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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
+no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
+it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Saint's Progress
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: June 14, 2006 [EBook #2683]
+Last Updated: February 18, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAINT'S PROGRESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+SAINTS PROGRESS
+
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PART I
+
+I
+
+II
+
+III
+
+IV
+
+V
+
+VI
+
+VII
+
+VIII
+
+IX
+
+X
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+I
+
+II
+
+III
+
+IV
+
+V
+
+VI
+
+VII
+
+VIII
+
+IX
+
+X
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+I
+
+II
+
+III
+
+IV
+
+V
+
+VI
+
+VII
+
+VIII
+
+IX
+
+X
+
+XI
+
+XII
+
+XIII
+
+XIV
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+I
+
+II
+
+III
+
+IV
+
+V
+
+VI
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Such a day made glad the heart. All the flags of July were waving; the
+sun and the poppies flaming; white butterflies spiring up and twining,
+and the bees busy on the snapdragons. The lime-trees were coming
+into flower. Tall white lilies in the garden beds already rivaled the
+delphiniums; the York and Lancaster roses were full-blown round their
+golden hearts. There was a gentle breeze, and a swish and stir and hum
+rose and fell above the head of Edward Pierson, coming back from his
+lonely ramble over Tintern Abbey. He had arrived at Kestrel, his brother
+Robert's home on the bank of the Wye only that morning, having stayed
+at Bath on the way down; and now he had got his face burnt in that
+parti-coloured way peculiar to the faces of those who have been too long
+in London. As he came along the narrow, rather overgrown avenue, the
+sound of a waltz thrummed out on a piano fell on his ears, and he
+smiled, for music was the greatest passion he had. His dark grizzled
+hair was pushed back off his hot brow, which he fanned with his straw
+hat. Though not broad, that brow was the broadest part of a narrow oval
+face whose length was increased by a short, dark, pointed beard—a
+visage such as Vandyk might have painted, grave and gentle, but for its
+bright grey eyes, cinder-lashed and crow's-footed, and its strange
+look of not seeing what was before it. He walked quickly, though he was
+tired and hot; tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit, on
+whose black kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled.
+
+Above his brother's house, whose sloping garden ran down to the
+railway line and river, a large room had been built out apart. Pierson
+stood where the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the waltz, and
+the cool whipping of the breeze in the sycamores and birches. A man of
+fifty, with a sense of beauty, born and bred in the country, suffers
+fearfully from nostalgia during a long unbroken spell of London; so
+that his afternoon in the old Abbey had been almost holy. He had let his
+senses sink into the sunlit greenery of the towering woods opposite; he
+had watched the spiders and the little shining beetles, the flycatchers,
+and sparrows in the ivy; touched the mosses and the lichens; looked
+the speedwells in the eye; dreamed of he knew not what. A hawk had been
+wheeling up there above the woods, and he had been up there with it in
+the blue. He had taken a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret
+of London off his soul.
+
+For a year he had been working his parish single-handed—no joke—for
+his curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real holiday
+since the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to his
+brother's home. He looked down at the garden, and up at the trees
+of the avenue. Bob had found a perfect retreat after his quarter of a
+century in Ceylon. Dear old Bob! And he smiled at the thought of his
+elder brother, whose burnt face and fierce grey whiskers somewhat
+recalled a Bengal tiger; the kindest fellow that ever breathed! Yes,
+he had found a perfect home for Thirza and himself. And Edward Pierson
+sighed. He too had once had a perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound of
+whose death, fifteen years ago, still bled a little in his heart. Their
+two daughters, Gratian and Noel, had not “taken after” her; Gratian
+was like his own mother, and Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always
+reminded him of his cousin Leila, who—poor thing!—had made that sad
+mess of her life, and now, he had heard, was singing for a living, in
+South Africa. Ah! What a pretty girl she had been!
+
+Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the
+music-room. A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet
+slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly
+in the arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
+circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
+have come in recently, for he did not recognise them. At the piano sat
+his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face. But it was at his
+young daughter that Edward Pierson looked. Her eyes were half-closed,
+her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite short, curled into
+her slim round neck. Quite cool she seemed, though the young man in
+whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery hot; a handsome boy,
+with blue eyes and a little golden down on the upper lip of his sunny
+red-cheeked face. Edward Pierson thought: 'Nice couple!' And had
+a moment's vision of himself and Leila, dancing at that long-ago
+Cambridge May Week—on her seventeenth birthday, he remembered, so that
+she must have been a year younger than Nollie was now! This would be the
+young man she had talked of in her letters during the last three weeks.
+Were they never going to stop?
+
+He passed into view of those within, and said:
+
+“Aren't you very hot, Nollie?”
+
+She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and self-conscious,
+and Eve called out:
+
+“It's a bet, Uncle. They've got to dance me down.”
+
+Pierson said mildly:
+
+“A bet? My dears!”
+
+Noel murmured over her shoulder:
+
+“It's all right, Daddy!” And the young man gasped:
+
+“She's bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir!”
+
+Pierson sat down, a little hypnotized by the sleepy strumming, the slow
+giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-closed swimming eyes of
+his young daughter, looking at him over her shoulder as she went by. He
+sat with a smile on his lips. Nollie was growing up! Now that Gratian
+was married, she had become a great responsibility. If only his dear
+wife had lived! The smile faded from his lips; he looked suddenly very
+tired. The struggle, physical and spiritual, he had been through, these
+fifteen years, sometimes weighed him almost to the ground: Most men
+would have married again, but he had always felt it would be sacrilege.
+Real unions were for ever, even though the Church permitted remarriage.
+
+He watched his young daughter with a mixture of aesthetic pleasure and
+perplexity. Could this be good for her? To go on dancing indefinitely
+with one young man could that possibly be good for her? But they looked
+very happy; and there was so much in young creatures that he did
+not understand. Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy, seemed sometimes
+possessed of a little devil. Edward Pierson was naif; attributed those
+outbursts of demonic possession to the loss of her mother when she was
+such a mite; Gratian, but two years older, had never taken a mother's
+place. That had been left to himself, and he was more or less conscious
+of failure.
+
+He sat there looking up at her with a sort of whimsical distress. And,
+suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn each word
+a little, she said:
+
+“I'm going to stop!” and, sitting down beside him, took up his hat
+to fan herself.
+
+Eve struck a triumphant chord. “Hurrah I've won!”
+
+The young man muttered:
+
+“I say, Noel, we weren't half done!”
+
+“I know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren't you, dear? This is
+Cyril Morland.”
+
+Pierson shook the young man's hand.
+
+“Daddy, your nose is burnt!”
+
+“My dear; I know.”
+
+“I can give you some white stuff for it. You have to sleep with it on
+all night. Uncle and Auntie both use it.”
+
+“Nollie!”
+
+“Well, Eve says so. If you're going to bathe, Cyril, look out for
+that current!”
+
+The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration, muttered:
+
+“Rather!” and went out.
+
+Noel's eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.
+
+“If you're going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you'd better
+hurry up.”
+
+“All right. Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?”
+
+“Lovely; like a great piece of music.”
+
+“Daddy always puts everything into music. You ought to see it by
+moonlight; it's gorgeous then. All right, Eve; I'm coming.” But
+she did not get up, and when Eve was gone, cuddled her arm through her
+father's and murmured:
+
+“What d'you think of Cyril?”
+
+“My dear, how can I tell? He seems a nice-looking young man.”
+
+“All right, Daddy; don't strain yourself. It's jolly down here,
+isn't it?” She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away,
+looking like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round her
+head.
+
+Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a lovely
+thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following, went to
+the piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in E
+minor. He had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion.
+It was his way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which
+never quite failed him.
+
+At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a profession, but
+family tradition had destined him for Holy Orders, and an emotional
+Church revival of that day had caught him in its stream. He had always
+had private means, and those early years before he married had passed
+happily in an East-End parish. To have not only opportunity but power to
+help in the lives of the poor had been fascinating; simple himself, the
+simple folk of his parish had taken hold of his heart. When, however, he
+married Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish of his own on the borders
+of East and West, where he had been ever since, even after her death had
+nearly killed him. It was better to go on where work and all reminded
+him of one whom he had resolved never to forget in other ties. But he
+knew that his work had not the zest it used to have in her day, or even
+before her day. It may well be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy
+Orders twenty-six years, quite knew now what he believed. Everything had
+become circumscribed, and fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to
+have taken fresh stock of his faith, to have gone deep into its roots,
+would have been like taking up the foundations of a still-standing
+house. Some men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible—for
+which one formula is much the same as another; though Edward Pierson,
+gently dogmatic, undoubtedly preferred his High-Church statement of
+the inexpressible to that of, say, the Zoroastrians. The subtleties of
+change, the modifications by science, left little sense of inconsistency
+or treason on his soul. Sensitive, charitable, and only combative deep
+down, he instinctively avoided discussion on matters where he might hurt
+others or they hurt him. And, since explanation was the last thing which
+o could be expected of one who did not base himself on Reason, he had
+found but scant occasion ever to examine anything. Just as in the old
+Abbey he had soared off into the infinite with the hawk, the beetles,
+and the grasses, so now, at the piano, by these sounds of his own
+making, he was caught away again into emotionalism, without realising
+that he was in one of his, most religious moods.
+
+“Aren't you coming to tea, Edward?”
+
+The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown, had one of
+those faces which remain innocent to the end of the chapter, in spite of
+the complete knowledge of life which appertains to mothers. In days of
+suffering and anxiety, like these of the great war, Thirza Pierson was
+a valuable person. Without ever expressing an opinion on cosmic matters,
+she reconfirmed certain cosmic truths, such as that though the whole
+world was at war, there was such a thing as peace; that though all
+the sons of mothers were being killed, there remained such a thing as
+motherhood; that while everybody was living for the future, the present
+still existed. Her tranquil, tender, matter-of-fact busyness, and the
+dew in her eyes, had been proof against twenty-three years of life on a
+tea-plantation in the hot part of Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against
+the anxiety of having two sons at the front, and the confidences of
+nearly every one she came across. Nothing disturbed her. She was like a
+painting of “Goodness” by an Old Master, restored by Kate Greenaway.
+She never went to meet life, but when it came, made the best of it. This
+was her secret, and Pierson always felt rested in her presence.
+
+He rose, and moved by her side, over the lawn, towards the big tree at
+the bottom of the garden.
+
+“How d'you think Noel is looking, Edward?”
+
+“Very pretty. That young man, Thirza?”
+
+“Yes; I'm afraid he's over head and ears in love with her.”
+
+At the dismayed sound he uttered, she slipped her soft round arm within
+his. “He's going to the front soon, poor boy!”
+
+“Have they talked to you?”
+
+“He has. Nollie hasn't yet.”
+
+“Nollie is a queer child, Thirza.”
+
+“Nollie is a darling, but rather a desperate character, Edward.”
+
+Pierson sighed.
+
+In a swing under the tree, where the tea-things were set out, the
+“rather desperate character” was swaying. “What a picture she
+is!” he said, and sighed again.
+
+The voice of his brother came to them,—high and steamy, as though
+corrupted by the climate of Ceylon:
+
+“You incorrigible dreamy chap, Ted! We've eaten all the raspberries.
+Eve, give him some jam; he must be dead! Phew! the heat! Come on, my
+dear, and pour out his tea. Hallo, Cyril! Had a good bathe? By George,
+wish my head was wet! Squattez-vous down over there, by Nollie; she'll
+swing, and keep the flies off you.”
+
+“Give me a cigarette, Uncle Bob—”
+
+“What! Your father doesn't—”
+
+“Just for the flies. You don't mind, Daddy?”
+
+“Not if it's necessary, my dear.”
+
+Noel smiled, showing her upper teeth, and her eyes seemed to swim under
+their long lashes.
+
+“It isn't necessary, but it's nice.”
+
+“Ah, ha!” said Bob Pierson. “Here you are, Nollie!”
+
+But Noel shook her head. At that moment she struck her father as
+startlingly grown-up-so composed, swaying above that young man at her
+feet, whose sunny face was all adoration. 'No longer a child!' he
+thought. 'Dear Nollie!'
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+1
+
+Awakened by that daily cruelty, the advent of hot water, Edward Pierson
+lay in his chintz-curtained room, fancying himself back in London. A
+wild bee hunting honey from the bowl of flowers on the window-sill, and
+the scent of sweetbrier, shattered that illusion. He drew the curtain,
+and, kneeling on the window-seat thrust his head out into the morning.
+The air was intoxicatingly sweet. Haze clung over the river and the
+woods beyond; the lawn sparkled with dew, and two wagtails strutted in
+the dewy sunshine. 'Thank God for loveliness!' he thought. 'Those
+poor boys at the front!' And kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he
+began to say his prayers. The same feeling which made him beautify his
+church, use vestments, good music, and incense, filled him now. God was
+in the loveliness of His world, as well as in His churches. One could
+worship Him in a grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a
+high hill, by the banks of a bright river. God was in the rustle of the
+leaves, and the hum of a bee, in the dew on the grass, and the scent of
+flowers; God was in everything! And he added to his usual prayer this
+whisper: “I give Thee thanks for my senses, O Lord. In all of us, keep
+them bright, and grateful for beauty.” Then he remained motionless,
+prey to a sort of happy yearning very near, to melancholy. Great beauty
+ever had that effect on him. One could capture so little of it—could
+never enjoy it enough! Who was it had said not long ago: “Love of
+beauty is really only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union
+satisfies.” Ah! yes, George—Gratian's husband. George Laird! And
+a little frown came between his brows, as though at some thorn in
+the flesh. Poor George! But then, all doctors were materialists at
+heart—splendid fellows, though; a fine fellow, George, working himself
+to death out there in France. One must not take them too seriously. He
+plucked a bit of sweetbrier and put it to his nose, which still retained
+the shine of that bleaching ointment Noel had insisted on his using. The
+sweet smell of those little rough leaves stirred up an acute aching. He
+dropped them, and drew back. No longings, no melancholy; one ought to be
+out, this beautiful morning!
+
+It was Sunday; but he had not to take three Services and preach at least
+one sermon; this day of rest was really to be his own, for once. It was
+almost disconcerting; he had so long felt like the cab horse who could
+not be taken out of the shafts lest he should fall down. He dressed with
+extraordinary deliberation, and had not quite finished when there came a
+knock on his door, and Noel's voice said: “Can I come in, Daddy?”
+
+In her flax-blue frock, with a Gloire de Dijon rose pinned where it met
+on her faintly browned neck, she seemed to her father a perfect vision
+of freshness.
+
+“Here's a letter from Gratian; George has been sent home ill, and
+he's gone to our house. She's got leave from her hospital to come
+home and nurse him.”
+
+Pierson read the letter. “Poor George!”
+
+“When are you going to let me be a nurse, Daddy?”
+
+“We must wait till you're eighteen, Nollie.”
+
+“I could easily say I was. It's only a month; and I look much
+more.”
+
+Pierson smiled.
+
+“Don't I?”
+
+“You might be anything from fifteen to twenty-five, my dear, according
+as you behave.”
+
+“I want to go out as near the front as possible.”
+
+Her head was poised so that the sunlight framed her face, which was
+rather broad—the brow rather too broad—under the waving light-brown
+hair, the nose short and indeterminate; cheeks still round from youth,
+almost waxen-pale, and faintly hollowed under the eyes. It was her lips,
+dainty yet loving, and above all her grey eyes, big and dreamily alive,
+which made her a swan. He could not imagine her in nurse's garb.
+
+“This is new, isn't it, Nollie?”
+
+“Cyril Morland's sisters are both out; and he'll be going soon.
+Everybody goes.”
+
+“Gratian hasn't got out yet: It takes a long time to get trained.”
+
+“I know; all the more reason to begin.”
+
+She got up, looked at him, looked at her hands, seemed about to speak,
+but did not. A little colour had come into her cheeks. Then, obviously
+making conversation, she asked:
+
+“Are you going to church? It's worth anything to hear Uncle Bob read
+the Lessons, especially when he loses his place. No; you're not to put
+on your long coat till just before church time. I won't have it!”
+
+Obediently Pierson resigned his long coat.
+
+“Now, you see, you can have my rose. Your nose is better!” She
+kissed his nose, and transferred her rose to the buttonhole of his short
+coat. “That's all. Come along!” And with her arm through his, they
+went down. But he knew she had come to say something which she had not
+said.
