FOLLY CORNER

BY

MRS. H. DUDENEY

AUTHOR OF “THE MATERNITY OF HARRIOTT WICKEN”

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1900

[iii]

PROLOGUE.

THE steam of that stifling London day rose up in a choking, enervating haze from the hot grass. The shrill cries of children, loose from the Board School, cut the thick air. A train rushed across the bridge. Two or three cyclists tinkled their bells irritably as they spun down Wood Lane to the Uxbridge Road, leaving a cloud of gray grit behind them. Omnibuses pulled up at the corner of the short street near the few newly-built shops. From Portobello Road came the heavy rumble of more traffic, mixed with the nearer shout of costers vending dried fish and over-ripe fruit.

She was a young woman. She stood still, in a limp, hopeless attitude, her face turned on Wormwood Scrubbs, her strained eyes vacantly fastened on the buildings, spires, and chimneys in the distance.

Some simple sound from the frowning prison on her left made her turn her head with the swift, watching movement of a cat. But there was nothing to see; no hint, no hope. Behind those walls! Her throat, rising white and firm from the tumbled collar of the cotton blouse, contracted. Those walls! those impenetrable walls! those relentless walls!

[iv] She put out two hands in baggy gloves; she held them up, flat palms upward, toward the speechless prison. Her attitude was one of strong appeal, of hope, almost—as if she half expected that despair would work a miracle. They stretched out, big, strong, shapeless in the old gloves—those quivering, appealing hands of hers.

With a sharp agonized movement of the wrists she let her hands drop nervelessly to her side. A sob was strangled in her throat; she turned her head abruptly, so that her eyes no longer rested on the walls. With a sudden impulse she started running across the grass; ran across the road and under the bridge to the spot where an omnibus was waiting.

It grew dusk as she rattled back on the garden-seat to London. One by one the lights of night gleamed out. The life of night began. She looked down and saw the interior of smoothly rolling carriages, with women in evening dress lying idly back inside. Women on foot, smartly clad and with happy faces, flitted along the white pavements. Women clambered to the top of the omnibus, chattering and tittering. The one who sat next her glanced curiously at her grim mouth and shadowed eyes.

The lights grew thicker; fantastic chains of light—red and yellow. London glittered like some fairy mine of jewels: jewels already cut and polished, every facet gleaming. Words winked out letter by letter, then vanished. She saw them come and go on the fronts of the houses. OX FORCE—NINON SOAP—DUNN’S NOSTRUM. To her strained senses[v] they lost all common meaning and symbolized the weird, the threatening, the unknown.

*****

It was blinding hot in the market town that Wednesday. Sheep straggled into the pens; the drovers choked and cursed as the dust dried in their throats. A smart trap, driven by a girl, with a groom behind, bowled down the High Street, leaving behind an impression of coolness and smartness. Now and again a sharp, imperious cycle-bell cut the air, and as some female cyclist darted by pedestrians heard the soft flutter of sleeves, like the flapping sails of a yacht.

A man came, with a slightly rolling walk, down the street. He made an imperial progress, nodding his head bluffly to deferential shopkeepers who stood at their doors, exchanging a jovial word or so with other substantial yeomen. Everyone knew and respected Jethro Jayne—“Young Jethro” of Folly Corner. Everyone in and around Liddleshorn knew that there had been Jaynes at Folly in unbroken succession since before the days of Cromwell.

He was a picturesque figure, with his open, weather-tanned face, his clean-shaven lip, his buff breeches, and brown gaiters. He wore a linen coat and a flapping white linen hat. His eyes were lazily merry and roguish under the starched brim.

He turned in at the door of the inn, with the low-pitched, paneled dining-room, where most of the farmers dined on market-day.

A round-faced, pretty girl brought him his plate[vi] of beef and his two vegetables. Bread and cheese, and a jug of sweet cider, completed the meal.

He looked at her thoughtfully whenever she approached: so very blue-eyed and round; such a plump, neat figure in a black gown! He looked at her through a strong cloud of smoke as he puffed at his pipe and drank a last glass of the cider. She had suggested something. He was thoughtfully asking himself, Why not?

Presently he took a pencil and a letter from his breeches pocket. He began to write on the back of the envelope, making many erasions, knitting his brows and pouting his lips like an anxious child.

The girl came softly to the table and took away the mustard for another customer. Jethro never looked up at her. She had done her part. She had suggested.

He paid the bill and emerged into High Street. He looked a trifle more bluff and lurching than before. His face was red—with cider, with the excitement of his daring plan.

For the first time in his life he was yielding to impulse. Already he half regretted yielding. He was afraid of himself; he was more afraid of Gainah.

Yet he bent his head and went down two steps into the editorial offices of the Liddleshorn Herald. The place was empty save for a sharp-featured youth who was lounging at the side of the counter. He sharply asked the visitor what he wanted. He was a new importation, an embryo journalist, with a London journal as his goal. He touched the[vii] town side of things only. He had a smoldering contempt for farmers, and knew nothing of the master of Folly Corner.

Jethro pushed his envelope across the counter with a sheepish gesture.

“How many insertions?” asked the youth laconically, yet throwing an amused, curious glance at the big figure which stood near the door—an unconscious, unappreciated color scheme—in white and russet, buff and brown.

“How many times in?” The gentleman-farmer’s big, embarrassed laugh seemed to shake the silent place. “Well—once.”

As he went slowly out of the town the tinkle of a piano came out clearly from the front room of a little buff villa. There were rows of these buff villas on the outskirts of the town. Some navvies were putting down new drain-pipes. The notes of the piano and the reedy voice of a girl came out slowly, each note isolated and mingled with the nervous tap of the pickax. Jethro stood still and listened. It was a song of Purcell’s:

“To make us seek ruin, to make us seek ruin and love those that hate.”

He walked on, a queer stirring at his heart. The thin voice of the girl in the villa had touched the romantic spot in him. He thought of that other girl at the inn—plump, blue-eyed, smiling. He thought of his carefully-worded advertisement which, by to-morrow, would be worming its way[viii] through Sussex, through Surrey and Hampshire to London perhaps.

It was a joke; he began to regret, to blame the cider, or the demure little rings of light hair on the waitress’ unlined brow.

And yet he could still hear the piano. He still felt the slow, wondering work of his heart.

[1]

FOLLY CORNER.

CHAPTER I.

THE story begins with the emotions of two women—the two women principally concerned—on a morning ten days after Jethro Jayne had imprudently indulged in sweet cider at the market dinner in Liddleshorn.

One woman was young—twenty-five or less. She was a big, fair girl; a handsome girl, in the elementary way that satisfies most men. She looked well able to take care of herself; an up-to-date girl, accustomed to fight her way alone, to meet men on their own ground, to jealously look after her own interests. There was, however, an occasional haggard line at her mouth, and in her well-opened, rather prominent gray eyes was a hunted, hopeless look.

She wore a coat and skirt, with sleeves of last year’s cut. Her hat was trimmed with strict attention to fashion, and yet bore the brand “home-made.” There was a crisp new veil tied about the brim.

She smacked so of cities that the few people she met turned round to slowly gape at her, and a couple[2] of small girls coming home from the village shop laughed aloud in her angry face.

She walked slowly along the white road, stopping now and then to lift her veil and wipe her burning cheeks.

The scenery was beautiful—with the characteristic beauty of the Sussex Weald. But she did not notice: she was too preoccupied. Her own affairs were in a critical state, and when one is anxious there is small consolation in undulating hills, long stretches of pasture, and red-roofed farmhouses. Her attitude was quite cockney—prim regard for her shoes and half-contemptuous admiration of her surroundings predominated.

Once she stopped to rest. A thatched and plastered cottage stood empty under the shadow of huge oaks. Wide green glades wound into the very heart of a little wood. The turf, inch-deep in moss, yielded like down. It was irresistible. She threw herself flat on her back, settling her skirt smoothly under her, and looked lazily through the wide mesh of the veil at the sky. The heat and the perfect silence almost made her sleep. A trap went by full of gayly-dressed country girls; a young man, hideous in his Sunday clothes, was driving. They were all off to some festivity, and they looked curiously at the prone figure on the turf. At first they thought it was some tramp, but the thin-soled morocco shoes stuck out from the dusty skirt contradicted that assumption. Such vagrant ways these town folk had! They laughed derisively, and the sound roused her. She sat up and stared a trifle[3] vaguely at the watchful hills, the glades of the wood, the white, winding ribbon of highroad. Then she rose and whisked her skirt and went on again.

Only once more was she tempted to stop—at a bramble bush where the blackberries were loose and juicy. She drew up her veil to her nose and drew them off the stalks with widely parted lips, because she was anxious not to soil the fingers of her gloves. It was so necessary to make a good impression: the woman who could always make a good impression had the world at her feet.

She crossed a common; fowls were scratching and shaking their wings in the mounds of dust; a long string of geese waddled by, conversing volubly, and with evident arrogance. A man with a timber wagon came toward her, and she stopped him to ask the way. He told her that she had a mile or more to go.

She went on, her feet dragging at every step. At every step she grew more nervous, more undecided. She took a letter from her pocket and read it over twice. She stopped, half turned back. Her face was violent red and chalk-white in turn. Still she went on, with lagging, heavy feet and a queer, terrified shame and excitement at her heart: went on over that open common which was just beginning to flush with heather. Another man came by, driving a black pig. It grunted, and seemed to run in every direction but the right one. He looked a stupid man; but, then, they were all half-witted in the country. She said—very slowly and deliberately,[4] as if she were speaking to a small child—that she wanted Folly Corner. He gave a vacillating grin, keeping one eye on the pig, and pointed to a substantial stack of chimneys on the left.

“That be Folly,” he said laconically, and left her.

She could see the house through the dense leafage of three great elms. She stood, with one hand firmly gripping her gay parasol, and the other twitching at the crisp edge of her veil. She looked at the red gables, at the spreading outbuildings, at the garden, at the yard; she looked back at the hot road cutting across the common. Should she go back or should she go on? For a moment she closed her eyes, and immediately the dark, straight wall of the prison shot up slowly like a specter and chilled her.

The prison! The prison and the one damned, dear soul beating within its walls! But that was past. She had wrestled out that finally—at night, in her London room, close beneath the slates; at night, in her bed, the letter under her pillow, or twisting in her hot fingers.

The gate which led into the garden was a white wicket. At each side was a poplar. These had grown so thick and tall that they met midway and formed an arch. There was a path of red brick, a little raised, leading up to the house door; it led up straight, between box edgings two feet high. The garden-beds were rather neglected, but a great clump of red-hot pokers pointed flame fingers to the sky, and a loose white rose, like foam, clung to the walls and ran along the low roof. There was a[5] long window each side the door, and in front of the one on the right was a yew-tree clipped into the shape of an umbrella. The clipping had been neglected, and the tree had the dishevelled appearance of a man who neglects to shave. There was an air of indolence about the garden, but it did not seem the indolence of poverty. A pond partly encircled the place. A red-and-white cow came down to drink and to look at her reflectively with its big, closely-veined eyes.

What sort of greeting was garnering for her beyond that door with the wooden hood, the veil of white roses, and the rough iron knocker? She looked at a Virginia creeper twisting among the roses. Autumn had touched it. She looked at the red leaves, then at the white flowers. They seemed flame and pale fire to strained eyes, short of sleep and dazzled with the sun. The deep, haggard line curved round her mouth. Within! What waited within?

*****

Within was the second woman, old Gainah Toat. She sat in a low-pitched room—the room on the right, made dark by the umbrella yew. There was a great open hearth. There were three doors: one led into a dairy; it was open, and showed the bricked floor, the yellow and brown pans, the thick cream and made-up butter; the second door opened into the passage; the third into the garden.

She sat by the third door, which was thrown well back. She could see the orchard strewn with mussel plums, ripe to rottenness, with little yellow stewing pears[6] and apples specked with black. She did not seem to see anything; she had those eyes—cold blue with a dash of gray—that are always dull; eyes that evade and puzzle. They were very wide open, the lids rolled well back, and the lashes sparse.

She had a white face; there was a general appearance of wasting about her. The fingers, holding a letter—the other woman had been influenced by a letter too—were twisted and disfigured with rheumatism. Her body was flat and square; her faded gown made no pretense of slurring the defect. It went straight from her stringy throat to her hardly perceptible hips without a break, without a kindly fold or ruck of the stuff.

She was an odd-looking figure; a spectral woman almost—with her bloodless skin, her dead eyes, her twisted, transparent hands. But the people around Folly Corner were not given to fanciful imaginings; they only knew that Gainah seemed made of iron, that she worked on the farm without tiring from sunrise until night. Her life was spent in making things for other people to eat. She belonged to a dying type: she was one of those women who devote themselves to tickling the masculine palate. Machine-made food did not enter into her economy. Her mushroom ketchup, her marmalade, her blackberry jelly were renowned. She gave them to anyone who asked, not because she was generous, but because she was inordinately proud of her productions. She toyed with medicine too; made balm tea, and, from a particular sort of nettle, green ointment that would cure a gathering. She made herb beer and[7] water cider to save beer at harvest-time. She knew the effect of foxglove on the human heart, and made a concoction of a certain herb which she gathered secretly. With it she claimed to cure palsy. She was mistress at Folly Corner. She had come to old Jethro Jayne when his wife died. She had brought up the present master by hand; she ruled him still.

Every master of Folly Corner had been a Jayne, and every male Jayne had been a Jethro since the first farmer had hidden his pet mare for ten days in a cellar so that Cromwell’s Ironsides should not steal her.

The room was always cool because the yew threw a continual shadow. Gainah, sitting without a glint of sun in her chilly blue gown and with her feet flat on the stone floor, seemed to have no part with the hot, throbbing world outside.

They were threshing on the farm; the whirring sound hummed in and the smell from the engine hung on the air. On the south wall a man, by her orders, was cutting back the foliage from the vine so that the sun might get freely at the Sweet-water grapes. In a few weeks it would be time to think about wine-making. The busiest time of the year was coming on. She hadn’t a moment to waste. She should at that moment have been straining the mushroom-juice from the salt and boiling it with spices. But the letter, fluttering in her veined, gnarled hand, had made her an idle woman before noon. She read it again with the weighty deliberation of an almost illiterate person. It was written[8] in a dashing but undecided hand, and the words were stilted. Evidently the writer had been ill at ease.

She got up stiffly at last and moved about the room, flicking a duster over the ancient furniture. There was an oak cupboard reaching to the ceiling—a double corner cupboard with delicate brass escutcheons and an inlaid border of boxwood.

She ran the duster down the dark panels and breathed softly on the brass. Then she took out her keys from her apron pocket and opened the doors of the upper half. There were three shelves, the edge of each scalloped out. On every shelf were bottles and jars full of preserves and pickles. She touched them quite tenderly, looking at the faintly written labels, pursing up her colorless lips and moving her head spasmodically.

She shut the cupboard at last and went slowly on her journey round the room. She dusted the oak sideboard, the long oak table, with the form against the wall and the carved joint stools—the high one for the master, the low one for the dame—at each end. She dusted the chairs, some of solid oak, some of golden beech with rush seats. She dusted the clock; its hand pointed ominously to twelve.

It was about time then. In a few minutes she should be here. Gainah chuckled a little, remembering that she had purposely neglected to send the trap to the station. All the men were at harvest, and she had wanted old Chalcraft to trim the vine. She sat down by the door again, looking out blankly at the warmth and life. There were thick parchment-like mushrooms dotted over the meadow beyond[9] the quickset hedge, and in the orchard fruit kept thudding softly from the trees. It was the beginning of rich autumn, when one makes provision for winter. She was always so busy through August and September; on her feet until late at night—late for Folly Corner—straining and boiling, and pulping and stirring; scolding the two maids and tyrannizing over Jethro.

Those mushrooms had been in salt too long; the wind-fall apples were almost past preserving. It was washing-day, too—they had washed on the first Monday in the month for thirty years. The soapy smell floated into the dining-parlor; she could hear the rasping sound of the brush and the gurgling swill of suds. She heard also the cackle of the two maids and the mellow voice of the elderly washerwoman. They were wasting their time. Yet she didn’t move. Her eyes fell to the letter which she had taken out of her pocket again. Her lips mumbled the signature—“PAMELA CRISP.”

After thirty-three years! And she had served his father before him! It was very hard! She wouldn’t give up her keys—he wouldn’t expect that. She smiled dryly. He wouldn’t expect that—he was a Jayne and he knew when he was well off. He would never get anyone else to slave so. Even the green tomatoes were pickled—with onions and apples and mysterious spices. She was the only woman for miles round who had the recipe, and before she died she meant to burn it, having no daughter to bequeath it to. And scarlet runners put down every year for winter eating. Her butter[10] had never been known to have a twang. She could make cakes without fat and used snow for puddings when eggs were scarce.

The bed in the best room had been made under her eye from the feathers of birds killed on the farm.

Birds! It was not many henwives who could manage to hatch a full sitting. She never thought fifteen eggs too many to put under a hen; the Dorking might manage even more. The gray-and-white hen—didn’t it steal a nest of twenty-two and come clucking home at the end of three weeks with nineteen chicks, most of them pullets, too! A young, flighty woman would have spoilt everything by poking about and interfering with the bird. She had known all along that it was sitting in the barn, but she wasn’t going to let it know she knew. Young women spoilt their lives by haste. They spoilt the lives of other people too. Her eye dropped again to the dashing signature—“PAMELA CRISP.”

She sat brooding by the door, thinking proudly of all her domestic achievements and telling herself piteously that Jethro would never allow her to be displaced. Of course, she had known that he would marry some day, but then, in her own mind, she had picked him out a wife: pretty, soft-looking Nancy from Turle House. A wife—pliable and a little foolish, like Nancy—would not have mattered. But a cousin on the mother’s side! An unknown girl from London! A girl whose capital “P” trailed to the edge of the envelope!

She got up again and went round the dull room in her halting way, dusting and tidying mechanically.[11] Then all at once she straightened her back and listened. There were light steps on the brick path which led round to the garden door. The clip-clip of the shears ceased. There were two voices—a young feminine one and the hoarse croak of old Chalcraft, who was past work, and lived out his life of long service like an ancient horse, doing light jobs, so that he might still believe himself useful and independent.

Gainah went out, the sun on her uncovered head, with its wide parting and gray-brown hair. She went round the corner. Chalcraft was on the ladder still. The shears yawned in his tremulous hand; he had clipped to the wall, and the Sweet-waters hung close to it and stripped of foliage, pale green and luscious. The long trails of grayish leaves were on the path; the girl trod them down. When she saw the elder woman she made a step forward. She seemed half defiant, half ashamed. Her hat was on one side; it gave her a rakish air of towns. Such a slight thing may imperil a woman’s reputation—in prejudiced eyes. Gainah’s cold eyes contracted, and her brows drew over them a harsh ridge.

Pamela put out her hand—in a new glove. A slim gold bracelet, from which dangled a green charm, swung on her wrist.

“You must be Gainah,” she said in a conciliating way, and smiling.

Then she added, with a faint touch of injury, “I wrote to say I was coming this morning. I hoped that you would send to meet me. It’s a long walk.”

[12] Gainah gave her a sharp look; she thought that this was the first indication of authority.

“It’s harvest-time,” she said curtly; “the best harvest for seventeen years. Come inside.”

They both slipped over the threshold of that dim gray room with the stone floor and the solid family furniture. Pamela gave a swift glance round to see if the room was empty. There was a flaming spot on each cheek, and her glittering eyes moved uneasily behind her loose veil.

“I’d like to put myself tidy,” she said in the confiding whisper of one woman to another, “before I go in to him.”

“To your Cousin Jethro?” Gainah’s dull eyes fastened on the hectic face.

“To my Cousin Jethro—yes,” she laughed nervously; then added quickly, “It seems strange to call him ‘cousin.’ We’ve—we’ve never met. You got my letter? Yes. I—I want to be friends.”

Gainah didn’t answer. She only opened the door leading to the stairs. The two went up together. There was a high window halfway up, with a lattice of thick oak bars.

“No glass,” said Pamela in astonishment.

“They didn’t use glass in the days when that was cut,” Gainah said, “and the Jaynes are not people to go with new-fangled ways. Every Jayne says that what was good enough for his father is good enough for him. It’s a family not given to changing. You ought to know that; you belong to it.”

“On the mother’s side—yes,” returned the girl in a half-hearted way.

[13] Gainah opened the door of her own bedroom. It was poorly furnished with her own furniture, which she had brought with her to Folly Corner. There was a wooden bedstead, painted clay color and touched with lines of apple-green. The washstand and drawers matched it. There was a strip or so of shabby felt carpet, and on the shelf a pair of brass candlesticks and a red china cow milked by a diminutive woman. The girl looked about her disdainfully, assertiveness getting the better of nervousness. She took off her hat and veil before the murky glass, splashed water over her face, patted her hair caressingly, arranged again the smart hat and veil. Gainah watched this pretty toying of youth with grim disapproval; even the girl’s big arms lifted to her head were an offense.

“Like a brass button in a sweep’s eye, all glitter,” the old woman mumbled to herself, as the yellow and green bracelet swung on the round wrist and the jet buckles flashed in the elaborate hat.

On the way downstairs she was afforded a peep into other bedrooms.

“I can’t let you have the best spare room,” she declared autocratically. “This is it. It’s never used, except for layin’s out and weddin’ nights, and layin’s in. All the Jaynes, right back to King Charles, have been born in that bed—and died in it afterward.”

Pamela looked at the ponderous piece of furniture and shuddered.

“I wouldn’t sleep there for worlds,” she said.

Gainah, her claw-like hand caught stiffly round[14] the banisters to help her progress, went slowly down, stair by stair. Pamela, close behind her, looked contemptuous—of everything: the old-fashioned place, the odd old woman.

They crossed the room which the yew made so dark. Gainah opened the door into the narrow corridor. Pamela followed. There was a window looking out at the garden. On the ledge were blood-red geraniums, and on the distempered walls queer prints in black frames.

She didn’t approve of those crinkled, brownish prints; they were hardly decent.

Gainah flung open the door of the other room.

“Jethro,” she said in her high, grating voice, “here’s your Cousin Pamela—on the mother’s side.”

[15]

CHAPTER II.

THE girl winced and hung back, as one does at physic or a possible blow. She looked along the narrow passage, as if for the support of another woman. But Gainah had hobbled away, shutting the door behind her. Pamela stood alone. She looked round her—at the oak table strewn with papers—old copies of the Field and Farm and Home.

There were a pair of driving-gloves thrown down, and a whip with a broken thong. There was a great blue bowl half full of waste paper and ends of string. A pair of brass candlesticks winked on the ledge beside the vivid geraniums. She gave a second nervous look at the colored prints in black frames, prints of which she did not quite approve. A full voice from inside the room said impatiently, “Come in.”

She didn’t advance, so the voice added, with a mellow laugh in it, “Come in. Why did Gainah go away? Come in, Cousin Pamela. I cannot move from this confounded sofa.”

So he was crippled! Her wild gray eyes darted across the garden and along the hot road. If she could only just softly open that door and slip out without seeing him! A cripple! She might have known that there was something.

[16] “Come in.”

She made a desperate step forward: it was so like a fool to stay outside. She had come to the house on certain business, and she must go through with it. Her foot in the arched morocco shoe tapped on the bare oak floor. Then it sunk into a thick carpet. She could not see the occupant of the room yet; he was on a couch in the bay window which looked across the harvest fields. All that she could see was a wall hung with gorgeous flowered paper, a carpet with a green ground and bunches of Provence roses, a round walnut table, and a piano with a closed lid.

It was like coming from December to June at a breath—this transit from the dim ancestral living-room to the parlor with the walnut and velvet suite from the best shop in Liddleshorn. Yet Pamela hardly noticed. The only thing that mattered was the sofa in the bay window. Would that man, that cripple on the sofa, be favorably impressed with her?

She was sick and hot with apprehension. Had any girl been in such a position before? She began to think dimly of early tales that she had read of slave markets, of a poem learnt and recited at school about a quadroon girl.

Of course old Gainah didn’t know all—didn’t know anything that was truth. What an odd old woman! Not pleasant to live with. Not a cheerful house in which to spend the winter! She went slowly over that thick carpet to the bay window, her head down, her upper lip caught fiercely over her lower. When she reached the sofa she was in an agony of shame, and hardly lifted her eyes.

[17] Jethro said, almost tenderly:

“Do sit down.”

The words were simple, but she liked him from that moment. She felt sure of him. He wouldn’t be—coarse. She sat down. There was a low walnut chair with a green cover drawn into the bay all ready. Then she dared to look up.

Jethro was flat on his back. He was so spare that his body seemed to curve inward; but it was the spareness of a tough, muscular man. His upper lip was bare and his eyes were keen, merry blue. A life of sunshine and wind and rain had tanned his skin. The backs of his hairy hands looked as if they had been steeped in tobacco juice; beyond his wrist, where his coat sleeve pushed up, his skin was milky. He wore an Oxford shirt with an unstarched collar. She saw a ring of milk-white skin when he turned his head to look at her, and immediately above it he was the color of delicate old leather.

She looked at his handsome face and muscular body with interest. Well! It might be worse—or better. A little round table with a red and gold cloth was within touch. He put out his hand and touched a toppling pile of letters.

“These were all answers,” he said, smiling drolly. “I had them addressed to Liddleshorn post-office, as you know. Three hundred and fifty. I shall get some more to-morrow morning, no doubt.”

“Don’t!” she cried out sharply, “oh, don’t! It—it—it—a man doesn’t know.... A woman has little secret shames—you won’t understand.... I[18] wish I hadn’t come. Three hundred and fifty girls! Oh! They are not coming here, too?”

She stopped, panting. Her eyes were on those letters, letters in every shape and color, some with gilt monograms on the back, one with a gilt “Nell.” She looked at the handwriting, some blotted and some scrawling, some neatly masculine and clerk-like. Her face looked old, her eyes blistered with tears.

Jethro struggled to rise. Then with a groan of pain and sharp twist of his injured leg he fell back on the cushions.

Her back was firm against the carved walnut of the green-seated chair, as they sat in such strange conference in the deep shadow of the bay. Through the hot mist of her tears she saw the harvest field, half clipped, like the shorn head of beauty. A big brown fellow of a humble bee came through the open casement and settled on her. She flinched. Jethro regarded it as an omen.

“When a humble bee flies in at the open window and lights on a stranger and flies out again, it’s a sign the stranger will not stay long,” he said, looking quite disturbed as the insect droned out into the sun again.

She looked at him with mild contempt, thinking it most extraordinary that a big fellow such as he was should entertain such notions.

There were the usual sounds of fully blown summer; petulant buzz of overworked insects, voices of harvesters, the whirr of the engine. Taps from the smithy at the corner intensified in Pamela’s aching[19] head; ever afterward she regarded smithy sounds as indispensable to the perfection of an August day.

Suddenly she broke out passionately:

“I can’t stay. I shouldn’t have come. It is the sort of thing that a barmaid, a shop girl—someone a little reckless—would do. I am different.” She stretched her hand and directed it haughtily toward the letters. “I am not like these others. But it was a temptation: such a rest, such a certainty for the future. And ... it was half a joke, too.”

Jethro put out his immense brown hand and gripped her by the forefinger and thumb round the wrist. She looked fully at him for the first time, and, in spite of herself, she liked his face. It was handsome. The thin high nose and beautifully curved lips made it even aristocratic. She was a shallow town product, and had a flimsy horror of anything that she considered coarse. Yet she admitted that on this man’s face was no touch of boorishness. He looked, so she thought, like a patrician who was masquerading in queer clothes. Her idea of masculine raiment was confined to black cloth, with tweeds for the seaside and flannel for tennis.

“I like you,” he said simply. “You are a nice-minded girl. It was a joke with me, too—half a joke. I did it on market day; a fellow gets a bit jolly then, perhaps. I shouldn’t have gone any further with these.” He touched the letters with his free hand, and the touch was enough to scatter them rudely on the floor. “But your name took my fancy. PAMELA CRISP! Now, my mother was a Crisp.”

[20] “Yes, so you told me in your letter,” she said faintly, and gently fluttering her white, veined wrist in its handcuff. “You told me to write and tell Miss Toat that we were cousins—on the mother’s side. I did it—as a joke. Oh! a joke—you believe me?”

“Of course—a joke. It is nothing more—not yet.” His clear, blue eyes were on her pastel-like face. Then he added ponderingly: “But we may be cousins, after all. It wouldn’t make any difference—in the end. You understand?”

She showed how fully she understood by the quick wave of color on her cheek.

“My mother’s name was Lilith,” he went on.

“The name of my little sister who died.”

“My mother had a brother who ran away—some boy’s scrape at home. He was never heard of afterward. His name was John.”

“My father’s name.” She became suddenly confidential. “He was a contractor; plenty of money while he lived. We had a house a little way out of London. He drove to his office every day. Two servants, a governess for me, a dinner party now and then. When I grew up, a little shopping, a little housework in an elegant way—arranging flowers, setting the maids by the ears. You know. Thousands of girls live like that and are bored to death. He died bankrupt; mother died of a broken heart, or broken fortunes, poor dear. I was thrown on the world—the creditors took everything. That is five years ago.”

He had been listening attentively, watching every[21] shade and shine upon her face, admiring her vivacious, half tragic gestures—not understanding her in the least. The genteel life she so scornfully sketched was unknown to him.

“You were the only one?”

“What?”

She lifted her head, rearing it almost, like an aggressive serpent.

“You were my Uncle John’s only child?”

“No.” The word came full and rounded from her mouth, and the eyes behind the curtaining lashes were somber. “There was a—a brother. He has gone away, a long voyage. He has a passion for the sea.”

“That settles it. Another brother of my mother’s, Uncle Thomas, was a captain in the navy. He ran away before he was sixteen; nothing would stop him. Every Crisp has a salt drop in his veins.”

“Father, in his most prosperous days, had a little yacht.”

“There you are again! The Crisp love for water. Well! I believe from my heart that we really are cousins—Cousin Pamela. I shall tell the folk hereabout that I advertised for my kin—Uncle John or his children—and that you, seeing the advertisement, answered. That will make things easy for us both. And now, cousin”—his voice was meaning, and his handsome open face became roguish and bold—“I ought to kiss you.”

She slipped her wrist from his finger and thumb and fell back.

[22] She looked at his face—handsome, thin, almost ascetic if it had not been for the tan—with distaste.

“A kiss!” she murmured, with a quick, startled breath. “No, no; I couldn’t dream of it.”

He seemed pleased at what he assumed to be her modesty. There was a quaint pause, during which he thoughtfully examined her face, picking feature from feature and dwelling most on the downcast lids. Then he said, almost tenderly:

“What have you been doing these five years for a living? Cousin Pamela! if only I had known that Uncle John’s child——”

“Don’t talk like that. We are not sure. What did I do?” She gave a short, rather grating laugh. “Anything—short of scrubbing floors. I’ve been a governess. I’ve tried to draw fashion-plates—but my drawing was against me there. I’ve collected money for charitable institutions—on commission. I was a companion. She was a publican’s widow with heaps of money—one dare not be too particular. She was queer—a secret drinker I always thought. I had twenty-five pounds a year. She liked me so much that she raised my money at one bound to forty; money was only dirt to her. Forty pounds a year—and she died before the first quarter was due. I have always been unlucky.”

“And then?”

She shrugged with an artificial callousness.

“Looking out. Answering advertisements—until I answered yours.”

Directly she mentioned his the shame and outraged modesty in her surged up again.

[23] “I’ve never answered an advertisement like that before,” she burst out. “But—it was fun, as you say. And I had put three advertisements in a paper for a situation—at three-and-sixpence for forty words. Three three-and-sixpences! Not a single answer! Something made me look at the Liddleshorn Herald. It was in the stationer’s shop—ordered specially for some customer. When I was a little thing I seem to remember that paper about at home. The name, Liddleshorn, was familiar. Something made me touch it, look down the advertisements. Then! You know!”

She put out her hands with a dramatic gesture. Jethro appeared to think that it was time he made his explanations of the situation.

“I did it for fun—at first,” he said. “Afterward I was rather taken with the idea. But not with the girls,” seeing her glance vindictively at the scattered letters. “I wanted to marry; Gainah’s getting too tight a hold on the place. And there is no one to entertain lady visitors—no mistress. It isn’t natural. I wanted a wife. I advertised for one. I wanted a change, too—a change of blood. It’s good for stock, why not for us? That’s the way I argued it out with myself.”

Her chin was sunk in the puffs of her white muslin blouse and the color was in her cheeks again. But he went on, apparently not noticing her confusion.

“For generations back every Jayne has married in the neighborhood. We are all related in some way; you meet the Jayne nose on a Crisp face—you[24] have the Crisp chin—and a Furlonger little finger,” he crooked out his own, “on a Jayne hand. Nancy Turle has my father’s waving red hair, and I’ve got the Turles’ white skin.”

He tucked up the sleeve of his coat to show her his smooth, milky skin.

“I thought,” he continued, as she neither looked nor spoke, “that a change would be good. Change! You see it in stock; you see it in flowers. Those crimson phloxes,” he pointed through the window, “are twice as high this year because last autumn they were shifted in the border. And Gainah, who knows all about flowers, says she can’t grow heartsease three years running without lifting. They dwindle to farthing-faces. Even cabbage mustn’t follow cabbage. I said to myself that I’d graft new blood on the old Jayne stock.”

Pamela lifted her flaming face, and, putting out her thin foot, contemptuously kicked the nearest letter.

“Then you had better take one of these,” she said, with temper, “if, as you seem to think, I am a Crisp and your cousin.”

He looked at the foot which darted from her skirt.

“It’s a Furlonger foot,” he said simply. “Cousins! There isn’t a doubt. But I’m content to take the way of my fathers.”

“I—I don’t know. It is early. You’d better let me go back.”

As she spoke she fleetly shut her eyes, so that she could see neither the golden wheat-field nor the[25] handsome face. At once the steep wall of the prison ran up, and above it, searing her eyes, was the blinding dome of sky. Beyond she saw the railway line, the dreary waste land, a solitary old cottage, a tethered goat; on the edge of the earth, meeting the sky, the bristling chimneys of the distant suburb beyond the Scrubbs.

The prison! That chapter of her life was nearly ended. She knew that she was weak; knew that she would yield to Jethro. Already she almost felt as if that golden field of wheat half belonged to her. She would yield. Why not? It was so simple, so idle. How she had longed for rest, and more—for freedom! The heel of another woman had been very hard on her neck. Just to go back to London, pack her boxes, take a cab, bid her landlady farewell—and leave no trace. When he came out from prison he would not find her—that was all.

“I might stay—and see,” she said faintly, opening her gray eyes.

“Very well. You want a situation; I offer you one. I pay you thirty-five pounds a year for gowns and things. That between ourselves. At the end of the year—we’ll see. To the world, to Gainah, you are my Cousin Pamela.”

“I’d like to earn my thirty-five pounds,” she said sturdily.

“Of course. You’ll make the place pretty, as young women can. You’ll entertain all your distant relations—the Turles and Crisps and Furlongers. You can write letters for me until I get about again. I’m like a log just now. Look here!”[26] He rolled down the covering and showed his bandaged limb. “I got a fork run into my leg in the harvest field, and it turned to a nasty wound. But I shall be about again soon.”

“That is all?” She breathed relief, and the glint of distaste in her eyes faded out.

“That is all. You didn’t think I was a cripple?”

“I didn’t know.”

“You really do favor my Uncle John,” Jethro said, after a pause. “Do you mind—it will be your first duty—getting a leather case from that top, left-hand drawer? Yes, that’s it,” when she brought it back. “See! Here he is. Now, isn’t the mouth the same?”

He held before her the faded likeness, taken on silver, of a young man in staid black clothes, and with straggling side whiskers.

“Taken just before he ran away. Is it anything like your father?”

She stared at the dim old portrait for a long time before she answered. Her eyes took in every detail—the doubled fist on a bulky book, the vapid smile, the too apparent watch-chain with its bunch of seals.

“I can’t say,” she returned faintly at last. “This is a young man. Father was gray when I remember him. He married late in life. He had a white beard. But I think,” she held the portrait thoughtfully sideways, “that the mouth is something like. Father had a bare lip to the end of his days.”

She shut the case and laid it on the table. Another[27] bee came in and darted at the nodding cherries in her hat. The metallic clink from the smithy became more persistent. Jethro said gently at last, putting out the big brown hand which was so dry and yielding:

“Then it is settled?”

Pamela, her head down, the long, haggard line deep on her lips, said almost inaudibly:

“Yes.”

The word had hardly died away before Gainah, in her dim blue cotton gown with the skimped skirt and straight bodice, put her head in at the door and asked harshly if the newly-found cousin meant to stay to dinner.

[28]

CHAPTER III.

HER past was tightly packed away behind her—packed as remorselessly, as perfectly, as she had corded her boxes; with much effort and expenditure of strength, but with a perfect regard to safety. She was out of London. Never again would she let her eyes of anguish light on the prison.

She was driving with Jasper along the dusty Sussex road, which barely a week before she had trudged wearily and with many misgivings. The prosperity and ease and promise of her new life struck at her, soothed her, with many minute details—the soft carriage-rug, the sleek coat of the mare, the polished harness. She had a passion for ease, for pretty things, for worldly status.

Folly Corner became her home—her sheltered home. Time passed. As the weeks wore on her face grew mobile and careless, dull pink begun to timidly bloom on her skin, her eyes brightened. She was happy, occupied, free from anxiety. Above all, she had plenty of pence, need never deny herself a penny pleasure—and she was one of those mercurial women who can be made happy by a bar of French chocolate, and miserable by a shabby hat. Once she said, with a bitter-sweet laugh, to Jethro:

“I was never made for responsibility. I ought to live in a harem. A bon-bon, a pat on the head[29] from my master, would make me absolutely content.”

He seemed amused at first, then he looked puzzled, and then displeased. He had decided already in his serious, practical way, that she was to be his wife, and whimsicality struck him as unorthodox—nearly as bad as dissent. The Jaynes had always been stanch churchmen, and never spoke without first weighing every word.

Sometimes, in spite of herself, she gave a backward thought. Sometimes the hunted, tragic gleam lighted its taper in her happy eyes. Some shadow of the old grief, some touch of the old delirious joy and misery, stirred her. Rain against the window, a rumble of thunder, a shrieking wind, or a harsh voice was enough to frighten her. She felt a gnawing uncertainty. Would this peace, this ease, continue?

When these uncomfortable thoughts assailed her she plunged fiercely into work, clicking her needle and thimble through new calico, or darting about the rambling house with a duster. She was pathetically anxious to earn her salary, to be absolutely independent of Jethro’s charity. She had not yet decided whether her torn heart would allow her to marry him when the time came.

One morning he strolled down the weedy gravel path of the oblong kitchen-garden, with the holly hedge as wall on all four sides, and the holly arch as postern at the entrance. There were grass paths between the beds: they wanted mowing and leveling. The wide herbaceous borders were full of[30] weeds. The gravel path going straight from one end to the other was a harmony in green and yellow.

There was a gardener at Folly Corner, but Gainah made him clean boots, chop wood, and carry buckets; while Jethro made him drive and groom the horses, and pressed him into service when he was short of hands on the farm. Consequently the garden was unattended. Scarlet pimpernel was vivid on the dry ground, bindweed bound round the cabbage-stalks, and wild clumps of blazing corn marigold bloomed unheeded.

Pamela was loitering in an archway of dead scarlet-runners, collecting seed, by Gainah’s orders. Gainah was mistress of the garden. Jethro came along the alley in his thick brown boots. His hands were in his breeches pockets; a Michaelmas daisy, which he had pulled from the border as he strolled, was in his mouth. He looked at Pamela, half tenderly, half quizzically—a look which always set her pulses throbbing. She could never forget, when she was alone with him, the piquant circumstances which had brought her under his roof. Sometimes when Gainah imposed distasteful tasks her neck would swell, and she told herself proudly that by next autumn she could, if she chose, be mistress of Folly Corner.

Her basket was three parts full of seed-pods—like the fingers of dainty gloves stretched over bones. As she moved the seeds made a dice-like rattle. Jethro took the basket from her and begun to pull the pods off the dry yellow stalks himself.

“You shouldn’t be at this work,” he said, lifting[31] her white hand with his free one. “Why can’t Daborn do it?”

“Gainah likes to see to these things herself.”

“You must be mistress over Gainah.”

“Not yet,” she broke out involuntarily, and then flushed.

Jethro laughed.

“I’m glad you put it that way. Evidently we are of the same mind. Suppose we say six months instead of a year, Cousin Pamela.”

“No, no! A year, as we decided.”

She looked vaguely through the wasted tendrils of the dead beans as they clung to the sticks—looked in the direction of London. Jethro had once said carelessly London was that way, jerking his broad brown thumb widely. After that, she looked across the common whenever that chill thought of the prison stole in and numbed her brain.

“Come a little way along the road. If Gainah sees us she’ll call you in,” he said almost pleadingly. “I never get you to myself.”

He pulled out his turnip-like silver watch, which had been his grandfather’s, and added that he had ten minutes. Daborn was grooming the roan mare, ready to drive him in the dogcart to Liddleshorn.

“You might come too,” he said.

“No. Gainah would be angry.”

“You mustn’t think too much of her. After all, she’s a paid servant.”

“So am I.”

Her face, under the brim of her Panama hat, was arch and mournful at the same moment.

[32] They went along the gravel path. Jethro took out his pocket-knife and cut off the head of a great plantain.

“The place wants seeing to,” he said with dissatisfaction, looking at the weeds in the bed. “It wants a mistress. You should see the garden at Turle House. Nancy manages that. Nancy in some sort of way must be your cousin. We are all relations.”

It was the last day of September, and there had been a frost early in the morning. The blackened marrow plants straggled on their mound. Daborn had clamped the beet the day before, and the broken leaves, with their wine-colored stems, were scattered. The plumy foliage of the carrots had died down. The sparkling parsnip leaves were yellow, and dew glittered on the crinkled, bluish leaves of the savoys with their tight hearts. The sun shone brightly, but the air was crisp. Everything was ominous of winter. Pamela shivered as she looked at the solid chimney stacks of Folly Corner, and pictured an iron winter in the fastness of that old house, with Gainah as grim companion.

They went through the yard into the road. Daborn had the dogcart out. Pamela stopped by the wall of the granary, her foot twined in a bit of trailing periwinkle.

“Give me the basket,” she said, “and good-by.”

Jethro looked at her.

“You’d better come too,” he said. “Jump in.”

“No. My dress; no gloves.”

“Tuck your hands under the rug. At Liddleshorn[33] we’ll buy gloves. Jump up. We shan’t want you, Daborn. Here’s the basket. Miss Crisp will hold the reins.”

Pamela still hesitated, looking back at the house, and remembering she had promised Gainah that she would mark some pillow-slips. But it was such a magic morning, with an intensely blue sky—a March sky almost, with a spice of frost lurking behind the hot sun. There were long trails of red bryony berries on the hedges; glittering gossamer webs were woven across the clumps of broom on the common. Jethro looked so strong and masterful—such a man! She believed that in the end she would marry him whether she wanted to or not. He had a rough manner of command with women—savage, yet tender. Pamela, like a woman, loved it. She lifted her foot, swung up to the blue cushion, and a moment later they were bowling smoothly along the road.

He didn’t speak. He flicked at the mare with a tinge of pettishness. Pamela sat well back. She felt a person of some importance; every small girl they met bobbed her little skirts into the dust, and the heavy-footed laboring men lifted a finger to their hair as Jethro bowled by in the flashing sunshine.

He pulled up at the gate of a small farm, and asked Pamela to hold the mare while he went in. The farmer had a farrowing sow for sale.

She just clasped the slack reins. The farmhouse was so overgrown with fruit-trees and ivy that the mellow bricks were shrouded. By and by Jethro came swinging down the path, with a weak old man[34] hobbling behind him. They went and leaned over the piggeries, which were on the left of the gate. She caught a word or two here and there; it was Greek to her. Jethro surveyed the huge black sow keenly before he closed the bargain. Then he swung open the gate in his familiar impetuous way, and just before he got up into the cart he turned to the old man and said with a kind of careless authority:

“You ought to get out of this. Sell up and go into lodgings. It isn’t good for a man to live alone.”

To Pamela he added in a bluff aside:

“Mansell has lost his missus.”

She leaned toward the straggling, shambling figure, and threw a faint smile of sympathy. He was a foolish-looking old man, with a face made more imbecile by a loose, slobbering lip and the short silvery spikes of a week-old beard. He began to pour out his misery and loneliness, perhaps because she, like his dead wife, was a woman.

“Missis died six months ago,” he said tremulously, as he twisted his dirty hands and gave his watery smile. “She was a good missis. But,” with a crowing cackle of laughter, “I was good, too. I never knocked her down, nor give her a black eye. I didn’t offen even scold her. Step inside.” His face and voice were eager. “I’d like you to have a look round.”

Pamela, oddly touched, said gently to Jethro:

“Let me go. You come too.”

They tied the mare to the gatepost, and went up the path to the brooding house in its tangle of ivy[35] and its unpruned jungle of ancient plum-trees. The widower went first, chattering volubly all the time, his back bent, his hand heavy on the polished knob of his stick.

They went into the low-pitched living-room. The fusty smell turned Pamela faint. The old man seemed to divine her nausea.

“You should ha’ seen how missis kept it,” he said deprecatingly. “But, Lord bless you, I am a helpless old man, seventy-nine come October, and I can’t clean. I’m alone. Missis and the children dead. But I aint afraid.” He gave an apprehensive glance at the shadows of the murky room. “Why should I be? What I always says is this”—he kept peppering his platitudes with the silly laugh that went to the girl’s heart—“God, who made me, aint a-goin’ to kill me.”

Pamela looked round the room. Everything, inside and out of the farm, had gone to pieces for the lack of a capable woman.

“I did used to keep the garden terrible nice,” the old man said, seeing her gray eyes look through the door into the sunny wilderness. “But there! missis is gone! I’ll show you her earrings.”

He hobbled away into the adjoining room. Pamela heard him jingling metal and scrooping wooden furniture over the flag floor. Presently he came out with a card-board box shaking in his hand. He took the lid off reverently and held out the open box. A pair of earrings, of very pale gold, such as you can buy at fairs for a trifle, were on a bed of tissue paper.

[36] “Very pretty,” the girl said lamely.

Jethro had gone outside. He was viewing the neglected fruit-trees severely.

“And there’s one more thing I must show you.”

Mansell hobbled away, up the crazy stairs this time, and came back with a snow-white smock, which he thrust into her hands.

“Missis made this for me to be married in.” He stuck his foolish red face forward and grinned more widely. “She put her best work into it. Lord bless you, when I was but a boy—I’m seventy-nine come October—we used to go to church on Sundays, every man in his clean smock. Missis did it. She was a rare one at her needle.”

Pamela looked at the exquisite, delicate stitching. The whole heart of that dead woman was woven into the diamonds and honeycombs and lattices of the wedding smock.

“Very pretty,” she said lamely again.

“I must get to Liddleshorn before ten,” Jethro cried out from the garden.

She stepped into the sun, Mansell behind her. He followed them to the gate, seeming pathetically anxious to hold on to human companionship as long as he could. A sheep-dog came running out from the barn. Pamela, who was distrustful of dogs, felt glad that she was in the cart.

“He won’t bite, bless you; he’s too old. But when he was young he was s’ savage. Missis used to set one side of the fire winter nights, and I used to set the other. And she, just for fun, used to say to me, ‘Oh, dear,’ and I used to say, ‘Oh, dear.’[37] You should have heard him growl. He was s’ savage you durstn’t move or speak.”

Jethro gathered the reins with an air of business.

“You must get out of this,” he advised, with curt good nature.

“I suppose I must. Yet I’d like to stop on. Yet since missis died everything’s gone to pieces. I used to get such good living—fresh butter and new-laid eggs. I can churn myself, but no one seems to care for my butter. Don’t know why; there was a great call for missis’s.”

“Well, good-by to you,” said Jethro, with masculine intolerance of his whimpering garrulity.

“Good-by and God bless you. Take care of yourselves. Come and see me again.” His bleared blue eyes were turned pleadingly on Pamela. “And, Master Jayne”—he looked from one to the other, and his shrill voice quavered childishly—“when you gets a missis may you never lose her. A man’s no good without a missis.”

