that way; she wasn't going to take any
advantage, mean or otherwise; it was a question of a supreme, a
sacred obligation. How _could_ she marry a man who disregarded, who
was capable of disregarding, her father's dying wish? And that she
stuck to.

I can't tell you now whether she was merely testing him, or whether
she was determined, in pure filial piety, to carry the thing
through, and saw, knowing her hold on him, that this was the way and
the only way, or whether she actually did believe that for him, too,
the obligation was sacred and supreme. Anyhow she stuck to it. Poor
Burton said he didn't think it was quite fair of her to work in that
way, but that, rather than lose her, rather than lose Antigone, he
had given in.


VI

He had taken the papers--the documents--home with him; and that he
might know the worst, the whole awful extent of what he was in for,
he began overhauling them at once.

I went to see him late one evening and found him at it. He had been
all through them once, he said, and he was going through them again.
I asked him what they were like. He said nothing.

"Worse than you thought?" I asked.

Far worse. Worse than anything I could imagine. It was
inconceivable, he said, what they were like. I said I supposed they
were like _him_. I gathered from his silence that it was
inconceivable what _he_ was. That Wrackham should have no conception
of where he really stood was conceivable; we knew he was like that,
heaps of people were, and you didn't think a bit the worse of them;
you could present a quite respectable "Life" of them with "Letters"
by simply suppressing a few salient details and softening the
egoism all round. But what Burton supposed he was going to do with
Wrackham, short of destroying him! You couldn't soften him, you
couldn't tone him down; he wore thin in the process and vanished
under your touch.

But oh, he was immense! The reminiscences were the best. Burton
showed us some of them. This was one:

"It was the savage aspects of Nature that appealed to me. One of my
earliest recollections is of a thunderstorm among the mountains. My
nursery looked out upon the mountainside where the storm broke. My
mother has told me that I cried till I made the nurse carry me to
the window, and that I literally leaped in her arms for joy. I
laughed at the lightning and clapped my hands at the thunder. The
Genius of the Storm was my brother. I could not have been more than
eleven months old."

And there was another bit that Burton said was even better.

"I have been a fighter all my life. I have had many enemies. What
man who has ever done anything worth doing has not had them? But our
accounts are separate, and I am willing to leave the ultimate
reckoning to time." There were lots of things like that. Burton said
it was like that cloak he used to wear. It would have been so noble
if only he had been a little bigger.

And there was an entry in his diary that I think beat everything
he'd ever done. "May 3, 1905. Lankester died. Finished the last
chapter of 'A Son of Thunder.' _Ave Frater, atque vale._"

I thought there was a fine audacity about it, but Burton said there
wasn't. Audacity implied a consciousness of danger, and Wrackham
had none. Burton was in despair.

"Come," I said, "there must be something in the Letters."

No, the Letters were all about himself, and there wasn't anything in
_him_. You couldn't conceive the futility, the fatuity, the
vanity--it was a disease with him.

"I couldn't have believed it, Simpson, if I hadn't seen him empty
himself."

"But the hinterland?" I said. "How about the hinterland? That was
what you were to have opened up."

"There wasn't any hinterland. He's opened himself up. You can see
all there was of him. It's lamentable, Simpson, lamentable."

I said it seemed to me to be supremely funny. And he said I wouldn't
think it funny if I were responsible for it.

"But you aren't," I said. "You must drop it. You can't be mixed up
with _that_. The thing's absurd."

"Absurd? Absurdity isn't in it. It's infernal, Simpson, what this
business will mean to me."

"Look here," I said. "This is all rot. You can't go on with it."

He groaned. "I _must_ go on with it. If I don't----"

"Antigone will hang herself?"

"No. She won't hang herself. She'll chuck me. That's how she has me,
it's how I'm fixed. Can you conceive a beastlier position?"

I said I couldn't, and that if a girl of mine put me in it, by
heaven, I'd chuck _her_.

He smiled. "You can't chuck Antigone," he said.

I said Antigone's attitude was what I didn't understand. It was
inconceivable she didn't know what the things were like. "What do
you suppose she really thinks of them?"

That was it. She had never committed herself to an opinion. "You
know," he said, "she never did."

"But," I argued, "you told me yourself she said they'd represent
him. And they do, don't they?"

"Represent him?" He grinned in his agony. "I should think they did."

"But," I persisted, because he seemed to me to be shirking the
issue, "it was her idea, wasn't it? that they'd justify him, give
him his chance to speak, to put himself straight with _us_?"

"She seems," he said meditatively, "to have taken that for granted."

"Taken it for granted? Skittles!" I said. "She must have seen they
were impossible. I'm convinced, Burton, that she's seen it all
along; she's merely testing you to see how you'd behave, how far
you'd go for her. You needn't worry. You've gone far enough. She'll
let you off."

"No," he said, "she's not testing me. I'd have seen through her if
it had been that. It's deadly serious. It's a sacred madness with
her. She'll never let me off. She'll never let herself off. I've
told you a hundred times it's expiation. We can't get round _that_."

"She must be mad, indeed," I said, "not to see."

"See? See?" he cried. "It's my belief, Simpson, that she hasn't
seen. She's been hiding her dear little head in the sand."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean," he said, "she hasn't looked. She's been afraid to."

"Hasn't looked?"

"Hasn't read the damned things. She doesn't know how they expose
him."

"Then, my dear fellow," I said, "you've got to tell her."

"Tell her?" he cried. "If I told her she _would_ go and hang
herself. No. I'm not to tell her. I'm not to tell anybody. She's got
an idea that he's pretty well exposed himself, and, don't you see,
I'm to wrap him up."

"Wrap him up----"

"Wrap him up, so that she can't see, so that nobody can see.
_That's_ what I'm here for--to edit him, Simpson, edit him out of
all recognition. She hasn't put it to herself that way, but that's
what she means. I'm to do my best for him. She's left it to me with
boundless trust in my--my constructive imagination. Do you see?"

I did. There was no doubt that he had hit it.

"This thing" (he brought his fist down on it), "when I've finished
with it, won't be Wrackham: it'll be all me."

"That's to say you'll be identified with him?"

"Identified--crucified--scarified with him. You don't suppose they'd
spare me? I shall be every bit as--as impossible as he is."

"You can see all that, and yet you're going through with it?"

"I can see all that, and yet I'm going through with it."

"And they say," I remarked gently, "that the days of chivalry are
dead."

"Oh, rot," he said. "It's simply that--she's worth it."

Well, he was at it for weeks. He says he never worked at anything as
he worked at his Charles Wrackham. I don't know what he made of him,
he wouldn't let me see. There was no need, he said, to anticipate
damnation.

In the meantime, while it pended, publishers, with a dreadful
eagerness, were approaching him from every side. For Wrackham (what
was left of him) was still a valuable property, and Burton's name,
known as it was, had sent him up considerably, so that you can see
what they might have done with him. There had been a lot of
correspondence, owing to the incredible competition, for, as this
was the last of him, there was nothing to be said against the open
market; still, it was considered that his own publishers, if they
"rose" properly, should have the first claim. The sum, if you'll
believe me, of five thousand had been mentioned. It was indecently
large, but Burton said he meant to screw them up to it. He didn't
mind how high he screwed them; _he_ wasn't going to touch a penny of
it. That was his attitude. You see the poor fellow couldn't get it
out of his head that he was doing something unclean.

It was in a fair way of being made public; but as yet, beyond an
obscure paragraph in the _Publishers' Circular_, nothing had
appeared about it in print. It remained an open secret.

Then Furnival got hold of it.

Whether it was simply his diabolic humor, or whether he had a
subtler and profounder motive (he says himself he was entirely
serious; he meant to make Burton drop it); anyhow, he put a
paragraph in his paper, in several papers, announcing that Grevill
Burton was engaged simultaneously on the "Life and Letters of Ford
Lankester" and the "Personal Reminiscences" of Mr. Wrackham.

Furnival did nothing more than that. He left the juxtaposition to
speak for itself, and his paragraph was to all appearances most
innocent and decorous. But it revived the old irresistible comedy of
Charles Wrackham; it let loose the young demons of the press. They
were funnier about him than ever (as funny, that is, as decency
allowed), having held themselves in so long over the obituary
notices.

And Furnival (there I think his fine motive _was_ apparent) took
care to bring their ribald remarks under Burton's notice. Furny's
idea evidently was to point out to Burton that his position was
untenable, that it was not fitting that the same man should deal
with Mr. Wrackham and with Ford Lankester. He _had_ to keep himself
clean for him. If he didn't see it he must be made to see.

He did see it. It didn't need Furnival to make him. He came to me
one evening and told me that it was impossible. He had given it up.

"Thank God," I said.

He smiled grimly. "God doesn't come into it," he said. "It's
Lankester I've given up."

"You haven't!" I said.

He said he had.

He was very cool and calm about it, but I saw in his face the marks
of secret agitation. He had given Lankester up, but not without a
struggle. I didn't suppose he was wriggling out of the other thing,
he said. He couldn't touch Lankester after Wrackham. It was
impossible for the same man to do them both. It wouldn't be fair to
Lankester or his widow. He had made himself unclean.

I assured him that he hadn't, that his motive purged him utterly,
that the only people who really mattered were all in the secret;
they knew that it was Antigone who had let him in for Wrackham; they
wouldn't take him and his Wrackham seriously; and he might be sure
that Ford Lankester would absolve him. It was high comedy after
Lankester's own heart, and so on. But nothing I said could move him.
He stuck to it that the people in the secret, the people I said
mattered, didn't matter in the least, that his duty was to the big
outside public for whom Lives were written, who knew no secrets and
allowed for no motives; and when I urged on him, as a final
consideration, that he'd be all right with _them_, _they_ wouldn't
understand the difference between Charles Wrackham and Ford
Lankester, he cried out that that was what he meant. It was his
business to make them understand. And how could they if he
identified himself with Wrackham? It was almost as if he identified
Lankester----

Then I said that, if that was the way he looked at it, his duty was
clear. He must give Wrackham up.

"Give up Antigone, you mean," he said.

He couldn't.


VII

Of course it was not to be thought of that he should give up his
Lankester, and the first thing to be done was to muzzle Furnival's
young men. I went to Furny the next day and told him plainly that
his joke had gone too far, that he knew what Burton was and that it
wasn't a bit of good trying to force his hand.

And then that evening I went on to Antigone.

She said I was just in time; and when I asked her "for what?" she
said--to give them my advice about her father's "Memoirs."

I told her that was precisely what I'd come for; and she asked if
Grevill had sent me.

I said no, he hadn't. I'd come for myself.

"Because," she said, "he's sent them back."

I stared at her. For one moment I thought that he had done the only
sane thing he could do, that he had made my horrible task
unnecessary.

She explained. "He wants Mamma and me to go over them again and see
if there aren't some things we'd better leave out."

"Oh," I said, "is that all?"

I must have struck her as looking rather queer, for she said, "All?
Why, whatever did you think it was?"

With a desperate courage I dashed into it there where I saw my
opening.

"I thought he'd given it up."

"Given it up?"

Her dismay showed me what I had yet to go through. But I staved it
off a bit. I tried half-measures.

"Well, yes," I said, "you see, he's frightfully driven with his
Lankester book."

"But--we said--we wouldn't have him driven for the world. Papa can
wait. He _has_ waited."

I ignored it and the tragic implication.

"You see," I said, "Lankester's book's awfully important. It means
no end to him. If he makes the fine thing of it we think he will,
it'll place him. What's more, it'll place Lankester. He's still--as
far as the big outside public is concerned--waiting to be placed."

"He mustn't wait," she said. "It's all right. Grevill knows. We told
him he was to do Lankester first."

I groaned. "It doesn't matter," I said, "which he does first."

"You mean he'll be driven anyway?"

It was so far from what I meant that I could only stare at her and
at her frightful failure to perceive.

I went at it again, as I thought, with a directness that left
nothing to her intelligence. I told her what I meant was that he
couldn't do them both.

But she didn't see it. She just looked at me with her terrible
innocence.

"You mean it's too much for him?"

And I tried to begin again with no, it wasn't exactly that--but she
went on over me.

It wouldn't be too much for him if he didn't go at it so hard. He
was giving himself more to do than was necessary. He'd marked so
many things for omission; and, of course, the more he left out of
"Papa," the more he had to put in of his own.

"And he needn't," she said. "There's such a lot of Papa."

I knew. I scowled miserably at that. How was I going to tell her it
was the whole trouble, that there was "such a lot of Papa"?

I said there was; but, on the other hand, he needed such a lot of
editing.

She said that was just what they had to think about. _Did_ he?

I remembered Burton's theory, and I put it to her point-blank. Had
she read all of him?

She flushed slightly. No, she said, not all. But Mamma had.

"Then" (I skirmished), "you don't really know?"

She parried it with "Mamma knows."

And I thrust. "But," I said, "does your mother really understand?"

I saw her wince.

"Do you mean," she said, "there are things--things in it that had
better be kept out?"

"No," I said, "there weren't any 'things' in it----"

"There couldn't be," she said superbly. "Not things we'd want to
hide."

I said there weren't. It wasn't "things" at all. I shut my eyes and
went at it head downward.

It was, somehow, the whole thing.

"The whole thing?" she said, and I saw that I had hit her hard.

"The whole thing," I said.

She looked scared for a moment. Then she rallied.

"But it's the whole thing we want. He wanted it. I know he did. He
wanted to be represented completely or not at all. As he stood. As
he stood," she reiterated.

She had given me the word I wanted. I could do it gently now.

"That's it," I said. "These 'Memoirs' won't represent him."

Subtlety, diabolic or divine, was given me. I went at it like a man
inspired.

"They won't do him justice. They'll do him harm."

"Harm?" She breathed it with an audible fright.

"Very great harm. They give a wrong impression, an impression
of--of----"

I left it to her. It sank in. She pondered it.

"You mean," she said at last, "the things he says about himself?"

"Precisely. The things he says about himself. I doubt if he really
intended them all for publication."

"It's not the things he says about himself so much," she said. "We
could leave some of them out. It's what Grevill might have said
about him."

That was awful; but it helped me; it showed me where to plant the
blow that would do for her, poor lamb.

"My dear child," I said (I was very gentle, now that I had come to
it, to my butcher's work), "that's what I want you to realize.
He'll--he'll say what he can, of course; but he can't say very
much. There--there isn't really very much to say."

She took it in silence. She was too much hurt, I thought, to see. I
softened it and at the same time made it luminous.

"I mean," I said, "for Grevill to say."

She saw.

"You mean," she said simply, "he isn't great enough?"

I amended it. "For Grevill."

"Grevill," she repeated. I shall never forget how she said it. It
was as if her voice reached out and touched him tenderly.

"Lankester is more in his line," I said. "It's a question of
temperament, of fitness."

She said she knew that.

"And," I said, "of proportion. If he says what you want him to say
about your father, what can he say about Lankester?"

"But if he does Lankester first?"

"Then--if he says what you want him to say--he undoes everything he
has done for Lankester. And," I added, "_he's_ done for."

She hadn't seen that aspect of it, for she said: "Grevill is?"

I said he was, of course. I said we all felt that strongly; Grevill
felt it himself. It would finish him.

Dear Antigone, I saw her take it. She pressed the sword into her
heart. "If--if he did Papa? Is it--is it as bad as all that?"

I said we were afraid it was--for Grevill.

"And is _he_," she said, "afraid?"

"Not for himself," I said, and she asked me: "For whom, then?" And I
said: "For Lankester." I told her that was what I'd meant when I
said just now that he couldn't do them both. And, as a matter of
fact, he wasn't going to do them both. He had given up one of them.

"Which?" she asked; and I said she might guess which.

But she said nothing. She sat there with her eyes fixed on me and
her lips parted slightly. It struck me that she was waiting for me,
in her dreadful silence, as if her life hung on what I should say.

"He has given up Lankester," I said.

I heard her breath go through her parted lips in a long sigh, and
she looked away from me.

"He cared," she said, "as much as that."

"He cared for _you_ as much," I said. I was a little doubtful as to
what she meant. But I know now.

She asked me if I had come to tell her that.

I said I thought it was as well she should realize it. But I'd come
to ask her--if she cared for him--to let him off. To--to----

She stopped me with it as I fumbled.

"To give Papa up?"

I said, to give him up as far as Grevill was concerned.

She reminded me that it was to be Grevill or nobody.

Then, I said, it had much better be nobody. If she didn't want to do
her father harm.

She did not answer. She was looking steadily at the fire burning in
the grate. At last she spoke.

"Mamma," she said, "will never give him up."

I suggested that I had better speak to Mrs. Wrackham.

"No," she said. "Don't. She won't understand." She rose. "I am not
going to leave it to Mamma."

She went to the fire and stirred it to a furious flame.

"Grevill will be here," she said, "in half an hour."

She walked across the room--I can see her going now--holding her
beautiful head high. She locked the door (I was locked in with
Antigone). She went to a writing-table where the "Memoirs" lay
spread out in parts; she took them and gathered them into a pile. I
was standing by the hearth and she came toward me; I can see her;
she was splendid, carrying them in her arms sacrificially. And she
laid them on the fire.

It took us half an hour to burn them. We did it in a sort of sacred
silence.

When it was all over and I saw her stand there, staring at a bit of
Wrackham's handwriting that had resisted to the last the purifying
flame, I tried to comfort her.

"Angelette," I said, "don't be unhappy. That was the kindest thing
you could do--and the best thing, believe me--to your father's
memory."

"I'm afraid," she said, "I wasn't thinking--altogether--of Papa."

I may add that her mother did _not_ understand, and that--when we at
last unlocked the door--we had a terrible scene. The dear lady has
not yet forgiven Antigone; she detests her son-in-law; and I'm
afraid she isn't very fond of me.




THE COSMOPOLITAN

PART I

INLAND


I

Unspeakable, unlikable, worse than all, unsketchable. A woman has no
more formidable rival than her idea in the head of an imaginative
young man, and Maurice Durant had been rash enough to fall in love
with Miss Tancred before sight.

He was rash in everything. When the Colonel asked him down to Coton
Manor for a fortnight, he accepted the invitation (with much
pleasure) by return, and lay awake half the night with joyous
anticipation. He was in the train steaming into the Midlands before
he realized that he knew nothing of his host beyond a vague family
tradition. He was his (Durant's) godfather; he was a retired Colonel
of militia; he had given him (Durant) a hideous silver cup; but this
was the first time he had given him an invitation. There was
something more, too. Durant had spent the last seven years exploring
every country but his own, and he was out of touch with family
tradition; but now he thought of it he had--he certainly had--a
distinct recollection of hearing his father say that of all his
numerous acquaintance that fellow Tancred was quite the most
intolerable bore.

He had been a little precipitate. Still, he said to himself, England
was England, and if there was any fishing on the Colonel's land, or
a decent mount in his stables, he thought he could pull through.
Mrs. Tancred was dead; he did not certainly know that there was a
Miss Tancred, but if there were he meant to flirt with her, and if
the worst came to the worst he could always sketch her (the
unsketchable!).

He had had plenty of time for anticipation during the slow journey
on the branch line from the junction. The train crawled and burrowed
into the wooded heart of the Midlands, passed a village, a hamlet, a
few scattered houses, puffed and panted through endless lengths of
arable and pasture land, drew up exhausted at the little wayside
station of Whithorn-in-Arden, and left him in that prosaic
wilderness a prey to the intolerable bore.

As ill-luck would have it, he had arrived at Coton Manor three hours
before dinner. At the first sight of his host he had made up his
mind that the Colonel would have nothing to say that could possibly
keep him going for more than three minutes, yet the Colonel had
talked for two hours. Durant had been counting the buttons on the
Colonel's waistcoat and the minutes on the drawing-room clock, and
wondering when it would be dinnertime. Once or twice he had caught
himself looking round the room for some sign or token of Miss
Tancred. He believed in her with a blind, unquestioning belief, but
beyond a work-basket, a grand piano, and some atrocious
water-colors, he could discover no authentic traces of her presence.
The room kept its own dull counsel. It was one of those curious
provincial interiors that seem somehow to be soulless and sexless in
their unfathomable reserve. It was more than comfortable, it was
opulent, luxurious; but the divine touch was wanting. It made Durant
wonder whether there really was a Miss Tancred, much as you might
doubt the existence of a God from the lapses in his creation. Still,
he believed in her because there was nothing else to believe in. He
had gathered from the Colonel's conversation that there was no
fishing on his land, and no animal in his stables but the
respectable and passionless pair that brought him from the station.

Could it be that there was no Miss Tancred?

Durant, already veering toward scepticism, had been about to plunge
into the depths of bottomless negation when the Colonel rose
punctually at the stroke of seven.

"My daughter," he had said, "my daughter will be delighted to make
your acquaintance."

And Durant had replied that he would be delighted to make Miss
Tancred's.

There was nothing else to be delighted about. He had divined pretty
clearly that Miss Tancred's society would be the only entertainment
offered to him during his stay, and the most outrageous flirtation
would be justifiable in the circumstances; he had seen himself
driven to it in sheer desperation and self-defense; he had longed
hopelessly, inexpressibly, for the return of the absconding deity;
he had looked on Miss Tancred as his hope, his angel, his deliverer.
That she had not been at home to receive him seemed a little odd,
but on second thoughts he had been glad of it. He would have
distrusted any advances on her part as arguing a certain poverty of
personal resource. Presumably Miss Tancred could afford a little
indifference, a touch of divine disdain. And if indeed she had used
absence as an art to stimulate his devotion, she was to be
congratulated on her success. His dream had been nourished on this
ambrosial uncertainty.

Upstairs in his bedroom mere emotional belief in Miss Tancred had
risen to rational conviction. The first aspect of the guest-chamber
had inspired him with a joyous credulity. It wooed him with its
large and welcoming light, its four walls were golden white and
warm, and in all its details he had found unmistakable evidences of
design. There was an overruling coquetry in the decorative effects,
in the minute little arrangements for his comfort. A finer hand than
any housemaid's must have heaped that blue china bowl with roses,
laid out that writing-table, and chosen the books in the shelf
beside the bed. A woman is known by her books as by her
acquaintance, and he had judged of the mind of this maiden, turning
over the pages with a thrill of sensuous curiosity. This charming
Providence had fitted his mood to perfection with these little
classics of the hour, by authors too graceful and urbane to bore a
poor mortal with their immortality. Adorable Miss Tancred! He was in
love with her before sight, at half-sight.

For at the sound of a punctual gong he had hurried out on to the
stairs, a door had opened on some unseen landing, he had heard a
woman's step on the flight below; he had listened, he had watched,
and as he caught the turn of her head, the rustle and gleam of her
gown, some divine and cloudy color, silver or lavender or airy blue,
he had been radiantly certain that his vision had passed before him.
Down there somewhere it was making itself incarnate in the unknown.
He felt already its reviving presence, the mysterious aura of its
womanhood.

Hitherto his imagination had been guided by a profound sense of the
justice that is in things. Destiny who had brought him to this
deceitful place owed him compensation for the fraud, and an apology
in person was really no more than his due. What if Miss Tancred were
she, the supremely feminine, Destiny herself?

Under the echoing gallery the drawing-room had opened and closed
upon her, and he had followed, his nerves tingling with the familiar
prophetic thrill.

And this was Miss Tancred?

To begin with, he had never seen a woman more execrably dressed. No
doubt it is the first duty of a woman's gown to clothe her, but
apparently Miss Tancred's gown had a Puritan conscience, an almost
morbid sense of its duty. It more than clothed her, it covered her
up as if she had been a guilty secret; there was concealment and
disguise in every crease of the awful garment. In its imperishable
prudery it refused to define her by ever so innocent a curve; all
its folds were implicated in a conspiracy against her sex. The
effect, though striking, was obviously unstudied and inevitable, and
he argued charitably that Miss Tancred was attired, not after her
own mysterious and perverse fancy, but according to some still more
mysterious and perverse doom. Happily she seemed unconscious of her
appearance, and this unconsciousness had saved her.

For Miss Tancred was plain; and the irritating thing about her
plainness was that it, at any rate, was not inevitable. She had had
a hair's-breadth escape of being handsome in a somewhat original and
eccentric way. And so her plainness was insistent; it would not let
you alone, but forced you to look at it, worrying you with perpetual
suggestions of the beauty it might have been. Her black hair grew
low on the center of her forehead, whence it rose describing a
semicircle above each temple; she had a short and salient Roman
nose, black eyes, and straight black brows laid like an accent on
the jutting eyebones. Her mouth--there might have been hope for her
in her mouth, but for its singular unreadiness to smile; there was
no hope for her in her sallow skin, the dull droop of her eyelids,
her whole insupportable air of secrecy and reserve. A woman has no
business to look like that.

There could be no hope for any woman whom Maurice Durant had
pronounced unsketchable. He was tolerant with the tolerance of a
clever young modern painter, trained to look for beauty (and find
it, too) in the most unlikely places. He could find no beauty in
Miss Tancred. She was useless for his purposes. Those lips had never
learned to flirt, to chatter, to sing, to do anything spontaneous
and natural and pleasing.

He shook hands with her in a paralytic manner, battering his brains
for a reply to her polite commonplaces. Inwardly he was furious. He
felt that he had been duped, tricked, infamously cheated of his
legitimate desire; and he hated the woman as if she, poor soul, had
been personally responsible.

It had bored him to listen to the Colonel, and he was sure it would
bore him still more to talk to Miss Tancred; but for ten minutes he
did his best to sustain a miraculous flow of sparkling monologue. If
Miss Tancred was going to bore him, at any rate it would not be by
her conversation. Some plain women he had known who had overcome
plainness by vivacity and charm. Not so Miss Tancred. Being plainer
than most she was bound to make a more than ordinary effort, yet she
had adopted the ways of a consummately pretty woman who knows that
nothing further is required of her. Did she think that he would go
on forever battering his brains to create conversation out of
nothing, when she clearly intimated that it was not worth her while
to help him? Never in his life had he met a woman who inspired him
with such invincible repugnance. He found himself talking to her at
random like a man in a dream, and so indifferent to her opinion that
he was not in the least distressed at his own imbecility; and Miss
Tancred, like a lady in a dream, seemed to find his attitude
entirely natural; perhaps she had read a similar antagonism in the
faces of other men. (As it happened, repugnance was an emotion that
Durant had frequently felt before, and certain emphatic lines about
his nose and mouth had apparently been drawn there on purpose to
express it.) Anyhow, Miss Tancred made no attempt to engage his
attention, but turned her dull eyes to the Colonel, as if appealing
to him to take the burden of Durant's entertainment on his own
shoulders.