+
+2
+
+Bob Pierson, in virtue of greater wealth than the rest of the
+congregation, always read the Lessons, in his high steamy voice, his
+breathing never adjusted to the length of any period. The congregation,
+accustomed, heard nothing peculiar; he was the necessary gentry with the
+necessary finger in the pie. It was his own family whom he perturbed. In
+the second row, Noel, staring solemnly at the profile of her father in
+the front row, was thinking: 'Poor Daddy! His eyes look as if they
+were coming out. Oh, Daddy! Smile! or it'll hurt you!' Young Morland
+beside her, rigid in his tunic, was thinking: 'She isn't thinking of
+me!' And just then her little finger crooked into his. Edward Pierson
+was thinking: 'Oh! My dear old Bob! Oh!' And, beside him, Thirza
+thought: 'Poor dear Ted I how nice for him to be having a complete
+rest! I must make him eat he's so thin!' And Eve was thinking:
+'Oh, Father! Mercy!' But Bob Pierson was thinking: 'Cheer oh! Only
+another three verses!' Noel's little finger unhooked itself, but
+her eyes stole round to young Morland's eyes, and there was a light in
+them which lingered through the singing and the prayers. At last, in
+the reverential rustle of the settling congregation, a surpliced figure
+mounted the pulpit.
+
+“I come not to bring Peace, but a sword.”
+
+Pierson looked up. He felt deep restfulness. There was a pleasant light
+in this church; the hum of a country bluebottle made all the difference
+to the quality of silence. No critical thought stirred within him, nor
+any excitement. He was thinking: 'Now I shall hear something for my
+good; a fine text; when did I preach from it last?' Turned a little
+away from the others, he saw nothing but the preacher's homely face
+up there above the carved oak; it was so long since he had been preached
+to, so long since he had had a rest! The words came forth, dropped
+on his forehead, penetrated, met something which absorbed them, and
+disappeared. 'A good plain sermon!' he thought. 'I suppose I'm
+stale; I don't seem—' “Let us not, dear brethren,” droned the
+preacher's earnest voice, “think that our dear Lord, in saying that
+He brought a sword, referred to a physical sword. It was the sword of
+the spirit to which He was undoubtedly referring, that bright sword of
+the spirit which in all ages has cleaved its way through the fetters
+imposed on men themselves by their own desires, imposed by men on other
+men in gratification of their ambitions, as we have had so striking an
+example in the invasion by our cruel enemies of a little neighbouring
+country which had done them no harm. Dear brethren, we may all bring
+swords.” Pierson's chin jerked; he raised his hand quickly
+and passed it over his face. 'All bring swords,' he thought,
+'swords—I wasn't asleep—surely!' “But let us be sure that
+our swords are bright; bright with hope, and bright with faith, that
+we may see them flashing among the carnal desires of this mortal life,
+carving a path for us towards that heavenly kingdom where alone is
+peace, perfect peace. Let us pray.”
+
+Pierson did not shut his eyes; he opened them as he fell on his knees.
+In the seat behind, Noel and young Morland had also fallen on their
+knees their faces covered each with a single hand; but her left hand
+and his right hung at their sides. They prayed a little longer than any
+others and, on rising, sang the hymn a little louder.
+
+3
+
+No paper came on Sundays—not even the local paper, which had so
+long and so nobly done its bit with headlines to win the war. No news
+whatever came, of men blown up, to enliven the hush of the hot July
+afternoon, or the sense of drugging—which followed Aunt Thirza's
+Sunday lunch. Some slept, some thought they were awake; but Noel and
+young Morland walked upward through the woods towards a high common of
+heath and furze, crowned by what was known as Kestrel rocks. Between
+these two young people no actual word of love had yet been spoken. Their
+lovering had advanced by glance and touch alone.
+
+Young Morland was a school and college friend of the two Pierson boys
+now at the front. He had no home of his own, for his parents were dead;
+and this was not his first visit to Kestrel. Arriving three weeks ago,
+for his final leave before he should go out, he had found a girl sitting
+in a little wagonette outside the station, and had known his fate
+at once. But who knows when Noel fell in love? She was—one
+supposes—just ready for that sensation. For the last two years she had
+been at one of those high-class finishing establishments where, in
+spite of the healthy curriculum, perhaps because of it, there is ever an
+undercurrent of interest in the opposing sex; and not even the gravest
+efforts to eliminate instinct are quite successful. The disappearance
+of every young male thing into the maw of the military machine put a
+premium on instinct. The thoughts of Noel and her school companions were
+turned, perforce, to that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they
+could afford to regard as of secondary interest. Love and Marriage
+and Motherhood, fixed as the lot of women by the countless ages, were
+threatened for these young creatures. They not unnaturally pursued what
+they felt to be receding.
+
+When young Morland showed, by following her about with his eyes, what
+was happening to him, Noel was pleased. From being pleased, she became a
+little excited; from being excited she became dreamy. Then, about a week
+before her father's arrival, she secretly began to follow the young
+man about with her eyes; became capricious too, and a little cruel. If
+there had been another young man to favour—but there was not; and she
+favoured Uncle Bob's red setter. Cyril Morland grew desperate. During
+those three days the demon her father dreaded certainly possessed
+her. And then, one evening, while they walked back together from the
+hay-fields, she gave him a sidelong glance; and he gasped out: “Oh!
+Noel, what have I done?” She caught his hand, and gave it a quick
+squeeze. What a change! What blissful alteration ever since!
+
+Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up to
+put things to the touch. Noel too mounted silently, thinking: 'I will
+kiss him if he kisses me!' Eagerness, and a sort of languor, were
+running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her shady
+hat. Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage; made the
+greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive; flashed on
+beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little
+runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the
+ferns; butterflies chased each other in that sunlight, and myriads of
+ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by a frenzy of life. The whole
+wood seemed possessed, as if the sunshine were a happy Being which had
+come to dwell therein. At a half-way spot, where the trees opened and
+they could see, far below them, the gleam of the river, she sat down on
+the bole of a beech-tree, and young Morland stood looking at her. Why
+should one face and not an other, this voice and not that, make a heart
+beat; why should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and a touch from
+another awaken nothing? He knelt down and pressed his lips to her foot.
+Her eyes grew very bright; but she got up and ran on—she had not
+expected him to kiss her foot. She heard him hurrying after her, and
+stopped, leaning against a birch trunk. He rushed to her, and, without
+a word spoken, his lips were on her lips. The moment in life, which
+no words can render, had come for them. They had found their enchanted
+spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their arms round
+each other, while the happy Being of the wood watched. A marvellous
+speeder-up of Love is War. What might have taken six months, was thus
+accomplished in three weeks.
+
+A short hour passed, then Noel said:
+
+“I must tell Daddy, Cyril. I meant to tell him something this morning,
+only I thought I'd better wait, in case you didn't.”
+
+Morland answered: “Oh, Noel!” It was the staple of his conversation
+while they sat there.
+
+Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:
+
+“I shall go off my chump if we're not married before I go out.”
+
+“How long does it take?”
+
+“No time, if we hurry up. I've got six days before I rejoin, and
+perhaps the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him.”
+
+“Poor Daddy! Kiss me again; a long one.”
+
+When the long one was over, she said:
+
+“Then I can come and be near you till you go out? Oh, Cyril!”
+
+“Oh, Noel!”
+
+“Perhaps you won't go so soon. Don't go if you can help it!”
+
+“Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan't be able.”
+
+“No, of course not; I know.”
+
+Young Morland clutched his hair. “Everyone's in the same boat, but
+it can't last for ever; and now we're engaged we can be together all
+the time till I've got the licence or whatever it is. And then—!”
+
+“Daddy won't like our not being married in a church; but I don't
+care!”
+
+Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on her cheeks,
+young Morland thought:
+
+'My God! I'm in heaven!'
+
+Another short hour passed before she freed herself.
+
+“We must go, Cyril. Kiss me once more!”
+
+It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down. 4
+
+Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where he had read
+the Lessons, saw them in the distance, and compressed his lips. Their
+long absence had vexed him. What ought he to do? In the presence of
+Love's young dream, he felt strange and helpless. That night, when
+he opened the door of his room, he saw Noel on the window-seat, in her
+dressing-gown, with the moonlight streaming in on her.
+
+“Don't light up, Daddy; I've got something to say.”
+
+She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned it over.
+
+“I'm engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week.”
+
+It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs; and at the
+sound he made she hurried on:
+
+“You see, we must be; he may be going out any day.”
+
+In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind of reason
+in her words. But he said:
+
+“My dear, you're only a child. Marriage is the most serious thing in
+life; you've only known him three weeks.”
+
+“I know all that, Daddy” her voice sounded so ridiculously calm;
+“but we can't afford to wait. He might never come back, you see, and
+then I should have missed him.”
+
+“But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only be much
+worse for you.”
+
+She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it
+against her heart. But still her voice was calm:
+
+“No; much better, Daddy; you think I don't know my own feelings, but
+I do.”
+
+The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.
+
+“Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is
+wanted. Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the same
+things.”
+
+“Yes, I know; but we do.”
+
+“You can't tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks.”
+
+“But these aren't ordinary times, are they? People have to do things
+in a hurry. Oh, Daddy! Be an angel! Mother would have understood, and
+let me, I know!”
+
+Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his loss,
+from reminder of the poor substitute he was.
+
+“Look, Nollie!” he said. “After all these years since she left us,
+I'm as lonely as ever, because we were really one. If you marry this
+young man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can in such
+a little time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it turn out,
+after all, nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if anything
+happens to him before you've had any real married life together,
+you'll have a much greater grief and sense of loss to put up with
+than if you simply stay engaged till after the war. Besides, my child,
+you're much too young.”
+
+She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm. “But I must!”
+
+He bit his lips, and said sharply: “You can't, Nollie!”
+
+She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone. With the closing of
+the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took its place. Poor child!
+What to do with this wayward chicken just out of the egg, and wanting to
+be full-fledged at once? The thought that she would be lying miserable,
+crying, perhaps, beset him so that he went out into the passage and
+tapped on her door. Getting no answer, he went in. It was dark but for
+a streak of moonlight, and in that he saw her, lying on her bed, face
+down; and stealing up laid his hand on her head. She did not move; and,
+stroking her hair, he said gently:
+
+“Nollie dear, I didn't mean to be harsh. If I were your mother, I
+should know how to make you see, but I'm only an old bumble-daddy.”
+
+She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on the bed. He
+could see her eyes shining. But she did not speak; she seemed to know
+that in silence was her strength.
+
+He said with a sort of despair:
+
+“You must let me talk it over with your aunt. She has a lot of good
+sense.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.
+
+“Good night, my dear; don't cry. Promise me!”
+
+She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on his
+forehead, and went away a little comforted.
+
+But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the night,
+to the emptiness and silence; each minute so much lost of the little,
+little time left, that she might have been with him.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he had
+thought himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.
+
+After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him more forcibly
+than the needlessness of his words: “Don't cry, Nollie!” for he
+had realised with uneasiness that she had not been near crying. No;
+there was in her some emotion very different from the tearful. He kept
+seeing her cross-legged figure on the bed in that dim light; tense,
+enigmatic, almost Chinese; kept feeling the feverish touch of her lips.
+A good girlish burst of tears would have done her good, and been a
+guarantee. He had the uncomfortable conviction that his refusal had
+passed her by, as if unspoken. And, since he could not go and make music
+at that time of night, he had ended on his knees, in a long search for
+guidance, which was not vouchsafed him.
+
+The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told that for
+the last hour they had been sitting with their arms round each other,
+watching the river flow by, talking but little, through lips too busy.
+Pierson pursued his sister-in-law to the room where she did her flowers
+every morning. He watched her for a minute dividing ramblers from
+pansies, cornflowers from sweet peas, before he said:
+
+“I'm very troubled, Thirza. Nollie came to me last night. Imagine!
+They want to get married—those two!”
+
+Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her cheeks grew
+a little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder. She took up a sprig of
+mignonette, and said placidly:
+
+“Oh, my dear!”
+
+“Think of it, Thirza—that child! Why, it's only a year or two
+since she used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with her hair.”
+
+Thirza went on arranging her flowers.
+
+“Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her age. And
+real married life wouldn't begin for them till after—if it ever
+began.”
+
+Pierson experienced a sort of shock. His sister-in-law's words seemed
+criminally light-hearted.
+
+“But—but—” he stammered; “the union, Thirza! Who can tell what
+will happen before they come together again!”
+
+She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:
+
+“I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in these days,
+of what Noel might do. I told you there's a streak of desperation in
+her.”
+
+“Noel will obey me.”
+
+“I wonder! There are so many of these war marriages now.”
+
+Pierson turned away.
+
+“I think they're dreadful. What do they mean—Just a momentary
+gratification of passion. They might just as well not be.”
+
+“They mean pensions, as a rule,” said Thirza calmly.
+
+“Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn't affect this case. I
+can't bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a moment
+which may come to nothing, or may turn out the beginning of an unhappy
+marriage. Who is this boy—what is he? I know nothing of him. How can I
+give her to him—it's impossible! If they had been engaged some time
+and I knew something of him—yes, perhaps; even at her age. But this
+hasty passionateness—it isn't right, it isn't decent. I don't
+understand, I really don't—how a child like that can want it. The
+fact is, she doesn't know what she's asking, poor little Nollie.
+She can't know the nature of marriage, and she can't realise its
+sacredness. If only her mother were here! Talk to her, Thirza; you can
+say things that I can't!”
+
+Thirza looked after the retreating figure. In spite of his cloth,
+perhaps a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child who had
+come to show her his sore finger. And, having finished the arrangement
+of her flowers, she went out to find her niece. She had not far to go;
+for Noel was standing in the hall, quite evidently lying in wait. They
+went out together to the avenue.
+
+The girl began at once:
+
+“It isn't any use talking to me, Auntie; Cyril is going to get a
+license.”
+
+“Oh! So you've made up your minds?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+“Do you think that's fair by me, Nollie? Should I have asked him
+here if I'd thought this was going to happen?”
+
+Noel only smiled.
+
+“Have you the least idea what marriage means?”
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+“Really?”
+
+“Of course. Gratian is married. Besides, at school—”
+
+“Your father is dead against it. This is a sad thing for him. He's
+a perfect saint, and you oughtn't to hurt him. Can't you wait, at
+least till Cyril's next leave?”
+
+“He might never have one, you see.”
+
+The heart of her whose boys were out there too, and might also never
+have another leave; could not but be responsive to those words. She
+looked at her niece, and a dim appreciation of this revolt of life
+menaced by death, of youth threatened with extinction, stirred in her.
+Noel's teeth were clenched, her lips drawn back, and she was staring
+in front of her.
+
+“Daddy oughtn't to mind. Old people haven't to fight, and get
+killed; they oughtn't to mind us taking what we can. They've had
+their good time.”
+
+It was such a just little speech that Thirza answered:
+
+“Yes; perhaps he hasn't quite realised that.”
+
+“I want to make sure of Cyril, Auntie; I want everything I can have
+with him while there's the chance. I don't think it's much to ask,
+when perhaps I'll never have any more of him again.”
+
+Thirza slipped her hand through the girl's arm.
+
+“I understand,” she said. “Only, Nollie, suppose, when all this
+is over, and we breathe and live naturally once more, you found you'd
+made a mistake?”
+
+Noel shook her head. “I haven't.”
+
+“We all think that, my dear; but thousands of mistakes are made by
+people who no more dream they're making them than you do now; and then
+it's a very horrible business. It would be especially horrible for
+you; your father believes heart and soul in marriage being for ever.”
+
+“Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes,
+you know. Besides, I'm not making a mistake, Auntie! I love Cyril ever
+so.”
+
+Thirza gave her waist a squeeze.
+
+“You mustn't make a mistake. We love you too much, Nollie. I wish we
+had Gratian here.”
+
+“Gratian would back me up,” said Noel; “she knows what the war is.
+And you ought to, Auntie. If Rex or Harry wanted to be married, I'm
+sure you'd never oppose them. And they're no older than Cyril. You
+must understand what it means to me Auntie dear, to feel that we belong
+to each other properly before—before it all begins for him, and—and
+there may be no more. Daddy doesn't realise. I know he's awfully
+good, but—he's forgotten.”
+
+“My dear, I think he remembers only too well. He was desperately
+attached to your mother.”
+
+Noel clenched her hands.
+
+“Was he? Well, so am I to Cyril, and he to me. We wouldn't be
+unreasonable if it wasn't—wasn't necessary. Talk, to Cyril,
+Auntie; then you'll understand. There he is; only, don't keep him
+long, because I want him. Oh! Auntie; I want him so badly!”
+
+She turned; and slipped back into the house; and Thirza, conscious of
+having been decoyed to this young man, who stood there with his arms
+folded, like Napoleon before a battle, smiled and said:
+
+“Well, Cyril, so you've betrayed me!”