The cart moved on. Presently Pamela said softly, “Poor old thing! he made me feel quite miserable.”

“He’s not quite right in his head. But—you heard what he said, Cousin Pamela? A man’s no good without a missis.”

The strong brown hand in the worn driving-glove plunged under the holland carriage-rug and took her bare fingers significantly.

“It’s true enough,” Jethro said thoughtfully, after a bit. “I’m worried about Folly Corner. Something’s wanting. The food’s all right——”

[38] “Now, the food isn’t right,” she put in briskly. “Plenty of it—yes. But the serving! Who ever heard of a meat pudding brought to table in its basin! Fancy cheese on the breakfast-table! White sugar should be grated over the tarts and—oh, many things. Some of them I couldn’t mention to you: it wouldn’t be nice.”

She was thinking of a thrifty trick of Gainah’s: the unhatched eggs found in a hen that had been killed were used for cakes. She thought it perfectly horrid, and her town squeamishness made her feel that there was a certain indelicacy involved in the proceeding. At all events she couldn’t mention such a thing to Jethro.

“And the other day,” she continued, broodingly, “a pig was killed. Gainah was in the kitchen all day. She made me go out, too. The things they did with that pig! The savory horrors she turned out!”

Jethro gave a great jolly laugh.

“Chitterling and fagots and scraps,” he cried. “I like them. You are not a farmer’s wife—yet. Gainah is a splendid housekeeper. It isn’t the housekeeping. It is the—the—difference. You know what I mean. Flowers in the vases; the dinner-table dainty, not solid. Foolish things—but they make a difference.”

“They are important things. They certainly make a difference—all the difference. You’ve been dominated too long by that old woman. The place has the wrong tone. Do you understand what I mean? It looks a farmer’s house. It ought to look a gentleman’s.”

[39] “But I am a farmer—and proud of it.”

“Of course. It is the fashion to farm nowadays. It is quite genteel if—if you lose money over it.”

He seemed puzzled at her pert extravagance, and said stolidly that he was glad that his farming paid—every Jayne was a good farmer; it was in the blood.

“Well,” said Pamela, with a shrug and a droll smile, “you can get the effect anyhow. We must put up with prosperity. There are many things I’ll do, if you’ll let me. The housemaid must wear a cap with lappets in the afternoons. She should wait at table, and bring your newspaper in on a tray; letters, too, when there are any. I’ll train her. Of course, Gainah does not know how; she will be grateful to me for hints. You are very slow down here in Sussex. Did I tell you that I lived for six months in a boarding-house?” There was the faintest quiver of her heavy lids. “I carved and kept accounts. Things were done very well there. I have moved about the world and kept my eyes open.”

While she was making this smug little speech Jethro looked at her with satisfaction. She was a woman of wit, of knowledge. Her glib tongue was refreshing and piquant after the demure monosyllables and faint opinions—always watered by Mamma—of the Liddleshorn damsels.

They were smoothly clattering down the High Street.

“Furniture.” Pamela pointed to the upholsterer’s. “There should be oak in the dining-room.”

[40] “There is oak at Folly Corner.”

“Is that oak?” She opened her big eyes and arched her faint dun brows. “Then it is different. We had a beautiful carved dinner-wagon at the boarding-house.”

“It was my father’s grandfather’s furniture, and his grandfather’s before him,” Jethro said conservatively.

Pamela ran on:

“And cushions. There should be lots of cushions with frills.” She threw a longing glance at the draper’s.

Jethro looked too. One window was full of down cushions—big, square, and with frills deeper than the cushions themselves.

“They would look lovely on the settle,” Pamela said gloatingly.

Every woman has her pet weakness. Hers had always been carte blanche at the Oriental shop. There was a spatter of Oriental fripperies in a side window at the Liddleshorn draper’s; it was an up-to-date shop.

“And embroidered mats,” she added, “and big bowls to stand flower-pots in; and those green specimen glasses for the table; and a bit or two of that Benares brass; and—it’s really a very good assortment—one of those guitars to hang on the wall with ribbons. You should have fretwork ornaments and some lacquered brackets, on which to stand plates or little blue tear-bottles.”

Jethro beckoned to a small boy on the curb, and threw him the reins.

[41] “We’ll go in,” he said, jumping down and holding out his hand to Pamela.

“I must get some gloves first of all,” she said, as her foot touched the pavement.

When she had bought them, she led Jethro captive through the Oriental department. He told her carelessly to buy what she chose, and she moved eagerly from one counter to another. She chose some gaudy rugs to toss about the oak floors. She bought brass bowls and trays, a few grotesque ornaments for the shelves, mats, a guitar, a Chinese woman’s shoe, a mandarin’s petticoat to throw over an armchair, a bundle of peacock’s feathers, a few bits of coarsely-printed china, various embroidered table-covers—all the vividly-colored, alluring rubbish that she fancied.

They had it packed up and stowed in the dogcart. She carried the china gingerly on her knee for fear of breakage. Her eyes danced. After years of poverty, this careless throwing away of money was delightful.

When they reached home she made Daborn take everything out and carry it into the dining-room—the dining-parlor, as Gainah persisted in calling it. There was a strong smell of raw onion from the kitchen; it was being packed away in wide-mouthed bottles, with alternate slices of beet and a savory bath of spiced vinegar. Gainah came in, her hands dyed with onion juice.

Pamela was excitedly unswathing her treasures from yards of tissue paper.

“We’ve bought a few things,” she said pleasantly.[42] “Sit down and look at them. That is an Indian god.” She held out an abominable brown figure. “Jethro was saying that the place wanted improving—bringing up to date. Of course, you never hear of the newest things down here. How should you? I got these cushions for the settle, and this—isn’t the embroidery lovely?—for the piano. A piano should never have its back against the wall. It is an ugly piece of furniture; its form is all against it. I told Jethro that there should have been a grand in that big room. That is the only endurable form of piano.”

She was chattering the artistic jargon of a belated æsthete who had boarded at the house in Bloomsbury. Gainah hardly seemed to hear her. She had toppled down into one of the high-backed, rush-seated chairs, and was nervously moving her stained hands on her lap.

“Don’t you like these rugs?” Pamela cut the string with one of the heavy buck-handled knives which was on the dinner-table. “They are to be thrown down in odd corners—anywhere. You can’t have too much color in a room. I must go and take my hat off.” She glanced at the waiting dinner-table and stacked her purchases carefully on the horsehair sofa. “I’ll arrange everything this afternoon. By tea-time you will hardly recognize the place. Cousin Jethro is so kind; he says that if I haven’t thought of everything he will drive me into Liddleshorn again to-morrow. These green glasses are for flowers. I must arrange them every day for dinner in schemes of color. There! That[43] is one thing I forgot—an embroidered centerpiece. And we might have candle-shades, too. Those candlesticks,” she glanced at some heavy ones of Sheffield plate on the oak sideboard, “are the rage in London just now.”

She ran out of the room. Gainah did not stir from her chair by the yawning hearth on which the first fire of the season smoldered. She gazed fixedly in her vacant way at the trash on the sofa. Only one thing that Pamela had said worked in her slow brain: “Jethro was saying that the place wanted improving.”

She looked at the gaudy plates and jars; then thought of the delicate family china which was locked away in the little closet leading out of the keeping-room. She looked at the red and yellow brackets, the ornaments, and then looked round at the distempered walls, against which stood the beautiful golden oak, every piece of which she had tended as if it were a child. Every week she had rubbed that oak with beeswax and turpentine. Every week she had washed the china bowls and figures on the shelf. Every week for more than thirty years! She knew now that the landmarks of those years were going to be swept away. Her face grew harsh and vindictive—the face of a worn old panther—worn, old, feeble, but still with claws. Pamela, who meant everything in the kindest spirit possible, and who never doubted that her efforts would be received with gratitude, was breeding tragedy. Gainah, in the upright chair, her mournful eyes roving sluggishly round the ancestral[44] furniture that she loved, was working up to a climax.

Why should this girl—this pert jade, this strange cousin on the mother’s side—ruin the lives of her elders? Why should she sneer at rustic customs which were old enough to be as sacred as the Bible?

Gainah’s mental attitude changed from injury to rebellion. She began to ask herself stupidly, with an agonized questioning of her slow brain, if Pamela could not be got rid of, banished from Folly Corner. How should she lift from the farm the shadow thrown across it? She only wanted to serve her master in her old faithful way, according to her own lights. She had brought him up from his birth. She almost believed that she was his mother. She had even chosen his wife for him. Nancy Turle wouldn’t have taken the housekeeping keys. She clutched at them as they weighed down her apron pocket. Pamela should never take them either. Nancy Turle would never have spent money like water at Liddleshorn. She glowered at the brightly colored stuffs and crockery.

Only to go on serving him until the end. Wasn’t that a simple thing to ask? Just to be allowed to save and screw, to manage the farmhouse and to manage him in her hectoring way, which was all tenderness and devotion at bottom. She got up, turned her back on the new purchases, and ran her hand along the heavy sideboard lovingly, as if it were alive.

[45]

CHAPTER IV.

WHEN the purchases from the Oriental department were finally arranged, Pamela retreated to the door of the keeping-room—the drawing-room as she had privately determined to call it—and shut her eyes; then, opening them quickly and glancing comprehensively round, she tried to imagine what the effect of the room would be on a stranger. The round walnut table was pushed into a corner and covered with a red and yellow cloth, on which storks were painted. The piano cut across a corner, and had its back draped. The brackets were fixed on the wall and upheld Kaga plates. The mandarin’s petticoat, that had cost a great deal, nearly covered the green chair, and the green sofa was piled with cushions. The gaudy rugs did their best to cover up the bunches of pink Provence roses on the carpet.

Things really made a very good show. The place looked almost civilized. These were her complacent thoughts as she stood at the door with her head on one side. Instinctively she went upstairs and put on her best gown, and arranged her hair in the elaborate way which she reserved for special occasions. When she came downstairs she shut her eyes again, then opened them spasmodically. Yes, it would do.

She felt quite excited. Anyone could see that the hand of a person of taste had touched everything.

[46] A feeling of towns came over her. She looked through the diamond panes of the long window as if she expected to see hansoms bowling along the road. Then she sighed and glanced in the mirror again. What was the good of dressing one’s hair and wearing one’s best gown? Nobody would call.

Gainah was still in the kitchen. She could hear her grating voice and slow step. Jethro was tramping over the stubble, his Irish terrier, Rob, at his heels. She put her softly-puffed head out of the bay window and called out pleadingly:

“Oh! do come in and look.”

He came across the field—came tolerantly, leisurely, as if he were good-humoredly indulging the whim of a child. When he opened the door he seemed too heavy for the transformed room, with its elegant tags of foreign frippery. He seemed to put it to shame; he brought an intangible, sterling feeling with him. Pamela, without knowing why, felt a little less satisfied.

“Do you like it?” she asked nervously.

He dropped into the green chair, his broad hands gripped round the petticoat, and looked about him with amusement.

“Everything’s crooked,” he said lazily, at last, his mouth drolly curved and his eyes merry. They were such keen, outdoor eyes; they seemed to pierce through shams. She was afraid that he saw the pins in the piano back. She had been obliged to join two lengths of silk together, and had been too eager to stay and sew it.

“Yes, everything is crooked; that is one of the[47] fundamental rules of modern decoration,” she told him flippantly. “Piano across one corner, table across the other; nothing stiff, nothing solid.”

“Umph!”

He was not impressed. He was certainly laughing at the single knickerbocker of silk into which she had stuck a pot of late musk.

“You’ve blocked the door of the china closet with that jar of feathers.”

“The china closet! How delightful. It never occurred to me to ask what was beyond that door.” She tried the handle, then asked him for the key.

“Gainah has it.”

“I’ll get her to give it me.”

She dashed out into the corridor and met the housekeeper midway.

“I was coming to look for you,” she said, with her unfailing good temper and self-satisfaction. “I want your opinion on the drawing-room. There! Isn’t that pretty? Cousin Jethro doesn’t care a bit; but, then, men are no good at decoration.

“And I want you to give me the key of the china closet,” she added.

A queer flush stole over Gainah’s cheeks, and her distorted hand went involuntarily to her apron pocket, and her cold eyes sought Jethro’s beseechingly. Pamela had her palm outspread.

“Yes, we’ll have a look in the closet,” Jethro said easily. “Don’t know when I went in last. There is a lot of stuff that was my mother’s and your aunt’s.” As he put in this touch, he glanced meaningly at Gainah, with the half-timid assertion of a[48] big, kindly man who has been subjugated by a mean woman.

He wanted her to remember, without troubling him to hurt her by putting it into words, that Pamela was one of the family, and had a close interest in the family crockery.

“The closet is only opened once a year, when we clean in spring,” Gainah said grudgingly. “I don’t want strange fingers handling the china.”

But she opened the door. Pamela, quite as a matter of course, took the key off the ring and slipped it into her own pocket.

“It is a mistake to hide old china. The room won’t want locking again,” she said, gliding over the bare, dusty floor. “What a lovely collection! I wish I had known, then I need not have wasted money on Kaga. Anyone can buy that for so much three farthings—farthings play a most important part in modern decorations, Cousin Jethro.”

She dimpled round at his puzzled face, and threw a conciliatory glance at Gainah, who had taken up a canary-colored jug with uneven black lettering straggling round its bulging middle. They were all three in the tiny room, lighted by one high window, across which the foamy white rose crept.

“May I look?” Pamela took the canary jug.

“Most delightful sentiments, and equally delightful spelling,” she commented lightly, while Jethro[49] watched her with a growing admiration, and the cold light slanted through the window on Gainah’s worn, malevolent face.

“What blue bowls and dishes! What luster! I think they call that coppery stuff luster.”

“My mother’s best tea set.” Jethro took up a tiny handleless cup with purplish-pink trails of flowers painted on it.

“Lowestoft, I think.” Pamela cocked her head on one side. “But I know nothing of china. Therefore I admire it all—that is a very safe rule in art. Now you and Gainah must run away.” She made a feint of pushing him toward the door. “I’m going to be busier than ever. All this must be arranged to the best advantage. Then the door will be left open, and when next we go to Liddleshorn you must buy a portière.”

She jumped upon a chair, and lifted bowls and dishes from the top shelf, making a running comment as she did so.

“I wish I knew printed from painted. This dish is either very valuable or utterly worthless; some things are just on the borderland. You two must really go away.” She put out one hand deprecatingly. “There ought to be some tin tacks, or a ledge, in front of the shelves, so that the plates could stand up.”

Gainah looked at her, a brilliant, dainty, voluble creature, high up on a mahogany chair whose back was carved in wheat-ears. She had all the color and pertness of a bullfinch. She looked at her, this dangerous republican; looked at white fingers carelessly[50] handling china which for over thirty years only her own hands had touched. She had grown to believe that it was hers, that Jethro himself was hers, and the farm too, with its fat acres and its ripe family tradition. She had been undisputed queen at Folly Corner the best part of her life. All the family connections, when they paid Jethro a rare visit, had deferred to her. Yet not one of them knew the truth—that Jethro’s father had almost married her.

She thought of that as she watched Pamela standing radiant on the chair. A horrible pang for the muddles, incomplete past, and a still more set feeling of bitterest, merciless revenge contracted her heart. She turned away without a word, leaving the cousins in the china closet. She sat herself down in the ruins of her temple, and looked blankly at the devastation wrought by Pamela’s active fingers in two short hours.

She knew for whom this room had been refurnished more than thirty years before. Not for Jethro’s mother. She, after the fashion of frugal first wives, had saved and gone short of household elaborations. The room had been furnished for her. She, Gainah Toat, had been the elder Jethro’s second fancy. She had been a good-looking woman well within thirty in those days; while he had been nearer sixty, having married a middle-aged cousin—of the plain variety of women, warranted to wear well—when he was fifty or more. But she, Gainah, had inspired him with positive passion. Bah! She knew what a man’s passion was, and how far it led[51] him. She knew that it made even a miser like the elder Jethro dip deeply into his pocket.

She remembered driving with him into Liddleshorn, just as Pamela had to-day driven in with his son, and choosing the flowery carpet, the round table, the piano—on which she could never hope to play a note. Neighbors had condoled with her on the prospect of a new wife at Folly Corner. She had said nothing, by his wish—he was a taciturn man. But she remembered the flutter of triumph which had worked behind her dry lips all the time. She knew that she was to be the bride of whom they gossiped and about whose appearance they speculated.

What might have been! He had been dead more than thirty years, and she had dutifully kept the secret of his weakness. Not even Jethro knew that there had been love passages, of a fairly practical sort—on one side at least—between Gainah and his father. Her courting scenes had been seasoned with matter-of-fact reference to the crops or the prospects of early ducklings. She had always been grim and unbending.

What might have been! If only the master of Folly Corner had not been pitched out of the high gig. His head had cracked on a heap of big stones by the road, piled high all ready for autumn breaking.

She remembered so well the day they brought him home. It was on a Monday, and she had, for once, managed to cut her nails without thinking of a fox’s tail—sure sign of a present.

That was the present they brought her—the dying[52] body of the substantial man, who loved her in his common-sense way, who would have redeemed her from service.

She remembered the day of the funeral. It was a cold day. The bereft house had seemed to rock and moan with every wail of the agonized wind outside. The front door, through which they carried the long, wide coffin, was flung widely back by her orders until the burial service had been read at the church. If that had not been done there would have been another death within the year. Bitterly as she had been disappointed and foiled, she did not want to die. Neither did she want baby Jethro to die; she loved him a great deal better than she had loved his father—there was no ulterior motive mixed up with her regard for the child.

The farmer had not even made a will in her favor. He had not left her one penny. She stayed on as paid housekeeper, the conclave of relatives deciding that it would be best. Mrs. Turle, the dead man’s sister, paid her quarterly. She stayed on. She managed the farm until Jethro grew up. She managed Jethro—had never left off managing him. She was a masterful woman.

And now she was to be put aside, like the pair of china figures which had lost an arm apiece, and which stared at each other hopelessly on their dim attic shelf.

Jethro came out from the closet, looking handsome and happy. Pamela, still on the chair, was softly humming a gay little air.

Gainah struggled up from the sofa. She looked[53] at Jethro. She moved her dry pale lips, and moved her oddly-dressed brown head too. She wanted to speak to him—to implore, to insist. But the words strangled in her throat at the sight of his exultant face and shining eyes.

It was useless for age to pit itself against youth. Her time was past. She knew, although it was gall to admit it, that the girl she hated had Nature on her side. All her comparisons were drawn from Nature; her untiring energy of pickle and preserve making had gone hand-in-hand with Nature.

Didn’t the old potatoes rot off to make room for the new? Wasn’t it natural?

Her feet moved slowly over the carpet. It had been her choice nearly thirty-five years before. But it was hardly worn; they rarely used the keeping-room.

She went into the garden. She looked at the brown stalks of the summer’s annuals in her borders. They were dead, dry—only fit for the waste-heap. Yet their young seedlings were green and vigorous. It was all so simple, so natural. Yet—yet! She was far too practical, too mentally sluggish, to put the half-formed thought into clear shape. They were only fit for the waste-heap—but did they want to go there? Wasn’t there some dumb, desperate struggle against extinction going on between those brown, sadly swaying stalks?

Then she saw a wagonette pull up at the white gate, saw a head of rich red hair between the poplars, and hurried indoors to put on her black silk gown.

[54]

CHAPTER V.

PAMELA saw the wagonette, too, as she perched on the chair, her head level with the high window. She was so surprised and fluttered that the Oriental bowl she was lifting down nearly dropped from her fingers. She called through the open door to Jethro:

“Here’s a carriage at the gate. Inside, an elderly lady and a girl with red hair. They are coming up the path.”

“Aunt Sophy—Mrs. Turle, of Turle House—and Nancy.”

“They have come to call on me.”

She gave a soft breath of satisfaction as she jumped from the chair; her best gown, her waved hair, were justified. She had only just time to add, “What a pity I hadn’t finished the china closet!” before they were announced, in rustic, familiar fashion, by the red-armed housemaid, who hadn’t yet changed her cotton gown for her afternoon stuff one.

Mrs. Turle was a big woman with a stately carriage. Nancy was slim, and either shy or stupid. She had a very white skin—the Turle skin, as Jethro had said. Whenever she spoke or was spoken to, a silly pink flooded her face. Her dress[55] was precise and perfect in detail; the very best that the best shop in Liddleshorn could supply. Mrs. Turle, too, wore a stiff silk, and the set of golden sable which had been part of her wedding outfit, and was only just beginning to look damaged by moth. This was evidently a state call. Pamela saw her look swiftly round the room, as she threw back her net veil with the deep hem.

Jethro, after a few awkward words—he never excelled in the presence of women—went back to his stubble and his dog. Pamela was left alone with these two—evidently bent on criticism—who might or might not be of her blood. Mrs. Turle said, looking at her steadfastly:

“My dear, you are like Jethro’s mother. She died when he was born, you know. Always weak here.” She laid her plump hand on the sable that crossed her ample bosom. “I hope your chest is not weak. You don’t look very strong.”

“I am quite strong, thank you,” the new cousin returned rather awkwardly, conscious that Nancy was trying to puzzle out the construction of her coiffure.

“You may think so”—Mrs. Turle dealt out the sweet, maternal smile for which she was famous,—“but one can never be sure of one’s own constitution. I must send you down a large bottle of the cough syrup I make for Nancy every autumn.”

She kept looking round the room. Pamela felt sure that she resented everything—the tablecloth with storks, the winking brass bowls, the very petticoat, which her portly shoulders crushed.

[56] “I should have called before,” she continued apologetically, “but I couldn’t have the horse. We only keep one since Mr. Turle died, and my man, Evergreen, like all old servants, must be indulged. He doesn’t care to drive in bad weather, and we have had so many mists lately. Besides”—there was a tinge of reproach in her purring voice—“I hadn’t seen you at church. I didn’t know if you were ready for callers.”

“Church! Oh, I haven’t been yet. It seemed such a pity to waste half a beautiful day indoors,” said Pamela innocently. She saw timid Nancy glance at her mother and smile. They were very tepid people. She already felt as if little cascades of lukewarm water played on her.

“In London,” she added, in extenuation, “so few people go to church.”

Mrs. Turle looked grave.

“I must say,” she said softly—and Pamela soon learnt that “I must say” was her favorite formula—“that people in towns are very lax. You can’t bring up a large family—I’ve had fifteen—without method. When my children were little they went to church twice on Sunday—what else could you do with boys? They would only loaf about. Next Sunday, dear, Nancy and I will call for you. We always drive.”

“Thank you very much.”

“And you have always lived in London? Your mother and father are dead, so Jethro told us. I knew your father. He was a very handsome young man. I must say,” her scintillating eyes[57] were full on the girl’s face, “that I should never have known you for his daughter. There is no resemblance; poor John had such regular features.”

Pamela looked a little awkward. Nancy said kindly in her weak, sweet voice, and with her languishing smile:

“Do you ride a bicycle?”

“No. I—I’ve never had the chance.”

“Oh! you must get one. Mustn’t she, mamma? It is such fun. In the summer we have picnics, and in the winter paper chases.”

“That would be nice.”

The cascades of tepid water were growing in volume. She was new to this class of caller. Her London experience was pretty large; she had knocked about in her search for bread. She knew the art jargon of Hampstead, the conscientious struggle for intellect and high purpose which distinguishes the prosperous quarter of Bloomsbury. She could talk shops with a feather-headed woman, babies, even, with a bovine one, or the divine duties of sex with the serious. But with these people there was no give-and-take, no merry tossing with the ball, no brightening of the wits.

“And I suppose you were living with some other relations in London?”

“No,” she said curtly, “I was working for my living. Jethro is my only relation.”

“We are all kin, are we not, mamma?”

“Of course. So you had a career, dear? Yes. Art? So many girls go in for that. Nancy attended the Liddleshorn school for a time. But I[58] don’t think the influence is good for a young woman. I must say that drawing from a model is not my idea of delicacy.”

“Never from the nude, mamma.”

“Oh! never from the nude, of course. Unless it was a foot. I think you drew from a foot once, Nancy, love.”

“Oh, yes, mamma; but the model only came once. She hadn’t understood that she must take her stockings off.”

Pamela was yawning. “I haven’t studied art,” she said curtly.

“Literature? A great many girls go in for that. We had an author at Mere Cottage. A most extraordinary person. He put a Latin text over his door. What was it, Nancy?”

“Parva domus magna quies, mamma.”

“Yes, something like that. I’m not quite sure that your Latin is right. But Egbert would know. He is my son at Cambridge.”

“The people were so puzzled,” said Nancy. “Old Mrs. Chalcraft declared it meant knock and ring. But one of the other old women said it was a spell to keep witches away.”

“It was a stupid thing to put,” Mrs. Turle broke in with impatience. “‘A little house for great quiet.’ That is how my son translated it—my youngest son at Cambridge. That is absurd, of course; little houses never are quiet.”

“But he meant, mamma, that he didn’t want people to call.”

“Then he need not have troubled to put such a[59] sentence over his door, dear. Old Timms, who is a painter by trade, was half afraid to do it.”

“His wife made him give up the job when he got to magna, mamma. Some of the old people are so superstitious. She was afraid he might be signing some compact about his soul with the devil.”

Pamela laughed. The conversation was waking up, she thought, but Mrs. Turle looked grave.

“It was in very bad taste,” she said, “and he need not have troubled. No one meant to call on such people.”

“And was it literature, dear?” she continued, more genially. “We are quite literary down here.” She laughed pleasantly, as if introducing Pamela to a congenial atmosphere. “What is the name of that person at the new house on the Liddleshorn Road, Nancy? She keeps a poultry farm and takes in type-writing.”

“Samuels, mamma.”

“Yes, Mrs. Samuels. And there is Mrs. Clutton at the Buttery. Her husband is a journalist—so she says.”

The last three words were spoken impressively. Pamela immediately divined that Mrs. Clutton, of the Buttery, was not a local favorite.

“Nancy has a great taste for literature,” Mrs. Turle continued, with a fond glance at her daughter, who immediately blushed. “I think that if there had ever been any question of her going out into the world she would have chosen literature.”

[60] “Only I can never think of a subject,” Nancy said pathetically. “If only I could think of a subject and get somebody else to begin!”

“We subscribe to Smith’s,” Mrs. Turle said, smiling sweetly. “We like to keep abreast with the times. Nancy goes in for serious subjects; she is halfway through Ruskin’s——”

“Huxley’s, mamma.”

“There is very little difference, dear. But I confine myself to current fiction. I’m just reading Kingsley’s ‘Westward Ho!’”

“I’m not at all literary,” said Pamela. “I was governess for a time. Then I was a companion. And—and I managed a boarding-house.”

“Really! Then you understand housekeeping. That will be a help to Gainah, who is growing old. Ah! here she is. I suppose you have made your elderberry wine, Gainah? I only got a cask and a half this year.”

Pamela opened her gray eyes when Mrs. Turle of Turle affectionately greeted the housekeeper. She was astounded to see Gainah, in her black silk, and with a worn gold chain round her scraggy neck, sit down with the easy air of an equal on the sofa. She couldn’t understand her position. She derided the idea of her importance—an ignorant old woman who was always cooking. Gainah in her eyes was a servant—nothing more. But in local opinion she was entitled to much deference. The laborers regarded her as even more important than “young Jethro,” who was only a stripling.

Nancy took Pamela’s hand.

[61] “Come out in the garden,” she said. “I so love a garden. Do you?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” said Pamela, as they strolled about in the sun, and the other girl made little gurgling comments.

“How sweet those stocks are! What a show of asters! Ours were a failure. Evergreen doesn’t care for asters. He likes carpet-bedding and I bought him a half-crown packet of petunia seed; so I did hope he would succeed with the asters. You must get Jethro to build you a little greenhouse. I could give you plenty of geranium cuttings next spring. It is a little late to take them now. I think it is a little late; but I must ask Evergreen. You should have a bicycle.” She was evidently anxious to be friendly. “Would you like to join our Shakspere class? It is quite proper, you know.”

“Perhaps,” said Pamela vaguely.

Directly she heard the tea bell she hastened her steps almost rudely. She was determined that Gainah should not take the head of the table, and she managed to slip on to the oak stool behind the urn just as the two elder women came along the corridor.

Gainah sat down at the side, shaking her hands and vibrating her head with anger. But Mrs. Turle smiled approval.

“You must find a young lady in the house a great help,” she said innocently, as she sat down, spreading her thick silk skirt flat beneath her. “Nancy always pours out for me.”

[62] Pamela was sulky. She hated what she called a “sit-down” tea. Tea was not a meal; it was an interlude, a good way of helping out an idle afternoon.

Jethro on the high stool at the end was hospitably carving a ham. The smiling housemaid kept coming with fresh plates of toasted tea-cake, preserve, or buns.

“You must give me the recipe for these rice cakes,” Mrs. Turle said.

“Two cups of rice flour,” returned Gainah solemnly.

“You beat your butter to a cream, of course?”

“Yes. Two eggs.”

“That is very economical. We have hardly any eggs. The hens are all getting broody again, and I must say an October brood is not worth hatching. I wish Evergreen would let me have a non-setting breed.”

“Nothing better than Leghorns,” said Jethro.

“Tch!” interrupted Gainah, with her air of absolutism, “Langshans are better.”

“But they are not nice table birds.” Mrs. Turle smiled on them both and took another cake. “Now, I must say I like the Plymouth Rock—only its legs are yellow.”

Pamela, with the superior air of a being on a higher plane, poured out her newly-found aunt a third cup of tea.

The talk went on. She heard Gainah and Mrs. Turle talk of wine-making, cider-making, apple-storing.

[63] “Our Blenheims,” Gainah complained, “have all gone a-bitel.”

“They will go mildewed some years. I don’t know why,” returned Mrs. Turle sympathetically; “ours have kept beautifully so far. I’ll ask Evergreen if we can spare you some.”

It was a very long meal. The dying sun straggled round the house and filled the dull room with yellow light. Through the latticed window they could see the mist rising like a huge bridal wreath from the wet grass. Mrs. Turle got up hurriedly when the housemaid came in to say that her carriage had come round.

“You must spend a long afternoon with us soon,” she said, kissing Pamela. “What are we doing on Wednesday, Nancy?”

“It’s the Shakspere class, mamma.”

“Of course. Pamela must join the Shakspere class. Mrs. McAlpine, my dear, who started it, is extremely clever—she reads German novels in the original. And she is very particular—they only read the nice parts of the plays. I inquired into that when Nancy joined. For although one admires and loves dear Shakspere, I must say one is never sure of him. It seems such a pity. Are we free on Thursday, Nancy?”

“I usually go round with the Parish Magazines, mamma—it is the third Thursday in the month.”

“So it is. And Friday is unlucky. I don’t believe in such nonsense, of course, but it is as well not to run unnecessary risk. And Saturday, that is no day at all.”

[64] “I usually give out stores on Saturday, mamma.”

“Then we’ll say Monday. No, Tuesday—that will give us time to make a cake. I must ask some more of your relations to meet you, dear. And, Nancy, we must be careful with the cake; Maria’s are always so excellent, and she is so critical. And now run out, dear, and tell Evergreen I’ll come in a moment. I’m afraid he won’t like being kept in the mist.”

On Tuesday Jethro, who was driving into Liddleshorn, dropped Pamela at Turle. She stood and watched him out of sight, admiring the smartly turned-out trap and his broad back in the light covert coat. Then she went, with lagging feet, up the drive.

Turle was an old house which had been improved into an appearance of juvenility. Mr. Turle bought it when he retired with a comfortable fortune from the milling—a comfortable fortune, and a determination on the part of his wife—to end his days as a gentleman. He spent so much money that people forgot that he had been a miller. When he died his widow was actually on the skirts of small gentrydom. She was a diplomatic woman, and managed to steer fairly clear of family connections who were still in superior family trade. She drove her social four-in-hand skillfully, and kept several distinct sets in perfect balance, smiling on them all with the same motherly, expansive sweetness, yet never offending the aristocratic susceptibilities of Mrs. Sugden, the Paper King’s wife, who called on[65] her twice a year, nor hurting the feelings of the Jeremy Crisp girls, whose father still carried on the family grocer’s business in Liddleshorn.

Pamela liked Turle. The farm-buildings were hidden, the surrounding meadows had been knocked into a miniature park and planted with trees. They were young trees, but everything must have a beginning.

When she was announced she saw that the big drawing-room was full of strange women. She looked hurriedly from one face to another, finding family characteristics everywhere. Mrs. Turle kissed her.

“You don’t look quite up to the mark,” she said affectionately. “A touch of bile?”

She was introduced to all of them; handed over from one to another, like a bale of samples. They had been engrossed at her entrance over a big box of fancy work. One of the Jeremy Crisp girls—who was only a girl by courtesy—went into elderly raptures over a woolwork jacket, which looked a capital fit for an organ-grinder’s monkey, and was intended for a baby.

“The box comes round to us once a quarter,” Mrs. Turle explained. “It goes round to all members. Every member works something, prices it, puts it in the box, and sends it on to another member. If we see anything we like we buy it.”

Pamela was beginning to find out that her new cousins and aunts were tremendously busy women—over nothing at all; that they had a frenzy for[66] belonging to classes and societies; that they took themselves and their efforts very seriously.

The cheerful coal fire winked on the foolish satisfied faces with their ridiculous monotony of outline and color. A crunching on the gravel made everybody glance out of the window. Mrs. Turle seemed a little frightened and annoyed. She looked deprecatingly at Cousin Maria Furlonger, from the “Warren,” who was so very exclusive, who moved in such a good set, and habitually went up to help Mrs. Sugden when she gave a charitable entertainment.

“It’s Mrs. Clutton, my dear. You didn’t want to meet her, did you?”

“Oh, never mind, Aunt Sophy. I needn’t know her if I meet her again.”

“I wish she wouldn’t drop in so unceremoniously,” poor Mrs. Turle said in a hurried whisper. “Mrs. Sugden was here the other day. She begged me to let her out of the back door because Mrs. Clutton was coming in at the front. Of course a woman in her position couldn’t possibly meet anybody like that.

“My dear,” she swept her ample skirts across the room, “this is a pleasure. Nancy and I were wondering what had happened to you. We’ve seen nothing of you for at least three days. You’re a little pale. The weather is trying, and makes one look so fagged and worn.”

It was a trick of Aunt Sophy’s to compassionate everyone and comment on the fragility of their appearance. Pamela, when she grew to know her[67] better, was never sure whether it was a feline trick or a sympathetic one.

The new-comer was dark and lean. She was a young woman, whose face looked as if it had weathered storms. She was carelessly dressed in perfectly cut clothes, rather worn. She carried a damp, loosely-tied parcel, which she handed to Nancy.

“Here are your pinks and white phloxes. Put the roots in soon.”

“If Evergreen has time to-morrow——”

“Don’t wait for him; he’ll kill them. Gardeners have a knack of sticking their spades through the things they dislike. Do it yourself. I am so glad I can’t afford a gardener—to give me a plant for the table when he chooses.” Her eye fell on a melancholy petunia.

“Have you been to any more sales, dear?” asked Mrs. Turle. “Have you added to your interesting collection of nice old things?”

“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Clutton’s voice became enthusiastic. “I went to such a delightful sale at Carrsland. I bought a little oak table. A dealer ran it up to thirty shillings—the wretch! He passed me on the road! I was walking, as usual; he was cycling. I instantly smelt him out as a dealer, and I was half inclined to tip him off the bicycle with the point of my umbrella, gag him, bind him to a tree until the sale was over. I wish I had; it would have been so deliciously simple.”

There was an awkward silence; then Nancy said, in her gently gushing way:

[68] “I wish you’d ride a bicycle. It’s such fun.”

Maria Furlonger, of the “Warren,” added politely:

“Yes. You should ride; it’s so good for the brain; and I’ve heard you write—or something of the sort.”

“Bicycling’s very bad for one’s logic; you can’t imagine a logician on a bicycle. I don’t write; my husband does.”

Mrs. Turle, anxious for perfect harmony, and knowing—also sharing—the local skepticism regarding Mrs. Clutton’s husband, put in blandly:

“Mr. Clutton is a journalist. He has gone for a tour round the world.”

“Oh!”

Maria Furlonger’s wide smile full in Mrs. Clutton’s face was a little dangerous.

Mrs. Turle added quite irrelevantly:

“Poor Mrs. Peter Hone has another baby. That’s twelve.”

“Sympathy is wasted on the poorer classes,” Mrs. Clutton put in, with her calm, dogmatic air. “You pet them too much. Once it was lap-dogs; now it’s paupers. Any old dame with a clean apron and a courtesy, any old man with his trousers tied round the calf and his chin like stubble, can take you in. Merely a question of livery! Now, it is the man in the top hat who wants petting—the man who is at his wits’ end to keep up his insurance payments.”

The tea bell rang. They all filed solemnly into the dining-room.

Maria Furlonger, who was rather taken with Pamela’s[69] silence, which, of course, meant modesty, began to tell her graciously about the old Manor House at Carrsland, where her father, Jethro’s mother’s brother, had been born.

“It’s a very old place. There is a moat all round. It has been filled up.”

“I am so glad it has been filled,” cried another cousin. “It was so awkward, so dangerous. You see”—addressing herself to Pamela—“it was just under the drawing-room window, and a lady might so easily have fallen out. What a terrible thing it would be for a lady to fall out of her own drawing-room window—into a moat!”

“When ladies have a tendency that way they should sign the pledge,” said Mrs. Clutton tersely.

Nancy, meeting her mother’s diplomatic eye, rushed into the breach:

“Have you heard about the nice butcher boy?”

“That boy at Churnside’s?”

“Yes. He has stolen ten pounds. They have arrested him.”

“Dishonesty on a small scale never pays,” said Mrs. Clutton. “Honesty is really the best policy—now that we have such an excellent police force.”

She was putting on her gloves, and they looked at each other with secret satisfaction. She seemed anxious to go. She looked as if the double row of placid faces irritated her. Mrs. Turle and Nancy kissed her. The former said:

“Come in again soon; we see so little of you. And take a tonic, dear—you’re really looking run down.”

[70] “What a vulgar person!” said Maria Furlonger, when the place was clear of her.

Annie Jayne—the Jaynes of the “Mount”—said:

“She struck me as being a little weak—mentally. Dear mother used to say that no properly-balanced woman should have opinions of her own—outside the domestic circle.”

“I must say that some of her remarks are in bad taste,” Mrs. Turle admitted gently. It was her policy to offend nobody, to speak ill of nobody; ill-natured remarks never helped your social ascent.

“She’s quite incorrigible,” one of the Jeremy Crisps said. “Do you know that she cut Mr. Meadows?”

“She didn’t!”

“She did!”

“The clergyman of the parish! A rural dean!”

“He called on her—merely a parochial call. He said that he liked to be identified with all his parishioners—whatever their views. Could anything be more broad, more generous?”

“Well?”

The Jeremy Crisp girl continued:

“She actually laughed in his face, and said she had not any views; didn’t he consider views narrow?”

“She’s not a lady.”

“That’s not all. He met her in the lane next day. He nodded most affably; you know his rule: a nod to people who walk, a bow to those who keep a carriage. It is a wise rule—it defines the classes[71] so well, which is absolutely necessary, or where should we be?”

One or two superior cousins sneered at each other across the teacups. The airs of these Jeremy Crisps!

“She cut him dead!”

“I spoke to her about that,” Mrs. Turle said gently.

“Well! What did she say? Short sight? She wears glasses for effect, no doubt.”

“Those eye-glasses make one look so intelligent, they really do,” put in a quiet cousin, who had scarcely spoken all the afternoon; “I thought of getting some.”

“She said that the men of her acquaintance might touch their hats or raise them—which they choose. If none of us would put that insufferable Mr. Meadows in his place, she must.”

“You never should have called on her, Aunt Sophy.”

“My dear Maria, she is a neighbor. And you never know how these queer people from London may turn out. Sometimes they prove desirable. I hesitated a long time, though, when I heard her husband was a journalist: very often journalist means swindler.”

“She looks to me like a woman who drinks,” Maria Furlonger said. “Drink makes people talk at random; drink makes people forget their duty to their superiors in the parish.”

“Dear mother always said that a drunken woman was such a much more painful sight than a drunken[72] man,” Annie Jayne said. “Oh! I can’t believe it of her, Maria. She was quite nice to Baby the other day.”

Annie had her first baby, and thought of very little else besides. If anyone admired Baby she concluded, in her simple, ardently maternal way, that such admiration was a moral certificate.

“Drink! Nonsense!” said Mrs. Turle, quite sharply for her. “I must say she has very clever ideas. She told me the other day that she was thinking of patenting an automatic arrangement for making cyclists swallow their own dust—though it would never do for you, Nancy, with your chest. Why, here is Jethro. I suppose he has come to take you away, Pamela?”

[73]

CHAPTER VI.

THE autumn rains set in early that year. Every night when Pamela fell asleep in her bedstead with the fluted posts and hangings of chintz, having a fearful pattern of black roses, she heard the murmuring rush of rain down the pipes and into the soft-water tubs. Every morning she was awakened by the swish of rain against the casement and the clatter of the maidservant’s clogs on the stones in the yard.

She spent long afternoons in the drawing-room staring dismally out at the sodden fields and the hills beyond, which shed sad mist. She was left very much to her own resources; her new relations rarely visited in bad weather.

She gave the house the benefit of her active brain, instituting all sorts of changes which she honestly believed to be reforms. She flung a modern, flimsy feeling of culture about the staid old place—a feeling expressed by current magazines, superficial opinions, shallow daring.

Jethro was pleased and invigorated by her reckless dogmatic opinions, by her dainty domestic ways. He used to watch her graceful figure flit from room to room, used to listen to her high young voice giving peremptory orders. She fascinated him. She was always changing, and the women to whom he[74] had been accustomed all his life never changed. Each one said and did exactly what her mother had said and done before her: to be original was to break the fifth commandment.

They sat round the great open hearth on wet, wild evenings. Gainah would be sewing or painfully writing out recipes in a dirty copy-book. Pamela generally had a catalogue of bulbs, a sheet of paper, and a pencil. Nancy’s gushing, incapable enthusiasm, and Mrs. Clutton’s practical knowledge of flower gardening had infected her. She already knew them well enough for that. She was full of ideas for spring bedding.

“I must have a hundred early tulips,” she would say coaxingly.

When Jethro, looking up from the local paper, returned indulgently, “Order what you please,” she added the hundred tulips to her list with the glee of a child.

Gainah seldom said anything. She had always been a silent woman, and Pamela’s whirling, modern influence had petrified her altogether. The thin white lips hardly opened except to timidly rate the two maids, who now tossed their heads at their former tyrant. She took Pamela’s presence passively, never commenting on anything she did. But sometimes, when the girl looked up suddenly from the fascinating bulb catalogue, and found those odd eyes on her, she shivered. They were so dead—those eyes. Yet such a secret, such a terrible soul seemed to play and lurk behind them.

Gainah never protested. Little by little she felt[75] the scepter slip from her powerless hand. Little by little her life lost color. Pamela laughed at her methods, was often disgusted by her thrifty, traditional economies. She had a superior trick of saying, “My way is the correct one.” Or she would quote the domestic routine of her father’s house, in the prosperous time when they lived in a detached house with a carriage drive and stabling. She was more than a bit of snob, but Jethro knew nothing of snobbery. He approved of all she did.

She gabbled on hygiene. She took tickets for a course of lectures on domestic economy, driving into Liddleshorn every alternate Friday. When she returned, she was more ardent than ever for reform. She penetrated to the scullery, and examined the dishcloth—with a scared murmur of microbes, because it had not been scalded in soda water and hung up in the air to dry. She insisted on making the tea herself in a patent pot. Once she said lightly that Gainah was trying to poison them all because she told the cook to boil halfpence with the cabbage to make it green. The flash in Gainah’s eye had been sinister, but Pamela did not see it. She laughed Jethro out of his favorite supper—a loaf hot from the oven and soaked in cider. She tried very hard to abolish supper as a meal—wishing to call the eight-o’clock meal dinner. But here she was stopped by the opposition of every member of the family; even Aunt Sophy entered a diplomatic protest.

She begged Jethro to make Chalcraft wring the necks of the poultry. She couldn’t bear the slow[76] sounds of death. It was barbarous—the slight, skillful slit of the knife, the long bleeding, the fluttering “glug-glug” in the throat, growing fainter and fainter. Gainah had always insisted on that method; she said it made the flesh white. Gainah shut the doomed birds for twenty-four hours before death in a coop, and made them fast, so that they might be more easily got ready for table: Pamela went surreptitiously to the corn sack, and gave them an extra feed before the ordeal. Gainah, in hot weather, hung meat down the well to keep it fresh; she buried sour milk in the earth, tied up in a muslin bag, and dug it up cream cheese. She had a theory about leg of mutton: it should be buried in the earth for three days to make it tender; the same might be done with an old hen. She did not approve of eggs in a milk pudding, and never used butter in white sauce if the milk was new and not skimmed. To waste nothing, to be lavish with nothing—that had been her religion. The hygiene lecturer—through Pamela, who conscientiously took notes—told her that some of her antique tricks were not only dirty, but dangerous.

Pamela taught the cook to make bread without touching it with the hand. She told Boyce how to milk the cows, washing his hands in an antiseptic first. She had chemical tests for the milk, and made a rigorous inspection of the dairy each morning. Gainah was calmly put aside as a domestic fossil. She was openly flouted. She was told to sit by the fire, to do nothing. Even needlework[77] was not necessary—things could be bought so cheaply ready-made, ready-marked even.

She was pushed aside. She must do nothing. Yet for over thirty years she had done everything. Her life had been one long fury of immaculate housekeeping according to her lights. She had thrown all the fierce energy of a naturally passionate woman into her dairy and her store-room. Love had just brushed her, then slipped away; maternity had never been hers. Religion she regarded as a respectable duty, varied by the clergyman coming to tea, which was a nervous trial, and meant getting out the best china. She couldn’t write poems, or lecture, or be an athlete; every outlet of the emotional woman was denied her by circumstance or temperament. She had flung herself upon the altar of good management, and now she was told that good management was not an art—it was the merest detail in the day’s work of a truly capable woman.

She said nothing. But there was a constant throbbing and seething in her aching head, above the turgid eyes. If Pamela could have foreseen, could have guessed, she might have been more temperate, more gradual. But she was sublimely unconscious.

On those autumn nights the heavy rain drove down from the hills and swept the sad common and beat against the thick walls of the farm. The wind skirled across space, and the cider-press creaked and moaned. Gainah let the press out to the villagers if they cared to make cider. They paid her so much[78] an hour for the use of it. This was one of her economies.

Jethro would sit and sprawl and blink at the fire like a well-fed, thoroughly satisfied, and sleepy dog after a day in the covers. Now and again in the course of the evening he would get up, stretch his arms, shake himself, fling back the doors, and look deep into the black night. He was such a hearty, open-air being that he seemed to pant at intervals for draughts of that strong wind down his throat, for an angry splutter of the shot-like rain in his eyes.

When the wind blew in, Gainah, her back creaking and cold with rheumatism at the merest draught, would say with acerbity:

“You come from Hartin’, where they have no doors.”

The rustic sarcasm was quite lost on Pamela. She regarded the old woman as antiquated, dirty, and even slightly half-witted. All her attention centered on Jethro.

When he walked across the room she watched him slyly. She admired him very much. He was so big and strong; so independent. The men of her acquaintance had always been under orders—Government clerks, and so on. Here was a man, savage in his strength, who had never been in bondage except to the great Earth. She admired him, but she didn’t love him yet.

Love! She would never love him; never. She didn’t want to. She prayed that the acrid taste of Love might never sear her lips again. And then[79] she thought of the prison. And the cruel wall rose up before her blinding eyes, and her quick fingers dropped the pencil and caught nervously at her side.

Jethro would come back to the fire and sink luxuriously into the big horsehair-covered chair with the protecting ears. He would put out his foot in the thick boot and touch the glowing logs. His gun was in the corner just as he had left it when he came in tired and muddy from pheasant shooting. Pamela was afraid of the gun, but it pleased her. It was part of Jethro’s strength and masculinity. So were his careless clothes, and so was his blunt Shaksperean tongue. She liked a man to be frank, a little coarse even, when the man was Jethro. She once thought fancifully that she wouldn’t mind being beaten by a man like that.