This the Colonel was perfectly prepared to do. It was evidently an
understood thing that Miss Tancred should sit there, in that
depressing attitude, while her father monopolized their guest.
Durant hastily classified his host and hostess as the bore active
and the bore passive. If Miss Tancred had ever had any interest or
property in life she seemed to have made it over to the Colonel,
together with a considerable portion of her youth. The Colonel wore
his sixty years well out of sight, like an undergarment; you even
felt that there might be something slightly indecorous in the
suggestion that he wore them at all. He was alive to the
finger-tips, alive in every feature of his aristocratic little face.
He seemed at first rather uncertain how to take Durant, and looked
him up and down as if in search of a convenient button-hole; he
smiled innocently on the young man (Durant soon learned to know and
dread that smile); nothing could have been more delicate and
tentative than his approach. He had been silent for the last few
minutes, lying low behind a number of the _Nineteenth Century_, for
if he were a bore he had the dangerous power of masking his deadly
qualities in an unreal absorption. At the signal that followed
Durant's last desperate remark the Colonel's tongue leaped as from
an ambush.

His first conversational maneuver was a feint. He inquired, with a
certain affected indifference, what sort of weather Durant had met
with on the journey down, and what sort he had left behind him in
London; and then he seemed inclined to let the weather drop. But
before Durant could get a word in edgeways he had taken it up again
and was handling it like a master. Now he was playing with it,
hovering round it lightly, with a tantalizing approach and flight;
now he had gripped it tight, there was no more wandering from the
point than may be seen in the vacillations of a well-behaved
barometer; the slender topic seemed to grow under his touch, to take
on the proportions of his own enormous egotism; he spoke of last
autumn and the next parish as if he were dealing with immensities of
time and space. And now the Colonel was merged and lost in his
theme; he was whirled along with the stream of things, with moons
and meteors, winds and tides, never for an instant compromising his
character as a well-behaved barometer.

Never for an instant forgetting that he was a Tancred, with a
pedigree dating from the days of feudalism. And after all he looked
such a gentle little fellow that Durant could almost have forgiven
him. He was so beautifully finished off. You could only say of him
that he was fastidious, he had the prejudices of his class. He
scorned to make conversation a sordid traffic in ideas. At any rate,
Durant felt himself released from all obligation to contribute his
share.

He had given it up, and was wondering how on earth they were to get
through the evening. Various dreadful possibilities occurred to him;
music (Miss Tancred and Beethoven on the grand piano); family
prayers; cards; in some places they sat up half the night playing
whist, a game that bored him to extinction. Thank heaven, as there
were but three of them, it would not be whist. Meanwhile it was past
eight and no dinner bell.

As if in answer to his thoughts the Colonel turned sharply to his
daughter.

"Frida, are you sure that you wrote to Mrs. Fazakerly?"

"Quite sure."

"And are you equally certain that she is coming?"

"Quite certain. Unless she has been taken ill."

"What did you say? Taken ill? Taken ill?"

"I did not say she was taken ill, papa; I said nothing but illness
would keep her from coming."

"Ah, a very different thing." He turned to Durant, blushing and
bridling in his stiff collar as if the important distinction had
been a subtlety of his own.

He curled himself up in his chair, and Durant caught him smiling to
himself, a contemplative, almost voluptuous smile; was it at the
prospect of another victim?

Who the devil, he wondered, is Mrs. Fazakerly?


II

Mrs. Fazakerly did not keep him wondering long. Already she was
tripping into the room with a gleeful and inquisitive assurance. A
small person, with a round colorless face and snub features finished
off with a certain piquant ugliness. Her eyes seemed to be screwed
up by a habit of laughter, and the same cheerful tendency probably
accounted for the twisting of her eyebrows. Mrs. Fazakerly must have
been forty and a widow. She was dressed with distinction in the
half-mourning of a very black silk gown and a very white neck and
shoulders. She greeted Miss Tancred affectionately, glanced at
Durant with marked approval, and swept the Colonel an exaggerated
curtsey, playfully implying that she had met him before that day. It
struck Durant that nature had meant Mrs. Fazakerly to be vulgar, and
that it spoke well for Mrs. Fazakerly that so far she had frustrated
the designs of nature. He rather thought he was going to like Mrs.
Fazakerly; she looked as if she would not bore him.

If Mrs. Fazakerly was going to like Durant, as yet her glance merely
indicated that she liked the look of him. Durant, as it happened,
was almost as plain for a man as Miss Tancred was for a woman; but
he was interesting, and he looked it; he was distinguished, and he
looked that, too; he was an artist, and he did not look it at all;
he cultivated no eccentricities of manner, he indulged in no dreamy
fantasies of dress. Other people besides Mrs. Fazakerly had approved
of Maurice Durant.

Unfortunately the Colonel's instant monopoly of the lady had the
effect of throwing Durant and his hostess on each other's mercy
during dinner, a circumstance that seemed greatly to entertain Mrs.
Fazakerly. Probably a deep acquaintance with Coton Manor made her
feel a delightful incongruity in Durant's appearance there, since,
as her gaze so frankly intimated, she found him interesting. He was
roused from a fit of more than usual abstraction to find her little
gray eyes twinkling at him across the soup. Mrs. Fazakerly, for
purposes of humorous observation, used a _pince-nez_, which
invariably leaped from the bridge of her nose in her subsequent
excitement. It was leaping now.

"Mr. Durant, Miss Tancred is trying to say something to you."

He turned with a dim, belated courtesy as his hostess repeated for
the third time her innocent query, "I hope you like your room?"

He murmured some assent, laying stress on his appreciation of the
flowers and the books.

"You must thank Mrs. Fazakerly for those; it was she who put them
there."

"Indeed? That was very pretty of Mrs. Fazakerly."

"Mrs. Fazakerly is always doing pretty things. I can't say that I
am."

In Miss Tancred's eyes there was none of the expectancy that betrays
the fisher of compliments. If she had followed that gentle craft she
must have abandoned it long ago; no fish had ever risen to wriggling
worm, to phantom minnow or to May-fly, to Miss Tancred's groveling
or flirting or flight; no breath of flattery could ever have bubbled
in men's eyes--those icy waters where she, poor lady, saw her own
face. Durant would have been highly amused if she had angled; as it
was, he was disgusted with her. It is the height of bad taste for
any woman to run herself down, and the more sincere the depreciation
the worse the offense, as implying a certain disregard for your
valuable opinion. Apparently it had struck Mrs. Fazakerly in this
light, for she shook her head reproachfully at Miss Tancred.

"If Mr. Durant had been staying with _me_, I should have packed him
into the bachelor's bedroom with his Bible and his Shakespeare."

Miss Tancred, accused of graciousness, explained herself away. "I
put you on the south side because you've just come from the
Mediterranean; I thought you would like the sun."

Why could he not say that it was pretty of Miss Tancred?

The Colonel had pricked up his ears at the illuminating word.

"What sort of weather did you have when you were in Italy?"

It was the first time that he had shown the faintest interest in
Durant's travels. He seemed to regard him as a rather limited young
man who had come to Coton Manor to get his mind let out an inch or
two.

Durant replied that as far as he could remember it was fine when he
arrived in Rome two years ago, and it was fine when he left Florence
the other day.

The Colonel shrugged his shoulders. "Ah, I don't call that weather.
I like a variable barometer. I cannot stand monotony." As he spoke
he looked at his daughter. In a less perfect gentleman there would
have been significance in the look. As it was, it remained
unconscious.

"The Colonel," Mrs. Fazakerly explained, "is studying the
meteorology of Wickshire."

It seemed that Mrs. Fazakerly was studying the Colonel, that it was
her business to expound and defend him. She had implied, if it were
only by the motion of an eyelid, that all they had heard hitherto
was by way of prologue; that the Colonel had not yet put forth his
full powers. Her effervescent remark was, as it were, the breaking
of the champagne bottle, the signal that launched him.

Meteorology apart, the Colonel, like more than one great
philosopher, held that science was but another name for ignorance.

"But with meteorology," he maintained, "you are safe. You've got
down to the bed-rock of fact, and it's observation all along the
line. I've got fifteen little memorandum books packed with
observations. Taken by myself. It's the only way to keep clear of
fads and theories. Look at the nonsense that's talked in other
departments, about microbes, for instance. Fiddlesticks! A microbe's
an abstraction, a fad. But take a man like myself, take a man of
even ordinary intelligence, who has faced the facts, don't tell me
that he hasn't a better working knowledge of the subject than a
fellow who calls himself a bacteriologist, or some other absurd
name."

Durant remarked meekly that he didn't know, he was sure. But the
Colonel remained implacable; his shirt-front dilated with his wrath;
it was wonderful how so gentle a voice as the Colonel's contrived to
convey so much passion. Meanwhile Miss Tancred sat absorbed in her
dinner and let the storm pass over her head. Perhaps she was used to
it.

"Fiddlesticks! If you don't know, you ought to know; you should make
it your business to know. If I've got cholera I want to be told
what'll cure me. I don't care a hang whether I'm killed by a comma
bacillus or----"

"A full-stop bacillus," suggested Mrs. Fazakerly.

"The full-stop bacillus for choice--put you sooner out of your
agony."

"For shame, Mr. Durant; you encourage him."

"I, Mrs. Fazakerly?"

"Yes, you. It was you who brought the _Nineteenth Century_ into the
house, wasn't it? Depend upon it, he's been reading something that
he's disagreed with, or that's disagreed with him."

Durant remembered. There were things about bacteriology in that
_Nineteenth Century_, and about hypnotism; the Colonel had
apparently seized on them as on fuel for a perishing fire.

Heedless of the frivolous interruption, the little gentleman was
working himself into a second intellectual fury.

"Take hypnotism again--there's another abstraction for you----"

Here Mrs. Fazakerly threw up her hands. "My dear Colonel, _de
grâce!_ If it's an abstraction, why get into a passion about it?
Life isn't long enough. You're worrying your brain into
fiddlesticks--fiddlestrings I mean, of course. This child doesn't
look after you. You ought to have something tied over your head to
keep it down; it's like a Jack-in-the-box, a candle blazing away at
both ends, a sword wearing out its what's-his-name; it's wearing out
your friends, too. _We_ can't live at intellectual high pressure, if
you can."

The Colonel softened visibly under the delicious flattery of her
appeal; he smiled at her and at Durant; he came down from his
heights and made a concession to the popular taste. "Well, then,
take influenza----"

"We'd very much rather not take it, if it's all the same to you."

"Take what?"

"Why, the influenza--the bacilli, or whatever they are. Or do the
bacilli take _you_?"

"My dear lady, you don't know what you're talking about. The bacilli
theory is--is--is a silly theory."

And Durant actually smiled; for his own brain was softening under
the debilitating influence. He would not be surprised at anything he
might do himself; he might even sink into that sickly state in which
people see puns in everything and everything in puns; it would be
the effect of the place.

"Well, it made you very ill last winter, that's all I know."

The wrinkles stopped dancing over the Colonel's face; his
shirt-front sank; he was touched with an infinite tenderness and
pity for himself.

"Yes. But I had a fit of the real thing. It left me without a
particle of muscle--legs mere thread-papers, and no brain----"

"Cherry-tart, Mr. Durant?"

The voice was Miss Tancred's. It was keen, incisive; it cut the
Colonel's sentence like a knife. But if she had meant to kill it the
unfilial attempt was foiled.

"No brain at all, Durant." He held up a forefinger, demonstrating on
the empty air. "That, mind you, is the test, the mark of true
influenza--the _ut_-ter, abso_lute_ collapse of brain power."

"Im_bacilli_ty, in short."

Having emitted this feeble spark, Durant's intellect went out
altogether. Trusting to his face not to betray him, he inquired
gravely if it was long since the Colonel's last attack of influenza.

But he had trusted rather too much to his face. A painful flush
spread over it when he found Miss Tancred looking at him with a
lucid, penetrating gaze. She had recognized his guilt; it was
impossible to tell whether she had measured the provocation.

He, at any rate, had discovered the secret of her silence; it was
not stupidity, it was shame. The spectacle of the Colonel's
conversational debauches had weaned her forever from the desire of
speech. For the rest of the meal he, too, sat silent, building a
cairn of cherry-stones at the side of his plate; an appropriate
memorial of a young man bored to death at a dinner-table.


III

"Well now," said the Colonel, rousing himself from a brief nirvana
of digestion, "I hope that you will not be dull." He said it with
the confidence of a man who has just laid before you a pretty
convincing sample of his social powers.

Durant started; he was alone with the Colonel and the wine, and had
just made the discovery that when the Colonel's face was at rest he
was very like an owl.

"To-morrow we'll go exploring together. I should like to take you
over my little property."

As a matter of fact, the property was considerable; but Durant
noticed that its owner applied the endearing diminutive to every
object that appealed specially to his egotism. It was a peculiarity
of the Colonel that he was ready to melt with affection over the
things that belonged to himself, and was roused almost to ferocity
by whatever interested other people.

"I dare say it will be good for you to see some fresh faces and to
be put--in touch--in touch with fresh ideas."

You would have said that Durant had been sitting for seven years
with his feet on the fender while the Colonel roamed the world.

Durant agreed. He was being hypnotized by the hooked nose and the
round hazel eyes with their radiating wrinkles. He had been five
hours in Coton Manor, it felt like five years, and the evening had
only just begun.

His host stared at him, fidgeted nervously for five minutes, plunged
into nirvana again, emerged, and with a shamefaced smile suggested
that the ladies would be getting impatient. In the drawing-room his
nervousness increased; he went on like a person distracted with an
intolerable desire; he sat down and got up again; he pirouetted; he
played with ornaments; he wandered uneasily about the room, opening
and shutting windows, setting pictures straight, and lighting
candles; he was a most uncomfortable little Colonel of militia. And
with every movement he revolved nearer and nearer to a certain
table. The table stood in the background; Durant recognized it as
the kind that opens and discloses the magic circle, the green land
of whist. The table had a sweet and sinful fascination for the
Colonel.

Durant had just pulled himself together, and determined that he
could bear it if they didn't play some infernal game, if they didn't
play whist. And now it seemed that whist was what they played, that
whist of course was what Mrs. Fazakerly was there for. The Colonel
looked from the table to the group, from the group to the table;
there was calculation in his eye, an almost sensual anticipation. He
seemed to be saying to himself, "One, two, three, four; the perfect
number." Durant affected abstraction, and turning to the window
gazed out into the dim green landscape. His host's eye followed him;
it marked him down as the fourth; it hovered round him, dubious,
vacillating, troubled. The Colonel had still some torturing remnants
of a conscience; he had read the deep repugnance on the young man's
face, and hesitated to sacrifice a guest on his first night. He
turned helplessly to Mrs. Fazakerly, who put an end to his struggle.

She touched Durant lightly on the shoulder. "Come," she murmured
gently, like a fate that pitied while she compelled. "Come. He wants
his little game."

It was as if she had said, "My poor dear sacrificial lamb, he wants
his little holocaust. There is no help for it. Let me show you the
way to the altar."

"Frida!" It was the Colonel who spoke.

Miss Tancred spread open the table with the air of a high priestess,
hieratic and resigned. The Colonel approached it, a lighted candle
in each hand. For one moment of time the egotist seemed to be rapt
beyond himself; he was serving the great god Whist. Cards were the
Colonel's passion; he loved them with delight that was madness,
madness that was delight. Cards for cards' sake, the pure passion,
the high, immaculate abstraction; no gambling, mind you; no playing
for penny points; no pandering to a morbid appetite for excitement.
With cards in his hand the Colonel was transformed. He might be
wedded to matter of fact, which is the grossest form of materialism;
but at the green table he appeared as a devotee of the transcendent,
the science of sciences, Whist.

Durant curled his long legs under the table and prepared for a
miserable evening, while the Colonel's face beamed on him from
between two candles.

"Durant," he said, "you are an acquisition. If it wasn't for you we
should have to play with a dummy."

Durant replied mournfully that he was not great at the game, but he
thought he was about as good as a dummy.

"Don't you be too sure of that," said Mrs. Fazakerly. "There's a
great deal to be said for the dummy. He isn't frivolous, he never
revokes, he never loses his little temper, and he plays the game."

"Yes, I think he can show you some very pretty science, Durant." The
Colonel's mustache and eyebrows and all the wrinkles on his face
were agitated, but he made no sound. The owl was pluming all his
little feathers, was fluttering with mysterious mirth. Oh! he took
the lady's humor, he could enter into the thing, he could keep the
ball going.

"You see," Mrs. Fazakerly explained, "he has an intelligence behind
him."

"A dummy inspired by Colonel Tancred would be terrible to
encounter," said Durant.

Miss Tancred lifted her eyes from the cards she was shuffling. Again
he felt her gaze resting upon him for a moment, the same
comprehensive, disconcerting gaze. This time it had something
pathetic and appealing in it, as if she implored him to take no
further notice of her father's fatuity.

"Confound the old fellow," he said to himself; "why does he make me
say these things?"

When they began Durant saw a faint hope of release in his own
stupidity, his obvious unfitness for the game. By a studied
carelessness, an artful exaggeration of his deficiencies, he courted
humiliation, ejection in favor of the dummy. But, as it happened,
either his evil destiny had endowed him with her own detestable
skill, or else his stupidity was supreme. Trying with might and main
to lose, he kept on winning with horrible persistency. He was on the
winning side; he was made one with the terrible Miss Tancred; and
for the first half hour he found a certain painful interest in
watching that impenetrable creature.

Miss Tancred played the game; she played, now with the rhythm and
precision of a calculating machine, now with the blind impetus and
swoop of some undeviating natural force. It was not will, it was not
intelligence; it was something beyond and above them both,
infinitely more detached, more monotonous and cold; something
independent even of her desire. Durant could see that she had as
little love for the game as he had. She played because she always
had played, by habit, a second nature that had ousted the first.
Her skill was so unerring that for Durant it robbed the game of its
last lingering attraction, the divine element of chance. One tinge
of consciousness, one touch of fire, and it would have been sheer
devilry. As it was he could have been sorry for her, though in her
infinite apathy she seemed to be placed beyond his pity and her own.
With no movement save in her delicate sallow fingers, she sat there
like an incarnate Ennui, the terrible genius of the house.

The Colonel, though losing rapidly, was in high good humor. He
displayed a chivalrous forbearance with the weakness of Mrs.
Fazakerly, who committed every folly and indiscretion possible to a
partner. He bowed when he dealt to her; he bowed when she dealt to
him; he bowed when she revoked.

"'To err is human,'" said the Colonel.

"'To forgive, divine,'" said Mrs. Fazakerly, smiling at Durant, as
much as to say, "You observe his appropriation of the supreme
_rôle_?"

And indeed the Colonel bore himself with some consciousness of his
metaphysical dignity. He was pleased with everybody, pleased with
Durant, pleased with Mrs. Fazakerly, most particularly pleased with
Colonel Tancred, late of the Wickshire militia.

And as the game wore on Durant realized the full horror of his
position. The gallant Colonel was not going to leave that table till
he had won, and he could never win. He frowned on Durant's proposal
to change partners; he would accept no easy victory. They were in
for a night of it. Durant was in torment, but he sat on, fascinated
by the abominable beauty of his own play; he sat with every nerve on
edge, listening to the intolerable tick of time.

Ten o'clock. He thought it had been midnight. He passed his hand
over his face, as if to feel if it were stiffening in its expression
of agony.

And all the time Mrs. Fazakerly kept on raising and dropping her
eyeglass. Now and then she gave him a look that plumbed the sources
of his suffering. It seemed to recommend her own courageous
attitude, to say, "My dear young man, we are being bored to death;
you know it, and I know it. But for Goodness' sake, let us die with
pleasant faces, since we can but die."

And Durant felt that she was right. He fell into her mood, and
passed from it into a sort of delirium. There could be no end to it;
his partner's pitiless hands would never have done shuffling the
cards. Black and red, red and black, they danced before him; they
assumed extravagant attitudes; they became the symbols of tremendous
mysteries. His head seemed to grow lighter; he was visited with
fantastic impulses like the caprices of an intoxicated person. To
turn on the Colonel and ask him what he meant by inflicting this
torture on an innocent man, whose only crime had been to trust him
too well; to shake the inscrutable Miss Tancred by the hand and tell
her that he knew all--_all_, and that she had his sympathy; to fall
on Mrs. Fazakerly's neck and cry like a child, he felt that he was
capable of any or all of these things. As it was, his behavior must
have been sufficiently ridiculous, since it amused Mrs. Fazakerly so
much. The two had reached that topsy-turvy height of anguish that is
only expressible by laughter. Theirs had a ring of insanity in it;
it sounded monstrous and immoral, like the mirth of victims under
the shadow of condign extinction. As for his play, he knew it was
the play of a madman. And yet he still won; with Miss Tancred for
his partner it was impossible to lose. She sat there unmoved by his
wildest aberrations. Once, to be sure, she remarked with a shade of
irritation in her voice (by some queer freak of nature her voice was
unusually sweet), "Oh, _there_! We've got that trick again!" Like
him, she would have preferred to lose, just to break the maddening
monotony of it.

He pitied her. Once, in a lucid interval, he actually heard himself
paying her a compliment, much as he would have paid a debt of honor.
"Miss Tancred, how magnificently you play!" She answering, "I ought
to. I've been doing nothing else since I was ten years old." It was
simply horrible. The woman was thirty if she was a day.

Half past eleven. Midnight gathering in the garden outside. The room
was reflected on the window-pane from the solid darkness behind
it--the candles, the green table, the players--a fantastic, illusive
scene, shimmering on the ground of night as on some sinister
reality. Mrs. Fazakerly was dashing down her cards at random, and
even the Colonel shuffled uneasily in his seat. At twelve he
observed that none of them "seemed very happy in whist"; he proposed
loo, a game in which, each person playing for his own hand, he could
not be compromised by the ruinous folly of his partner.

At loo Miss Tancred, also untrammeled, rose to dizzying heights of
play. She hovered over the green table, motionless like an eagle
victory. Then she swooped, invincible. One against three she laid
about her, slashed, confounded, and defeated the enemy with terrific
slaughter. As Durant stammered, idiotic in his desperation, it was
"a regular Water-loo."

The Colonel kept it going. He laughed, "Ha-ha! What do you say to a
whiskey-and-water-loo? My head's as clear as daylight. I think I
could stand another little game if we had some whiskey and water."

A movement of Mrs. Fazakerly's arm swept the pack on to the floor.
"Frida," she cried, "take your father and put a mustard plaster on
the back of his neck."

Miss Tancred rose. She just raised the black accent of her eyebrows
as she surveyed the disenchanted table, the awful disorder of the
cards. She looked at Durant and Mrs. Fazakerly with a passionless,
interrogatory stare. Then suddenly she seemed to catch the infection
of their dreadful mirth. It wrung from her a deeper note. She too
laughed, and her laughter was the very voice of Ennui, a cry of
bitterness, of unfathomable pain. It rang harsh upon her silence and
was not nice to hear.

This unlooked-for outburst had the happy effect of bringing the
evening to an end. It seemed to be part of the program that the
Colonel should go home with Mrs. Fazakerly to take care of her, and
that Miss Tancred should go with them both to take care of the
Colonel. They had not far to walk; only through the park and across
the road to a little house opposite the lodge gates.

While they were looking for their hats Durant was left for a moment
alone with Mrs. Fazakerly. She sank into a seat beside him,
unstrung, exhausted; she seemed to be verging on that state of
nervous collapse which disposes to untimely confidence.

"I like whist," said Mrs. Fazakerly; "but it must be an awful game
to play if you don't like it."

He followed her gaze. It was fixed on Miss Tancred's retreating
figure.

"Why on earth does she play if she doesn't like it?"

Mrs. Fazakerly turned on him, suddenly serious.

"She plays because the Colonel likes it--because she is the best
girl in the world, Mr. Durant."

He stood reproved.


IV

Three days passed; they brought nothing new; each was a repetition
of the other; each merged itself in whist. No relief came from the
outside world; the outside world must have found out long ago that
it was not worth while driving many miles to call on the Tancreds.

Three days at Coton Manor would have been trying to anyone; to
Durant they were intolerable. For limbs that had roamed the world to
be tucked up under the Colonel's whist table, for a mind equally
vigorous and vagrant to be tied to the apron-strings of the
Colonel's intellect, was really a refinement of torture. Thrice
Durant had tried to find an exit into the surrounding landscape, and
thrice the Colonel had been too quick for him. He hovered
perpetually round him; he watched his goings-out and his comings-in;
there was no escaping his devilish ingenuity. While Durant was
looking for a stick or a hat, he would secure him softly by the arm
and lead him out for a stroll. He would say, "My dear Durant, the
women are all very well in their way, but it is a luxury to have
another man to talk to." He talked to Durant, leaning toward him
lover-like, with the awful passion of the bore for his victim.

These strolls extended over several miles, without taking them
beyond the bounds of Coton Manor. Durant began to disbelieve in the
existence of a world beyond. Coton Manor had swallowed up the
county; it seemed to have opened its gates and swallowed him up,
too.