+
+Even in speaking she was conscious of the really momentous change
+in this sunburnt, blue-eyed, lazily impudent youth since the day he
+arrived, three weeks ago, in their little wagonette. He took her arm,
+just as Noel had, and made her sit down beside him on the rustic bench,
+where he had evidently been told to wait.
+
+“You see, Mrs. Pierson,” he said, “it's not as if Noel were an
+ordinary girl in an ordinary time, is it? Noel is the sort of girl one
+would knock one's brains out for; and to send me out there knowing
+that I could have been married to her and wasn't, will take all the
+heart out of me. Of course I mean to come back, but chaps do get knocked
+over, and I think it's cruel that we can't take what we can while we
+can. Besides, I've got money; and that would be hers anyway. So, do be
+a darling, won't you?” He put his arm round her waist, just as if
+he had been her son, and her heart, which wanted her own boys so badly,
+felt warmed within her.
+
+“You see, I don't know Mr. Pierson, but he seems awfully gentle
+and jolly, and if he could see into me he wouldn't mind, I know. We
+don't mind risking our lives and all that, but we do think we ought to
+have the run of them while we're alive. I'll give him my dying oath
+or anything, that I could never change towards Noel, and she'll do the
+same. Oh! Mrs. Pierson, do be a jolly brick, and put in a word for me,
+quick! We've got so few days!”
+
+“But, my dear boy,” said Thirza feebly, “do you think it's fair
+to such a child as Noel?”
+
+“Yes, I do. You don't understand; she's simply had to grow up.
+She is grown-up—all in this week; she's quite as old as I am,
+really—and I'm twenty-two. And you know it's going to be—it's
+got to be—a young world, from now on; people will begin doing things
+much earlier. What's the use of pretending it's like what it was,
+and being cautious, and all that? If I'm going to be killed, I think
+we've got a right to be married first; and if I'm not, then what
+does it matter?”
+
+“You've known each other twenty-one days, Cyril.”
+
+“No; twenty-one years! Every day's a year when—Oh! Mrs. Pierson,
+this isn't like you, is it? You never go to meet trouble, do you?”
+
+At that shrewd remark, Thirza put her hand on the hand which still
+clasped her waist, and pressed it closer.
+
+“Well, my dear,” she said softly, “we must see what can be
+done.”
+
+Cyril Morland kissed her cheek. “I will bless you for ever,” he
+said. “I haven't got any people, you know, except my two sisters.”
+
+And something like tears started up on Thirza's eyelashes. They seemed
+to her like the babes in the wood—those two!
+
+
+
+
+
+IV 1
+
+In the dining-room of her father's house in that old London Square
+between East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor garb of a nurse,
+was writing a telegram: “Reverend Edward Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern,
+Monmouthshire. George terribly ill. Please come if you can. Gratian.”
+Giving it to a maid, she took off her long coat and sat down for a
+moment. She had been travelling all night, after a full day's work,
+and had only just arrived, to find her husband between life and death.
+She was very different from Noel; not quite so tall, but of a stronger
+build; with dark chestnut-coloured hair, clear hazel eyes, and a broad
+brow. The expression of her face was earnest, with a sort of constant
+spiritual enquiry; and a singularly truthful look: She was just twenty;
+and of the year that she had been married, had only spent six weeks
+with her husband; they had not even a house of their own as yet. After
+resting five minutes, she passed her hand vigorously over her face,
+threw back her head, and walked up stairs to the room where he lay. He
+was not conscious, and there was nothing to be done but sit and watch
+him.
+
+'If he dies,' she thought, 'I shall hate God for His cruelty. I
+have had six weeks with George; some people have sixty years.'
+She fixed her eyes on his face, short and broad, with bumps of
+“observation” on the brows. He had been sunburnt. The dark lashes of
+his closed eyes lay on deathly yellow cheeks; his thick hair grew rather
+low on his broad forehead. The lips were just open and showed strong
+white teeth. He had a little clipped moustache, and hair had grown on
+his clean-cut jaw. His pyjama jacket had fallen open. Gratian drew it
+close. It was curiously still, for a London day, though the window
+was wide open. Anything to break this heavy stupor, which was not
+only George's, but her own, and the very world's! The cruelty of
+it—when she might be going to lose him for ever, in a few hours or
+days! She thought of their last parting. It had not been very loving,
+had come too soon after one of those arguments they were inclined to
+have, in which they could not as yet disagree with suavity. George had
+said there was no future life for the individual; she had maintained
+there was. They had grown hot and impatient. Even in the cab on the way
+to his train they had pursued the wretched discussion, and the last kiss
+had been from lips on lips yet warm from disagreement.
+
+Ever since, as if in compunction, she had been wavering towards his
+point of view; and now, when he was perhaps to solve the problem—find
+out for certain—she had come to feel that if he died, she would never
+see him after. It was cruel that such a blight should have come on her
+belief at this, of all moments.
+
+She laid her hand on his. It was warm, felt strong, although so
+motionless and helpless. George was so vigorous, so alive, and
+strong-willed; it seemed impossible that life might be going to play him
+false. She recalled the unflinching look of his steel-bright eyes, his
+deep, queerly vibrating voice, which had no trace of self-consciousness
+or pretence. She slipped her hand on to his heart, and began very
+slowly, gently rubbing it. He, as doctor, and she, as nurse, had both
+seen so much of death these last two years! Yet it seemed suddenly as if
+she had never seen death, and that the young faces she had seen, empty
+and white, in the hospital wards, had just been a show. Death would
+appear to her for the first time, if this face which she loved were to
+be drained for ever of light and colour and movement and meaning.
+
+A humblebee from the Square Garden boomed in and buzzed idly round the
+room. She caught her breath in a little sob....
+
+2
+
+Pierson received that telegram at midday, returning from a lonely walk
+after his talk with Thirza. Coming from Gratian so self-reliant—it
+meant the worst. He prepared at once to catch the next train. Noel was
+out, no one knew where: so with a sick feeling he wrote:
+
+“DEAREST CHILD,
+
+“I am going up to Gratian; poor George is desperately ill. If it goes
+badly you should be with your sister. I will wire to-morrow morning
+early. I leave you in your aunt's hands, my dear. Be reasonable and
+patient. God bless you.
+
+“Your devoted
+
+“DADDY.”
+
+He was alone in his third-class compartment, and, leaning forward,
+watched the ruined Abbey across the river till it was out of sight.
+Those old monks had lived in an age surely not so sad as this. They must
+have had peaceful lives, remote down here, in days when the Church was
+great and lovely, and men laid down their lives for their belief in her,
+and built everlasting fanes to the glory of God! What a change to this
+age of rush and hurry, of science, trade, material profit, and this
+terrible war! He tried to read his paper, but it was full of horrors
+and hate. 'When will it end?' he thought. And the train with its
+rhythmic jolting seemed grinding out the answer: “Never—never!”
+
+At Chepstow a soldier got in, followed by a woman with a very flushed
+face and curious, swimmy eyes; her hair was in disorder, and her lip
+bleeding, as if she had bitten it through. The soldier, too, looked
+strained and desperate. They sat down, far apart, on the seat opposite.
+Pierson, feeling that he was in their way, tried to hide himself behind
+his paper; when he looked again, the soldier had taken off his tunic and
+cap and was leaning out of the window. The woman, on the seat's edge,
+sniffing and wiping her face, met his glance with resentful eyes, then,
+getting up, she pulled the man's sleeve.
+
+“Sit dahn; don't 'ang out o' there.”
+
+The soldier flung himself back on the seat and looked at Pierson.
+
+“The wife an' me's 'ad a bit of a row,” he said companionably.
+“Gits on me nerves; I'm not used to it. She was in a raid, and 'er
+nerves are all gone funny; ain't they, old girl? Makes me feel me
+'ead. I've been wounded there, you know; can't stand much now. I
+might do somethin' if she was to go on like this for long.”
+
+Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resentfully.
+The soldier held out a packet of cigarettes. “Take one,” he said.
+Pierson took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted him to speak,
+murmured: “We all have these troubles with those we're fond of; the
+fonder we are of people, the more we feel them, don't we? I had one
+with my daughter last night.”
+
+“Ah!” said the soldier; “that's right. The wife and me'll make
+it up. 'Ere, come orf it, old girl.”
+
+From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds of
+reconciliation—reproaches because someone had been offered a drink,
+kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse. When they got out at
+Bristol the soldier shook his hand warmly, but the woman still gave him
+her resentful stare, and he thought dreamily: 'The war! How it affects
+everyone!' His carriage was invaded by a swarm of soldiers, and the
+rest of the journey was passed in making himself small. When at last he
+reached home, Gratian met him in the hall.
+
+“Just the same. The doctor says we shall know in a few hours now. How
+sweet of you to come! You must be tired, in this heat. It was dreadful
+to spoil your holiday.”
+
+“My dear! As if—May I go up and see him?”
+
+George Laird was still lying in that stupor. And Pierson stood
+gazing down at him compassionately. Like most parsons, he had a wide
+acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellowship
+with death. Death! The commonest thing in the world, now—commoner than
+life! This young doctor must have seen many die in these last two years,
+saved many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift a finger to
+save himself. Pierson looked at his daughter; what a strong, promising
+young couple they were! And putting his arm round her, he led her away
+to the sofa, whence they could see the sick man.
+
+“If he dies, Dad—” she whispered.
+
+“He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as ever our
+soldiers do.”
+
+“I know; but that's no comfort. I've been watching here all day;
+I've been thinking; men will be just as brutal afterwards—more
+brutal. The world will go on the same.”
+
+“We must hope not. Shall we pray, Gracie?”
+
+Gratian shook her head.
+
+“If I could believe that the world—if I could believe anything!
+I've lost the power, Dad; I don't even believe in a future life. If
+George dies, we shall never meet again.”
+
+Pierson stared at her without a word.
+
+Gratian went on: “The last time we talked, I was angry with George
+because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want belief, I feel
+that he was right.”
+
+Pierson said tremulously:
+
+“No, no, my dear; it's only that you're overwrought. God in His
+mercy will give you back belief.”
+
+“There is no God, Dad”
+
+“My darling child, what are you saying?”
+
+“No God who can help us; I feel it. If there were any God who could
+take part in our lives, alter anything without our will, knew or cared
+what we did—He wouldn't let the world go on as it does.”
+
+“But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable. We dare not say He should
+not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He is working.”
+
+“Then He's no good to us. It's the same as if He didn't exist.
+Why should I pray for George's life to One whose ends are just His
+own? I know George oughtn't to die. If there's a God who can help,
+it will be a wicked shame if George dies; if there's a God who can
+help, it's a wicked shame when babies die, and all these millions of
+poor boys. I would rather think there's no God than a helpless or a
+wicked God—”
+
+Her father had suddenly thrown up his hands to his ears. She moved
+closer, and put her arm round him.
+
+“Dad dear, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.”
+
+Pierson pressed her face down to his shoulder; and said in a dull voice:
+
+“What do you think would have happened to me, Gracie, if I had lost
+belief when your mother died? I have never lost belief. Pray God I never
+shall!”
+
+Gratian murmured:
+
+“George would not wish me to pretend I believe—he would want me to
+be honest. If I'm not honest, I shan't deserve that he should live.
+I don't believe, and I can't pray.”
+
+“My darling, you're overtired.”
+
+“No, Dad.” She raised her head from his shoulder and, clasping her
+hands round her knees, looked straight before her. “We can only help
+ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel.”
+
+Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could say would
+touch her just then. The sick man's face was hardly visible now in the
+twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed. She stood looking down at
+him a long time.
+
+“Go and rest, Dad; the doctor's coming again at eleven. I'll call
+you if I want anything. I shall lie down a little, beside him.”
+
+Pierson kissed her, and went out. To lie there beside him would be the
+greatest comfort she could get. He went to the bare narrow little room
+he had occupied ever since his wife died; and, taking off his boots,
+walked up and down, with a feeling of almost crushing loneliness. Both
+his daughters in such trouble, and he of no use to them! It was as
+if Life were pushing him utterly aside! He felt confused, helpless,
+bewildered. Surely if Gratian loved George, she had not left God's
+side, whatever she might say. Then, conscious of the profound heresy of
+this thought, he stood still at the open window.
+
+Earthly love—heavenly love; was there any analogy between them?
+
+From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves answered;
+and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly tale of murder. 3
+
+George Laird passed the crisis of his illness that night, and in the
+morning was pronounced out of danger. He had a splendid constitution,
+and—Scotsman on his father's side—a fighting character. He came
+back to life very weak, but avid of recovery; and his first words were:
+“I've been hanging over the edge, Gracie!”
+
+A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch, the
+merest fraction of an inch more, and over he would have gone. Deuced rum
+sensation! But not so horrible as it would have been in real life. With
+the slip of that last inch he felt he would have passed at once into
+oblivion, without the long horror of a fall. So this was what it was for
+all the poor fellows he had seen slip in the past two years! Mercifully,
+at the end, one was not alive enough to be conscious of what one was
+leaving, not alive enough even to care. If he had been able to take in
+the presence of his young wife, able to realise that he was looking at
+her face, touching her for the last time—it would have been hell;
+if he had been up to realising sunlight, moonlight, the sound of the
+world's life outside, the softness of the bed he lay on—it would
+have meant the most poignant anguish of defraudment. Life was a rare
+good thing, and to be squashed out of it with your powers at full, a
+wretched mistake in Nature's arrangements, a wretched villainy on
+the part of Man—for his own death, like all those other millions of
+premature deaths, would have been due to the idiocy and brutality of
+men! He could smile now, with Gratian looking down at him, but the
+experience had heaped fuel on a fire which had always smouldered in his
+doctor's soul against that half emancipated breed of apes, the human
+race. Well, now he would get a few days off from his death-carnival!
+And he lay, feasting his returning senses on his wife. She made a pretty
+nurse, and his practised eye judged her a good one—firm and quiet.
+
+George Laird was thirty. At the opening of the war he was in an East-End
+practice, and had volunteered at once for service with the Army. For the
+first nine months he had been right up in the thick of it. A poisoned
+arm; rather than the authorities, had sent him home. During that leave
+he married Gratian. He had known the Piersons some time; and, made
+conscious of the instability of life, had resolved to marry her at the
+first chance he got. For his father-in-law he had respect and liking,
+ever mixed with what was not quite contempt and not quite pity. The
+blend of authority with humility, cleric with dreamer, monk with artist,
+mystic with man of action, in Pierson, excited in him an interested, but
+often irritated, wonder. He saw things so differently himself, and had
+little of the humorous curiosity which enjoys what is strange simply
+because it is strange. They could never talk together without soon
+reaching a point when he wanted to say: “If we're not to trust our
+reason and our senses for what they're worth, sir—will you kindly
+tell me what we are to trust? How can we exert them to the utmost in
+some matters, and in others suddenly turn our backs on them?” Once,
+in one of their discussions, which often bordered on acrimony, he had
+expounded himself at length.
+
+“I grant,” he had said, “that there's a great ultimate Mystery,
+that we shall never know anything for certain about the origin of life
+and the principle of the Universe; but why should we suddenly shut up
+our enquiring apparatus and deny all the evidence of our reason—say,
+about the story of Christ, or the question of a future life, or our
+moral code? If you want me to enter a temple of little mysteries,
+leaving my reason and senses behind—as a Mohammedan leaves his
+shoes—it won't do to say to me simply: 'There it is! Enter!' You
+must show me the door; and you can't! And I'll tell you why, sir.
+Because in your brain there's a little twist which is not in mine,
+or the lack of a little twist which is in mine. Nothing more than that
+divides us into the two main species of mankind, one of whom worships,
+and one of whom doesn't. Oh, yes! I know; you won't admit that,
+because it makes your religions natural instead of what you call
+supernatural. But I assure you there's nothing more to it. Your eyes
+look up or they look down—they never look straight before them. Well,
+mine do just the opposite.”
+
+That day Pierson had been feeling very tired, and though to meet
+this attack was vital, he had been unable to meet it. His brain had
+stammered. He had turned a little away, leaning his cheek on his hand,
+as if to cover that momentary break in his defences. Some days later he
+had said:
+
+“I am able now to answer your questions, George. I think I can make
+you understand.”
+
+Laird had answered: “All right, sir; go ahead.”
+
+“You begin by assuming that the human reason is the final test of all
+things. What right have you to assume that? Suppose you were an ant. You
+would take your ant's reason as the final test, wouldn't you? Would
+that be the truth?” And a smile had fixed itself on his lips above his
+little grave beard.
+
+George Laird also had smiled.
+
+“That seems a good point, sir,” he said, “until you recognise that
+I don't take, the human reason as final test in any absolute sense.