She already began to regard him as her own possession. She felt a personal pride in him; the very hang of his homespun tweeds on his tough, spare body seemed eloquent of sturdy independence.

The yellow firelight glided across the brass rosette-like heads of the fire-dogs. They seemed to wink knowingly at every flicker. Now and again the two hounds in the barn snarled as an infrequent foot came slouching along the wet road, for it was always raining and blowing. Rain, mist, and wind! These were the elements which watched over the slow, reluctant growth of Pamela’s love for big Jethro.

Sometimes he read a paragraph from the paper to Gainah—about local doings or people. Sometimes he would ask her advice—about a sale of underwood[80] or the fate of a cow. Sometimes he and Pamela would be left alone for a moment, and then they were both shy. Neither of them forgot that this was a time of probation. Who knew? When the rain and wind and mist of next autumn came they might be man and wife.

Autumn grew to winter. She was happy—with a hushed dull happiness that she wished would last forever. No anxieties, no fierce, tearing burst of emotion, gay or sad. She was happy; satisfied with the mild amusements of the simple family connections. They no longer irritated her—these placid, narrow women—slow and heavy, but very useful and harmless. She laughed at Mrs. Clutton’s extravagances, but did not indorse them. She had become very intimate with the dark, sarcastic woman whose husband was abroad.

She had her little excitements—skating parties, small dances, occasionally the visit of a dramatic company to Liddleshorn. In this way winter went. The last snow melted into a puddle; the first flowers of March came. She was delighted with the dazzling white of the arabis. Gainah called it snow-on-the-mountains; but Annie Jayne, who brought her baby round in the mail-cart on sunny mornings, said that “dear mother” had always called it March-pride.

She ran out frequently to look at the thin green spears which begun to bristle in the borders: these were her bulbs. She spent long hours in her new greenhouse, giving Daborn orders. He was retained exclusively for the garden now, at her wish.[81] There wasn’t a weed to be seen, and every bed was raked and cleaned.

As the sun strengthened in the sky Gainah grew more silent than ever. Spring was here, summer on the way, and she had nothing to do. Pamela had taken the keys. The maids went to her for orders. She paid them their wages and gave them each an evening out during the week—an indulgence which until her coming had never been dreamt of.

Nothing to do! Not wanted! In her idle hours Gainah wandered over the rambling house alone, going from room to room, touching things without meaning, taking up and putting down; mumbling vaguely to herself. One morning she put on her shabby cloth cap—an old one of Jethro’s—and went into the garden. It was raining—a soft, warm rain, with the sun behind it.

“Good growing weather,” she said to herself with satisfaction—and then remembered that the garden had been taken from her.

Winter storms had made the borders draggled in spite of Daborn’s labor and Pamela’s enthusiasm. Gainah felt, in a fumbling, wordless way, that this garden was like the devastation of her own life. She carried a little fork; force of habit had made her get it from the tool-shed. Now and then, again from habit, she bent her stiff back to dig out a weed; but there were no weeds.

The stalks of the Michaelmas daisies had been left—by Pamela’s orders, so that the frost might not get down to the roots. Gainah viewed the stiff clumps of brown wood with injury; her rule had[82] been to cut down everything in November. She remembered that she had promised a bit of white daisy to Chalcraft’s “missus” in exchange for a deep purple one with a golden eye—her generosity took the form of barter.

She went round and round in the spraying rain. There was no wind, simply a feeling of soft, patient dampness and melancholy in the garden. Over the wall was the sodden, empty road, and on the horizon the streaming, formless hills.

Her eyes spied out a few self-sown hardy plants in the neatly-raked beds. She dropped little fragments of criticism as she went.

“The slugs have been at the ‘reckless’ plants,” she murmured regretfully, stooping to look more closely at a clump of sickly auricula, which seemed mostly thick stalk.

“There’s a Glory in bud already. I remember old Jethro budding the brier. He was a good hand at budding, and it was a wet season, with the sap running well, that year. Ah! the Glory Die! John makes a fine head on a standard.”

She touched the yellow bud—a little pinched and small—with tender fingers. A faint touch of red rushed into her white face.

“That green Yule when she was taken,”—she was thinking of Jethro’s mother—“I picked a Glory full out on Christmas morning, and kept it in water for more ’n a week. The hard frost came soon after—the hardest for forty years. The old sow was frozen stiff in the sty, and Joan Wadey’s boy was out digging swedes for old Farmer Scotter, and[83] he set down and his breeches turned into ice and burned into his flesh. I mind that—and the Glory blooming on the shelf.”

Perhaps it was the memory of the frost and the sow who fell a victim to it; at all events, she went round to the piggeries, taking a stick from the bristling fagot stack on the way. It had always been one of her recreations to stand over the sty and scratch the great rough backs of the animals. She did it now, rubbing the stick insinuatingly up and down, across and across, and almost fancying that the thick grunts held meaning, and that there were appreciation, friendliness, and compassion in the small, slitlike eyes that looked up at her.

Then, restless and idle, she went round again to the garden and stood staring stupidly at the red, newly graveled paths and the glass of the new greenhouse. She could see Daborn inside pricking out seedlings into boxes.

There was a weedy patch—the one weedy patch—in a corner of the garden. She fetched the spud and began to dig for dandelion-roots. She had almost forgotten that she made dandelion-tea every spring and insisted on Jethro taking a cup in the morning to clear his liver. She took them up, transferring them from her knotted, earth-caked hand to her apron. She meant to take them back to the house, wash them, cut them up, and infuse them in water for a certain number of hours. But halfway along the path she stopped blankly, a sudden thought dismaying her. Pamela would not let her make the tea. Scalding childish tears rose in[84] her eyes. She felt sure she would not be allowed to make the dandelion-tea. She went stumblingly back to the weed-grown patch and let the roots drop in a little hill from her apron to the ground. Then she looked up, and saw old Chalcraft, who was beginning to trench up the farther end. He was leaning idly on his spade, watching her with affectionate solicitude. There was a little suspicion mixed with his compassion; your true rustic is always distrustful of what he doesn’t understand. She, standing there idle, vacant, with a still tongue, was a mystery. He didn’t know what blighting thing had touched and turned her.

She stood there stupidly, dead to the familiar sounds on the farm—the excited cluck of laying hens, two cocks crowing in rivalry, the weak bleat of very early lambs in the fold, and the yapping of puppies in the barn. She didn’t hear the steady break of stones in the road, nor the song of a lark as it rose from the neighboring field.

The weedy patch had last year been sown with beet. Sparrows had eaten it—beet on that soil being, with carrots and spinach, a chance crop. Chalcraft was digging the weeds in and preparing to make a second sowing of broad beans. Pamela had not yet brought her reforming intellect to bear on the kitchen-garden; she thought vegetables very uninteresting.

The spade was deep in the stiff soil. The piece that Chalcraft had already turned up was wet and yellow in contrast to the hard gray of the untouched piece. Gainah watched him closely, as if he had[85] been a stranger and digging was to her a new and intricate performance. She saw his bald head: there was a red, shining wen on one side. There were two careful patches, side by side and of a different color and stuff, on the back of his waistcoat.

“You’ve got another patch on the back of your waistcoat, Master Chalcraft,” she said childishly.

He spat thoughtfully, first on the palms of his hands and then into the trench where the weeds were buried. He looked at her—looked with the slow wonder of the aged, to whom nothing matters very much. Then he said, with a chuckle:

“Aye! so there be! Patch side by side look neighborly, but patch upon patch be beggarly, Mis’ Toat.”

She didn’t answer. She still stood in that wavering, uncertain way on the other side of the trench.

“The worms in this ’ere patch is past believin’,” he said, with an infantile slobber and chuckle, at last, stolidly chopping through the writhing bunches.

“It must be nearly dinner-time, Master Chalcraft,” said Gainah mechanically, with a steady glare across the trench with her pale eyes.

“Aye, that it be,” he returned rather nervously; “I’ve had mine.”

She turned and went back to the path. He stood and watched her. He was conscious, in his slow-witted way, that some queer change had come to her. The sun broke through the rain-cloud and touched the silver tip of his spade and the hard red[86] lump on his head. He bent his back again and turned up slab after slab of sticky ground.

Gainah went round to the front of the house. She had a bed of lilies of the valley beneath the umbrella yew. She stooped down behind the wall of somber green and saw the tender leaves uncurling. One root already had a cluster of snowy buds. Then, as she stooped, she heard a voice—the high, imperious voice of Pamela. Looking through the yew, she saw her standing by the wall with Jethro. She was talking very fast, moving impetuously now and then, throwing out her firm white hands, and pointing eagerly.

“It would be the simplest thing in the world. Oh, you must do it—please. Then the house would look like Turle. You take away the gate and build the wall along—so. Then you take up those horrid cabbages.” She threw a look of intolerance at the leggy stalks of Brussels sprouts which were thickly covered with widely opened miniature cabbages.

“Chalcraft likes this patch. It is the richest in the garden, so he says. In June the old man will dibble in his cauliflowers; they want a rich soil.”

“They’ll grow anywhere; ground is ground,” she cried, with Cockney superiority. “You are too indulgent to Chalcraft; he and Gainah are past work. They should be pensioned off. She might be allowed to come to dinner on Sundays.”

“She has been a mother to me.”

Gainah, behind the yew, her head furtively poked forward, saw the girl look at him—a look that said plainly enough:

[87] “And shall not I be your wife? Doesn’t a man leave all and cleave to his wife?”

The elder woman’s hands, rubbed over with wet mold which was drying and caking, crossed convulsively on her chest. This was not new to her—this comedy of love. She had played it, too, with something less of fancy. She knew what was coming. She waited, sick at heart, for the first kiss. She nearly fell upon the half-opened leaves of the young lilies when Jethro dropped his massive head and pointed his lips to Pamela’s. Her fingers lost their last hold of the domestic scepter when she heard the quick, liquid chirrup of his kiss on the firm scarlet flesh.

[88]

CHAPTER VII.

PAMELA ran up to her room with the long, low lattice window and the somber furniture. She threw herself full length on the old sofa which she had rescued from one of the attics and covered in the most approved be-frilled style with cretonne. Her head was back on the cushions, her sparkling eyes were on a level with the garden. She looked at the Brussels sprouts with satisfaction, imagining shaven emerald turf and lozenge-shaped beds of standard roses and geraniums in their place.

She was going to marry Jethro. Their eyes and lips had met—the thing was settled. Men did not propose in set words and the conventional attitude nowadays. She would marry Jethro. Her future life stretched out before her—smooth, level, pleasant—like the big tennis lawn at Turle. She thought of all the country houses round where she was sure of a hearty welcome because she was a cousin. They were comfortable, easy people, these Turles and Crisps and Jaynes and Furlongers. She had grown really fond of Nancy, with her simper, her pretty pink face, and her glorious red hair. Annie Jayne, in her spick and span nursery with her beaming face bent over her baby boy and her lips flowing forth pious reminiscences of her mother, had her own particular charm. To be simple, to be[89] sterling, that was all one wanted; everything else was garish, meretricious. Hearts were better than the flimsy things called brains.

She saw her life roll away year after year, so placid, so uneventful, so comfortable and prosperous. She loved money for her pleasure, not her pocket. She always felt her greatest admiration for Jethro when he hauled out a canvas bag of sovereigns.

She began to form social plans. She would be exclusive, yet catholic, like Aunt Sophy. Jethro must let her have another servant—that would be three. The wagonette must be done up, and she’d try for a Battlesden car like Furlonger’s. She’d aim at culture, too—a Browning class, in opposition to Mrs. McAlpine’s Shakspere. There wouldn’t be so many expurgations necessary. The members of the Shakspere class had neatly written slips sent them with a list of passages to be slurred. She would like to take a rise out of Mrs. McAlpine, who lived in a cottage, but gave herself tremendous airs because she was a J. P.’s daughter, and had instituted afternoon tea with cucumber or cress sandwiches.

In the afternoon she slipped on her things and went to the Buttery, the ancient cottage where the absentee journalist’s wife lived with a small maid. Mrs. Clutton had become her most confidential friend. She didn’t mean to mention her engagement, but she was twitching with excitement, dragged here and there with emotions of very different sorts.

[90] She went across the common in the March sun and wind. Her heart and feet danced, but her face was like the changing sky. Forget! She must forget. She was to marry Jethro. It was so easy to say forget, so difficult to do it. Once she stopped, her eyes strained in the direction of London—far away over moor and hill and sleek pasture. She groaned aloud. She knew that she would give it all—greenhouse, Battlesden, big, fond man with the bulging bag of sovereigns—for one touch on the mouth from one other man. He was still in prison, still only a number behind the high wall. When he came out? Emigration or the army. But that was not her affair.

When she reached the Buttery she went through the high green trellis door into the garden, sure of finding her hostess there on such a day, at such a season. It was a fair-sized garden in apple-pie order. The long borders were gay. At one end were substantial pig-sties. In them Mrs. Clutton kept fowls. She was leaning over the wall, her elbows spread out on the wire netting which was nailed across to keep the birds from flying over.

She came running excitedly along the neat asphalt path. In one hand she held an egg. It was evidently only just laid. It hardened as the air touched it.

“Look!” she said with a laugh, “I’m going to give this to the cock. What would your thrifty Gainah say? They are all going—my pet hens—Flirt and Prim and Sheila. My cock, too—Tatters.[91] Isn’t he a fine fellow? But morals! None. They are neurotic. Old Chalcraft says they eat their eggs because the floor of the run is brick and they can’t scratch. I hate a person who snouts round for a practical solution. It’s just environment—because I am their mistress. Tatters has been more trouble to me than able-bodied twins. I fed him from the very shell with hard-boiled egg and bread-crumb, thereby sowing the seed of future vice, no doubt. I’ve scrubbed his legs with carbolic and anointed him with vaseline for scaly-leg. I read about it in a paper. I came and stood out here, paper in hand, comparing his leg with the symptoms. And then, after all, I found that humpy-bumpy legs were natural to that particular breed. I was overjoyed at his first baby-crow—such a throaty, silly sound.

“To be practical—the eggs went. Every time Flirt or Prim or Sheila cackled I rushed out, only to find them stalking gravely up and down with an unconscious expression faintly tinged with injury. And then one day I saw that villain Tatters gulping down the last bit of shell. I’ve sold them at a sacrifice, on condition that they are sent to market and not allowed to demoralize another run. Hone will be here directly; he’s taking them to Liddleshorn. But—Tatters—here!”

She threw the egg, flinging back her head at the same moment. The cock rushed at it. In an instant it was gone, yellow yolk, brown shell, stringy white. Mrs. Clutton shrugged and pushed the picturesque black hair from her brow. Pamela said, with a laugh:

[92] “Well, you are mad. No one else would have done that.”

“Of course not. I get more and more ridiculous. But what can one do? I pay afternoon calls and say mad things. You must shock the people down here—it’s your only chance. I’m bound to talk extravagantly. You can’t discuss gravely for a whole afternoon whether servants should be allowed to wear veils on their afternoons out, or whether it is really economical to wash at home. I wonder what Tim’s first impression of me will be when he comes home!”

“You expect him soon?”

“Who knows!” She shrugged and led the way into the house. “He’s irresponsible. I got these at a sale—and these—and these.” She pointed out various ornaments on the shelf of her sitting-room. “And Tryphena says that old Mrs. Hillyar is dead. So I shall be able to get her tallboys chest of drawers for the merest trifle: collectors have no conscience.”

“Does Mr. Clutton care for old things?” Pamela looked round intolerantly at the mixed collection of antique furniture and bric-a-brac which crowded the room.

“Of course. He is most artistic: master of every art—except that of earning a decent living. As for hobbies! He has exhausted them. I suggested that paying his debts would be a novel one—a complete collection of receipted bills! But the idea didn’t appeal to him. He was never afflicted with the form of indigestion called conscience.”

“He’s a journalist?”

[93] “Yes; most brilliant. He assimilates everything—but his food. A confirmed dyspeptic; he would have three serious internal diseases in one week.”

Tryphena Hone, the little maidservant, brought in tea. The two young women sat and chatted until the room grew dark. When the lamp came in, it burned steadily. Pamela said:

“Our lamps never burn like that. Yet I see to them myself. Aunt Sophy taught me her own particular way of trimming a lamp.”

“My lamp burns well because I never see to it myself. The whole duty of the foolish young housekeeper is ‘doing the lamps.’

“I was telling you about Tim.” She seemed in a confidential mood. “He was brought up to the profession of great expectations. One’s greatest curse is a modest competence. We had it—until Tim’s father died, without even leaving him the shilling with which he cut him off. We hadn’t a halfpenny. Tim, with his unfailing originality, suggested earning a living, but his profession had spoiled him. He was like the Irishman who was willing to do anything but work or run errands. I took in boarders, but it didn’t pay; I never happened on a paying paying guest. He tried journalism; every failure tries that. At last a man on a rather prominent paper—worn out with importunities, no doubt—shipped him to South America and told him to study out-of-the-way sides of things. He paid him for it, too. His articles have been a great success. It really seems as if our luck has turned. Journalists are short-sighted; the man need not have[94] sent him abroad in search of novelty. I could tell strange tales. Every cottage here has its skeleton, and I wheedle round the old people until they show me the bones. I am making a note-book for Tim—he can write a series of articles on Sussex skeletons when he comes home.”

She looked round at her bits of china and brass; at the shabby furniture which she had picked up at sales and in odd corners.

“Every little thing,” she said, “has its history. Such tender tales—such fierce, curdling, terrible tales—I hear from plodding men and heavy women in these little Sussex cottages! And it is all the more impressive because they are so phlegmatic. They tell you of a ruined life much more calmly than they would tell you of a bad batch of bread or a chicken stolen by the fox.”

Pamela was hardly listening. Her feet were on the gleaming rail of the pierced brass fender; her eyes thoughtful on the winking coals.

“Do you consider one runs a risk in marrying?” she asked tentatively at last.

“No risk—if you marry for the right motive. I haven’t found out what that is: not money; not duty—only prigs do their duty; not impulse; certainly not love.”

“Can one marry for peace?”

“Maybe. Peace is a great thing; I’ve found that since dear Tim went away and took his imaginary incurable troubles with him. I would write over every baby girl’s cradle: ‘DON’T MARRY A DYSPEPTIC!’

[95] “Must you really go? Here is Nancy’s latest photograph.” She took it from the table. “Of course you have one. Nancy is just the average woman—insatiable desire to have herself photographed in evening-dress. Nancy is stupid; she actually believed that a Papal Bull was a live animal. Just wit enough to dress her magnificent hair according to the latest fashion plate—that’s Nancy! She’s callous, too. The other day she ran down one of the Peter Buckman children when she was cycling. She only said calmly that it ‘was bad for the wheel.’ Fortunately the child wasn’t hurt.”

Pamela went home in bright moonlight; it was only a stone’s throw from the Buttery to Folly Corner.

She thought calmly of her future as she walked: the moon, the sweet, crisp March night cooled and stilled her. She was not going to marry for love. To marry for love had once been the dear dream of her life. But that was over; the prison had engulfed her poor romance—it had been a mean one at the best. It was all over—the first wild, keen shame and rebellion, the steadfast belief in him, the passionate waiting for the future. It was all over—dead. She was going to marry Jethro; going to take refuge in his kindliness—as if he were a wayside barn on a wet day. She meant to be a good wife, a happy wife. Nothing was more contemptible than a tiresome, melancholy woman with a past.

[96]

CHAPTER VIII.

SHE was loitering in the drawing-room next morning when Jethro came in. There was a strong touch of out-door sweetness about him. He was not one of those men who smell of hot rooms and tobacco.

He went up and kissed her, taking her fair round face reverently in his hands as a matter of course. She was thrilled, not with love, but with pleasure at the open adoration in his light blue eyes. His great hands placed gently under her chin, his fine head well set on his broad shoulders, and his big limbs in the breeches and gaiters, stirred in her the primitive passion of woman for brute strength in a man.

He threw himself on the couch and blinked lazily at the gewgaws of the room, which his very presence always made so trivial. Then he lugged out his worn brown pocket-book and took from it a slip of paper roughly torn from a newspaper. Directly she saw it Pamela’s cheeks blazed, and the same agonized shame and degradation which she had felt on her first visit to that room she felt then.

“Come here.”

He spoke gently, yet with command; the voice of a man who after marriage will tell his wife to fetch[97] his slippers or his pipe, as if service were a matter of course.

She stepped into the great embrasure of the bay window and sat down on the green-covered walnut-wood chair—just as she had sat down on the first day. Her eyes looked straight ahead, not at ripe grain, but at the burning purple of furrowed earth.

Jethro touched her idle hand with the privileged tenderness of an accepted lover.

“You are a slipped thing,” he said fondly.

“Slipped?”

“Slender, then. I always fancied a woman with a trim, hard waist like yours. But I came to talk business.”

He held out the roughly torn bit of newspaper.

“Tear it up,” she said thickly.

Her head hung on her bosom and her eyes fell until the lashes rested on her flaming skin.

“Not yet.”

She put out her hand to snatch it from him, with the wicked, stealthy air of a cat after a bird. Until that shameful bit of paper was destroyed her womanhood was vulgarized.

“Give it me,” she besought humbly.

He laid it in her open hand and she tore it into minute bits, opened the casement, and cast it out. The wind caught it, carried it, and shed it like snowflakes over the ridged furrows.

“We needn’t wait long for the wedding,” he said, as she latched the casement and came back to the green chair.

It pleased him to watch her changing face, now[98] pink like Nancy’s, now white like the hidden skin on his own arms and chest.

“When you like,” she returned docilely—thinking it would be better to settle soon.

“And I’ve drawn you a check—a year’s salary and a year more instead of notice,” he continued, twisting up his face into cunning wrinkles with satisfaction at his own artifice. “Take Aunt Sophy with you into Liddleshorn and buy clothes.”

She took the strip of paper, her eyes dilating at the magnificence of the amount.

“You are a great deal too good to me.”

“When we are married,” he went on, pressing her hand jovially, “I’ll make any alterations about the place you like. But the carriage drive must wait till winter—hedging and ditching time; labor’s cheap then. How about inside?”

“I should like a bath-room.”

“You shall have it. And nurseries.” His voice was perfectly matter-of-fact. “The two sunny rooms up top will do. I’ll have bars to the windows; it’s as well to be ready.”

“Not too ready,” she said faintly, hardly knowing whether to retreat or to laugh.

“A son,” Jethro said dreamily, “to come beating with me when shooting’s on. They soon grow up. He shall have a little horse and ride to hounds. We say in these parts about a woman’s children:

She got up nervously, not knowing whether he[99] would be betrayed into rustic sayings yet more suggestive.

“I’d like to go to Liddleshorn to-morrow,” she said, folding the check in her purse. “There will be time before dinner to run over to Turle and see if Aunt Sophy can come with me—if you wish it.”

“She’s a splendid manager.”

“Very well. I’ll take her and Nancy. What are you doing this morning? We might go to Turle together.”

“I must see Boyce”—(he was the cowman)—“about those newly dropped lambs. He thought maybe you’d like a sock.”

“A what?”

“A sock—pet lamb.”

“That would be nice—but, when it grew a sheep?”

“You could send it to the butcher.”

“Never. Tell Boyce, with thanks for his remembrance, I’d rather not. Well, good-by until dinner.”

She ran upstairs, humming complacently, and in a leisurely way put on her short skirt and narrow-brimmed hat. Through her window she saw Jethro cross the garden and stroll into the yard, his broad shoulders proudly back and his hands deep in his breeches pockets. Her heart swelled with satisfaction—in him and in the broad acres, plowed or pasture, and in the beautifully built golden ricks which hedged the house. Everything was hers.

She went downstairs. Gainah, for the first time[100] for ten years, had gone out for the day to see an old friend some miles up the line. Pamela thought that the house seemed more like home, more her own, without the elder woman, and she began to speculate on the time when Folly Corner would no longer roof them both.

She stood in the passage by the window. Gainah’s geraniums, preserved from frost in the kitchen all through the winter, were blooming. The future mistress decided that she would banish them. She had not reached the altitude of admiring an earthenware pot. Then she glanced at the wall, at the rude prints in narrow black frames. Mrs. Clutton had been enthusiastic about them, saying they were “Bunbury’s”—which meant nothing to Pamela. She couldn’t endure those fat women in low dresses, and those men with wigs and lewd expressions.

She sat down in the armchair by the oak table, idly putting on her gloves. There was a hand-bell on the table—one of her institutions—together with a smart tray for letters. The blue Oriental bowl, instead of being littered with string and screwed envelopes, was reserved for cards, and in place of the farming papers was the current copy from the library of the most cultured magazine then running its brief life. She thought that the extraordinary cover struck a distinctive note directly one entered the house.

The kitchen door was at the other end of the passage, immediately opposite the drawing-room. It was ajar. She was just stretching her gloved hand to the bell, to tell them that Daborn might bring[101] round her bicycle, when a man’s voice struck on her heart.

At first she half struggled to her feet, and they failed her. Then she fell back in the chair helplessly, like a woman with an overstrained spine. That voice! His voice! No. It couldn’t be. There was very little in a voice; each individual had not the monopoly of one. Now, a face would be different. How absurd she was! The dates did not agree. She had a head for dates, and that one—the date of his release—had eaten into her brain like an acid into metal. It was too soon.

The air through the open window—she had opened it herself only a minute ago, before the world changed—was warm. The full red heads of the geraniums nodded heavily with occasional puffs of vigorous March wind. It was a warm, noisy world. The beseeching, persistent bleat of the little new lambs rung like a mournful bell with every second, and through it filtered the confused song of every madly happy bird that had mated and built a nest.

She put out her hand again for the bell, calling herself a fanciful, nervous fool. As she gripped the handle she heard the voice again—persuasive, winning. Hadn’t she often heard it like that? It said:

“You can have one by very easy payments.”

The bell fell on the table, rolled off, and clanged its noisy tongue as it touched the oak floor. The pretty, ruddy housemaid came in, looked flurried. She left the kitchen door wide behind her, and[102] Pamela saw the well-scrubbed table, the gleaming brass preserving-pan on top of an oak corner cupboard in which candles, soaps, and so on were stored. She could, with the tail of her eye, see the back door leading to the flagged yard, and she seemed to feel that he was standing there. Certainly someone was there, because the sheep dog, who was so savage on the chain, barked angrily.

“I want my bicycle,” she said as calmly as she could, “and, Nettie, who is that at the back door?”

“A piker—I beg pardon, miss—a tramp. Yet not just a piker; he never begged. But he wants me and Cook to buy a sewing-machine, paying it off by little bits each month.”

“I shouldn’t like the noise of a sewing-machine in the kitchen.”

“Then I’ll tell him to go away.”

“Nettie.”

“Yes, miss.”

“I was just going to say that—I forget. I remember—you need not speak to Daborn about the bicycle for a few moments. I’ll go into the garden and find him myself.”

“Very well, miss.”

The buxom figure of the country girl in her deep pink gown went round the half-opened door. Pamela sat, her head against the wall, a sound like the thudding, throbbing noise of an engine-room in her head and at her waist. Suddenly she stretched out her hand and rang the bell again. The housemaid came round the door for the second time, looking a little surprised.

[103] “Has he gone?”

“No, miss. Cook’s going to have a machine—not to work here, miss. She’s to be married next club day.”

“I should like to see him. Perhaps the machines are good and cheap. Tell him to step through.”

The pink figure disappeared again and she waited—sick, expectant, dreading; disgusted with herself for the half delight which she felt, a delight which nearly swamped the fear.

He came through the door and they shut it after him. There was no mistake. Her ears had not played her false. Directly he saw her sitting there, beneath the row of black-framed prints, beside the shining brown table which held the great bowl of blue, he gave a start, a whistle of astonishment, and said under his breath:

“Pam!”

She looked at him for an instant—cropped hair, shoddy clothes, blunted nails, the evasive stamp of something new and perplexing on his handsome face:

“Edred!”

She was looking apprehensively down the long garden path which ran between the box edgings. Jethro might come in. Then she again turned her eyes with an effort toward the tall figure in the deplorable suit of ginger-colored tweed. In spite of herself, an expression of ecstasy broke across the cloud above her eyes. She half rose, put out her hand, peaked her head toward him. He gave a[104] quick glance round; listened. Everything was still, but for the lambs and birds and insects; no sound of human life, no clink or clatter from the kitchen. He stepped up lithely to the chair, lifted her in his long arms, and kissed her—a long kiss which told volumes—full on the mouth. With that kiss, fully returned, each told the history of the weary months the prison had stolen.

She let herself lie for a moment in his arms, caring for nothing in the world but that first re-union which she had so often imagined, so often longed for. Then she roused herself.

“Why did you come?” she said reproachfully. “Oh, my darling, why did you come and spoil everything?”

He shrugged.

“We don’t know that anything is spoilt yet. I wouldn’t stand in your light for worlds. Tell me how you came here. Give me my cue.”

“Come into the other room. We shall be quieter there.”

He followed her through the low door into the room which the yew shadowed. They were no longer in the sun; something damp, melancholy, and threatening struck at them both.

“Sit down,” she said, pointing nervously to a chair, taking one herself, and throwing a quick glance at the brass face of the tall clock. “I—I didn’t know you were out. I thought that it would be another six months——”

He stuck out his long legs and sunk his hands in his pockets. He was tall and slim and elegant. At[105] each gesture she was more than ever his slave—it brought back remembrance. Her eyes hardly left his face—dark, sallow, cruel. A sardonic-looking man, with silky black hair half veiling his scoffing mouth, and sleepy eyes which seemed always to be mocking.

“Haven’t you ever heard,” he asked airily, “of a ticket-of-leave?”

She shivered as she answered, well down in her dry throat, “I think so.”

“Tell me how you came here, and what part I’m expected to play. I’m down on my luck at present, and you may be able to help me. Look at these clothes.” He touched the sacklike cloth. “Nothing but paper. The first shower would reduce me to pulp.”

“I came here,” she said, “in answer to an advertisement. A man—the man who owns this house—wanted a wife.”

“Whew! Such is the faithfulness of woman! But it was clever of you—confoundedly clever.”

“Don’t! It nearly killed me. He is so kind, so fond of me. He believes I am his cousin—his mother was a Crisp. There are other confirming details. Very likely I am his cousin—that doesn’t matter. They have all been kind—my new relations. They think that he advertised for information about his mother’s brother—who disappeared in early life—and that I, as a surviving child, answered. They never troubled for fuller proof; they take my word——”

“Very useful people!”

[106] “That flippant tongue of yours,” she flashed out, “brings back bitter memories.”

“Never mind memories—no time for them. Go on with your story. At present I’m uncomfortable; don’t know my ground. If he should come in——”

“Jethro!” She looked alarmed, and seemed to strain her ears for outside sounds.

“Queer name. Jethro—what?”

“Jayne.”

“Jethro Jayne! He ought to be the villain in a melodrama—wicked squire or something of that sort. And are you going to marry him, Pam?”

She caught her hands across her breast theatrically.

“I—I don’t know. You have changed everything.”

“Not at all. I’ll free you. I’m not”—he gave his soft, callous laugh—“in a position to keep a wife, and he is. As Mrs. Jethro Jayne you might be very useful to me.”

“As Mrs. Jethro Jayne I dare not look at you.”

“Pooh! You were always too intense. Marry him and help me. That would be the act of a sensible woman. You are quite free.”

“Absolutely free,” she assented dreamily, looking a little wildly at the handsome face.

She was free; in no sense was she tied to him. She wasn’t in his power; he couldn’t rake up against her any discreditable past. This was not the stock position of the sensational drama—confiding husband, blackmailing lover, wife with unclean or imprudent past. She was free, free, free! Free to[107] order him away from the house and out of her life. If Jethro came in she could afford to tell the truth. There was nothing wrong in it.

And yet, hating herself all the time, because she knew he wasn’t worthy, she adored this dark-haired cynical ex-criminal. His prison taint, marked elusively on his face, only made her yearn over him the more. Free! And yet chained like a slave. She cursed and despised herself for the contemptible, dog-like devotion which a true woman calls love. She couldn’t send him away. She couldn’t live without him. She wanted him to kiss her again, to call her Pam in that careless, caressing voice. Jethro was nothing—but a good-natured money-bag. This man had been the first to stir in her some wonderful, untamable passion. She was insisting to her heart that a woman must always love the first, return to him, cleave to him, however unworthy he may be.

There were steady steps outside. Someone was coming round the house, brushing the wall across which the vine spread its stout arms. She knew the step. She knew the melodious whistle. It was Jethro. She pictured him coming in his leisurely way round to the garden door, little dreaming; his hands stuck in the pockets of his shooting breeches, his cap a little tilted over his eyes to keep the hard March sun out.

She sprang to her feet. The man sprang up too. He had heard the steps before she heard them. His life had been one that lent itself to stealth and minute caution. He knew that the next moment would[108] decide her, and consequently would decide his fate. He had no claim on her—she might turn him adrift if she chose, as he had reminded her. And he much preferred to stay. Lucky accident had brought him here. Selling sewing-machines by easy payments at the back door was not a life to his taste.

The steady, leisurely steps grew more distinct. The two—desperate girl and desperate man—were close, eye to eye. With a fleet movement he folded his arms about her and kissed her for the second time on the mouth. She whispered fiercely, as soon as she got her breath:

“When I came—that first day—he asked me if I had brothers or sisters. I thought of you—you were never out of my head. Something, someone—God or the devil—made me say I had a brother, a sailor on a long voyage. You understand?”

“Perfectly.” He nodded his head approvingly. “Now sit down, darling, and leave off trembling.”

The long, broad shadow of a man fell across the floor from the open door to the plinth of the tall clock. It stopped on the threshold. Pamela’s feet, which had turned numb and cold, were set fast. She tried to get up unconcernedly, but could only grip her hands round the curved arms of the rush-seated chair of golden beechwood. The last remnant of a struggle was fighting itself out within her. Should she stand up and say:

“I knew this man once. He boarded at the house where I was an assistant. He made love to[109] me. I was flattered and I responded—but that was nothing. It was all over long ago. Send him away and let us be happy together as we have settled to be.”

Should she say that? Should she tell the bald, mean, ugly truth?

They were both looking at her—these two men who between them held the strings of her future. Jethro’s light eyes were a bit cold and hard. He was suspicious, like all simple men. She said, putting one hand stiffly toward the companion beechwood chair:

“This is my brother——”

She broke off, a nervous dread sealing her lips. She had nearly said “my brother Edred,” and then she could not remember whether, at that first interview in the big bay window, she had given him a name.

“My brother—the sailor,” she went on falteringly, her stiff hand still out, like the wooden arm of a signal, toward the chair in which he sat looking carelessly nonchalant. “He has come home from sea. His ship,” she seemed to see the suspicion deepen on Jethro’s open face as he glanced at the visitor’s rough hands and cheap suit, “was wrecked.”

“The Matador—wrecked off the coast of West Africa. I was second officer. A Dutch vessel ran into us. Made off without offering to help. That’s like those cowardly Dutchmen. I was hanging on to a mast for ten hours. Everything I had in the world gone, of course.”

[110] The lies rolled glibly off his ready tongue. Pamela felt her cheeks flame as if hot irons had brushed them. She did not look up. Let these two settle her fate between themselves.

Jethro took a wide stride into the room and put out his brown hand.

“Glad to see you,” he said with simple heartiness. “Glad to see any of my mother’s people at Folly Corner.”

After that they went on talking. She didn’t hear a word—only the amicable voices. That Edred was smoothly lying she felt sure; that Jethro was taking every word as solemnly as he took his Bible or the advice of his head man she felt equally sure. They were so simple, so true, these Sussex folk. They had taken her on trust. They would take him on trust too—this unscrupulous jail-bird, her lover, hero, the wrecker of her life.

Why couldn’t she stand up and say:

“We are both liars and impostors. He is no sailor; merely a shady city man who has just served his time for dishonesty”?

He was talking cleverly of the sea, using nautical terms, fashioning his sentences tersely and rudely like a bluff sailor. What a clever, heartless villain he was—and how she loved him!

Nettie came in to lay the cloth for dinner. Pamela got up and walked across the room mechanically, beckoning to the maid to follow.

When they were outside in the sunny, narrow corridor she said—looking steadily into the girl’s unexpressive eyes:

[111] “That gentleman is my brother—Mr. Edred Crisp.”

“The piker!—oh, miss, I ask your pardon.”

“He is a sailor,” Pamela went on steadily, “and he was wrecked. He went through dreadful hardships. Everything he had was lost at sea. He was obliged to sell machines for a living. It was quite by accident that he happened to come here and find me.”

“It was Providence sent him, miss.”

“Yes, Providence—of course. And you will lay for one extra at dinner, and you will get the best room ready.”

“To be sure I will, miss. Wrecked at sea! Whatever will Cook say when I tells her?”

“And Nettie.”

“Yes, miss. How pale you look, miss! It’s shook you, and no wonder.”

“Here are the keys. Get out some little things for dessert. I’ve told you how to manage for dessert. And the best table linen—and everything of the best.”

“To be sure, miss.”

She went back to the parlor. It struck a gray note after the stream of hopeful sun in the corridor. The yew—impenetrable, glistening, green—blocked the latticed window; logs on the yawning brick hearth had broken in the middle amid a wreck of wood-ash. She dropped on her knees and began to ply the bellows. Presently the smoke and flames curled blue and yellow round the wood, and reflected on her face, remorselessly showing the careworn[112] line of her mouth and the hopeless droop of her lids. Edred had taken a piece of paper from his pocket and was drawing a pretended plan of something—it didn’t matter what—lies, of course—and he was talking glibly of the different parts of a ship and the habits of the natives off the coast of West Africa. Her hands moved softly on the bellows, and the gentle plaintive “shoo-shoo” as they puffed made a sad accompaniment to that high-pitched, eager voice and the occasional slow, mellow note of Jethro’s.

He was talking in his innocence of his mother’s brother. He spoke of the other uncle—Thomas—who had also been a sailor. He said that a love of the sea was evidently in the Crisp blood. And then he added heartily that he hoped Edred would make a long stay; the place was large enough and there was always a home for kindred. Pamela said nothing. She looked round fitfully from time to time. She blew the bellows more vigorously, with a fancy that the ruddy light should fall on those two faces near the table—one big and ruddy and restful, the other dark, sallow, full of a guilty, eager brilliance.

She could hardly breathe. Her heart was playing her such mad pranks. At one moment she could feel nothing but the most lawless, unrestrained delight at Edred’s return to her—in any circumstance. At the next she felt a profound pity for her own extraordinary position and the sudden sinister twirl of her fortunes. On Jethro she bestowed only one emotion, and that—mild contempt. The queer feminine twist—small regard for the man who[113] blindly loves and is gulled—was strong in her. She had illogically looked to him to get her out of her difficulty. He was, in his ignorance, making things harder; he was placidly wrecking his own life. He loved her. She would have made him a good wife; she had a very grateful regard for him. If only she had gone to Turle ten minutes before! If she had been quicker in changing her gown! If, if, if! The little word, which sometimes means so much more than the very biggest in the language, chimed in her racked head.

How should she shape her course? Edred’s nautical sentences, coming to her now and then in a nonsensical jumble, disposed her to a sailor’s simile. With him under the same roof, with him in daily association, she could see only one thing possible—elopement with him when, if ever, he chose to suggest it. One kiss on the mouth from him would take her from Jethro, even at the moment when she stood with that confiding, admirable simpleton at the altar steps. One kiss, she shuddered, would win her from Jethro even if she were his wife of years’ standing. Contemptible, animal, womanly devotion!

Nettie came in again and lingered curiously, staring at the visitor. She had taken off her pink cotton and put on her black stuff, with the white collar and cuffs. The lappets of her cap floated to her neat waist. Pamela, with disgust, saw Edred look at her approvingly. She had often seen him look like that at any pretty parlor-maid they happened to have at the boarding-house. It was a low[114] type of man who would smirk at a servant. He was really very vulgar; he hadn’t one good quality. And yet—she wished that big, stupid Jethro would leave them alone for a moment!

She hung the bellows on the nail and scrambled to her feet.

“You’d like to come up to your room,” she said, her pleading gray eyes on the flushed dark face and her feet moving toward the door.

He got up with alacrity. The ginger tweeds he wore were too short at the arms and legs, too wide across the back, but nothing could make him look anything but carelessly elegant. He had the lethargic air of the true Piccadilly product—the men you jostle by the dozen on the pavement there, who have just life enough and energy enough to put on an immaculate frock-coat, with a wired flower in the buttonhole.

They went up the oak stairs and into the best spare room. Pamela shut the door.

“It’s a bigger room than I’ve been accustomed to,” he said, with a shrug of his thin shoulders and a bitter smile.

“If you were more ashamed,” she said, trying to let condemnation get the stronger hold of her, “I should be more pleased. You are not ashamed; you are not silent.”

“Why should I be? To be found out is a blunder. I am annoyed, that’s all. I was a catspaw—in other words, a fool. Overent and Bladden both got off to Spain: £40,000 in the cab that took them to Victoria! What luck! I tell you, Pamela,[115] the thought of those two fellows nearly drove me to suicide when I was in prison. But the game isn’t up——”

She gave a little scream; then, in a fright, put her hand on her mouth.

“But you’ll never again——”

“Pooh! my darling—business is business. Bogus company promoting is as honest a profession as—stock-broking, for example, or making a corner. Suppose the gold-fields, or diamond-fields, or petroleum-wells don’t exist—that’s business. If not, where is the use of fools? The small capitalist must have been created with some object.”

“You are hopeless. I dread to think of what the end may be. At all events”—she moved her head toward the door and tapped her foot softly on the floor—“you’ll leave him alone.”

“I’ll be a pattern. As for him—there is nothing left for me to do. I leave him entirely to you. Marry him. Perhaps you know a pretty girl with a little fortune who would suit me.”

She thought of Nancy, and immediately an unreasoning, murderous jealousy of that pink-faced, foolish thing took possession of her. She sat down on the low window-seat. The casement was hooked back, and the new shoots of ivy tickled her chin as she leaned out with a tired groan and looked down at the glistening garden. Then she pulled herself back to every-day detail with a jerk, and got up, saying that she would send him up what was necessary—brushes, soap, and so on. The room had not yet been prepared. The silk quilt was spread[116] gauntly over a blanketless bed. Edred was looking at it and at the dim hangings with idle interest.

“You don’t often see a bed like this nowadays,” he said.

“It is a state bed, in a way. They were all born in it; they all die in it. Full of ghosts! I’d rather you slept in it than I.”

“I’m inured to them—the prison’s full. Not the ghosts of small capitalists who come wringing their hands for their swamped savings; only women and weaklings see ghosts of that kind. It was one ghost of lost opportunity—that tormented me; the ghost of £40,000 collared by Overent and Bladden, who were a shade more clever than I was.”

She took up a corner of the patchwork quilt.

“It is made,” she said dreamily, “from bits of wedding dresses. Each bride contributed her patches. It is a pretty idea—the people about here are full of fancies.”

“You’ll be contributing your patches before long,” he said airily. “By Jove! I, as only brother, must give you away. We never imagined that particular position in the old days, Pam.”

“I don’t admit it now.” She shook her pale head. “Oh, why did you come? Why am I fool enough to love you?”

“No heroics, dear. I’m fond of you—too fond to stand in your light. I won’t dispute that I’ve some regard for myself, too. Run away now and send me a few things. I want to make myself as decent as these confounded clothes will allow.”

She went away. Directly Jethro heard her foot[117] on the stairs he called her, in a masterful way, just as if she already belonged to him.

He said, his face shining with hospitality and kinsmanship, how pleased he was. He spoke of driving Edred over to Turle that very day, but she negatived it as skillfully as she could. Then he spoke heartily of the wedding and of Edred’s opportune arrival. She was afraid that he meant to kiss her again; he seemed prone to hearty lover’s kisses, without considering mood or asking for permission. Nettie, bearing a steaming soup tureen, saved her.

The gong—one of her civilized institutions—was beaten. Edred came humming down the shallow stairs. The three took their seats at the low, narrow table—Jethro on the high master’s stool at one end, Pamela on the other, Edred modestly at the side.

Both men ate and talked heartily, Pamela childishly crumbled bread in her soup. When the meal was over she left them; decanters on the table, the smoke of tobacco mingling with the smoke from the fire. She went into the gay drawing-room and stretched flat on the sofa.

She looked at the trivial vanities which she had brought home so joyfully from Liddleshorn. She looked, as Gainah had looked, with somber eyes. Her life was wrecked too. She would never be the mistress of Folly Corner now.

Through the stout doors came the men’s laughter. Edred’s became more roystering as the minutes ticked on. She could hear in the intervals the[118] steady stroke of the clock, the rumbling groan it gave before it delivered itself of the quarters.

Her arms were above her head, her widely-opened eyes looked across the hot purple furrows of the field. She could see a long way, over hedges, across copses. She saw stretches of pasture, dotted with cows; saw verdant fields of rye-grass; fields of turnips half devoured by sheep, which were shut in by hurdles.

The sun shone, the birds sang, one or two adventurous bees came in at the window. Every now and then that laugh of license, of reckless disregard, pierced the thick doors, and she blenched. She could no longer see the future.

[119]

CHAPTER IX.

AUNT SOPHY was giving her first garden party of the season—to her second-best set. That meant a family gathering, with the Jeremy Crisps left out. Maria Furlonger drew the line at the Jeremy Crisps, and said she did her duty to them as a relative by buying groceries at their father’s shop.

Edred was to go with Pamela. He was already a local favorite. He had all the qualities which commend themselves to country society. He could sing, play tennis, do conjuring tricks at the local entertainments.

Jethro wasn’t going; men with a serious occupation were never even asked. Aunt Sophy collected her men painfully; a town failure or so, who happened to be trying poultry farming or fruit culture—having tried everything else of which he knew anything whatever; the curate; one or two old gentlemen who had retired from something or the other, one or two young ones who admired a particular girl.

Pamela ran out to the barn before she started. Jethro was at the door, with a couple of half-bred retrievers at his heels and a trio of mongrel pups that he was training for sheep-dogs gamboling in the muck of the yard.

The vast proportions of the barn—the biggest and[120] oldest for many miles round—were a fitting background for Jethro with his muscular frame and fair, sun-seared face. He was so English, so brown, so spare. There was nothing of the student’s pallor and stoop about him—no irritating subtlety. There was no furrow in his face, no ridge of superfluous flesh, no mark of painful thought. It was all tough muscle. Pamela looked at him admiringly, her desire going out to strength and health and simplicity of life and motive. The clean shocks of yellow straw in the barn, the dirty, trodden straw in the yard, agreed well with his blue checked shirt and tan waistcoat; with his voluminous checked tie, made in the time-honored rustic fashion. His father had worn such ties and his father before him. What had been seemly in “Old Jethro” was seemly in “Young Jethro”; that was the spirit of Folly Corner. It was a blue check tie made out of half a silk handkerchief, cut cornerwise and deftly folded into proper shape by the iron. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, showing his delicately textured upper arm. He had been helping his men with some necessary job—he was a master, by heredity, of all the intricate sublime art of agriculture. She said:

“We are going now. I wish you could come too.”

As she spoke, a loud angry hiss came from behind the house. It was like the threatening bubble of a pot that is boiling too fast.

“Chalcraft is taking a starling’s nest,” Jethro said. “Tell Aunt Sophy I may be up after tea.”

[121] He turned into the barn, through the dim shadow of which she could see two men, Peter Hone and another. She turned to go back through the yard, placing the points of her shoes carefully on the ground so that she might not soil above the toe-cap. Edred was leaning over the white paling and watching her gingerly progress with amusement.

“Beastly dirty place, isn’t it?” he said, sneering and glancing down at the trodden straw. “I say, what a jolly dance you could have in that great barn! Do you remember the dance I took you to at Westminster Town Hall?”

She nodded, hardly glancing at his slim, foppish figure. He was tinsel compared to Jethro—Jethro with his muscular arms bared amid the golden straw of his barn. She saw poetry in the vast gray place, with its dusty, murky rafters; to Edred it only suggested a subscription dance and Westminster Town Hall. For the moment she preferred Jethro, with his white strong throat.