He told himself that he had done nothing to deserve his doom. He was
not more selfish or more exacting than other men; he was not
sensual; he had not made mere physical pleasure his being's end and
aim. He had been content with a somewhat negative ideal, the mere
avoidance of boredom. He never struggled or argued with it, but
whenever and wherever he met it he had simply packed his portmanteau
and gone away. This repugnance of his had entailed endless
traveling, but Durant was a born traveler. Hitherto his life had
been free from any care beyond the trouble of avoiding trouble. But
he had been lax in this matter of Coton Manor; he had had reason
enough to suppose that the visit would bring him face to face with
the thing he feared, and he had rushed into the adventure with open
arms. And now, this horror that he had eluded so successfully for
seven years he was to know more intimately than his own soul; he was
to sound all the depths beyond depths of boredom. He had stayed in
dull places before, but their dulness struck him now as naïf and
entertaining by comparison. Other people lapsed helplessly into
dulness; at Coton Manor they cultivated it; they kept it up. What
was worse, they took it for granted in other people. It never seemed
to occur to Miss Tancred or the Colonel that Maurice Durant could be
interesting, that he had done anything worth mentioning. Not that he
was sensitive to their opinion, it was simply that this attitude of
theirs appealed unpleasantly to his imagination, giving it a cold
foretaste of extinction. It was as if his flaming intellectual
youth, with all its achievements, had been dropped into the dark,
where such things are forgotten. At Coton Manor his claim to
distinction rested on the fact that he was the Colonel's godson. The
Colonel had appropriated, absorbed him, swallowed him up.

The fact that Durant was lapped in material comfort only intensified
his spiritual pangs. The Tancreds were rich, and their wealth was
not of to-day or yesterday; they had the dim golden tone, the deep
opulence of centuries. And they were generous, they gave him of
their best; so that, besides being bored, he had the additional
discomfort of feeling himself a bit of a brute. As he lay awake
night after night in his luxurious bed he wondered how he ever got
there, what on earth had induced him to accept their invitation. He
cursed his infernal rashness, his ungovernable optimism; he had
spent half his life in jumping at conclusions and at things, and the
other half in jumping away from them, however difficult the backward
leap. He had jumped at the Colonel's invitation.

To tell the truth, he would have jumped at anybody's at the time.

When he came back from his travels he had found himself a stranger
in his own country. In every place he touched he had left new
friends most agreeably disconsolate at his departure; he supposed
(rashly again) that the old ones would be overjoyed at his return.
As it happened, his reception in England was not cold exactly, but
temperate, like the climate, and Durant had found both a little
trying after the fervors and ardors of the South. The poor fellow
had spent his first week at home in hansoms, rushing passionately
from one end of London to the other, looking up his various
acquaintances. He was disappointed, not to say disgusted, with the
result. (Maurice Durant was always disgusted when other people
failed to come up to his expectations.) His best friends were out of
town, his second best were only too much in it. Many of them had
abjured art and taken to stiff collars and conventions. He called on
these at their offices. They were all diabolically busy in the
morning and insufferably polite in the afternoon; they had flung him
a nod or a smile or a "Glad to see you back again, old fellow," and
turned from him with a preoccupied air. He remembered them as they
were seven years ago, when they were all Bohemians together. They
had no manners, good or bad, in those days, those young men; they
called you by strange names; they posed you in peculiar attitudes
and made abominable caricatures of your noble profile; but they
would lend or borrow a five-pound note with equal readiness; they
would give you a supper and a shake-down at any time of the night or
morning. Now it seemed they thought twice about asking you to
dinner, if indeed they thought about it at all. So Durant had been
pleasantly surprised at his godfather's genial letter. Why, bless
his little heart, the old boy had actually pressed him to stay for a
fortnight.

Well, how was he to get through that fortnight? He decided that he
would not get through it at all. He kept himself awake devising
schemes for his liberation; he would find some business to take him
up to town to-morrow; or, if he could not find it, he would invent
it; he would send himself a telegram. And then, against his will,
his mind began running on Miss Tancred. As he had been possessed by
the ideal, so now he was haunted by the reality; it had a horrible
fascination for him. He wondered if Miss Tancred had ever been
young; he wondered if Miss Tancred had ever made a joke; he wondered
if Miss Tancred had ever been in love. This third idea was so
incongruous, so impossible, that at last he found himself dallying
with it for the mere extravagant humor of the thing.

If he had only been able to make himself agreeable to Miss
Tancred--for Miss Tancred, if she had the will, had certainly the
power to help him. The unhappy young man had made a careful
inspection of the stables to see if there was a lingering chance
for him there. The sleek bays that brought him from the
station--impossible; the Colonel's cob, a creature too safe to be
exciting; and--yes, there was Miss Tancred's mare. The sight of the
fiery little beast dancing in her stall had affected him with an
uncontrollable desire to ride her. The groom, not without sympathy,
had interpreted his longing glances.

"There's a-many casts sheep's eyes at that there mare, sir; but it
'ud be as much as my place is worth, sir, to let you or any other
gentleman get atop of her. Nobody lays a 'and on that annymal but
Miss Tancred. Miss Tancred's orders, sir."

He might have known it. Miss Tancred was good for nothing, not even
for the loan of a mount.

Miss Tancred seemed aware that nothing was expected from her, and
kept conscientiously out of his way. He saw nothing of her from
breakfast till dinnertime and the evening, when she appeared as his
official partner in the game of whist. What became of her in the
meanwhile he did not know; he could only vaguely conjecture. She
seemed to vanish, to lose herself in the vast workings of Coton
Manor, or in that vaster entity, the Colonel.

By the fourth day Durant's irritable mood had changed to
resignation. If he could not altogether adopt Mrs. Fazakerly's
attitude and smile pleasantly into the jaws of dulness, he consented
to be bored to death with a certain melancholy grace.

He had made a dash for freedom; he had actually started first thing
in the morning with his sketching block and easel, and was
congratulating himself on his benignant chance, when, as he sneaked
round a corner of the house, the Colonel stepped out upon him from a
side window. There was one hope for him. Rain had fallen over
night, and the little gentleman was as yet in his slippers; he was
feeling the damp gravel like a fastidious cat.

"Ah-ha!" said he, in the tone of joyful encounter. "And what do you
propose to do with yourself this morning?"

Durant looked at his host with a sad reproachful gaze from which all
bitterness had departed. He had felt inclined to reply that he
proposed to commit suicide; as it was, he only said he thought of
trying to sketch something.

The Colonel seemed a little offended at the proposal; it certainly
implied that Durant had more confidence in his own resources than in
those of the house.

"So that's your fad, is it? I think we can do better for you than
that."

And as Durant had calculated he skipped back into the house, and
before he could return with his boots on, Durant, by another miracle
of chance or his own cunning, had contrived his escape.

He made his way up a slight slope, whence he could see far over the
landscape. What he had as yet seen was not inspiring, the heavy
full-blown charm of the Midlands in July, lonely, without any of the
poetry of loneliness. As he looked about him he realized again that
he was in the heart of the country, the great, slow, passionless
heart whose pulses are interminable hours. If you love Nature as
Durant loved her, for her sex with its divine caprices, its madness
and its mystery, you will be disappointed with Wickshire. In
Wickshire Mother Nature is no dubious Aphrodite; she is indissolubly
married to man, and behaves like an ordinary British matron, comely
and correct. Durant saw in the immediate foreground a paddock dotted
with young firs, each in a ring fence, beyond the paddock a field
of buttercups shining with a polished gleam, beyond the buttercups a
horizon of trees. Before him to the southeast, soaring above the
roofs of Whithorn-in-Arden, a church spire pointed the way to
heaven; beyond that, traveling low above the railway cutting, a thin
line of smoke indicated the way into the world. Behind him were more
trees; the green crescent of the woods with the white front of Coton
Manor shining in their arms like a heavy, foolish face. He had no
patience with the landscape, with this Nature trimmed and tamed,
these shaven meadows and clean-cut hedges and little rectangular
plantations. It was a typical English landscape, a landscape most
unnecessarily draped, where the bosom of the hills was always
covered, and the very elms were muffled to their feet. A landscape
destitute of passion and sensual charm, a landscape like Miss
Tancred.

Miss Tancred. He no longer felt any wild resentment against that
poor girl; he had learned to judge her leniently. If you live with
bores you inevitably become a bore; at the same time, he admitted
that she was doing her best not to bore him. Meanwhile he
transferred his hatred to her surroundings.

This young man had no philosophy beyond the general impression that
the universe was under infinite obligations to be good to him, a
belief that had found itself rather rudely shaken. He chose his view
and pitched his easel and relieved himself by one deep,
metaphysical, soul-satisfying curse at the devilry of things. Then
he set to work, and with the instinct of a born painter he tried to
find possibilities in the despised landscape. Before long he had
discovered mystery in the woods that lifted their heavy rounded
contours to the sky, gathered and massed and piled on one another
like clouds; deep mystery in their green, green drenched with
liquid and aerial gray, pierced by thick black veins and hollowed
into caverns of darkness and blue dusk. And, though he knew that he
was tying himself to the place by taking it seriously, in an hour's
time he was absorbed and happy.

He was startled by a voice behind him. "Do you think that it's so
very beautiful?"

He turned round. Miss Tancred stood looking over his shoulders, not
at him nor at his sketch, but at the distant prospect.

"It's--nice and open," he answered absently.

"Open? Wait till you've lived in it. To me it's like living with all
the doors shut."

"Too many woods, perhaps. And yet there's always a charm about a
wooded country; it's English."

"Yes, and, like everything English, it's much too serious, too
conventional, too"--she paused for her epithet--"too disgustingly
rich."

He was more startled than ever; she had put his own feeling about it
into words.

"And then it's so painfully proper and respectable. Look at those
ridiculous trees in their petticoats. English to a degree."

"Ah!--if you've been abroad----"

"I haven't been abroad."

"Proud insular boast!"

"I wasn't boasting. I was stating a fact."

"Well, you've some cause to boast. Not to have been abroad is
distinction nowadays."

"If it comes to that I've never been out of this county, except to
London now and then. You wouldn't think it."

He smiled, for it happened to be precisely what he had thought. It
explained her somehow; he recognized in Miss Tancred the incurable
provincial. To be sure, her sentiments were somewhat at variance
with her character, an inconsistency not unusual in woman. All he
said was, "It is a little extraordinary." He was wondering when she
was going to go. She did not go.

"I'm glad you've discovered something to do here. It must be so
deadly dull."

He found relief in ambiguity. "I am never dull"; adding
irrelevantly, "it's a glorious view."

She brightened visibly. "If you like I can show you a better one
than this. It's not so very far;"--she hesitated--"we might go
to-morrow, perhaps; though it wouldn't be very amusing, I'm afraid."

Again he felt a touch of compunction. She had so clearly grasped the
situation; she was so evidently sorry for him, so conscientious,
even if mistaken, in her efforts to make amends, that he found her
positively pathetic. He answered humbly that he would be delighted
if she would be so good.

Then, conscientiously again, she left him. He watched her tall
figure departing with energetic strides, and he decided that Miss
Tancred was not so bad out of doors, but that she needed a large
background.

The next morning he had the grace to remind her of her promise. They
started at a rapid pace. Durant left the paraphernalia of his art
behind him by way of intimating delicately that the hour was hers.
Miss Tancred was evidently prepared for vigorous walking. She was
dressed suitably and inoffensively in brown holland. She took him up
a long, gradually rising hill to where a group of firs stood on an
isolated mound.

Here Miss Tancred paused, with tilted profile, sniffing the ambient
air. "This," she said, "is the highest point in the county; there is
always a fresh breeze here; to-day you can smell the sea."

"Impossible; we must be right in the very center of England, about
a hundred miles from the nearest coast."

"You can hear it, then. Shut your eyes and listen."

He obeyed. The wind moved and the firs gave out their voice. He
opened his eyes and glanced at Miss Tancred. She was leaning up
against a fir; her eyes looked straight past him into the distance;
the wind had loosened the hair about her forehead; her lips were
parted, her eyes shone; there was an eagerness in her face he had
not yet seen there. It was as if a dead woman had been suddenly made
alive before him. She was gazing and listening.

"If you've never been out of Wickshire, where have you heard the
sea?"

She answered curtly, "I don't know where I've heard it"; then added,
as if by way of apology for her manner, "Do you like it?"

"Immensely."

"Then you must come up whenever you want to. You can always be alone
here."

She spoke as if she were giving him the freedom of her private
sanctuary.

"Have you any sketches of those places you've been to abroad?"

"Sketches? Any amount."

"Have you brought them with you?"

He blushed. He had brought many sketches in the hope of showing them
to a wealthy godfather and an admiring god-sister.

"Some--a few."

"I wish you'd show them to me."

"I shall be delighted." He blushed again, this time for pleasure.
With the desire to bestow a little of it, he asked rashly, "Do you
sketch, Miss Tancred? I saw some water-colors----"

"They were my mother's. I do nothing."

"Oh, I see." (They were going home now.) "I was wondering what on
earth you found to do here."

"I? A great many things. Business chiefly. My father is secretary to
the Primrose League. I write all his letters for him."

"That's one way of being secretary to the Primrose League."

"The usual way, I think. Secretaries generally have
under-secretaries, haven't they? My father dictates."

Durant smiled. He could see him doing it. "What else does Colonel
Tancred do?"

"He does no end of things. All the business of the estate; and he
speaks, at meetings, everywhere. He has lectured----"

It was pathetic, her eagerness to vindicate his intellect, to record
his achievements, to convince Durant that she was proud of him, not
to let him see.

For the rest of the way she was silent, the light died out of her
eyes with every turning, and by the time they had reached Coton
Manor Miss Tancred was herself again.

At whist that evening nobody was pleased. The Colonel looked sulky
and offended, possibly at Durant's disaffection; Durant was moodier
than ever, and even Mrs. Fazakerly seemed depressed. Miss Tancred
remained imperturbable and indifferent, she won every trick without
turning a hair, but when it was all over she left the table
abruptly. She was visibly distressed. Mrs. Fazakerly gazed after her
with an affectionate stare. She turned to Durant.

"For goodness' sake," she whispered, "say something nice to her."

For the life of him Durant could think of nothing nice to say,
beyond congratulating her on her success in the accursed game.

Mrs. Fazakerly chimed in, "With or without a partner Miss Tancred
wins!"

"I always win. So, I imagine, does Mr. Durant."

"And why should I always win?"

"You? You win because you care nothing about the game."


V

If you had told Durant that the end of his first week would find him
sitting under the firs in lonely conversation with Miss Tancred, he
would have smiled at you incredulously. Yet so it was. Her fear of
him, if fear it had been, and not indifference, was wearing away.
She seemed anxious to make friends with him if possible in a less
painfully conscientious manner, and he, on his side, was beginning
to tolerate her. In fact, he went so far as to own that, if it had
not been for that ridiculous idea of his, he would have tolerated
her from the first. It was not her fault if he had been fool enough
to fall in love with her before sight or at half-sight. She had
disappointed him (hence his natural disgust); but the thing had
happened many times before in his experience. After all, he had had
no grounds for his passionate belief in Miss Tancred beyond the
argument from defect, the vague feeling that Destiny owed him amends
for her intolerable shortcomings. But Durant's mind was too sane and
versatile to be long concerned with passion yet unborn. He was not
one of those pitiable sentimentalists who imagine that every
petticoat, or at any rate every well-cut skirt, conceals a probable
ideal. Some women of his acquaintance had defined, not to say
denounced, him as a consummate and dangerous flirt, but these were
not the most discerning of their sex. Durant described himself more
correctly as a sympathetic, though dispassionate, observer of
womankind. In other words, he was not a vulgar flirt; he flirted
with understanding.

An understanding without flirtation was springing up between him and
Miss Tancred. In this God-forsaken place they were comrades in
boredom and isolation. She had said nothing, but in some impalpable
yet intimate way he knew that she, too, was bored, that the Colonel
bored her. The knowledge lay between them unnamed, untouched by
either of them; they passed it by, she in her shame and he in his
delicacy, with eyes averted from it and from each other. It was as
if the horror had crept out through some invisible, intangible
doorway of confession; unseen, unapproached, it remained their
secret and the source of their mutual pity. Meanwhile she no longer
avoided him; on the contrary, she showed an unmistakable liking for
his society. She would come while he was sketching and sit beside
him for five minutes, fifteen minutes, half an hour, remaining
silent, or merely exchanging a few frank words with him before she
went her way. In these matters she was gifted with an unerring tact;
without a hint on Durant's part she seemed to know to a nicety how
far her presence was agreeable or otherwise.

This time he had gone up the hill after dinner, and had found her
sitting in the accustomed place. They had been alone that evening,
for the Colonel was dining intimately with Mrs. Fazakerly. That
lady, with a refined friendliness that did her credit, had refrained
from including Miss Tancred and Durant in the invitation, thereby
insuring them one evening's immunity from whist. Durant could make
no better use of his freedom than by spending it alone out of
doors; it seemed that Miss Tancred had done the same with hers.

She was sitting there on the edge of the mound, clasping her knees
and gazing into the distance. He apologized for his intrusion, and
she waked from her abstraction with a dreamy air, making a visible
effort to take him in and realize him. But, though she said simply
that she was glad he had come, the effect of his coming was to
plunge her into deeper abstraction. They sat for some time without
speaking. Miss Tancred had a prodigious faculty for silence, and
Durant let her have her way, being indeed indifferent to Miss
Tancred's way.

At last she spoke.

"It's odd how some people take Nature," said she; "for instance,
Mrs. Fazakerly says she loves it because it's so soothing. She might
just as well say she liked listening to an orchestra because it
sends her to sleep. She can't love it for its own sake."

"You'll think me horribly rude, but I doubt if any woman can. That
is the one thing a woman is incapable of--a pure passion for Nature,
a really disinterested love of life. It's an essentially masculine
sentiment."

"I don't at all agree with you."

"Don't you? To begin with, it argues more vitality than most women
have got. They take to it as a substitute for other things; and to
be content with it would mean that they had exhausted, outlived the
other things."

"What other things?"

She was studying every line of his young, repugnant face, and Durant
was a little embarrassed by her steady gaze.

"Other interests, other feelings--whatever it is that women do care
for most."

"I don't know anything about women."

Her remark might have borne various interpretations, either that she
knew nothing about herself, that she despised her own sex too much
to include herself in it, or that she had tacitly adopted Durant's
attitude, which seemed to leave her altogether outside of the
discussion. He talked to her unconsciously, without any desire to
please, as if he assumed that she expected as little from him as he
from her. She never reminded him that she was a woman. It would have
been absurd if she had insisted on it, and whatever she was Miss
Tancred was not absurd.

She went on calmly, "So I can't say what they care for most; can
you?"

"You know my opinion. I wanted yours."

"Mine isn't worth much. But I should say that in these things no two
women were alike. You talk as if they were all made of the same
stuff."

"So they are inside--in their souls, I mean."

"There's more unlikeness in their souls, I imagine, than there ever
is in their bodies; and you wouldn't say an ugly woman was quite the
same as a pretty one, would you?"

"Yes; in the obvious sense that they are both women. I admit that
there may be an ugliness that cancels sex, to say nothing of a
beauty that transcends it; but in either case the woman is unique."

"And if the woman, why not her soul?"

"Because--because--because there is a certain psychical quality that
is eternal and unchangeable; because the soul is the seat of the
cosmic difference we call sex. In man or woman that is the one
unalterable fact--the last reality."

He spoke coldly, brutally almost, as if he, like herself, was blind
to the pathos of her ignored and rejected womanhood.

She seemed to be thinking that last point over.

"Yes," she said, "I'm glad you came. I believe you can help me."

"I shall be delighted if I can."

"What do you think of Mrs. Fazakerly?"

Durant was a little taken aback by the suddenness of the question.

"What should I think?"

"I--I hardly know."

She knitted her black brows till they almost touched, and propped
her chin with her hand, as if she were oppressed with the weight of
her own thoughts. It struck him that her provincial mind entertained
an unreasonable suspicion of the consummate little widow, a woman's
jealousy of the superior creature compact of sex; and a sense of
justice made him inclined to defend Mrs. Fazakerly. Besides, he
liked Mrs. Fazakerly; she, at any rate, was not a bore.

"She's a very amusing woman, and I should say she was an uncommonly
good sort, too."

To his surprise her face brightened. "Should you? Should you say
that she had a good heart?"

"Really, Miss Tancred, I can't see into Mrs. Fazakerly's heart, but
I wouldn't mind betting----"

"That she's good? And affectionate? And straight?"

"Straight as a die."

"And honest?"

"Oh, Lord, yes." He wondered whatever primitive meaning she attached
to the word.

"Well, if you think that----"

"Mind you, my opinion may be utterly worthless."

"No, no. It's just the very sort of opinion I want."

"Why should it be?"

"Because it's the opinion of a man of the world. Mrs. Fazakerly's a
woman of the world, so I thought you'd understand her. I don't."

"I've known her exactly a week, and you?"

"Two years. But then I don't observe character, and you do. And yet
I have an intuition."

"Then by all means trust your intuition."

"That's it--I daren't. The truth is, I'm afraid of myself--my
motives."

"Your motives are not yourself."

"Aren't they? If it wasn't for them I should be certain. I see she's
a dear little woman, and I know that I like her."

"Then, for Heaven's sake, go on liking her; it's the best thing you
can do."

"Isn't it rather horrid to like a person just because they may be of
use to you?"

"Not in the least. You were pleased to say I might be of use to you,
and I'm sure I hope you like me."

"Yes, I like you; but I think I like you for yourself. I'm afraid of
liking Mrs. Fazakerly from the wrong motive."

"You can't like her from the wrong motive. You can't have a motive
at all, if it comes to that. You might have a motive for killing
her, or for cultivating her acquaintance, but not for liking her.
You either like a person or not, and there's an end of it."

"If your motives are not yourself, what are they?"

"Lord only knows. Forces, tendencies, that determine your actions,
which are the very smallest part of you. What you call intuitions,
your feelings--hate (I should say you were a good hater), and
love----" (her eyes, which had been fixed on his, dropped
suddenly), "don't wait for motives. They're the only spontaneous
things about you, the only realities you know." (And of these he had
said just now that the last reality was sex. It was his point of
view, a point from which it appeared that for him Miss Tancred had
no existence.) "Of course there may be some transcendental sense in
which they're not realities at all; but as far as we are concerned
they're not only real, but positively self-existent."

As he thus discoursed, Durant blinked critically at the sky, while
his pencil described an airy curve on the infinite blue, symbolizing
the grace, the fluency, and the vastness of his thought.

"They, if you like, are you. It's very odd that you don't seem to
trust them more."

She had turned from him till her face was a thin outline against the
sky. She had a fine head, and carried it well, too; and at the
moment the twilight dealt tenderly with her dress and face; it
purified the tragic pallor of her forehead and all but defined that
vague, haunting suggestion of a possible charm. Durant had it a
moment ago--there--then. Ah! now he had lost it.

"I daren't trust my feelings. I can't. There are too many of them.
They won't work the same way. They're all fighting against each
other."

"Then let them fight it out, and let the strongest win."

"If I only knew which _was_ the strongest."

"You'll know some day. In the long run, you see, the strongest is
bound to win."

"Not necessarily. There might be a number of little ones that all
together would be stronger still."

"Oh, kill off the little beggars one at a time--go for them,
throttle them, wring their necks, jump on them; and if they wriggle,
_stamp_!"

"You can't jump on your own shadow. You can't stamp on them if
they're _you_."

He groaned. Miss Tancred was getting too subtle; it was like sitting
in the desert and playing at metaphysics with the Sphinx. He had had
about enough of it. He rose, stretching his long limbs, and the
action suggested the hideous tension of his intellect.

"You must let yourself go, Miss Tancred--let yourself go!" And he
laughed at his own vision of Miss Tancred; Miss Tancred insurgent,
Miss Tancred flamboyant, Miss Tancred voluptuous, volatile,
victorious!

And then a thought struck him.

He turned and saw Miss Tancred still sitting motionless, nursing her
knees; her pure inflexible profile glimmered against the dusk.


VI

Durant had an idea, or rather two ideas, one purely comic, the other
comic or tragic, according to the way you took it. He first of all
discovered that the Colonel was laying siege to the heart of Mrs.
Fazakerly, and at the same time conducting his campaign with an
admirable discretion. There never was a little Colonel of militia so
anxious to avoid committing himself. Not that the event could be
considered doubtful for a moment. Measuring all risks, it was in the
highest degree incredible that he would be called upon to suffer the
indignity of repulse.

There was nothing extraordinary in that. To be sure, on the first
face and blush of it, Durant had wondered how on earth Mrs.
Fazakerly could tolerate the Colonel; but, when he came to think of
it, there was no reason why she should not go a great deal farther
than that. The Colonel's dullness would not depress her, she having
such an eternal spring of gaiety in herself. She might even find it
"soothing," like the neighboring landscape. And as she loved her
laughter, it was not improbable that she loved its cause. Then she
had the inestimable advantage of knowing the worst of him; her
intelligent little eyes had seen him as he was; she could lay a soft
finger on all his weak spots. There was this to be said for the
Colonel, that he was all on the surface; there was nothing,
positively nothing, behind him. Besides, Mrs. Fazakerly was not
exacting. She had not lived forty years in the world without knowing
the world, and no doubt she knew it too well to ask very much from
it. Then the fact remained that the Colonel was an immaculate
gentleman, immaculately dressed, and he was not the only item in the
program. Coton Manor would be thrown in, and there were other
agreeable accessories. Mrs. Fazakerly's tastes were all of the
expensive sort, and her ambition aimed at something vaster than the
mere adornment of her own person. In her household she displayed a
talent, not to say a genius, for luxurious order. But a little
dinner at the cottage opposite the lodge gates had convinced Durant
that this elegance of hers was of a fragile and perishable sort. The
peculiar genius of Mrs. Fazakerly clamored for material and for
boundless scope. It could not do itself justice under two thousand a
year at the very least. As things stood its exuberance was hampered
both as to actual space (her drawing-room was only eighteen feet by
twelve) and as to the more glorious possibilities that depend on
income. At Coton Manor she would have a large field and a free hand.
Heaven only knew what Mrs. Fazakerly's mind was made up of; but
quite evidently it was made up.

So far so good; but there was less certainty as to the Colonel's
attitude. As yet nothing was to be seen, so to speak, but his
attitudes, which indeed were extremely entertaining. The little
gentleman was balancing himself very deftly on the edge of
matrimony, and Durant watched with a fearful interest the rash
advance and circumspect retreat, the oscillating hair's-breadth
pause, the perilous swerve, and desperate contortion of recovery.