+I only say it's the highest test we can apply; and that, behind that
+test all is quite dark and unknowable.”
+
+“Revelation, then, means nothing to you?”
+
+“Nothing, sir.”
+
+“I don't think we can usefully go on, George.”
+
+“I don't think we can, sir. In talking with you, I always feel like
+fighting a man with one hand tied behind his back.”
+
+“And I, perhaps, feel that I am arguing with one who was blind from
+birth.”
+
+For all that, they had often argued since; but never without those
+peculiar smiles coming on their faces. Still, they respected each other,
+and Pierson had not opposed his daughter's marriage to this heretic,
+whom he knew to be an honest and trustworthy man. It had taken place
+before Laird's arm was well, and the two had snatched a month's
+honeymoon before he went back to France, and she to her hospital in
+Manchester. Since then, just one February fortnight by the sea had been
+all their time together....
+
+In the afternoon he had asked for beef tea, and, having drunk a cup,
+said:
+
+“I've got something to tell your father.”
+
+But warned by the pallor of his smiling lips, Gratian answered:
+
+“Tell me first, George.”
+
+“Our last talk, Gracie; well—there's nothing—on the other side.
+I looked over; it's as black as your hat.”
+
+Gratian shivered.
+
+“I know. While you were lying here last night, I told father.”
+
+He squeezed her hand, and said: “I also want to tell him.”
+
+“Dad will say the motive for life is gone.”
+
+“I say it leaps out all the more, Gracie. What a mess we make of
+it—we angel-apes! When shall we be men, I wonder? You and I, Gracie,
+will fight for a decent life for everybody. No hands-upping about that!
+Bend down! It's good to touch you again; everything's good. I'm
+going to have a sleep....”
+
+After the relief of the doctor's report in the early morning Pierson
+had gone through a hard struggle. What should he wire to Noel? He longed
+to get her back home, away from temptation to the burning indiscretion
+of this marriage. But ought he to suppress reference to George's
+progress? Would that be honest? At last he sent this telegram: “George
+out of danger but very weak. Come up.” By the afternoon post, however,
+he received a letter from Thirza:
+
+“I have had two long talks with Noel and Cyril. It is impossible to
+budge them. And I really think, dear Edward, that it will be a mistake
+to oppose it rigidly. He may not go out as soon as we think. How would
+it be to consent to their having banns published?—that would mean
+another three weeks anyway, and in absence from each other they might be
+influenced to put it off. I'm afraid this is the only chance, for if
+you simply forbid it, I feel they will run off and get married somewhere
+at a registrar's.”
+
+Pierson took this letter out with him into the Square Garden, for
+painful cogitation. No man can hold a position of spiritual authority
+for long years without developing the habit of judgment. He judged
+Noel's conduct to be headlong and undisciplined, and the vein of
+stubbornness in his character fortified the father and the priest within
+him. Thirza disappointed him; she did not seem to see the irretrievable
+gravity of this hasty marriage. She seemed to look on it as something
+much lighter than it was, to consider that it might be left to Chance,
+and that if Chance turned out unfavourable, there would still be a way
+out. To him there would be no way out. He looked up at the sky, as if
+for inspiration. It was such a beautiful day, and so bitter to hurt his
+child, even for her good! What would her mother have advised? Surely
+Agnes had felt at least as deeply as himself the utter solemnity of
+marriage! And, sitting there in the sunlight, he painfully hardened
+his heart. He must do what he thought right, no matter what the
+consequences. So he went in and wrote that he could not agree, and
+wished Noel to come back home at once.
+
+
+
+
+
+V 1
+
+But on the same afternoon, just about that hour, Noel was sitting on the
+river-bank with her arms folded tight across her chest, and by her
+side Cyril Morland, with despair in his face, was twisting a telegram
+“Rejoin tonight. Regiment leaves to-morrow.”
+
+What consolation that a million such telegrams had been read and
+sorrowed over these last two years! What comfort that the sun was daily
+blotted dim for hundreds of bright eyes; the joy of life poured out and
+sopped up by the sands of desolation!
+
+“How long have we got, Cyril?”
+
+“I've engaged a car from the Inn, so I needn't leave till
+midnight. I've packed already, to have more time.”
+
+“Let's have it to ourselves, then. Let's go off somewhere. I've
+got some chocolate.”
+
+Morland answered miserably:
+
+“I can send the car up here for my things, and have it pick me up at
+the Inn, if you'll say goodbye to them for me, afterwards. We'll
+walk down the line, then we shan't meet anyone.”
+
+And in the bright sunlight they walked hand in hand on each side of a
+shining rail. About six they reached the Abbey.
+
+“Let's get a boat,” said Noel. “We can come back here when
+it's moonlight. I know a way of getting in, after the gate's
+shut.”
+
+They hired a boat, rowed over to the far bank, and sat on the stern
+seat, side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep
+green by the high woods. If they talked, it was but a word of love
+now and then, or to draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a
+dragon-fly. What use making plans—for lovers the chief theme? Longing
+paralysed their brains. They could do nothing but press close to each
+other, their hands enlaced, their lips meeting now and then. On Noel's
+face was a strange fixed stillness, as if she were waiting—expecting!
+They ate their chocolates. The sun set, dew began to fall; the river
+changed, and grew whiter; the sky paled to the colour of an amethyst;
+shadows lengthened, dissolved slowly. It was past nine already; a
+water-rat came out, a white owl flew over the river, towards the Abbey.
+The moon had come up, but shed no light as yet. They saw no beauty in
+all this—too young, too passionate, too unhappy.
+
+Noel said: “When she's over those trees, Cyril, let's go. It'll
+be half dark.”
+
+They waited, watching the moon, which crept with infinite slowness up
+and up, brightening ever so little every minute.
+
+“Now!” said Noel. And Morland rowed across.
+
+They left the boat, and she led the way past an empty cottage, to a shed
+with a roof sloping up to the Abbey's low outer wall.
+
+“We can get over here,” she whispered.
+
+They clambered up, and over, to a piece of grassy courtyard, and passed
+on to an inner court, under the black shadow of the high walls.
+
+“What's the time?” said Noel.
+
+“Half-past ten.”
+
+“Already! Let's sit here in the dark, and watch for the moon.”
+
+They sat down close together. Noel's face still had on it that strange
+look of waiting; and Morland sat obedient, with his hand on her heart,
+and his own heart beating almost to suffocation. They sat, still as
+mice, and the moon crept up. It laid a first vague greyness on the high
+wall, which spread slowly down, and brightened till the lichen and the
+grasses up there were visible; then crept on, silvering the dark above
+their heads. Noel pulled his sleeve, and whispered: “See!” There
+came the white owl, soft as a snowflake, drifting across in that
+unearthly light, as if flying to the moon. And just then the top of the
+moon itself looked over the wall, a shaving of silvery gold. It grew,
+became a bright spread fan, then balanced there, full and round, the
+colour of pale honey.
+
+“Ours!” Noel whispered.
+
+2
+
+From the side of the road Noel listened till the sound of the car was
+lost in the folds of the valley. She did not cry, but passed her hands
+over her face, and began to walk home, keeping to the shadow of the
+trees. How many years had been added to her age in those six hours since
+the telegram came! Several times in that mile and a half she stepped
+into a patch of brighter moonlight, to take out and kiss a little
+photograph, then slip it back next her heart, heedless that so warm a
+place must destroy any effigy. She felt not the faintest compunction
+for the recklessness of her love—it was her only comfort against the
+crushing loneliness of the night. It kept her up, made her walk on with
+a sort of pride, as if she had got the best of Fate. He was hers for
+ever now, in spite of anything that could be done. She did not even
+think what she would say when she got in. She came to the avenue, and
+passed up it still in a sort of dream. Her uncle was standing before the
+porch; she could hear his mutterings. She moved out of the shadow of the
+trees, went straight up to him, and, looking in his perturbed face, said
+calmly:
+
+“Cyril asked me to say good-bye to you all, Uncle. Good night!”
+
+“But, I say, Nollie look here you!”
+
+She had passed on. She went up to her room. There, by the door, her aunt
+was standing, and would have kissed her. She drew back:
+
+“No, Auntie. Not to-night!” And, slipping by, she locked her door.
+
+Bob and Thirza Pierson, meeting in their own room, looked at each other
+askance. Relief at their niece's safe return was confused by other
+emotions. Bob Pierson expressed his first:
+
+“Phew! I was beginning to think we should w have to drag the river.
+What girls are coming to!”
+
+“It's the war, Bob.”
+
+“I didn't like her face, old girl. I don't know what it was, but I
+didn't like her face.”
+
+Neither did Thirza, but she would not admit it, and encourage Bob to
+take it to heart. He took things so hardly, and with such a noise!
+
+She only said: “Poor young things! I suppose it will be a relief to
+Edward!”
+
+“I love Nollie!” said Bob Pierson suddenly. “She's an
+affectionate creature. D-nit, I'm sorry about this. It's not so bad
+for young Morland; he's got the excitement—though I shouldn't like
+to be leaving Nollie, if I were young again. Thank God, neither of our
+boys is engaged. By George! when I think of them out there, and
+myself here, I feel as if the top of my head would come off. And those
+politician chaps spouting away in every country—how they can have the
+cheek!”
+
+Thirza looked at him anxiously.
+
+“And no dinner!” he said suddenly. “What d'you think they've
+been doing with themselves?”
+
+“Holding each other's hands, poor dears! D'you know what time it
+is, Bob? Nearly one o'clock.”
+
+“Well, all I can say is, I've had a wretched evening. Get to bed,
+old girl. You'll be fit for nothing.”
+
+He was soon asleep, but Thirza lay awake, not exactly worrying, for that
+was not her nature, but seeing Noel's face, pale, languid, passionate,
+possessed by memory.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI 1
+
+Noel reached her father's house next day late in the afternoon. There
+was a letter in the hall for her. She tore it open, and read:
+
+“MY DARLING LOVE,
+
+“I got back all right, and am posting this at once to tell you we
+shall pass through London, and go from Charing Cross, I expect about
+nine o'clock to-night. I shall look out for you, there, in case you
+are up in time. Every minute I think of you, and of last night. Oh!
+Noel!
+
+“Your devoted lover,
+
+“C.”
+
+She looked at the wrist-watch which, like every other little patriot,
+she possessed. Past seven! If she waited, Gratian or her father would
+seize on her.
+
+“Take my things up, Dinah. I've got a headache from travelling;
+I'm going to walk it off. Perhaps I shan't be in till past nine or
+so. Give my love to them all.”
+
+“Oh, Miss Noel, you can't,—”
+
+But Noel was gone. She walked towards Charing Cross; and, to kill time,
+went into a restaurant and had that simple repast, coffee and a bun,
+which those in love would always take if Society did not forcibly feed
+them on other things. Food was ridiculous to her. She sat there in the
+midst of a perfect hive of creatures eating hideously. The place was
+shaped like a modern prison, having tiers of gallery round an open
+space, and in the air was the smell of viands and the clatter of plates
+and the music of a band. Men in khaki everywhere, and Noel glanced from
+form to form to see if by chance one might be that which represented,
+for her, Life and the British Army. At half-past eight she went out
+and made her way: through the crowd, still mechanically searching
+“khaki” for what she wanted; and it was perhaps fortunate that
+there was about her face and walk something which touched people. At the
+station she went up to an old porter, and, putting a shilling into
+his astonished hand, asked him to find out for her whence Morland's
+regiment would start. He came back presently, and said:
+
+“Come with me, miss.”
+
+Noel went. He was rather lame, had grey whiskers, and a ghostly thin
+resemblance to her uncle Bob, which perhaps had been the reason why she
+had chosen him. 64
+
+“Brother goin' out, miss?”
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+“Ah! It's a crool war. I shan't be sorry when it's over. Goin'
+out and comin' in, we see some sad sights 'ere. Wonderful spirit
+they've got, too. I never look at the clock now but what I think:
+'There you go, slow-coach! I'd like to set you on to the day the
+boys come back!' When I puts a bag in: 'Another for 'ell' I
+thinks. And so it is, miss, from all I can 'ear. I've got a son out
+there meself. It's 'ere they'll come along. You stand quiet and
+keep a lookout, and you'll get a few minutes with him when he's done
+with 'is men. I wouldn't move, if I were you; he'll come to you,
+all right—can't miss you, there.' And, looking at her face, he
+thought: 'Astonishin' what a lot o' brothers go. Wot oh! Poor
+little missy! A little lady, too. Wonderful collected she is. It's
+'ard!'.rdquo; And trying to find something consoling to say, he
+mumbled out: “You couldn't be in a better place for seen'im off.
+Good night, miss; anything else I can do for you?”
+
+“No, thank you; you're very kind.”
+
+He looked back once or twice at her blue-clad figure standing very
+still. He had left her against a little oasis of piled-up empty
+milk-cans, far down the platform where a few civilians in similar case
+were scattered. The trainway was empty as yet. In the grey immensity of
+the station and the turmoil of its noise, she felt neither lonely nor
+conscious of others waiting; too absorbed in the one thought of seeing
+him and touching him again. The empty train began backing in, stopped,
+and telescoped with a series of little clattering bangs, backed on
+again, and subsided to rest. Noel turned her eyes towards the station
+arch ways. Already she felt tremulous, as though the regiment were
+sending before it the vibration of its march.
+
+She had not as yet seen a troop-train start, and vague images of brave
+array, of a flag fluttering, and the stir of drums, beset her. Suddenly
+she saw a brown swirling mass down there at the very edge, out of which
+a thin brown trickle emerged towards her; no sound of music, no waved
+flag. She had a longing to rush down to the barrier, but remembering
+the words of the porter, stayed where she was, with her hands tightly
+squeezed together. The trickle became a stream, a flood, the head of
+which began to reach her. With a turbulence of voices, sunburnt men,
+burdened up to the nose, passed, with rifles jutting at all angles; she
+strained her eyes, staring into that stream as one might into a walking
+wood, to isolate a single tree. Her head reeled with the strain of it,
+and the effort to catch his voice among the hubbub of all those cheery,
+common, happy-go-lucky sounds. Some who saw her clucked their tongues,
+some went by silent, others seemed to scan her as though she might be
+what they were looking for. And ever the stream and the hubbub
+melted into the train, and yet came pouring on. And still she waited
+motionless, with an awful fear. How could he ever find her, or she him?
+Then she saw that others of those waiting had found their men. And the
+longing to rush up and down the platform almost overcame her; but still
+she waited. And suddenly she saw him with two other officer boys, close
+to the carriages, coming slowly down towards her. She stood with her
+eyes fixed on his face; they passed, and she nearly cried out. Then he
+turned, broke away from the other two, and came straight to her. He
+had seen her before she had seen him. He was very flushed, had a little
+fixed frown between his blue eyes and a set jaw. They stood looking
+at each other, their hands hard gripped; all the emotion of last night
+welling up within them, so that to speak would have been to break down.
+The milk-cans formed a kind of shelter, and they stood so close together
+that none could see their faces. Noel was the first to master her power
+of speech; her words came out, dainty as ever, through trembling lips:
+
+“Write to me as much as ever you can, Cyril. I'm going to be a nurse
+at once. And the first leave you get, I shall come to you—don't
+forget.”
+
+“Forget! Move a little back, darling; they can't see us here. Kiss
+me!” She moved back, thrust her face forward so that he need not
+stoop, and put her lips up to his. Then, feeling that she might swoon
+and fall over among the cans, she withdrew her mouth, leaving her
+forehead against his lips. He murmured:
+
+“Was it all right when you got in last night?”
+
+“Yes; I said good-bye for you.”
+
+“Oh! Noel—I've been afraid—I oughtn't—I oughtn't—”
+
+“Yes, yes; nothing can take you from me now.”
+
+“You have got pluck. More than!”
+
+Along whistle sounded. Morland grasped her hands convulsively:
+
+“Good-bye, my little wife! Don't fret. Goodbye! I must go. God bless
+you, Noel!”
+
+“I love you.”
+
+They looked at each other, just another moment, then she took her hands
+from his and stood back in the shadow of the milk-cans, rigid, following
+him with her eyes till he was lost in the train.
+
+Every carriage window was full of those brown figures and red-brown
+faces, hands were waving vaguely, voices calling vaguely, here and
+there one cheered; someone leaning far out started to sing: “If auld
+acquaintance—” But Noel stood quite still in the shadow of the
+milk-cans, her lips drawn in, her hands hard clenched in front of her;
+and young Morland at his window gazed back at her.