They went down the road and through the wood, talking commonplaces. Edred had been nearly three months at Folly Corner, and one cannot for three months keep up the strain of a dramatic attitude. Pamela still had her moments of anguish, of struggle—but she no longer talked about those moments. She waited with turgid, stupid hopelessness for what the future might fling at her. She drifted; the matter had been taken completely out of her hands. She was—so she understood—to be married to Jethro directly the harvest was in: until the[122] harvest was in, she allowed herself time to breathe. She was garnering up strength.

The woods were in their fullest flush of beauty. The anemones were widely blown, with the quiet watchfulness which comes before death. The heavy heads of the blue-bells were voluptuous. Here and there one caught the deep yellow of the oxlip; snowy stitchwork was a delicate groundwork to every leaf and flower.

No feet but their own disturbed the silence. Jethro was savage on the rights of property, and this was his land. No old woman might pick up sticks, no child gather wild-flowers in his preserves. They were small; he was fond of saying scornfully that he was a working farmer, not a rich yard-stick from London. He did not make pheasants the sole business of October, and what he shot he ate or gave away. The contents of his bag never went to market.

He had the grasping spirit of the farmer who flourished in the early years of the century, in the roaring times before Parish Councils and educated, supercilious cockneys, keen on rights of way. He would, when the opportunity occurred, put a padlocked, five-barred gate across a little-used public path. He cunningly inclosed wayside waste, doing it gradually; grubbing the old hedge, bringing his newly planted, carefully clipped one to the edge of the road. He honestly believed that he was doing a good act; in his view, all waste land was wasted land, and he would have had the Government parcel out the commons to farmers for redemption.

[123] Edred kept his eyes on the ground and grumbled at the deep yellow ruts made in winter by timber wagons and horses’ hoofs. But Pamela forgot her dainty shoes, the edge of her new skirt, with the tiny frills. She looked ardently at every new beauty which slid before her eyes—bursting twigs, drifted blossom, dry, feathery fagots tied into bundles, little heaps of creamy wood chips; the hacked hedge-rows and banks, with the warm orange of the amputated tree-trunks.

It was early June. The day was so hot and dry that when they reached Turle they could see from the road that even careful matrons like Aunt Sophy were sitting about the big sloping lawn without even a shawl. They made little groups—like modern pictures of the ladies in the “Decameron.”

Nancy came running across the lawn, her heavy red-ringed croquet mallet in her hand. She had a loose flannel shirt and her cycling skirt with the big smoked pearl buttons at each hip.

“A cycling skirt always makes a girl look coarse,” Edred murmured critically.

Pamela gave him a pleased glance; she loved to hear him depreciate Nancy.

“Oh! do come and play!” cried the girl, addressing herself pointedly to Edred. “We are making up a fresh set. Croquet is such fun.”

Pamela, the thin stream of gall flowing from her heart, saw him return Nancy’s pleading, babyish glance tenderly. She turned away. She took Aunt Sophy’s effusive kiss without a word, only assuring her that she hadn’t a headache.

[124] Egbert Turle, who had left Cambridge and was walking the hospital, nodded with patronage from his post by the tennis-net. He came dutifully to Turle every week.

Mrs. Clutton ran along the grass in her careless gown.

“Come and sit under the elms with me,” she said.

There were several ladies under the elms, in green wooden chairs with sloping backs. They had not come to play tennis or croquet; their sole aim was to talk scandal, snub people in the set a shade beneath their own, and drink astringent tea. They wore long skirts and elaborate light wraps, as distinguished from the athletic women a few paces off, who were running about and screaming to each other in the sun.

The earnest topic of the moment turned out to be false hair. Mrs. McAlpine had confessed to an increasing thinness on the left temple. Her doctor told her that she used the right side of the brain too much—and darkly hinted that she must go up to Lechaux—a hairdresser recommended by the ladies’ paper—and get a front. Annie Jayne cried out in earnest horror:

“Oh, don’t! My mother never wore false hair in her life. She took to caps when she was thirty-five. I shall take to caps myself in a year or two—they look matronly.”

“But no one wears caps nowadays,” cried Mrs. Clutton tersely. “Women buy false hair instead of lace. If, since the creation, each woman had done[125] just as her mother did, fig-leaves would still be the height of fashion.”

Mrs. McAlpine, who had the greatest contempt for the journalist’s wife—she was a J. P.’s daughter and the widow of a Government official—broke out in her languidly genteel voice:

“I was afraid I should have been prevented from coming, dear Mrs. Turle. One can’t possibly attend a garden-party in a coat and skirt”; she looked complacently at her embroidered bodice, “and my lost box only turned up last night.”

The face of every lady immediately became solemnly sympathetic.

“I told you all about it, didn’t I? I’d been visiting at Warne—taking my best things, of course. The things, you know”—she gave a quick glance of her narrow eyes at Mrs. Clutton—“that one takes with one on a visit at a house where they are—well, rather particular. Dear Laura entertains so largely at Warne.”

One or two ladies on the edge of the second-best set looked at her with reverential alarm. Here was a person who visited on such positively equal terms at Warne, the biggest seat for miles round, that she called the hostess by her Christian name!

“I was in despair.” She flattened out her hands. “My box lost! My diamond comb and pendant, my jeweled girdle, a miniature set with diamonds that was given to my great-uncle by the Duke of Wellington, my ivory-backed brushes and silver toilet set—all the small, necessary trifles that one takes on a visit.”

[126] “And you got them back?” asked a little lady breathlessly.

She was a shabby Jayne. Sophy did not often ask her to a garden-party, and she was feverishly voluble and deprecating in turn. She had a home-made blouse, with a funny tucker, and very new black kid gloves, the perfect palms of which she constantly displayed.

“I got it back,” Mrs. McAlpine said carelessly, giving the home-made blouse a look of amiable condescension. “But you may all imagine how I felt; one sets such store by one’s poor trifles.”

A massive girl, with a white gown, threw down her mallet as a member of the opposition clicked her ball against the stick.

“I can’t play any more; too slow,” she said. “I’ll tell somebody’s fortune instead.”

“My dear”—the dowdy Jayne cousin looked alarmed—“do you think that it is in quite good taste?”

She stopped with a jerk as Mrs. McAlpine said sweetly:

“Palmistry is all the rage just now in the best houses. Prejudice of any sort is so very middle-class. We had a professional palmist at Lady Clara’s last week, when I ran up to Grosvenor Gardens for her reception. She implored me to come; we are such very old friends.”

“Mother always thought it was best to ignore such things as fortune-telling, table-turning, scientific lectures, and anything unsettling,” Annie[127] Jayne said simply. “I don’t think I’ll have mine told, Isabel.”

Half a dozen hands were held out. The girl in white went round phlegmatically.

She distributed journeys, legacies, surprises, and mishaps with equal calm. When it came to Mrs. Clutton’s turn she held out her pretty hand, a little coarsened by devotion to her neurotic fowls and her garden, with pretended nervousness. Isabel looked at it thoughtfully and murmured something about the lines not being very clear—a certain one, at least, confusing.

“Don’t say anything dreadful. Don’t tell me I’m going to be hanged; I’ve always had a foreboding that I shall be; and Tim—my husband, you know—used to say in his most savagely dyspeptic moments that I certainly deserved the fate.”

Isabel dropped the roughened hand suddenly.

“I can’t make out your fortune,” she said coldly. “There is no one else, is there? Yours is settled, Pamela. I’ll go and have a game of tennis, if Egbert will join—croquet’s duffing.”

She moved away in her statuesque fashion, her white skirt bellowing out in the May breeze. There was a sudden coldness and constraint. Even diplomatic Mrs. Turle looked vexed.

Mrs. Clutton made a mouth at Pamela, and said:

“Shall we go and have a look at Nancy’s flowers in the walled garden?”

They skirted the shrubbery, with its clumps of yellow berberis and laurustinus gone shabby. There[128] was a swing between the double-flowered cherry trees; Nancy still used it—on rare occasions when she read fiction. Usually she was honestly intent on improving her mind. A thick volume lay face downward on the seat. Mrs. Clutton picked it up, read the title, and dropped the book with a gesture of distaste.

“Nancy shouldn’t be allowed to read that woman’s stories.”

“She is very popular.”

“She ought to lecture—‘for men only.’ However, Nancy won’t hurt; she won’t understand—half. She is a little more than shallow; all surface, like a dish—not even a well-dish. Nancy and Isabel Crisp—you know Isabel is staying here now that Egbert is down from the hospital—will read the same book. One reads a bit, puts in a marker; the other takes up the book, reads on from the marker, then puts it in where she leaves off. That’s how they get through. I’m fond of Nancy—she’s so picturesquely idiotic. Of course, she will marry your brother?”

Pamela dropped the almond-scented stalk of plum-colored wallflower which she had pulled and was sticking in her belt.

“I—I don’t know. Oh, no! I wouldn’t let him marry Nancy.”

Mrs. Clutton looked at her suspiciously.

She said meaningly, “There is one man in the world for you—Jethro Jayne. A woman has only to concern herself about her husband. Of course your brother will be cruel to Nancy in his own particular[129] fashion. Some kick with their feet, some lash with their tongues—I prefer the former; they kiss a bruise, but no man’s lips can reach a woman’s heart. After all, he’ll make a better husband than that prig, Egbert Turle; he’s going to marry Isabel Crisp. He’s insufferable. He would divide the animal kingdom into four groups: the lower animals, hospital cases, human beings, and ’Varsity men. He talks of nothing but dissecting-rooms. He alludes constantly to the ‘laity.’”

Mrs. McAlpine’s genteel voice filtered through the shrubs.

“I knew the dear Duchess very well—in her maiden days. We visited at the same house in the Midlands.”

“That humbug! Her motto is ‘Who’s who?’ I don’t believe that she ever got farther than the housekeeper’s room at Warne. Some day, when I’ve bought enough oak and china, I’ll devote a little time to unmasking her. Tea will be served in half an hour. There’s dear Mrs. Turle going weightily toward the house to coach her three maids how to set cups.”

“Gainah is like that—or was before I deposed her. Cook did nothing but wash dishes.”

“You may sort women into two classes: those who can’t touch a chicken unless they’ve cleaned it themselves, and those who, if they are obliged to clean it, can’t eat it. Do come with me to Mrs. Hone’s—this way; through the gate, across the field, and into the Liddleshorn road. She has a Chippendale teatray which she has half promised[130] to sell. We shall have plenty of time before tea.”

They went across the field, black-horned cattle following them curiously. Occasional cottages sparsely dotted the straight road leading to Liddleshorn. Two new ones, with vivid roofs of smooth tiles running up in conical shape to a chimney like an exaggerated pimple, had a blue metal plate lettered with white between the narrow doors.

“You are pretty safe in saying that every singularly ugly cottage is tenanted by the county police. Mrs. Hone lives at this next one with the bush of Jew’s mallow.”

They went in single file up the narrow flag path. Sheets of white candytuft crept coldly along the edge of the borders from the wooden gate to the door. In the little patch of kitchen garden row after row of cabbage with a blue bloom looked to Pamela like a generously flung out art carpet. The man at the best shop in Liddleshorn had shown her one just that shade. Straight ahead, across the railway bridge, a train shot past, the tails of smoke like drifting opal under the bright sun.

Mrs. Hone was hobbling about her garden.

“Poor old dear! She looks like a camel whose hump has slipped. Now, you must say nothing, look nothing—or you’ll spoil my bargain. Good-afternoon, Mrs. Hone. How’s the rheumatism?”

The sweet wrinkled face lifted and a thin voice said shrilly:

“It aint what you call rheumatism, ma’am; it’s paralism, that’s what I tells Dr. Frith.”

[131] “You’re busy in your garden. I’ve been working very hard in mine. Your broad beans are in blossom. And you’ve planted out your French marigolds already.”

“Aye. But I doubt the frost ’ull nip ’em.”

She laughed; the pretty, brainless cackle of a very old woman—the light laugh something like a child’s and yet with the knell of decay in it.

“When I plants out they little seedlin’s I thinks o’ my children—all planted out; some in London, some on the hill. Some livin’ to blossom, some nipped by the frost. I’ve had thirteen, bless you! You’ll step inside?”

They went into the tiny living room, the strangely twisted mistress painfully leading the way. At a round table an old man sat at tea—bread, lettuce that had bolted, a handful of spring onions. The mahogany tray that Mrs. Clutton coveted was on a ledge beside the low-burning fire. The old wife stepped up to her husband and shook him none too gently by the shoulder, dropping her head at the same time, and shouting:

“Get up and let the ladies come to the fire.”

To them she added apologetically:

“He’s very old. I’m only seventy-eight, but he’s pretty nigh eighty. Deaf, too. I can’t make him hear—not when I wants him to do anything. I very offen say to him, ‘You don’t want to hear; you don’t want to hear, that’s what it is,’ I says.”

He turned round savagely at the touch of her hand on his shoulder and looked at the two women in light gowns on the threshold.

[132] “What are you doing?” he demanded gruffly. “Damn it all, I means to have my tea.”

“He’s been one of those who lash and kick, too—the brute. And she such a sweet old fragrant thing! Never mind, Mrs. Hone; don’t you trouble to move, Mr. Hone; we should be sorry to disturb your tea.”

Mrs. Clutton squeezed round the other side of the table and took the tray in her hands. It was oval, cut out of the solid wood, and daintily inlaid with box.

“You’d sell this, Mrs. Hone?”

“The lady wants to know if we’ll sell the tray.”

“What’s she goin’ to give we for it?” he demanded sharply.

“Ten shillings!” screamed Mrs. Clutton.

“No, no! We couldn’t let it go for that. I thought fifteen.”

“Too much.” She put the tray back on the ledge.

He stuffed the last hunk of bread into his fierce old mouth, and spluttered out:

“Will you give twelve-and-six?”

“Well—yes. Is that settled?”

“You must settle with missus. I’m only a lodger.”

His eyes glittered at the half-sovereign she took from her purse and laid in Mrs. Hone’s hand.

“Yes, he’s only a lodger, as I often tells him when he’s tiresome. It’s my house. I was borned here—my brother left it me; he says, ‘You was borned here and you shall die here.’ My father built it[133] and my brother added on this front room. His wife wanted to pull the old place down and put up a new; but he says, ‘No; what the father’s hands had put up the son’s should never pull down.’”

She kept laughing feebly and looking at them, from one to the other, with her dim eyes, deep in the web of seventy-eight years.

“It’s my cottage, and that’s why they won’t give me parish relief. It’s very hard. I ses to ’em, ‘I can’t fill my poor empty belly with bricks and mortar. An’ I am so fond of a bit of meat.’”

She was like a small child begging for sweets.

“Haven’t you any daughter to come in and look after you?”

“No. My daughter died fifty-five year ago. She was a pretty little gal. He’s my second husband, you know.” She nodded her head toward the deaf man, who, mollified by the gold, was munching vegetables like an amiable donkey. “My first husband died. He was coachman at Warne. When the new one come I was told to turn out of my nice cottage. So I married him. I couldn’t leave my nice cottage, could I, my dears? I was a silly gal and got married agen. I married the new coachman. That was before my brother died and left me this. If I’d known he was going to die and leave me this cottage when I was borned, I wouldn’t ha’ been a silly gal and got married agen. He was a dwarf, my brother. You come agen some day, and I’ll show you his trousers. I’ll show you my husband’s trousers, too. I got four shillin’s prize at the show last year for the best patch put on her husband’s[134] trousers by an old woman over sixty. And I’m seventy-eight—there’s a difference! There did ought to be another class for them over seventy. I can use my needle. Mother always taught us to use our needles. The gals nowadays can’t put a shirt together.”

“Tea will be ready at Turle,” whispered Pamela.

“Yes. We must go. Good-by, Mrs. Hone; good-day, Mr. Hone. I’ll take the tray under my arm. Oh, don’t you bother about paper.”

They went down the uneven path with the stiff lines of snowy flowers.

“Poor old soul!” said Pamela, when they reached the road.

“Did she take you in with what she so eloquently calls her ‘poor, empty belly’? I left off being sentimental long ago. Mrs. Hone has a fat account in the post-office savings bank. I know that for a fact.”

“Shall we hurry a little? I hate to keep Aunt Sophy waiting, or to vex her. She didn’t like your remark about being hanged.”

“Of course she didn’t. Wasn’t it fun to see them petrify? No doubt they’ve been discussing me; saying what bad taste it was to set up a gallows-tree at a garden party. I give them endless topics for conversation. They don’t believe me even when I do tell the truth. There was a comic song Tim used to sing, ‘The only time I told the truth she said I was a liar.’ That is just my position. I tell the unvarnished truth: that my husband is a journalist traveling in search of sensation. They[135] don’t believe me. If he were doing time at Portland and I said he was stalking big game, my social popularity would rival Mrs. McAlpine’s. Here’s your brother Edred coming across the meadow to look for us. He’s a very handsome man; not a bit like you. He reminds me of some splendid snake. Do you understand? As his sister, you won’t. You’ll only be shocked; there is a strong streak of the local prudery and orthodoxy about you, Pamela. I could go to destruction with a man of that type—hating him and myself all the time.”

[136]

CHAPTER X.

JETHRO was hoeing peas in the burning June sun. His white linen hat flapped over his calm, shrewd eyes. Pamela, loitering along the grass paths, marveled intolerantly at his choice of an occupation. Why should a man of substance, a man of birth, a man with acres and with laborers, hoe peas? She paced the paths thoughtfully, looking at her neat, broad border of new roses, taking up a fluttering label now and then to read the half-obliterated name. They were all the very latest and choicest roses, and had been planted in the spring by the nurseryman at Liddleshorn, to whom she had given a large order.

Her heart told her that Edred was close behind, and she turned, her eyes seeking his humbly, pleading for tender recognition. He did not trouble to look at her, but merely plucked one of her beautiful pink Verdier roses without permission, and stuck it in his coat, with a scornful laugh at its huge size.

Jethro, across his little heaps of flagging weeds and clods of yellow earth, watched the two gloomily. He was tired of Pamela’s elegant brother; he was suspicious, although he could not have explained why. His welcome to the shipwrecked stranger had been warm—it had even extended to a free drawing on his check-book; but he did not[137] want his kinsman’s-hospitality to be construed into a life invitation. He remembered a funny story he had once heard about an engaging Irishman who had come on a month’s visit to a country house and stayed forty-five years. Edred had lamed his best horse; he had considerably reduced the cask of old whisky; he dipped too deeply into the tobacco-jar. He might stay until the wedding, and when that was over he must take himself off—to the West Coast of Africa, to another wreck, if he chose. The busy man, hoeing peas not because it was necessary but as a positive outlet for his energy, was heartily sick of the idle one, who strolled languidly along the rose border, the smoke from his cigar making a lean, blue string.

The wicket-gate creaked. Pamela looked up sharply. Heels clattered on the raised brick path, and a blithe voice called out, “Where are you all?”

“It’s Nancy.”

Edred moved forward so abruptly that he broke the long ash of his cigar, which he had been carefully preserving. Pamela followed. A tall, slim figure stood for a moment in the frame of the shining holly arch at the entrance of the garden. The sun caught Nancy’s masses of brick-red hair and enveloped her pretty face in flame. She called out to Jethro:

“Mother wants you to tell me how much you think she ought to get a load for her hay. Write it down, please, or I am sure to forget.”

She met Pamela at the beginning of the grass path. They kissed. Edred watched the tame little salute[138] cynically. Then he took Nancy’s hand in the cycling glove with the perforated palm—like a thin crumpet—and watched her white lids fall. She was such a child that she never tried to hide her feelings.

Pamela dragged off a great branch of damask rose and tore her fingers.

“You should always cut roses,” Nancy said reprovingly, taking up a label. “Francesca Kruger—that’s flesh, tinged with saffron, isn’t it?”

“Copper,” returned Pamela curtly.

“I wish we could have some good roses. Evergreen isn’t successful with flowers. But he lets us have plenty of vegetables. I came to know if you would both come over to Malling Flower Show next Thursday. We could bike—that would be great fun, wouldn’t it? Mr. Meadows has asked me to judge the wild flowers, and I feel so horribly nervous. But I’ve been reading it up.”

“You can’t go to Malling,” Pamela said, looking sternly at the weak, radiant face, and hating Nancy all the more fiercely because her temples were so purely white, and because the ruddy hair grew round them so charmingly. “It’s lecture-day at Liddleshorn—the nursing lecture. It will be very interesting; we are going to bandage a small boy.”

“But I don’t care for the lecture. We are not going to finish the course. Annie says that her mother—Aunt Jerusha—thought scientific nursing a great mistake, and always said that no woman could expect to be a good nurse until she had been the mother of a large family and had buried two-thirds of it. You must come to Malling.”

[139] She was speaking to Pamela, but her blue eyes were on Edred.

“I’ll come, anyhow,” he said lightly. “I’ll call at Turle about three. Will that do? Pamela would rather go to Liddleshorn and bandage her small boy.”

“That would be fun. And you’ll come into supper afterward. I must go now. Mother told me to look in at Hone’s—Nick Hone’s.”

“Where there are so many children?” asked Pamela, her gloomy eyes on the straight line of beauty afforded by her choice roses.

“No. Those are the Peter Hones. The Bert Hones live near us. But Nick Hone is a neighbor of yours. Jethro!” she called out shrilly, and he came across the rough, dry ground, hoe in hand, “do send poor Nick Hone in some new potatoes. You have plenty.” She glanced along the beds at the rows in white blossom. “He’s dying, and he keeps saying that if he had a dish of new potatoes he’d get better. Mrs. Hone went and dug some yesterday, but they were only as large as cob-nuts. Mother would have sent some, but Evergreen is a little touchy. He doesn’t like us to interfere with the vegetables.”

“Daborn shall take a trug full,” said Jethro carelessly. “Dying, is he? That’s drink. Never knew such a fellow! Three gallons of cider a day at harvest time wasn’t enough for him. The other men save some and take it home to their wives.”

“That is kind of you. Mrs. Hone will be so[140] pleased. I’ll be off now. Three o’clock on Thursday, Mr. Crisp.”

He seemed amused by her adorable air of sheepishness when he took her hand. They all four went out into the inclosed garden, Jethro and Pamela dropping behind as a matter of course—his eyes on her, and hers fixed blankly on the well-cut back of Edred’s coat. Jethro picked up a flat wooden basket, with pieces of wood at the bottom like the rockers of a cradle. It stood by a row of early peas.

“Here’s a trug. Daborn shall take it to Hone when he goes home to dinner. Here, Daborn!”

He put his earthy, hard hand to his mouth and shouted. Pamela saw the man hurrying from the greenhouse, where he was getting young tomato plants ready for planting out. She followed Nancy and Edred, dreading to leave them alone for a moment, despising herself for dreading. They had just passed through the holly hedge. She scurried after, not knowing why she put her feet so softly on the gravel and coaxed her skirt close to her limbs so that it should not brush the box edging. When she stood in the frame of the arch she stopped. Her clear, jealous eyes went straight across the garden, across the bed of newly-planted cauliflowers which Chalcraft had been allowed to dibble in for the last time—next year she would have a lawn and carriage-drive. She looked across the brick path, through the tall heads of June flowers, to the umbrella yew-tree beneath which Gainah’s lilies were blooming.

They were standing behind it, between the thick[141] foliage and the square lattice of the dining-parlor window. She saw Edred peer through to see if the room was empty. She saw Nancy, her head down, her arms and hands jerking, pretending to admire the lilies—bemoaning, in her imbecile way, no doubt, because Evergreen would not let her have lilies too.

They were very close together in the bosky kindness of the yew; no doubt it had been a witness to many like scenes and been discreet. Nancy seemed to sway a bit nearer the lithe figure in gray. Pamela saw his face and her heart came to a startled stop. He had looked like that when he kissed her for the first time—on the stairs of the boarding-house. It had been the first man’s kiss of her life.

Nancy’s eyes and cheeks and lips blazed like her ruddy hair. He pulled her toward him with the easy, insolent air of a man who is sure of his woman—who has been sure of women all his life—and kissed her on lids, lips, brows.

Pamela, wearing a white cotton gown, her head bare, looked like statue—one of the statues that used to decorate old gardens. She forgot everything—her approaching marriage and magnificence, her border of tea roses, the carriage-drive, her wedding clothes—all the big and little things which equally made her happiness or misery. For the first time for many months she seemed to touch her past self. She had almost forgotten, in the new strong life, the old one of dull days, and sloppy streets, and shop-windows, and a struggle for the latest fashion at the least possible cost. She was again that sharp-witted[142] girl in Bloomsbury, that wildly wretched one who used to take omnibus in spare hours just to stand on the common and stare hungrily at a wall.

He was kissing Nancy; he meant to marry her. She couldn’t let him do that. She must abandon Jethro. Her life must run side by side with Edred’s. She didn’t care what sort of life—one of poverty, hard work, hard words; blows, perhaps. One of guilty prosperity, winding up with the prison again for him. It didn’t matter—so long as they were together, if only for a little. He didn’t love her. He wasn’t capable, as she knew love. But she loved him, even when she saw him stoop again to those red pouting lips behind the yew. All her rage was for Nancy.

Daborn came behind with the trug full of yellow-skinned potatoes. She stepped back and watched him go through the yard, and presently watched Nancy go down the bricked path, mount her bicycle, and skim away like a light swallow. Nancy had forgotten the marked quotation for hay. She could not carry two ideas in that limited head of hers.

The world was too gay and warm for Pamela’s blank misery. The hot sun darted into her strained eyes like needles. She went round the house, hugging the lichened wall, her head down, the woolly leaves and spiral tendrils of the vine touching her dull hair. At the garden door she met Gainah, with a flush on her wasted face and a gleam of the old industry and importance in her cold eyes. She was attired in a loose garment of unbleached calico, cut like an antiquated bathing garment. Her skirts[143] were bunched under it. She had a battered straw hat, round which was firmly fixed a veil of green net. A pair of old stockings were pulled over her hands and arms. She carried a tin frying-pan, which she constantly beat with a long iron skimmer.

The air was hot and noisy. There seemed an unusual commotion along the line of beehives which were set by the south wall. They were straw skeps, which in winter were covered with turf to keep out the cold. Pamela, who had read up bee-keeping, with other branches of country life, had long decided to have bar-frame hives when she was mistress of Folly Corner. But her knowledge of bees was only theoretical. She was very frightened of them, and the deft, fearless way in which Gainah would take a swarm excited her admiration and made her grudgingly admit that it might be a point of superiority.

The angry buzzing grew louder, the monotonous tom-tom beating of the frying-pan and skimmer more persistent.

“There’s a swarm over there in the crab-tree,” Gainah said excitedly, forgetting for the time all party feeling. “I must go and take it. They know me. They’ve been talking all the morning; I knew we should have a flitting by dinner-time.”

Pamela languidly turned her head. A dark, pear-shaped mass hung from the lower branch of the crab tree in the oat-field.

“They know I’m coming,” Gainah said, advancing and still beating, “they know everything.[144] These are fierce—I crossed them with an Italian queen ten years ago—but they never sting me. They have more sense and feeling than half the folk about. When old Bert Hone died and young Bert took the bees from his mother, they didn’t flourish. He hadn’t acted fair and they knew it. When there’s a swarm in the thatch none of the girls in a house ever get married. All Len Daborn’s girls are maids still.”

She strode on, a spare distorted figure in her calico wrapper, with the green veil tucked safely down in her scraggy throat. Pamela watched her vanish and reappear beyond the fruit-bushes. On any other day she might have asserted herself—given a wise homily on bee-keeping up to date, or deprecated old-world superstitions.

She went under the low door with the wooden hood and sat down in the dull dining-parlor, her eyes vaguely looking out of the window at the space between the casement and the yew. Nancy’s flame-colored hair and thick scarlet lips seemed to stand out in relief from the curled somber leaves.

Gainah’s work, just as she had thrown it down when the bees swarmed, was huddled on the floor, and the blue cambric hearts which she had cut ready for patching on the white dimity were dotted like huge pale turquoises on the narrow oak table.

Pamela looked at the half-made quilt. Gainah had told her once, in a moment of expansiveness, that the blue cambric and white dimity had been her mother’s wedding petticoat and gown. It was a dainty quilt, all white groundwork, with blue bordering[145] and bands and carefully cut hearts and leaves. The stitches were small and regular. Gainah sat at patchwork from breakfast until supper, now that the garden and the house were no longer under her control. In the lower drawer of her chest she already had five quilts folded neatly away in camphor.

The front door opened. Edred came in, rang the hand-bell on the table in the passage. Pamela heard voices—a little deprecating cackle, a man’s voice subdued to a cautious bass growl. Unable to bear any more, she started up, threw back the door, and advanced into the passage. As she did so, the deep rose-color of Nettie’s cotton gown whisked out of sight into the kitchen. She went, her head high on her throat, into the drawing-room, and Edred followed.

Fate seemed to decide that her moments of decided comedy or tragedy should be played in that room: the room with the ugly grate and marble mantelpiece which Jethro’s father had put in to make the place smart for Gainah; with the painted milking-stools and fretwork brackets and cheap embroideries which she had herself brought from Liddleshorn.

The roses in the blue bowls were drooping, candle-grease had dropped on to the keys of the piano, the open door of the china closet displayed dusty shelves and a floor on which the gay red-and-blue rugs were kicked up. Pamela saw these things; they reminded her sharply of the change that of late had come over her. She no longer took a housewifely[146] pride in anything; her life was occupied in playing cat, with Nancy and Edred for mice.

“Are you going to marry Nancy?” she asked abruptly.

“Are you going to marry Jethro?” he returned aptly.

“I—I suppose so. And yet, when it comes to the point—— Everything depends on you.”

She looked at him again in an appealing way.

“We’re in a bit of a mess,” he said, shrugging his thin shoulders and impatiently pulling the fine points of his black mustache.

She hunched her shoulders and clenched her hands between her knees as if she were in actual physical pain.

“Oh! why did you come?” she moaned.

“Nonsense. It was very fortunate for me. I couldn’t have kept on with sewing-machines—cut my throat, rather. And you can’t execute a coup of any kind without capital. This sort of thing isn’t permanent, of course. Old Jeth’s getting sick—he’s a good fellow. Men of that type always show their feeling in mean ways. He ought to swear at me, kick me out—he only looks blue when I fill up my glass. I must either marry Nancy—it can’t make any difference to you, Pam—or I must get a couple of hundred to set me up in life again. There are lots of good things going in the City—beastly nuisance not seeing the evening papers. My head is full of ideas. If I had a couple of hundreds I could turn them into thousands in a week. Balaclavas have run up to——”

[147] “Don’t talk to me about stocks; I don’t understand—and it is so unimportant——”

“By Jove! it’s all-important to me.”

She straightened her curved back. He saw a convulsive lump working in her throat, and the rims of her lids grew faintly pink. He frowned. She was going to cry. A woman’s tears lashed him to any sort of brutality.

“When I saw you kiss Nancy,” she broke out, “it nearly killed me.”

“So you saw! But when old Jeth kisses you, in his open, whole-hearted, smacking fashion?”

“It doesn’t affect you. Men are different—and you more different than any other man,” she said confusedly.

“This sort of thing doesn’t help us,” he cried impatiently. “Which shall it be? Turle, with Nancy as a wife and Aunt Sophy as a mother-in-law, or London, with two hundred pounds in my pocket?”

“I haven’t fifty pounds.”

“But Jethro has. Get it out of him; you’ll do it better than I should. Go to him frankly; say I’ve a scheme for making a fortune. He will be delighted to get rid of me. He’s suspicious, without knowing why, poor chap. This brother and sister humbug is the merest farce. If these people were not fools, the most generous, gullible fools in the world, they would have found us out long ago.”

He crossed to the sofa, threw himself beside her, and laxly hooked his long arm round her firm waist.

“Get me the couple of hun, Pam,” he said tenderly,[148] “and I’ll be off. Nancy is a pretty imbecile. I’ll go to town. I’ll keep out of mischief, sail just within the wind—don’t bother your dear anxious head about me. Marry old Jeth; cut a figure in the neighborhood. With his money and your brains you can be county swells.”

“And you?”

“I told you—don’t worry. Forget No. 4658.”

She started nervously.

“How can you think of that time without a shudder? Even now, when I go to sleep at night, the prison wall shoots up and blinds me. Yet you—were inside. And you say that number—the number that was you—without a tremor. I’m afraid to let you go. It will happen again.”

“Not if I know it. I was green. Overent and Bladden victimized me. Only fools are found out. Sin is a short name for stupidity. I shall never overshoot the mark again. There are fifty ways—five hundred—of making a fortune. No man but a fool need work—in these commercial days. Milligan cleared fifty thousand only last week, just by buying a concern and turning it into a company. He’s a prominent man, a politician, a baronet. Ten years ago he kept a newspaper and sweetstuff shop at Hornsey. Lady Milligan, whose drawing-room gowns are sketched in the fashion papers, boiled toffee and sold it in pennyworths. No one calls Milligan a blackguard.”

“He must have swindled somebody. It’s impossible else.”

“Of course he did. But everybody swindles[149] everybody else—that’s the commercial spirit; it has made us a great nation.”

“Jethro——”

“Was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He is a fool; without his inheritance, he’d be plowing and hay-making. Why discuss idly and waste time? The dinner gong will sound soon.”

He took out his watch. It was a costly gold hunter, which he had bought in his brief prosperous time. He had put it in her hands only half an hour before his arrest—when Overent and Bladden had flown with forty thousand pounds and he was madly packing his bag in the Bloomsbury back bedroom.

“What am I to do?”

“Get two hundred pounds out of Jethro. I will go away and make my fortune. Some day, when you read the papers—a day old,” he sneered, “you’ll see my name as chairman of a public dinner, or recipient of a testimonial. I mean to be generous—when generosity can be made to pay. I’ll present my district with a public library, a clock tower, or a drinking fountain, and be knighted.”

“You’ll come to Folly Corner sometimes?”

“Never.” Even his honor, just because he was a man, was stronger than hers. “I thought at first that it would work—you as Jethro’s wife, I as Nancy’s husband. But you are one of those emotional women who go to the devil and drag a man with them. When I leave here it will be for good. You won’t even know my address.”

“I couldn’t bear it.”

[150] Her eyes were not on him, but on the lattice. She looked across the great field, with its uplands and its belt of oaks. She had seen it in so many aspects—half shorn; plowed, the wet furrows shining like glass; seen it smoothly iced with January snow; watched the green needle-points of young grain. That outlook, that deep bay window, had known the tearing of her heart.

She looked. The ripeness of harvest was suggested. There were the long stretches of gray-green grain, soon to be golden, soon to rustle with the dry, hot breeze of August. She saw the tossed-up lavish boughs of wild roses wreathing above the hedge-rows, and saw the long grass on the banks, tropical in its growth, and going rapidly to seed.

She couldn’t stay here and watch the changes of the season for years—year after year and then death—without word of him.

“I couldn’t bear it,” she repeated.

“You wouldn’t be fool enough to throw Jethro over? You wouldn’t come with me to London and take pot luck—a knight’s wife some day, perhaps, or only the starving wife of—a number. I mean to be careful—but failure’s on the cards. Even men like Milligan come a cropper now and then. I’ve heard shaky stories about him. He doesn’t know when to stop.”

His eyes were shining. Something of the old passion was stamping itself anew on his face. She was looking lovely—the daredevil expression of perfect abandonment and sacrifice strong on her[151] mouth, on her quickly-breathing body, on the very hands which shook in the lap of her white gown.

“You wouldn’t come?” he said, under his breath.

She gave a quick sigh, a last sharp glance at the gray, gently-moving uplands and the wreaths of dog-roses.

“I would go with you—anywhere. I would have gone with you to the prison, been a number, a thing less than an animal behind the prison wall—but they wouldn’t let me.”

He put his mouth to hers.

“Dear little woman! In India you’d go to the Suttee. Then it is settled. Tackle Jethro to-night.”

[152]

CHAPTER XI.

SHE waited until supper was over, and then she asked Jethro for half an hour alone in the little room looking due north, where he kept his papers, his boots, his agricultural catalogues, stray packets of seeds, and so on.

The door shut on them. It was nearly dark—the sun setting luridly and throwing a coppery light across the wall. The oak bureau filled one corner of the tiny room; turned full to the gaping hearth was a high-backed oak chair, with the initials “J. J. 1625” cut into its back. An oak chest beneath the window, carved also, and bearing the initials “J. J. 1604,” with a coat of arms, showed that the Jaynes had in the past been even more important people than they were now. A shadow passed the window. Edred, a dog at his heels, the usual fat cigar in his mouth, shouted through, saying that he’d stroll up to Turle and tell Nancy that he couldn’t go to Malling on Thursday. He gave Pamela a significant look and moved off. The copper light burned on the wall again. There was a strong scent of jasmine; the wan white blossoms looked in at the open window. Pamela sat in the chair by the grate, her head against the carved wood.

“I wanted to speak to you about my—about Edred,” she said.

[153] “I’m going to speak to him myself,” Jethro returned promptly. “He oughtn’t to be loafing about here like this. The place is big enough for all of us, but it’s bad for a man to be out of collar so long.”

“He’s very anxious to get something to do. He is full of ideas. He is very clever.”

Jethro did not answer. He was sitting on the end of the chest, his back to the window, one foot in a heavy shoe idly dangling. His clean-cut, rugged face was in shadow; her guilty conscience made her fancy that his mouth was relentless.

“He doesn’t want to go to sea again,” she straggled on. “His nerves have been tried—you can understand that?”

“What does he want?”

She heard the wicket-gate creak. Through the summer haze and the misty, heavy-leaved trees she saw him pass along the road; white dog at his heels, burning tobacco between his lips.

“He wants two hundred pounds. He would go away from Folly Corner; never come back, never trouble you for a penny more, for a meal, even.”

Jethro’s light eyes opened. They looked to her like filings of steel in the uncertain light. His voice came through the twilight suspiciously.

“Why does he talk like that? He is your brother, isn’t he? I want my wife’s brother to have the run of my house whenever he’s in the neighborhood.”

“He is afraid that he has trespassed on your hospitality too long.” How parrot-like her voice was, how stilted her words! She burst out feverishly:

[154] “Give him the two hundred pounds—if you love me. Let him go at once. If he delays he may lose his chance. I don’t understand business, but he will explain it to you; it is something that will not wait.”

“He could come back for the wedding.”

“We shouldn’t want him; we could manage without him, I mean. He would not be able to get away; business—a new business would be too engrossing.”

“Two hundred pounds is a good lump.”

“But to set him up in life—to get rid of him.”

“You don’t want to get rid of your own flesh and blood, surely! There’s no hurry. Wait until after the wedding. It’s in August—just six weeks.”

He got up, bent over the high chair in his clumsy, hearty fashion, and kissed her mouth. That kiss decided her, made her inflexible. She gulped down a little scornful laugh in her throat: a man who kissed in that way deserved to be jilted.

“Go back to the chest,” she cried petulantly. “This isn’t the proper time for nonsense; we are talking business. You will give him the money at once, won’t you?”

“I must think it over. Two hundred pounds!”

“It is nothing to you—everything to us.”

“To him.”

“To him—that is what I meant. Open the bureau; get your check-book. It will only take a moment.”

“There is no hurry. I never rush things. I’ll talk the affair over with Edred to-morrow—no, on[155] Wednesday, before I drive in to market. To-morrow I must see old Crisp, of the Flagon House, about that rye of his.”

He pulled a wan, white jasmine bloom to pieces slowly, put his head half out of the window into the damp, scented air, and said casually that a couple of bats had flown out of the ivy.

Her palms tingled with rage and despair. This matter of two hundred pounds was nothing to him. The clock in the dining-parlor struck nine very softly; on the hedge across the road a nightingale was performing a sad recitative. She jumped to her feet in a passion.

“If you don’t promise to give him the two hundred pounds to-morrow morning, I’ll go away—I won’t marry you,” she cried.

Jethro only laughed. He felt so secure. The wedding was to be in six weeks; workmen were coming out from Liddleshorn to-morrow to fit up the bathroom and paint the place. Nearly every day a young woman came with things from the draper’s at Liddleshorn. It was all settled. But she looked pretty in a passion. He rose heavily from the chest again.

“If you touch me I shall strike you.”

“What’s the matter, dear? You’ve been cycling too much. I told Edred that thirty-five miles would be more than you could manage, and it’s nearly forty to Beer Hill and back.”

“It wasn’t a bit too long a ride. The others did it; even Nancy, who is supposed to be so delicate. I cannot endure to think you so mean, so lethargic—over[156] a little thing. You must give him the money to-morrow, or I swear——”

“Pam.”

“Don’t call me that. Will you——”

“He shall have a check to-morrow morning, as you wish it so much.”

He opened the bureau.

“I’ve got it in notes somewhere. I meant to bank on Wednesday. Two hundred pounds!” Hereditary closeness got the better of him again. “It is a good lump. But what is mine is yours—or will be in six weeks. If it makes you happy.”

“It makes him secure. What are you doing?”

Jethro was pressing his broad thumbs carefully into the sides of a pigeonhole.

“There is a secret drawer here. I wouldn’t show it to everyone—but you are flesh of my flesh.”

“Not yet.”

“In six weeks.”

“Show me the secret drawer.”

“Wait a bit; it wants humoring. This is a home-made bureau. My great-grandfather was a clever old chap, wasn’t he? I’ve heard my father say that when he died the drawer was overhauled for money, but all they found was three farthings of the year 1732. Here they are.”

The long shallow drawer was open. Bank notes were lying flat and crisp in it; in one corner were the farthings, spotted with verdigris.

A shadow passed across the window again. Edred put his handsome, insouciant face through the tangle of white blossom and green:

[157] “Aren’t you two coming out?” he cried chaffingly. “The moon’s up, and I never heard the nightingale in better form. I’ll run over to Turle in the morning.”

Pamela flitted across the dusky room.

“We are coming—in a moment,” she said in a loud voice, looking at him significantly; then looking back in the gloom at Jethro—burly and well-favored—by the open bureau, with its shallow secret drawer and pigeon-holes full of bills.

She watched Edred go down to the gate and lean over; the twin poplars shooting up like two giant brooms above his head, the white dog like a wraith in the green light. She shut the window and stepped back into the silent little room, which, although it was June, felt cold. Jethro had the notes in his hand. She put out hers with a sudden impulse.

“Give them to me to give to him—as a surprise,” she besought faintly.

She looked at the bank notes—white, crisp, heavily lettered with black.

“Come,” she said, with a forced air of archness and spontaneity, her hand still out, and Jethro’s diamonds burning with a pale fire on her finger. Her gesture was a trifle ghastly in its struggle after playfulness. Her lips were rolled back, showing the set teeth.

It was such a sudden, breathless impulse. She looked from one to the other—the man at the bureau, who was so close that she could feel his breath—sweet as a cow’s—on her hair; the man at the gate, jailed by poplars.

[158] Why shouldn’t she yield to this new impulse? Why shouldn’t she go away from them both and begin a new, an absolutely feminine and nunlike life? These men drove poor women mad. She knew what a future would be with Edred—delirium, misery, wealth, disaster, disgrace. She knew what a future would be with Jethro—fat ease, heart-hunger. But a future apart she did not know. She would run away from them both—with two hundred pounds in her pocket. Two hundred pounds in notes!

Jethro looked at her strangely.

“I’ll give it him myself—to-morrow morning,” he said soberly, putting the notes into the drawer and letting it spring back into its hiding-place.

She sat down in the oak chair, letting body and brain collapse. She didn’t bother to think—to regret, to rage, to feel. Things were decided for her.

“You’ll give it to him to-morrow morning, then. How serious you are! Why do you look at me so oddly? Of course, I did not want the notes. You never see a joke.”

“I’ll go out and have a talk with Edred now about this business. I shall be too busy in the morning. You go to bed.” He tried to see her face through the teasing dusk which had drawn between them; his voice was tender. “You’ve been doing too much lately. Good-night, dear. Have a long night’s rest.”

“Good-night.”

As she undressed, slipping her[159] petticoats from her waist to her feet, she saw through the half-drawn dimity curtains the two men and the dog strolling about in the uncertain moonlight. Jethro looked magnificently broad and kingly. When she stretched herself in the bed, almost sinking in the feathers, she told herself that this might be her last night at Folly Corner. Before she went to sleep she recalled Jethro’s girth and bearing, together with his balance at the bank, and hesitated.

[160]

CHAPTER XII.

NEXT morning when she awoke workmen were hammering and whistling. When she looked out of her window she saw scaffolding. Long ladders were set up stealthily against the old red walls. They were getting Folly Corner ready for a bride. Those long ladders, that swung scaffolding, reminded her that her wedding-day was fixed. She dressed and went down into the garden, where the roses were all embroidered with dew and a white mist puffed slowly across the meadows beyond the hedge. It was very early. Len Daborn, going heavily to his work, looked like a patriarch, with his crook-like stick and spreading white beard. She thought of his daughters, all maids—because the bees had swarmed in the thatch. She was very anxious to see Edred before breakfast, and, picking up one of the potatoes which Daborn had left on the ground when he took the trug to Hone, threw it in at the open window, crying, with meretricious raillery:

“Come down. It is a lovely morning.”

She tried to speak quite airily, purposely choosing her words and tone. Jethro was already about—looking after the young turkeys. Edred, his voice muffled by sleep and the drawn curtains, called out that he wouldn’t be long. She healed her heart by looking at her roses. The garden always comforted[161] her—drew her to it with strange, silent magnetism. Before he came down, heavy-eyed and irritable, as he always was in the early morning, she had decided, with infinite relief, that she would stay at Folly Corner, and let him go back alone, fight life alone, take his garish triumphs and risks without her.

“Jethro’s going to give you the two hundred pounds this morning,” she said tersely, hardly lifting her head.

“You are a brick, Pam. We can leave here this afternoon. Pretend that you have promised to take me over to Annie Jayne’s. We’ll bike to the station. Never mind luggage. I can spare you plenty of frocks out of the two hundred. London to-night. We’ll dine somewhere—a good dinner. Then I’ll drive you to Bloomsbury—they’ll take you in. I can go to a hotel. To-morrow I’ll get a license and we’ll be married.”

She picked a rose and pressed her nose right into the exquisite petals. The fresh morning air, the farm sounds; dew, sun in a haze of slow fire, bees streaming brown and yellow from the hives, the old house foaming with the loose Devoniensis rose and lichened to the roof—all these drew her.

“To-morrow morning,” he continued, with satisfaction, “I shall be able to have a whisky-and-soda directly I wake. It pulls a fellow together. Leave me alone with old Jeth after breakfast—I’m sorry for the poor devil; you are treating him badly—but a woman has no heart. And, Pam, hurry up dinner to-day. We’d better start soon after.”

[162] Jethro came round the house from the yard. He looked a little careless and rough. Directly he caught Pamela’s glance, his aristocratic face, with the wholesome russet skin, lighted, and he jerked his thumb, with a smile and a droll, tender gesture, toward the tall ladders and the litter of the builders.

The house—restful, spacious, substantial; the figure beside it, all honest devotion, decided her. She turned to Edred, lithe and dark, flushed at the prospect of early emancipation from Folly Corner, which had been to him merely a rambling prison with lax rules.

“I’ve altered my mind,” she whispered hurriedly, not daring to look at him, not daring to stand close, for fear her hand should touch his coat-sleeve and make her waver. “I’ll stay. I’ll marry Jethro. Don’t come down. Lead your own life. In future, as you said, I shall only know you in the newspapers—a day late. I shall be content, happy; you’ll be free.”

He stared at her in frank amazement. He was disappointed, astounded, relieved.

“You’ll stay.” He gave his cynical smile; then, as Jethro came up, his face shining and his hands soiled with the poultry-yard, he strolled off.

When breakfast was over she threw a look of meaning across the table and left the room. As she turned to shut the door she saw the two men disappear in the direction of Jethro’s little den—the home-made bureau was in there, with the secret drawer and the bank notes.

Gainah was already settled at the oval table by[163] the window, cutting patchwork hearts, with the aid of a piece of carefully shaped tin.

Pamela went along the narrow passage into the drawing-room and tried to dust, to rearrange china, alter furniture—anything for bodily energy.

Now and then she heard the loose lick of a plasterer’s brush. The workmen outside were whistling blithely and calling to each other. They all seemed to be named Bill. She sat down on the couch and laughed foolishly. Why was the workingman always called Bill?