Durant felt for him; he had so much to lose. Under Miss Tancred the
working of his household was already brought to such exquisite
perfection that any change must be for the worse. He had found out
what became of Miss Tancred in her mysterious disappearances. As far
as he could see the business of the estate was entirely
superintended by the lady. He came across her in earnest
conversation with the gardener; he met her striding across the
fields with the farm-bailiff; he had seen her once on her black mare
inspecting some buildings on the farthest limit of the property, the
obsequious builder taking notes of her directions. She was obviously
a capable woman, a woman of affairs. He presumed that these matters,
with her household and secretarial work, filled up her days; he knew
too well that whist accounted for her evenings. He did not know if
there was any margin, any dim intellectual region, out of time, out
of space, where Miss Tancred's soul was permitted to disport itself
in freedom; she seemed to exist merely in order to supply certain
deficiencies in the Colonel's nature. Mrs. Fazakerly had once
remarked that Frida was "her father's right hand." It would have
been truer to have said that she was right hand and left hand, and
legs and brain to the student of meteorology. There had evidently
been some tacit division of labor, by which she did all the
thinking and all the work while he did the talking. Thus, to
continue Durant's line of argument, the Colonel's comfort was
secured to him without an effort on his part (otherwise it would not
have been comfort); and when all was said and done Mrs. Fazakerly
was a most indifferent player of whist.

Then there was the Colonel's age. Durant knew a man who had taught
himself the 'cello at fifty-five. But the Colonel was not that sort
of adventurous dilettante. Neither was Mrs. Fazakerly exactly like a
violoncello, she was more like a piano; while Miss Tancred, from the
Colonel's point of view, was like a hurdy-gurdy. Not a difficult
instrument the hurdy-gurdy; you have only to keep on turning a
handle to make it go. To be sure, you can get rather more out of a
piano; but pianos are passionate things, ungovernable and slippery
to the touch. The Colonel was fond of the humbler instrument that
gave him the sense of accomplishment without the effort, the joys of
the _maestro_ without his labor and his pain.

He was in a double dilemma. If he had to choose between Miss Tancred
and Mrs. Fazakerly his choice would never be made. On the other
hand, if he decided for both, his comfort would be more insecure
than ever. There would be jealousy to a dead certainty; in all mixed
households that was where the shoe pinched. To pursue that vulgar
figure, the Colonel's daughter was like a pair of old and easy shoes
made by a good maker, a maker on whom he could rely; a wife would be
like new boots ordered rashly from an unknown firm. They would be
his best pair, no doubt, but your best pair is generally the
tightest. He had some trying years before him; and well, a man does
not put on new boots for a long uphill scramble.

So the Colonel's breast was torn with internecine warfare, desire
battling with habit, and habit with desire. No wonder if in that
awful struggle the fate of one insignificant individual counted for
nothing. Frida Tancred never had counted.

Durant admitted that his imagination was apt to work in somewhat
violent colors, and that there might be a point of view from which
the Colonel would tone down into a very harmless and even pathetic
figure; for Mrs. Fazakerly he had no terrors. But there was the
girl. It was hard to say exactly what he had done to her. Apparently
he had taken her soul while it was young and squeezable, and had
crushed it till it fitted into all his little habits; he had
silenced her heart with commonplaces, and dulled her intellect with
his incomprehensible fatuity. And through it all he had been the
most innocent little gentleman alive. Oh, yes, he was pathetic
enough in his way. He himself was only an instrument in the hands of
irrepressible Nature who couples wild soul with tame, hot blood with
cold blood, genius with folly, and makes her sport of their unhappy
offspring. And Nature was playing a glorious game with Frida Tancred
now.

That was Durant's second idea; the thought that had struck him so
unpleasantly after his last interview with her. To put it coarsely,
he had a suspicion, a fear, that Miss Tancred was beginning to fall
in love with him. He might have known that it would happen. It was
just the sort of damnable irony most likely to pursue that
unfortunate woman. There could be no mistake about it; he knew it;
he knew it by many subtle and infallible signs. Somewhere he had
heard or read that no nice man ever knows these things. That was all
nonsense; or, if it had any meaning at all, it could only mean that
no nice man ever shows that he knows. The fact remained that if he
had loved her he would not have known.

For the disagreeable circumstance itself he called Heaven to witness
that he had not been to blame. He had been ready to do his part, to
fall down and worship the unknown Miss Tancred, the Miss Tancred of
his vision. The hour had been ripe, the situation also, and the
mood; the woman alone had failed him. Heaven knew he had done
nothing to make her care for him. True, he had given her a certain
amount of his society; since she found a pleasure in it he would
have been a brute to deny her that poor diversion, that miserable
consolation for the tedium of her existence. Perhaps he had tried
too much to be sympathetic; but who again would not have tried? He
had given her nothing to go upon. What had he ever given her beyond
some infinitesimal portion of his valuable time, at the most some
luminous hour of insight, or perhaps a little superfluous piece of
good advice that was of no possible use to himself? For these things
she had given herself--given herself away. How ludicrously pathetic
some women are! You do them some kindness on an afternoon when you
have nothing better to do and they reward you with the devotion of
eternity; for they have no sense of proportion. The awkward thing is
that it lays you under an eternal obligation to do something or
other for them, you don't know exactly what; an intolerable position
for a nice man.

So Durant's first feelings were surprise, annoyance, and a certain
shame. Then he began to feel a little flattered, being perfectly
sure that Frida Tancred was not the woman to give herself away to
any ordinary man. He was the first, the only one, the one in a
thousand, who had broken down her implacable reserve. He ended by
feeling positively proud of his power to draw out the soul of a
creature so reticent and passionless and strange.

His time was not yet up, and the question was: Ought he to go or
stay? He would have found or invented some pretext, and left long
ago, but that in him the love of pleasure brought with it an equal
fear of giving pain. It would give pain to the Colonel (who, after
all, had received him kindly) if he went before his time. By the art
of graceful evasion Durant had escaped many such an old gentleman as
the Colonel; but when it came to doing the really disagreeable and
ungraceful thing it seemed that his courage failed him.

There was no doubt in Miss Tancred's mind on the delicate point. She
was even capable of making a sacrifice to keep him.

He met her one morning riding on her black mare. Miss Tancred looked
well on horseback; the habit, the stiff collar, the hard hat, were
positively becoming, perhaps because they left no room for
decorative caprice. She drew up, and Durant ran his hand lovingly
over the warm shining neck and shoulders of the mare. Miss Tancred's
eyes followed the movements of his hand, then they traveled up his
tall figure and down again.

"Your legs are rather long," said she, "and you're heavier than I
am; but you can ride her if you like."

"I shouldn't think of it," said Durant, magnificently mendacious. He
had been very early enlightened as to his chances with the mare; but
the temptation to ride her had never died in him.

"Unless you ride," she continued, "there is nothing for you to do
here. Then you'll be bored to death; and then, I suppose, you'll
go?"

"And bury myself? And then?"

"You won't be buried long. You'll rise again fast enough, somewhere
else."

"And what if I do go and do all these things?"

"Well, I don't want you to go--and do them."

She moved on, and he walked beside her, his hand on the mare's mane.

"I can't think why you've stopped so long. Every morning since you
came I've been expecting you to go. I thought you'd say your father
was dying, or that your partner was ill, and you had urgent business
in town. It's what they all do. Do you know, we've asked no end of
people down, and they never stay more than three days. They always
get letters or telegrams, or something. No, I'm wrong; one man
stopped a week. He sprained his ankle the first day, and left before
he was fit to travel."

(Durant laughed. She really amused him, this _ingénue_ of thirty,
with the face of a Sphinx and the conversation of a child.)

"And they never come again. There's something about the place they
can _not_ stand."

They were walking leisurely together in full sight of Coton Manor.
She gazed at it anxiously.

"Does it--does it look so very awful?"

"Well--architecturally speaking--no, of course it doesn't."

"Ah, you're getting used to it. Do you know you'll have been here a
fortnight next Monday?"

About the corners of her mouth and eyes there played a dawning
humor.

"Come, that sounds as if you did want me to go."

"No it doesn't. How could it? If you don't believe me, here's the
proof--you can ride Polly every day if you'll stop another week."

Another week! Most decidedly she had a sense of the monstrous humor
of the thing. If she could see it that way she was saved. He had not
the heart to kill that happy mood by a coarse refusal; it would have
been like grinding his heel on some delicate, struggling thing just
lifting its head into life.

Besides, she had really touched him. His legs, as Miss Tancred had
observed, were a little long, otherwise Durant had the soul and the
physique of a tamer of horses. The sight of Polly filled him with
desire that was agony and rapture; he saw himself controlling the
splendid animal; he could feel her under him, bounding, quivering,
pulsating, he himself made one with every movement of her nervous,
passionate body. It was too much. Beside that large, full-blooded
pleasure, his scruples showed colorless and light as air.

That happened on a Friday. He had only two clear days more. He found
himself seriously considering the desirability of staying over
Monday.


VII

As ill-luck would have it Saturday was a wet day, and Durant,
instead of riding the mare, was wandering aimlessly about the house.
He had finished all the books in his bedroom and was badly in want
of more. He knocked up against Frida Tancred in a dark passage,
apologized, and confided in her. As usual she was sorry for him.

"I'm afraid we haven't many books; but you'll find some of mine in
here." She opened a door as she spoke, and passed on.

Durant found himself in a room which he had not yet investigated.
It was somewhat bare as to furniture; it struck strange to his
senses as if he had stumbled into another world; in some occult
way it preserved a tradition of travel and adventure. The bookcase
he came to inspect was flanked by a small cabinet of coins and
curios--Italian, Grecian, Egyptian, and Japanese; the walls were
hung with bad landscapes interspersed with maps.

One of these, an uncolored map of Europe, attracted his attention.
It was drawn by hand in Indian ink, a red line and accompanying
arrow heads followed the coast and strung together such inland
places as were marked upon the blank. The line started from
Southampton and reached the Mediterranean by the Bay of Biscay; it
shot inland to the great cities of Italy, returning always to the
sea. It skirted Greece, wound in and out of the Ionian islands,
touched at Constantinople, ringed the Bosporus and the Black Sea,
wheeled to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and then swept wildly up the
north of Russia to Archangel and the Arctic Ocean; thence it
followed the Scandinavian coast-line, darted to Iceland, and dipped
southward again to Britain by way of the Hebrides. Off Queenstown
the arrowheads pointed west, winged for the Atlantic. He found the
same red line again on a blank map of Asia heading for India by
China and Japan. An adventurous, erratic line, whose stages were now
the capitals of the world, and now some unknown halting-place in the
immeasurable waste. And what on earth did it mean? Was it the record
of an actual journey, or some yet untraveled visionary route?

But it was not these things alone that gave the room its fantastic
and alien air. What dominated the place was the portrait of a woman,
a woman who had Frida's queer accented eyebrows and Frida's eyes,
with some more fiery and penetrating quality of her own, something
more inimitably fine and foreign. The portrait (which struck Durant
as decidedly clever) was signed by some unknown Russian artist, and
he recognized it as that of Frida's mother, the lady of the
landscapes. He wondered if it was the demon of _ennui_ that had
driven poor Mrs. Tancred to the practice of her terrible art, if she
had had a spite against Coton Manor, which she vented by covering
its walls with bad pictures.

He turned to the bookcase. Frida's library offered him an amazing
choice of polyglot fiction. It contained nearly all Balzac and the
elder Dumas, Tolstoi and Turgenieff, Björnsen and Ibsen, besides a
great deal of miscellaneous literature, chiefly Russian and
Norwegian. Here and there he came across some odd volumes of modern
Greek. A whole shelf was devoted to books of travel; grammars and
dictionaries made up the rest. Miss Tancred's taste in books was a
little outlandish, but it was singularly virile and robust. He had
been prepared to suspect her of a morbid pedantry, having known more
than one lady in her desperate case who found consolation in the
dead languages. But Miss Tancred betrayed no ghoulish appetites; if
she had a weakness for tongues, she had also the good taste to
prefer them living.

Durant was so much absorbed in these observations that he did not
hear her come into the room.

"Have you found anything you can read?" she asked.

"I've found a great deal that I can't read. You _do_ go in strong
for languages."

"That's nothing; my mother was a Russian, and Russians know every
language better than their own. I don't know more than seven besides
mine. And I can only read and write them. They will never be any use
to me."

"How can you tell what may be of use to you? Even Mrs. Fazakerly, or
I?" Durant was anxious to give a playful turn to that remarkable
discussion they once had; he thus hoped to set the tone for all
future conversations with Miss Tancred. "I admit that you can't live
on languages, they are not exactly safety-valves for the emotions;
nobody can swear in more than three of them at a time. I think
music's better. Instead of playing whist you ought to play Chopin."

"It's better to play whist well than Chopin badly."

"Better to rule in Hades than fool in the other place, you think?
Miss Tancred, you are as proud as Lucifer."

"I don't see that any good is got by murdering the masters."

"It saves some women from worse crimes, I believe. Why didn't you
take to sketching, then? _That_ only kills time."

Miss Tancred was splendid in her scorn. "Kill time with painting bad
pictures? I'd rather time killed me."

Ah, that was what he liked about her. She had not revenged herself
on Nature by making hideous caricatures of Nature's face; she did
not draw in milk-and-water colors, and she did not strum. She had
none of the exasperating talents, the ludicrous ambitions of the
amateur; she was altogether innocent of intellectual vanity.

"That reminds me," said she, "that I've seen nothing of those
wonderful sketches you said you'd show me."

He had clean forgotten the things. Well, he could hardly do better
than exhibit them; it would keep her quiet, and save him from
perilous personalities.

At first he thought the exhibition was going to give her more pain
than pleasure. He sat beside her, and she took the sketches from him
gingerly, one by one, and looked at them without a word. A visible
nervousness possessed her; her pulses clamored, she seemed to
struggle with her own unsteady breathing. Once, when in the transfer
of a drawing her hand brushed against his, she drew it back again as
if it had dashed against a flame. Durant had noticed once or twice
before that she avoided his touch.

Suddenly she awoke out of the agony of her consciousness. One
picture had held her longer than the rest.

"It's beautiful--beautiful," she murmured.

"I'm glad you like it," said Durant, pleased at her first sign of
admiration.

"Oh, I don't mean your picture--I mean the place."

"It's not a very good picture perhaps----"

"I don't know whether it's good or bad; it seems to me rather bad,
though I can't say what's wrong with it. It looks unfinished."

"It _is_ unfinished, but that's not what's wrong with it. These are
better--better painting."

His hand brushed hers in vain this time. She remained absorbed. "I
don't care two straws about the painting; they may be masterpieces
for all I know; it's _that_--that stretch of sand licked by the sea,
and the grass trodden down by the wind--the agony and beauty and
desolation of it----" She laid it down unwillingly, and took the
others from his hand.

"Oh, what's this?"

"A wall in Suza."

"I've never seen anything like that. The light seems to be
moving--soaking into it and streaming out again. It looks as if it
would burn if you touched it."

The artist in him laughed for pure pleasure. "It's all very well,
you know, but they must be infernally good if they make you feel
like that."

"They may be. Have you seen all these things, or have you done any
of them out of your head?"

"Seen them, of course. I never paint 'out of my head'; I haven't
enough imagination."

"Show me more places where you've been. Tell me about them. You
might have done that before."

He obeyed, giving her his experience, his richest and his best; he
drew for her scenes and things, not in their crude and temporary
form, but as they lived for him and for his art, idealized,
eternalized by the imagination that sees them as parts of the
immortal whole; and yet vivid, individual, drenched with the
peculiar color that made them equally and forever one with the soul
of Maurice Durant. She hardly seemed to heed, hardly seemed to
listen or to follow. She looked as if hearing were already absorbed
in sight.

Durant put a small oil painting into her hand. He had kept his
finest to the last. "If you're fond of the sea that may please you."

Mid-ocean, the slope and trough of a luminous sea; in the foreground
one smooth, high-bosomed, unbroken wave, the light flung off from
its crest like foam, to slide down its shoulder like oil on rounded
glass. On the sky-line the white peak of a sail; the whole a heaving
waste of wind and water, light and air. It was a consummate bit of
painting, as nobody knew better than Maurice Durant.

She looked at it as though she would never be tired of looking. A
sudden impulse seized him, a blind instinct to give pleasure at any
cost, to make amends for pain.

"If you honestly like it, I wish you'd keep it."

"Keep it? Keep it? Do you really mean it?"

"It would give me pleasure if you would."

"But isn't--might it not be valuable?"

It was valuable, as Durant reflected somewhat regretfully, but he
answered well. "Valuable chiefly to me, I fancy. Which is all the
more reason, if you like it----"

"Like it? I should lo----" She drew back her breath. "No; I think
I'd better not. Thank you very much, all the same." She laid the
canvas down with a gesture of renunciation.

"Now that's foolish. Why ever won't you?"

"I daren't. I daren't live with it. It would remind me of all the
things I want to forget."

"What things?" He felt that the question was cruel, it was probing
the very heart of pain. But his curiosity was too strong. The
fountains of the deep were breaking up; he knew that he had only to
give the word to witness an astounding transformation of the woman.
He had given the word. Her face was changing; it had taken on the
likeness of her foreign mother, intensified in its subtlety and
fire.

"What things? The things I want to do and can't; the things I want
to see--the things----" She stopped. "Do you know, I don't even like
to have those sketches of my mother's hanging about; they haunt me
so intolerably, they tempt me to that degree that sometimes I can
hardly bear to look at them."

He glanced at the drawings. _He_ could hardly bear to look at them
either. Poor wraiths and skeletons of landscapes, he would have
thought them too fleshless and bloodless to touch even the ghost of
longing.

She took up the picture she had just laid down. "But _this_--it's
not painting, it's real; it's a piece torn out of the living world.
It would bring it so horribly near me--don't you see?"

He thought he saw. He looked, and she lowered her eyelids. On to
the slope of his wave there splashed a tear, salt to the salt.

She got up, turned away from him, and leaned against the window
frame, staring out at the gravel walk, the lawn, the paddock, all
the sedate, intolerable scene. Her breast heaved; she was shaken by
a tumult of vision and desire.

"If only I could get away--get away from this!"

It was not she that cried out, but some other self, unacknowledged
and unappeased, smothered and crushed and hidden out of sight.

Durant was moved by the revelation, and a little frightened, too.

"And why not get away?" he asked gently.

"Because I can't do anything like other people, by bits and halves.
If I once go, I shall never come back--never. There's no use
thinking about it. I've thought about it till I could have gone
mad." She faced him bravely. "Mr. Durant, if you ever want a thing
as badly as I want that, let me tell you that it will be simpler and
easier to give it up altogether, for always, than to keep on looking
at it and touching it and letting it go."

"Do you apply that principle to everything?"

"Nearly everything."

"H'm. Uncompromising. Yet I doubt if you are wise."

"Wise? Isn't it wiser to stand a little hunger than to go back to
starvation after luxury?"

"Oh, of course; at that rate you can bring your soul down to a straw
a day. But in the end, you know, it dies."

"If it comes to that, mine was dead ages ago, and buried quite
decently, too. I think we won't dig it up again; by this time it
might not look pretty."

At any other time she would have alienated his sympathy by that
nasty speech; it was the sort of thing he hated women to say. But he
forgave her because of her evident sincerity.

She dried her eyes and left him to his own reflections.

So this was Frida Tancred? And he had thought of her as the
Colonel's daughter, a poor creature, subdued to the tyranny of
habit. Habit indeed! She had never known even that comparative calm.
It was not habit that had bound her to that dreadful old man, who
was the father of her body, but with whom her soul recognized no
kinship. Her life must have been an agony of self-renunciation, an
eternal effort not to be.

He doubted her wisdom; but he was not sure that he did not admire
her courage. That uncompromising attitude was more dignified than
the hesitations of weaker natures. When women set out with the bold
intention of living resolutely in the Whole, the Good, and the
Beautiful, they sometimes find themselves brought up sharply midway
at the threshold of the Good; and there they stand vacillating all
the time, or at the most content themselves now and then with a
terrified rush for the Beautiful and the Whole. They are fascinated
by all three and faithful to none. Frida Tancred scorned their
fatuous procedure. Balked of the best, she would never console
herself with half-measures and the second best; as for all lesser
values, there was something in her which would always mark her from
Mrs. Fazakerly and her kind. With Frida it was either the whole or
nothing; either four bare walls or the open road where there is no
returning.

She would go no way where the Colonel could not follow.

Durant, on his way to bed that night, saw something that told him
so much. Father and daughter stood with their backs to him at the
end of the long corridor. The Colonel was putting out the lights.
Frida had just nodded good night to him at her bedroom door, when
she turned impetuously and flung her arms round the little
gentleman. She pressed his head against her neck and held it there
an instant, a passion of remorse and tenderness in the belated
caress. The Colonel was, as it were, taken off his feet; he was
visibly embarrassed. Durant saw his eyes staring over her shoulder,
in their profound stupidity helpless and uncomprehending.


VIII

It was Sunday afternoon, and they had been taking tea with Mrs.
Fazakerly. This was the second time that Durant had had the
opportunity of studying Mrs. Fazakerly at home, of filling in the
little figure on its own appropriate background. The first thing
that struck him was that the background was not appropriate, or
rather that it was inadequate. Mrs. Fazakerly's drawing-room had an
air of uneasy elegance, of appearances painfully supported on the
thin edge of two hundred a year. It was furnished with a too
conspicuous care; the most insignificant details were arranged so as
to lead up to and set off her good things, which were few and far
between. There was no rest in it for the eye that was perpetually
seized and riveted on some bit of old silver, or Oriental drapery,
some Chippendale cabinet or chair. Such things were the commonplaces
of Coton Manor, and there they fell unobtrusively into their place.
Here they were touched up and handled, posed out of all simplicity;
they bore themselves accordingly with a shining consciousness of
their own rarity; they made an unblushing bid for praise. In Mrs.
Fazakerly's drawing-room the note of taste was forced.

The invitation had come as a sort of farewell attention to Durant.
Its valedictory character was further emphasized by Mrs. Fazakerly's
proposing to walk home with them, and finally falling into the rear
with Durant.

As a turn in the drive brought them within sight of Coton Manor,
Mrs. Fazakerly balanced her _pince-nez_ on the bridge of her nose.
It remained there, and he judged that Mrs. Fazakerly was in no mood
for mirth.

"That house," said Mrs. Fazakerly, "annoys me."

"Why?"

"Because it hasn't had justice done to it."

"I should have thought that was a ground for pity rather than
resentment."

Mrs. Fazakerly shrugged her shoulders ever so little. "That
drawing-room--did you ever see anything like it? And such
possibilities in it, too. I can't bear to think of all those
beautiful things wasted, just for want of a little taste, a little
arrangement--the right touch."

The widow's white fingers twitched. It was not vulgar cupidity; it
was the passion of the born genius, of the lover of art for art's
sake, who sees his opportunity given into the hands of an inferior.
If only she had the ordering, the decoration of Coton Manor! Durant
thought of the cottage at the gates, her cramped and humble sphere;
it was not her fault so much as the defect of her instrument, that
forcing of the note of taste; no wonder that she longed for the rich
harmonies of Coton Manor under "the right touch," the touch of the
master.

She continued, "But poor dear Miss Tancred, you know, she will have
it left just as it was in Mrs. Tancred's time; she won't change a
picture or a chair in it. That's Frida all over. She's made that
house a monument to her mother's memory. And think what she might
have made it."

"I'm thinking what she might have made of her life. She seems to be
making that a monument to her father's memory."

"Ah! and the things she could have done with it."

Impossible to say whether Mrs. Fazakerly referred to Miss Tancred's
house or her life. Durant smiled at her probable conception of Coton
Manor, with its tragedy of splendid possibilities gone to waste; but
Mrs. Fazakerly's idea cut both ways.

She sighed wearily.

"These drives were not made to be walked up. There's another mile
and a half of it, and I'm half-dead already. I shall sit down."

She led the way to an elm tree fallen in the grass, examined it
critically, sat down, and made a place for him at her side.

"So you're going to-morrow? Is that so?"

"It is--probably."

"It's a pity--just as you and Miss Tancred have made friends."

"The best of friends must part," said he lightly.

"Yes. Well, I'm glad you've managed to be nice to her, after all.
She's come out in the most astonishing manner since you came. What
have you been doing to her?"

"I've done nothing to her, I assure you."

"Ah, you mean you've not been making love to her."

"I don't mean anything of the sort."

Durant was angry. It was borne in upon him that Mrs. Fazakerly was
vulgar, after all. She looked at him, and her _pince-nez_ balanced
itself on the bridge of her nose, then leapt its suicidal leap. She
was amused with the ambiguity of his reply.

"_That's_ all right. Heaven help the man who does make love to her,
if he means it. That girl's a riddle to me. I used to think she
cared a little for her father; but it's my belief that Frida Tancred
cares for nobody, not even herself. She simply doesn't know what
love is, and she doesn't want to know. Why am I saying these
alarming things to you? I'm saying them because I'm old enough to be
your mother, and because I like you. You're clever, and you've got a
sense of humor, too, though I can't say it's been much use to you
since you came here. But, with all your cleverness, you'll never
understand Frida Tancred. She's not like other women, the sort
you've flirted with so much. Don't tell me you haven't; for you
have. She can't help it. Her mother was a queer fantastic creature,
and Frida's just like her, only stronger, much stronger, and deeper,
which makes it worse. I'm sorry for her, because you see I'm very
fond of her, and I think there's nothing--positively nothing--I
wouldn't do to help her."

"It's an intolerable existence for her."

"Intolerable? Ah, my dear Mr. Durant, you're delightfully young; so
is Frida, though you mightn't think it; and you young people are all
so tragic. Frida's absurd about her father; she's always been going
about with that face of hers, playing at being Antigone, and as the
poor, dear Colonel is as blind as What's-his-name? he naturally
doesn't see it. She's brought it all on herself. She looks on her
father as her fate, and treats him accordingly--in the grand
style--and it doesn't suit him. What a subject like the Colonel
wants is a light touch. With me, for instance, he's a dear."

"Is he? I thought he rather bored you," said Durant maliciously.

"When did you think that? Oh, that first night when we all laughed
so much, except poor Frida. I wasn't bored--not a bit; on the
contrary, I was amused at the expression of your face, and at your
atrocious manners and still more atrocious puns. Nothing ever bores
me. It's only you young people who let yourselves be bored. Tragedy
again. Too much tragedy for my taste."