+
+2
+
+How she came to be sitting in Trafalgar Square she did not know. Tears
+had formed a mist between her and all that seething, summer-evening
+crowd. Her eyes mechanically followed the wandering search-lights, those
+new milky ways, quartering the heavens and leading nowhere. All was
+wonderfully beautiful, the sky a deep dark blue, the moonlight
+whitening the spire of St. Martin's, and everywhere endowing the great
+blacked-out buildings with dream-life. Even the lions had come to life,
+and stared out over this moonlit desert of little human figures too
+small to be worth the stretching out of a paw. She sat there, aching
+dreadfully, as if the longing of every bereaved heart in all the town
+had settled in her. She felt it tonight a thousand times worse; for last
+night she had been drugged on the new sensation of love triumphantly
+fulfilled. Now she felt as if life had placed her in the corner of a
+huge silent room, blown out the flame of joy, and locked the door.
+A little dry sob came from her. The hay-fields and Cyril, with shirt
+unbuttoned at the neck, pitching hay and gazing at her while she dabbled
+her fork in the thin leavings. The bright river, and their boat grounded
+on the shallows, and the swallows flitting over them. And that long
+dance, with the feel of his hand between her shoulder-blades! Memories
+so sweet and sharp that she almost cried out. She saw again their dark
+grassy courtyard in the Abbey, and the white owl flying over them. The
+white owl! Flying there again to-night, with no lovers on the grass
+below! She could only picture Cyril now as a brown atom in that swirling
+brown flood of men, flowing to a huge brown sea. Those cruel minutes on
+the platform, when she had searched and searched the walking wood for
+her, one tree, seemed to have burned themselves into her eyes. Cyril
+was lost, she could not single him out, all blurred among those thousand
+other shapes. And suddenly she thought: 'And I—I'm lost to him;
+he's never seen me at home, never seen me in London; he won't be
+able to imagine me. It's all in the past, only the past—for both of
+us. Is there anybody so unhappy?' And the town's voices-wheels, and
+passing feet, whistles, talk, laughter—seemed to answer callously:
+'Not one.' She looked at her wrist-watch; like his, it had luminous
+hands: 'Half-past ten' was greenishly imprinted there. She got up in
+dismay. They would think she was lost, or run over, or something silly!
+She could not find an empty taxi, and began to walk, uncertain of her
+way at night. At last she stopped a policeman, and said:
+
+“Which is the way towards Bloomsbury, please? I can't find a
+taxi.” The man looked at her, and took time to think it over; then he
+said:
+
+“They're linin' up for the theatres,” and looked at her again.
+Something seemed to move in his mechanism:
+
+“I'm goin' that way, miss. If you like, you can step along with
+me.” Noel stepped along.
+
+“The streets aren't what they ought to be,” the policeman said.
+“What with the darkness, and the war turning the girls heads—you'd
+be surprised the number of them that comes out. It's the soldiers, of
+course.”
+
+Noel felt her cheeks burning.
+
+“I daresay you wouldn't have noticed it,” the policeman went
+on: “but this war's a funny thing. The streets are gayer and more
+crowded at night than I've ever seen them; it's a fair picnic all
+the time. What we're goin' to settle down to when peace comes, I
+don't know. I suppose you find it quiet enough up your way, miss?”
+
+“Yes,” said Noel; “quite quiet.”
+
+“No soldiers up in Bloomsbury. You got anyone in the Army, miss?”
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+“Ah! It's anxious times for ladies. What with the Zeps, and their
+brothers and all in France, it's 'arassin'. I've lost a brother
+meself, and I've got a boy out there in the Garden of Eden; his mother
+carries on dreadful about him. What we shall think of it when it's all
+over, I can't tell. These Huns are a wicked tough lot!”
+
+Noel looked at him; a tall man, regular and orderly, with one of those
+perfectly decent faces so often seen in the London police.
+
+“I'm sorry you've lost someone,” she said. “I haven't lost
+anyone very near, yet.”
+
+“Well, let's 'ope you won't, miss. These times make you feel for
+others, an' that's something. I've noticed a great change in folks
+you'd never think would feel for anyone. And yet I've seen some
+wicked things too; we do, in the police. Some of these English wives
+of aliens, and 'armless little German bakers, an' Austrians, and
+what-not: they get a crool time. It's their misfortune, not their
+fault, that's what I think; and the way they get served—well, it
+makes you ashamed o' bein' English sometimes—it does straight:
+And the women are the worst. I said to my wife only last night, I
+said: 'They call themselves Christians,' I said, 'but for all the
+charity that's in 'em they might as well be Huns.' She couldn't
+see it-not she!' Well, why do they drop bombs?' she says.
+'What!' I said, 'those English wives and bakers drop bombs?
+Don't be silly,' I said. 'They're as innocent as we.' It's
+the innocent that gets punished for the guilty. 'But they're all
+spies,' she says. 'Oh!' I said, 'old lady! Now really! At your
+time of life!' But there it is; you can't get a woman to see reason.
+It's readin' the papers. I often think they must be written by
+women—beggin' your pardon, miss—but reely, the 'ysterics and the
+'atred—they're a fair knockout. D'you find much hatred in your
+household, miss?”
+
+Noel shook her head. “No; my father's a clergyman, you see.”
+
+“Ah!” said the policeman. And in the glance he bestowed on her could
+be seen an added respect.
+
+“Of course,” he went on, “you're bound to have a sense of
+justice against these Huns; some of their ways of goin' on have been
+above the limit. But what I always think is—of course I don't say
+these things—no use to make yourself unpopular—but to meself I often
+think: Take 'em man for man, and you'd find 'em much the same
+as we are, I daresay. It's the vicious way they're brought up, of
+actin' in the mass, that's made 'em such a crool lot. I see a good
+bit of crowds in my profession, and I've a very low opinion of
+them. Crowds are the most blunderin' blighted things that ever was.
+They're like an angry woman with a bandage over her eyes, an' you
+can't have anything more dangerous than that. These Germans, it seems,
+are always in a crowd. They get a state o' mind read out to them by
+Bill Kaser and all that bloody-minded lot, an' they never stop to
+think for themselves.”
+
+“I suppose they'd be shot if they did,” said Noel.
+
+“Well, there is that,” said the policeman reflectively. “They've
+brought discipline to an 'igh pitch, no doubt. An' if you ask
+me,”—he lowered his voice till it was almost lost in his chin-strap,
+“we'll be runnin' 'em a good second 'ere, before long. The
+things we 'ave to protect now are gettin' beyond a joke. There's
+the City against lights, there's the streets against darkness,
+there's the aliens, there's the aliens' shops, there's the
+Belgians, there's the British wives, there's the soldiers against
+the women, there's the women against the soldiers, there's the Peace
+Party, there's 'orses against croolty, there's a Cabinet Minister
+every now an' then; and now we've got these Conchies. And, mind you,
+they haven't raised our pay; no war wages in the police. So far as I
+can see, there's only one good result of the war—the burglaries are
+off. But there again, you wait a bit and see if we don't have a prize
+crop of 'm, or my name's not 'Arris.”
+
+“You must have an awfully exciting life!” said Noel.
+
+The policeman looked down at her sideways, without lowering his face, as
+only a policeman can, and said indulgently:
+
+“We're used to it, you see; there's no excitement in what
+you're used to. They find that in the trenches, I'm told. Take our
+seamen—there's lots of 'em been blown up over and over again, and
+there they go and sign on again next day. That's where the Germans
+make their mistake! England in war-time! I think a lot, you know, on my
+go; you can't 'elp it—the mind will work—an' the more I think,
+the more I see the fightin' spirit in the people. We don't make a
+fuss about it like Bill Kaser. But you watch a little shopman, one o'
+those fellows who's had his house bombed; you watch the way he looks
+at the mess—sort of disgusted. You watch his face, and you see he's
+got his teeth into it. You watch one of our Tommies on 'is crutches,
+with the sweat pourin' off his forehead an' 'is eyes all strainy,
+stumpin' along—that gives you an idea! I pity these Peace fellows,
+reely I pity them; they don't know what they're up against. I expect
+there's times when you wish you was a man, don't you, miss? I'm
+sure there's times when I feel I'd like to go in the trenches.
+That's the worst o' my job; you can't be a human bein'—not in
+the full sense of the word. You mustn't let your passions rise, you
+mustn't drink, you mustn't talk; it's a narrow walk o' life.
+Well, here you are, miss; your Square's the next turnin' to the
+right. Good night and thank you for your conversation.”
+
+Noel held out her hand. “Good night!” she said.
+
+The policeman took her hand with a queer, flattered embarrassment.
+
+“Good night, miss,” he said again. “I see you've got a trouble;
+and I'm sure I hope it'll turn out for the best.”
+
+Noel gave his huge hand a squeeze; her eyes had filled with tears, and
+she turned quickly up towards the Square, where a dark figure was coming
+towards her, in whom she recognised her father. His face was worn and
+harassed; he walked irresolutely, like a man who has lost something.
+
+“Nollie!” he said. “Thank God!” In his voice was an infinite
+relief. “My child, where have you been?”
+
+“It's all right, Daddy. Cyril has just gone to the front. I've
+been seeing him off from Charing Cross.”
+
+Pierson slipped his arm round her. They entered the house without
+speaking....
+
+3
+
+By the rail of his transport, as far—about two feet—as he could get
+from anyone, Cyril Morland stood watching Calais, a dream city, brighten
+out of the heat and grow solid. He could hear the guns already, the
+voice of his new life-talking in the distance. It came with its strange
+excitement into a being held by soft and marvellous memories, by one
+long vision of Noel and the moonlit grass, under the dark Abbey wall.
+This moment of passage from wonder to wonder was quite too much for a
+boy unused to introspection, and he stood staring stupidly at Calais,
+while the thunder of his new life came rolling in on that passionate
+moonlit dream.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+After the emotions of those last three days Pierson woke with the
+feeling a ship must have when it makes landfall. Such reliefs are
+natural, and as a rule delusive; for events are as much the parents of
+the future as they were the children of the past. To be at home with
+both his girls, and resting—for his holiday would not be over for ten
+days—was like old times. Now George was going on so well Gratian would
+be herself again; now Cyril Morland was gone Noel would lose that sudden
+youthful love fever. Perhaps in two or three days if George continued to
+progress, one might go off with Noel somewhere for one's last week. In
+the meantime the old house, wherein was gathered so much remembrance
+of happiness and pain, was just as restful as anywhere else, and the
+companionship of his girls would be as sweet as on any of their past
+rambling holidays in Wales or Ireland. And that first morning of perfect
+idleness—for no one knew he was back in London—pottering, and
+playing the piano in the homely drawing-room where nothing to speak of
+was changed since his wife's day, was very pleasant. He had not yet
+seen the girls, for Noel did not come down to breakfast, and Gratian was
+with George.
+
+Discovery that there was still a barrier between him and them came but
+slowly in the next two days. He would not acknowledge it, yet it was
+there, in their voices, in their movements—rather an absence of
+something old than the presence of something new. It was as if each had
+said to him: “We love you, but you are not in our secrets—and you
+must not be, for you would try to destroy them.” They showed no fear
+of him, but seemed to be pushing him unconsciously away, lest he should
+restrain or alter what was very dear to them. They were both fond of
+him, but their natures had set foot on definitely diverging paths. The
+closer the affection, the more watchful they were against interference
+by that affection. Noel had a look on her face, half dazed, half
+proud, which touched, yet vexed him. What had he done to forfeit her
+confidence—surely she must see how natural and right his opposition
+had been! He made one great effort to show the real sympathy he felt
+for her. But she only said: “I can't talk of Cyril, Daddy; I simply
+can't!” And he, who easily shrank into his shell, could not but
+acquiesce in her reserve.
+
+With Gratian it was different. He knew that an encounter was before him;
+a struggle between him and her husband—for characteristically he set
+the change in her, the defection of her faith, down to George, not to
+spontaneous thought and feeling in herself. He dreaded and yet looked
+forward to this encounter. It came on the third day, when Laird was up,
+lying on that very sofa where Pierson had sat listening to Gratian's
+confession of disbelief. Except for putting in his head to say good
+morning, he had not yet seen his son-in-law: The young doctor could
+not look fragile, the build of his face, with that law and those heavy
+cheekbones was too much against it, but there was about him enough of
+the look of having come through a hard fight to give Pierson's heart a
+squeeze.
+
+“Well, George,” he said, “you gave us a dreadful fright! I thank
+God's mercy.” With that half-mechanical phrase he had flung an
+unconscious challenge. Laird looked up whimsically.
+
+“So you really think God merciful, sir?”
+
+“Don't let us argue, George; you're not strong enough.”
+
+“Oh! I'm pining for something to bite on.”
+
+Pierson looked at Gratian, and said softly:
+
+“God's mercy is infinite, and you know it is.”
+
+Laird also looked at Gratian, before he answered:
+
+“God's mercy is surely the amount of mercy man has succeeded in
+arriving at. How much that is, this war tells you, sir.”
+
+Pierson flushed. “I don't follow you,” he said painfully. “How
+can you say such things, when you yourself are only just—No; I refuse
+to argue, George; I refuse.”
+
+Laird stretched out his hand to his wife, who came to him, and stood
+clasping it with her own. “Well, I'm going to argue,” he said;
+“I'm simply bursting with it. I challenge you, sir, to show me
+where there's any sign of altruistic pity, except in man. Mother love
+doesn't count—mother and child are too much one.”
+
+The curious smile had come already, on both their faces.
+
+“My dear George, is not man the highest work of God, and mercy the
+highest quality in man?”
+
+“Not a bit. If geological time be taken as twenty-four hours, man's
+existence on earth so far equals just two seconds of it; after a few
+more seconds, when man has been frozen off the earth, geological time
+will stretch for as long again, before the earth bumps into something,
+and becomes nebula once more. God's hands haven't been particularly
+full, sir, have they—two seconds out of twenty-four hours—if man
+is His pet concern? And as to mercy being the highest quality in, man,
+that's only a modern fashion of talking. Man's highest quality is
+the sense of proportion, for that's what keeps him alive; and mercy,
+logically pursued, would kill him off. It's a sort of a luxury or
+by-product.”
+
+“George! You can have no music in your soul! Science is such a little
+thing, if you could only see.”
+
+“Show me a bigger, sir.”
+
+“Faith.”
+
+“In what?”
+
+“In what has been revealed to us.”
+
+“Ah! There it is again! By whom—how?
+
+“By God Himself—through our Lord.”
+
+A faint flush rose in Laird's yellow face, and his eyes brightened.
+
+“Christ,” he said; “if He existed, which some people, as you know,
+doubt, was a very beautiful character; there have been others. But to
+ask us to believe in His supernaturalness or divinity at this time of
+day is to ask us to walk through the world blindfold. And that's what
+you do, don't you?”
+
+Again Pierson looked at his daughter's face. She was standing quite
+still, with her eyes fixed on her husband. Somehow he was aware that all
+these words of the sick man's were for her benefit. Anger, and a sort
+of despair rose within him, and he said painfully:
+
+“I cannot explain. There are things that I can't make clear, because
+you are wilfully blind to all that I believe in. For what do you imagine
+we are fighting this great war, if it is not to reestablish the belief
+in love as the guiding principle of life?”
+
+Laird shook his head. “We are fighting to redress a balance, which was
+in danger of being lost.”
+
+“The balance of power?”
+
+“Heavens!—no! The balance of philosophy.”
+
+Pierson smiled. “That sounds very clever, George; but again, I don't
+follow you.”
+
+“The balance between the sayings: 'Might is Right,' and 'Right
+is Might.' They're both half-truth, but the first was beating the
+other out of the field. All the rest of it is cant, you know. And by the
+way, sir, your Church is solid for punishment of the evildoer. Where's
+mercy there? Either its God is not merciful, or else it doesn't
+believe in its God.”
+
+“Just punishment does not preclude mercy, George.”
+
+“It does in Nature.”
+
+“Ah! Nature, George—always Nature. God transcends Nature.”
+
+“Then why does He give it a free rein? A man too fond of drink, or
+women—how much mercy does he get from Nature? His overindulgence
+brings its exact equivalent of penalty; let him pray to God as much as
+he likes—unless he alters his ways he gets no mercy. If he does alter
+his ways, he gets no mercy either; he just gets Nature's due reward.
+We English who have neglected brain and education—how much mercy
+are we getting in this war? Mercy's a man-made ornament, disease,
+or luxury—call it what you will. Except that, I've nothing to say
+against it. On the contrary, I am all for it.”
+
+Once more Pierson looked at his daughter. Something in her face hurt
+him—the silent intensity with which she was hanging on her husband's
+words, the eager search of her eyes. And he turned to the door, saying:
+
+“This is bad for you, George.”