Nettie, the supercilious smirk stronger than usual on her pretty face, came in to ask for the grocer’s list; the man was at the back door waiting for orders. She gave it, forgetting nothing—table salt, bedroom candles, matches, more turpentine—they had their own beeswax—all the irritating, narrow things that make up the sum total of a well-managed house. When the girl had gone, she sat down, listening to the fluty whistles and rough voices outside, and wondering if she would ever again give the order for the grocer.

She was a weathercock. Hadn’t she said that she would stay and be Jethro’s wife? Edred had not been disappointed—but then he took everything with a hard, cynical philosophy. She was to be Jethro’s wife. Then why did she listen so intently for the opening and shutting of doors; why gasp and spring to her feet at a footstep?

She was standing, the checked duster in one hand, the other painfully at her side, when Jethro came in. Her white face was all lines and furrows.

[164] “I’ve given Edred the notes,” he said shortly. “He wants to be off as soon as possible. I shan’t go to the Flagon House; very likely I shall meet old Crisp at market to-morrow. We’ll all drive to the station in the wagonette after dinner.”

He looked annoyed; the two hundred pounds had gone against the grain; he was naturally close-fisted—it was the quality which had made the fortunes of his house. Presently his face lighted, and he said:

“What color would you like them to paint the outside of the place? The foreman suggests chocolate, but I fancy a nice green.”

“It must be white,” she said positively. “That is fashionable now, and so clean and fresh—in the country.”

“Then I’ll tell him white. You’d like to see the last of Edred? We might drive round by Turle on the way back; Nancy will be upset—I thought there would be a match there.”

She didn’t answer; only rubbed viciously at the polished table.

All that morning she kept away from Edred, although she saw him lounging about outside—in the garden, in the orchard, waiting for a word with her. At dinner-time she came down in her most becoming dress. Her cheeks were flushed, and her gray eyes sparkled and darted. She ate very little. The two men made a hearty meal, Edred very voluble betwixt his hurried mouthfuls—talking to Jethro in the superior, pitying way of the town man. Gainah said nothing; they had ceased to regard her. She was a machine. She stitched all day; she fed[165] methodically; she stared at them with her glassy, stupid eyes.

Jethro went out to hurry Daborn with the horse. Pamela, the untasted pudding steaming on her plate, got up with a jerk, and spoke of putting on her hat and gloves. Edred, who had been trying to catch her eye all through the meal, touched her softly on the back of the hand with his fingers. She gave a little cry, and flinched as if they had been hot coal. Her wide eyes, searching his face for the first time, were wildly appealing. He was piqued by her decision to stay behind and marry Jethro. Now that there was a chance of losing her, she suddenly became desirable.

“This won’t do,” he whispered eagerly. “You must come.”

“I can’t. Everything is settled.”

“Pooh! You could arrange——”

He had her hand. He was looking at her ardently. The impulse to go with him—let fate bring what it might—was strong. She looked at him. He was more in earnest, more in love than he had ever been. She had always understood that it was a mistake to let a man know you loved him—but then her feeling had always been so intense that she had been incapable of hiding it. Her love had bubbled in her eyes, on her eager lips. But it was bad strategy all the same.

She looked at the cold, dim room, at the foolishly intent old woman by the window, stitching blue hearts on worn white dimity in a perfect fury of aimless industry. She looked at the grim shadow[166] of the yew, at the yawning cavern of the open hearth, at the somber furniture. And she thought of London, with its glitter, its hurry, and vivacity. London and Love! She let her wrist relax, let her whole fluttering hand be buried in that long, cool one.

“I might arrange——”

She broke off as Jethro came through the low door.

“You two ought to be ready,” he called out. “The horse is coming round.”

She turned and faced him, with her cheeks like rouged cheeks and her eyes like polished, many-faceted diamonds.

“There is really no need for you to go,” she said unsteadily “Edred wouldn’t mind. Let Daborn drive us. You know you had an appointment at the Flagon House.”

“But that was this morning. Of course I’ll come. Be quick and get your hat on.”

She went up the shallow stairs, woe at her wavering, passionate heart. It was no good; he must go alone. It was far better that he should go alone.

“Edred can sit on the box with me. The wagonette is half filled up with luggage,” Jethro said, as she came out of the gate.

“We can manage very well behind. Can’t we?” She turned, trembling, to Edred, who was digging at his shoes with the point of his cane.

“Then jump in.” Jethro had the reins in his hand.

[167] They flashed along the white roads. She and Edred kept their hands clasped under the summer rug of Holland. Once she bent forward, first looking cautiously at the figure on the box, and shook her head, and whispered:

“I can’t do it. You see he would come.”

Now and then Jethro, by a flick of his whip, pointed out some feature of great interest—to him: another farmer’s hay or cattle, a badly tilled field, a line of old cottages which he had been renovating—putting slate roofs in place of thatch and square panes of glass instead of lead lights. Those cottages were for Pamela; the rent would be her pin money.

As they whizzed down the steep hill leading to the little wayside station, the signal fell. The porter, who was just throwing back the gates of the level crossing, waited for the horse to pass.

“We mustn’t stop to see him off,” Jethro said, as Edred’s baggage was got out. “The mare shies at an engine.”

“We must wait.”

Her voice was so shrill that it startled her. She added, touching Jethro’s arm, and feeling like Jael of old as she did so:

“Do please wait.”

“Very well. Here, sonny; hold the horse.”

He threw the reins to a boy, and the three of them walked into the tiny station. Edred went into the booking office for his ticket. On the platform there were several people—a few rustics, with baskets or bulging red cotton handkerchiefs; one[168] young woman with a tight, leafless posy bound carefully round with newspaper.

“He ought to have had some flowers,” Jethro said, throwing a glance inside at the lean figure at the ticket window.

“What would be the good? He hasn’t any home. He will go to an hotel to-night.”

A wild, impotent desire to go with him made her quiver.

Another wagonette drove up and Mrs. Turle with Nancy alighted.

The girl’s face flooded when she saw Edred—in dark clothes—and saw the various leather bags lying about on the platform. They were being hurriedly labeled by the porter.

“Edred’s going away—for good.” Pamela turned her veiled cheek to the red lips.

“To sea?”

Nancy’s face grew piteous.

“No. To the city.”

“Then he will come down sometimes.”

“Perhaps—but it is doubtful. He has found Folly Corner dull. London is so full of attractions for a man.”

“Going away!” Aunt Sophy’s clear eyes seemed to pierce behind the lying mask of her burning face. “Isn’t it very sudden, dear? You look quite feverish, Pamela. A touch of headache?”

“My head never aches,” she said, almost rudely.

“Nancy and I will have an escort up. We are shopping; the summer sales get earlier and earlier every year.”

[169] The porter began to clang the noisy brass bell, and along the line, which ran perfectly straight for a mile or more, they saw the blue smoke and bulky, indistinct outline of the approaching engine:

“I’ll go and hurry Edred.”

She stepped out of the sun into the little booking-office, with its torn excursion-bills and gay pictures of ocean liners.

He was scooping up his change, throwing it, with his accustomed carelessly reckless air, into his trousers pocket. The door of the waiting-room was half open. On the platform Aunt Sophy was talking earnestly to Jethro about farming affairs, and Nancy was staring at the enameled advertisement of a local seedsman.

“Come in here for a moment.”

She jerked her hand toward the open door. They went in. The window was of frosted glass.

“I can’t go with you,” she said, looking up hopelessly through her veil. “You see how it is! Aunt Sophy and Nancy are going up. Everything is against us. Perhaps it is as well. Good-by.”

He had never been so nearly disposed to sacrifice himself for a woman. Then, with his unquenchable selfishness, he remembered too that a pretty woman would be positively useful in his mode of life: many a dubious bit of business had been pulled off by a good dinner and an attractive woman. She was so devoted to him. A devoted woman was invaluable and very rare. They usually played their own game.

He kissed her turbulently on her closed eyes,[170] through the crisp net, on her burning cheeks and dry lips. They both felt the rush and sway of the train as it rushed into the station. They both became conscious of a figure in the narrow door. She lifted her head, unclasped her fierce arms, to see Jethro.

“We were saying good-by,” she stammered.

Edred was cool.

“Pam and I have always been chums—we were left in the world together,” he said in a matter-of-fact way, and insolently meeting the doubt in Jethro’s steely eyes. “Good-by, old girl. By the way, I’ll send you a telegram when I get to town, just to let you know I am all right.”

He went out into the sun, got into a carriage with the Turles, raised his hat gayly as the train steamed out.

He was gone. It was all over. The railway banks were gay with snapdragons, self-sown; ferns had sown themselves in the cutting and thrust out their fronds like forked green tongues. The station-master’s black-and-tan terrier bounded round Pamela’s skirts. Every little thing was emphasized—as it would be in a nightmare.

“Did you think to ask Aunt Sophy the name of her kitchen-range?” asked Jethro, as they went slowly up the hill.

She was on the box beside him. She felt cold and sick. She looked back now and then at the empty seats.

“It is the Camelot,” she returned mechanically, and for the rest of the drive she kept saying to herself,[171] in a dazed way, “Camelot,” as if it were a new word.

After tea Jethro drove to the Flagon House, saying he might stay to supper. Folly Corner was quiet, growing mystic with twilight. Pamela went down the bricked path, without a glance at the rich mosaic of the herbaceous borders, and stood between the poplars, her arms on the gate. By and by a boy came along the road. When he got close she saw that he carried a red envelope. She took it languidly, saying that there was no answer, and paying him sixpence for porterage.

“Be ready to start for London with me at half-past ten to-night. Am coming back. Will wait under yew.”

It had been sent from Liddleshorn. Edred was waiting at Liddleshorn now—waiting for the night, which was always kind to criminals.

She went into the house, put a few things together. Jethro came in soon after nine. He was a bit surly—he had surly fits occasionally. To-night she took no notice. She couldn’t find it in her heart to look at him, knowing the part she was going to play.

By ten she was dressed and standing under the yew. Her bag and umbrella, set against the wall of the house, seemed a grotesquely modern touch beside the silence and starlight, in contrast to the sharp delight and terror of her own face.

How white and gaunt the ladders and scaffolding looked! What a queer, old-world interior the[172] dining-room made! She could see straight through; they rarely drew the curtains these light June nights.

The night-jar called harshly, a beetle dashed against her face, then whirred away. From the stall came loud, human-sounding, trumpeting moans. They made her shudder. She knew that one of the cows was calving. Once she saw the light of a lantern—muddy and yellow, like a bilious eye, beside the hard stars—go round the building. She hid behind the yew, listening to the steady clump of Boyce’s boots as he went in to tend the animal.

The church clock struck a quarter to eleven. He was late, a quarter of an hour late; perhaps they wouldn’t catch the last up-train from Liddleshorn. Very likely he was out in the road merely waiting, as a matter of prudence, until Boyce went away. The loud moans of the tortured cow struck her heart.

She strained her eyes, expecting every moment to see the tall, lithe figure steal across the garden. She strained her ears, imagining she heard the sharp ring of hoofs along the road. They came nearer, more certain, more distinct. She advanced like a guilty thing to the gate, creeping along in the starlight. Each time she reached the poplar there was perfect silence. Each time she looked along the road it stretched straight and blank across the common. Yet when she waited at the yew again she fancied that she heard the ring of those quick hoofs.

[173] The quarters chimed on. Boyce, with his yellow-eyed lantern, shuffled out of sight. The world was only stars and boding night-jar and sentinel trees which had hardly stirred a leaf in the hot, still air.

Twelve! Two clocks chimed midnight together, tripping each other up, like stammering tongues.

He would never come now. Even as she stood there, sick and flushing, the whistle of the last up-train tore the night, and on the horizon she saw the lurid tail of fire.

She only wanted him to come, to creep behind the yew and kiss her, as he had kissed that little pink fool, Nancy Turle. She didn’t trouble her head about anything more; didn’t add to her agitation by worrying over practical details. They could walk under the stars until dawn—anything. Mere trifles like food, sleep, sore feet, light head, were nothing. If only he would come! Those maddening hoofs kept ringing along the road. A dozen times she ran along the bricked path.

As the clock struck one she turned away, went under the hooded door like a thief, up the still staircase into her own room. She flung herself, wide awake, dry-eyed, and tingling, on her smooth bed.

At two she heard the steady passing of feet—not Boyce’s this time. With a strangled cry of joy she slipped off the bed and glided to the open window. The stars were clouded, and a violent summer rain struck straight from the sky. The feet stopped below Jethro’s window, a rattle of gravel went against the glass. She looked out cautiously; listened; heard Chalcraft tell his master that the ricks were[174] not covered. Jethro answered back that he, too, had heard the rain, and would be down directly.

She heard him go down, heard the feet of the two men die away. Every star was hidden. It was too dark to see anything.

She returned to the bed without undressing. She lay there flat on her back, fully clothed, with her hands and lips clenched. Jethro came back to the house, to his bed. She heard him steal by her door without his shoes.

There was silence. Then the restless life of the farm began. Cocks crowed; there were feet along the wet road. Across the fields, through the dimness and mystery of the half-born day, Boyce, the cowman, was weirdly hooting in the morning mist for the cattle to come and be milked.

[175]

CHAPTER XIII.

“MOTHER used to say that when a girl was married she should wear a bonnet and never jest with gentlemen. Mrs. Clutton’s hats are very large, and her manner to Jim has always been flippant.”

Annie Jayne, her hair already thin at the temples, and her pretty narrow brow seamed with a thousand solicitous premature creases, looked down fondly at her second baby. Its legs had been unswathed; it was kicking and gurgling on the drawing-room rug.

“She certainly is a little flippant—I must say that,” admitted Aunt Sophy diplomatically, as she beamed at the rug, and gave vent to a voluble string of infantile expletives.

“You never should have called on her,” Maria Furlonger cried reproachfully. “And it did have boofy nickle legs, so it did.”

She, too, beamed at the baby. He returned her wide grin with a look of stolid, pitying superiority. Annie, her eyes swimming with tenderness as they rested on the naked, purplish limbs, said:

“Isn’t it wonderful, the way he takes notice?”

“She is no more married than you are—than I am,” Maria continued, returning to the attack, and pulling her mouth back to its natural limits.

Annie and Aunt Sophy froze a little after the manner of matrons. They said instinctively and together:

[176] “My dear!”

“A married man never sneaks home to his wife after dark when he has been away for months,” Maria persisted. “It was past ten. Mrs. Daborn was calling in her cat—the tortoiseshell she has had for sixteen years. You know that Si Daborn’s cottage is just opposite the Buttery. She saw him go in like a thief—not even a hand-bag.”

“A married man always has luggage. Mother used to pack father’s bag herself. If there are buttons off or a thin place in the socks it reflects on the wife.”

“I must say”—Aunt Sophy held out her finger for the child to clutch—“that a gentleman doesn’t usually—return from South America——”

“Without so much as a tooth-brush,” broke in Maria.

“He might have had it in his pocket,” Annie reminded her gently. “We mustn’t condemn until we are certain.”

“They came down quite coolly to breakfast in the morning,” Maria continued. “Not a word of explanation to Tryphena—Hone’s eldest girl; the Hones of Marrow’s farm. I was always against Tryphena taking service at the Buttery. The Hones are in my district.”

There was a little pause. The baby broke it by cooing. Then Maria cried out suddenly:

“Good gracious! He can’t be the Birmingham murderer in hiding at the Buttery. He may be her husband, after all—which makes it all the more reprehensible. Mrs. Daborn tells me he looked a most[177] suspicious character: one of those men with a bronzed face, bold eyes, and a suit with a large check.”

“Mrs. Si Daborn is nearly blind with cataract.”

“You always try to make out a good case for people, Annie. Mrs. Si Daborn can see a large-checked suit. She is a most respectable old soul; I think a great deal of her judgment. Her eldest daughter married a builder; he is in a large way of business at Walthamstow.”

“A murderer! Maria!” Aunt Sophy for once forgot to be diplomatically gentle. “I must say that it isn’t wise to talk so wildly. You’ll frighten Annie and upset the darling baby.”

“The Birmingham murderer! Is that the man who murdered his employer and his employer’s six motherless children? Boiled them in the copper, didn’t he?”

Annie put the questions quite calmly—as if they merely referred to a family recipe for making pickled walnuts.

“Yes, that’s the man.”

“Then he can’t be at the Buttery. Jim brought home the evening paper from Liddleshorn. There is a portrait of the murderer and his victims—before they went into the copper—poor things. He was arrested. He committed suicide in his cell.”

The sweet, spiteful expression stole across Aunt Sophy’s face as she glanced at Maria, who only said tartly:

“He wasn’t the only criminal in the country, after all. Read the papers regularly, both of you, and[178] see how many crimes there are which are never fastened on to the right person.”

“I rather thought,” said Annie placidly, “that Pamela would come up to tea. I told her that I was going to short-coat baby to-day.”

“Rather funny about her brother, wasn’t it?”

Maria had a faculty for starting aggressive subjects.

Aunt Sophy put on her best dignity air—the air she adopted toward people who only kept one servant, who hadn’t a “conveyance,” who didn’t get invited to the Vicarage.

“I used to think that he was courting Nancy,” Maria continued, unabashed.

“My dear! What an extraordinary notion! Isn’t darling Maria’s brain original, Annie? Nancy is almost engaged to Mr. Minns, the Liddleshorn curate. He is an extremely intellectual young man. Naturally he was drawn to Nancy, whose tastes are so literary.”

Pamela was slowly driving up the hill in her governess car. She was startled by a sharp voice behind. It took little to startle her. Her gray eyes had lately a vague, fixed look—they seemed to petrify as the wedding-day grew near—a day not to be evaded.

“I thought that I should never make you hear.” Mrs. Clutton put one hand on the cart and the other to her pulsing brown throat.

“I’m sorry. Jump in. Are you going to the Mount?”

“Not I. My reception wouldn’t be warm.”[179] She laughed merrily. “You must have heard the scandal.”

“What scandal?”

Pamela’s high voice seemed to whistle through her teeth; the reins dropped slackly on Betsy’s back.

“About my husband, of course. He came home quite unexpectedly last night; came just as he was from his club, where he is putting up until we settle. I opened the door myself; Tryphena was in bed. He looked so big and brown and self-assured—so prosperous—nothing of the flabby, dubious, hard-up artist about him. He ate cold pork for supper, and slept all night. No more dyspepsia, no more rows! He is a success—a decent income assured us for life. He climbed some peak in America that no one else has ever climbed. His book will be the sensation of the season.”

She stopped, her black eyes snapping and gleaming.

“I’m very glad,” Pamela said, with a kind of sad heartiness. “Very glad that someone is going to be happy.”

“Someone else, you mean. Your happiness is beyond question, though happiness is only attitude. What alterations Mr. Jayne is making at Folly Corner!”

“We couldn’t do without a new wing. A country house isn’t complete without a billiard-room,” Pamela said, with her limp, forced air of breeding, of doing the “correct thing.”

“And your brother will be bringing men down, week ends, no doubt.”

[180] “Edred!” She caught the reins up tightly. “He will not come again.”

Mrs. Clutton looked at her shrewdly. Then she said:

“Tim and I are to live at Chelsea; one of those delightful new houses, all white paint and wrought iron. He has gone back to town. He is much too busy to stay. I am making all arrangements for leaving the Buttery at the end of the week. He was so delighted with the oak. When I showed him my notebook, full of rustic skeletons, he fairly shouted. It will make a most sensational thing to run in an up-to-date paper: daily installments, skillfully backed up by interviews, paragraphs, photographs of the Chelsea house, when we are settled.”

“There is nothing scandalous in all this.”

“How discursive I am! Never mind. You will hear it all, from the proper point of view, at the Mount. I can see them sitting in judgment! Annie Jayne, quoting her mother; that horrid Maria Furlonger, an animated sneer; dear Mrs. Turle, trying to pull both ways, enjoying the scandal and yet not wishing to take sides against me, in case Tim should turn out all right and be a vehicle for eligible bachelors. She has a fury for marrying Nancy.

“A married man should come back with his halter round his neck. Tim should have had the station fly full of boxes. He just walked in without a word—without a clean collar or a nightshirt. I thought that he was in Venezuela. When Tryphena saw us both come down next morning she dropped the[181] butter-dish—hand-painted willow—the little fool! Then she sneaked off and told her mother. Mrs. Hone, very fat, very shiny with outraged virtue, came back to say that she couldn’t allow her girl to stay in such a place. Her children had always been brought up respectable. No one could say that one of her daughters had been compelled to marry in a hurry.”

“And you are going away? You won’t be here for my wedding—a week next Thursday.”

“I’m afraid not. But you must come and see us in town. I’ve told Tim all about you. He adores big, dun-haired girls. He likes women as he likes wine—with body.

“I want you to go to Mrs. Hone’s,” she continued, “that is why I ran after the cart. Say I’ll give her five shillings for that figure with the skull in its hand. Tim thinks an exhibition of Staffordshire would be a good idea.”

“Bert Hone’s?”

“Yes. He is dead. Queer old savage! Good-by. I’m going to talk to the landlord of the Buttery.”

She turned off at the cross-roads. Pamela drove to Mrs. Hone’s, haggled for the figure, wrapped it in newspaper, and put it in the cart. As she did so she mentioned carelessly that Mrs. Clutton was going away.

“Be she now?” the doubled-up old woman cried. “Sure! London now. You don’t say so, my dear soul. I shall miss her. When my man died she came in to look at him. He worked up to[182] the very last, although he was so old—past eighty. He took his turn with the hayin’. He never wasted a hour; it was Sunday when he died, so it was. She come and looked at him a-layin’ in his coffin, and she shed a tear. The other ladies gi’ me black clothes. Young Mis’ Jayne up at the Mount brought the little baby for me to see, and Mis’ Turle sent Miss Nancy down with a bottle o’ doctor’s stuff—it’s nothin’ but camphor; jest smell it. But Mis’ Clutton brought a fine wreath like wax. He went down into his grave as if he was a gentleman farmer. Nobody else thought o’ flowers; wreaths aint for the likes o’ we.”

As Pamela turned the pony’s head she decided not to go to the Mount that day. There were still moments when Annie’s impenetrability and Aunt Sophy’s phlegm jarred.

She drove home across the common. It was a burning day—the last in July. There was a ticking sound in the hot air, as the black seed pods of the broom burst. High in the sky was an intense angry sun, swept now and then by boding thunder-clouds. Across the common stretched a carpet of heather, exquisite purple, just breaking into bloom. When she turned off and drove down Waggoner’s Lane on the way to Folly Corner, the hedges were full of blackberry blossoms, widely opened, and pale heliotrope. There was a fishy smell of privet from a cottage garden, and the soft, tearing swish of a scythe came from a field. The high hedges were hung with butter-colored hay, which had caught in the branches as the loaded wain toiled by. At[183] Folly Corner, in her garden, the long edgings of white pinks were dry, and brown, and scentless, and sad. The elder tree which hung over the barn was shabby. The leaves on the poplars rustled dryly, as they never had done in June.

The newspaper, which the carrier brought daily from Liddleshorn, was on the table in the corridor, neatly folded, tied with twine, and addressed to Jethro. She carried it into the drawing-room and read it listlessly. Politics didn’t interest her—foreign politics in particular seemed singularly superfluous. But she read the art notices and the reviews of new books as a matter of duty, and the advertisements as a matter of interest. There were twelve pages to the paper that day. One was taken up with an advertisement—the prospectus of a new company. It was something about a ruby mine—it didn’t matter much, anyhow. She was far too languid to read it all. Still, her eye ran listlessly down. When she came to the names of the directors she cried out. Edred Crisp, Esq., of Marquise Mansions, W., headed the list.

That name brought everything back. She drove it into her brain letter by letter. She stared at it so long, so fixedly, that her eyes played pranks, and the one name, Edred Crisp, took up the whole sheet.

There was a barking of dogs, a grating grind of wheels outside, Jethro’s voice. She jumped up, her face suddenly stern, desperate. She looked out of the window, her head framed in fully-blown roses which had shriveled and turned brown.

“Come in here,” she said metallically, looking at[184] the spare figure and keen, kind eyes. “I want to speak to you.”

“My boots are dirty.”

“Never mind. Come now; if you don’t, I may change again, and that will be the worse for both of us.”

Until he came in at the door, stooping his head a little because it was so low, she kept her throbbing eyes upon those words, “Edred Crisp, Esq., Marquise Mansions, W.”

“I’ve been to Liddleshorn and seen Preece about the wedding-cake,” he said.

“The wedding-cake!” she repeated blankly. “Oh, you need not have troubled. It does not matter in the least.”

Jethro was looking puzzled—a little annoyed, too. Her unequal moods of late vexed him. He was a short-tempered man, given to fits of silence and brusquerie, just as his father had been. Men in the country are often so; she had noticed that young Jim Jayne snubbed Annie. In towns a man goes out and blows off his temper—at his club or a music-hall; in the country he vents it on his women.

“Doesn’t matter? That sounds strange from you, Pamela.”

She laughed. The steady look in her eyes, the lambent light on her face, struck him. She seemed swept, dominated by a sudden fierce, irrevocable decision. The newspaper, wide open at the page-advertisement of the new company, was on her knees. She put her finger under Edred’s name and showed it to him.

[185] “Umph! Well, he has never written a line since he went away—didn’t even send the telegram. Still, I’m glad he’s getting on. Looks like business, doesn’t it?” He read the name and address in a rather awe-struck way. “There seems to be money in that. How much capital, do they say? He hasn’t been long in making his fortune. Perhaps he’ll pay me back the two hundred. It was understood between us to be only a loan—if he succeeded. What are the Chinese beggars doing at——”

He lifted the paper to turn it. She drew it away.

“Never mind the Chinese. You will have time—your whole life—for them.”

“My whole life!” He laughed. “By Jove! we mean to settle them in less than a month—judging by the telegrams. Just let me have a look at the summary, dear.”

“But I want to speak to you.”

“You have spoken. It was to tell me about Edred, wasn’t it?”

“About Edred—yes.”

“You haven’t had a letter from him? You don’t know anything but that?” He pointed to the paper.

She shook her head.

“I’ve never had a letter from him since he left; but this,” she put her finger on the words, “has decided me. The mere look of the letters put together to form him was enough. Can’t you guess, Jethro? You are not stupid.”

“Guess!” An angry darkness suddenly overspread his face. “Guess what?”

[186] “You don’t guess. You only suspect—and suspicion never decides a woman’s fate. I shall have to tell you.”

She seemed to pull herself together, giving a last fierce look of affection round the room and out of the window, at the flowers and the fripperies that she was so fond of. Then she said coldly—with the unerring cold, callousness of steel:

“Edred is not my brother. He was my lover in London. We were engaged to be married. He got into trouble—some business affair. The others were to blame. They got away and he had to pay the penalty. When I came here he was in prison. I decided never to see him again; not to let him know my address. He came to the back door with machines that day—that day, dear; oh, Jethro, I’m so sorry—when you gave me the check for my wedding things and asked me about the pet lamb. I can’t marry you; I can’t stay. He doesn’t love me—as you do. He’ll be unkind to me: he’s that sort of man. I’m a fool, a traitor—everything that is ignoble. Why don’t you strike me?” She threw up her face and looked at him mournfully—that wild, sharp face, which was just a mask for her racking brain.

“Why don’t you curse me? I have spoilt your life—but it might have been worse. If he came back, or sent a message saying he wanted me, I should have gone. Yes, your wife, Jethro, would have gone. I’ve been trying to cure myself. I saw his name, and it all came back. He was the first man—no one else before had said or looked love, or[187] kissed me. I suppose that must be the reason. There can be no other—he is worthless. You are a god compared to him. But he was first. I can’t help it.” She shook her head hopelessly, the molten, heavy tears rolling slowly down her face.

“That isn’t all. You shall know the very worst. Then you won’t care so much. You’ll drive me away from Folly Corner—and forget. Marry some good, even-minded girl—some girl without the horrible strength that I have. I must tell you the rest. He did send a telegram. You were at the Flagon House. He said he was coming back to fetch me. I waited under the yew until past midnight. He never came. Until to-day, until I saw this”—she touched his name—“I thought—I hoped that he might be dead. He wouldn’t have any power over me then.

“You saw him kissing me in the waiting-room. Why didn’t you guess then—why did you stop short—just suspecting? Suspicion is no good—it is only a petty thing. If you had not driven us to the station I should have gone to London with him. That day I kept changing my mind. Do speak, Jethro. Don’t look at me in that queer way. You must be angry. Show it. Strike me. Call me all the disgraceful names you are surely thinking.”

He got up, giving himself a slow shake in the shaggy coat of homespun, which was of a very light color and looked something like hairy sacking.

“You must go to him,” he said simply, not a trace of anger on his face. “It’s natural—I wouldn’t stand up against Nature for the world.[188] Nature mates us all—no good our meddling. Even with the cattle——”

“Never mind the cattle,” she broke in, her squeamishness asserting itself even now—his speech was apt to be blunt enough when he spoke of the simple facts which he had been accustomed to take as a matter of course all his life.

“You can’t help it,” he continued, with superb generosity. “I don’t blame you. He was first—you were meant for him. It isn’t your fault—or his. I am the fool, the meddler. You can’t mate through the newspaper. I ought to have known.”

He went toward the door, his head down, his face gentle and strong. She started up.

“You are not going?”

“There is nothing to stay for.”

“You don’t say one word of blame——”

“It is no good, and I have no right. Go to him, dear.”

“You forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive. I should have done as you have done. Not a woman in the world would hold me back from you, if you were free.”

“But the wedding? What will people say?”

“Let them say. That’s nothing.”

“Those things are everything. You are going to live and die in this place. For your sake, not mine”—she looked lingeringly at the yellow fields and rainbow flower-beds—“we must tell Aunt Sophy a plausible story. I’ll write a note, tell her that Edred is ill—a long illness—and wants me. Later[189] on, by degrees, you can let them know that I am never coming back.”

“You’ll tell her that Edred is ill—a long illness—and wants you,” he repeated in a slow, painstaking voice, as if, for her sake, he was very anxious to remember. “Very well, I’ll try not to forget. Would you like me to drive you to the station this afternoon?”

He saw the lightening of her face.

“So soon! But I could be ready. I’ll start packing now.” She went crisply across the room. “But not you. Let Daborn drive.”

“I’d rather come, if it’s the same to you. There’s a train at four.”

“Four. Very well.”

“We can have an early tea. You like your tea.”

“Tea—yes.”

“Take some flowers. There are plenty of eggs, too. Some of those early pullets are laying already, although the old birds are on the moult. He liked quince jam. Could you manage to pack a pot or so?”

“Jethro!” Her keen voice made the name more a shrill, birdlike cry than a word. “I can’t bear to hear you talk so calmly. I would not mind so much if you looked the martyr. But you sound so every-day—quince jam, pullet eggs! And yet I know how bitterly you care.”

“I must try not to. I’ve made a muddle. I hurried things when I should have let them alone.”

“You’ll forget,” she said, with miserable lack of[190] conviction. “We shall be—Edred and I—a bad dream. Never trouble to give us a thought.”

“But I shall expect to hear from you; to see you, perhaps, if I go to London. I’ve often thought of a week in London. I haven’t been since my father died. We saw most of the sights, but missed the Doré Gallery. Everyone ought to go there.”

She gasped.

“You could come up, see us together—man and wife. You can talk of the Doré Gallery!”

“Why not? I mustn’t lose sight of you, my mother’s kin.”

“Kin!” she cried out, with bitter scorn for herself and Edred. “He isn’t, at all events. His real name I don’t know; he was sentenced as Edred Pugin. As for me! Very likely my father was not your missing uncle at all. I hope not—for your sake. I’m no credit to you.”

“You must send me your address. If that ruby company is good and all the shares are not allotted, I’ve money lying by—I shan’t need to spend so much now——”

“You don’t know Edred. Never let him have another penny. He has done you harm enough. You won’t want our address; we shan’t be creditable people—for you to know. Up to-day and down to-morrow—I know the life I’m going to lead. But I step into it with my eyes open, because—because it will be with him. I want you to know the very worst of me—you’ll be cured all the sooner. Your misery is nothing—compared to him. My heart is all stone—until he dissolves it. He doesn’t want[191] me. But I’m glad, mad to go. Remember all this when I’m gone. Say she was a callous, reckless, scheming, unprincipled creature—she is well forgotten.”

She slipped past him, and out of the room, and up the stairs. Once he thought he heard her sing and then stop abruptly. He went out and tramped moodily across his acres, finding fault with everything, swearing freely at the men, kicking his dog, and roughly ordering away a party of children who were playing in the meadow.

Pamela packed. She said good-by to Gainah, who never troubled to lift her head, tipped the two maids. When she told them, in a marked and significant way, that her brother was dangerously ill, pretty Nettie began to blubber.

When the wagonette was out of sight Gainah put her patchwork away methodically. Then she went into the garden, looking at things critically, speaking to Daborn in a sharp voice—the imperious voice of old. She was a little cramped yet—mentally and bodily. But the fact that Pamela had gone was beginning to glimmer in on her poor intelligence. When she saw the housekeeping keys in the basket, she picked them up and dropped them in her deep pocket with a cunning chuckle. Then she marched solemnly into the kitchen.

[192]

CHAPTER XIV.

WHEN Pamela walked out into the yard at Victoria, the stale stable smell, the heavy air, and coarse sounds instantly made her feel at home. The last time she had breathed London was on that hot, stifling August morning nearly a year ago when she had started for Folly Corner. Her head had been heavy then, her eyes inflamed with crying, her feet sore and burning with the ceaseless, hopeless walk of the night before—backward and forward across the common, keeping the stolid prison—his shameful casket—in sight.

To-day her mouth curved happily, the blood ran in and out of her face with the intensity of her emotion. Folly Corner was far behind her—behind forever; Aunt Sophy, Nancy, Annie—all the kind, slow-witted women—were mere phantoms; Jethro, clumping his fields stupidly, his head hanging, his big heart sore, was simply a rustic figure of no particular interest.

That life at Folly Corner had been a different incarnation. The one moment when it seemed real was when a ruddy-faced man had brushed by her on the platform—a pointed Niphetos rosebud in his coat. She thought then fleetly of her garden, of all the bushes which had been her choice, which had been planted for her.

[193] She listened joyously to the hoarse voices of the drivers, to the mellow rattle of the piano-organ playing a tune which she had never heard. An orderly boy, looking pertly up in her face as she got into the cab, said:

“Now we shan’t be long.”

That must be the new catchword; once she had been well up in these things. Edred had taken her to music-halls.

How hot and misty and stuffy it was! And how delicious! She leaned back in the cab, laughing softly and continuously, like a mad thing. Then she began to be afraid, not knowing how Edred would receive her. Then she smiled again, knowing that she knew how to make herself adorable—at least for a little while. There were certain gestures, certain airs and words, which always pleased him. She coaxed a finger under her veil, and pulled a loose bit of hair on the temple over her brow. He liked loose hair.

It was a misty, gray-gold afternoon. London was empty—for London.

The Green Park was thick and mystic, the white frocks of the little children standing out solidly in the haze; an occasional white perambulator moving along slowly, like a fairy boat.

Marquise Mansions. The cab pulled up. The driver called out ironically to the conductor of a Hammersmith omnibus, “Fancy meeting you!”—that must be another catchword. How she had lost touch of the gay, silly, witty London life! She had been contemptuous of it, imagined that she hated it,[194] that she only longed for it because Edred was there. Was it possible that only yesterday, about this time, she had been watching Jethro’s cart horses, with their elaboration of brass harness and head decking? She had thought then that the country was so large, so utterly satisfying; that towns, with their hotbed air of struggle and scheming, would choke her. Only yesterday! It had all faded into a sad, tender dream. She was very glad to be awake again. Marquise Mansions!

It was a leviathan block of latter-day flats; red brick, white paint already turning smoke-colored, muslin curtains at the windows, little fragile balconies to the upper stories. A maid in smart black-and-white livery came daintily out and flicked a duster over one of the balconies. She looked down into the street and smirked at a man with a milk cart.

The place was like Edred. It was a typical place for him to choose: all swagger show, all glitter, very smart and ostentatious, very thin.

She dismissed her cab, went up the tesselated steps, consulted the names which were displayed on the wall. The hall porter rang the lift bell. The lift came down. She got in, reclined on the thickly-cushioned back, and watched the floors skim by, dip down.

Edred was on the third. She knocked with some trepidation at the extravagantly shaped copper knocker which flaunted itself on a peacock door. A little pert page, all claret cloth and gilt buttons, opened it. She caught her breath at the color and[195] depth of the carpets lying on the stained floor, at great copper bowls and decorative dishes which were disposed on shelves in a room with a half-opened door.

“Is Mr. Crisp in?”

The little page smiled knowingly; it was a very horrible smile, on such a chubby, child face. He didn’t seem at all surprised at the advent of such a visitor—a handsome woman, young and well dressed. It was evident—her blazing, aching heart told her this—that she was only one of a type.

“Mr. Crisp is in, miss. What name?”

“Never mind. Tell him an old friend.”

He left her in a little ante-room, dainty, extravagant, luxurious, with an oriel window looking over the park. She had composure enough to get up and put her face close to an oval, gilt-framed glass which hung above the hearth. She had hardly turned away when the door opened. With lips parted and hands out she advanced, then fell back as a strange man put his chin and a pair of keen eyes round the lintel. He was a nondescript. She took an instant dislike to the weak face and reedy figure. He was dressed in brown tweed of an ugly herring-bone pattern; he had a thick new watch-chain. She didn’t know who he was, but she instantly hated—and resented—him.

He came a little farther into the room, looked at her thoughtfully, critically—as a lady’s-maid might at her lady’s new gown—possibly to be hers some day. Then he, too, grinned. The glance instantly fired her; she looked and almost spoke indignant[196] remonstrance. But the strange man merely grinned again and slipped away. She was left alone.

Edred was a very long time. When at last she heard lagging feet, the ball in her throat—of frenzied delight, of trepidation and tumult—nearly choked her.

He was faultlessly dressed. He looked prosperous—a bit bored and languid—that was part of his mask—but happy and very much plumper. She fancied that his puffy cheeks detracted from his good looks. He hadn’t missed her. He had left her at Folly Corner—to die if she liked, to do worse—without caring.

She struggled up from the extravagantly stuffed divan of figured silk.

“Edred!”

“By Jove! Pam! You?”

She had nervously pulled her gloves off while she waited. His eyes fell to her hands at once. There wasn’t a ring on them.

“Whew! He hasn’t found out? The wedding isn’t off?”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“My dear little girl—it is such a surprise. Fancy meeting you!” he laughed airily. “Where’s old Jeth? What’s the joke?” His eyes fell to her hands again. “You’re married? It was to be the sixth—wasn’t it? No—the sixteenth?” He looked at a calendar.

“The tenth.”

“To-day’s the fourth. Are you playing a trick? How did you know I was here? I say, Pam, be[197] square. Is he—Jethro, you know—waiting outside? The old fellow must look odd in a frock-coat. Does he lift each foot along the pavement, as if he were walking through stubble? If he’s up, I can give him a good tip. The new company——”

“The ruby mine. I know. I saw your name—that is why I came.”

“Does he want an investment?”

She clasped her hands with an air of hopeless, helpless tragedy.

“You men are all alike. Can’t you see an inch before your nose? Do you think I should come up here about rubies? Oh! can’t you see it on my face? Jethro was just as bad; he made me tell him everything.”

“Everything?”

His handsome face became blank.

“Everything.” She threw a hard laugh at him. “Everything—No. 4658 and all.”

“You didn’t?”

“I did. It is your fault. I couldn’t marry him, Eddie. I had to come. He wished it. He knows everything. He sent me.”

“He sent you to me?”

“Yes.” She was growing deadly pale. “Don’t you want me? I can go away—but not to Folly Corner. That is finished.”

He looked troubled, stroking and tugging the coal-black, silky mustache. He raised his eyes to her, then dropped them to the ground.

She had fallen back, her lids half fallen. It was a hot day; it had been a long journey. She was[198] very tired, quite faint. She didn’t think she cared much, now that he evidently didn’t. Yet, never for a moment did she regret leaving Jethro; never for a moment entertain the idea of going back. She shut her eyes, listening quite listlessly to the rumble of life below. Her fate had long ago passed out of her own hands. She was a chattel in spirit; although free in letter. Let him settle what he liked.

She was roused by a kiss on her mouth. Edred was on the lounge. His face was tender—the bold, assured tenderness that always made her happy.

“Good little girl,” he said, in the half-sneering, half-caressing voice which was his nearest approach to adoration. “Good little girl to come. You must stay with me. I’ve missed you, Pam. You had the telegram?”

She let her head stay on his arm; she stretched her dusty feet out wearily, with a gesture of absolute content.

“Yes. It was dangerous; Jethro might have opened it. I waited by the yew half the night. Why didn’t you come?”

“Because I had just a shred or so of honor left——”

“The evasive thing that men call honor! I never could understand it.”

“A woman doesn’t. Jethro—poor old man—had been devilish good. The two ‘hun’ put me on my feet, Pam. Like the place?” He nodded his head comprehensively at the luxury which walled them. “Decentish, isn’t it?”

“It’s very nice. Why didn’t you come, or write?[199] It nearly broke my heart. If I had not seen your name in the paper yesterday I should have married Jethro.”

“I’m very glad you didn’t.” He looked sleepily at the beauty of her flushed cheeks, at the depths of her happy eyes. “You saw the page advertisement in the Standard? We’re spending thousands in advertisements—throw a sprat to catch a herring. Does the carrier still bring the paper? What’s the fellow’s name?”

“Buckman.”

“That’s it. The same slow old horse—Hackty. You see I’ve remembered that. I suppose they mean it for Hector, or perhaps Active. Gad! what a sleepy hole! I felt like being in a dentist’s chair the whole time, half under the gas, you know, just going off. If you went back in fifty years, they’d be just the same. It’s so precious dull that they’d blow their brains out—if they had any.”

“Jethro has been so good,” she said, feeling numbly that Jethro was already very, very far away. She actually laughed, adding: “He insisted on my bringing up flowers, eggs, some quince jam.”

“That stunning quince jam,” he said boyishly. “Jeth’s a good sort. Was he very much cut up? It was too bad.” He gave her another kiss, without any protest on her part, any courtliness on his; quite as a matter of course.

“He was splendid. Poor, dear old Jethro! You wouldn’t understand. You’ll only laugh. You always laugh at things that make me want to cry—it’s the way with a man. He was so simple,[200] so grand. He was like a Greek god, very calm, but not a bit indifferent. He regarded it so broadly—talked of Nature. He is all Nature. He is a great, simple, clean-living ox—slow, reflective, not a bit stupid. He seemed to be above or past all the small teasing, tearing strings which drag mean hearts like yours and mine. I’ve been talking a great deal of nonsense and you are annoyed.”

She looked quite frightened as Edred got up abruptly and rang the bell. The past ten minutes had been so sweet that she would have accepted them willingly as eternity.

“Not a bit.” He shrugged. “But it’s rather rough to compare him to one of his own oxen. Do you remember how proud he was of his stock—murderous black beasts with tremendous horns? I tell you I didn’t half like crossing some of those fields in the twilight.”

The page came in. He looked at her boldly as she sat on the couch. She decided that her first step of authority should be the dismissal of that boy. Edred ordered tea. Everything was dainty, strangely dainty to her, because she was fresh from the coarse, lavish hospitality of Sussex. The sandwiches were evanescent—a suggestion of yellow and green. Edred tilted the cream into her cup; at Folly Corner they often had to put up with skim milk because Jethro insisted on having so many pounds of butter made weekly. He had his stern economies; believed in making farming thoroughly pay. When eggs fetched more than a shilling a dozen almost every one was sent to market.

[201] There were French cakes, toast cut in mathematically exact triangles. The aroma of the tea seemed to fill the room. They sat by the open window, an inlaid table spread with exquisitely drawn linen between them. She looked at the road, across the railings into the park, where an occasional carriage drove through the haze. She looked at Edred. The prison stain was completely gone. His diamond ring, the pin at his neck, all his indications of prosperity, pleased her. And yet she thought the diamonds ostentatious. If he had been a portly man, instead of a slim and elegant one, he would have been vulgar.

She was always touched by externals—had a painful respect for the things money gave. In the midst of her intense happiness she paused to consider discreetly that, love apart, Edred was a more eligible husband than Jethro. She thought of Jethro—that side of him which had always jarred on her: his half-sheepish, half-surly air in the presence of strangers, his shy avoidance of women. Then she thought of his toilet—the striped tags of his thick boots, which were generally hanging out, the black suit, which he would speak of as his “best”; his week-day shirts of galatea; his best white ones, which he did not often wear because of the difficulty experienced by the old washerwoman in getting them up. She thought of his ridiculous neckties, of his huge, snuffy silk pocket-handkerchief, of the turnip-like repeater which had been his grandfather’s, and which he lugged out of his capacious pocket laboriously. She poured herself more[202] tea from the Queen Anne silver pot. She poured another cup for Edred, feeling a delightful sense of being wifely as she did it.

“We might have had some of Jeth’s jam,” he said, idly smiling at her. His eyes seemed to contract and glitter unnaturally with undisguised admiration. She was very flushed and triumphant, a little feverish and reckless with her mastery of him. Yet, all the same, because she was a woman of the world, and had been driven to consider her reputation, she began to wonder, as the gray haze in the park grew black, what suggestion he was going to make for the night. One could not walk out into the street, take a hansom, and drive to be married forthwith. He said, pushing his empty cup away and settling back in the chair:

“I’ve been lucky. Everything I’ve touched has turned up trumps.”

“The ruby mine——”

“Pooh! That is only one thing. I’ve learnt, by very bitter experience, that it is as well to have plenty of irons in the fire.”

“Is it a genuine concern? You won’t risk anything this time?”

She put the question for his sake—for theirs. She did not wish him to fail, to suffer again. She wanted to be rich—safe—for the rest of her life.

“As genuine as anything can be,” he returned evasively. “But don’t spoil yourself by being serious. The prettiest woman—and you are looking devilish pretty to-night, darling—can’t afford to be serious: it brings lines about the mouth.”

[203] She returned his smile, but a moment after she sobered again.

“I’m obliged to be serious,” she told him deprecatingly. “What arrangement do you propose for to-night? If I go to Bloomsbury too late they will not be willing to take me in.”

“Bloomsbury!” He looked annoyed at being reminded of that page in his life. “You don’t want to go there.”

“They know me. I can think of no other place.”

He didn’t answer for a moment. She searched his flushed face anxiously through the uncertain light.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said at last. “There’s a very fair hotel a few doors down. Sutton shall send my traps there. I’ll engage a couple of rooms for myself and him, and you shall have this place. Will that do? You’ll be very comfortable. They give me service—the cooking’s fair. One of the chambermaids will unpack your things and help dress you.”

He spoke as if she had all her life been accustomed to such attendance. He was wonderfully plastic; it was one of his feminine attributes. In a few weeks he had assimilated the manner, cultivated the brain of a wealthy man who instinctively measures cost by a five-pound note: nothing smaller than a “fiver.”

“That would do very well.”

“It won’t be for long. We must marry. I’ll get a license to-morrow. Sutton shall see about it—he’s a rare fellow for details.”

[204] “Is that the horrid man who looked into the room while I was waiting?”

Edred laughed.

“Yes.”

“Who is he? He mustn’t come here any more. I’m sure he’s hateful.”

“He’s very useful. He lives here—a most superior fellow, much to be pitied. He was a clerk in a City firm for twenty-five years; went there when he left school; worked up to a salary of £150. Threw all his energies into the business; stayed late on Saturday, took papers home to master on Sunday. Then they chucked him—wanted a younger fellow. Everybody must be young nowadays. Sutton is invaluable. He knows the inside of the city. He’s my clerk. I give him a couple of pounds a week and his grub. He’s perfectly happy—so am I. His tips have put hundreds into my pocket. Oh! you’ll have to be civil to Sutton.”

“Don’t be in too great a hurry to make money, will you?”

He laughed.

“Too much haste leads to the dock,” he said lightly. “I’m careful enough. Some day—in a fairly little time, too—I shall be a second Milligan. Lady Pamela Crisp. It sounds well, doesn’t it?”

“We are going to be married—in my name. Will that be legal?”

“Extraordinary delusions a woman has about the marriage service! Of course it will be legal.”