Mrs. Fazakerly paused to let her communications sink in and take
root. There was a deep hush on the landscape, as if in deference to
her awful confidences. A deer stood knee-deep in the grass and gazed
at them inquiringly. And as Mrs. Fazakerly stared unabashed into the
face of Nature, Durant thought of Frida's remark, and wondered if
she found it "soothing."

"Mind you, I don't mean to say that she's cold. On the contrary, I
believe she's capable of a tremendous passion for something--I don't
quite know what. It might be a person,"--she rose--"but let me tell
you it's much more likely to be a thing."

They were talking quite innocently about art and literature when
they appeared at the house.

Durant vainly tried to unravel the possible motives for her
confidence. They were so many and so mixed. It was possible that she
honestly suspected him of a dawning passion for Frida and that she
meant to warn him of the hopelessness of such an attachment;
apparently she understood her friend. Or the conversation may have
been designed as an apology for her own future conduct. Durant knew
that she would not refuse to marry Colonel Tancred if he made the
offer; he knew, or thought he knew, her inmost opinion of that
ridiculous person. She must be aware that her own dignity was
considerably compromised by the situation; perhaps she hoped by
rehabilitating the Colonel's behavior to justify her own. But why
that insistence on the enigma of Frida Tancred's? Why this
superfluous and elaborate cover for her own very simple meaning?

Unless, indeed, she was not quite so simple as she seemed. In
courtship the Colonel had shown himself vacillating, to say the
least of it. If Mrs. Fazakerly wanted to bring him to the point it
was obviously her interest to get Miss Tancred out of her way. In
other words, to throw her in Durant's way. His delicacy shrank from
the baseness of this conjecture, but his reason, as well as his
experience, suggested that the thing was not impossible. Mrs.
Fazakerly had been studying him, and she was shrewd enough to see
that the surest way to interest him in Miss Tancred was to set his
intellect to work on her. She had doubtless observed his _fin de
siècle_ contempt for the obvious, his passion for the thing beyond
his grasp, his worship of the far-fetched, the intangible, the
obscure. Thus she thought to inflame his curiosity by hinting that
Frida Tancred was incomprehensible, while she touched the very soul
of desire by representing her as unattainable. All this was no doubt
very clever of Mrs. Fazakerly; but it was not quite what he had
expected of her.

His suspicions were confirmed by Frida's behavior. Ever since their
last interview she had relapsed into something like her former
reticence. To-night, as if she had an inkling of the atrocious plot,
she avoided him with a sort of terror.


IX

Durant's time was up, but the Colonel had pressed him to stay
another week. He was affectionate; he was firm; he would take no
refusal. He dwelt on the advantages of a prolonged visit. "A little
change," said he, "does us all good. You young fellows are apt to
get into a groove. But you seem brighter since you came. I think
we've shaken you up a bit."

Indeed, at no time had there been room for any doubt as to the
sincerity of his welcome. Though he was so determined to shake
Durant up, to get him out of his groove, and give him fresh ideas,
he betrayed a pitiable dependence on the young fellow. He endeavored
to meet youth on its own ground; he made piteous experiments in the
frivolous. More than once Durant had suspected that the poor
gentleman had asked him down as a protection from the terrors of his
own society. His intellectual resources were evidently giving out.
The barometer was stationary; a fortnight's almost persistent
sunshine had dried up the source of ideas. Having gutted the
_Nineteenth Century_, his mind seemed to be impotently raging for
fresh matter to destroy. He repeated himself eternally; the same
phrases were always in his mouth. "A fad, a theory, a name for
ignorance." "Don't tell me; it's an insult to my intelligence!"
Durant could have been sorry for him if he had not been so
infinitely sorry for himself.

On Monday morning Frida Tancred was herself again; not her old self,
but the new one that Durant had learned to know and tolerate. She
sought him out after breakfast and seconded the Colonel's
invitation.

"If you could possibly stop, Mr. Durant, I wish you would. I'm
asking a favor. My cousin, Georgie Chatterton, is coming down on
Wednesday to stay. I don't know how long. I've never seen her
before, and she's a young girl."

Frida's voice expressed a certain horror.

"Well, what of that?"

"If there's one thing on earth that I'm afraid of, it's a young
girl. If you could only stay on just to amuse her a little, to help
her through her first week! You see, it'll be so desperately dull
for her if you don't."

He laughed; there was no other way of responding to the _naïveté_ of
the request.

"It doesn't really seem fair to ask her when she hasn't an idea--I
can't think why father did it. Perhaps he didn't. It's odd, but I've
noticed that, when anything like this happens, Mrs. Fazakerly is
always at the bottom of it."

Another lurid light on Mrs. Fazakerly!

"Was Mrs. Fazakerly at the bottom of his asking me?"

She smiled. "To tell you the honest truth, she was. Not but what he
is delighted to have you here. I don't know when I've seen him so
happy, so interested in anyone. But, you see, he's fearfully
conservative; he can't bear to take the first step in anything."

He saw. The Colonel might be as conservative as he pleased; but the
old order was changing; Coton Manor was on the eve of a revolution.
He saw it all clearly, that deep-laid plot of Mrs. Fazakerly's. He
had been asked down at her suggestion to keep Frida Tancred out of
the way for the moment, or, better still, forever. He had not risen
to the occasion; his time was up, so Miss Chatterton was to be
invited to take his place. Yet, when he came to think of it, so
simple a scheme, the mere substitution of one cat's paw for another,
hardly did justice to Mrs. Fazakerly's imagination. Was she still
convinced of his dawning passion for Miss Tancred? Had she doubts as
to Miss Tancred's willingness or power to return it? and had she
suggested that he should be pressed to prolong his stay in the hope
that the rival presence of the young girl would act as the spark
that fires the mine, kindling Miss Tancred's emotions and revealing
her to herself?

Meanwhile Miss Tancred's one idea was to make use of him, to hand
over the young girl to him and be rid of her. Her former offer of
the black mare on the condition that he stayed another week appeared
now as a grim jest, a cynical wager. This time she was in earnest.
Whereas, if she had been in love with him----

Weighing these matters in his sensitive brain, Durant conceived a
violent hatred of Mrs. Fazakerly and her plot, together with a
corresponding determination to stay on, if only to prove to that
ingenious lady that she was hopelessly mistaken. Any hasty movement
on his part would but confirm her in her absurd suspicions, while
his actual flight would be the most flattering testimony to the
profundity of her insight. He was not going to behave like the
victim to a desperate infatuation for Miss Tancred. He would stay
on, and Mrs. Fazakerly would see that nothing came of her
psychological intrigue.

How far the Colonel was her accomplice he had no idea. The old
fellow was a gentleman when all was said and done, and it was more
than likely that he contented himself with a gentlemanly
acquiescence. His dignity might possibly not refuse to draw a profit
either way from the transaction. Durant could reckon on Miss
Tancred, having returned to his original opinion of her. There was
not enough womanhood in her for ordinary elemental jealousy; as for
passion, he had decided that she was as innocent of understanding as
she was incapable of inspiring it. A sentimental coxcomb might beat
a precipitate retreat because he thought or fancied that his hostess
was in love with him, and he would probably call his ridiculous
conduct chivalry; it was more becoming in a gentleman to ignore the
painful circumstance. For all these reasons he determined to stay.

His acceptance of their renewed invitation gave evident pleasure to
the Colonel and Miss Tancred and very little annoyance to himself.
He had grown used to Coton Manor as a prisoner grows used to his
cell. He had, as he had feared, tied himself to the place by
beginning serious work in it. He was too well pleased with his
landscape studies of the neighborhood to leave them unfinished; and,
as it happened, he had plenty of time to give to them, for the
Colonel was pretty constantly engaged with Mrs. Fazakerly. (Here
again he traced the delicate hand of that lady. She had seen that,
if any guest was to remain at Coton Manor, a limit must be put to
the Colonel's opportunities for tormenting him.) Durant had ceased
to long for distraction; he was sufficiently entertained by the
situation itself.


X

If he had been on the lookout for distraction, he would have found
it in Georgie Chatterton. At Miss Tancred's request he went with her
to the station to meet the expected guest. It was evidently thought
that his presence would break the shock of her arrival.

It proved an unnecessary precaution. The young girl presented a
smiling face at the carriage window--the Tancred face, somewhat
obscured by a mass of irrelevant detail, sandy hair, freckles, a
sanguine complexion, and so on. She jumped out on to the platform
with a joyous cry of "Fridah!" She embraced "Fridah" impetuously,
and then kept her a moment at arm's length, examining her dubiously.
"You don't seem a bit glad to see me," was her verdict. She smiled
gaily at Durant, and held out a friendly hand. All the way up from
the station she conversed with them in a light-hearted manner.
Thus:--

"What do you people do down here?"

"Ask Mr. Durant; he'll tell you that we vegetate all day and play
whist all night."

"Oh, do you? Well, you know, I shan't. My goodness, Frida! is that
your house? Whatever is it like? A Unitarian chapel, or the Carlton
Club, or, stop a bit--you don't bury people in it, do you?" Then, as
it occurred to her that she might have hurt her cousin's feelings by
her last suggestion, she added, "It's rather a jolly old mausoleum,
though. I wonder what it's like inside."

If Miss Chatterton had any premonition of her own approaching death
by boredom, and had seen in Coton Manor more than a mere passing
resemblance to a tomb, she was neither awestruck nor downcast at the
prospect of dissolution. She flung herself into the vault as she had
flung herself onto the platform, all glowing with pleasurable
anticipation. To Durant there was something infinitely sad in the
spectacle of this young creature precipitating herself into the
unknown with such reckless and passionate curiosity. The whole long
evening through he could discover no diminution of her mood, her
gleeful determination to enjoy herself among the shades. She
behaved to Colonel Tancred as if he had been a celebrity whose
acquaintance she had long desired to make, a character replete with
interest and romantic charm. She greeted Mrs. Fazakerly with a
joyous lifting of the eyebrows, as much as to say, "What! another
delightful person?"

And she was observant in her way, too. When Miss Tancred put a hand
on her shoulder and said, "It will be horribly dull for you,
Georgie; you'll have nothing to do but talk to Mr. Durant," she
replied, "H'm! Mr. Durant looks as if he had been talked to all his
life. I shall talk to you, Frida."

All through dinner she managed to preserve her spirits, her air of
being among the most curious and interesting people. Durant wondered
how on earth she kept it up. She seemed one of those fortunate
beings whose vivacity is so overpowering that it can subdue even
dulness to itself. She made the Colonel look strangely old; beside
her Mrs. Fazakerly seemed suddenly to become dull and second-rate,
to sink into the position of an attendant, a fatuous chorus, a giddy
satellite. Her laughter swallowed up Mrs. Fazakerly's as a river in
flood devours its tributaries; her spirits quenched Mrs. Fazakerly's
as a blaze licks up a spasmodic flicker. It pleased Durant to look
at her, the abandonment of her manners was in such flagrant
contradiction with the Roman regularity of her Tancred face. Owing,
perhaps, to some dash of the Tancred blood in her, she was neither
pretty nor witty; yet she contrived to get her own way with
everybody. Durant accounted for it by her sheer youth, the obstinacy
of her will to live.

In twenty-four hours she had put a stop to Frida's disappearances,
to Durant's sketching, and to the Colonel's intellectual
conversation; and this she did by behaving so as to make these
things impossible. In short, she had taken possession of her cousin
and her black mare, of the Colonel and his cigarettes, of Mrs.
Fazakerly and her books, of everybody and everything except Durant.
She was friendly with him, but somehow her friendliness was
infinitely more unflattering than Miss Tancred's former apathy. It
implied that he was all very well in his way, but that she had seen
too many of his sort to be greatly excited about him; while in Frida
Tancred, now, she had found something absolutely and uniquely new.
She was not going to be put off with Durant; she fastened herself
upon Frida, and refused to let her go; she did the thing she had
said she would do--without absolutely ignoring her fellow-guest, she
talked to Frida or at Frida or for Frida alone. And yet, strangely
enough, by dint of much observation she had detected a subtle
resemblance between them, and she proclaimed her discovery with her
natural frankness.

It was the second evening of her stay, and the three were sitting
out on the lawn together. She had been looking long and earnestly at
her mysterious kinswoman.

"Frida, you really are a sort of cousin, aren't you?"

"So I've always been told."

"And Mr. Durant, is he a sort of cousin, too?"

"I never heard that."

"I'm afraid I have not the honor."

"That's odd. I thought he must be."

"Why?" asked Miss Tancred.

"Oh, because there's a likeness somewhere. Not in the face exactly,
but--yes, there! Keep that expression on your face one minute, Mr.
Durant; now don't you see it?"

"See what?"

"It--the likeness. He looks terribly reserved somehow--a sort of
wild-horses-shan't-draw-it-out-of-me expression, and yet so
fearfully restless; and that's just like you."

There was an embarrassed silence; and then Miss Chatterton again
raised her cheerful voice.

"I say, Frida! you might tell me exactly what I'm in for. Are you
two going to be horribly intellectual and clever and that sort of
thing?"

"I'm not," said Miss Tancred.

"I'm not," echoed Durant.

"Thank Heaven! Because you both look as if you'd a tremendous lot in
you. I wonder if you'll ever let it out."

"Not if we can help it," said Durant.

"There you are again! If you're not Frida's first cousin, you ought
to be."

Durant smiled; he wondered whether the idea was more than the random
frolicking of Miss Chatterton's brain. She was evidently a young
woman of perception; but her perceptions had wings, and she threw
them off from her in a manner altogether spontaneous, impersonal and
free. It was nothing to her if they brushed against the truth
sometimes in their irresponsible flight.

"You don't mind all these personal remarks, do you?"

"Not in the least," said Miss Tancred.

"For my part I rather like them," said Durant; but they both
carefully avoided each other's eyes.


XI

Durant had a grievance against Miss Chatterton. He had been induced
to lengthen his visit in order to entertain her, and Miss Chatterton
refused to be entertained. His position at Coton Manor had thus
become a humiliating sinecure. There was no earthly reason why he
should stay any longer, and yet he stayed.

The fact was, that by this time he was really interested in other
things beside the landscape. He had wondered how long Miss
Chatterton would keep it up. He watched her, as one haunted guest
watches another, to know if she too has seen the specter of the
house, observing her manner and her appetite at breakfast, the
expression of her face at bedtime, her voice in saying good-morning
and good-night. On the third day he thought he could detect a slight
flagging; Miss Chatterton was a shade less buoyant, less talkative
than before. By the evening she was positively serious, and he
judged that the iron had entered into her soul. Her manner to her
cousin had changed; it was more tentative, more tender, more
maternal. She had begun to pity Frida, as he had pitied her.

The two were inseparable; they were always putting their heads
together, always exchanging confidences. And it was not only
confidences but characters that they exchanged. It was a positive
fact that as Miss Chatterton flagged Miss Tancred revived, she
seemed to be actually growing young while the young girl grew older.
Not that Miss Tancred grew young without difficulty; the life she
had led was against that. She looked like a woman recovering from a
severe illness, she suffered relapse after relapse, she went about
in a flush and fever of convalescence; it was a struggle for health
under desperate conditions, the agony of a strong constitution still
battling with the atmosphere that poisoned it, recovery simulating
disease, disease counterfeiting recovery.

A wholesome process, no doubt, but decidedly unpleasant to watch.
Durant, however, had very little opportunity for watching it, as he
was now left completely to himself. Miss Tancred's manner intimated
that she had done with him,--put him away in some dark cupboard of
the soul, like a once desired and now dreaded stimulant,--that she
was trusting to other and safer means for building up her strength.
If Durant had ever longed for solitude, he had more than enough of
it now, and he devoted the rest of his time to finishing the studies
and sketches he had begun. He had made none of Miss Tancred.

One morning he had pitched his umbrella and his easel below a ridge
on the far slope of the fir plantation. A thorn bush sheltered him
from the wind and made him invisible from the terrace of grass above
him.

He had emerged from a fit of more than usual absorption when he felt
the stir of footsteps in the grass, and a voice rang out clear from
the terrace.

"If it would only make papa happy. I want him to be happy."

Durant could not help but overhear, his senses being sharpened by
the dread of hearing.

"My poor child" (it was the young girl who spoke), "you don't know
what you want; but you want something more than that."

Durant rattled his color-box in desperation, but the women were too
much absorbed to heed his warning, and Frida even raised her voice
in answering:

"Yes, I'm afraid I do want something more. I know what you're
thinking, Georgie. When women of my age go on like this it generally
means that they're in love, or that they want to be married, or
both."

Durant was considering the propriety of bursting out on them noisily
from the cover of his umbrella, but before he could decide the point
Miss Tancred had continued:

"I am not in love."

She spoke in the tone of one stating an extremely uninteresting
fact.

"You _are_ in love, Frida. You're in love with life, and life won't
have anything to do with you; it's thrown you over, and a beastly
shame, too! You're simply dying for love of it, my sweetheart."

Frida did not deny the accusation. They passed on, and in the
silence Durant could hear their skirts as they brushed the thorn
bush. He could only pray now that he might remain invisible.

He felt rather than saw that they turned their heads in passing.

"Do you think he heard?"

This time it was Miss Chatterton who raised her voice.

"It doesn't matter if he did. He's not a fool, whatever else he is."

Durant overlooked that flattering tribute to himself in his
admiration of Miss Chatterton's masterly analysis and comprehension.
She had, so to speak, taken Frida Tancred to pieces and put her
together again in a phrase--"Dying for love of life." Beside her
luminous intuition his own more logical method seemed clumsy and
roundabout, a constructive process riddled by dangerous fallacies
and undermined by monstrous assumptions. At the same time he
persisted in returning to one of these, the most monstrous, perhaps,
of all. In spite, perhaps because, of her flat denial, he pictured
Frida not only as mysteriously in love with existence, but with a
certain humble spectator of existence. According to the view he had
once expounded to her the two passions were inseparable.

Before very long he received a new light on the subject. It was his
last day, the two cousins were together somewhere, the Colonel was
in bed with a bilious attack, and Durant was alone in the
drawing-room.

He had not been alone long before Miss Chatterton appeared. She came
into the room with an air of determination and sat down beside him.
She went straight to her point, a very prickly one; there was no
beating about the thorn bush with Miss Chatterton.

"Mr. Durant," said she, "I want to talk to you--for once. When you
first came here what did you think of Miss Tancred?"

"I'm afraid I didn't think anything of Miss Tancred."

"Did you dislike her?"

"N-no. I only found her a little difficult to talk to."

"Oh. Well, that's not what I came to consult you about. I want you
to help me. I am going to elope----"

"You don't mean to say so----"

"To elope with Miss Tancred--run away with her--take her out of
this. It's the only way."

"The only way to what?"

"To save her. But I shall do nothing rash, nothing that would cause
a scandal in the county. I shall simply take her up to town with me
when I go back on Monday. My week isn't up; but--well--my temper is.
So far it's all open and aboveboard----"

"Yes--yes. And where do I come in?"

"Oh, _you_--if you wouldn't mind staying where you are and keeping
the Colonel in play till we've got safe across the Channel----"

"The Channel?"

"The Channel, my friend. Where else should we be safe?"

"That means that I've got to stick here till----"

"Till Wednesday."

"Good heavens! Another week! Not if I know it."

"Yes; it's awful, I know; but not as bad as it might have been. You
won't have to talk to Miss Tancred. By the way, she says you are the
only man who ever tried to talk to her--to understand her. What a
dreadful light on her past! Think what her life must have been."

"Not very amusing, I imagine."

"Amusing! _Think_ of it. Thirty years in this hole, where you can't
breathe, and without a soul to speak to except the Colonel. Not that
the Colonel is a soul--he's much too dense."

"To be anything but a body?"

"And all the time she has loathed it--loathed it. You see, she's got
cosmopolitan blood in her veins. Her mother--you know about her
mother?"

"I know nothing about her except that she did a great many bad
things--I mean pictures--for which I hope Heaven may forgive her."

"Don't be brutal. She's dead now and can't do any more. When she was
alive she was a Russian or a Pole or something funny, and mad on
traveling, always going from one place to another--a regular rolling
stone; till one day she rolled up to the Colonel's feet, and
then----"

"Well?"

"He picked her up and put her in his pocket, and she never rolled
any further. He packed her off to England and made her sit in this
dreadful old family seat of his till she died of it. That's the sort
of woman Miss Tancred's mother was, and Miss Tancred takes after her
mother. She's a cosmopolitan, too."

"Rubbish! No woman can be a cosmopolitan." He said it in the same
tone in which he had told Frida that no woman could have a pure
passion for Nature. "And Miss Tancred, though nice, strikes me as
peculiarly provincial. I shouldn't have thought----"

"There are things in her you'd never have thought of. It's wonderful
how she comes out when you know her."

"She certainly has come out wonderfully since you came on the
scene." (The words he used had a familiar ring. It was exactly what
Mrs. Fazakerly had said to him.)

"I? I've not had anything to do with it. It was you; she told me. It
wasn't just that you understood her; you made her understand
herself; you made her feel; you stirred up all the passion in her."

"I don't understand you," he said coldly.

"Well, I think if you can understand Miss Tancred you might
understand _me_. Compared with Frida I'm simplicity itself."

"When did I do these things?"

"Why, when you told her to let herself go. When you showed her your
sketches and talked to her about the places, and the sea, all the
things you had seen; the things she had dreamed of and never seen."

The young girl spoke as if she was indignant with him for reveling
in opportunities that were Frida's by right.

"But she shall see them. She shall go away from this, and be herself
and nobody else in the world."

"It's too late--it's not as if she were young."

"Young? She's a good deal younger than I am, though she's thirty and
I'm twenty-four--twenty-five next September. Frida's young because
she's got the body of a woman, the mind of a man, and the soul of a
baby. She'll begin where other women end, will Frida. Wait till
she's been abroad with me, and you'll see how her soul will come on,
in a more congenial climate."

"Where are you going?"

"We're going everywhere. Venice--Rome--Florence--the
Mediterranean--the regular thing. And to all sorts of queer
outlandish places besides--Scandinavia, the Hebrides, and Iceland;
everywhere that you can go to by sea. The sea----That's you again."

"The deuce it is! I doubt if I've done the kind thing, then. I seem
to have roused passions which will never be satisfied. When she
comes back----"

Miss Chatterton's voice sank. "She never will come back."

"Never? How about the Colonel?"

Miss Chatterton smiled. "That's the beauty of it. It's the neatest,
sweetest, completest little plot that ever was invented, and it's
simplicity itself, like its inventor--that's me. I suppose you know
all about Mrs. Fazakerly?"

"Well, not all. Who _could_ know all about Mrs. Fazakerly?"

"You know enough, I daresay. By taking her away--I mean Frida--we
force the Colonel's hand."

"You might explain."

"I never saw a man who wanted so many things explained. Don't you
see that, as long as Frida stays at home, petting and pampering him
and doing all his work for him, he'll never take the trouble to
marry; but as soon as she goes away, and stays away----"

"I see, I see; he marries. You force his hand--and heart."

"Exactly. And, if he marries, Frida stays away altogether. She's
free."

"Yes; she's free. If she goes; but she'll never go."

"Won't she? She's going next Monday. It's all arranged. I've told
her that she's in her father's way, that he wants to marry, and
keeps single for her sake. And she believes it."

He walked up and down with his hands in his pockets, a prey to
bewildering emotions.

"It's ingenious and delightful, your plot," said he. "But I can't
say that I grasp all the _minutiæ_, the practical details. For
instance (it's a brutal question, but), who's going to provide
the--the funds for this expedition to Scandinavia--or was it
Abyssinia?"

"Funds? Oh, that's all right. She's got any amount of her own,
though you wouldn't know it."

"I didn't know it." He champed his upper lip. He could not in the
least account for the feeling, but he was bitterly, basely
disappointed at this last revelation. Miss Tancred was independent.
Up till now he could not bring himself to believe in her flight; he
did not want to believe in it; it would have been a relief to him to
know that the strange bird's wings were clipped.

"It was her mother's; what the poor lady traveled on, I suppose.
Frida might have been enjoying it all the time, only, you see, there
was the Colonel. That's why she wants him to marry Mrs. Fazakerly,
though she'd rather die than own it."

"Why shouldn't she own it?"

"Because she can't trust her motives, trust herself. I never saw a
woman fight so shy of herself."

"Then that's what she was thinking of when she said she was afraid
of her own feelings."

"Oh! So she _did_ say it, did she?"

"She said that or something very like it. You think that's what she
must have meant?" He appealed to her humbly, as to one who had
mastered the difficult subject of Frida Tancred.

"Why, whatever else _could_ she have meant, stupid?"

There was an awkward silence, broken, or rather mended, by Miss
Chatterton saying, as she stood with her hand on the door:

"Look here, you're not going to back out of it. You've promised to
stand by and see us through with it, honor bright."

"I promised nothing of the sort, but I'll stand by all right."

"You may have a bad time. The Colonel will kick up an awful fuss;
but remember, you're not in the least responsible. I'm the
criminal."

It was as if she had said, "Don't exaggerate your importance. I, not
you, am Miss Tancred's savior and deliverer."

He stiffened visibly. "I shall not quarrel with you for the _rôle_."


XII

Monday was the day of the great deliverance, the day that was fixed
for Frida Tancred's flight. And, as if it meant to mark an era and a
hegira and the beginning of revolution, it distinguished itself from
other days by suitable signs and portents. It dawned through a
brooding haze that threatened heat, then changed its mind, thickened
and massed itself for storm. While he was dressing, Durant was made
aware of the meteorological disturbance by an incessant tap-tap on
the barometer as the Colonel consulted his oracle in the hall. The
official announcement was made at breakfast.

"There is a change in the glass," said the Colonel. "Mr. Durant
brought the fine weather with him and Miss Chatterton is taking it
away."

"I'm taking something else away beside the weather," said she.

But the spirit of prophecy was upon him.

"To judge by to-day's forecast, I think we shall see Frida back
again before the fine weather."