+
+He saw Gratian put her hand on her husband's forehead, and
+thought—jealously: 'How can I save my poor girl from this
+infidelity? Are my twenty years of care to go for nothing, against this
+modern spirit?'
+
+Down in his study, the words went through his mind: “Holy, holy, holy,
+Merciful and Mighty!” And going to the little piano in the corner, he
+opened it, and began playing the hymn. He played it softly on the shabby
+keys of this thirty-year old friend, which had been with him since
+College days; and sang it softly in his worn voice.
+
+A sound made him look up. Gratian had come in. She put her hand on his
+shoulder, and said:
+
+“I know it hurts you, Dad. But we've got to find out for ourselves,
+haven't we? All the time you and George were talking, I felt that you
+didn't see that it's I who've changed. It's not what he
+thinks, but what I've come to think of my own accord. I wish you'd
+understand that I've got a mind of my own, Dad.”
+
+Pierson looked up with amazement.
+
+“Of course you have a mind.”
+
+Gratian shook her head. “No, you thought my mind was yours; and now
+you think it's George's. But it's my own. When you were my age
+weren't you trying hard to find the truth yourself, and differing from
+your father?”
+
+Pierson did not answer. He could not remember. It was like stirring
+a stick amongst a drift of last year's leaves, to awaken but a dry
+rustling, a vague sense of unsubstantiality. Searched? No doubt he had
+searched, but the process had brought him nothing. Knowledge was all
+smoke! Emotional faith alone was truth—reality!
+
+“Ah, Gracie!” he said, “search if you must, but where will you
+find bottom? The well is too deep for us. You will come back to God, my
+child, when you're tired out; the only rest is there.”
+
+“I don't want to rest. Some people search all their lives, and die
+searching. Why shouldn't I.
+
+“You will be most unhappy, my child.”
+
+“If I'm unhappy, Dad, it'll be because the world's unhappy. I
+don't believe it ought to be; I think it only is, because it shuts its
+eyes.”
+
+Pierson got up. “You think I shut my eyes?”
+
+Gratian nodded.
+
+“If I do, it is because there is no other way to happiness.”
+
+“Are you happy; Dad?”
+
+“As happy as my nature will let me be. I miss your mother. If I lose
+you and Noel—”
+
+“Oh, but we won't let you!”
+
+Pierson smiled. “My dear,” he said, “I think I have!”
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII 1
+
+Some wag, with a bit of chalk, had written the word “Peace” on three
+successive doors of a little street opposite Buckingham Palace.
+
+It caught the eye of Jimmy Fort, limping home to his rooms from a very
+late discussion at his Club, and twisted his lean shaven lips into a
+sort of smile. He was one of those rolling-stone Englishmen, whose early
+lives are spent in all parts of the world, and in all kinds of physical
+conflict—a man like a hickory stick, tall, thin, bolt-upright, knotty,
+hard as nails, with a curved fighting back to his head and a straight
+fighting front to his brown face. His was the type which becomes, in
+a generation or so, typically Colonial or American; but no one could
+possibly have taken Jimmy Fort for anything but an Englishman. Though
+he was nearly forty, there was still something of the boy in his face,
+something frank and curly-headed, gallant and full of steam, and his
+small steady grey eyes looked out on life with a sort of combative
+humour. He was still in uniform, though they had given him up as a bad
+job after keeping him nine months trying to mend a wounded leg which
+would never be sound again; and he was now in the War Office in
+connection with horses, about which he knew. He did not like it, having
+lived too long with all sorts and conditions of men who were neither
+English nor official, a combination which he found trying. His life
+indeed, just now, bored him to distraction, and he would ten times
+rather have been back in France. This was why he found the word
+“Peace” so exceptionally tantalising.
+
+Reaching his rooms, he threw off his tunic, to whose stiff regularity he
+still had a rooted aversion; and, pulling out a pipe, filled it and sat
+down at his window.
+
+Moonshine could not cool the hot town, and it seemed sleeping
+badly—the seven million sleepers in their million homes. Sound
+lingered on, never quite ceased; the stale odours clung in the narrow
+street below, though a little wind was creeping about to sweeten the
+air. 'Curse the war!' he thought. 'What wouldn't I give to be
+sleeping out, instead of in this damned city!' They who slept in the
+open, neglecting morality, would certainly have the best of it tonight,
+for no more dew was falling than fell into Jimmy Fort's heart to cool
+the fret of that ceaseless thought: 'The war! The cursed war!' In
+the unending rows of little grey houses, in huge caravanserais, and
+the mansions of the great, in villas, and high slum tenements; in the
+government offices, and factories, and railway stations where they
+worked all night; in the long hospitals where they lay in rows; in the
+camp prisons of the interned; in bar racks, work-houses, palaces—no
+head, sleeping or waking, would be free of that thought: 'The cursed
+war!' A spire caught his eye, rising ghostly over the roofs. Ah!
+churches alone, void of the human soul, would be unconscious! But
+for the rest, even sleep would not free them! Here a mother would be
+whispering the name of her boy; there a merchant would snore and dream
+he was drowning, weighted with gold; and a wife would be turning to
+stretch out her arms to-no one; and a wounded soldier wake out of a
+dream trench with sweat on his brow; and a newsvendor in his garret
+mutter hoarsely. By thousands the bereaved would be tossing, stifling
+their moans; by thousands the ruined would be gazing into the dark
+future; and housewives struggling with sums; and soldiers sleeping
+like logs—for to morrow they died; and children dreaming of them; and
+prostitutes lying in stale wonder at the busyness of their lives; and
+journalists sleeping the sleep of the just. And over them all, in the
+moonlight that thought 'The cursed war!' flapped its black wings,
+like an old crow! “If Christ were real,” he mused, “He'd reach
+that moon down, and go chalking 'Peace' with it on every door of
+every house, all over Europe. But Christ's not real, and Hindenburg
+and Harmsworth are!” As real they were as two great bulls he had once
+seen in South Africa, fighting. He seemed to hear again the stamp and
+snort and crash of those thick skulls, to see the beasts recoiling and
+driving at each other, and the little red eyes of them. And pulling a
+letter out of his pocket, he read it again by the light of the moon:
+
+“15, Camelot Mansions,
+
+“St. John's Wood.
+
+“DEAR MR. FORT, “I came across your Club address to-night, looking
+at some old letters. Did you know that I was in London? I left Steenbok
+when my husband died, five years ago. I've had a simply terrific time
+since. While the German South West campaign was on I was nursing out
+there, but came back about a year ago to lend a hand here. It would be
+awfully nice to meet you again, if by any chance you are in England.
+I'm working in a V. A. D. hospital in these parts, but my evenings are
+usually free. Do you remember that moonlit night at grape harvest? The
+nights here aren't scented quite like that. Listerine! Oh! This war!
+“With all good remembrances,
+
+“LEILA LYNCH.”
+
+A terrific time! If he did not mistake, Leila Lynch had always had a
+terrific time. And he smiled, seeing again the stoep of an old Dutch
+house at High Constantia, and a woman sitting there under the white
+flowers of a sweet-scented creeper—a pretty woman, with eyes which
+could put a spell on you, a woman he would have got entangled with if
+he had not cut and run for it! Ten years ago, and here she was again,
+refreshing him out of the past. He sniffed the fragrance of the little
+letter. How everybody always managed to work into a letter what they
+were doing in the war! If he answered her he would be sure to say:
+“Since I got lamed, I've been at the War Office, working on
+remounts, and a dull job it is!” Leila Lynch! Women didn't get
+younger, and he suspected her of being older than himself. But he
+remembered agreeably her white shoulders and that turn of her neck when
+she looked at you with those big grey eyes of hers. Only a five-day
+acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one did in a
+strange land. The episode had been a green and dangerous spot, like one
+of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set
+foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at least. Well, there
+was none of that danger now, for her husband was dead-poor chap! It
+would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody spent any time whatever
+except in the service of the country, to improve his powers of service
+by a few hours' recreation in her society. 'What humbugs we are!'
+he thought: 'To read the newspapers and the speeches you'd believe
+everybody thought of nothing but how to get killed for the sake of the
+future. Drunk on verbiage! What heads and mouths we shall all have when
+we wake up some fine morning with Peace shining in at the window! Ah! If
+only we could; and enjoy ourselves again!' And he gazed at the moon.
+She was dipping already, reeling away into the dawn. Water carts and
+street sweepers had come out into the glimmer; sparrows twittered in the
+eaves. The city was raising a strange unknown face to the grey light,
+shuttered and deserted as Babylon. Jimmy Fort tapped out his pipe,
+sighed, and got into bed.
+
+2
+
+Coming off duty at that very moment, Leila Lynch decided to have her
+hour's walk before she went home. She was in charge of two wards, and
+as a rule took the day watches; but some slight upset had given her this
+extra spell. She was, therefore, at her worst, or perhaps at her best,
+after eighteen hours in hospital. Her cheeks were pale, and about her
+eyes were little lines, normally in hiding. There was in this face a
+puzzling blend of the soft and hard, for the eyes, the rather full lips,
+and pale cheeks, were naturally soft; but they were hardened by
+the self-containment which grows on women who have to face life for
+themselves, and, conscious of beauty, intend to keep it, in spite of
+age. Her figure was contradictory, also; its soft modelling a little too
+rigidified by stays. In this desert of the dawn she let her long
+blue overcoat flap loose, and swung her hat on a finger, so that
+her light-brown, touched-up hair took the morning breeze with fluffy
+freedom. Though she could not see herself, she appreciated her
+appearance, swaying along like that, past lonely trees and houses. A
+pity there was no one to see her in that round of Regent's Park, which
+took her the best part of an hour, walking in meditation, enjoying the
+colour coming back into the world, as if especially for her.
+
+There was character in Leila Lynch, and she had lived an interesting
+life from a certain point of view. In her girlhood she had fluttered the
+hearts of many besides Cousin Edward Pierson, and at eighteen had made
+a passionate love match with a good-looking young Indian civilian, named
+Fane. They had loved each other to a standstill in twelve months. Then
+had begun five years of petulance, boredom, and growing cynicism, with
+increasing spells of Simla, and voyages home for her health which was
+really harmed by the heat. All had culminated, of course, in another
+passion for a rifleman called Lynch. Divorce had followed, remarriage,
+and then the Boer War, in which he had been badly wounded. She had gone
+out and nursed him back to half his robust health, and, at twenty-eight,
+taken up life with him on an up-country farm in Cape Colony. This middle
+period had lasted ten years, between the lonely farm and an old Dutch
+house at High Constantia. Lynch was not a bad fellow, but, like most
+soldiers of the old Army, had been quite carefully divested of an
+aesthetic sense. And it was Leila's misfortune to have moments when
+aesthetic sense seemed necessary. She had struggled to overcome this
+weakness, and that other weakness of hers—a liking for men's
+admiration; but there had certainly been intervals when she had not
+properly succeeded. Her acquaintance with Jimmy Fort had occurred during
+one of these intervals, and when he went back to England so abruptly,
+she had been feeling very tenderly towards him. She still remembered him
+with a certain pleasure. Before Lynch died, these “intervals” had
+been interrupted by a spell of returning warmth for the invalided man to
+whom she had joined her life under the romantic conditions of divorce.
+He had failed, of course, as a farmer, and his death left her with
+nothing but her own settled income of a hundred and fifty pounds a
+year. Faced by the prospect of having almost to make her living, at
+thirty-eight, she felt but momentary dismay—for she had real pluck.
+Like many who have played with amateur theatricals, she fancied herself
+as an actress; but, after much effort, found that only her voice and
+the perfect preservation of her legs were appreciated by the discerning
+managers and public of South Africa; and for three chequered years she
+made face against fortune with the help of them, under an assumed name.
+What she did—keeping a certain bloom of refinement, was far better
+than the achievements of many more respectable ladies in her shoes. At
+least she never bemoaned her “reduced circumstances,” and if her
+life was irregular and had at least three episodes, it was very human.
+She bravely took the rough with the smooth, never lost the power of
+enjoying herself, and grew in sympathy with the hardships of others. But
+she became deadly tired. When the war broke out, remembering that
+she was a good nurse, she took her real name again and a change of
+occupation. For one who liked to please men, and to be pleased by them,
+there was a certain attraction about that life in war-time; and after
+two years of it she could still appreciate the way her Tommies turned
+their heads to look at her when she passed their beds. But in a hard
+school she had learned perfect self-control; and though the sour and
+puritanical perceived her attraction, they knew her to be forty-three.
+Besides, the soldiers liked her; and there was little trouble in her
+wards. The war moved her in simple ways; for she was patriotic in the
+direct fashion of her class. Her father had been a sailor, her husbands
+an official and a soldier; the issue for her was uncomplicated by any
+abstract meditation. The Country before everything! And though she had
+tended during those two years so many young wrecked bodies, she had
+taken it as all in the a day's work, lavishing her sympathy on the
+individual, without much general sense of pity and waste. Yes, she had
+worked really hard, had “done her bit”; but of late she had felt
+rising within her the old vague craving for “life,” for pleasure,
+for something more than the mere negative admiration bestowed on her
+by her “Tommies.” Those old letters—to look them through them had
+been a sure sign of this vague craving—had sharpened to poignancy the
+feeling that life was slipping away from her while she was still comely.
+She had been long out of England, and so hard-worked since she came back
+that there were not many threads she could pick up suddenly. Two letters
+out of that little budget of the past, with a far cry between them, had
+awakened within her certain sentimental longings.
+
+“DEAR LADY OF THE STARRY FLOWERS,
+
+“Exiturus (sic) to saluto! The tender carries you this message of
+good-bye. Simply speaking, I hate leaving South Africa. And of all my
+memories, the last will live the longest. Grape harvest at Constantia,
+and you singing: 'If I could be the falling dew: If ever you and your
+husband come to England, do let me know, that I may try and repay a
+little the happiest five days I've spent out here.
+
+“Your very faithful servant,
+
+“TIMMY FORT.”
+
+She remembered a very brown face, a tall slim figure, and something
+gallant about the whole of him. What was he like after ten years?
+Grizzled, married, with a large family? An odious thing—Time! And
+Cousin Edward's little yellow letter.
+
+Good heavens! Twenty-six years ago—before he was a parson, or married
+or anything! Such a good partner, really musical; a queer, dear fellow,
+devoted, absentminded, easily shocked, yet with flame burning in him
+somewhere.
+
+'DEAR LEILA,
+
+“After our last dance I went straight off'—I couldn't go in. I
+went down to the river, and walked along the bank; it was beautiful, all
+grey and hazy, and the trees whispered, and the cows looked holy; and I
+walked along and thought of you. And a farmer took me for a lunatic, in
+my dress clothes. Dear Leila, you were so pretty last night, and I did
+love our dances. I hope you are not tired, and that I shall see you soon
+again:
+
+“Your affectionate cousin,
+
+“EDWARD PIERSON.”
+
+And then he had gone and become a parson, and married, and been a
+widower fifteen years. She remembered the death of his wife, just before
+she left for South Africa, at that period of disgrace when she had so
+shocked her family by her divorce. Poor Edward—quite the nicest of her
+cousins! The only one she would care to see again. He would be very old
+and terribly good and proper, by now.
+
+Her wheel of Regent's Park was coming full circle, and the sun was up
+behind the houses, but still no sound of traffic stirred. She stopped
+before a flower-bed where was some heliotrope, and took a long,
+luxurious sniff: She could not resist plucking a sprig, too, and holding
+it to her nose. A sudden want of love had run through every nerve and
+fibre of her; she shivered, standing there with her eyes half closed,
+above the pale violet blossom. Then, noting by her wrist-watch that it
+was four o'clock, she hurried on, to get to her bed, for she would
+have to be on duty again at noon. Oh! the war! She was tired! If only it
+were over, and one could live!...
+
+Somewhere by Twickenham the moon had floated down; somewhere up from
+Kentish Town the sun came soaring; wheels rolled again, and the seven
+million sleepers in their million houses woke from morning sleep to that
+same thought....
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Edward Pierson, dreaming over an egg at breakfast, opened a letter in a
+handwriting which he did not recognise.
+
+“V. A. D. Hospital,
+
+“Mulberry Road, St. John's Wood N. W.
+
+“DEAR COUSIN EDWARD,
+
+“Do you remember me, or have I gone too far into the shades of night?
+I was Leila Pierson once upon a time, and I often think of you and
+wonder what you are like now, and what your girls are like. I have been
+here nearly a year, working for our wounded, and for a year before that
+was nursing in South Africa. My husband died five years ago out there.