“I ought to be going to Victoria to get my luggage. It is in the cloak-room.”

[205] “Sutton will see to that.”

She never forgot the witchery of that evening. Edred was so adoring, so recklessly generous, so optimistic. They dined; they had a box at the theater. No tinge of conscience whipped up her light heart. She never threw one half-thought back, across the lonely miles of suburb and common and pasture, to the mellow old house, girt with a great pond, whose master at that moment might be sitting by the empty hearth with his whole big faithful heart full of her.

The one disconcerting touch was when they parted at the door of Marquise Mansions. Edred had been talking of his successes, of the many clever, shifty schemes he had in prospect.

“We must entertain—in a Bohemian way,” he said. “Only men; jossers I want to persuade into doing things. You understand? Very often a look from a pretty, well-dressed woman will do more than hours of plausibility, of convincing proof, from the woman’s husband. You must have some Paris frocks; get your hair dressed well.”

“We shall only entertain men?”

“Women are not interesting—the wives and daughters of city men. We shall only entertain from diplomacy—other women would spoil everything. You must help me to play my game. It is to your interest, isn’t it?”

She did not answer. He thought that her expression in the uncertain light—stars and gas lamps competing—was rebellious. He became savagely petulant.

[206] “This marrying is a bore,” he said. “Why do you insist on it? Marriage is only an empty form. It would be all the same—no one would know. Married people are not branded for all the world to see, after all. We shall never get tired of each other. It will be just the same, just as safe, more romantic. What do you think, Pam?”

He stared at her with odd intentness, as she stood in the shadow of the wide entrance door. She was wrapped from her soft dull hair to her shoe in a costly evening cloak which they had hurriedly bought on the way to the theater to cover her dusty traveling dress.

“I think that it has all been said, threshed out,” she returned firmly. “I don’t want romance—at the expense of respectability.”

The night-rattle of London swung by them as they stood in the shadow of the door poising their fate in their hands. The warm, misty streets were festooned with strings of red and yellow light. Pamela was reminded of those miserable omnibus rides from Portobello Road, when she had watched the words “OX FORCE—NINON SOAP—DUNN’S NOSTRUM” glitter and die on the face of a house.

Edred’s eyes, contracted and brilliant, tried to destroy her will. They were admiring, magnetic. But she was fiercely respectable; she had struggled, had seen the seamy side of life. She loved him, she was madly, wickedly infatuated with him, but his smooth claptrap about the romance of an irregular union did not take her in.

[207] “You are jesting,” she said coldly; “jesting—in very bad taste.”

“Yes. Only a jest,” he returned, gripping her hand.

Three days after that they were married. She started a new, intoxicating career as mistress of the gorgeously appointed flat at Marquise Mansions.

[208]

CHAPTER XV.

IT was past eleven and they were languidly pecking at breakfast. The brick-red sun forced himself into the room, made the gorgeously upholstered settee and chairs look faded, showed the green tarnish on the great copper pots, the gray rim of dust on the delft which crowded the shelves, and the darker layer which the housemaid had left in the interstices of the elaborately carved furniture.

Pamela’s morning gown, of some clinging primrose stuff, had caught London smuts in the loose ruffles of its sleeves. She lifted her cup and the ruffles fell back, showing finger-and-thumb bruises on the white flesh. She was sallow, blotchy, her eyes muddy and swollen. Edred kept looking up from his paper and staring savagely; the weary face, all quiver and traces of heavy tears, infuriated him.

“I don’t know what is coming over you,” he broke out at last. “You have only two moods—the nagging or the maudlin.”

“Edred! I—I thought you’d say you were sorry for last night. Look!”

She held up her bare arm accusingly.

“Sorry!” His frank look of amazement was absolutely genuine. “What have I to be sorry about?”

“Look!”

[209] The white arm, with the ugly purple marks, quivered before his eyes.

“Pooh! you bruise with a touch. It’s nothing.”

“The things you said——”

“Said! You’d madden any man with your stiff airs of prudery.”

“I’ve begged you not to ask Milligan here.”

“I shall ask him as often as I like. He’s useful. You’ll please be civil to everybody who’s useful—to Sutton in particular. You treat the fellow as if he were——”

“The cur he is,” she concluded scornfully.

“You’re no good if you can’t help me to play my game. That is why you are here, confound you,” he cried savagely. “You don’t think”—his sneer was devilish—“that I married you because I had such a supreme longing for fireside virtue.”

“They are all alike—your men,” she cried out passionately. “They regard me as—as—I cannot finish.”

She buried her disfigured face in her hands. Every line of her shaking body was crouching, subjective; she was a human hound with a brute for a master, a brute on whom she fawned.

“It’s new for you to be so particular.”

“I—I don’t understand.” She lifted her face suddenly; let him see it all grotesquely distorted, drawn out of shape.

“I repeat; it is new for you to be so particular. If you can throw yourself into the arms of one man——”

“One man?”

[210] “These mawkish airs of innocence don’t impress me. We’ve been quite bare to each other for twelve months. You came here; forced yourself on me. Why couldn’t you stay behind like a sensible, modest woman, and marry Jethro? I was getting on perfectly well, wasn’t I? Did I look as if I wanted you?”

“Edred!”

“That parrot cry will make me murder you some day. Be a woman, with a clear head on your shoulders, not a sniveling fool. Be a wife to me.” A queer, mocking expression contracted his thin mouth. “Help me when you can. If you offend Milligan——”

“I’ll never speak to him again. Good Heavens! You don’t want me——”

He sprung up from the table, took her by the trembling shoulder, and swung her round.

“I don’t care what the devil you do,” he said deliberately.

She looked weakly up into his face, saw that he meant it, and began to shake and sob. This was the worst blow he could deal. He meant it! Hitherto she had attributed his brutalities to business worry.

She cried violently, hopelessly. She was all tears. She had no spirit left, except the spirit that vents itself in extravagant words. Suddenly she darted to the open window.

“If I were to jump down,” she began desperately; her feverish hands clawed round the ledge, her wild eyes turned inward to the room.

“It wouldn’t be a bad solution.”

[211] She ran back, tried to catch him round the neck with her pleading arms, murmured pet names, shivered, sobbed, shook, tried vainly, in the wrong way, to win back the old, transient adoration.

He wrenched himself away, as he would have freed himself from a skein.

“I’m sick of these rows,” he said savagely. “Do as I wish. Mind what you’re at with Sutton—he knows a precious deal that I’d rather he didn’t. Play Milligan. A clever woman would do it all without compromise, but you are a prude—one of those ardent, faithful prudes that make a man curse. Hang it all, I don’t want your extravagant devotion; I’m in need of help. I don’t care what you do so long as I don’t know—that’s married fidelity up to date. Do you understand?”

“I can’t—I won’t! My life is one degradation; you don’t care. If I were some shameful woman, not your wife——”

“By George! if you knew all, you’re little better. That jargon in the church—Sutton to give you away, the verger as best man—didn’t put you on a pedestal of virtue.”

“I won’t—I can’t!” she repeated desperately, linking and unlinking her hands, looking up at him with the devoted, obstinate eyes of a dog who is afraid.

“Then go. You are a burden, an irritant.”

“You mean that?”

“Of course. I mean everything.”

He flung himself out of the room. Presently she heard him leave the flat with Sutton.

[212] She fell down on the settee, cuddling into the stuffed corners for comfort. She shivered all over. She was cold. She ached with misery. She told herself that she was a coward. She knew perfectly well, as well as he did, that her heroics, her dramatic attitudes and words of palpable restraint, were only pose. A woman who meant suicide wouldn’t talk about it. She despised herself for that rush to the window—as he despised her. He had told her to go; he didn’t want her. But she hadn’t the courage to take him at his word. She loved him. She was perfectly willing to crawl, to cringe to him—for the sake of an occasional rough caress.

What a life it had been! She looked back along the year. She recalled his first few ardent weeks, his gradual cynicism and disregard, the constant vinegar lash of his reckless tongue, the frequent heavy blows.

What a strange, disreputable, luxurious life they led, the three of them! She included Sutton without hesitation. He was only a dependent in externals. Edred seemed more than half afraid of him. Sutton knew every money-making shuffle, every risky deal of the game.

She gazed wildly about her. Everything was luxurious, slovenly, lonely. She hadn’t an engagement to fill the day, hadn’t a woman friend in the world. Then, fleetly, her thoughts ran back with deep affection to those women she had known once—kin, perhaps—the Turles and Crisps, and Jaynes and Furlongers. Simple women! She had laughed at them, been scornful of them, been bored to death[213] by them. At the moment she longed for them. She pictured them individually in their lonely, comfortable homes, with their traditional, simple, brainless occupations. She thought of them singly. Each one had her special reputation among her neighbors—for a particular jelly, good butter, or savory pickles.

She knew dozens of men. They came to the flat with Edred; sometimes they came when he was out, when they knew perfectly well that he was certain to be in the City. Milligan especially cultivated that trick. Her outraged virtue lighted to a cruel fire. She thought fiercely that if Milligan came up the stairs that day she would find courage to kill him.

Yes, dozens of men! They gave her flowers, once or twice a jewel. They paid her dubious compliments, discussed music-hall artistes, told queer stories in her presence. They flattered, ignored, or shocked her, as it suited the mood of the moment. She occupied exactly the position of a beautiful, expensive lap-dog, whose ears every visitor may pull, to whom every visitor may toss a lump of sugar.

London outside was gay and hot—all blue and yellow, all dust and eager noise. The top-heavy omnibus swung by, with gayly dressed women on the garden seats, fluttering bows of ribbon on the drivers’ whips. The big hats of the women, piled with feathers and imitation roses, made her think of her blazing flower borders at Folly Corner. She sat up, wiped her burning eyes, into which her bitter sorrow seemed to have corroded. She thought very calmly of Jethro—thought of the slow, easeful, reflective[214] life which she had so lightly, so gladly, thrown out of reach. A year ago! They would have married—had a child, perhaps. His simple words—“A little son to come with me and beat in shooting-time; they soon grow up”—rippled in her throbbing head. A child! She might have had her own child by now. The dreadful ache of a barren woman caught her.

She walked up and down the untidy room, her primrose trail dragging over the dusty carpet. She rang the bell, but no one came to clear. She hadn’t a duty in the world. It was hardly noon yet. If she crawled back to her bed and sobbed away the day, if she went headlong down through the oriel window—it made no difference. She was perfectly free to do exactly as she chose.

She walked up and down in her misery and indecision, the August sun streaming into the room, where the bacon on the table was caked in a translucent layer of white grease, and the crumpled serviettes were tossed to the floor.

All her love, her passion, her folly, and heartlessness had ended in this—a mere vulgar marriage row. Row was the word he had used. Just an underbred squabble—they had plenty. They had flung words at each other—the usual taunts of an ill-sorted couple.

She knew he’d come in as usual at night—Sutton behind, with his false air of subservience; Milligan at his side, his eyes roving about for her. She knew she’d put on her freshest dress. She knew. She was a miserable, plastic fool, hopelessly committed.[215] Already she was no longer angry with Edred; only bitterly, sorely pained and degraded.

If she could only travel past caring! But every bitter word of his found its frightful billet in her heart; every foul word pierced like a pointed weapon. Her love was riddled with the cruelest wounds, but not one was vital. She loved him. He had told her to go. Go! She laughed, picking up his pipe and kissing the stem ardently.

The gay rattle and careless chaff ran under her yawning window. She started up suddenly and put on her out-of-door things. She went down the wide staircase thoughtfully, wondering what on earth she should do with the day.

She hailed the first omnibus that came rocking down Piccadilly. She got inside and sat near the door. There were only two other passengers—a middle-aged man and his more middle-aged wife. Pamela watched them languidly, in the mood to study other people. Her own life held nothing now but empty days and distasteful evenings. Dinner-time was coming—with Milligan, other men, perhaps—all the people who somehow made her feel contemptible, passively immoral. Their insults were so delicate, so flattering, that she could not resent them: to resent would be an admission. She just studied the dilemma of the middle-aged woman, who was very nervous, who expressed her preference for trams.

“I’ll go nearer the door. Then, if there should be a spill, I could jump out.”

She rustled along the seat, the stiff folds of her[216] brocaded black skirt seeming to share her terror. Then she peppered the conductor with anxious queries, asking him if he didn’t think the driver was drunk.

“Lor’, mum! he’s drove the ’bus for twenty year,” came the not altogether reassuring answer.

“You think he’s really sober? But, oh conductor”—her voice rose to a shriek as the horses swerved—“I do wish I was on the Underground. I insist on getting out.”

He rang his bell viciously and bundled her off the step. Her husband followed, looking keenly annoyed. Pamela smiled—scenting a marriage row. Then the blinding tears gushed to her eyes and burned there without falling. Marriage row! A vulgar, trivial squabble! She lived in a rain of them.

“I’ll go outside,” she said, with a sudden desire for the sky above her head and the dry air on her face. She went with a sure foot up the steps and along the roof, the omnibus still moving, and took the one spare seat immediately behind the driver. Once she had been proud of her coolness and dispatch in climbing an omnibus. That was in the old days, when money was scarce and skirts shabby at the hem: the days when she had carved at table, accompanied songs, and made herself generally useful (attractive, so the advertisement stipulated) at the stuffy boarding-house near the British Museum. Edred had been one of the boarders—had paid thirty shillings a week, which was as much as he could afford out of his two pounds five weekly. Those[217] were the days before he became a—number. She thought of it all, as she was carried by Kensington Gardens—occasional nights at a music-hall, merry waiting at pit doors, Sunday jaunts to Hampton Court—with a fresh summer gown, a smart cheap hat, and a constant dread of a shower.

The women on the seat immediately opposite were talking volubly. They both had cheap black jackets with very big buttons and outstanding sleeves. One, as she talked, kept licking her lips and constantly popping out her tongue with odd vivacity and archness. The other, an older woman, with a severe expression, took an occasional solemn swig at a bottle which was genteelly wrapped to the nose in a confectioner’s paper bag.

As the vivacious woman wriggled on the seat she afforded occasional peeps of a rusty quilted petticoat with a red flannel lining.

“She done it on the Monday as we see her on the Sunday,” Pamela heard her say mysteriously.

She fell to wondering what she had done: something very reprehensible certainly, judging from the shocked expression of the elder woman, who nodded sourly and tilted her paper bag.

“She says to me, ‘Why don’t you take in a lodger?—some young lady as is engaged all day in business. There’s the spare room a-goin’ beggin’,’ she says. But I aint goin’ to do it, Mrs. Whitbourn; would you? Oh, ’e’s a good ’usban’. But there!”—the dusty head with the black chip hat shook sideways and the quick tongue lolled out—“you never knows nothin’, do yer?”

[218] “No, yer never does,” confirmed the solemn woman.

“Lor’! ’ere we are at the church. Well, good-by, Mrs. Whitbourn. See you again some day.”

They kissed lusciously; the sateen petticoat with the frowsy red lining whisked away.

Pamela stared straight in front of her thoughtfully.

“Yer never knows nothin’, do yer? No, yer never does,” kept striking in her head.

“Yer never does.”

She didn’t. Strange, that a suspicion of the particular wrong which Edred might do her had never before occurred to her. Had she found the secret of his coldness and unconcern—in another woman? Was there somebody else?

First, a fierce, instinctive jealousy swept her; then she wished ardently that it might be so. That might be the deathblow of her mad, headlong love for him.

She went to the very end of the journey, then took another omnibus back. At Bond Street she alighted and walked down to the dainty shop where she usually had tea. The woman’s words still haunted her.

“Yer never knows nothin’, do yer?”

One might go on for a lifetime, in a nest of different worlds like London, and never know. That was perfectly true. She turned her sleeve up furtively and drank in the angry purple of the bruises on her wrist. Was another woman responsible for them? It was a new idea and a very enticing one.

[219]

CHAPTER XVI.

AS days went on she became more than ever persuaded of the fatalism of those suggestive, common words, “Yer never knows nothin’, do yer?” That woman, with the soiled red lining to her kicked-up petticoat—that woman, with the loosely sensuous mouth, big tongue, and rolling bright eyes, had emerged from the gray routine of her particular suburban corner, merely as a warning. Those comically meaningless words became a gospel. She was always saying them, puzzling over them. They were on her pale lips as she looked questioningly into Edred’s face. Once she woke up and found herself saying them in her sleep. It was too stupid. But, if only that persistent quoting of them, in silence, that continual battering of them at the door of her distracted brain, would bring solution! If she could take hold of some slight clew! She found herself constantly longing for proof of Edred’s unfaithfulness. That, she thought, would end her love—her reckless, shameful love for an unworthy object: love that blows, terrible suggestions, the cruelest words and looks could not kill. If she could free herself from that horrid, paralyzing coil of Love!

She used to dog his steps with the patient sleuth-like tread of an intent panther. She followed him[220] into strange places often enough—unseen. She was always watching, waiting. Other wives waited and watched, hoping all the time that nothing was wrong, that they still had faithful husbands, might still keep their homes together with honor. But Pamela dogged Edred desperately—much more desperately than she would have done had there been the smallest chance of happiness left for them. She only fiercely prayed that there might be some entanglement, that there was some other woman—weak, innocent, or criminal—in the background. It meant so much more to her than mere conjugal peace and trust; her experience had made her bitterly scornful of married life: you could never successfully blend romance and joint housekeeping. She was playing for a much higher, nobler stake—her own independence. A wife was an individual first, a mere married woman afterward. She was conscious from time to time of the absolute isolation of each human being who treads the world.

One flesh! Bare hearts! What empty jargon! One could look into the other one’s eyes and be breeding murder, worse than murder, all the time. This life, the beings with whom we were accidentally thrown in contact during our half-conscious sojourn—mere detail! There was a splendid, terrifying isolation about everyone. Each alone! She used to look at them curiously, speculatively; figures moving along the yellow streets at night, in tender twos, in merry companies—and yet alone. Each one shut in, cut off from all perfect communion, by the film of his own individuality. Each brain its[221] own secret world. Each body, under such varying garments, absolutely its own, in spite of vows, ardent protestations, respectable and legal shackles.

She used to brood thus, a little at random, as she warily trod the streets behind that slim, carefully-dressed figure. She had become a strange perversion. She loved her husband still, in a headlong, fierce way. Yet she longed for him to commit himself, so that her love might puff away, become impalpable, like smoke rising in a clear sky. There was no chance for her, no freedom, no self-respect until she became callous, until that hot, wayward heart of hers was dammed up. She had read—in a girl’s superficial way—of first love as a potent thing. She hadn’t known then that it could be such a sweeping, crowning, involuntary thing—hadn’t dreamed that it could hold you in such grim, iron grasp. She couldn’t get away from the magnetism of—the first. She despised him; sometimes, for a clear moment, she loathed him. She remembered that on one occasion it had been a keen struggle to throw down the bread knife on the wooden platter instead of slitting it through his long lean throat.

And yet! He had only to call the old playful, indulgent light into his lazy eyes, only to carelessly flip at her some gesture or word of the past, to bring her under his heel—quivering body, small subject soul. It was horrible to be in such bondage to a man—just because he had been first. Only because!

One night near Holywell Street she saw him meet a woman. She followed them down the[222] Strand, an odd, glad singing in her head. The moment had come.

She studied that woman with a woman’s minute, critical eye. She wasn’t satisfied. The woman was respectable, obviously, insolently respectable. She looked like the mistress of a maid-of-all-work and a flawless little house.

She hadn’t the right atmosphere. She took Edred’s arm, hanging on it stolidly and looking at other women on the pavements with a sort of virtuous sneer, seeming to say, “I have a perfect right; can any of you say as much?” They might have been an aggressively respectable married couple from South London going to dine at a restaurant by way of dissipation.

As a matter of fact they turned in at one. Pamela watched Edred push back the heavy door and gravely stand aside for his companion to pass in first. There was no eagerness in his attitude; he seemed quite used to it, not exactly weary, but coldly stolid. He wore the settled air of a married man—the mild, contented, resigned air of doom, which so many husbands wear. He was neither unhappy nor happy; he took this evening meal in the crush and steam and the hurry of waiters as a matter of course. Why not?

She didn’t pretend to understand him—or her. They were an odd couple. Nothing stealthy, illicit, ecstatic about them, when there should have been a suggestion of all three emotions!

The woman wore brown—the frump’s unfailing refuge: it was a hot, reddish sort of brown; her hat,[223] anxious to be in the fashion, was painfully skewered to her head by many pins. There were fresh touches of pink about her at ridiculously unwanted spots. She looked pleased, shy; like a child dressed for a party.

Pamela followed them up between the line of tables, between the greedy line of eaters, some gluttonously bending over the plates, some waiting with an air of impatience, some replete and leaning back, quizzing and smoking. In the long mirrors she could see the reflection of all three—such a dramatic three: Edred, with his sheepish, sleepy air; the strange woman, all pink and brown and narrow airs of virtue as she looked at—and apparently suspected—every other woman a little smarter than herself. Last of the three Pamela saw her own tall figure, stylishly attired, the abundant dull hair bunching out beneath her toque with the big ostrich plumes. The set and selection of her gown was in such good, if rather striking, taste, that the over-fed and quickly-feeding men looked after her, their faces lighting up.

The intangible feeling of shame, of smirching, which was becoming common to her, caught at her then. She fancied she read insult in the admiration of these many strange men.

She looked at herself again and was bound to admit that there was not so very much difference between her costume, her carriage, and the carriage and costume of others present whose vocation was unmistakable. The ultra-fashionable woman sails perilously near the wind in appearance. She felt[224] quite angry with her expensive garments. She followed still, through the glass, the movements of the woman in pink and brown. She seemed to shout, in every seam of her dowdy frock, in every gleaming button of her badly-cut gloves, “respectable married virtue.” She!—she!

The world was whirling round the wrong way.

She followed her quarry, every sense alert so that Edred might not discover her. When the two settled at a table she deftly slipped aside and took the one immediately behind them. So that they were sitting back to back, she and that shameful woman with the perplexing insolent air of calm virtue. The back of her beautifully-cut and braided heliotrope coat was within a few inches of the contemptible little brown bodice with the crisp pink bow at the neck and the pink-lined ends, like lopping rabbit-ears, at the waist.

The waiter came up. Beneath her breath and mechanically she ordered a steak, her ears strained all the time to hear what they would order. Edred said:

“Calves’-head? You have never tasted it—as they serve it here.”

“It’s rather rich,” came a common voice dubiously.

Odd! Her voice, like her frock, like her little pursed mouth and hard eyes, was respectable. Aggressively respectable! Women like that had no right to appear respectable; to do so was an additional aggravation. Wasn’t their existence enough? The jealous fire was rising, was already[225] burning, a steady white light, at her heart. But she was very glad, of course. Confused, conflicting thoughts kept running in her head.

When the steak came she could not eat it; there was enough for two men. She just played with her knife and fork, dipping deeply into the bottle of red wine she had ordered.

“I knew it would be too rich,” the voice of the brown woman said reproachfully. “It’s too bad of you to spoil my dinner, when you know my stomach’s not strong. Nasty, bilious stuff! I can’t touch another bit.”

Well! He might have chosen a handsomer, a more refined woman. Little common narrow creature! He might have given her a more worthy rival while he was about it.

“Where did I put my gloves? No, I couldn’t look at pudding; it would just about finish me. Cheese? If you like—not for me. I’ll have a liqueur by and by; not that beastly green stuff we had last time. Cherry brandy. I can’t have lost the gloves.”

She twirled round suddenly, putting her hands behind her and anxiously fumbling. Pamela wheeled round too, grasping the handle of her umbrella by way of excuse. Their eyes met. The quick, respectable, scandalized expression shot into those of the brown woman.

Pamela flinched and flushed. It wasn’t pleasant to be mistaken—by her, too. The wretch—the little, common, hypocritical wretch! How dare she? Their eyes met: the malevolent stare in the[226] pink and brown woman’s, the eager, wide look in Pamela’s. She photographed on her alert brain every line of that face—the face which Edred found more comely than hers. It was long and thin, but quite youthful; she judged her to be about twenty-five. The eyes were hot brown, like the gown, and set close together. They were restless eyes, curiously restless. They roved about perpetually, seeming miserably to search for something which never came. It was like a monkey’s face—a pink, unlined monkey face. There was cunning in it, spite, and a kind of dumb pathos. A very curious woman for a rival!

She fished up the ginger-colored gloves. They were shamefully new; one or two of the buttons were still covered with tissue-paper.

Edred had finished his meal; he was smoking, his head back, his eyes dreamy. Pamela knew the attitude very well; it usually followed a good dinner. Her heart ached for herself. The little woman fussily put on her gloves, drew down her veil, settled her fluttering ends of pink satin. Then she, too, fell back on the red seat and began to look idly about her, passing audible comments on people whose appearance invited the acid of her tongue.

“And there’s that woman behind,” she said presently, in a distinct whisper. “Just behind me. Look—when she isn’t looking. How silly you are! Always looking the wrong way. Didn’t I say behind?”

“Never mind. I’ll take your word for her,” he returned.

[227] “But do look. I’m sure she’s—you know. Half of them are in this place. Disgraceful, overdressed things!”

He turned with sudden curiosity. Pamela was still twisted round on the seat. She was staring savagely at that impudent brown hat, with the ferocious spiked pins which stuck out in all directions. Edred turned. He saw her—saw her haggard face peering through the smoke and vulgar glitter of the place. As, for that one supreme moment, they stared spellbound at each other, the second woman said impatiently:

“Come on. We shall be late. The last time you took me to the theater we were late.”

Pamela started up, slipped past the tables, past the rows of diners. Near the door the waiter stood in her path. She dropped a coin in his hand and hurried on. Once outside the door of that place, under the cool sky in a dark side street, she took to her heels like a pickpocket. She was afraid of Edred, more afraid than she had ever been. There had been a new, ugly threat on his face. It would be something more than words this time. After all, words were not the worst. Her flesh was tender; she dreaded that he would beat her.

She turned, panting like a closely-pressed hare, into the Strand, held up her umbrella to the first hansom, and hustled in.

“Marquise Mansions,” she called up to the driver. “I’ll give you double fare if you drive very quickly.”

The horse seemed to fly through the moving,[228] brilliant streets. Before her heart ceased its mad, quick beat of terror and apprehension, the crude red wall of Marquise Mansions was in sight.

She went up to the flat, locked herself in her bedroom, dragged off her tight gown, kicked away her shoes, unfastened the piquant hat from her fair hair—and hid everything. She rolled the things in a rough bundle and shot them far under the bed.

When Edred burst in ten minutes later, she was half lying in a low chair by the drawing-room window, with a novel in her hands. The lace and cashmere of her tea-gown spread softly about her ankles like the delicate tail of some exquisite foreign bird.

[229]

CHAPTER XVII.

SHE had never seen his face look quite so strange, not even on that mad day in the stuffy Bloomsbury house when she helped him throw his things into the bag and he whispered hoarsely that “they” were after him. She was puzzled by the intensity of his expression. He didn’t love her, he was tired, anxious to be rid of her. That discovery of the contemptible woman in brown should have been propitious for him. And yet he seemed furious, and, more than that, afraid.

She had meant to calmly tell the truth. But two things froze the truth that lay ready on her tongue. She was afraid of him: he was a mere violent physical brute, in the mood to stamp on her, to drive his fist into her face: that was what it had come to—her tender, first romance. Her weak woman’s cowardice made her shiver with apprehension under her sweeping folds of cashmere. And then, apart from fear, she couldn’t tell him. She didn’t want him to know she knew.

It was humiliating, mortifying, delightful. She rapidly read her own heart. She loved him still. There was no solution. The common, dowdy woman that he had just left had no power to part them. She realized with fear, with self-reproach, with bitter shame, yet with relief, that any mere bodily sin he might commit was pardonable. Was[230] there, then, no cardinal offense? Was she to go on loving in this despicable way until the very end?

She looked up from the book, smiling, yawning.

There was cunning in her big clear eyes, the cunning which even the frankest woman on earth has in reserve: handed down to her through generations of oppressed women, who have always been slaves.

Slaves! The word suddenly came; she couldn’t have told why. And while she sat back in the chair, chin up, eyes half afraid, mouth stiffly smiling, she was thinking scornfully that woman always had been and always would be slaves. They liked to be slaves. All this strident talk about freedom and rights was froth, propounded by those imbittered free women who hadn’t succeeded in finding a master.

“You said you were not coming back to dinner,” she said gayly, and then grew deadly pale as she suddenly remembered that he had said something about not coming back all night, if a certain business he had in hand took an anxious turn. He had said that he might be called away to Liverpool. Her lip curled. Liverpool! Kennington, more likely! That hat, that terrible gown, had looked like Kennington. Then she rallied. “You said you were not coming back to dinner, so I—I dined: a woman’s dinner, you know—an egg, some cake, and three cups of tea.”

“No lies!” he returned savagely. “What were you doing half an hour ago? An egg! Tea! There was a plate of rump-steak in front of you at the restaurant.”

[231] She was by this time thoroughly steadied to hard, deliberate lying. She didn’t want to lose him. She didn’t mean to hand him over publicly to that woman. She loved him. She’d keep the semblance of him anyhow.

All her frenzied watching; all her deplorable spying; all her fierce assurance that unfaithfulness on his part would free her soul—ended in this. She was lying, in order to keep him.

That he had been unfaithful she was certain; his attitude toward the woman spoke of nothing else. It was an old entanglement, purged of all piquancy, all intensity. It had become a matter of course.

“You don’t suppose I would go out and dine alone? Steak! I never touch it.”

“You never do,” he said ponderingly; then added, “but that was, no doubt, part of your devilish, ingenious scheming, to throw dust in my eyes.”

“I don’t understand, I really don’t,” she persisted, with the firmness and absolute blankness of the deeply-committed liar. “Be a little more clear.”

“You were there. I saw you,” he stormed, moving his hands about nervously. “Why! You remember looking at me. You remember—her?”

“Her?”

“The woman with me. She was dressed in brown.”

“I hate brown. What woman?”

“You haven’t the impudence to stick to it that you weren’t there—with a rump steak and a bottle of wine?”

“It doesn’t sound at all inviting—at all like me.[232] My dear boy!” She leapt up, and tremblingly hung her arms about his stubborn neck. “It was a delusion—you saw my double.”

“Double be——”

“You must tell me about that woman,” she broke in, smiling falsely, her teeth, beneath her curled-back lips, white and cruel in their regularity and soundness. “You’ve committed yourself. Who was she? A business connection—a person from—Liverpool? Though you’ve never asserted that it was politic for you to keep in with the women—as it is for me to appease the men.”

He pushed her away from him by a reckless blow on the chest.

“Curse you!” he said with fury. “You’re like a cat—all claws, all purr. You double like a cat. I saw one chased by a dog through some front gardens the other day. She doubled behind some shrubs, and he lost her.”

She had one hand on her chest, where it throbbed with his fist. She was smiling still; a demoniacal smile, but with the most hopeless outraged tenderness behind it.

“There are no front gardens in Piccadilly,” she said, looking at him oddly. “You must have been in the suburbs.”

He sat down. He was biting his nails fitfully, and looking up at her from time to time with a sullen, suspicious glance.

“I’ll be even with you yet,” he said threateningly. “You were there.”

“I wasn’t.”

[233] “You’ll swear?”

“Women don’t swear. I wasn’t. I haven’t been out of the flat all day. Go into the bedroom, if you don’t believe me. Look at my shoes—all in nice shiny rows. Look at my gowns, all tidily on the pegs. By the way, what did she wear?”

“Brown,” he returned mechanically.

“Pooh! We’ll come to her later on. I mean the other—the one you mistook for me.”

“You wore a violet kind of thing, with black stuff sewn on it,” he persisted. “There were violet feathers in your hat. They nodded at me like imps when you got up and slipped away. By Jove! I won’t be fooled like this——”

“Don’t be absurd. Did you ever see me in violet? Think.”

The dress had only come from the tailor’s that morning. She watched him triumphantly.

“Perhaps not—but I never notice what you wear.”

“You never do,” she made answer sadly; and then she jumped up, again meaning to kiss him, but he angrily waved her back.

“It was a very curious thing,” she said steadily, and smiling into his angry, infuriated face. “It’s rather dree to know one has a double. I hope you’re convinced now. If not, go into the next room. See if you can find a violet gown. Shall we go together and hunt?”

“You’ll swear you weren’t there?”

“I’ve told you I wasn’t—I’m tired of telling. Now, about this woman?”

[234] “Never mind who she was. It’s not your affair.”

“But——”

“I’ve given you my definition of married fidelity,” he said, with an ugly, puzzling grin full on her quivering face. “Nothing matters—so long as the other one doesn’t find out. Find out—if you dare! If I ever see—your double—dogging me again, I’ll turn round in the streets and knock her down. Do you understand?”

“I hear—and I’m very sorry for the poor thing. I can only hope that she won’t cross your path, but—it’s nothing to me. Is it?”

He was out of the room, out of the flat before her lips closed after the mocking words. She fell back, shaking with degradation. She knew perfectly well that he would not return that night. She might drop her mask, spread the accusing violet gown on the bed, plant her dusty shoes in the middle of the room. She might cry her fill—but where was the good of that? Tears were bad diplomacy at the best of times. She was worn out enough by the burning shame of the glib lies she had been reeling off.

He would not come back that night. He had returned to—her—the brown person. Perhaps she had been waiting outside all the time. She got up, ran into the other room, began to feverishly unfasten her gown with one hand, while with the other she flung back the door of the wardrobe. She would follow them. If he saw her, knocked her down—so well! She would follow them—to the very door. Then she dropt down on the bed, shaking[235] her head mournfully, twisting her hands. She wouldn’t follow—all motive for following was gone. She had been waiting, watching all these degrading weeks for the advent of a woman. The woman had come. She had believed that she would bring freedom in her hands. But she hadn’t; no woman ever would. It needed a subtler force to kill her love for that villain. She didn’t even feel jealous because he had gone away with her rival. She was contemptuous of him because her rival was so uninteresting—that was about all. Her strongest feeling was one of being stunned—as if he had struck her on the head, instead of on the breast. She didn’t mind much. She was relieved, immensely relieved, that it was no longer necessary to watch—to crawl stealthily about the streets like an unclean animal of prey. She only hoped that he would come back in the morning—and in a good temper. One must learn to wink at things.

As she sat on the bed, shaking her head in a foolish, silly fashion, and smiling at the wall with the self-satisfied air of a person mildly and harmlessly distraught, the outer door of the flat opened. She jumped up with a wild hope, a sick dread. She gave the one essential look in the glass, raised her hot fingers mechanically to her crumpled hair, and went back to the drawing-room.

Sutton was standing in the middle of it, his head bent in a listening way.

“Oh!” she said stiffly, with an air of collapse. “You!”

He did not answer, only stared at her. His face[236] was aflame with some unusual emotion. It looked like a Christmas card—one of those things—transparencies—which admit a ruddy, steady light in places where you hold them up before a lamp.

“Edred has gone out,” she continued with abrupt impulse, “and I—I’m going out too.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. The pit of a theater, perhaps; he used to take me.”

He was looking at her fixedly, as well he might. Her voice, her face, her attitude were reckless.

“Will you come to a music-hall with me?”

She looked at him. He read her contempt for him; it was steady behind the reckless mask. But he didn’t care. For many months he had been playing for this night.

“Wait. One moment,” she said in a staccato fashion. “I’ll put on my long cloak—that’s all.”

She whisked through the door and was back in a moment, wrapped to her ankles in the garment which Edred had bought for her on that fairy summer evening—the night of the day on which she had left Jethro.

“You are going—like that?” he said musingly, as she hitched up the tail of her gown, and plunging his hand into his pocket.

He didn’t choose his music-hall with any regard for her. He took her somewhere—she didn’t know or care exactly where. She only knew that it wasn’t in one of the big streets. She sat with him in the box, staring and smiling through the performance. Nothing smote her modesty that night. She[237] had suddenly turned numb. Sometimes, as she stared and smiled at the stage, she saw, not a kicking, painted woman, but a demure, savagely respectable figure in brown. Once a dancer suddenly changed into a big woman, mostly jacket-buttons and red-lined petticoat, who extravagantly popped out a very long tongue, and said, “Yer never knows nothin’, do yer?”

As the evening wore on, and she endured without flinching the risky songs and patter, Sutton’s attitude grew more free. In the cab on the way home he sat beside her, seeming to press her uncomfortably into the corner.

When he unlocked the door of the flat her instinct told her at once that Edred had not returned. Sensation came back. She suddenly felt ill at ease. She wished from her heart that she had not gone out for the evening with Sutton, a man she detested and despised. She looked down at him contemptuously—a middle-aged, vacuous, little-minded, vulgar, cunning creature: a very good example of the played-out mercantile clerk.

“Good-night,” she said curtly.

It seemed an almost superfluous thing to say, jammed in together and alone as they were in the flat, where a whisper almost passed through the walls.

“Good-night,” she repeated, with sudden constraint.

“Wait a bit”—he opened the drawing-room door—“I want to talk to you.”

“I’m tired.”

[238] “But it’s very important.”

She marveled at the remarkable change in him. He had become an impressive figure. He absolutely commanded her, as he stood by the open door, in his iron-gray suit. It was baggy at the knees and elbows. It was perfectly true that he had plenty of money now; but he could not shake off the careful habits of twenty years. He only had two new suits a year, and he scrupulously changed his coat whenever he came indoors.

He threw out his hand and bowed—something in the way of a shop-walker. She walked into the room, without another word of protest.

He went out again, putting his face back in his usual queer way, to throw at her the words:

“I’ll be back in half a jiff. I’ll just put on my slippers and get my alpaca jacket.”

When he came in again, she was sitting bolt upright on the lounge; she had not even turned up her veil, nor unbuttoned her long gloves.

“Take off your things,” he said with ghastly jocularity. “Make yourself at home, you know.”

Then he laughed nervously. It suddenly dawned on her that he was in a state of great tremor. His jocular tone, his silly, vulgar words—everything of him—jarred terribly. She reproached herself, condemned herself again for that hideous evening of frolic at a third-rate music-hall with such a creature.

“I’ll keep my things on,” she said firmly. “Sometimes these summer nights are cold. It is going to rain.”

He came and sat on the other end of the lounge,[239] and stared at her with his unpleasant, expressionless eyes. He crossed first one leg and then the other; he stroked and tugged at the weakly growing hair on his face.

“If you’ve anything to say,” she said crisply, “say it. It’s twenty past twelve.”

“I’ve all night to say it in—he won’t come home.”

She nearly struck him for that free, unctuous laugh. She would have whisked up and locked herself in her own room—but she couldn’t. Even a mean man is commanding in moments of tremendous excitement. It was obvious that Sutton was laboring to say something of moment; she was impelled to sit still and let him say it.

“I don’t know where to begin,” he said helplessly, winding his watch-chain round his finger.

“If it is business,” she said, suddenly becoming inspired with the idea that there was some financial difficulty, and he wished to confide in her, to break it to her, “don’t tell me. I shall not understand.”

“I never talk business with a woman,” he returned with a sneer.

“Oh! Then what do you talk?”

“The one thing of any interest. You know what—but you like to tease me, you won’t help me out. It’s unkind to a poor beggar,” he said, with a fearful attempt at pathos and tenderness.

Then she knew instantly what was coming, knew what had transformed him. She was consumed with shame, with apprehension—but she could not rise from that paralyzing lounge, could not move[240] one step toward the door. Like a true woman, hypocritically obtuse to the very last, she said:

“I haven’t the least idea——”

He grabbed at her hands, held them desperately.

“You know; you’ve known all along. It’s been a pretty game, hasn’t it? You thought I didn’t see the nods you gave me over the dinner-table, the cunning little winks behind his back.”

“I never winked in my life,” she said indignantly.

He ignored the disclaimer, and went on calmly:

“You’ve stood a good deal more than most girls would have done—a pretty girl like you, too. He’s been a bit of a brute, hasn’t he? Upon my word, I wonder that you have stood it so long.”

She made a second frenzied attempt to struggle up from the cushions. She could see that he was slowly edging up, that the red glow on his face was more pronounced, that his eyes were nearer being expressive than they had ever been before.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said, pushing her back. “You’re not a fool; you’re a sharp girl—you know which side your bread’s buttered. Edred is going all to pieces; if he doesn’t look out he’ll find himself in the dock again—with Milligan and one or two more. But I was always prudent. I’ve made a nice little pile. I can give you every comfort.”

“I don’t know what you mean; on my word of honor I don’t,” she said beseechingly—too utterly staggered to be angry with him.

“You don’t know! You won’t, you mean. You’re bent on playing a better game. Well! there;[241] I’ll marry you, if you like. No man can make a fairer offer than that.”

Then, at last, she jumped up—positively, tangibly afraid of him. She conceived the sudden extravagant idea that he had gone mad. She knew nothing of his antecedents, she recalled a thousand foolish things that he had done and looked and said. She firmly believed him to be subject to attacks of mania. Her eyes expressed her fear.

“Do you think I’m off my head?” he demanded bluntly. “You look as if you did.”

He rose too, his face becoming inflamed and furious.

“You know,” she said gently, “of course you remember—I was married to Edred at St. Antony’s last year. You gave me away.”

He looked at her keenly. Then at last he said slowly:

“Haven’t you really found out? Do you still believe in that farce? Why have you followed him about all these weeks? Oh! I know. I did it well, didn’t I?” he laughed. “You behind him, I behind you, night after night. I’m a cute chap. When I was in the City the firm always gave me little delicate jobs like that to do. I can ferret out anything. And I can tell you this—she’s beginning to suspect.”

“She?”

“His wife. Come. You must know—you must have known for a long time. I found it out nearly a year ago. The little woman he dined with to-night. I was there too. What on earth made you[242] give the waiter half a quid? Hadn’t you less in your pocket?”

He wasn’t mad. She was—the world was. It was a bewitched night, a topsy-turvy universe. She wasn’t afraid of him any longer; he was sane enough, the little wriggling, contemptible reptile. He was sane, he was speaking the absolute truth. She sat down again.

“Tell me everything,” she said. “Please tell me everything. I thought that woman was—but—it is I. Will you please explain—everything.”

Sutton began to explain. He seemed to enjoy the task. He sat and talked and nursed his knee and glanced ardently, hopefully, from time to time, at the attractive, agonized face in front of him.

“It’s a nice little complication,” he said. “Of course when Edred married you he thought that she was dead. He’s not a fool; he wouldn’t have walked into a trap blindfold. He married her some years ago, before you ever met him. They had a baby. It died and she went off her head. They took her away to the asylum. Then, after a bit, he had an official notice that she was dead. He was jolly glad, of course; any fellow would be. Fancy a man being tied up to a cracked wife! Well! To cut a long story short, she wasn’t dead at all. It was somebody else—one of the blessed bungles of the asylum. It was a regular scandal in all the papers. She’s very much alive. She’s out, cured, as sane as you are, except for a rum look in her eyes now and then, which I should funk if I were her husband. He’s taken a little place for her at Mildmay[243] Park. He says he’s a commercial traveler. But she’s cunning; she smells a rat.”

“And she’s his wife?” Pamela said stonily.

“I can show the register if you like. It was at a church in——”

“I don’t want proof. I believe it. I might have known it from the first. She looks his wife. But I——”

She put up her hands and gave a short, wounded cry.

“The position’s favorable for us,” Sutton said complacently. “Of course, you don’t care for him, a brute who strikes and bullies you. Besides, he’ll throw you over before long. It’s getting a little too hot for him. She suspects and you suspect. He’s afraid you’ll be clawing each other’s faces. You see—it’s an ugly word—he’s committed bigamy. He may be found out any day. That means——”

“I know, I know,” she said, sharply nodding her head several times; “but I should never give him away. Never, never.”

“We needn’t send him to prison. He wouldn’t be any use to us there,” Sutton said, with a gesture of assent. “But we can bleed him pretty regularly. He’s in a tight corner, poor old chap. I can give him away on the business side and you on the matrimonial.”

He laughed with relish. She said, in the most matter-of-fact way, “If you laugh like that again, I think I shall kill you.”

“What a queer girl you are!” His voice was[244] steady, but he made a furtive movement toward the grate, where there were fire irons—efficient weapons—if he wanted them. He was thinking uneasily, in his common, literal way, that she was a big woman, that she looked deuced queer, that a woman when her blood was up was ten times worse than a man.

“What a queer girl you are!” he repeated rather timidly. “Do you forgive him?”

Her head was down on her breast.

“I love him,” she said, almost sullenly.

Sutton surveyed her in silence for a moment or so: anything out of the ordinary run of emotions struck him dumb. He had expected her to rage, to cry, to be hysterical, and end by dropping into his ready arms.

“You might have guessed,” he said at last. “Has he ever treated you as if you were his wife? Have any of us treated you as if you were his wife? You are not mistress here; the very servants see how things are; they never come to you for orders. The manager grins openly in your face.”

“Yes,” she said thoughtfully, thinking it all over and remembering a thousand damning incidents.

“Why,” Sutton went on, “if you had been his wife, he would have kicked Milligan out of the place long ago; he would have kicked us all out. Where have your eyes been, my dear girl? Think! Did any of those men bring their wives or sisters?”

She shook her fair, dull head: it seemed to sink lower on her breast as Sutton went fluently on:

“This flat is a bachelor establishment; he and I[245] are the tenants. If you were his wife I shouldn’t be here; the place is only a bandbox. I’ll take you to the church where they were married to-morrow morning; you shall see the register.”

“I don’t want to see it. I know that woman is his wife. I should have known it from the first, when I saw her hanging on his arm in the Strand. She is his wife. But I? What am I?”

Sutton said:

“Do you remember the night when Milligan came here with a lady?”

A queer expression of distaste crossed her white face. She remembered. There had been a quarrel between her and Edred—one of the usual sharp disputes. She had reproached him for bringing only men to the flat. She remembered her quick, foaming flood of reproach and invective in answer to his cold sneers. She remembered that when she stopped, panting for breath, he had said:

“Well, is that all? Good Heavens! how you women can jaw!”

That night Milligan had brought Lady Milligan with him to dinner. When they had gone Edred asked her, with an ugly look, if she were satisfied now. “What more did she want?”

Lady Milligan! A dark young girl, with a tightly-curled fringe like a door mat, a half dirty blouse, red hands. She remembered.

“Yes, Lady Milligan,” she said to Sutton. “A vulgar woman; but what could one expect? She used to serve in a tobacconist’s shop.”

Sutton laughed.

[246] “Lady Milligan,” he said, “is nearly fifty; a very religious, proper woman. Do you understand?”

“Oh!” she breathed, seeming to collapse with this added indignity of Edred’s. “Yes. I understand. Spare me any more confirming proofs.”

She hid her face in the sofa-cushions, her shame choking her. Sutton put his hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t be so upset,” he said, with a pompous, condescending attempt at comfort. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t help it. It will be all right. I’ll marry you myself. There shall be no hanky-panky this time.”

She started up as if his hand had been the thin lash of a whip through her cloak.

“Don’t touch me! Marry you! It is impossible for anyone like you to understand. You don’t know how near I am to desperate crime—only I am a coward. That makes you safe—I am a coward. I wish Edred would come home. If only I knew where to find him!”

“The address is in my pocket-book,” he sneered. “But you can’t be serious. What do you want him for? You can’t alter things. If you nag at him, he’ll only laugh, or hit you.”

“If he would only come back,” she moaned. “If I could touch him, see him, speak to him. I feel so alone, so incapable and miserable.”

“You want to have it out with him?”

“I want him,” she returned simply.

Then Sutton lost his temper.

“You are an idiot,” he said flatly. “I make you[247] a good offer; not many men would make it, and you can only——”

She laughed contemptuously, looking full in his eyes.

“You droll, contemptible creature,” she said with limitless scorn. “Of course you don’t understand. How should you? I am going out—never mind where. I am coming back—or I am not—according to my mood. You needn’t be certain of anything—but the one thing: I don’t intend to marry you!”

She whirled out of the room before he could collect his startled wits. She was out of the flat and half down the stairs before he could stop her.

The vast, high house was dark. She ran down the familiar stone steps, drew the long bolts of the entrance door. As she opened it, she heard the patter of slippers, a little down at heel, covering the flights; heard a hoarse, cautious voice cry out down the black shoot of the quiet staircase.

“Pamela! Come back! Don’t be a fool! Don’t lose your head like this!”