Whereupon Durant smiled and Miss Chatterton laughed, which gave him
an agreeable sense of being witty as well as prophetic.

By ten o'clock the hand of the barometer had crept far past
"Change"; by noon it had swung violently to "Stormy, with much
rain"; by lunchtime a constrained and awkward dialogue was broken by
the rude voice of the thunder. The Colonel took out his watch, timed
the thunder and lightning, and calculated the approaches of the
storm. "Seven miles away from us at present," said he.

It hung so low that the growling and groaning seemed to come from
the woods round Coton Manor; the landscape darkened to a metallic
purplish green, then paled to the livid color of jade under a sallow
sky. There was a swift succession of transformation scenes, when,
between the bursts of thunder, the park, swathed in sheet lightning,
shot up behind the windows, now blue, now amethyst, now rose, now
green. Then the storm suddenly shifted its quarters and broke
through a rampart of solid darkness piled high in the southwest.

"Fifteen seconds," said the Colonel, "between that flash and the
thunder."

Among these phenomena the Colonel moved like a little gentleman
enchanted; he darted to and fro, and in and out, as if the elements
were his natural home; his hurried notes in the little memorandum
book outsped the lightning. For the last thirty years there had not
been such weather in the meteorological history of Wickshire.

But the storm was only in its playful infancy; the forked lightning
and the rain were yet to come. The last train up, timed to meet the
express at the junction, left Whithorn-in-Arden at 3.10, and it was
a good hour's drive to the station. As they toyed with the lightning
on their plates Durant and Miss Chatterton looked at Frida. Fate,
the weather, and the Colonel, a trinity of hostile powers, were
arrayed against her, and the three were one.

At the stroke of two the Colonel remarked blandly, "There will be no
driving to the station to-day, so I have countermanded the
brougham."

They were dressed ready for the journey, and, as the Colonel spoke
Frida got up, drew down her veil and put on her gloves.

"That was a pity," she said quietly, "seeing that we've got to go."

The Colonel was blander than ever; he waved his hand. "Go, by all
means," said he, "but not in my brougham. There I put my foot down."

("Not there, not there, oh, gallant Colonel," said Durant to
himself, "but where you have always put it, on Frida's lovely
neck.")

She started, looked steadily at her father, then, to Durant's
surprise, she shrugged her shoulders; not as an Englishwoman shrugs
them, but in the graceful Continental manner. The movement suggested
that the foreign strain in her was dominant at the moment; it
further implied that she was shaking her neck free from the
Colonel's foot. She walked to the window and looked out upon the
storm. With the neck strained slightly forward, her nostrils
quivering, her whole figure eager and lean and tense, she looked
like some fine and nervous animal, say a deerhound ready to slip
from the leash.

As she looked there was a sound as if heaven were ripped asunder,
and the forked lightning hurled itself from that dark rampart in the
southwest and went zig-zagging against the pane. "Only ten seconds,"
said the Colonel; "the storm is bursting right over our heads."

Frida too had consulted her watch; she turned suddenly, rang the
bell, and gave orders to a trembling footman. "Tell Randall to put
Polly in the dogcart. He must drive to the station at once."

The answer came back from the stables that Randall had shut himself
into the loose box and covered himself with straw, "to keep the
lightning off of him. He dursn't go near a steel bit, not if it was
to save his life, m'm, and as for driving to the station----"

It was too true; Randall, horse-breaker, groom and coachman,
excellent, invaluable creature at all other times, was a brainless
coward in a thunderstorm.

"If we don't go to-day, we can't go till to-morrow," said Georgie
Chatterton, and she nodded at Durant to remind him that in that case
his departure would be postponed till Thursday.

Frida too turned toward him. "If I don't go to-day, I shall never
go."

He understood. She was afraid, afraid of what might come between her
and her deliverance, afraid of her fate, afraid of the conscience
that was her will, afraid of her own fear, of the terror that would
come upon her when she realized the full meaning of her lust for
life. To-morrow any or all of those things might turn her from the
way; to-day she was strong; she held her life in her two hands. At
any rate, she was not afraid of the weather. She would go straight
to her end, through rain and lightning and thunderbolts and all the
blue and yellow demons of the sky.

"Are you afraid, Georgie?"

"Of thunder and lightning?" asked Georgie pointedly. "No."

"All right, then. We've got forty-five minutes. I must put Polly
into the cart myself. Five for that; forty to get to the station."

She strode off to the stables, followed by the footman and Durant.
Among them they forced Polly into the trap, and led her dancing to
the porch, where Miss Chatterton stood, prepared for all weathers.

"I say," cried she, "this is all very well; but who's going to drive
Polly there and back again?"

"I am," said Durant calmly. He had caught a furtive flash from
Frida's eyes that lighted upon, glanced off him and fell to the
ground. The woman in her had appealed to his chivalry. At the same
instant there was a swish, as if the skirts of heaven were trailing
across the earth, and the rain came down. He hastily thrust Miss
Tancred's arms into the sleeves of her mackintosh and wriggled into
his own. The final speeches were short and to the point.

"Mr. Durant," said Miss Chatterton, "you are a hero."

"Frida," said the Colonel, "you are a fool." And for once Durant
was inclined to agree with him. The more so as Miss Tancred took
advantage of his engagement with his mackintosh to enthrone herself
on the driver's high seat. She said good-by to the Colonel, and
gathered up the reins; Miss Chatterton climbed up beside her; Polly
gave a frantic plunge and a dash forward; and the hero was obliged
to enter the dogcart after the deft fashion of a footman, with a run
and a flying leap into the back seat.

Miss Chatterton was unkind enough to laugh. "Well done!" said she.
"Sit tight, and try to look as chivalrous as I'm sure you feel."

But it is hard to look or feel chivalrous sitting on a back seat in
a wet mackintosh with a thunderstorm pouring down your neck and into
your ears, and a woman, possessed by all the devils, driving
furiously to an express train that she can never catch. In that
lunatic escape from Coton Manor she had not looked back once; she
left Durant to contemplate a certain absurd little figure that stood
under an immense Doris portico, regarding the face of the sky.

The main thoroughfare of Whithorn-in-Arden was scored like the bed
of a torrent, and fringed with an ochreish scum tossed up from the
churning loam. The church clock struck three as they dashed through.

"You'll never do it," said Durant; "it's a good twenty minutes from
here."

"In the brougham it is. Polly will do it in ten--with me driving
her."

She did it in seven. Durant had pictured the two ladies scurrying
along the platform, and himself, a dismal figure, aiding their
unlovely efforts to board a departing train; as it was, the three
minutes saved allowed Frida to achieve her flight with dignity.

For two out of those three minutes he stood outside their carriage
window, beyond the shelter of the station roof, with the rain from
the ornamental woodwork overflowing on to his innocent head. He was
trying to smile.

"Heroic," murmured Miss Chatterton; and her eyebrows intimated that
she saw pathos in his appearance. As for Frida, her good-by was so
curt and cold that Durant, who had suffered many things in redeeming
the discourtesy of his former attitude to her, was startled and not
a little hurt. His plain, lean face, that seemed to have grown still
plainer and leaner under the lashing of the rain, set again in its
habitual expression of repugnance; hers paled suddenly to a lighter
sallow than before; the hand she had given to him withdrew itself in
terror from his touch. He drew himself up stiffly, raising a hat
that was no hat but a gutter, and the train crawled out of the
station.

He stood yet another minute staring at the naked rails, two shining
parallel lines that seemed to touch and vanish, over the visible
verge, into the gray fringe of the infinite where the rain washed
out the world.

And then he saw nothing but Frida Tancred, sitting on the edge of
the fir plantation and gazing into the distance; he heard his own
voice saying to her, "Let yourself go, Miss Tancred; let yourself
go!"

And she was gone.


XIII

All that Durant got out of Polly was the privilege of driving her
home, through mud and rain, at a melancholy trot. True, he was in no
hurry to get back; so he let her take her own pace, in pity for her
trembling limbs and straining heart. Polly had done all she knew
for her mistress in that frantic dash for freedom and the express;
and, when he thought of what Frida Tancred's life had been, he
guessed that the little animal was used to carrying her through
worse storms than this.

The storm was over now; it had driven the clouds into the north,
where they hung huddled and piled in a vast amphitheater; other
clouds, charged with light now instead of darkness, were still
rolling up from the south, east and west, their wings closed till
the sky was shut in like Whithorn-in-Arden, ringed with its clouds
as Arden with its woods; above, beneath, there rose the same
immense, impenetrable boundary, green on the earth and gray in
heaven.

And Frida Tancred had escaped from these confines, would never come
back to dwell in them again; she had said so, and he believed her.
To be sure, she had shown weakness at the last, she had been driven
to juggle with the conscience that would not let her go; had she not
persuaded it that she was leaving the Colonel for the Colonel's
good? But once gone, once there, away over the border and safe in
the promised land, she would see clearly, she would realize her
right to be happy in the glorious world.

Not that these things could have happened without Georgie
Chatterton. He had nothing but admiration for that young woman;
there had been daring in her conquest of Frida Tancred, there were
ingenuity and determination in the final elopement. Was it possible
that he was piqued at the insignificance of the part she had
assigned to him? She had left him to settle up the sordid accounts
while she ran away with the lady. He had got to say to Colonel
Tancred, "Colonel Tancred, I am not your daughter's seducer and
abductor; I am only a miserable accessory after the fact." In other
words, Miss Chatterton had reminded him that he was too late.

Too late indeed, it seemed. Whether or not Miss Chatterton's faith
in him had failed her at the last moment, but when he came down to
dinner that evening he found that she had been beforehand with him;
there was nothing left for him to do.

The Colonel looked up smiling from a telegram. "News from St.
Pancras. Miss Chatterton is carrying my daughter off to the
Continent."

"I'm delighted to hear it. It will do her all the good in the
world."

"Yes, yes; I'm glad she should have the opportunity. I made a little
tour on the Continent myself when I was a young man, and I've felt a
brighter fellow for it ever since."

"Really?"

"Yes. One's apt to get into a groove staying at home so much.
There's nothing like rubbing brains with foreigners. It stretches
you out, clears you of all your narrow insular prejudices, brings
you in touch"--Durant quivered; he knew it was coming--"in touch
with fresh ideas. I don't know how you feel about it, but six months
of it was enough to convince me that there's no place like England,
and no people like English people, and no house like my own. As for
Frida, a very little goes a long way with Frida; she'll be sick of
it in six weeks, but she'll settle down all the better for the
change."

"You think so?"

"I do. She may be a little unsettled at first. Her poor mother was
just the same--restless, restless. But she settled down."

The Colonel made no further allusion to his daughter's absence. He
was presently disturbed about another matter, bustling about the
room, wondering, questioning, and exclaiming, "I have lost my little
meteorological chronicle? Has anybody seen my little meteorological
chronicle? Now, where did I have it last? I wonder if I could have
left it with my other papers in Frida's room?"

But Frida's room, the room where she did all her father's writing,
and her own reading and dreaming when she had time to read and
dream, Frida's room was locked, and nobody could find the key. The
Colonel, more than ever convinced that his meteorological chronicle
was concealed in Frida's room, ordered the door to be burst open.
Durant lent a shoulder to the work and entered somewhat
precipitately, followed by the Colonel.

The meteorological chronicle, the labor of years, was found where
its author had left it, on his writing-table, together with his
other papers, business letters, household accounts, Primrose League
programs, all carefully sorted, dated, and docketed. Many of the
letters had been answered; they lay, addressed in Frida's
handwriting, ready for the post. She had left her work in such
perfect order that a new secretary could have been fitted into her
place without a hitch. The fact was eloquent of finality and the
winding up of affairs; but certain other details were more eloquent
still.

Order on the writing-table; in the rest of the room confusion and
disarray, rifled bookcases and dismantled walls. Fresh squares of
wall-paper outlined in cobwebs marked the places where the great
maps had hung. The soul of the room was gone from it with the
portrait of the late Mrs. Tancred; the watercolor drawings, sad work
of her restless fingers, were no longer there. The furniture had
been pushed aside to make room for the deed of desecration; the
floor was littered with newspapers and straw; an empty packing-case
lay on its side, abandoned, in a corner.

The Colonel opened round eyes of astonishment, but his mustache was
still. He rang the bell and summoned the servants. Under severe
cross-examination, Chaplin, the footman, gave evidence that three
packing-cases had left Coton Manor for the station early in the
morning before the bursting of the storm. Frida, too, had discerned
the face of the sky, and--admirable strategist!--had secured her
transports. The Colonel dismissed his witnesses, and appealed
helplessly to Durant; indeed, the comprehension in the young man's
face gave him an appearance of guilty complicity.

"What does it mean, Durant? what does it mean?"

Durant smiled, not without compassion. When a young woman arranges
her accounts, and makes off with three packing-cases, containing her
library and her mother's portrait, the meaning obviously is that she
is not coming back again in a hurry. He suggested that perhaps Miss
Tancred proposed to make a lengthier stay on the Continent than had
been surmised.

"The whole thing," said the Colonel, "is incomprehensible to me."

For the rest of the evening he remained visibly subdued by the
presence of the incomprehensible; after coffee he pulled himself
together and prepared to face it.

"There will be no whist this evening," he announced. "You will
excuse me, Durant; I have an immensity of work on hand. Chaplin, put
some whiskey and water in the study, and light the little lamp on my
literary machine."

Tuesday morning's post brought explanation. Two letters lay on the
breakfast table, both from a fresh hotel, the _Hôtel Métropole_,
both addressed in Frida Tancred's handwriting, one to the Colonel
and the other to Durant. Durant's ran thus:

  "DEAR MR. DURANT:--You will explain everything to my father,
  won't you? I have done my best, but he will never see it; it is
  the sort of thing he never could see--my reasons for going away
  and staying away. They are hard to understand, but, as far as I
  have made them out myself, it seems that I went away for his
  sake; but I believe, in fact I know, that I shall stay away for
  my own. You will understand it; we thrashed it all out that
  Saturday afternoon--you remember?--and you understood then. And
  so I trust you.

      "Always sincerely yours,

          "FRIDA TANCRED.

  "P.S.--Write and tell me how he takes it. I can see it--so
  clearly!--from his point of view. I hope he will not be unhappy.

  "P.P.S.--We sail to-morrow."

He was still knitting his brows over the opening sentences when the
Colonel flicked his own letter across the table.

"Read this, Durant, and tell me what you think of it."

Durant read:

  "MY DEAR FATHER:--You will see from Georgie's telegram that we
  shall be leaving England to-morrow. I did not tell you this
  before because it would have meant so much explanation, and if
  we once began explaining things I don't think I should ever
  have gone at all. And I had to go. Believe me, I was convinced
  that in going I was doing the best thing for you. I thought you
  had been making sacrifices for my sake, and that you would be
  happier without me, though you would not say so. Whether I could
  have brought myself to leave you without the help of this
  conviction, and whether I have the conviction strongly still, I
  cannot say; it is hard to be perfectly honest, even with myself.
  But now that I have gone I simply can't come back again. Not
  yet. Perhaps never, till I have done the things I want to do.

  "Of course you will be angry--it is so unexpected. But only
  think--you would not be angry, would you, if I married? You
  would have considered that perfectly legitimate. Yet it would
  have meant my leaving you for good. And what marriage and
  settling down in it is to other women, seeing the world and
  wandering about in it is to me--it's the thing I care for most.
  We do not talk about these things, so this is the first you have
  heard of it. Think--if I had been very much in love with anyone
  I would have said nothing about it till I was all but engaged to
  him. It's the same thing. And it will make less difference to
  you than my marriage would have made."

Here Frida's pen had come to a stop; with a sudden flight from the
abstract to the concrete, she had begun a fresh argument on a fresh
page.

  "I only mean to use a third of my income. The other two thousand
  will still go to keeping up the property. I have left everything
  so that my work could be taken up by anybody to-morrow."

The Colonel's eyes had dogged Durant's down to the bottom of the
sheet, when he made a nervous attempt to recapture the letter. It
was too late; the swing of Frida's impassioned pleading had carried
Durant over the page, and one terse sentence had printed itself
instantaneously on his brain. He handed back the letter without a
word.

The Colonel drew Durant's arm in his and led him out through the
window on to the gravel drive. Up and down, up and down, they walked
for the space of one hour, while the Colonel poured out his soul. He
went bareheaded, he lifted up his face to the heavens, touched to a
deeper anguish by the beauty of the young day.

"Lord, what a perfect morning! Look at this place she's left; look
at it! I've nursed the little property for her; it was as much hers
as if I was in my grave, Durant. She's lived in it for nearly thirty
years, ever since she was no higher than that flower-pot, and she
thinks nothing of leaving it. She thinks nothing of leaving _me_.
And I've got more work to do than my brain's fit for; why I was in
the very thick of my Primrose League correspondence, up to the neck
in all manner of accounts; and she knew it, and chose this time.
I've got to give a lecture next week in Whithorn parish-room, a
lecture on 'Imperialism,' and I've my little chronicle on hand, too;
but it's nothing to her. The whole thing's a mystery to me. I can't
think what can have made her do it. She never was a girl that cared
for gadding about, and for society and that. As for trying to make
me believe that I should be no worse off if she married, the
question has never risen, Durant. She hasn't married. She never even
wanted to be married. She never would have been married."

"That makes it all the more natural that she should want to see
something of the world instead."

"No, it's not natural. I could have understood her wanting to get
married, that's natural enough; but what's a woman got to do with
seeing the world? It's not as if she was my son, Durant."

Durant listened and wondered. As far as he could make out, the
Colonel's attitude to his daughter was twofold. On the one hand, he
seemed to regard her as part of the little property, and as existing
for the sake of the little property, from which point of view she
had acquired a certain value in his eyes. On the other hand, he
looked upon her as an inferior part of Himself, and as existing for
the sake of Himself; it was a view old as the hills and the earth
they were made of, being the paternal side of the simple primeval
attitude of the man to the woman. And, seeing that the little
property was a mere drop in the ocean of the Colonel's egoism, this
view might be said to include the other as the greater includes the
less. On either theory Frida Tancred was not supposed to have any
rights, or, indeed, any substantial existence of her own; she was an
attribute, an adjunct.

"Seeing the world--fiddlesticks! Don't tell me there isn't something
else at the bottom of it--it's an insult to my intelligence."

As everything the Colonel did not understand was an insult to his
intelligence, his intelligence must have had to put up with an
extraordinary number of affronts.

He leaned heavily on the young man's arm. "It's shaken me. I shall
never be the fellow I was. I can't understand it. Nobody could have
done more for any girl than I've done for Frida; and she deserts me,
Durant, deserts me in my old age with my strength failing."

Durant vainly tried to make himself worthy of Frida Tancred's trust,
but he could add nothing to her reasoning, and she had kept her
best argument to the last,--"It will make less difference to you
than my marriage would have made."

"After all, sir, will it make so very much difference if--if your
daughter does go away for a year or two?"

"I can't say. I can't tell you that till I've tried it, my boy. It's
all too new to me, and I tell you I can't understand it."

He trailed off with a slow and stricken movement, like a lesser
Lear, and reëntered the house by the window of Frida's room. The
sight of the well-ordered writing-table subtilized for a moment his
sense of her desertion.

"Look at that. She was my right hand, Maurice, and I can't realize
that she's gone. It's the queerest sensation; I feel as if she was
here and yet wasn't here."

Durant said he had heard that people felt like that after the
amputation of their right hands. As for the wound, he hoped that
time would heal it.

"Any soldier can tell you that old wounds will still bleed, Durant.
I think that was the luncheon bell."

Lunch, over which the Colonel lingered lovingly and long, somewhat
obscured the freshness of the tragedy, and made it a thing of the
remoter past. An hour later he was playing with his little
rain-gauge on the lawn. At afternoon teatime he appeared
immaculately attired in the height of the fashion; brown boots, the
palest of pale gray summer suitings, a white piqué waistcoat, the
least little luminous hint of green in his silk necktie, and he
seemed the spirit of youth incarnate.

At this figure Durant smiled with a pity that was only two-thirds
contempt. He longed to ask him whether the old wound was bleeding
badly. He was bound to believe that the Colonel had a heart under
his immaculate waistcoat, with pulses and arteries the same as other
people's, his own unconquerable conviction being that if you pricked
the gentlemannikin he would bleed sawdust.

The Colonel had scarcely swallowed his tea when Durant saw him
trotting off in the direction of the cottage; there was that about
him which, considering his recent bereavement, suggested an almost
indecent haste. He returned and sat down to dinner, flushed but
uncommunicative. He seemed aware that it was Durant's last night,
and it was after some weak attempts to give the meal a commemorative
and farewell character, half-festal, half-funereal, that he sank
into silence, and remained brooding over the ice pudding in his
attitude of owl-like inscrutability. But during the privacy of
dessert his mystic mood took flight; he hopped, as it were, onto a
higher perch; he stretched the wing of victory and gazed at it
admiringly; there was an effect as of the preening of young plumage,
the fluttering of innumerable feathers.

And, with champagne running in his veins like the sap of spring, he
proclaimed his engagement to that charming lady, Mrs. Fazakerly.

Durant had no sooner congratulated him on the event than he
remembered that he had left the postscript of Miss Tancred's letter
unanswered. She had said, "Write and tell me how he takes it"; she
had hoped that he would not be unhappy. So he wrote: "He took it
uncommonly well" (that was not strictly true, but Durant was
determined to set Frida Tancred's conscience at rest, even if he had
to tamper a little with his own). "I should not say that he will be
very unhappy. On the contrary, he has just assured me that he is
the happiest man on earth. He is engaged to be married to Mrs.
Fazakerly."

It was a masterly stroke on Mrs. Fazakerly's part, and it had
followed so closely on the elopement (as closely, indeed, as
consequence on cause) that Durant had to admit that he had grossly
underrated the powers of this remarkable woman. He had been lost in
admiration of Miss Chatterton's elaborate intrigue and bold
independent action; but now he came to think of it, though Miss
Chatterton's style was more showy, Mrs. Fazakerly had played by far
the better game of the two. Durant, who had regarded himself as a
trump card up Mrs. Fazakerly's sleeve, perceived with a pang that he
had counted for nothing in the final move. Mrs. Fazakerly had not,
as he idiotically supposed, been greatly concerned with Frida
Tancred's attitude toward him. She had divined nothing, imagined
nothing, she had been both simpler and subtler than he knew. She had
desired the removal of Frida Tancred from her path, and at the right
moment she had produced Georgie Chatterton. She had played her
deliberately, staking everything on the move. Georgie's independence
had been purely illusory. She had appeared at Mrs. Fazakerly's
bidding, she had behaved as Mrs. Fazakerly had foreseen, she had
removed Frida Tancred, and Durant had been nowhere. Mrs. Fazakerly's
little gray eyes could read the characters of men and women at a
glance, and as instantly inferred their fitness or unfitness for her
purpose. She might be a poor hand at the game of whist, but at the
game of matrimony she was magnificent and supreme.

Frida had said, "We sail to-morrow"; therefore, Durant walked all
the way to Whithorn-in-Arden to post his letter, so that it might
reach her before she left London. And as he came back across the
dewy path in the dim light, and Coton Manor raised its forehead
from the embrace of the woods and opened the long line of its dull
windows, he realized all that it had done for Frida. He understood
the abnegation and the tragedy of her life. She had been sacrificed,
not only to her father, but to her father's fetish, the property;
Coton Manor had to be kept up at all costs, and the cost had been
Frida's, it had been her mother's. The place had crushed and
consumed her spirit, as it swallowed up two-thirds of her material
inheritance; it had made the living woman as the dead. He remembered
how the house had been called her mother's monument, and how it had
become her own grave. Her soul had never lived there. And now that
she was gone it was as empty as the tomb from which the soul has
lifted the body at resurrection time.

And he, too, was set at liberty.

He left by the slow early train on Wednesday without waiting for the
afternoon express, his object being not so much to reach town as to
get away from Coton Manor. The Colonel accompanied him to the
station; and, to his infinite surprise and embarrassment, he found
Mrs. Fazakerly on the platform waiting to see him off.

He could think of nothing nice to say to her about her engagement,
not even when she took possession of him with a hand on his arm, led
him away to the far end of the platform, and gazed expectantly into
his face.

"You don't congratulate me, Mr. Durant."

"On what?" he asked moodily.

"On having done a good deed."

"A good deed?"

"Didn't I tell you there was nothing I wouldn't do for Frida
Tancred?"

Incomparable cunning! To set herself right in his eyes and her own,
she was trying to persuade him that she had accepted the Colonel for
his daughter's sake. A good deed! Well, whatever else she had done,
and whatever her motives may have been, the deed remained; she had
set Frida Tancred free. Nevertheless, he could not be pleasant.

"Self-sacrifice, no doubt, is a virtue," said he; "yet one draws the
line----"

"Does one?"

He felt a delicate pressure on his arm, the right touch, the light
touch. "Mr. Durant, you are dense, and you are ungrateful."

"I don't see it."

"Don't you see what I have done for you?" There was a strange light
behind the _pince-nez_ as she smiled up into his face. "I have
cleared the way."

"For Miss Tancred, you mean," said Durant; thereby proving that in
her calculations as to his mean density Mrs. Fazakerly was not
altogether wrong.

But Durant was always an imaginative man. And as he sped on the same
journey over the same rails, his imagination followed Frida Tancred
in her flight toward freedom and the unknown.




THE COSMOPOLITAN

PART II

OUTWARD BOUND


XIV

After seven weeks in England Maurice Durant began to look back with
longing on the seven years he had spent away from it, and so turned
his back on Dover and his face to the South of France. Those three
weeks in Coton Manor had disgusted him with the country, another
three weeks in London had more than satisfied his passion for town.
It was there that he realized more keenly than anywhere else that he
was a foreigner in England, and he went abroad in order to feel
himself an Englishman again.