+Though we haven't met for I dare not think how long, I should awfully
+like to see you again. Would you care to come some day and look over my
+hospital? I have two wards under me; our men are rather dears.
+
+“Your forgotten but still affectionate cousin
+
+“LEILA LYNCH.”
+
+“P. S. I came across a little letter you once wrote me; it brought
+back old days.”
+
+No! He had not forgotten. There was a reminder in the house. And he
+looked up at Noel sitting opposite. How like the eyes were! And
+he thought: 'I wonder what Leila has become. One mustn't be
+uncharitable. That man is dead; she has been nursing two years. She must
+be greatly changed; I should certainly like to see her. I will go!'
+Again he looked at Noel. Only yesterday she had renewed her request to
+be allowed to begin her training as a nurse.
+
+“I'm going to see a hospital to-day, Nollie,” he said; “if you
+like, I'll make enquiries. I'm afraid it'll mean you have to begin
+by washing up.”
+
+“I know; anything, so long as I do begin.”
+
+“Very well; I'll see about it.” And he went back to his egg.
+
+Noel's voice roused him. “Do you feel the war much, Daddy? Does
+it hurt you here?” She had put her hand on her heart. “Perhaps it
+doesn't, because you live half in the next world, don't you?”
+
+The words: “God forbid,” sprang to Pierson's lips; he did not
+speak them, but put his egg-spoon down, hurt and bewildered. What did
+the child mean? Not feel the war! He smiled.
+
+“I hope I'm able to help people sometimes, Nollie,” and was
+conscious that he had answered his own thoughts, not her words. He
+finished his breakfast quickly, and very soon went out. He crossed the
+Square, and passed East, down two crowded streets to his church. In the
+traffic of those streets, all slipshod and confused, his black-clothed
+figure and grave face, with its Vandyk beard, had a curious remote
+appearance, like a moving remnant of a past civilisation. He went in
+by the side door. Only five days he had been away, but they had been so
+full of emotion that the empty familiar building seemed almost strange
+to him. He had come there unconsciously, groping for anchorage and
+guidance in this sudden change of relationship between him and his
+daughters. He stood by the pale brazen eagle, staring into the chancel.
+The choir were wanting new hymn-books—he must not forget to order
+them! His eyes sought the stained-glass window he had put in to the
+memory of his wife. The sun, too high to slant, was burnishing its base,
+till it glowed of a deep sherry colour. “In the next world!”
+What strange words of Noel's! His eyes caught the glimmer of the
+organ-pipes; and, mounting to the loft, he began to play soft chords
+wandering into each other. He finished, and stood gazing down. This
+space within high walls, under high vaulted roof, where light was toned
+to a perpetual twilight, broken here and there by a little glow of
+colour from glass and flowers, metal, and dark wood, was his home,
+his charge, his refuge. Nothing moved down there, and yet—was not
+emptiness mysteriously living, the closed-in air imprinted in strange
+sort, as though the drone of music and voices in prayer and praise clung
+there still? Had not sanctity a presence? Outside, a barrel-organ drove
+its tune along; a wagon staggered on the paved street, and the driver
+shouted to his horses; some distant guns boomed out in practice, and the
+rolling of wheels on wheels formed a net of sound. But those invading
+noises were transmuted to a mere murmuring in here; only the silence and
+the twilight were real to Pierson, standing there, a little black figure
+in a great empty space.
+
+When he left the church, it was still rather early to go to Leila's
+hospital; and, having ordered the new hymn-books, he called in at the
+house of a parishioner whose son had been killed in France. He found her
+in her kitchen; an oldish woman who lived by charing. She wiped a seat
+for the Vicar.
+
+“I was just makin' meself a cup o' tea, sir.”
+
+“Ah! What a comfort tea is, Mrs. Soles!” And he sat down, so that
+she should feel “at home.”
+
+“Yes; it gives me 'eart-burn; I take eight or ten cups a day, now.
+I take 'em strong, too. I don't seem able to get on without it. I
+'ope the young ladies are well, sir?”
+
+“Very well, thank you. Miss Noel is going to begin nursing, too.”
+
+“Deary-me! She's very young; but all the young gells are doin'
+something these days. I've got a niece in munitions-makin' a pretty
+penny she is. I've been meanin' to tell you—I don't come to
+church now; since my son was killed, I don't seem to 'ave the
+'eart to go anywhere—'aven't been to a picture-palace these
+three months. Any excitement starts me cryin'.”
+
+“I know; but you'd find rest in church.”
+
+Mrs. Soles shook her head, and the small twisted bob of her discoloured
+hair wobbled vaguely.
+
+“I can't take any recreation,” she said. “I'd rather sit
+'ere, or be at work. My son was a real son to me. This tea's the
+only thing that does me any good. I can make you a fresh cup in a
+minute.”
+
+“Thank you, Mrs. Soles, but I must be getting on. We must all look
+forward to meeting our beloved again, in God's mercy. And one of these
+days soon I shall be seeing you in church, shan't I.”
+
+Mrs. Soles shifted her weight from one slippered foot to the other.
+
+“Well! let's 'ope so,” she said. “But I dunno when I shall
+'ave the spirit. Good day, sir, and thank you kindly for calling,
+I'm sure.”
+
+Pierson walked away with a very faint smile. Poor queer old soul!—she
+was no older than himself, but he thought of her as ancient—cut off
+from her son, like so many—so many; and how good and patient! The
+melody of an anthem began running in his head. His fingers moved on the
+air beside him, and he stood still, waiting for an omnibus to take him
+to St. John's Wood. A thousand people went by while he was waiting,
+but he did not notice them, thinking of that anthem, of his daughters,
+and the mercy of God; and on the top of his 'bus, when it came along,
+he looked lonely and apart, though the man beside him was so fat that
+there was hardly any seat left to sit on. Getting down at Lord's
+Cricket-ground, he asked his way of a lady in a nurse's dress.
+
+“If you'll come with me,” she said, “I'm just going there.”
+
+“Oh! Do you happen to know a Mrs. Lynch who nurses”
+
+“I am Mrs. Lynch. Why, you're Edward Pierson!”
+
+He looked into her face, which he had not yet observed.
+
+“Leila!” he said.
+
+“Yes, Leila! How awfully nice of you to come, Edward!”
+
+They continued to stand, searching each for the other's youth, till
+she murmured:
+
+“In spite of your beard, I should have known you anywhere!” But she
+thought: 'Poor Edward! He is old, and monk-like!'
+
+And Pierson, in answer, murmured:
+
+“You're very little changed, Leila! We haven't, seen each other
+since my youngest girl was born. She's just a little like you.” But
+he thought: 'My Nollie! So much more dewy; poor Leila!'
+
+They walked on, talking of his daughters, till they reached the
+hospital.
+
+“If you'll wait here a minute, I'll take you over my wards.”
+
+She had left him in a bare hall, holding his hat in one hand and
+touching his gold cross with the other; but she soon came hack, and a
+little warmth crept about his heart. How works of mercy suited women!
+She looked so different, so much softer, beneath the white coif, with a
+white apron over the bluish frock.
+
+At the change in his face, a little warmth crept about Leila, too, just
+where the bib of her apron stopped; and her eyes slid round at him while
+they went towards what had once been a billiard-room.
+
+“My men are dears,” she said; “they love to be talked to.”
+
+Under a skylight six beds jutted out from a green distempered wall,
+opposite to six beds jutting out from another green distempered wall,
+and from each bed a face was turned towards them young faces, with but
+little expression in them. A nurse, at the far end, looked round, and
+went on with her work. The sight of the ward was no more new to Pierson
+than to anyone else in these days. It was so familiar, indeed, that it
+had practically no significance. He stood by the first bed, and Leila
+stood alongside. The man smiled up when she spoke, and did not smile
+when he spoke, and that again was familiar to him. They passed from bed
+to bed, with exactly the same result, till she was called away, and he
+sat down by a young soldier with a long, very narrow head and face, and
+a heavily bandaged shoulder. Touching the bandage reverently, Pierson
+said:
+
+“Well, my dear fellow-still bad?”
+
+“Ah!” replied the soldier. “Shrapnel wound: It's cut the flesh
+properly.”
+
+“But not the spirit, I can see!”
+
+The young soldier gave him a quaint look, as much as to say: “Not
+'arf bad!” and a gramophone close to the last bed began to play:
+“God bless Daddy at the war!”
+
+“Are you fond of music?”
+
+“I like it well enough. Passes the time.”
+
+“I'm afraid the time hangs heavy in hospital.”
+
+“Yes; it hangs a bit 'eavy; it's just 'orspital life. I've
+been wounded before, you see. It's better than bein' out there. I
+expect I'll lose the proper use o' this arm. I don't worry; I'll
+get my discharge.”
+
+“You've got some good nurses here.”
+
+“Yes; I like Mrs. Lynch; she's the lady I like.”
+
+“My cousin.”
+
+“I see you come in together. I see everything 'ere. I think a lot,
+too. Passes the time.”
+
+“Do they let you smoke?”
+
+“Oh, yes! They let us smoke.”
+
+“Have one of mine?”
+
+The young soldier smiled for the first time. “Thank you; I've got
+plenty.”
+
+The nurse came by, and smiled at Pierson.
+
+“He's one of our blase ones; been in before, haven't you,
+Simson?”
+
+Pierson looked at the young man, whose long, narrow face; where one
+sandy-lashed eyelid drooped just a little, seemed armoured with a sort
+of limited omniscience. The gramophone had whirred and grunted into
+“Sidi Brahim.” The nurse passed on.
+
+“'Seedy Abram,'.rdquo; said the young soldier. “The Frenchies
+sing it; they takes it up one after the other, ye know.”
+
+“Ah!” murmured Pierson; “it's pretty.” And his fingers drummed
+on the counterpane, for the tune was new to him. Something seemed
+to move in the young man's face, as if a blind had been drawn up a
+little.
+
+“I don't mind France,” he said abruptly; “I don't mind the
+shells and that; but I can't stick the mud. There's a lot o'
+wounded die in the mud; can't get up—smothered.” His unwounded arm
+made a restless movement. “I was nearly smothered myself. Just managed
+to keep me nose up.”
+
+Pierson shuddered. “Thank God you did!”
+
+“Yes; I didn't like that. I told Mrs. Lynch about that one day when
+I had the fever. She's a nice lady; she's seen a lot of us boys:
+That mud's not right, you know.” And again his unwounded arm made
+that restless movement; while the gramophone struck up: “The boys in
+brown.” The movement of the arm affected Pierson horribly; he rose
+and, touching the bandaged shoulder, said:
+
+“Good-bye; I hope you'll soon be quite recovered.”
+
+The young soldier's lips twisted in the semblance of a smile; his
+drooped eyelid seemed to try and raise itself.
+
+“Good day, sir,” he said; “and thank you.”
+
+Pierson went back to the hall. The sunlight fell in a pool just inside
+the open door, and an uncontrollable impulse made him move into it, so
+that it warmed him up to the waist. The mud! How ugly life was! Life and
+Death! Both ugly! Poor boys! Poor boys!
+
+A voice behind him said:
+
+“Oh! There you are, Edward! Would you like to see the other ward, or
+shall I show you our kitchen?”
+
+Pierson took her hand impulsively. “You're doing a noble work,
+Leila. I wanted to ask you: Could you arrange for Noel to come and get
+trained here? She wants to begin at once. The fact is, a boy she is
+attracted to has just gone out to the Front.”
+
+“Ah!” murmured Leila, and her eyes looked very soft. “Poor child!
+We shall be wanting an extra hand next week. I'll see if she could
+come now. I'll speak to our Matron, and let you know to-night.” She
+squeezed his hand hard.
+
+“Dear Edward, I'm so glad to see you again. You're the first of
+our family I've seen for sixteen years. I wonder if you'd bring
+Noel to have supper at my flat to-night—Just nothing to eat, you know!
+It's a tiny place. There's a Captain Fort coming; a nice man.”
+
+Pierson accepted, and as he walked away he thought: 'Dear Leila! I
+believe it was Providence. She wants sympathy. She wants to feel the
+past is the past. How good women are!'
+
+And the sun, blazing suddenly out of a cloud, shone on his black figure
+and the little gold cross, in the middle of Portland Place.
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Men, even if they are not artistic, who have been in strange places
+and known many nooks of the world, get the scenic habit, become open
+to pictorial sensation. It was as a picture or series of pictures that
+Jimmy Fort ever afterwards remembered his first supper at Leila's. He
+happened to have been all day in the open, motoring about to horse farms
+under a hot sun; and Leila's hock cup possessed a bland and subtle
+strength. The scenic sense derived therefrom had a certain poignancy,
+the more so because the tall child whom he met there did not drink it,
+and her father seemed but to wet his lips, so that Leila and he had
+all the rest. Rather a wonderful little scene it made in his mind,
+very warm, glowing, yet with a strange dark sharpness to it, which came
+perhaps from the black walls.
+
+The flat had belonged to an artist who was at the war. It was but a
+pocket dwelling on the third floor. The two windows of the little square
+sitting-room looked out on some trees and a church. But Leila, who hated
+dining by daylight, had soon drawn curtains of a deep blue over them.
+The picture which Fort remembered was this: A little four-square table
+of dark wood, with a Chinese mat of vivid blue in the centre, whereon
+stood a silver lustre bowl of clove carnations; some greenish glasses
+with hock cup in them; on his left, Leila in a low lilac frock, her neck
+and shoulders very white, her face a little powdered, her eyes large,
+her lips smiling; opposite him a black-clothed padre with a little
+gold cross, over whose thin darkish face, with its grave pointed beard,
+passed little gentle smiles, but whose deep sunk grey eyes were burnt
+and bright; on his right, a girl in a high grey frock, almost white,
+just hollowed at the neck, with full sleeves to the elbow, so that her
+slim arms escaped; her short fair hair a little tumbled; her big grey
+eyes grave; her full lips shaping with a strange daintiness round
+every word—and they not many; brilliant red shades over golden lights
+dotting the black walls; a blue divan; a little black piano flush with
+the wall; a dark polished floor; four Japanese prints; a white ceiling.
+He was conscious that his own khaki spoiled something as curious and
+rare as some old Chinese tea-chest. He even remembered what they ate;
+lobster; cold pigeon pie; asparagus; St. Ivel cheese; raspberries and
+cream. He did not remember half so well what they talked of, except that
+he himself told them stories of the Boer War, in which he had served
+in the Yeomanry, and while he was telling them, the girl, like a child
+listening to a fairy-tale, never moved her eyes from his face. He
+remembered that after supper they all smoked cigarettes, even the tall
+child, after the padre had said to her mildly, “My dear!” and she
+had answered: “I simply must, Daddy, just one.” He remembered Leila
+brewing Turkish coffee—very good, and how beautiful her white arms
+looked, hovering about the cups. He remembered her making the padre sit
+down at the piano, and play to them. And she and the girl on the divan
+together, side by side, a strange contrast; with just as strange a
+likeness to each other. He always remembered how fine and rare that
+music sounded in the little room, flooding him with a dreamy beatitude.
+Then—he remembered—Leila sang, the padre standing-by; and the tall
+child on the divan bending forward over her knees, with her chin on her
+hands. He remembered rather vividly how Leila turned her neck and looked
+up, now at the padre, now at himself; and, all through, the delightful
+sense of colour and warmth, a sort of glamour over all the evening; and
+the lingering pressure of Leila's hand when he said good-bye and they
+went away, for they all went together. He remembered talking a great
+deal to the padre in the cab, about the public school they had both been
+at, and thinking: 'It's a good padre—this!' He remembered how
+their taxi took them to an old Square which he did not know, where the
+garden trees looked densely black in the starshine. He remembered that
+a man outside the house had engaged the padre in earnest talk, while the
+tall child and himself stood in the open doorway, where the hall beyond
+was dark. Very exactly he remembered the little conversation which then
+took place between them, while they waited for her father.
+
+“Is it very horrid in the trenches, Captain Fort?”
+
+“Yes, Miss Pierson; it is very horrid, as a rule.”
+
+“Is it dangerous all the time?”
+
+“Pretty well.”
+
+“Do officers run more risks than the men?”
+
+“Not unless there's an attack.”
+
+“Are there attacks very often?”
+
+It had seemed to him so strangely primitive a little catechism, that he
+had smiled. And, though it was so dark, she had seen that smile, for her
+face went proud and close all of a sudden. He had cursed himself, and
+said gently:
+
+“Have you a brother out there?”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“But someone?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Someone! He had heard that answer with a little shock. This child—this
+fairy princess of a child already to have someone! He wondered if she
+went about asking everyone these questions, with that someone in her
+thoughts. Poor child! And quickly he said:
+
+“After all, look at me! I was out there a year, and here I am with
+only half a game leg; times were a lot worse, then, too. I often wish I
+were back there. Anything's better than London and the War Office.”