Her only answer was another strident laugh. The door thudded after her. She stood alone in the night—a chilly night, with a spray of rain. She stood facing the black mass of the Park.

She swept on westward. After a while she grew cool, practical enough to put her hand in her pocket and feel if she had her purse. It was there, lying heavy at the bottom. Her head was on fire, her sore heart beat rapidly. She went on trying to formulate her life as the day must see it. Dawn meant[248] shame, ridicule, curiosity. She couldn’t walk London in thin shoes with heavily jetted toes, in a cloak bordered with swansdown and a long tea-gown.

What should she do when dawn came? She tried to be cool, practical. She had always been practical; women who earn their own bread are compelled to be. She walked on very quickly. The streets were almost empty. She met with no annoyance. Yet she felt that this was the measure of her degradation—this night alone under the London stars. What should she do? She knew what she wanted to do. Go back; ignore everything. Yes, she wanted that. She kept lashing herself with fierce self-reproach. She called herself shameless, spiritless, vicious. But she couldn’t help it. She wanted to go back—to breakfast with him as usual, to say nothing. She loved him. That terrible cankering love! Would nothing destroy it?

At Sloane Street she turned down, making her way instinctively, like all hopeless, desolate creatures, to the river. She walked along and along, not noticing distance, not feeling the soreness of her lightly-shod feet, until she came to Chelsea.

She crossed the road and walked closely by the houses in Cheyne Walk. She went by Oakley Street, by Cheyne Row, by the red blocks of flats beyond, and by the Hospital, where lights still burned in certain windows. At the corner of Beaufort Street she stopped. What on earth was the good of going on?

A quick, frightened feminine cry, a hoarse curse from a man, startled her, and she stumbled to the[249] pavement, conscious all in a moment that a hansom had nearly knocked her down. It stopped at a house with a heavy door painted white. As she stood there by the railings, unsteady, uncertain, a woman jumped from the hansom and opened the gate of that house.

She had a long cloak too. Beneath it hung a soft mass of black net which flashed with steel. Their eyes met; the eyes of these two women on the pavement. The hansom rattled off. The lights in the house, except one on the ground floor, were out. The pavements wound away, wet and empty. Their eyes met. Pamela forced a smile, put out her hand in a conventional way.

“Is it really Mrs. Clutton?” she said, with an artificial accent, as if it were broad day and Bond Street.

“Pamela! Pamela! Really? But what are you doing alone? Where is Mr. Jayne?”

The little dark, vivacious woman’s eyes contracted as they rested on this wild figure with the wretched, haggard face, the clown-like smile.

Pamela said nothing. She began to cry in a low, terrified fashion, like a lost child. The other took her by the shoulder and led her up the flagged path to the door.

[250]

CHAPTER XVIII.

SHE opened the wide door into a hall which blazed with a yellow carpet and led the way into a room which was lighted with a shaded reading-lamp. The room instantly appealed to Pamela with a sense of dear familiarity. It was filled with furniture and china from the Buttery.

“Sit down. It is Mrs. Nick Hone’s chair. She used to stand her washing-tub on it; Tim says it is worth five pounds.”

A little fire burned in the grate although it was a summer night. On the bare table of brown oak was a tray set with tea things.

“I always like a cup of tea when I come home from a party; it makes me sleep. I’ll get another cup. You remember Mrs. Silas Daborn’s corner cupboard?” She opened it and brought out the china.

Pamela looked about her hungrily, silently, at the familiar dumb things which seemed alive that night: warm, vital things that knew her. The hideous china figures on the shelves grinned affably—at a former neighbor.

“You must drink this hot.”

Pamela began to cry again as the cup was held to her mouth.

“Ssh. No. Drink the tea. Tell me everything and have a big cry afterward.”

[251] She drank obediently, draining the cup. Then she said in a heartfelt, passionate way, as if she were an ardent convert to a new belief:

“There is nothing like another woman when one is miserable.”

“Nothing. Men are excellent—when we are happy. At other times they bully us—with the best intentions—putting all our emotions down to hysteria.”

“Men are never excellent at any time. They have brought me misery. You pay for one moment of delight with a day of anguish.”

“This tray,” said Barbara Clutton, evidently thinking it politic to turn the conversation, “was Mrs. Bert Hone’s. You were with me when I bought it. Do you remember how deaf she was, and how the old man swore—most picturesque swears! Do you remember what I said that day about your brother Edred? How is he?”

Pamela started up at the name.

“I must tell you everything,” she cried energetically. “It isn’t fair to sit here, to stay in your house without telling you everything.”

She told it all without another moment of hesitation: told every little thing. She didn’t care how her story would be received. She relentlessly dissected all her emotions—however unworthy. She detailed all her experiences—however unsavory. It was a relief to be absolutely frank at last, to have no concealment whatever from at least one person. It was a very long story; she touched it up almost lovingly. The night wore away. She drained[252] herself of all the bitterness, all the delight and shame and misery of three years.

The fire died out. Hushed sounds in the streets beyond the smugly drawn curtains, a cold, dull light breaking through a chink and marking the wall, were suggestive. Barbara Clutton, who had listened without one word of comment, started to her feet and dragged back the curtains.

It was broad daylight in the streets outside. She put her arm around Pamela’s shoulders, with a gesture much more eloquently tender and sympathetic than a torrent of words would have been, and drew her to the window.

“Did you ever see such an exquisite flush of pink?” she said, pointing to the sky. “I’ll open the window. There! Such air on one’s cheeks, in one’s thick eyes. We ought to go for a walk while the world is empty.”

“I wonder what it is like at this moment at Folly Corner, in my garden,” Pamela said abstractedly.

“Ah! Folly Corner. What a garden, what a dim old house, packed with ghosts, guilt, dead dreams, and delights! What a collection of furniture; I’d like Tim to see it. And you put all that behind you for a tinsel thing. My poor Pamela! But then you are a woman. Let us talk over your plans. You’ve got to finish your life—that is a piece of work we are not allowed to throw aside. Let us make plans.”

“I haven’t any—only desires,” Pamela returned in a shamefaced way.

“Desires! Are you thinking of Jethro? The[253] dawn, the quiet has brought it all back—Folly Corner.”

“That is past—impossible. I was thinking of Edred. I had better go back. You see, he didn’t mean to shame me. He didn’t know that she was alive all the time. He is a victim of circumstances. He needs pity. I’ll go back. I’ll say nothing about it. That will be the best. You don’t know how fond I am of him! It is terrible; it frightens me sometimes. Nothing kills it—not even last night; not even the bruises on my body. I’ll go back. You must forget to-night. I’m not a fit person for you—or any nice woman—to know.”

A tinge of cold disgust came into Mrs. Clutton’s dark eyes.

“I won’t wrong you by believing that you’re serious,” she said at last, with some distaste—with a great deal more seriousness than she usually allowed herself. “Go back! It would be immoral, horrible. You can’t do it. You can’t possibly mean what you say. We won’t mention him again. You must stay here; things will arrange themselves—they always do.”

“But Mr. Clutton?”

“Tim. He has gone abroad as war correspondent. It is as well. We quarrel if we are together too long, or we grow apathetic, which is worse. I’d rather have isolated episodes of rapture than a matter-of-fact, unbroken affection. I could never endure the kind of husband who calls you ‘my dear,’ who draws you a check without grumbling, who politely wishes you good-morning when you meet[254] at the breakfast table and asks anxiously if you are sure his shirts are aired.

“We are happy, prosperous. Tim makes money, although brains, as a rule, are a positive hindrance to worldly success. We know lots of clever people. To them I am only Tim’s wife: I used to hope that he would be only my husband. We rush through society; he the kite, I the tail. I used to think I was clever—I’m merely voluble. I can’t even succeed in being positively stupid: in a brilliant age like this it’s a distinction to be unmistakably stupid. Nancy has been up to stay with me. I took her about. She made a tremendous sensation—with her complexion, her red locks, her gift of silence. People said she had an air, was uncommonly clever. She is going to be married to Mr. Minns, the Liddleshorn curate. And some people say that Mr. Jayne is to be married too—they talk of Maria Furlonger. Isabel Crisp has married that prig Egbert Turle. He has bought old Dr. Smith’s practice at Liddleshorn. Mrs. Turle—she came up with Nancy—says that old Gainah is wonderfully active, more active than ever. Why! You are nearly asleep. We’ll go upstairs. There is a room ready. Annie Jayne was to have spent the night here on Monday. She has at last decided to have false teeth—greatly against her will: her mother had only six stumps in her head when she died. But the baby—there’s another since your time—had an attack of rose rash, whatever that may be. It sounds pretty.”

She led the way upstairs softly. The house was most luxurious, and the tail of her gown, as she[255] swept it over the thick carpets, was like a molten stream of silver.

Pamela fell asleep in a mahogany bed draped with some wonderful fabric full of color and of bold design. When she woke the sun was fierce in the room. Her limbs felt stiff and her head muddled. She started up on her elbow, looking wildly round for her own possessions—the big toilet table, the winged, ugly wardrobe with the long glass. Her tea-gown, all frilled and limp and pale on a chair by the bed, was eloquent. It brought back the nightmare: the person in brown; Sutton, with his atrocious proposal and disclosure; the long walk, the meeting with her hostess. She looked over the side of the bed. Her slippers were kicked off, soles upward. There was a round hole in one, the other had broken away at the side. Her black silk stockings, lying near, had holes, too. She fell back despairingly on the square pillow, its frill tickling her cheeks. Where was the use of waking?

The door opened, and Barbara Clutton stole in. When she saw that her guest was awake she sat down on the edge of the bed. Then, as Pamela, like a child, lifted her face, she jumped up and kissed her gravely between the widely set, melancholy eyes.

“I was always fond of you,” she said, going back to the foot of the bed. “I always suspected you of drama. I’ve a plan. You must stay here—it will be a charity to me. When Tim comes home—we’ll see! I shan’t want you then.” She made a little frank grimace. “When Tim comes home I want no one—until the first rapture of reunion wears off.[256] We are like a couple of very juvenile lovers—but we don’t keep up the strain for long. He won’t return for a couple of months at the very least. We can have a splendid time, you and I together. There is only one thing I must insist on—one thing.” The disgustful expression of the night before momentarily hardened her laughing face. “You must vow, by something solemn—what binding instrument can we get for you to kiss or swear by? There is really nothing but a back glass—which is frivolous—and a poker, which is threatening. Give me your bare word. Promise not to attempt to see that man; not to degrade me by going back, by writing. You mustn’t even speak of him. It’s all terrible tragedy to you; to me it is merely a disgraceful, unavoidable episode. The woman in brown transforms the situation. I’m more sorry for her than for you; we can’t help our respectable prejudices. He is never to be mentioned. We’ll put away, if you please, the very tea-gown which he has touched. I’ve brought you a coat and skirt—a pale blue skirt which ought to suit you beautifully. Is it all settled?”

“All!” Pamela returned with promptitude. “I vow. I am only too grateful to be saved—from myself.”

In that quick way—natural to Barbara Clutton—they decided it. Pamela fell obediently into the life at Beaufort Street. It was almost conventual. Day after day she rose from her bed, looked at the mourning band of river and despaired. She was cut off from London; it was part of the compact that[257] she was not to go beyond the Chelsea end of Sloane Street. She shopped in King’s Road. Sometimes she walked out to Fulham, or penetrated farther still, to a lonely green, belted with red and yellow houses. The omnibuses pulled up there. She used to stare at them wistfully, and think of Wormwood Scrubbs and the old, dead days of anguish.

Furtively she bought newspapers and read them with a hungry eye. She read everything which might hold a trail of Edred. She bought City papers, made her head ache by puzzling over market quotations. She read accounts of frauds, read all the criminal news. She read the lists of bankrupts, read death notices, advertisements. She never saw his name. It seemed suddenly sponged from all the places which had formerly placarded it.

She beat against the bars of that house by the river. She wasn’t happy; neither she nor Barbara was happy after the first glow of novelty wore off. They weren’t of the mold to be completely satisfied with the companionship of their own sex.

Summer died; leaves, whirled by October gales, swept the Embankment. Pamela was lonely, bored. She had fancied that the society of clever people—people with the public certificate of cleverness—would be invigorating. But the distinguished people who came to Beaufort Street were stupid; they seemed to go out of their way to be commonplace.

“Conversational brilliance is out of fashion,” Barbara said flippantly.

Pamela was tired of Barbara Clutton, tired of her volubility, her pettishness, her whims. She was[258] very grateful to her, she liked her very much, of course—she was sick to death of her.

How would it end? She studied the newspapers, for other than sentimental reasons: she looked for a situation. That would be the end—a situation. They would never take her back at the boarding-house in Bloomsbury; Edred’s history, and her connection with him, was too notorious. But there were other boarding-houses. She would go back to the old life—that would be the end. She would help carve, talk smoothly on safe, commonplace subjects at the dinner-table.

She knew the life. She remembered; and it turned her sick. A woman in subservience was only half a woman. But that was to be the end. She was to finish as she had begun. Perhaps, by years of saving, she might be able to start a boarding-house of her own. Perhaps Jethro would help her to do so, if Maria would permit him.

The boarding-house! She remembered the narrow hall, where the dinner always hung on the close air; remembered the shabby manservant, the guests. They had mostly been women, those boarders: old maids who called each other “dear,” “darling,” “sweet one,” and gathered by twos into corners of the big, shabby drawing-room to tear each other to shreds. They were fussy old women, susceptible to draught, and given to wearing ragged fur tippets in the house when an east wind was blowing. She knew—and shuddered. But it was the only thing left.

Her thoughts flew to Folly Corner, and then to[259] Edred. She would remind herself reproachfully that she had not once thought of him that day. She wanted to forget him; she tried to forget, and yet she reproached herself because she was beginning to succeed. She must forget—it wasn’t respectable to remember. Barbara Clutton was always impressing that on her.

“I like,” she said one day, in explanation of her gospel, “to be a very respectable woman; an icily virtuous one—but yet to give the impression of being dangerous.”

Pamela had left off laughing at her oddities—she had left off laughing at anything. She was cultivating the prim, half-formed manner of a spinster well over thirty. She grew fussy over trifles, became morbidly afraid of taking cold, studied her health, her diet. She gratuitously spied over the servants, seeing an embryo burglar in every tradesman’s boy, running her fingers along ledges for dust, measuring the contents of the dishes with suspicious eyes.

“I want to be of some use,” she said, in extenuation. “I’ve had great experience in housekeeping.”

“Housekeeping!” Her hostess shrugged. “A calling artfully created by hopelessly lazy women as a blind. My dear girl, no busy woman keeps house; it’s a terrible confession of idleness. Suppose Cook does give away the dripping—why should I waste nervous energy in attempting to stop her? The dripping isn’t worth it. If they refuse to burn small cinders in the kitchen range—what matters? Figure out for yourself—I can’t—the cost of a ton[260] of coal, and see how much Tim loses in the year. He pays—and it can’t be more than a box of cigars.”

Pamela said nothing. She retired to her room and her newspapers. She looked up from the lines of advertisements, and out at the gliding river. She thought of Folly Corner, of Jethro, in all his picturesque environment. And then she dragged herself back to thoughts of Edred; it was becoming an effort to remember him. She thought she would set aside half-an-hour every day for remembrance—as if he were some tenderly-loved dead person. She became afraid of herself. She was hopelessly fickle, of light behaviour. She was incapable of any lasting regard. She loved him. She loved him. But the words had become parrot-like—they no longer tore her heart to say them. She was forgetting him—the very thing she had once struggled in vain to do. She was becoming indifferent: the attitude she had once prayed and struggled for. And yet she wasn’t happy.

Tim precipitated things. He send his wife a telegram, saying that he was on his way home. Would she care to join him in Paris for a week?

“It needn’t make any difference to you, dear,” the excited little woman said, as her cab stood at the open door, and her wraps were carried down the path by a lilac-gowned maid, whose streaming cap-ends whirled about on the rude November wind.

She kissed Pamela remorsefully, conscious that she had been malicious now and then.

“It’s difficult for two women to live together without fighting, isn’t it?” she said ingenuously.[261] “I wonder how they manage in a nunnery! A novel from the inside of a nunnery would cause a sensation. I’ll commend it to Tim. He’s quite clever enough to pass as a nun—but it wouldn’t satisfy my unquenchable sense of propriety. I’ve been very horrid to you now and then; but when Tim comes—we shall only stay in Paris ten days at the outside—he will keep us in order. Of course, his coming won’t make any difference,” she added, with obviously forced hospitality.

“I shall get a situation,” Pamela said, in the inert way which had become habitual. “Good-by”—they kissed again. “I’ll look after the maids. You’ll never be able to keep that between-girl. She’s hopeless.”

The other shrugged and ran out in the wind to the cab. It drove off, the maid came in, the door shut, an unusual silence settled over the house. Pamela went into the dining-room and sat by the window, not even a newspaper in her hand. She felt more lonely, more unwanted than she had ever felt at any moment in her varied life. Barbara had been in such a frenzy to get to her husband that she hadn’t given her a thought—hadn’t even asked her, as a matter of form, to see her off at the railway station.

She lunched alone and meagerly. After lunch she sat by the dining-room window until tea came in. The maid set the tray down with a bang and moved across to the door flouncing her black skirts.

Pamela set her mouth grimly. She knew the ways of servants; they had decided, in the absence[262] of their mistress, to give her a rough time. But she was equal to any servant. She amused herself by scheming out an elaborate house-cleaning—and then abandoned it wearily because the house wasn’t hers. She went to bed almost directly she had eaten her dinner. She was awake all night, lying flat and long in the bed, her eyes open, her thoughts forced to consideration of Edred. What was he doing? She didn’t feel much curiosity. His tenderness didn’t make her heart throb. His brutalities no longer made it blaze and ache.

It had really come—indifference: a body, a soul of stone. She turned on the pillow and cried from sheer loneliness.

It rained next morning. Rain—a high fog! The most miserable morning imaginable. She had her breakfast in the little room at the back of the house, with a French window leading to the long, suburban garden. She didn’t know why she turned the hasp of that window and stepped out under the gloomy sky, into the dreary rain.

It was a very uninteresting garden; a ghastly, heart-breaking travesty of a garden. The limp creeper on the blackened wall smutted her hand when she touched it. The narrow borders were bare and smut-laden. From the top of the wall a lean, gray cat looked at her with a sinister mournfulness in its yellow eyes. The fog was in her eyes and down her throat, the rain fell coldly on her bare head. Peals of coarse, hearty laughter rang up from the kitchen, where the maids were romping[263] with the man who came every morning to fill the scuttles and clean the boots. The gray cat stole along the wall.

She turned back to the window, not knowing why she came into the garden, not knowing what to do with this sad day. There was a rockery near the French window—the usual rockery, rich in clinkers. But some blue thing stared up into the brown air boldly. She uttered a sudden glad cry and stooped, letting her skirt brush the wet gravel. It was a delicate blue periwinkle. There was a patch of blue periwinkle at Folly Corner, just by the granary. Periwinkle! What nonsense was it that Gainah told her about periwinkle? Ah, yes! If a man and his wife eat the leaves they will ever be faithful each to the other. The blue flower with its trail of glistening leaves was in her hand. She bit one leaf, laughing—yet more a sob than a laugh—as she did it. She would never be Jethro’s wife—nor any man’s. She was a tainted thing.

She stared at the flower, a long, thoughtful stare. Then she laughed again and clapped her hands—the heavy, blinding tears in her eyes. The world was to her one wide delicate flower of cold blue. She went through the window, laid the trail on the table, looked at it questioningly. Once she said to it, “Shall I? Dare I?” Then, with a clumsy movement, she dragged herself up, hurried to the door, went up the stairs two at a time.

The maids were making her bed. She said abruptly:

[264] “I am going away—a visit. I may be back to-night—I cannot say. You’ll see to everything just as if Mrs. Clutton and I were at home.”

They left her alone. She put on her things and went out of the house. She didn’t leave a note for Barbara; she didn’t take any luggage; she didn’t look at the house with any feeling—no lingering glance of farewell. Her strip of needlework was hanging out of the basket. She didn’t trouble to put it in. She might be back to-night. It was extremely likely that she would be back. Of course she would. She was a fool, an impudent, optimistic fool to go at all. She would be back. She nearly rang the bell to order dinner at the usual time. She kept assuring herself that night would find her again in London—shuddering at every assurance. She knew very well that this journey was her last throw. She knew very well that this journey was to decide everything. Jethro might be married. He might be, if not already married, committed to some nice, pure, faithful girl. Was she the sort of woman to be introduced to a girl of that tepid, blameless description? The contempt for mere unimpassioned, untempted virtue curled her lip.

He might be contemptuous, hard. He might be brutal; he could be bitterly, uncompromisingly brutal when he chose. He had the reputation of being a hard man—all the Jaynes had.

She could imagine him saying very coolly some damning, insulting thing. She could see his ruddy patrician face as he said it, could see the relentless glint in his cold blue eyes. Eyes a couple of shades[265] paler than the periwinkle; she crushed it in her hand.

She took her ticket; was fortunate enough to catch a quick train—there were very few in the day to such an out-of-the-way place. She was quite alone in the carriage. She watched the landscape eagerly; watched the foul fog rise as they left London; watched the slow development of a dazzling autumn day.

[266]

CHAPTER XIX.

THERE was no one she knew at the station; she had been nervously apprehensive that there would be. She had expected to create a small flutter among the railway people—measuring the intensity of their emotions during the last year by her own. No one was surprised to see her. The station-master civilly said good-morning. The porter pulled his cap and added that they had not sent from Folly Corner to meet her. Should he send for the blacksmith’s pony-cart? She shook her head, stepping out into the sun.

She crossed the common, noting every detail of the landscape with ecstasy. It all soothed and comforted her so inexpressibly, so mystically; she fell into it with a delicious sensation of ease. Across the common a woman was driving kids. The old goat had got free and was awkwardly humping after her, dragging its tether chain. She saw everything; her heart swelled in her throat at every step, at every new sight. She saw it all, felt it all—even to the white horse silhouetted against the broken black sail of the disused windmill.

Each side of her, as she walked on the well-kept road, the common at her back, were the clean-cut black ditches, half filled with iron-reddened water, and bound by the silver of dew-soaked, glittering grass. In a field a man was harvesting swedes.[267] The sick, sweet smell of them hung in the air; they were bulbed, tawny and big on the black ground. She stood and watched him, finding added peace in these simple occupations—the land drew her. He was stuffing the roots into a bloated, dun-colored sack. They bulged here and bulged there until the canvas looked like an unwieldly, headless sheep of some mammoth breed. He threw up the green tops into a cart, the prongs of his fork flashing in the sun. Everything was bright and cold and hard; the newly-painted shafts of the cart blood-red and angry against the fierce, clear blue of the drifting sky.

She noted everything minutely. She was struck by the fantastic appearance of a copse of bare bushes—a gray-brown film of mystery. She didn’t throw a backward glance at London, with its crowds, its hectic flow of life. She was at home. She didn’t even think very much of Jethro; didn’t speculate on her reception at Folly Corner. She wanted the place, the influences of the country, as distinct from human preference. She dreaded the thought of a man’s love. All she had longed for was placidity. The clear, hard day, the slow, simple occupations of the few men and women she saw, gave her that.

And then, as the time wore on, came the note of dread, of chill threatening. The sun slipped out of sight, the sky sulked. When she began to cross the second stretch of common, a light, delicate powdery mist hung over the shriveled heather. The common drew away—brown, bare, heavy with foreboding.

[268] The autumn flaying of the turf was in progress. She saw the bare, blue-black patches, like the skin of a dark cat. Through the mist she saw the stolid figure of a man. He was leaning his body against a turfing iron. A cart, half full of square turfs, was at his elbow.

The mist grew thicker at every step. The one note of comfort and warmth came from the smithy, round which was an angry red flare, and from which came the steady clink of iron on iron.

The afternoon grew cold. The chill, delicate powder-mist was eating into her. She was lightly clad. When first she went to Beaufort Street she had bought herself some cheap, necessary clothing out of the few pounds in her purse. This was an afternoon for furs. The mist rose and rose. The voice of a woman who plodded by with a top-heavy perambulator, the cry of the wretched, chilled baby inside, were the only dull sounds in the eerie, pure-white thickness.

Her hair was wet on her face, moisture stood in minute pearls on the velvet collar of her cloth coat. Higher and higher, thicker and thicker, rose the delicate, eating mist! She was chin high in it. A couple of cows, a tethered goat, a long white string of geese, were queerly-shaped wraiths. The world was white: a wet, ghostly, silent world. There was a threat at every step; each corner, each clump of dripping bush formed to her nervous fancy some sinister ambush.

Her spirits fell. Once she absolutely stopped, half-crying, with cold and misery. She was disposed[269] to go back. It was still a long way to Folly Corner, and the terrifying mist was triumphant.

She came at last to the cottage at the edge of the oak-scrub copse, the thatched and plastered cottage under the great oak trees. She remembered it so well, remembered the hot August day when she had walked to Folly Corner for the first time, and had thrown herself on the moss-grown turf under the burning sun. She strained her eyes to see the wide green glades, the clumps of primrose leaves, the tangled brambles, the great tropical growing thistles. She knew exactly what should be there at that season, but she saw nothing save the fire of a bush of haws. The cottage, which had stood empty on that August day, was now tenanted. She approached, her chilled limbs moving creakily. She slowly skirted that cottage, preferring to tread the soddened grass just for the sake of being near somebody. The world was deserted; she could no longer hear one single sound. She was the last desperate soul left outside.

The languid flame of a small fire fell across the tiny casement with its ragged curtain of brownish white net. She went up close. She could see the gray beams across the plaster, see the plumy Irish yew standing straight by the yellow, weather-stained wall. The door was half open. She saw the flagged floor exuding moisture, saw one poor chair; a bare brown dresser, on which stood a coarse crock or so. She saw the mere hint of a table, with turned legs which winked feebly in the light. At the deadened sound of her feet there was a heavy clumping[270] across the flags. An old face, the malevolent, evil face of a man, hung in the shadow. She saw the dull, golden fustian of his torn coat, saw his gnarled, filthy hand close round the jamb of the door and shut it. She likened him to an evil spirit. He was a bad omen. It was nonsense, of course; yes, she knew it was nonsense. The man was only Chalcraft. But the mist made everything ghostly, demoniacal.

She hadn’t far to go now. She imagined it, she knew every detail, she knew just how it would all look on that particular day—the white wicket-gate dirty and dripping with water, the umbrella yew in a fairy wreath of fog, the great brown pond, with the muddy wheel-tracks zigzagging away from it and the marks of many hoofs in the yellow mud at its edge. The garden beds would be weedy; vivid green here and there with patches of self-sown plants. No doubt, in her absence, Gainah and Daborn had easefully lapsed back to the old way—weeds all the winter and a grand forking in the spring. She pictured the long windows, running away each side of the house door. Inside, Gainah’s red geraniums would still be fitfully blooming. She remembered the sentinel poplars at the gate, the raised brick path leading to the door. She remembered the outbuildings, the untidy muck-yard—all, all.

It was here. Twenty more paces would bring her to the pond. She took them tremblingly, things becoming practical now that she was steadily creeping beneath the warm, wide shadow of the place.[271] The mist must surely be thicker than ever. She could not see the poplars; yet how was it that she had been able to see the Irish yew outside Chalcraft’s cottage?

It was here, it should be here, it must be. She nearly reeled in the wide road as she peered fearfully about her, looking for so many familiar tokens which should have studded the landscape—but didn’t.

It was, it must be, Folly Corner. But—but—was that a new house? What was the meaning of that wall which shot up like a straight, unrelenting shaft and mocked her?

The pond was there. The pond! She stared at the big, brown patch of water affectionately—certain of that, anyway.

The house! Yes. The house was the same. It wasn’t a new house. She penetrated through its modern coat, its gingerbread attempt at gentility. The house was there. She could not see very well; the impish mist tantalized her. But the hard, smooth line of roof told her that the tiles were new. The yew was gone, the bristly, unclipt umbrella yew which had watched Edred kiss pink Nancy: the yew which knew the night of her secret vigil.

That night! The night when she had waited. The night when Boyce had helped the poor cow with her calving; the night when Chalcraft had thrown earth at his master’s window to rouse him, because it was raining, and the ricks were not covered. That night!

She had crept like a criminal a dozen times down[272] the brick-path, had stood between the poplars, had looked along the road, had heard feet, phantom feet, which came and died and finally departed. That night! The poplars were gone, the yew, the raised path of worn bricks. They had gone and taken that old story of dishonor with them.

A sinuous carriage drive of the brightest gravel wound away, beginning where the entrance to the yard had been. The yard had been redeemed and planted as a shrubbery; the new wall half hid the ample farm-buildings. The shrubbery was very new—glossy laurels and firs set at regular intervals, the ground between newly dug. She thought—and marveled at herself for the preference—that she would rather have seen the mother-pig there, as in the old days—with a pendulous stomach sweeping the soiled ground, and a litter of pink, squeaking things about her.

The gates leading to the drive were newly hung. She pushed them back fearfully and went toward the house, treading on the beautifully-cut grass edge, because she was afraid of the crunch of her own feet in the death-like silence and pallor of the early evening.

Firelight danced inside the house. As she drew nearer and yet nearer she could see that there were two fires, one in the dining-room, one in the drawing-room. The dining-room wouldn’t be dark now that the yew was gone. That must be an improvement. Yet, at every step she made notes of disapproval. It was so cold, so tame, so flat and unfeeling; these mechanically set shrubs, that gleaming[273] regular roof, those wide windows. Yes! She was near enough to see. There were new windows, sash windows, with little panes above and one large pane beneath. She had once said impatiently to Jethro that lead lights cut up the view. He had taken advantage of her ideas for the benefit of that girl. Of course, there must be a girl. He would not have gone to all this expense, except with a view to a wife.

She was near the house, so near that it seemed to throb out to her with sympathy. She put out her hand and touched the spick, newly-painted walls. With a quick feeling of resentment she saw that they had cut down the Devoniensis rose—that globular, foam-like, ethereal thing which she had worshiped more than any of the roses. She looked down, round, up, making mental, resentful notes of everything. There were pert pots on the wide-throated chimneys, grotesque and poor-looking. There was a new window upstairs, high and narrow, filled with stained glass. That must be the bath-room. Most of the upper rooms were dimly lighted. She had often insisted that this was the proper thing to do—in good houses. Jethro had resisted the innovation, with a view to the oil involved.

Yes! She stopped, her head critically on one side, her heart becoming more tolerant of the many changes. This looked a good house, a house that a lady might live in: she was full of these commonplace expressions that smack of the housekeeper’s room.

Lights in every window, jealously drawn blinds.[274] It looked like a house where they dined late, where, about this time, the maids were tripping to the bedroom doors with cans of hot water. The house had all the appearance of a good house—a gentleman’s, as distinct from a yeoman’s, so she thought, beginning to be satisfied and then remembering that it made no difference to her now. She went round the house stealthily, like a gypsy woman with a basket of cheap lace. The dog bounded out of the kennel, then wagged his tail when she went close and he recognized her. She went round, went past the woodstack. As she passed, a sandy rat, whose young family lived in the shelter of the fagots, ran timidly over her foot.

She reached at last the back door. It stood open; she had always grumbled at the maids, in vain, because they would have the back door open. Everything around the door was much the same, the modern spirit had not affected the back of the house. There was the pig-tub waiting to be carried to the stye, there was the ash-heap, the other heap of broken crockery and old iron. There were the rain-water tubs lurking in the angles of the house, their green paint turning blue. She looked up at the sky and found that the mist had risen, that the mellow moon was full on her head.

She saw everything. Her eyes stretched away into the garden, through the entrance-arch of which she saw the glittering glass of the greenhouse which Jethro had bought to please her.

She stood close to the wall, her wet shoulder pressing the thick branches of the vine, all black and[275] damp and with loose rough bark. There were busy movements inside in both the kitchens, a subdued cluttering of feet, a comforting rattle of china. The warmth and smell of the fire puffed out. There was a band of amber light, shaming the cold moon. It fell across the pig-tub and the ash-heap, running straight from the open door and losing itself in the hedge, which was being grubbed. Jethro was evidently in the grip of some frenzy of renewal and refurbishing.

The voices came from the kitchen. One was the voice of Nettie, that girl Edred used to kiss and squeeze on the sly in his hateful animal way. There were a couple of strange voices. The predominant smell was that of apples bubbling in sugar. And then at last, as she stood shrinking by the wall and undecided what to do, she heard Gainah’s voice. It said, in the old acid shrew’s tone:

“I’ll have ’em made int’n apple-stucklin.”

She curled her lip, remembering those stodgy apple-pasties of Gainah’s which Jethro had eaten with such relish. If they were still eating apple-stucklins—such a name!—the improvements were only external after all. Gainah’s voice, Gainah’s charge to the new cook, gave her courage. Jethro had not yet taken a wife; no young wife would endure Gainah’s rule.

He hadn’t a wife. She would walk straight into the house; the garden-door was always unbolted until well after dusk. She would go into the house through the garden-door and walk through the dining-room. If he were not there she would look[276] into his little room, where he kept papers, guns, his boots, his bicycle even, when he chose.

It was a new surprise to find herself in a porch—so the dining-room no longer opened direct into the garden! That was another improvement.

She went through the porch into the room itself. She stopped on the threshold and cried out faintly. Everything was changed. The yawning hearth was filled in, and a coal fire was burning in a grate of the latest design. There was a square table in the middle of the room, in place of the long narrow one, with the stout legs and the thick staves, which she had always considered so rude, so uncouth. It was pushed against the wall opposite the new door—the table beneath which so many dead and gone Jaynes had slept off their liquor, the table whose top was ringed with black, ring within ring, each the mark of a wet mug, each telling the tale of some dead joviality.

She had always declared that it was only fit for a public-house. It stood against the wall, its disreputable ringed top discreetly covered with a cloth. They used it as a side-board. There was a filter set out, a soda-water syphon, and various other things.

The china ornaments had gone, the brass candlesticks. The big horsehair-covered chair had been re-covered in shrimp-colored plush. The plaster walls were papered. The thick oak beam above had been whitened with the rest of the ceiling. She thought that the room looked much more light[277] and cheerful, much more suitable for a dining-room. But it was empty. There was no hint of Jethro, no gun in the corner, no cloth cap thrown carelessly down, no heavy boots drying on the hearth; one wouldn’t expect any of those things now. And yet their absence depressed her.

She glided across the thickly-carpeted floor—it was a new carpet—and looked into his own particular little room. Nothing had changed there. The bureau from which he had taken the notes for Edred was open. The shabby rugs were kicked up, the plaster on the walls was in places discolored. His bicycle, all muddy, leaned against the window ledge, his gun, his boots, his cap, his thick woolen gloves were strewn about with masculine carelessness.

“The last thing in the house that a man changes is his own room,” she said, looking tenderly at a shapeless, deplorable old shooting jacket which hung limply on a chair. “But she will make him tidy this place up.”

She! She! She! Who was this girl? She ran through the list of likely maidens—every Jayne or Crisp or Turle or Furlonger under thirty-five. It couldn’t be Peggy Crisp of Liddleshorn. It was probably silly, pretentious Maria Furlonger of the Warren, as Barbara had said.

She turned away, feeling a quick, painful affection for this little, dirty, dim, north room of his—the only room left untouched. She turned away, opened the other door, and went along the corridor, thinking that she might find him in the drawing-room.[278] It was most unlikely; he disliked that room. But then he had always disliked coal fires, new furniture, many lights about the house. She was beginning to realize that only the unlikely would happen at Folly Corner that night.

She turned the handle of the drawing-room door, stole in, and saw with satisfaction that very little had been touched. Her improvements were still rampant. The various slips of Eastern embroidery were disposed about the furniture—awkwardly, by an unskilled, stiff hand. The piano was draped. The door of the china closet stood ajar, showing the dark floor with its gaudy rug and the daintily-finished shelves holding the still daintier family china. The curtains—those curtains which they had bought together at Liddleshorn—were drawn; the standard lamp, which had been one of his last gifts before she went away, burned steadily. There were candles alight on the high shelf—she had always insisted on candles in the drawing-room; they made such cool pin-points of steel-blue and yellow. On one side of the hearth was the one thing that she had always longed for—a cozy corner. She didn’t think that you touched the water-mark of true refinement without a cozy corner. Jethro had stoutly resisted it. Yet there it was; no home-made affair, but a perfect thing, cunningly upholstered in the most artistic style known to Regent Street.

The green sofa, the green chair, were still in the bay—that bay, curtained now, through whose leaded lights she had looked—weighing the uplands thick with grain in all their beauty and plenitude with[279] Edred’s shallow protestations of love and worldly success.

Jethro was lying on the couch half asleep. She had seen him lie so on many autumn evenings when he came in tired after a day’s tramping on the farm, or in the stubble after partridges. He was dozing. She stood under the shade of the standard lamp and looked at him. He surprised her—everything did. He wore a brown velvet coat and waistcoat; his slippers had thin soles.

She made an involuntary sound with her foot, and he was awake and erect in a moment, stirred like a watch-dog by the least noise.

“Jethro!” she said humbly.

“Pamela—Cousin Pamela! You’ve come to Folly Corner at last.”

He was on his feet, at her side. He stooped and kissed her lightly, conventionally—the lukewarm kiss of a relative, to whom a kiss has no background. He seemed to regard it as the proper thing to do—proper, and perfectly safe. That matter-of-fact kiss of his made her more wildly miserable than many of Edred’s blows had done.

“You’ve come!” He looked behind her, a curious, questioning glance, as if he were waiting for the second indispensable figure. But the door was closed; she offered no explanation.

“How cold and wet you are!” He ran his hand down her coat. “Take that thing off. I’ll ring for tea; you could always drink tea at any moment. You see I remember—everything.”

He had his hand out to the bell—bells had been[280] added to the old place with other things. She put out her chilled hand and tapped him lightly on his hairy wrist, where the skin was so white.

“Not just yet. No one saw me come in. I’m cold. I had a terrible walk.”

“But you didn’t come alone! Where is Edred? If he couldn’t leave his business you should have wired. I would have driven to the station. I would have brought the new Battlesden. You know you had set your heart on one. I bought it soon after you went away. It’s only been used once. Did Edred——”

“Sit down,” she said, with another light touch. “Oh! this fire is glorious.” She turned up the hem of her skirt and let the warmth touch her icy ankles.

“It’s Friday,” Jethro continued thoughtfully. “Is he coming down to-morrow? You must stay a week at least.”

“I’ll stay longer—if you will have me,” she said, looking at him queerly.

“Good! I didn’t suppose he’d be able to get away from business for more than a week. All the summer I’ve been talking of running up to town, but I’ve been prevented: haying, harvest, one thing and the other. You never wrote”—his voice was gently reproachful—“but I remembered the address—Marquise Mansions.”

“You’ve been making improvements,” she said, looking round the room.

“Yes, I’ve done a few things—the things we settled to do before you went away,” he returned, in a calm voice, “I knew you’d be coming down sooner[281] or later, and that you would be pleased. Let me ring for tea—though there will be dinner in half an hour”—he pulled out the big, ancestral watch. “I dine late now, as they do at the Warren.”

“The Warren! Oh, yes. Of course you dine late now.”

So it was Maria Furlonger of the Warren—Maria Furlonger, who made such agonized efforts to get on socially.

“I know you like late dinner. I thought it was as well to have it, so that when you and Edred came down there would be no fuss—everything ready and as usual. He used to say that early dinner gave him indigestion. Late ones make me sleepy; I’m ready for bed before nine.”

“But you haven’t done all these things; you don’t dine late—for us?”

“The place had to be done up,” he said, rather curtly, as if he thought she laid too much stress on a trivial point. “It doesn’t matter much whether you call your last meal dinner or supper.”

“But——”

She broke off. The fire was warm and crackling, his voice so calm, she didn’t wish to disturb things. She recoiled from telling him the truth, she shrank from hearing it. For she was certain that he meant to marry. He had learnt to be indifferent to her—his kiss was an admission of that.

“We must have Gainah in.” He put his hand out again to that little knob on the wall. “She shall tell them to get the guest-room ready. You’d like to go upstairs?”

[282] “Not yet. There is something I must tell you first. Perhaps you’ll turn me out—I don’t know. In any case you will wish me to go to-morrow morning; even if you were willing to let me stay, she wouldn’t hear of it.”

“Gainah! She doesn’t rule me any longer,” he laughed. “Poor old Gainah! She’s old—and queer. Aunt Sophy is afraid she is breaking up. That would be awkward for me; a man can’t manage maids.”

“I didn’t mean Gainah. I meant Maria Furlonger. She is a good housekeeper. She’ll make a good mistress for Folly Corner. When you tell her the truth—and you must tell her—she’ll be indignant. There isn’t much mercy in Maria. But I congratulate you, Jethro.”

“You talk as if I meant to marry Maria.”

“And you don’t? Who is it, then?”

“I’m not going to marry at all,” he returned soberly. “You ought to know that, Pamela.”

“You are not going to marry!” she cried out in a shrill, happy, half-incredulous voice. “I am so glad. Barbara Clutton said you were. I thought you were doing up the place for your wife.”

“I did it up for you. I thought you’d be pleased. The men had begun before you went away; it seemed a mistake to stop them. I should have lost by it; the builder could have claimed.”

“You’re not going to be married,” she repeated, as if it were too good to be true. “Then, I am not afraid of you. Men are kind and just. They don’t understand; they don’t pet you and croon over[283] you, as a woman does. They talk hard business and look at things from the practical side. You, for example, would urge me to expose him, and I could never do it, never.”

He started.

“Has he got into trouble again? Is he in prison?”

She shook her head.

“Worse—from my point of view. He is married. His lawful wife comes first; he married her before he ever met me. He thought she was dead—I do not blame him for that; it was a mistake. But other things!” She bent forward and took his big, hard hands. “You don’t know what I’ve suffered,” she continued in a quick, passionately vibrant whisper. “Blows! Worse than blows. He constantly urged me to terrible things. There was one man; there were two. The second one told me the truth and offered, in a spirit of superb generosity, to marry me. He wanted me to run away with one—a man I loathed, whose hand I would hardly touch. There are some like that: you couldn’t kiss them, not if you were as free as air, not if they were the only ones in the world. Do you ever feel like that about particular women?”

“I never thought about women—only one.”

“You are different. I think these things out, just for amusement: women do. I imagine what might happen in particular circumstances. He wanted to get rid of me; I was a constant danger. He was tired of me—he never cared, after the first few weeks: no one is indifferent to an absolute novelty.[284] I went away directly I heard he was married. I have never seen him, never heard of him since. Barbara Clutton took me in. This morning I found a periwinkle. You haven’t dug up that patch near the granary?”

“Yes. Everything is altered out there. You’ll see.”

“It reminded me of you. I put on my things and drove straight away to the station, the flower in my hand. I threw it out of the railway carriage window. It had done its work; to bring it with me would have been sentimental, stupid.”

“Poor Cousin Pamela!” He just pressed her fingers, then gently pushed them away, as if they were a danger. “You must forget him. You are free.”

“I was always free. But I went away. I left you for him.”

They looked deeply into each other’s eyes. Until that moment they had not trusted themselves to embark on a long, steady gaze. She saw in Jethro’s nothing but intense, almost brotherly, affection and pity.

“You might leave me again to go to him?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know—I think, never. But I don’t know—so long as he is alive.”

“You are free. But he isn’t. He can’t marry you—can’t make it up to you.”

“Can’t make an honest woman of me,” she said, with bitter bluntness. “That is what the women say about here when they force the young men to[285] marry their daughters. No, he cannot. But that would make no difference to me—if he wanted me. He was first. I don’t even hate him. Sometimes I think I am getting indifferent; but I felt like that before, when he was in prison. I never know—unless he dies. That would break the terrible spell.”

He looked into her eyes again; he gave her hand a significant grip. They understood each other. They were to be cousins—nothing more. Nothing more was possible—she wasn’t even sure that she desired more, and she feared that he did not. Nothing was possible now. Their love had come to a full stop.

He got up, saying:

“I’ll go and speak to Gainah. I’ll prepare her. She’s getting old, and surprises upset her.”

When he came back, he looked a little stubborn—the old familiar look of rebellion at woman’s tyranny.

“She’ll be all right to-morrow,” he said, in answering Pamela’s eloquent querying look. “She’ll be glad to-morrow. You know that her temper’s an odd one.”

They dined alone. Everything seemed strange—Jethro so unusually precise in dress and manner, the dining-room so conventionally elegant.

[286]

CHAPTER XX.

AFTER dinner they went back to the drawing-room together. Nettie brought in coffee. She looked at Pamela curiously—with no very good feeling. Her sharp, impudent eyes dropped to the left hand, where Edred’s meaningless ring still gleamed. The look was not lost on Pamela. Directly the maid had left the room she slipped the ring off and put it in her purse. Jethro watched her, keen pity and indignation in his light eyes.

“If ever he comes here,” he said grimly, and with the eager instinct of a sportsman, “you must let me settle with him.”

“He will never come,” she said, slowly shaking her head. “He took all he wanted from Folly Corner.”

“Yes; I shall never see my two hundred pounds again,” the other returned ruefully, and a disagreeable silence fell over the room, the fire standing red on those two painfully tense faces.

Soon after coffee Jethro grew sleepy. He dozed spasmodically, shaking himself up at intervals, with apologetic murmurs. Pamela sat silent, her unringed hands on her lap, her eyes sadly on the coals. She resented the lack of drama in what she regarded as her home-coming. The long, varying walk had been so pregnant with possibilities. She had imagined,[287] dreaded, dared to hope—so much. This was the end—Jethro, inert with food, sleeping like a tired dog in the armchair. Everything was settled. They had talked themselves out already. She was to stay; she was to be Cousin Pamela again. Whether they were really cousins or not they did not know—they had agreed not to trouble—it mattered not. She was back at Folly Corner. To-morrow she would pick up her dropped reins. She would go to Turle, to the Warren, to all the roomy, warm old houses; she would kiss again the placid, clumsy-souled woman. No one was to know the truth. Everything would be just as it had been before—except that there would be no question of love between her and Jethro. He tacitly insinuated that, and she as delicately agreed. It had all been conveyed by a look.

When the clock struck ten, he shook himself up for the last time, stumbled to his feet, yawned openly, and said that it was late. Was she quite ready for bed? They went round the house together, winding the thirty-hour clock in the kitchen, which Gainah, strangely enough, had forgotten, trying bolts and locks, turning out lights. They went up the oak steps. At the door of the guest-room he kissed her calmly above the eyes.

When she was half undressed she discovered that the bed had not been made. The blankets and quilt were there, but there were no sheets, no slips on the pillows. She was half amused and half angry, divining at once what had happened. Gainah with a last kick of authority had bidden the maids prepare[288] the inferior room which had been hers in former days.

She went softly along the corridor and into that room. The bed was made. She did not intend to sleep there: Gainah must be grasped with a firm hand from the very start. She set her candle down, peeled off the sheets, piled them with the pillows in her arms, and turned to go back to the guest-room. When she opened the door, a puff of wind—the draughty old house was full of strange gusts—blew out her candle. Before the candle blew out she noticed that the key was gone from the door.

It was a wild autumn night, the wind rising and calling warningly down the chimney. The room was dark, the curtains closely drawn. One gleam of light, narrow and pointed, pierced through the uncurtained window in the corridor and fell on the tumbled bed. She had dragged the sheets up roughly; the blankets were in billows under the cotton quilt, the bolster, in a case of some coarse, dark stuff, was half doubled and partly buried beneath the humped-up coverings. As she gave the last look back before shutting the door she was struck by the oddity of that untidy bed. Quite unwittingly, in her hurried gathering of linen, she had achieved the similitude of a human form. The appearance was sufficiently startling. It was one of those queer, accidental effects which sometimes occur. The tumbled blankets, under the white quilt which she had hastily smoothed, the doubled, coarsely-covered bolster, half hidden, were like the curled-up body and round head of some sleeper.

[289] She went softly along the passage, down the steps, round the angles, in the dark, knowing every turn of the way. When she reached the guest-room she locked the door, lighted the candle, and made the bed. Directly she was in the shadow of the dim old hangings she fell asleep.