Restless as ever, he spent two years wandering the world, then shut
himself up for three more in a little villa in the Apennines, and
worked as he had never worked before, with the result that at the
end of the five years, he found himself irresistibly drawn back to
England again. Gradually--very gradually--England was waking to the
fact that Maurice Durant was a clever painter; still more gradually
it had dawned on Maurice that he was becoming famous. His name had
traveled to London, as a name frequently does, viâ Paris and New
York, and Fame had lured him to London by dint of taking it up and
incessantly sounding it, not with a coarse and startling blast from
her favorite instrument, the trumpet, but with a delicate crescendo,
lyrically, subtly, insinuatingly, like a young siren performing on a
well-modulated flute. The trumpet, no doubt, would have deafened or
irritated him; but before he got sick of it the softer music was by
no means disagreeable to his ear.

It seemed that he had scored a double success, being equally happy
in his landscapes and his portraits. The critics were divided. One
evening it would appear that, within the limits of his art, Maurice
Durant was the subtlest, the finest exponent of modern womanhood;
the next morning he would be told that he had rendered the beauty of
the divine visible world more imaginatively, more individually, than
any living artist, but that as a portrait painter he had yet to find
himself. These were the variations on the one familiar theme; for as
to his modernity, which was obvious, they were all agreed. But at
last he came across an account of himself which he acknowledged to
be more or less consistent and correct. It was the final
appreciation, the summing up of a judge who was said to be the only
man in England who had a right to his opinion. And this was his
opinion of Maurice Durant:

"He stands in a unique and interesting position. On his right hand,
the hand he paints with, are the heights unattainable by any but
the great artists; on his left, the dizzy verge of popularity. As a
matter of fact, he is neither popular nor great. His just horror of
vulgarity will save him from the abyss; his equal fear of
committing himself, of letting himself go, the fear, shall I say,
of failure, of the fantastic or ridiculous attitudes a man
necessarily assumes in falling from a height, will keep him forever
from the loftier way. It is not that his temperament is naturally
timorous and cold; if he is afraid of anything, he is afraid of his
own rashness, his own heat. There are about him delicacies and
repugnances, a certain carefully cultivated restraint, and a
half-critical, half-imaginative caution which, we submit, is
incompatible with greatness in his art. But he has imagination."

A little more praise or a little more blame, and he would have
suspected himself of genius; as it was, he was content to stand
distinguished from the ruck of the popular and the respectable by
virtue of that imagination which his critic had allowed to him. He
was not a great painter, and he knew it; but he was a brilliantly
clever one, and he knew that also, and in the fact and his intimate
knowledge of it lay the secret of his success. He kept a cool head
on his shoulders, and thus his position and the personal dignity
depending on it were secure. He would never tumble from his height
through the giddiness of vanity; and when the same high authority
kept on assuring the world, on the word of a critic, that Maurice
Durant was branded with the curse of cleverness, that he was the
victim of his own versatility, and that he had just missed
greatness, Maurice merely remarked that he was glad to hear it, for
he was sure that greatness would have bored him.

Whether it was the same ungovernable terror that restrained him from
marrying, or whether he was the friend of too many women to be the
lover of one, or whether he really was self-contained and
self-sufficient, all this time he had remained single. His
singleness had many advantages; it kept him free; it made it easy
for him to get about from place to place and obtain an uninterrupted
view of the world; it left an open way for his abrupt incalculable
movements, his panic flights.

And as he had always fled from everything that disturbed and
irritated him, so now, in the very middle of an English summer and a
London season, he was flying from the sound of his own fame. Not far
this time; only from the center to the verge, from Piccadilly
pavement to the south coast. He had hired a small cutter for a
month, and lived on board in much physical discomfort and
intellectual peace. He hardly knew it by sight, that beautiful full
face of his own country; but he was learning to know it as he sailed
from the white cliffs to the red, from the red to the gray and
black, the iron slopes and precipices of the Land's End.

He had just returned from a fortnight's cruise, and was wondering
what he would do with the weeks that remained to him--whether he
would explore the west coast of England or set sail for the Channel
Islands--when he found himself, very lazy and very happy, lying at
anchor in a certain white-walled harbor in the south of Cornwall. A
neighboring regatta had carried off, the fleet of yachts that had
their moorings there, and the harbor was dotted with fishing-boats,
pilot-boats, ocean steamers, steam tugs, wherries, and such craft.
The little _Torch_, rocking madly on miniature waves as she played
with her chain, was almost alone in her lightness and frivolity.
About an hour before midnight Durant woke in his berth, and felt
this vivacity of hers increasing; larger waves lapped her and broke
against her sides, but overhead, on deck, there was no sign of a
wind. He got up, climbed the companion ladder, and put his head out
over the hatch. A schooner yacht had come in, and lay straining at
her cable in the narrow channel between the _Torch_ and a Portsmouth
pilot. She had only just put into harbor, for her crew were still
busy taking down her sails. As if it were her own movement alone
that made her visible, she swayed there, dimly discerned, while she
slipped her white canvas like a beauty disrobing in the dark, sail
by sail, till she stood naked under a veil of dusk, and the light
went up above her bows.

A restless thing that schooner yacht; her canvas was hardly lowered
before it was up again. She had not long lain dreaming, passive to
the will of the tide. At sunrise she awoke, and what with her own
swinging and vibration, and the voices and trampling of her joyous,
red-capped, blue-jerseyed crew, there was no sleep for anyone in her
neighborhood after three o'clock. So Durant rolled out of his berth,
dressed hastily, and went on deck, eager to see her in her beauty,
robed for the morning and the wind. There she was, so near now that
he could almost have tipped a rope-end down her skylight from the
skylight of the _Torch_, every line of her exquisite body new-washed
in gold and shivering under the touches of the dawn. She was awake,
alive; the life that had still beaten through her dreams in the
night, stirred by the drowsy fingering of the harbor tide, was
throbbing and thrilling with many pulses as she shook out her
streamers to the wind. And now her mainsail went slowly up, and she
leapt and shuddered through all her being, passionate as though the
will of the wind was her will.

Durant stared at her with undisguised admiration. She was a fair
size for her kind, and from the sounds that came up through her
cabin skylight he judged that she had a party on board. Standing
on the deck of the _Torch_ in his light flannels, Durant looked
much too long for his own ridiculously tiny cutter. He was so
deeply absorbed in spelling out the letters on the yacht's
life-belts--_Windward_--that he was quite unaware that he himself
was an object of considerable interest to a lady who had just come
on deck. Literally flying as he was from the sound of his own
name, he was unprepared to hear it sung out in cheerful greeting.

"Mr. Durant!"

He started and blinked, unable to recognize the lady of the voice.
Assuming that he had once known, and since forgotten her, he had
raised his cap on the chance.

She was trying to say something to him now, but the noise of the
struggling sail cut off her words. She turned, and seemed to be
calling to somebody else. Another lady, whom the sail had hidden
from his sight till now, came forward and leaned eagerly over the
rail, steadying herself by the shrouds. This lady did not shout his
name; but, as her eyes met his across the narrow channel, she
smiled--a smile he could not place or recognize or understand; he
could only raise his cap to it blindly as before.

She was smiling still, while the first lady laughed, if possible in
a more bewildering manner than before. "Don't you know us?" She
seemed to be whispering across the gulf.

He shook his head in desperation, whereupon the second lady gave
orders to the men to stop hoisting the mainsail.

"If you _are_ Mr. Durant, come on board!"

This time the voice was distinct in the silence that followed the
hoisting of the sail. He knew that lady now.

And he knew the other also, though there was nothing but the turn of
her head and the black accent over her eyes to remind him of Frida
Tancred.


XV

"Well, is it all that you expected? Does the reality come up to the
dream?"

"It does. I never knew a dream that tallied so exactly with the
reality."

Frida was leaning back in a deck-chair, looking at Durant, who sat
beside her on the schooner's rail.

For three days the _Windward_ had sailed up and down the coast of
Cornwall; for three days the little _Torch_, with all sails set,
wheeled round her moorings or followed her flight. Durant had
accepted Miss Tancred's invitation to join them in a week's cruise
in English waters. He spent his mornings in his own yacht, his
afternoons and evenings on board the schooner. The proposal had been
a godsend to him in his state of indecision. After his aimless
wanderings he was exhilarated by this eager challenge and pursuit,
absurdly pitting the speed of his own small craft against the
swiftness and strength of the larger vessel. But he enjoyed still
more sitting on the rail of the _Windward_ and talking to Frida.
There was something infinitely soothing in the society of a woman
who knew nothing and cared nothing about his fame. He was not the
only guest. Besides Miss Chatterton there was Mr. Manby, a little
middle-aged gentleman, who called himself an artist; Miss Manby, a
little middle-aged woman, who seemed to be his sister; and two
little girls with their hair down their backs, his daughters, Eileen
and Ermyntrude Manby. Durant was a good deal alone with Frida, for a
stiff breeze had kept the artist and his sister much below, and
Georgie and the little girls hardly counted.

They were alone now.

Frida had smiled as she spoke, a smile of intelligence and
reminiscence; and he was irresistibly reminded of the first and last
occasion when he had discoursed to her about realities.

"And what are you going to do with it?" he asked.

"With what? With the reality or the dream?"

"With both, with life--now you've got it?"

"Why should I do anything with it? Unless you're talking of moral
obligations, which would be very tiresome of you."

"I'm not thinking of moral obligations."

"What were you thinking of, then?"

"I was thinking--of you."

Frida lay back a little further on her cushion as if she were
withdrawing herself somewhat from his scrutiny. She clasped her
hands behind her head; her face was uptilted to the sky.

His eyes followed her gaze. Over their heads the wind had piled up a
great palace of white clouds; under the rifted floors the blue sky
ran shallow in a faint milky turquoise, while above, between, beyond
those aerial roofs and pinnacles and domes it deepened to _lapis
lazuli_, luminous, transparent, light behind color and color behind
light. The green earth looked greener under the low-lying shafts of
blue and silver; far off, on the sea, the shadows of the clouds lay
like the stain of spilt red wine.

"Who was the great man?" she asked with apparent irrelevance, "who
said that women were incapable of a disinterested passion for
nature?"

He knitted his brows. Frida had proved a little disconcerting at
times. He had had to begin all over again with her, aware that,
though ostensibly renewing their old acquaintance, he was actually
making a new one, to which faint recognitions and perishing
reminiscences gave a bewildering, elusive charm. But Frida
remembered many things that he had forgotten, and a certain
directness and familiarity born of this superior memory of hers
puzzled him and put him out. This time, however, he had a dreamy
recollection.

"Fancy your remembering that!"

"I remember everything. At any rate, I remember quite enough to see
that you're just the same; you haven't changed a little bit. Except
that you don't look as you did the first night I met you."

"And how did I look then?"

She paused, carefully selecting her phrase. "You looked--as if--I'd
given you a shock. You had expected something different. That dream
did _not_ tally with the reality."

"How on earth----"

"How on earth did I know? You may not be aware of it, but you have a
very expressive face."

"I was not aware of it."

Poor Durant. His face was expressive enough now in all conscience.
She held out her hand and laid it on his sleeve, and he remembered
how she used to shrink from his touch.

"My dear Mr. Durant, don't look like that; it makes my heart bleed.
Of course I saw it. I saw everything. I saw your face looking over
the banisters as I was going downstairs, when I've no doubt you
thought you'd caught sight of a very pretty woman; and I saw it with
a very different expression on it when you shook hands and found
that the woman wasn't a bit pretty, after all. Of course it was a
shock to you, and of course I understood. I knew so exactly how you
felt, and I was so sincerely sorry for you."

"Sorry! I have a distinct recollection of being abominably rude to
you that night, and unpleasant afterward. Can you, will you forgive
me?"

"What? Five years after the offense? No. I forgave you at the time;
I'm not going to do it all over again. What does it matter? It's all
so long ago. The funny part of it was that I wasn't a bit annoyed
with you, but I was furious with--whom do you think?"

"I haven't a notion if it wasn't with me."

"It was a she--the other lady, the woman I wasn't, the woman you
thought I was, my ideal self. Needless to say, my feminine jealousy
was such that I could have throttled her. I suppose I did pretty
well do for her as it happened. There can be nothing deader than a
dead idea."

"Don't be too sure. I have known them come to life again."

His gaze, that had fallen, and was resting on the hem of her blue
serge gown, now traveled up the long, slender line of her limbs,
past the dim curves of her body to the wonder of her face. How
marvelously changed she was! She was not only both younger and older
than when he had left her five years ago, she was another woman. The
heaviness had gone from her eyes and forehead, the bitter,
determined, self-restraint from her mouth and chin; instead of
self-restraint she had acquired that rarer virtue, self-possession.
Her lips had softened, had blossomed into the sweet red flower that
was part of Nature's original design. Her face had grown plastic to
her feeling and her thought. She was ripened and freshened by sun
and wind, by salt water and salt air; a certain nameless, intangible
grace that he had caught once, twice, long ago, and seen no more,
was now her abiding charm. The haggard, sallow-faced provincial,
with her inscrutable manners and tumultuous heart, had developed
into the finished cosmopolitan; she had about her the glory and
bloom of the world. For once his artist's instinct had failed him;
he had not discovered the promise of her physical beauty--but that
he should have ignored the finer possibilities of her soul! If she
had really known all that he had thought and felt about her then,
had understood and had yet forgiven him, Frida was unlike any other
woman in the world. He was not sure that this was not the secret of
her charm--the marvelous dexterity of her sympathy, the swiftness
with which she precipitated herself into his point of view. It had
its drawbacks; it meant that she could see another man's and her own
with equal clearness.

The sound of voices from a neighboring cabin, followed by the noise
of unskillful footsteps stumbling up a companion ladder, warned them
that they were not alone. Mr. Manby appeared on deck with great
noise and circumstance, skating, struggling, clutching at impossible
supports, being much hampered by a camp stool and a sketching block
which he carried, and his own legs, which seemed hardly equal to
carrying him. Durant had recognized in the little artist a familiar
type. A small, nervous man, attired in the usual threadbare gray
trousers, the usual seedy velveteen coat and slouch hat, with a
great deal of grizzled hair tumbling in the usual disorder about his
peaked and peevish face. Durant sprang forward and helped this
pitiful figure to find its legs; not with purely benevolent
intentions, he settled it and its belongings in a secure (and
remote) position amidships.

"Glad to see you back again!" Frida sang out.

Mr. Manby screwed up his eyes, put his head very much on one side,
and peered into the wild face of Nature with a pale, propitiatory
smile.

"Yes, yes; I mustn't neglect my opportunities. Every minute of this
weather is invaluable."

"It strikes me," said Frida, as Durant established himself beside
her again, "that it's you artists whose devotion to Nature
is--well--not altogether disinterested."

"Manby's affection seems to be pretty sincere; it stands the test of
seasickness."

"Oh, Mr. Manby doesn't really care very much for nature or for art
either."

"What does he try to paint pictures for, then?"

"He tries to paint them for a living, for himself and the little
girls." And Frida looked tenderly at Mr. Manby as she spoke.

At that moment Durant hated Mr. Manby with a deadly hatred. He had
gone so far as to find a malignant satisfaction in the thought that
Mr. Manby's pictures were bad, when he remembered that Frida had a
weakness for bad pictures. Art did not appeal to Frida. She talked
about Paris and Florence and Rome without a word of the Louvre or
the Uffizi Gallery or the Vatican. She didn't care a rap about
Raphael or Rubens, but she hampered herself with Manbys.

"Is there a Mrs. Manby?" he asked gloomily.

"No. Mrs. Manby died last year."

"H'mph! Poor devil! Lucky for her, though."

Frida ignored the implication. "To go back to the point we were
discussing. If you were honest you'd own that you only care for
nature because you can make pictures out of it. Now I, on the
contrary, have no ulterior motives; I don't want to make anything
out of it."

"I wasn't talking about nature. I want to know what you are going to
make of your life."

"There you are again. Why should I make anything of it? You talk as
if life were so much raw material to be worked into something that
it isn't. To my mind it's beautiful enough as it is. I should spoil
it if I tried to make anything of it."

He looked at her and he understood. He was a man of talent, some
said of genius, but in her there was something greater than that; it
was the genius of temperament, an infinite capacity for taking
pleasures. To her life was more than mere raw material, it came
finished to her hands, because it had lived a long life in her soul.
Her dream had tallied.

Beside that rich creative impulse, that divine imagination of hers,
his own appeared as something imitative and secondhand, and his art
essentially degraded. He was nothing better than a copyist, the
plagiarist of nature.

He looked up to where Mr. Manby sat smiling over his sketching
block, Mr. Manby, surrounded by his admiring family. Mr. Manby did
not see them; he was wrapped in his dream, absorbed in his talent
with all its innocent enormities. He at any rate had no misgivings.
The little girls, Eileen and Ermyntrude, played about him; they
played with blocks and life-buoys and cables, they jumped over coils
of rope, they spun round to leeward till the wind wound their faces
in their long hair, they ran for'ard, shrieking with happy laughter
as they were caught by the showers of spray flung from the yacht's
bows. Frida's eyes followed them, and Durant's eyes followed
Frida's.

"They are seeing the world, too, it seems."

"Yes; they have caught the fever. But they are young, as you see;
they have taken it in time. Some day they'll be tired of wandering,
and they'll settle down in a house of their own, over here in
England, and be dear little wives and mothers."

"Eileen and Ermyntrude--by the way, I never know which is Eileen and
which is Ermyntrude. And you, will you never be tired of wandering?"

She looked at him with the lucid, penetrating gaze he knew so well.
"Never. I took the fever when I was--not young, and it goes harder
with you then. There's no hope for me; I shall never be cured."

She rose and joined the Manbys. The little girls ran to meet her,
they clung to her skirts and danced round her; she put her arm round
Ermyntrude, the younger, and Durant saw her winding her long fingers
in and out of the golden hair, and looking down into the child's
face, Madonna-like, with humid, tender, maternal eyes.

He thought of her as the mother of Manby's children, and he hated
the little girls.

There was a voice at his elbow. "Isn't she splendid?" Miss
Chatterton had seated herself in Frida's chair.

Her presence brought him instantaneous relief. He had been glad to
meet Miss Chatterton again. Not that he would have known her, for
time had not dealt very kindly with the young girl. Her face, from
overmuch play of expression, showed a few little wrinkles already,
her complexion had suffered the fate of sanguine complexions, it had
not gone altogether, but it was going--fast, the color was beginning
to run. But time had not subdued her extravagant spirits or touched
her imperishable mirth. In spite of a lapse of five years she gave
him a pleasant sense of continuity; she took him up exactly where
she had put him down, on the platform of the little wayside station
of Whithorn-in-Arden. Unlike Frida, Miss Chatterton had not
developed. When she began to talk she had the air of merely
continuing their last important conversation.

"Didn't I tell you how she'd come out if she got her chance?"

"You did."

"And wasn't I right?"

"You were."

"But you oughtn't to have needed telling, you ought to have seen it
for yourself."

"Right again. I ought to have seen it for myself."

"He who will not when he may will live to fight another day; isn't
that how it goes on?"

"Yes; I congratulate you on your work."

"It isn't my work, lord bless you! nor yours, either--_there_ I was
wrong."

"What is it, then?"

Miss Chatterton stared out over the sea and into the universal air.
"Why, it's--it's everything! Of course you did something, so did I.
But if it comes to that, the present Mrs. Tancred did more than
either of us. We couldn't have married the Colonel."

"Then you think that was the reason why she----"

"I do, indeed. She could have had no other. You see she was awfully
fond of Frida. And, what's more, she was fond of you."

It was his turn to look out over the sea.

"What do you think? He has never forgiven her for going away, though
it happened to be the very thing he wanted. How's that for
inconsistency?"

"Has she seen the--the Colonel since?"

"She has. A strange, unaccountable longing to see the Colonel comes
over her periodically, like a madness, and she rushes home from the
ends of the earth. That's happened three times. It's the most
erratic and incalculable thing about her. But going home doesn't
answer."

"I should hardly have thought it would."

"Except that she's got the control of more money now. Tell you how
it happened. The last time she went home she found the poor little
Colonel making his little will. He asked her point-blank what she
meant to do with the property when he was in his little grave. He
must have had an inkling. And Frida, who is honesty itself, said she
didn't know, but she rather thought she would sell it and make for
the unexplored. Then he was frightened, and made her make a solemn
vow never to do anything of the kind. Somehow the property seems to
have recovered itself, with all she put into it; anyhow, after that,
it managed to disgorge another thousand a year. So Frida's more
independent than ever."

Durant made an impatient movement that nearly sent him overboard to
the bottom of the sea, where, indeed, he wished that Frida Tancred's
thousands were lying. Georgie noticed the movement, and blushed for
the first time in their acquaintance.

"Just look at those children," said she, "they simply adore Frida.
It's odd, but she's got the most curious power of making people
adore her. I don't know what she does to them, but waiters,
policemen, porters, customhouse officers, they're all the same. The
people in the hotels we stayed in adored her. So did the Arabs up
the Nile and the Soudanese in the desert, so did the Kaffirs on the
veldt and the coolies that carried her up the Himalayas--and she's
no light weight, is Frida."

Georgie paused while her fancy followed Frida in delightful
retrospect. Durant said nothing, he sat waiting for her to go on.
She went on.

"Women, too--I've seen them hanging about drafty corridors for hours
on the off chance of seeing her. There was a dreadful girl we knew
in Paris, who used to grovel on her doormat and weep because she
said Frida wouldn't speak to her. Frida loathed her, but she was
awfully nice to her till one day when she tripped over her on the
mat. Then she wasn't nice to her at all; she hauled her up by the
belt, and told her to get up and go away and never make such a fool
of herself again."

Georgie cast at Durant a look that said, "That's how our Frida deals
with obstructives!"

"And where was all this remarkable fascination five years ago?"

"It was there all right enough, lying dormant, you know. I felt it.
Mrs. Fazakerly felt it--that's why she married the Colonel. You felt
it."

"I didn't."

"Excuse me, you did. That's why you stayed three weeks at Coton
Manor when you needn't have stopped three days. As for Mr. Manby
there, he simply worships the ground she treads on, as they say."

"The devil he does! What's he doing here?"

"As you see, he's painting pictures as hard as ever he can go. He
paints them in order to live; but as he has to live in order to
paint, Frida--well, between you and me, Frida keeps him and Eileen
and Ermyntrude, the whole family, in short. But that's a detail. It
isn't offered as any explanation of the charm. I don't believe that
anybody ever realizes that Frida has money."

He could believe that. He had never realized it himself. Her
enjoyment of life was so finished an art that it kept its machinery
well out of sight.

"Frida," Georgie serenely continued, "has a weakness for landscape
painters. The memory of her mother--no doubt."

"Don't they--don't they bore her?"

"No. It takes a great deal to bore Frida--naturally, after the
Colonel. Besides, she doesn't give them the chance. Nobody ever gets
what you may call a hold on Frida. There's so much more of her than
they can grasp. And there are, at least, three sides of her by which
she's unapproachable. One of them's her liberty. If you or I or the
little Manby man were to take liberties with her liberty Frida
would----"

"What would Frida do?"

"She would drop us down, very gently, at the nearest port, and make
for the Unexplored! And yet, I don't know. That's the lovely and
fascinating thing about Frida--that you never _do_ know."


XVI

The fortnight's cruise was at an end, the _Torch_ had gone back to
her owners, without Durant, who had contrived to stay on board the
_Windward_ till the latest possible moment. The yacht was lying-to,
outside the same white-walled harbor where she had first found
Durant. She wheeled aimlessly about with slackened sails, swaying,
balancing, hovering like a bird on the wing, impervious and
restless, waiting for the return of the boat that was to take Durant
on shore. It had only just put off with the first load of
guests--the Manbys--under Georgie Chatterton's escort. As Durant
watched it diminishing and vanishing, he thought of how Georgie had
described their hostess's method of dealing with exacting friends.
She was dropping them, very gently, at the nearest port. Poor Manby!
And it would be his own turn next. And yet Georgie had said, "You
never know." He must and would know; at any rate, he would take his
chance. Meanwhile, he had a whole hour before him to find out in,
for the crew had commissions in the town. That hour was Frida's and
his own.

The two weeks had gone he knew not how; and yet he had taken
count of the procession of the days. Days of clouds, when, under a
drenching mist, the land was sodden into the likeness of the sea,
the sea stilled into a leaden image of the land; days of rain, when
the wet decks shone like amber, and the sea's face was smoothed out
and pitted by the showers; days of sun, when they went with every
sail spread, over a warm, quivering sea, whose ripples bore the
shivered reflections of the sky in so many blue flames that leaped
and danced with the _Windward_ in her course; days of wind, when
the Channel was a race of tumultuous waves, green-hearted,
silver-lipped, swelling and breaking and swelling, and flowering
into foam, days when the yacht careened over with steep decks, laid
between wind and water, flush with the foam, driven by the wind as
by her soul; days when Durant and Frida, who delighted in rough
weather, sat out together on deck alone. They knew every sound of
that marvelous world, sounds of the calm, of water lapping against
the yacht's side, the tender, half-audible caress of the sea;
sounds of the coming gale, more seen than heard, more felt than
seen, the deep, long-drawn shudder of the sea when the wind's path
is as the rain's path; and that sound, the song of her soul, the
keen, high, exultant song that the wind sings, playing on her
shrouds as on a many-stringed instrument. The boat, in her unrest,
rolling, tossing, wheeling and flying, was herself so alive, so one
with the moving wind and water, and withal so slight a shell for
the humanity within her, that she had brought them, the man and the
woman, nearer and nearer to the heart of being; they touched
through her the deep elemental forces of the world. The sea had
joined what the land had kept asunder. At this last hour of
Durant's last day they were drifting rather than sailing past a
sunken shore, a fringe of gray slate, battered by the tide and
broken into thin layers, with edges keen as knives; above it, low
woods of dwarf oaks stretched northward, gray and phantasmal as the
shore, stunted and tortured into writhing, unearthly shapes by the
violence of storms. For here and now the sea had its way; it had
taken on reality; and earth was the phantom, the vanishing, the
vague.

They had been pacing the deck together for some minutes, but at last
they stood still, looking landward.

Durant sighed heavily and then he spoke.

"Frida, you know what I am going to say----"

They turned and faced each other. In the man's eyes there was a
cloud, in the woman's a light, a light of wonder and of terror.

She smiled bravely through her fear. "Yes, I know what you are going
to say. But I don't know----"

"What _don't_ you know?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You don't know what I mean?"