When the house was quiet and dark Gainah crept out of her room and slipped, in her flat cloth shoes, down the stairs. She had not undressed, had not even taken the band of dusty velvet from the top of her head. She crept down to the lower rooms, where the fires were still burning steadily, and where every article of furniture, new or old, took fantastic shape. She went about lingeringly from one room to the other, moving about slowly and stiffly in the dim circle of light which came from the candle in her quivering hand.

She walked about through one room into another, along the corridor and back again. Sometimes she sat down for a moment: sometimes she just stealthily opened a door and peered in. The two clocks, the eight-day in the dining-room and the thirty-hour in the kitchen, had clanging tongues of brass. They were the only sounds in the sleeping house. The hours struck. She did not seem to notice. A threatening change had come over her. She was full of fever and tremor. Her cold eyes burned with the fire of amethysts. Her ever-increasing restlessness would not let her stay in one room long. She went about wearily, stiffly, driven by some malignant whip. She went into the drawing-room and screwed herself awkwardly at one end[290] of the cozy corner. She started up almost immediately. To her hardihood there was a feeling of oppressive luxury and enervation about that soft, gayly-tricked room. She was such a persistent worker that her back felt strange against stuffing; she was more at ease with the broad bars of a rush-seated chair cutting from shoulder to shoulder.

She went out in the kitchen and moved about uneasily, peering, by long habit, into drawers, and sniffing, like an eager old dog, for fire.

There was a fatty frying-pan on the top of the kitchen range—that new-fangled range that Pamela had made Jethro buy. A victorious gleam hardened her glittering eyes: the maids had been cutting rashers for their supper. Her rule was bread, cheese, and water or cider. This was a battle to be fought out in the morning. The jades! And not wit enough to scour the pan!

The knife-box stood on the dresser. Gainah bent over it, from habit again. Everything definite that she did that night was done quite mechanically and from unquenchable habit. It was her habit to peer for dirty knives sneaked in among the clean: that was a cardinal offense.

The box was made of mahogany. There was a brass handle; it gleamed in the light of her candle. The knives had heavy buck-horn handles. Old Jethro had been proud of them, his son took to them as a matter of course, but Pamela had sneered and said they were barbarous.

There were two sets—a dozen to each set. One[291] was of lighter make than the other; their handles were straight and tipped with steel. The heavier set had stouter handles, which bulged out in knots at the ends. Gainah picked out the two carving-knives and scrutinized the blades. There was a weary, speculative look on her wasted, corpse-white face, in which the brilliant eyes stood out so unnaturally. The frying-pan was at her feet, but at the touch of the keen knives she absolutely whirled away from trivial offenses—she was swept by one superb, dangerous emotion.

She looked round the polished, scoured kitchen, as if asking those dumb gleaming metal things on walls and shelves to help her—to suggest.

Then she moved toward the scullery and quietly drew the long bolts of the door. She went across the yard, skirting the generous pile of farm-buildings. They had been overhauled with the rest of the place. The brick walls had been pointed; she could see every even, white line of mortar. The roofs of thick thatch had been covered with sheets of corrugated iron, which were hard and gray in the dim night. She went to the tool-shed. That, by some oversight or by intention, had been left untouched. It stood apart—the walls red patched with green, the roof of rough tiles covered with a luxurious growth of lichens and stonecrop.

She pushed back the door and went in. There were tools and labor implements of many sorts in the house: all the deadly array of weapons permitted to the peaceful agriculturist. Every one was familiar, to her; she had known them all from her[292] very birth—pronged fork, long scythe, solid spade, rakes with long pointed teeth.

She sat down on a heap of sacks and rubbish by the wall. Her oddly bright eyes roved feverishly over the collection; some on the earthen floor, some sentinel-like against the wall, some slipped up in the rafters, lying stealthily in wait.

After a little she got up stiffly, the rheumatism gripping her cold limbs, and touched these things one by one lingeringly. She ran her fingers along edges, pressed them against teeth: the speculative, questioning look crossed her face again. Yes. She must do it. That was necessary for the peaceful carrying on of the farm life. She had never scrupled to destroy anything that came in the way of the farm. It must be done. But how?

She took the hedgebill down. It had a long rounded handle of wood; its iron head was reared, as if to strike; there was the malignity of a cobra in the curve.

There was the scythe with which through so many early summers she had seen them cut down the young grass; the sickle, the almost circular faghook, the solid billhook of shining steel with which the men chopped thick sticks that were bound in the very hearts of the fagots.

There was an old tragic tale bound round the sickle. Years ago Chalcraft had made a clean cut with it through his child’s leg—a three-year-old asleep in the quivering oats. They said that Chalcraft, when the child died, tried to hang himself in[293] the granary; but it was before she came to Folly Corner.

There were the shears—long-handled shears, short-handled. She stood thoughtfully moving the handles. What sharp wide jaws! One could almost catch a head, a human head, in them, and clip it off as easily as one would the head of a dandelion.

She dropped the tools as wearily as she had dropped the knives, with as great an air of bewilderment. She went back to the house, in at the open door. She stood for a moment looking out, seeing faintly some of the changes that had taken place and imagining the rest. Nothing was the same. The old prosperous, easy, untidy time had gone forever. The Jaynes were trying to be gentry. She felt convinced that there was ruin involved in the effort—ruin to the place, ruin to the family. She loved the place: the hard iron roofs, the white-seamed bricks affronted her. It wasn’t the Folly Corner she loved, outside nor in. She loved the family; loved Jethro: hadn’t she almost married his father and been a Jayne herself? And he! He was going to marry the girl who had lightly altered everything. He was going to marry her—the girl who had come back with the easy, insolent air of a devil that night when the shadows were falling. It must not be. She must save the farm, save the family. Yes. That was certain, that was settled. She had always made up her mind that, if Pamela ever dared return, then Pamela must be done away with. One had to get rid of certain nuisances, certain unprofitable things about a farm. It was settled. But how?

[294] She went back to the mahogany box, bent over it, brooded. She took out the carver again, the poultry carver with the long slender blade and the sharply pointed tip. She rubbed it stealthily along the stone coping of the sink, then she carried it back to the kitchen and slowly swished it backward and forward along the steel, doing everything as silently as possible. By and by she drew the edge of the blade along her finger. It was so keen that a thin red line of blood ran up.

She went upstairs. In one hand she carried the flat, winking candlestick of brass, in the other the knife. Her fingers gripped the smooth golden-brown handle convulsively. The wicked point she held outward, her eyes fixed on it with much satisfaction. It was the best thing after all. The tool-house, with its rude weapons of earth, had not helped her. The knife-box had.

She was at the door of the room where she believed Pamela was sleeping. Leaving the light outside, she turned the handle with a sure grasp. She knew that the door could not be locked; the key was weighting her long pocket. She had remembered to take away the key.

The room was dark. She went like a slow, certain arrow to the bed. All her movements were slow, sure, horribly deliberate. She was used to killing things. She knew that the great secret of success was to keep cool. It didn’t seem to her any worse to kill a woman, when the woman was a distinct obstruction and hindrance, than it was to kill a bird.

[295] The knife was in her hand. She gripped the handle fiercely; the shining red bone of her wrist stood out. She shut her eyes; it was a habit of hers to shut her eyes at the very moment of killing—her ineradicable, nervous, womanly habit.

She darted the point of the blade down, jabbing it furiously through the heaped-up bedclothes. Then, her eyes hardly open, her hand out to feel the way, she crept away, softly shutting the door behind her.

The hard lines of her worn face had relaxed, the feverish shine of her eyes had given place to a calm light. The strained, hunted, uncertain expression had gone forever. The rebellion and misery, the desperate catechising of herself, were all ended. The question which, a year ago, had rung and rung in her head so persistently, which had rung again so noisily to-night when she heard that Pamela had come back, was answered. That question, that weary, bitter question which had chimed above her brow and made it ache so dully, would chime no more. There was silence, a strange feeling of ease and lightness above her eyes, where that maddening noise had been.

Her smoldering hatred of Pamela had taken tangible form. She wasn’t clever; she knew not the meaning of finesse nor the nature of conspiracy. It had never occurred to her that she might get rid of Pamela by skillful appeal to Jethro’s dearest emotions. That was not her way. Her way was more rough and ready, more grewsomely certain than that. Pamela must be got rid of in the usual manner.[296] There were plenty of precedents on the farm. A knife was the only solution—knife, or a trap, or a quick twist of the neck. But you could not twist a woman’s neck; neither could you pin her in a gin. A knife—that was the only way. She condemned Pamela in exactly the same spirit that she would have condemned an unprofitable animal. She arrived at the decision with stolidity. Her nerve had shaken a little at the actual act—that was all: it needed a man to do the killing properly—it wasn’t woman’s work on the farm.

Pests must be exterminated; that was the simplest rule of domestic economy.

As she went along the narrow, silent passage and up the stairs to her own room everything was strangely threatening. The candle was burning short and leaping desperately in the stick. All the familiar things, things of common life, reassuring things by day, were weird now with night and sleep.

She was afraid. She didn’t know why: she fought the feeling. She had earned the right to repose.

She shut her bedroom door, shooting the bolt convulsively. It was the first time in her life that she had locked herself in at night. She undressed quickly, the candle shooting up spasmodically before it died. She laid her clothes, precisely folded, on the particular chair. She took the velvet band from her head, parted her poor wisps of hair into even strands, and twisted each strand into a wisp of rag.

[297] She peeled herself of the various flannel wrappings which increasing rheumatism demanded. Then she took off her stockings and slipped on her coarse nightgown and got into bed, drawing the belated last leg in with a frightened jerk.

[298]

CHAPTER XXI.

THE sun, peering through the carelessly-drawn curtain and falling across her eyes, awakened Pamela next morning.

She jumped briskly to the floor from the high, enshrouded bed. She realized, with a joyful thrill, that this was not London—not Beaufort Street. She must write to Barbara, who had been kind; but the bread of dependence, when a woman hands it, is never sweet.

When she was half dressed she threw back the casement and occasionally bobbed out her head to look at the garden. Beneath her stretched the closely-shaven, vividly green grass, the accurately-cut beds, the long, flower-tangled borders. She saw with satisfaction, with a thrill of gratitude to Jethro, that everything had been kept in exactly the order that she wished.

The garden drew her, looking up at her with a bright, magnetic glance: the satisfying, intense, and comprehensive love for a garden caught her once more; she marveled because she had once cared more passionately for something else.

All the things that should be blooming in that month were there. Daborn had been very good; not a single chrysanthemum—those choice, delicate ones—had been lost. He had taken cuttings from[299] her dahlias, or preserved the tubers. They were there too. Her eyes dwelt almost tearfully on the blazing red cactus which had been her favorite. Her Japanese anemones, with their rough dull leaves, were heavy with pure white or pale pink flowers—widely open and waxen, like small saucers of the finest porcelain.

She was going to be very happy in a placid way—the most satisfactory form of happiness. She would always be happy; the garden needed her every month of the twelve. She had passed the stage of rapturous, transient happiness; she was too old. As she looked in the glass, twisting her dull, abundant hair, she saw, for the first time, accusing, brutally frank lines across her face.

She clasped the silver buckle at her waist with a click, and settled the crimson tie which made a mark of flame down the front of her white flannel shirt. She ran downstairs, humming under her breath, saying to herself that it was fortunate that Jethro was indifferent to the old, agitating passion—looking forward to his tepid, brother’s kiss above the eyes.

It seemed as if the whole world of Folly Corner rejoiced at her return. There was a busy cackling in the poultry yard; the bees were flying in the sun; the geese went, in their waddling, ludicrously dignified way, along the dry road, cackling with satisfaction. It was like a May morning—so blue, so warm, so golden. It was like spring; all over the garden were little chirrups and snatches of song, as if the birds were nesting.

[300] The dining-room was empty; so was Jethro’s room. She went into the drawing-room, opened the window, jubilantly ran her fingers over the keyboard of the piano. Then she went into the kitchen; she must show herself, assert herself.

Gainah was frying sausages over the wood fire in the back kitchen. She rigorously tabooed the new range, and she never allowed anyone to touch her sausages. She made them from the very foundation—putting in a good taste of sage, in the Sussex way. She fried them, set the dish on the table with her own hands. She had a reputation for her sausages.

Some of them were sizzling in a copper pan, others waited, long and lean and red, on a plate close by. They were not very appetizing to look at, although they were admittedly delicious to eat. They gave out a great deal of fat; the pan needed frequent emptying.

Gainah had a Windsor chair with a round back set near the fire. She had a table at her elbow. Every minute or so she got up and emptied the surplus fat into a bowl. It was a yellow bowl, ringed with lines of white, and decorated with brown trees roughly run on—a common yellow bowl such as they sell in country shops.

Pamela stepped across the bricks, her high heels clittering. She put out her hand with nonchalance, smiled, tried to look pleasant—but she had always been repelled by Gainah.

“Good-morning,” she said.

The pan of red copper, half full of fat and bubbling[301] sausages, was in Gainah’s hand. It was tipped toward the yellow bowl.

“Good-morning,” repeated Pamela, the wide smile of greeting exposing her teeth. “Why didn’t you come into the drawing-room last night to welcome me back?”

Gainah gave a choking cry and fell forward in the wooden chair. The pan dropped from her nerveless hand. The sausages were thrown about the brick floor, the fat streamed along sluggishly, a hot brown stream, rapidly settling.

Pamela started back. Some of those spitting brown grease spots were already hardening on her skirt, on the toes of her shoes.

“How careless of you!” she cried wrathfully. “You have spoilt my skirt.”

Gainah made that disquieting sound again. It did not seem to come from her throat: it was a threatening sound—outside, beyond her. She was now sitting bolt-upright in the chair. She made an odd figure, with her stiff, blanched face, her unreadable eyes, her uncouthly-cut gown, and her flat, stiffly planted feet. The fat was settling around her, going white and hard on the cold floor. The sausages were stuck in it. The pan was face downward on the floor.

Her crooked fingers were caught in at her throat, between the limp collar and the gown. She seemed to be desperately clawing the stuff away from her skin, as if she could bear no contact, as if she suffocated. Her feet were fast in grease, it molded them like a plaster cast. She didn’t seem to be in[302] any pain, although the fat was thick on her feet. Her jaw had dropped, like a poor dead jaw. Her eyes were blank.

Such eyes! Pamela thought of a mechanical toy—broken. Gainah looked like that. Something had given the last pull at the wire, the superfluous dangerous turn of the key—the one turn too many, the last turn. It was just the same: there was the fixed grin, the hard stare, the obstinate refusal to perform. There had been too violent a pull; now there was Oblivion where a moment before there had been a semblance at least of intelligence. She had always intolerantly considered Gainah very stupid, only half developed in a mental sense. Yet she had never before been an absolute, helpless, insensate, staring fool.

The door opened, Jethro came in.

He had been out early in the keen brief frost. The bridge of his high nose was ruddy, his eyes shone. There was about him the intolerant aggravating air of the person who gets up and goes out while others sleep. He seemed hungry—a trifle cross.

“I saw you through the window,” he said curtly, giving her a bluff little nod, and approaching as if to kiss her—the calm kiss that she imagined she wanted from his mouth. “Haven’t they got breakfast ready? Will you make the coffee, Pamela? The way you used to make it; nobody does it so well.”

“Yes, yes!—but look! But what is the matter with her, Jethro? Is it a fit?”

[303] She pointed to Gainah, stiff, staring, widely smiling; a terrified grin that had petrified on her wrinkled mouth. He looked. He gave a long, high whistle, then he seemed terribly touched.

“Aunt Sophy’s been afraid of this,” he said gravely. “We must get her up to bed.”

He picked the rigid figure up tenderly, as he would have picked up an ailing child.

Pamela followed him. On the way through the kitchen she told the maids to send two messengers—one to Turle, another to Liddleshorn for Egbert.

Jethro was halfway up the stairs, the odd figure bunched up like a short-coated baby in his long arms. It looked so ludicrous, so fearsome, that Pamela stepped back from the fixed eyes and stretched mouth. He went slowly, his hands gripped round the blue gown. He paused on the landing; paused by the window, with its tiny dull panes, its wide ledge, on which stood a jar of white honesty-pods—“money in both pockets,” as Gainah had always called it. Pamela slid by him, keeping her skirt, her head and hands from contact with the blue gown and hanging arms. She flung back the door of her old room.

“Carry her in here,” she said. “It is nearer. It is a better room than her own, too. When the doctor comes—I have sent for Egbert—the room must be tidy.”

He crossed the threshold; she ran in front and flung back the curtains, letting in the glad November sun.

“Put her in here. Then go down and send[304] Nettie up. We’ll undress her,” she said tersely, with the cool air of business that follows a shock.

They both looked at the bed at the same moment. Pamela stared, started, contracted her forehead. Then she threw a stronger look of terror and dislike at the doll-like, silly head of Gainah, which hung over Jethro’s shoulder.

“The wicked old woman!” she gasped. “I always knew she wasn’t safe; these queer people are much more dangerous than a full-blown lunatic. All the crimes that one reads of in the newspapers are committed by people like she was—peculiar people. She meant to murder me. She thought I was sleeping in this bed. Look at the knife.”

She stopped, with a wild leaping at her throat. Jethro had tumbled his burden down on one side of the humped-up bed. He drew out the knife. Pamela was close behind him. Together they traced its course. She put her shaking, twitching fingers through the close long cuts, which rent everything down to the very bed. All around the cut in the ticking were down and feathers that had puffed out. The down flew about their heads, stirred by the quick, short breaths of horror which gushed from their lungs.

“She meant to kill me. I took the sheets away and slept in the guest-room. It looked rather like a body—you can see the likeness yourself: the doubled-up bolster, the blankets all heaped up under the quilt. She meant to kill me. Show her the knife.”

She took it from Jethro and held it up, held it[305] close to the stony, widely-opened eyes of the figure at the edge of the bed. But the eyes gave no sign, the mouth did not relax.

“She doesn’t understand; it is no good trying to make any impression on her.”

She put the knife on the dressing-table.

“I’m afraid to touch her,” she said. “What an escape!”

“She’s lost her reason.” He looked down sorrowfully.

“You don’t care for me. You don’t think of my escape.”

He lifted his eyes from the bed, seeming suddenly to remember. Then he pulled her to him, kissed her with all the calm restraint of last night, smoothed her hair—petted her as if she were a startled bird. But all the time his eyes were turning to the bed. He treated her tenderly—as a pet thing who had narrowly missed destruction. But any pet was less than a woman. Gainah was a woman—the wreck of the woman who had been his mother, his mentor, his tyrant all his days. His eyes dwelt sorrowfully on the bed. Pamela pushed him to the door rather pettishly.

“We must get her undressed,” she said. “Egbert will be here soon. Tell Nettie to bring up a needle and thread. The tick must be sewn or we shall have the feathers all over the place.”

He went away reluctantly. When Pamela was alone she sat down on the edge of the sofa. Once she shrugged her shoulders and gave a cold short laugh of terror. Only last night she had been discontented[306] because her return to Folly Corner had lacked the elements of drama. There had been tragedy brewing for her all the while.

Gainah was on her side, just as Jethro had left her. A gentle, almost imperceptible, vibration of her head was unceasing; it extended to her hands, which clutched round the edge of the blanket. She seemed to be slowly crawling back to some muffled kind of consciousness. Once, when her eyes met Pamela’s, the girl fancied that she saw a gleam of terror. In another moment she felt certain that Gainah recognized her, was abjectly afraid of her, was trying, in an agony and without the least avail, to slip down in the bed and get out of sight.

It was the monthly washing day. It had been the day of the monthly wash when Pamela first came to Folly Corner. She thought of that as she threw back the window and heard the rasping, spasmodic sound of the brush.

Nettie came up. Between them they took off Gainah’s clothes, divested her of her many flannel packings. Then Pamela went and looked for a nightgown. She opened all Gainah’s boxes and drawers in the search. She wanted a fairly smart nightgown—for the doctor. She rejected those of daily wear—coarse, plain things which any self-respecting housemaid would disdain—narrow things, like bolster-cases with the bottoms out.

She found, at last, a parcel sewn in linen. On it was pinned a paper with the words, written in an uncertain, illiterate hand:

[307] “For my laying out.”

She hesitated—for sentimental reasons. Then—for practical reasons, and the practical was usually uppermost with her when it came to other people’s affairs—she unpinned the parcel. Woman’s pity for another woman touched her heart as she flipped the carefully-made nightgown, of fair, thin stuff, over her arm.

“Poor thing!” she said pitifully, and hesitated once more. Then she said brusquely to herself:

“Well, at the worst, if she dies, it can be washed, and she can be buried in it as she wished.”

She shut the drawer, it was a bottom drawer, with her foot. Gainah’s quilts, the blue one still unfinished, were folded carefully away.

When she went back she found the cook and washerwoman standing by the bed. The former had brought clean sheets, the latter was standing stolidly, her crinkled hands on her hips. She sent them all away and finished Gainah’s toilet herself. She fancied that the helpless figure shrank from the touch of her hands; fancied that the eyes tried eloquently and quite in vain to say things which the lips could not.

When the bed was made and Gainah was stretched straight and stiff and robed in snow-white linen of the very finest, Pamela tidied the room. She picked up the old woman’s garments with a “finicky,” fine air of distaste. She twisted together strips of flannel and rolled up stockings which had been frugally re-footed. Last of all she[308] plunged her hand into the pocket of the dim blue gown and brought out the heavy bunch of housekeeping keys. The clinking sound they made roused Gainah. She tried piteously to move in the bed.

[309]

CHAPTER XXII.

“THAT head-flannel may do for Annie; you know there is to be another little one about Lady Day. I must say that it is a pity when young wives have a family too fast.”

Mrs. Turle gently laved her ample hands in the fancy-work box, apportioning the different articles according to her mind.

“Nancy would like that embroidered newspaper rack. She and Duncan are so very literary. I’m sure Nancy would have distinguished herself in literature, if it had been necessary. She would have made her mark—ladies take up so many things nowadays, and are received by the best people just the same. When Nancy stayed with the Cluttons she moved in a very literary set, and was much admired.”

“Have you heard from Barbara lately?” asked Pamela.

She was sitting by the fire, with her back to the view of gravel drive and brand-new park land of Turle House. The big, dazzling white mantelpiece was a little above her head, loaded with family photos—a long, ogling, simpering line of family features.

“No. But I saw her name in the papers; I am always seeing it. Her husband is really a very distinguished[310] man in his way. I can’t think why she buried herself at the Buttery, and talked so much at random, making enemies of so many people. How could anyone be expected to understand her? Nancy says that in London, when staying with the Cluttons, she met a great many women of that type—ill-balanced women, my dear, with a trick of extravagant talk and an unchristian, uncomfortable habit of poking fun at everything.”

Pamela shifted her chair a little back from the hot fire. A quick, poignant shadow just flecked her face. A vivid picture of London, hot, restless, virile, flamed before her eyes and shook her calm for a moment. Then the peaceful slowness dropped down on her again. She looked, with a gasp of relief, at her surroundings—the big, ugly room—old-fashioned enough in its appointments and furniture to mark a distinct period. She looked at Mrs. Turle—who might or might not be her Aunt Sophy—looked at her motherly figure and hard, high-featured face. She remembered that Barbara had once said, with a laugh, that there was a strong streak of “old cat” in Aunt Sophy’s face.

Nothing changed: nothing ever would change. Everything in that room was the same as it had always been in her knowledge of it. It was restful and slow: it fed and stilled one’s nerves. She no longer wanted London, no more wanted Love. But the mention of London, which had held Love, just stirred her—made her remember that she had never heard anything of Edred. She wondered if he and Sutton were still at Marquise Mansions; if they,[311] with Milligan and a few more, were still carrying on risky financial schemes. The newspapers never mentioned them, the advertisements of their companies no longer necessitated an extra sheet.

“How is Gainah?” Mrs. Turle brought out a cushion of crazy patchwork. “I’ll buy this for her, poor soul! What an invaluable woman she was! What a manager! Folly Corner would have gone all to pieces after Lilith died but for Gainah. It is a dreadful end for an active woman. I suppose, dear, you notice no change?”

“None. She just sits upstairs—she won’t leave that room; my old room, you know——”

“I know. You certainly had a most providential escape.”

“She does patchwork; she cries to Jethro—never to me—for new pieces.”

“She shall certainly have this cushion. It would give her a new idea. She might copy it. She has never done crazy patchwork.”

“If any of you have any pieces, do send them to Folly Corner. Whenever we drive into Liddleshorn I will buy her some.”

“I’ll have a hunt. We all remember Gainah. Maria brought some over from the Warren last week—you can take them back with you. And Annie had some beautiful corners of sateen. She has been re-covering the cot eiderdown. I went to help her last Monday; it takes two—one to machine and the other to hold the work perfectly steady. Annie is rather early with her preparations, but your Aunt Jerusha always insisted on having everything[312] ready at least three months before: Annie is a very dutiful daughter. And Gainah still has that extraordinary dislike for you?”

“Yes. She is afraid of me. It is natural and uncanny. She thinks I am a ghost; she knows she killed me. The knife was dug in to the very hilt. What an escape I had! Jethro won’t send her to the asylum. He could pay. She would have every care. Half the parlormaid’s time is taken up with Gainah.”

“I can understand that it is a trial for you. It is telling on you, dear. You really look quite faded. I can see by your eyes that your head is aching at this moment. Take a dose of caffeine when you get back. And ask Egbert to give you a tonic. I must say that it isn’t natural, dear, for a young woman not quite thirty to look so yellow.”

“Gainah and Chalcraft ought to be comfortably provided for away from Folly Corner,” Pamela persisted. “Chalcraft is anything but a graceful pauper. He is most familiar to me whenever I go to his cottage.”

She laughed uncomfortably. She had grown into an elegant habit of philanthropy, after the manner of country ladies. Philanthropy was very gratifying. She bought courtesy with old gowns and paid for heavenly benedictions with a milk pudding. But Chalcraft was obdurate. He declined to bend his ancient knee to the interloper. He kept his bed nearly all the winter. He made his “missus” bring it down to the living-room and set it behind the door, so that he might see, in part, how[313] the world went. At Pamela’s entrance, foolish, half-daft Mrs. Chalcraft would courtesy and flip a chair, but Chalcraft only grunted. The cold stare of his rheumy blue eyes reminded her of the day when she first came to Folly Corner, when she trod down the gray tendrils of the vine with the pointed toes of her town shoes. She had been an adventuress then. She was assured now—the mistress of Folly Corner. She had routed them all—Gainah, Chalcraft, the rude manner of life. The fierce old head on the pillow behind the door, the blank, worn old face at the window of her old room, were unpleasant reminders. She would gladly have sent Chalcraft and Gainah away. But this was the one point on which Jethro was firm.

“You haven’t heard from Edred lately?”

Aunt Sophy’s placid, purring query struck her ears like a gunshot. “No,” she said shortly.

Aunt Sophy’s keen blue eyes were full on her face.

“He had a very serious illness?”

“Yes.”

“Why doesn’t he come down to Folly Corner?”

“He’s busy. The train service is so bad.”

“The train service is very good, now that we have the new line. He could go up every morning quite easily, with a quick horse to take him to the station. It would be better, dear. We hardly care for you to live alone with Jethro. You’re really much younger than you look. Strangers might consider the arrangement a fitting one, but we in the family, who know that you are really not thirty, consider it hardly proper. People talk. You[314] know,” she laughed indulgently, “what a long tongue Maria has—and she visits at so many nice houses. You and Jethro ought to marry. Why doesn’t the wedding come off? Everyone is wondering. It is fifteen months since you came back from nursing Edred.”

“We have changed our minds. We neither of us wish to marry. It doesn’t matter what people say.”

“My dear, your family has every confidence. But I’m sure my idea is excellent. Let Edred come and live at Folly Corner. If you had your brother with you no one could say a word. Isn’t this a pretty workbag?”

She held up a limp blue thing, worked with straggling leaves in brown silk. She held it so persistently, swinging it tantalizingly by the string, that Pamela was compelled to meet her inquisitive eyes—eyes that she had always known suspected her. There was more than a spark of malice in Aunt Sophy. She had been young once, a coquette, so they said. The embers of coquetry lay in her eyes still. She had never been a mere pink and silly girl like her daughter Nancy.

“If you had your brother with you,” she repeated with emphasis, “no one could say a word. Why doesn’t he come? Is it because of Nancy? He was in love with Nancy. But she is married now.”

“He cannot come. He has his business.”

“Well, then, my dear,”—she never shifted her questioning eyes,—“I must say that you ought to marry to Jethro.”

[315] Pamela walked home thoughtfully. There was, then, nothing stationary in life—outside a happy marriage. The family had combined to drive her from Folly Corner or into Jethro’s arms. The family did not know the cold, sad repugnance that they both had for love-making—the dread avoidance of it, as a poignant, heart-wrenching thing. Aunt Sophy might suspect, but she would never be sure.

She walked through the woods which she had once trodden with Edred on a spring day. Crisp frost—like the icing of Maria’s cakes: Maria’s forte was iced cake—spread over the thick, dead leaves. Every point on which her eye dwelt was glittering and white. When she reached Folly Corner she stopped to look at the cows, standing in golden straw and fenced by a gray paling on which serpent-green moss stood in a thick pile. Why wouldn’t the family let them alone—she and Jethro? They were happy—slow, peaceful, like their cattle: their cattle—she had come to believe that everything was hers, without the burning, binding tie of marriage. They were happy. The pensive melancholy and roundness of the old place, which no builder could inspire with modern feeling, had eaten into them. They only wanted to be left alone.

She went round the house, meaning to enter, as she usually did, by the garden door. As she passed beneath the window of her old room she looked up. It stood open. Gainah was indifferent to temperature: she was stitching at her interminable quilts. All she had kept of her sane days was the[316] feverish energy, which now wrought itself on snipping up stuff and sewing it together again. She wore the same old gown of blue—they could not take it from her; her hair bunched out on each side of her chalky face in the absurd bunches of corkscrew curls. The velvet band across her head was tightly strained: it had made a bald spot in the middle of the parting—a spot which was rapidly spreading. Pamela saw her plainly: the restless fingers, distorted by rheumatism, but quite clean and yellow-white, now that she did not do any housework or cooking; the worn, blank face, the constantly moving lips. She stood looking up, not knowing why she stopped, lost in speculation which had little enough to do with this dormant Gainah.

As she stood there Gainah suddenly looked down. She met the upturned eyes and gave a terrified baby’s cry. She tried to move, to scuttle out of sight. But her stricken limbs refused their aid; she began to whimper with fright at the sight of her victim. A flash of anger lighted on Pamela’s face. She had never forgiven.

She held up her finger and shook it threateningly.

“Go back,” she cried, “go back to the fire at once,” forgetting in her irritation that the old woman could not move across the room without help.

The parlormaid came forward to the window. She caught Gainah by the shoulder, none too gently, and pulled her away, shutting the casement with an impatient click.

Jethro was in the field beyond the garden. Pamela[317] went to him over the border of crisp, crunching grass which edged the furrows. She loved that field in all its moods. She had watched it, consulted it so often from the shadow of the deep bay window. She remembered just how it appeared at each particular crisis of her life at Folly Corner—half shorn of its yellow corn on that first day; mystic with clearing mist and great green moon the night she came back; dull brown to-day with thin ice on the upturned tips of its even furrows.

He was near the hedge, talking to Buckman, who was ditching. She went up and hooked her hand through his arm without saying a word. They had grown into that attitude—the affectionate, silent attitude of long, dear familiarity. Sometimes they would sit without speech for a whole evening, until he suddenly looked up from the paper with a tender look and stretched his big hand out to touch her fingers.

The ditch was clean, the hedge hacked. Small heaps of black leaf mold spotted the fringe of grass.

“You’ll be about done that job to-morrow,” Jethro said. “Just tie the fagots together and put them on the stack.”

The two walked toward the house.

“I think,” she said timidly, “that I would like to go to London to-morrow. Some shopping—that’s all. And I’d like a sight of London streets—a bit of color and movement. One wants that twice in a winter.”

He looked at her suspiciously. The clear fire blazed in her face. Standing there with the icy[318] ground under their feet and the scurrying, sunless sky above their heads, they read each other’s souls.

“No,” she said passionately; “you can trust me. I think I can trust myself. London is very big. I am not likely to meet him.”

“Go, if you like. But there will be a hard frost to-night and very likely snow to-morrow,” he returned, looking up to the sky for a weather sign.

The clear, hard light showed his rugged face, stern and simple.

[319]

CHAPTER XXIII.

HE stopped at the door and said he must drive over to the Flagon House before dusk. Pamela went alone into the drawing-room and sat by the fire. The luxury and completeness of the room touched her with a sense of Jethro’s boundless generosity—all the more creditable because he was a frugal man. It was quite a modern room now—it had the thin, elegant touch which she preferred.

Her tea came in. She threw aside her hat and coat, and toasted her knees while she read the newspaper. A queer hurry and unrest had taken possession of her. She kept worrying herself. Should she go to London to-morrow? Aunt Sophy had stirred her by the mere mention of London. Should she go? Should she stay at home?

There was no harm in going. Shopping, tea with Barbara perhaps—nothing more. She would stop at Liddleshorn and ask Nancy or Egbert’s wife to go with her. There would surely be safety in that. Safety! The word made her blench and shrink. She instantly suspected herself. So there was really danger!

She wasn’t sure of herself—not yet: wasn’t sure—would never be. Wasn’t it more than possible that, directly she was in London alone, unchecked, unwatched, she would go straight to Marquise Mansions,[320] not meaning to enter? But, at the foot of the stairs, wasn’t it certain, miserably certain, that she would go up? If she saw him! Then—that she admitted, with a violent shame and misery—everything would depend on his attitude. The woman in brown! The woman—didn’t count.

She wouldn’t think, wouldn’t speculate, wouldn’t decide just now. It would be premature to decide yet. There was no hurry.

She picked up the paper, which had dropped to the floor. Then she remembered that it had been the paper which had tempted her to leave Jethro before. Suppose Edred’s name should be on the next sheet! That would settle everything—so she feared.

Would it never end—this evil, incomprehensible witchery? Wasn’t she ever going to be safe? Was her life to be spent in veering between the happy lethargy of Folly Corner and the periodic joy and black misery of life with Edred? She despaired of herself. She hadn’t any shame, any self-respect, any modesty—any of those cold, praiseworthy qualities which romance has for centuries built up and labeled “feminine character.”

She read on. One word, at last, became more than a dancing string of letters. It was the word Sutton. Here at last, after fifteen months of vigilant watching, was a sign. Here, beneath her eyes, was an indirect message from Marquise Mansions.

Had he been knighted or sent to penal servitude? Either was equally likely—in their mode of life. She read. It was a highly respectable announcement:[321] he was a member of the County Council—a prominent member—and he had been agitating about some strike—yes, the plasterers’ strike. Whatever sympathy had he with plasterers? She laughed softly, and put the paper down. He was evidently prosperous, this sleek minion of Edred’s. The paragraph was redolent of prosperity. He was spoken of deferentially as a promising man—a coming man. She knew his future. He’d go into Parliament, pick his way up the social ladder.

There was no word of Edred. The omission was a knell on her brow.

She must go to London to-morrow. It would be safe. She wasn’t quite so weak as she supposed. After all, there really would not be much danger in going to Marquise Mansions—just to inquire of the porter.

The room grew dark as she sat, stooping forward, her chin in her hands. The wind rose, and lapped like rising waves about the lonely house. She put more coal on the fire, feeling the intense cold of the night even there, in the nest of carpets, thick curtains, and cushions.

Suddenly she heard muffled feet on the red, newly-spread gravel outside. No wheels, but the steady, heavy tramping of feet! She heard voices, the rustic, slow voices of the farm men. There was a momentary silence: then Jethro spoke. She could not catch the words, but there was a sinister intonation in his voice.

She ran to the window. When she hastily dragged the curtain back she saw that the glass was[322] spread with a fine cloth of silver. The casement was fast with frost; it took a determined movement of her wrist to throw it back.

When she put her head stealthily out into the night, the cold dashed against her with the sting of a blow. There had not been so cold a night that winter. The snow fell in solid steady flakes.

It was a typical winter’s night; it was quite theatrical in its completeness. She might have been looking at the drop-scene of a domestic drama. Snow, intense cold, slow-tongued, heavy-footed rustics—everything was ripe for a crisis; but there was to be no crisis in her life, no more drama. She was in harbor.

Jethro saw her before she spoke.

“Go back!” he said peremptorily. “Go back to the fire!”

Those were the words she had used to Gainah.

“Go back!” he repeated.

She couldn’t see his face; she could see nothing distinctly. The men were in a circle, as if they covered something. But she didn’t want to see. The strange ring in his voice was enough.

She shut the window, caught a rug from the cozy corner, and went through the warm, well-lighted corridor out of doors.

*****

They were going very slowly, very cautiously, the group of farm men, headed by Jethro, toward the barn. She could see them—the bent shoulders, the rough clothes, the shambling, swinging steps and loose swing of the body. They were all[323] familiar, these men. She knew them by name—knew how many shillings a week each had, and of how many children each was the father. At that moment she didn’t seem to know them at all. They were instinct with mystery—mystery flavored with dread.

What were they carrying? She could see now, as she gained on them silently in her thin slippers, that they guardedly carried a thing—a long, shrouded bundle. It was shapeless; yet, somehow, it cried out of life beneath the roughly piled coverings. It was nothing agricultural that they were carrying toward the barn so carefully.

She heard them speak, heard Daborn say in his cheery voice and deferential way:

“’Course, sir, it aint as I thinks, it’s as you thinks. But I should jus’ lay ’un in the barn.”

Lay what in the barn? A formless fear quickened her feet. She was very close, none of them yet suspected her presence—the heavy snow now extinguished all sound of feet.

They had covered the shrouded thing with sacks—wet sacks that were already stiffening with frost.

She crept behind them in the shadow of the newly-planted shrubs. She followed to the barn—the great barn, full of cobwebs, scored by huge beams. Its new roof of corrugated iron, covering the heavy thatch, gleamed like a strange, new precious metal.

They stopped to throw open the great door. How cold she was! And yet how her heart under the[324] sofa-rug blazed and beat—she couldn’t have told why.

They all went stolidly, carefully into the barn. She slipped like a wraith in after them.

Jethro turned and saw her.

“Go back!” he said wrathfully. “Go back!” repeating it, with no wrath at all, but with exquisite pleading and gentleness. “Go back! Dear love, go back to the fire.”

She looked up at him meaningly, knowingly. She began to feel what it was that stretched under those wet sacks. Dear love! It was the first time since her return that he had used those words—his favorite pet expression during the brief, agitated period of their engagement.

There were frozen flakes of snow scattered over the orange silk rug which wrapped her from her chin to the toe-caps of her slippers. Her white face, framed in disheveled, dust-colored hair, was shadowy. They stood together at the door of the barn. At the back of them, the men, each with his lantern, made a patch of light. An evil spirit seemed to stare out of each corner of the vast raftered place—to stare down at the thing under the sacks.

“I will not go back,” she said firmly. “I want to see. What is there?”

She pointed with a steady finger. They had improvised a bench. They were laying it out—straightening it, with rough, pitiful reverence, as she could very well see.

“What is there?”

[325] Her voice rang out in the lofty barn amid the perfect, unnatural silence which suddenly fell over the rest. Jethro only repeated, touching her coaxingly on the wrist:

“Go back. I’ll come in and tell you presently.”

She shook her head.

“I stay. I mean to see.”

The group of men, with rare delicacy, without a word or a gesture of recognition, clumped out, with heads down and heavy feet, trying in vain to tread lightly.

Jethro and Pamela were alone. She shot forward and touched the sacks.

“You mustn’t touch. I insist on your going in, Pamela.”

But her hand was already on the soiled, wet sacking, and she flipped it down with fearful eagerness.

“I knew, I knew,” she called out almost exultingly. “I felt sure.”

She looked at the dead face for a long time, and very steadily.

“I was driving home from the Flagon House,” Jethro explained in a husky voice and averting his eyes from those dead ones which would not close. “Something went wrong with the harness just as I got to the pond. I jumped down. By the light of the lamps. I saw—his arm was thrust out.”

She didn’t speak. Her eyes were steady and luminous on Edred’s rigid face. There was a ticking sound as the water dropped from his sodden clothes to the floor. Then a quick clatter of a horse’s hoofs fell on their ears.

[326] Jethro said simply:

“That’s young Buckman gone to Liddleshorn for Egbert. I told him to saddle the black mare.”

She only looked and looked. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, her lips were steady. She looked from the handsome dead face to the shabby, drenched clothes, which were splintered all over with little spear-shaped fragments of ice.

They were the clothes of a tramp. His boots were burst, a dirty handkerchief was knotted round his long throat, and on his chin was an unkempt beard—a piebald beard, half black, half gray. He was handsome still, but it was the wreck of comeliness—the sodden face of a dissolute man of fifty.

“He must have had ill luck lately,” Jethro said. “He was evidently coming back to us.”

“If he had come back—alive,” she said thoughtfully, “I wonder——”

Her steady gaze on the dead, aged, handsome face never wavered. If he had come back to Folly Corner alive—so—would he have possessed the old magic?

His eyes were fathoming the raftered roof. In every corner, clothed in the swaying black cobwebs, was an imp—the evil spirits who had swayed his life.

“We shall never know what brought him to this. Come away, dear,” urged Jethro.

She shook Jethro’s big hand off with petulance. The water from the dead man’s clothes was freezing at her feet, beneath her slippers, and chilled her. That was the nearest approach to contact she[327] reached with the dead. She made no attempt to touch him, to go a little nearer, to stoop and stare into the glazing, fearful surface of his wide dark eyes.

What a mystery he had always been! What a mystery he was now! She had never been certain even of his name. She didn’t know and never would know the secret history of the last fifteen months. Two might tell her—Sutton or the woman in brown. But she did not wish to revive either of them. That was past. Everything was past. She was stripped at last of everything; the world was simply Folly Corner. She felt as a slave might feel when he heard the blows which loosened his shackles. She was free. She had always been free—in the letter; in the spirit she had been a wretched slave. A slave to first love—that indefinable, holding thing.

She turned away suddenly, turned her back on the dead man—not with horror, grief, or repulsion, but apathetically—as if she had seen enough. She dismissed him. She put her head to Jethro’s coat, with the persuasive, rubbing air of a cat.

“I can’t feel,” she said, holding one hand out toward the roughly improvised bier. “I thank God that I don’t feel any longer. I’m not touched in the least, not even by ordinary natural emotions. I’m not sorry; I’m not ashamed; I’m not even glad. I’m only free. Jethro!”

“Dear love!” His great hand was on her hair.

“I don’t feel—for him,” she went on with more passion, “the ordinary pity and sadness that one[328] feels for any dead thing. I can’t—for him. There’s no dignity, no pathos in Death when it touches him. You mustn’t think me hard; mustn’t put this down to vengeance because he injured me. I can still feel pity. I cried only this morning over a tomtit which the cat had mangled. But I don’t cry for this. I don’t feel. I’m stone where he is concerned. Until to-night I have been wax. I’m not sorry or shocked; not anything womanly, anything human that I ought to be. I can’t feel. I’m free. Take me away. We’ll get warm in the house.”

They stepped out into the driving snow. The world was white and pitiless that night.

The door thudded solemnly when Jethro pulled it to. He had his arm round Pamela, his coat held out to form a screen for her. Midway to the house she stopped, the blinding, desolate snow whirling above their heads. She looked up and he looked down. There was a strange fire in each pair of eyes. Suddenly he stooped and kissed her on the mouth—roughly, brutally.

Her mouth smarted with the rudeness of that kiss, but a sweet, permanent content ran through her body. He loved her! She would be Cousin Pamela no more, save in the tender jest of matrimony. He had always loved her. His reserve, his brotherly attitude, had been forced. They were part of his prudent nature, part of his hereditary economy. He would never expend when there was small chance of any result.

The house was warm—a gently filtering warmth[329] that seemed to wrap them directly they shut the door.

The discreet clink of china, the savory smell of soup, came from the kitchen. They were preparing dinner—the place was wholly regardless of that miserable dead man.

They shut themselves in the drawing-room. Pamela abandoned herself to the luxury of the fire. Jethro paced about nervously, his ears alert for wheels.

“Egbert can do nothing,” he said. “The poor chap was dead when I found him—dead and stiff. He must have been in the pond some time. If I hadn’t found him to-night the ice would have pinned him in by to-morrow. We should have been obliged to cut him out. I can’t think how he got in. It isn’t dark: he never drank—too much. His head was strong. He could stand a lot of whisky. We don’t know——”

“We shall never know,” she said with the oddest lethargy.

All the time he walked about the room, indulging as he did so in kind commonplace reflections concerning Edred, she was saying to herself—lilting the words to a queer dancing air that hummed in her head:

“Free, free, free.”

She tried herself, probed herself, insisted on proving. She recalled all sorts of things—her happiest, tenderest moments with the dead man. She felt nothing at all, except faint disgust for the woman—it could not have been herself—who had so madly[330] loved that creature who was lying in the barn searching the roof with his fixed, shallow eyes.

“No,” she said, half to herself, half to Jethro, “I don’t feel.”

She waited a moment, let that flow of recollections rush on. Nothing touched her. It had been another woman—a dogged, shameful, spiritless creature. She repeated devotionally, as if she had been kneeling in a great church, swept by religious frenzy:

“I thank God. I don’t feel.”

*****

“Beaufort Street, May 24.

“MY DEAREST PAMELA: Tim and I will be delighted to spend all June at Folly Corner, as you suggest: you’ll really see Tim at last!

“We have let this house, and think of settling in the country. It will not be the real thing, as you have it. We shall go to one of those intellectual settlements with a good railway service to town; a theater train once a week. We shall live on a hill; there will be a splendid view from our windows. We shall have to pay for that view; we shall ask our friends down to look at it; we shall see it every morning—rave over it, become callous to it, abuse it—want to murder it. A true English home is in a hollow, like Folly Corner. I shall have to content myself with the hard monotony of a pine wood—after Sussex oak! We shall belong to a coterie—everybody will be an artistic something. Everybody will flatter and hate his neighbor.

[331] “I want to see the baby. Of course you’ll call him Jethro. I can understand your disquietude at Gainah’s fondness for him.

“Your letter was too domestic altogether. Do remember that a ‘good manager’ degenerates into a shrew after thirty.

“Of course your husband is trying—it is a way they have: a man is the most difficult of all domestic pets. Never mind his occasional morose moods; never mind his attempts at domestic economy. When a man decides on domestic economy he smokes a shilling cigar while he lectures his wife on the sinful extravagance of afternoon tea. A wise woman gives him his head on such occasions, and never varies her course.

“You are very much to be envied; our life is a struggle to make both ends meet. Tim’s book of essays, which made such a splash last year, has been the ruin of him. He is a melancholy object lesson—a man ruined by press notices. Still, that is not a fate likely to befall you or Mr. Jayne. My poor Tim no longer has confidence in anything he does. I tell him—without making the least impression on him—that a thing doesn’t cease to be clever because you’ve found out the way to do it. He’s versatile—that is his stumbling-block. To succeed, you must be superlatively skillful at one thing, and a perfect fool at everything else.

“So Nancy has won the literary prize in the Liddleshorn Herald competition—and dear Mrs. Turle has justified her opinion.

“As Chalcraft and his wife are dead, of course[332] there will be a sale. Buy me the oak chair, if I am not present to buy it myself.

“I remember Nettie; she didn’t look the kind of girl who would go off in a decline. But the rustics are dreadfully unhealthy. When I was at the Buttery buying things of the cottagers I had a fixed rule by which I ingratiated myself. If a woman was under fifty I inquired after the baby; over fifty, I inquired after the bad leg. It sounds horrid, but was invariably successful. If the victim was a man, I asked if his ground grew good onions, and said how sorry I was that I couldn’t keep a pig.

“By the way, when you see Mrs. Silas Daborn, ask her to save me a kitten next time they occur. The cat we have won’t catch mice—lets them frisk with the tip of her tail. I cannot think what cats are coming to. Tim, who is not a Progressive, says it is all the fault of the School Board.

“We shall come by the quick afternoon train on Wednesday, June 2. We arrive at five something; Mr. Jayne will please look it up in the time-table.

“Affectionately yours, with a kiss for the baby,

“BARBARA CLUTTON.”

THE END.