"I know you are going to say you love me, and you had better not.
For I don't know what that means. The thing you call love was left
out of my composition. Some women are born like that."

"I don't believe it. It's only your way of saying that you don't
care for _me_."

"I like you. I always have liked you. I'll go farther--if I ever
loved any man it would be you."

"The fact remains that it isn't?"

"It isn't, and it never will be. But you may be very certain that it
will never be anyone else."

"Tell me one thing--was there ever a time when it might have been?"

"That isn't fair. I can't answer that question."

"You can. Think--was there ever a time, no matter how short, the
fraction of a minute, when if I'd only had the sense, if I had only
known----"

"Are you sure you didn't know? I was afraid you did."

"Then you really mean it--that if I'd only asked you then----"

"Thank Heaven, you did not!"

"Why are you thanking Heaven?"

"Because--because--I can't be sure, but I might--I might have taken
you at your word."

"And why not?"

"I would have made a great mistake. The same mistake that you are
making now."

"Mistake?"

"You mistook the idea for the reality once, if you remember--and now
aren't you mistaking the reality for the idea?"

"Frida, you are too subtle; you are the most exasperating woman in
the world----"

"There, you see. That's the sort of thing we should always be saying
to each other if I let you have your way. But supposing you did have
it; if we were married we could not understand each other better
than we do; so we should not be one bit better off. By this time we
should have got beyond the phase we started with----"

"But we should have _had_ it----"

"Yes; and found ourselves precisely where we are now."

"Where we were yesterday, you mean."

"Yes. We were good enough friends yesterday."

"And what are we to-day? Enemies?"

She smiled sadly. "It looks like it. At any rate, we seem to have
some difficulty in understanding each other."

"Good God! how coolly you talk about it! Understanding! Do you never
feel? Has it never even occurred to you that I can feel? Have you
any notion what it is to be made of flesh and blood and nerves, and
to have to stay here, squeezed up in this confounded boat, where I
can't get away from you?"

"You can get away in three-quarters of an hour, and meanwhile, if
you like, you can go below."

"If I did go below I should still feel you walking over my head. I
should hear you breathe. And now to look at you and touch you, and
know all the time that something sticks between us----"

He stopped and looked before him. It was true that the sea had
brought them together. Amid the dæmonic triumph and jubilation of
the power that claimed them for its own they, the man and the woman,
had been thrown on each other, they had looked into each other's
eyes, spirit to spirit, the divine thing struggling blind and
uncertain in nature's tangled mesh. But now, so near, on the verge
of the intangible, the divine, it came over Durant that after all it
was this their common nature, their flesh and blood, that was the
barrier; it merged them with the world on every side, but it hedged
them in and hid them from each other.

"As you know, we're the best friends in the world; there's only one
thing that sticks between us--the eternal difference in our points
of view."

"I was perfectly right. Why couldn't I trust my first impressions? I
thought you frigid and lucid and inhuman----"

"Inhuman?"

"Well, not a bit like a woman."

"My dear Maurice, you are very like a man."

"There's something about you----"

"Really? What is it, do you think?"

"Oh, nothing; a slight defect, that's all. It must be as you say,
and as I always thought, that you are incapable of feeling or
understanding feeling. I repeat, there's something about you----"

"Ah, Maurice, if you want the truth, there's something about _you_.
I always knew, I felt that it was in you, though I wouldn't own that
it was there. Now I am sure. You've been doing your best to make me
sure."

"What have I made you sure of?"

"Sure that you are incapable, not of loving perhaps, but of loving a
certain kind of woman the way she wants to be loved. You can't help
it. As I said before, it is the difference in the point of view. We
should get no nearer if we talked till doomsday."

"My point of view, as you call it, has entirely changed."

"No. It is I who have changed. Your point of view is, and always
will be, the same."

He tried hard to understand.

"Does it come to this--that if I had loved you then you would have
loved me now?"

"You couldn't have loved me then. You were not that sort."

He understood her meaning and it maddened him. "It wasn't my fault.
How the devil was I to see?"

"Exactly, how were you? There are some things which you can't see.
You can see everything you can paint, and, as you are a very clever
artist, I dare say you can paint most things you can see."

"What has that got to do with it?"

"Everything. It's your way all through. You love me because what you
see of me is changed. And yet all that time I was the same woman I
am now. I am the same woman I was then."

"But I am not the same man!"

"The very same. You have not changed at all."

She meant that he was deficient in that spiritual imagination which
was her special power; she meant that she had perceived the implicit
baseness of his earlier attitude as a man to her as a woman, a woman
who had had no power to touch his senses. It was, as she had said,
the difference in their points of view; hers had condemned him
forever to the sensual and the seen.

He stood ashamed before her.

Yet, as if she had divined his shame and measured the anguish of it
and repented her, she laid her hand on his arm.

"Maurice, it isn't entirely so. I have been horribly unjust."

"Not you! You are justice incarnate. If I had loved you then----"

"You couldn't have loved me then."

"So you have just told me."

"You had good cause. I was not and could not be then--whatever it is
that you love now."

"But I might have seen----"

"Seen? Seen? That's it. There was nothing to see."

Her eyes, in her pity for him, filled with tears, tears that in his
anger he could not understand.

"Why are you always reminding me of what I was five years ago? I
_have_ changed. Can't a man change if you give him five years to do
it in?"

"Perhaps. It's a long time."

"Time? It's an eternity. If I was a brute to you, do you suppose the
consciousness of my brutality isn't a far worse punishment than
anything I could have made you feel?"

She raised her eyebrows. "What? Have you been suffering all this
time--this eternity?"

"Yes. That is, I'm suffering enough now."

"Then perhaps you have some idea of what you made me feel."

"Again?"

"It's the first time I've reproached you with it, even in my
thoughts."

He looked at her with unbelieving eyes. And yet he knew that it was
true. Her sweetness, her lucidity, had been proof against the
supreme provocation. She had forgiven, if she had not forgotten, the
insult that no woman remembers and forgives.

As his eyes wandered the hand that had lain so lightly on his arm
gripped it to command his attention, and he trembled through all his
being. But she no longer shrank from him; she kept her hold, she
tightened it, insisting.

"Oh, Maurice! haven't I told you that I understood?"

He smiled. "Yes. Thank God I can always appeal to your
understanding, if I can't get at your heart. Supposing I didn't care
for you then? Supposing I was too stupid to see what you were? Is
five years, though it may be eternity, so long a time to learn to
know you in? You take a great deal of learning, Frida; you are very
difficult. There's so much more of you than any man can grasp. But
you are the only woman I ever cared to know. I believe you have a
thousand sides to you, and every one--every one I can see--appeals
to me. There's no end to the interest. Whatever I see or don't see,
I always find something more, and I never could be tired of
looking."

She sighed and was silent.

"And you blame me because I couldn't see all this at once? Because
it took me five years to love you? Remember, you were very cautious;
you wouldn't let me see more than a bit at a time. But I love every
bit of you--heart and soul, and body and brain; I love you as I
never could love any other woman in the world--the world, Frida," he
added, pointing the hackneyed phrase. "You _are_ the world."

They had never stopped pacing the deck together, as they talked,
turn after turn, alike and yet unlike in their eagerness and unrest.
Now they stood still. Far off they could see the returning boat, a
speck at the mouth of the harbor, and they knew that their time was
short.

"Maurice," she said, "before you go I have a confession to make. I
wasn't quite honest with you just now when I said I only liked you
five years ago. I know very well that I loved you. The world has
taught me so much."

The world! He frowned angrily as she said it. But through all his
anger he admired the reckless nobility of soul that had urged her to
that last admission, by way of softening the pangs and penalties she
dealt to him. Would any other woman have confessed as much to the
man who had once despised her, and now found himself in her power?

She went on. "I thought you might like to know it. I've gone far
enough, perhaps; but I'll go farther still. I believe I would give
the world to be able to love you now."

"Frida, if you can go as far as that----"

"I can go no farther. No, Maurice, not one step."

"You can. I believe, even now, I could make you love me."

"No. You see, women in my position, my unfortunate position, want to
be loved for themselves."

"I do love you for yourself. Do you doubt that, too?"

"I do not doubt it. I am quite sure of it. That's where it is. I
know you love me for myself, and so many men have loved me--not for
myself. Do you suppose that doesn't touch me? If anything could make
me love you that would. And since it doesn't----"

The inference was obvious.

"Is it because you can't give up your life?"

"It is--partly. And yet I might do that. I did it once."

"You did, indeed. I can't conceive how you, being you, lived the
life you did----"

"I owed it. It was the price of my freedom."

Her freedom! No wonder that she valued it, if she had paid that
price!

She went on dreamily, as if speaking more to herself than him. "To
have power over your life--to do what you like with it--take it up
or throw it down, to fling it away if that seems the best thing to
do. You're not fit to take up your life if you haven't the strength
to put it down, too."

"Frida, if you were my wife you wouldn't have to put it down. I'm
not asking you to give up the world for me; I'm not even asking you
to give up one day of your life. Your life would be exactly what it
is now--plus one thing. You'll say, 'What can I give you that you
haven't got?' I can give you what you've never had. You don't know
what a man's love is and can be; and you must own that without that
knowledge your experience, even as experience, is not quite as
complete as it might be."

The boat--the boat that was to take him to the shore--was getting
nearer. It was his last chance. And while he staked everything on
that chance, he thought of Frida as he had first seen her, as she
sat tragically at the whist table at Coton Manor, dealing out the
cards with deft and supple fingers.

Now she was dealing out his fate.

He remembered how she had said, "Mr. Durant wins because he doesn't
care about the game." Because he cared--cared so supremely--was he
going to lose?

There were so many things in Frida that he had not reckoned with.
She was an extraordinary mixture of impulse and reserve, and she had
astonished him more than once by her readiness to give herself away;
but beyond a certain point--the point of view in fact--her
self-possession was complete. Still, he left no argument untried,
for there was no knowing--no knowing what undiscovered spring he
might chance to touch in that rich and subtle nature.

Her self-possession was absolute. She parried his probe with a
thrust.

"It is your own fault if my experience isn't complete. You should
have told me these things five years ago. As you say, nobody else
has instructed me since."

"I dare say they've done their best. Of course, other men have loved
you----"

"They haven't----"

"But I believe my love would be worth more to you than theirs, for
the simple reason that I understand you too well to insist on it. I
should always know how much and how little you wanted. For we are
rather alike in some ways. I would leave you free."

"I know you would. I am sure. And I would--I would so gladly--but I
can't! You see, Maurice, I _have_ loved you."

"All the more reason----"

"All the less. I knew what you thought and felt about me, and it
made no difference; I loved you just the same, because I understood.
Then I had to fight it. It was hard work, but I did it very
thoroughly. It will never have to be done again. Do you see?"

Yes; he saw very plainly. If Frida could not love him there was
nobody but himself to blame. He also saw the advantage she had given
him. She had owned that she had loved him, and he had hardly
realized the full force of the pluperfect. What had been might be
again. She was a woman in whom the primordial passion, once
awakened, is eternal.

He pressed his advantage home.

"And why had you to fight so hard?"

"Because the thing was stronger than myself, and I wouldn't be
beaten. Because I hated myself for caring for you, as I hate myself
now for not caring."

In her blind pity she laid her fingers on his trembling hand. She
who used to drop his hand as if it had been flame, she should have
known better than to touch him now.

He looked at her with hot hungry eyes. His brain in its feverish
intensity took note of trifles--the tortuous pattern of the braid on
her gown, the gold sleeve-links at her wrists, the specks of brine
that glistened on her temples under the wind-woven strands of her
black hair; it recorded these things and remembered them afterward.
And all the time the boat came nearer, and the slow, steady stroke
of the oars measured his hour by minutes, till the sweat, sprung
from the labor and passion of his nerves, stood out in beads on his
forehead.

He looked at her; and her beauty, the beauty born of her freedom and
abounding life, the beauty he worshiped, was implacable; the
divinity in it remained untouched by his desire.

"You needn't care," he said desperately. "I'm not asking you to
care; I'm not asking you to give me your love, but only to take
mine."

She smiled. "I'm not so dishonest as to borrow what I can't repay."

His voice was monotonous in its iteration. "I'm not talking about
repayment; I'll risk that. I don't want you to borrow it. I want you
to take it, keep it, spend it any way you like, and--throw it away
when you can't do anything more with it."

"And never return it? Ah, my friend! we can't do these things."

She dropped into the deck-chair, exhausted with the discussion. Her
brow was heavy with thought; she was still racking her brains to
find some argument that would appease him.

"I loved you--yes. And in my own way I love you now, if you could
only be content with my way."

"Haven't you told me that your way is not my way?"

"Yes; and I've done worse than that. I've been talking to you as if
you had made me suffer tortures, as if you had brought me all the
pain of existence instead of all the pleasure. If you only knew!
There's nothing I've been enjoying all these five years that I don't
owe to you--to you and nobody else. You were very good to me even at
the first; and afterward--well, I believe I love life as few women
can love it, and it came to me through you. Do you think I can ever
forget that? Forget what I owe you? You stood by me and showed me
the way out; you stood by and opened the door of the world."

To stand by and open the door for her--it was all he was good for.
In other words, she had made use of him. Well, had he not proposed
to make use of her? After all, in what did his view of her differ
from the Colonel's, which he abominated? All along, from the very
first, it had been the old theory of the woman for the man. Frida
for the Colonel's use, for his (Durant's) amusement, and now for his
possession. Under all its disguises it was only an exalted form of
the tyranny of sex. And Frida was making him see that there was
another way of looking at it--that a woman, like nature, like life,
may be an end in herself, to be loved for herself, not for what he
could make out of her.

"I am a woman of the world, a worldly woman, if you like. I love the
world better than anyone in it. And I'm a sort of pantheist, I
suppose; I worship the world. But you will always be a part of the
world I love and worship; I could not keep you out of it if I
would."

The exultation in her tone provoked his laughter. "Heaven bless
you--that's only a nice way of saying that I'm done for.

    'He is made one with Nature; there is heard
    His voice in all her music, from the moan
    Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird.'

You _have_ made a clean sweep of me and my personal immortality."

The splash of the oars sounded nearer. They could hear the voices of
the crew; the boat, lightened of her first load, was returning with
horrible rapidity, it came dancing toward them in its malignant
glee; and they sat facing each other for the last time, tongue-tied.

They had paced the deck together again; one more turn for the last
time.

Durant was silent. Her confession was still ringing in his ears;
but it rang confusedly, it left his reason as unconvinced as his
heart was unsatisfied.

She _had_ loved him, and not in her way, as she called it, but in
his. And that was a mystery. He felt that if he could account for it
he would have grasped the clue, the key of the position. Whatever
she might say, these things were more than subtleties of the pure
reason, they were matters of the heart. He was still building a hope
beyond the ruins of hope.

"Frida," he said at last, "you are a wonderful woman, so I can
believe that you loved me. But, seeing what I was and what you knew
about me, I wonder why?"

Louder and nearer they heard the stroke of the oars measuring the
minutes. Frida's eyes were fixed on the boat as she answered.

"Why? Ah, Maurice, how many times have I asked myself that question?
Why does any woman love any man? As far as I can see, in nine
hundred cases out of a thousand woman is unhappy because she loves.
In the thousandth case she loves because she is unhappy."

The boat had arrived. The oars knocked against the yacht's side with
a light shock. Durant's hour was at an end.

Frida held out her hand. He hardly touched it, hardly raised his
eyes to her as she said "Good-bye." But on the last step of the
gangway he turned and looked at her--the woman in a thousand.

She was not unhappy.


XVII

Frida had played high and yet she had won the game of life; that
dangerous game which most women playing single-handed are bound to
lose. She had won, but whether by apathy or care, by skill or
divine chance, he could not tell. As to himself he was very certain;
when he might have won her he did not care to win, now that he had
lost her he would always care. That was just his way.

Alone in the little hotel that looked over the harbor, left to the
tyrannous company of his own thoughts, he made a desperate effort to
understand her, to accept her point of view, to be, as she was,
comprehensive and generous and just.

He believed every word she had ever said to him, for she was truth
itself; he believed her when she said that she had loved him, that
she loved him still. Of course she loved him; but how?

They say that passion in a pure woman is first lit at the light of
the ideal, and burns downward from spirit to earth. But Frida's had
shot up full-flamed from the dark, kindled at the hot heart of
nature, thence it had taken to itself wings and flown to the ideal;
and for its insatiable longing there was no ideal but the whole.
Other women before Frida had loved the world too well; but for them
the world meant nothing but their own part and place in it. For
Frida it meant nothing short of the divine cosmos. Impossible to fix
her part and place in it; the woman was so merged with the object of
her desire. He, Maurice Durant, was as she had said a part of that
world, but he was not the whole; he was not even the half, that half
which for most women is more than the whole. From the first he had
been to her the symbol of a reality greater than himself; she loved
not him, but the world in him. And thus her love, like his own art,
had missed the touch of greatness. It was neither the joy nor the
tragedy of her life, but its one illuminating episode; or, rather,
it was the lyrical prologue to the grand drama of existence.

He did her justice. It was not that she was changeable or
capricious, or that her love was weak; on the contrary, its very
nature was to grow out of all bounds of sex and mood and
circumstance. Its progress had been from Maurice Durant outward;
from Maurice, as the innermost kernel and heart of the world, to the
dim verge, the uttermost margin of the world; and that by a million
radiating paths. It was not that she left Maurice behind her, for
all those million paths led back to him, the man was the center of
her universe; but then the center is infinitely small compared with
the circumference. He saw himself diminished to a mathematical point
in this cosmopolitan's cosmos. For Frida he had ceased to have any
objective existence, he was an intellectual quantity, what the
Colonel would have called an abstraction. There was nothing for him
to do but to accept the transcendent position.

Thus, through all the tension of his soul, his intellect still
struggled for comprehension.

Meanwhile, from his window looking over the white-walled harbor, he
could see the _Windward_ with all her sails spread, outward bound.

He watched her till there was nothing to be seen but her flying
sails, till the sails were one white wing on a dim violet sea, till
the white wing was a gray dot, indistinct on the margin of the
world.


XVIII

He cared immensely. But not to come behind her in generosity and
comprehension he owned that he had no right to complain because this
remarkable woman loved the world better than one man, even if that
man happened to be himself; in fact, while his heart revolted
against it, his pure intellect admired her attitude, for the world
is a greater thing that any man in it.

Now and again letters reached him across seas and continents, letters
with strange, outlandish postmarks, wonderful, graphic, triumphant
letters, which showed him plainly, though unintentionally, that Frida
Tancred was still on the winning side, that she could do without him.
Across seas and continents he watched her career with a sad and
cynical sympathy, as a man naturally watches a woman who triumphs
where he has failed.

Meanwhile he lived on her letters, long and expansive, or short and
to the point. They proved a stimulating diet; they had so much of
her full-blooded personality in them. His own grew shorter and
shorter and more and more to the point, till at last he wrote:
"Delightful. Only tell me when you've had enough of it."

The answer to that came bounding, as it were, from the other side of
the Atlantic. "Not yet. I shall never have enough of it. I've only
been 'seeing the world,' only traveling from point to point along an
infinite surface, and there's no satisfaction in that. I'm not
tired--not tired, Maurice, remember. I don't want to stop. I want to
strike down--deeper. It doesn't matter what point you take, so long
as you strike down. Just at present I'm off for India."

Her postscript said: "If you ever hear of me doing queer things,
remember they were all in the day's pleasure or the day's work."

He remembered--that Frida was only thirty-five; which was young for
Frida. And he said to himself, "It is all very well now, but what
will she be in another three years? I will give her another three
years. By that time she will be tired of the world, or the world
will be tired of her, which comes to the same thing, and her heart
(for she has a heart) will find her out. With Frida you never know.
I will wait and see."

He waited. The three years passed; he saw nothing and he had ceased
to hear. He concluded that Frida still loved the world.

As if in a passionate resentment against the rival that had
fascinated and won her, he had left off wandering and had buried
himself in an obscure Cornish village, where he gave himself up
to his work. He was not quite so successful as he had been; on
the other hand, he cared less than ever about success. It was the
end of the century, a century that had been forced by the
contemplation of such realities as plague and famine, and war and
rumors of war, to forego and forget the melancholy art of its
decadence. And from other causes Durant had fallen into a state
of extreme dissatisfaction with himself. Five years ago he had
found himself, as they said; found himself out, _he_ said, when
at the age of thirty-three he condemned himself and his art as
more decadent than the decadents. Frida Tancred had shown insight
when she reproached him with his inability to see anything that
he could not paint, or to paint anything that he could not see.
She had shown him the vanity of the sensuous aspect, she had
forced him to love the intangible, the unseen, till he had almost
come to believe that it was all he loved. The woman lived for him
in her divine form, as his imagination had first seen her, as an
Idea, an eternal dream. It was as if he could see nothing and
paint nothing else. And when a clever versatile artist of
Durant's type flings himself away in a mad struggle to give form
and color to the invisible it is not to be wondered at if the
world is puzzled and fights shy of him.

Meanwhile the critic who had a right to his opinion said of him:
"Now that he has thrown the reins on the back of his imagination it
will carry him far. Ten years hence the world will realize that
Maurice Durant is a great painter. But in those ten years he must
work hard."

As if to show how little he cared he left off working hard and
bestirred himself for news of Frida Tancred.

It came at last--from Poona of all places. Frida wrote in high
spirits and at length. "I like writing to you," she said, "because I
can say what I like, because you always know--you've been there.
Where? Oh, everywhere where I've been, except Whithorn-in-Arden.
And, now I come to think of it, you were there, too--for a
fortnight" ("three weeks--three long weeks--and for your sake,
Frida!"). "No, I'm not 'coming home.' Why _must_ I 'stop somewhere'?
I can't stop, didn't I tell you? I can only strike down where it's
deepest.

"It seems to be pretty deep here. If I could only understand these
people--but what European can? They mean something we don't mean....
You should see my Munshi, a terrifically high-caste fellow with a
diminutive figure and unfathomable eyes. I am trying to learn
Sanscrit. He is trying to teach me. We sit opposite each other at a
bamboo table with an immense Sanscrit dictionary between us. He
smiles in his sleeve at my attempt to bridge the gulf between Europe
and Asia with a Sanscrit dictionary. He is always smiling at me in
his sleeve. I know it, and he knows that I know it, which endears me
to him very much.

"My Munshi is a bottomless well of Western wisdom. He takes
anything that Europe can give him--art, literature, science,
metaphysics. He absorbs it all, and Heaven only knows what he is
going to do with it, or it with him. He swallows it as a juggler
swallows fire, and with about as much serious intention of
assimilating it. That smile of his intimates that the things that
matter to us do not matter to him; that nothing matters--neither
will nor conscience, nor pain nor passion, nor man nor woman, nor
life nor death. There's an attitude for you!

"That attitude is my Munshi, and my Munshi is Asia."

He smiled. He had seen Frida in many attitudes, Frida in love with
nothing, Frida in love with a person, Frida in love with a thing.
Here was Frida in love with an idea. It was just like her. She was
seeing Asia from the Asiatic point of view.

"Meanwhile," she went on, "there's a greater gulf fixed between my
Munshi and my 'rickshaw coolie than there is between me and my
'rickshaw coolie, or my Munshi and me."

He wondered if she meant to remind him that there was a still
greater gulf between him and her.

"To-morrow I and two coolies are going up to Gujerat where the
famine is. I inclose a snapshot of the party. My effacement by the
coolie is merely a photographic freak--his grin is the broadest part
of him, poor fellow. In the autumn I go down to Bombay. I am deep in
bacteriology, which reminds me of father and the first time I met
you, and your bad puns."

The snapshot was an unflattering likeness of Frida in a 'rickshaw.
The foreground was filled by the figure of the grinning coolie.
Behind him Frida's face showed dim and small and far-off; she was
smiling with the sun in her eyes.

Such as it was he treasured it as his dearest possession. He had
been painting pictures all his life, but he had none of Frida.

Silence again. "In the autumn," she had said, "I go down to Bombay."
But the autumn passed and there was no news of her. Durant provided
himself with an Indian outfit. He was going out to look for her; he
was ready to go to the ends of the world to find her. "The day after
to-morrow," he said, "I shall start for Bombay."

That night he dreamed of her; or, rather, not of her, but of a
coolie who stood before the door of a wayside bungalow, and held in
his hands shafts that were not the shafts of a 'rickshaw. And the
coolie's face was all one broad grin.

Two days later--the day he was to have sailed for India--hurriedly
skimming a column of the _Times_ he came upon the news he was
looking for.

"It is with much regret that we record the death from bubonic plague
of Miss Frida Tancred. It was quite recently that this lady gave up
a large part of her fortune to founding the Bacteriological
Laboratory in Bombay, more recently still that she distinguished
herself by her services to the famine-stricken population of
Gujerat. Miss Tancred has added to the immense debt our Indian
Empire owes her by this final example of heroic self-sacrifice. It
is said that she contracted plague while nursing one of her coolies,
who has since recovered."

He bowed his head.

It was not grief he felt, but a savage exultant joy. The world could
have no more of her. She was his, in some inviolable, irrevocable
way. He knew. He understood her now, clearly and completely.

His joy deepened to a passionless spiritual content; as if in the
fulness of his knowledge he had embraced the immortal part of her.

Why had he not understood her long ago? She had never changed. As he
had first seen her, playing cards with her father in the
drawing-room at Coton Manor, as he had last seen her, pacing the
deck of the _Windward_, intoxicated with her freedom, as he saw her
now, bending her head over the plague-poisoned body of the coolie,
she was the same tender, resolute, passionate Frida, who ruined her
life and glorified it, laid it down and took it up again at her
will. And as he saw--would always see her, in this new light of her
death, she was smiling, as if she defied him to see anything
pathetic in it.

She had loved the world, the mystic maddening beauty of it, the
divine darkness and glory of it. She had taken to her heart the
rapture and the pain of it. She had stretched out her hands to the
unexplored, to the unchanged and changing, the many-faced,
incomprehensible, finite, infinite Whole.

And she had flung it all up; for what?

For a 'rickshaw coolie's life?--Or for something--yet--beyond?




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