+But just then he saw the padre coming, and took her hand. “Good night,
+Miss Pierson. Don't worry. That does no good, and there isn't half
+the risk you think.”
+
+Her hand stirred, squeezed his gratefully, as a child's would squeeze.
+
+“Good night,” she murmured; “thank you awfully.”
+
+And, in the dark cab again, he remembered thinking: 'Fancy that child!
+A jolly lucky boy, out there! Too bad! Poor little fairy princess!'
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+1
+
+To wash up is not an exciting operation. To wash up in August became for
+Noel a process which taxed her strength and enthusiasm. She combined it
+with other forms of instruction in the art of nursing, had very little
+leisure, and in the evenings at home would often fall asleep curled up
+in a large chintz-covered chair.
+
+George and Gratian had long gone back to their respective hospitals,
+and she and her father had the house to themselves. She received many
+letters from Cyril which she carried about with her and read on her way
+to and from the hospital; and every other day she wrote to him. He was
+not yet in the firing line; his letters were descriptive of his men,
+his food, or the natives, or reminiscent of Kestrel; hers descriptive of
+washing up, or reminiscent of Kestrel. But in both there was always some
+little word of the longing within them.
+
+It was towards the end of August when she had the letter which said that
+he had been moved up. From now on he would be in hourly danger! That
+evening after dinner she did not go to sleep in the chair, but sat
+under the open window, clenching her hands, and reading “Pride and
+Prejudice” without understanding a word. While she was so engaged her
+father came up and said:
+
+“Captain Fort, Nollie. Will you give him some coffee? I'm afraid I
+must go out.”
+
+When he had gone, Noel looked at her visitor drinking his coffee. He
+had been out there, too, and he was alive; with only a little limp. The
+visitor smiled and said:
+
+“What were you thinking about when we came in?”
+
+“Only the war.”
+
+“Any news of him?”
+
+Noel frowned, she hated to show her feelings.
+
+“Yes! he's gone to the Front. Won't you have a cigarette?”
+
+“Thanks. Will you?”
+
+“I want one awfully. I think sitting still and waiting is more
+dreadful than anything in the world.”
+
+“Except, knowing that others are waiting. When I was out there I used
+to worry horribly over my mother. She was ill at the time. The cruelest
+thing in war is the anxiety of people about each other—nothing touches
+that.”
+
+The words exactly summed up Noel's hourly thought. He said nice
+things, this man with the long legs and the thin brown bumpy face!
+
+“I wish I were a man,” she said, “I think women have much the
+worst time in the war. Is your mother old?” But of course she was old
+why he was old himself!
+
+“She died last Christmas.”
+
+“Oh! I'm so sorry!”
+
+“You lost your mother when you were a babe, didn't you?”
+
+“Yes. That's her portrait.” At the end of the room, hanging on a
+strip of black velvet was a pastel, very faint in colouring, as though
+faded, of a young woman, with an eager, sweet face, dark eyes, and bent
+a little forward, as if questioning her painter. Fort went up to it.
+
+“It's not a bit like you. But she must have been a very sweet
+woman.”
+
+“It's a sort of presence in the room. I wish I were like her!”
+
+Fort turned. “No,” he said; “no. Better as you are. It would only
+have spoiled a complete thing.”
+
+“She was good.”
+
+“And aren't you?”
+
+“Oh! no. I get a devil.”
+
+“You! Why, you're out of a fairy-tale!”
+
+“It comes from Daddy—only he doesn't know, because he's a
+perfect saint; but I know he's had a devil somewhere, or he couldn't
+be the saint he is.”
+
+“H'm!” said Fort. “That's very deep: and I believe it's
+true—the saints did have devils.”
+
+“Poor Daddy's devil has been dead ages. It's been starved out of
+him, I think.”
+
+“Does your devil ever get away with you?”
+
+Noel felt her cheeks growing red under his stare, and she turned to the
+window:
+
+“Yes. It's a real devil.”
+
+Vividly there had come before her the dark Abbey, and the moon balancing
+over the top of the crumbling wall, and the white owl flying across.
+And, speaking to the air, she said:
+
+“It makes you do things that you want to do.”
+
+She wondered if he would laugh—it sounded so silly. But he did not.
+
+“And damn the consequences? I know. It's rather a jolly thing to
+have.”
+
+Noel shook her head. “Here's Daddy coming back!”
+
+Fort held out his hand.
+
+“I won't stay. Good night; and don't worry too much, will you?”
+
+He kept her hand rather a long time, and gave it a hard squeeze.
+
+Don't worry! What advice! Ah! if she could see Cyril just for a
+minute!
+
+2
+
+In September, 1916, Saturday still came before Sunday, in spite of the
+war. For Edward Pierson this Saturday had been a strenuous day, and even
+now, at nearly midnight, he was still conning his just-completed sermon.
+
+A patriot of patriots, he had often a passionate longing to resign his
+parish, and go like his curate for a chaplain at the Front. It seemed to
+him that people must think his life idle and sheltered and useless. Even
+in times of peace he had been sensitive enough to feel the cold draughty
+blasts which the Church encounters in a material age. He knew that nine
+people out of ten looked on him as something of a parasite, with no real
+work in the world. And since he was nothing if not conscientious, he
+always worked himself to the bone.
+
+To-day he had risen at half-past six, and after his bath and exercises,
+had sat down to his sermon—for, even now, he wrote a new sermon once
+a month, though he had the fruits of twenty-six years to choose from.
+True, these new sermons were rather compiled than written, because,
+bereft of his curate, he had not time enough for fresh thought on old
+subjects. At eight he had breakfasted with Noel, before she went off to
+her hospital, whence she would return at eight in the evening. Nine to
+ten was his hour for seeing parishioners who had troubles, or wanted
+help or advice, and he had received three to-day who all wanted help,
+which he had given. From ten to eleven he had gone back to his sermon,
+and had spent from eleven to one at his church, attending to small
+matters, writing notices, fixing hymns, holding the daily half-hour
+Service instituted during wartime, to which but few ever came. He had
+hurried back to lunch, scamping it so that he might get to his piano for
+an hour of forgetfulness. At three he had christened a very noisy baby,
+and been detained by its parents who wished for information on a variety
+of topics. At half-past four he had snatched a cup of tea, reading the
+paper; and had spent from five to seven visiting two Parish Clubs, and
+those whose war-pension matters he had in hand, and filling up forms
+which would be kept in official places till such time as the system
+should be changed and a fresh set of forms issued. From seven to eight
+he was at home again, in case his flock wanted to see him; to-day four
+sheep had come, and gone away, he was afraid, but little the wiser.
+From half-past eight to half-past nine he had spent in choir practice,
+because the organist was on his holiday. Slowly in the cool of the
+evening he had walked home, and fallen asleep in his chair on getting
+in. At eleven he had woken with a start, and, hardening his heart, had
+gone back to his sermon. And now, at nearly midnight, it was still less
+than twenty minutes long. He lighted one of his rare cigarettes, and
+let thought wander. How beautiful those pale pink roses were in that old
+silver bowl-like a little strange poem, or a piece of Debussy music, or
+a Mathieu Maris picture-reminding him oddly of the word Leila. Was
+he wrong in letting Noel see so much of Leila? But then she was so
+improved—dear Leila!... The pink roses were just going to fall! And
+yet how beautiful!... It was quiet to-night; he felt very drowsy.... Did
+Nollie still think of that young man, or had it passed? She had never
+confided in him since! After the war, it would be nice to take her
+to Italy, to all the little towns. They would see the Assisi of St.
+Francis. The Little Flowers of St. Francis. The Little Flowers!... His
+hand dropped, the cigarette went out. He slept with his face in shadow.
+Slowly into the silence of his sleep little sinister sounds intruded.
+Short concussions, dragging him back out of that deep slumber. He
+started up. Noel was standing at the door, in a long coat. She said in
+her calm voice:
+
+“Zeps, Daddy!”
+
+“Yes, my dear. Where are the maids?”
+
+An Irish voice answered from the hall: “Here, sir; trustin' in God;
+but 'tis better on the ground floor.”
+
+He saw a huddle of three figures, queerly costumed, against the stairs.
+
+“Yes, Yes, Bridgie; you're safe down here.” Then he noticed that
+Noel was gone. He followed her out into the Square, alive with faces
+faintly luminous in the darkness, and found her against the garden
+railings.
+
+“You must come back in, Nollie.”
+
+“Oh, no! Cyril has this every day.”
+
+He stood beside her; not loth, for excitement had begun to stir his
+blood. They stayed there for some minutes, straining their eyes for
+sight of anything save the little zagged splashes of bursting shrapnel,
+while voices buzzed, and muttered: “Look! There! There! There it
+is!”
+
+But the seers had eyes of greater faith than Pierson's, for he saw
+nothing: He took her arm at last, and led her in. In the hall she broke
+from him.
+
+“Let's go up on the roof, Daddy!” and ran upstairs.
+
+Again he followed, mounting by a ladder, through a trapdoor on to the
+roof.
+
+“It's splendid up here!” she cried.
+
+He could see her eyes blazing, and thought: 'How my child does love
+excitement—it's almost terrible!'
+
+Over the wide, dark, star-strewn sky travelling searchlights, were
+lighting up the few little clouds; the domes and spires rose from among
+the spread-out roofs, all fine and ghostly. The guns had ceased firing,
+as though puzzled. One distant bang rumbled out.
+
+“A bomb! Oh! If we could only get one of the Zeps!”
+
+A furious outburst of firing followed, lasting perhaps a minute, then
+ceased as if by magic. They saw two searchlights converge and meet right
+overhead.
+
+“It's above us!” murmured Noel.
+
+Pierson put his arm round her waist. 'She feels no fear!' he
+thought. The search-lights switched apart; and suddenly, from far away,
+came a confusion of weird sounds.
+
+“What is it? They're cheering. Oh! Daddy, look!” There in the
+heavens, towards the east, hung a dull red thing, lengthening as they
+gazed.
+
+“They've got it. It's on fire! Hurrah!”
+
+Through the dark firmament that fiery orange shape began canting
+downward; and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy of sound. And
+Pierson's arm tightened on her waist.
+
+“Thank God!” he muttered.
+
+The bright oblong seemed to break and spread, tilted down below the
+level of the roofs; and suddenly the heavens flared, as if some huge jug
+of crimson light had been flung out on them. Something turned over in
+Pierson's heart; he flung up his hand to his eyes.
+
+“The poor men in it!” he said. “How terrible!”
+
+Noel's voice answered, hard and pitiless:
+
+“They needn't have come. They're murderers!”
+
+Yes, they were murderers—but how terrible! And he stood quivering,
+with his hands pressed to his face, till the cheering had died out into
+silence.
+
+“Let's pray, Nollie!” he whispered. “O God, Who in Thy great
+mercy hath delivered us from peril, take into Thy keeping the souls of
+these our enemies, consumed by Thy wrath before our eyes; give us the
+power to pity them—men like ourselves.”
+
+But even while he prayed he could see Noel's face flame-white in the
+darkness; and, as that glow in the sky faded out, he felt once more the
+thrill of triumph.
+
+They went down to tell the maids, and for some time after sat up
+together, talking over what they had seen, eating biscuits and drinking
+milk, which they warmed on an etna. It was nearly two o'clock before
+they went to bed. Pierson fell asleep at once, and never turned till
+awakened at half-past six by his alarum. He had Holy Communion to
+administer at eight, and he hurried to get early to his church and
+see that nothing untoward had happened to it. There it stood in the
+sunlight; tall, grey, quiet, unharmed, with bell gently ringing.
+
+3
+
+And at that hour Cyril Morland, under the parapet of his trench,
+tightening his belt, was looking at his wrist-watch for the hundredth
+time, calculating exactly where he meant to put foot and hand for the
+going over: 'I absolutely mustn't let those chaps get in front of
+me,' he thought. So many yards before the first line of trenches, so
+many yards to the second line, and there stop. So his rehearsals had
+gone; it was the performance now! Another minute before the terrific
+racket of the drum-fire should become the curtain-fire, which would
+advance before them. He ran his eye down the trench. The man next him
+was licking his two first fingers, as if he might be going to bowl at
+cricket. Further down, a man was feeling his puttees. A voice said:
+“Wot price the orchestra nah!” He saw teeth gleam in faces burnt
+almost black. Then he looked up; the sky was blue beyond the brownish
+film of dust raised by the striking shells. Noel! Noel! Noel!... He dug
+his fingers deep into the left side of his tunic till he could feel the
+outline of her photograph between his dispatch-case and his heart. His
+heart fluttered just as it used when he was stretched out with hand
+touching the ground, before the start of the “hundred yards” at
+school. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the flash of a man's
+“briquet” lighting a cigarette. All right for those chaps, but not
+for him; he wanted all his breath—this rifle, and kit were handicap
+enough! Two days ago he had been reading in some paper how men felt just
+before an attack. And now he knew. He just felt nervous. If only the
+moment would come, and get itself over! For all the thought he gave to
+the enemy there might have been none—nothing but shells and bullets,
+with lives of their own. He heard the whistle; his foot was on the
+spot he had marked down; his hand where he had seen it; he called
+out: “Now, boys!” His head was over the top, his body over; he was
+conscious of someone falling, and two men neck and neck beside him. Not
+to try and run, not to break out of a walk; to go steady, and yet keep
+ahead! D—n these holes! A bullet tore through his sleeve, grazing his
+arm—a red-hot sensation, like the touch of an iron. A British shell
+from close over his head burst sixty yards ahead; he stumbled, fell
+flat, picked himself up. Three ahead of him now! He walked faster,
+and drew alongside. Two of them fell. 'What luck!' he thought;
+and gripping his rifle harder, pitched headlong into a declivity. Dead
+bodies lay there! The first German trench line, and nothing alive in it,
+nothing to clean up, nothing of it left! He stopped, getting his wind;
+watching the men panting and stumbling in. The roar of the guns was
+louder than ever again, barraging the second line. So far, good! And
+here was his captain!
+
+“Ready, boys? On, then!”
+
+This time he moved more slowly still, over terrible going, all holes and
+hummocks. Half consciously he took cover all he could. The air was
+alive with the whistle from machine-gun fire storming across zigzag
+fashion-alive it was with bullets, dust, and smoke. 'How shall I tell
+her?' he thought. There would be nothing to tell but just a sort
+of jagged brown sensation. He kept his eyes steadily before him, not
+wanting to seethe men falling, not wanting anything to divert him from
+getting there. He felt the faint fanning of the passing bullets. The
+second line must be close now. Why didn't that barrage lift? Was this
+new dodge of firing till the last second going to do them in? Another
+hundred yards and he would be bang into it. He flung himself flat and
+waited; looking at his wrist-watch he noted that his arm was soaked
+with blood. He thought: 'A wound! Now I shall go home. Thank God! Oh,
+Noel!' The passing bullets whirled above him; he could hear them
+even through the screech and thunder of the shell-fire. 'The beastly
+things!' he thought: A voice beside him gasped out:
+
+“It's lifted, sir.”
+
+He called: “Come on, boys!” and went forward, stooping. A bullet
+struck his rifle. The shock made him stagger and sent an electric shock
+spinning up his arm. 'Luck again!' he thought. 'Now for it! I
+haven't seen a German yet!' He leaped forward, spun round, flung up
+his arms, and fell on his back, shot through and through....
+
+The position was consolidated, as they say, and in the darkness
+stretcher-bearers were out over the half-mile. Like will-o'-the-wisps,
+with their shaded lanterns, they moved, hour after hour, slowly
+quartering the black honeycomb which lay behind the new British
+line. Now and then in the light of some star-shell their figures were
+disclosed, bending and raising the forms of the wounded, or wielding
+pick and shovel.
+
+“Officer.”
+
+“Dead?”
+
+“Sure.”
+
+“Search.”
+
+From the shaded lantern, lowered to just above the body, a yellowish
+glare fell on face and breast. The hands of the searcher moved in that
+little pool of light. The bearer who was taking notes bent down.
+
+“Another boy,” he said. “That all he has?”
+
+The searcher raised himself.
+
+“Just those, and a photo.”
+
+“Dispatch-case; pound loose; cigarette-case; wristwatch; photo.
+Let's see it.”
+
+The searcher placed the photo in the pool of light. The tiny face of a
+girl stared up at them, unmoved, from its short hair.
+
+“Noel,” said the searcher, reading.
+
+“H'm! Take care of it. Stick it in his case. Come on!”
+
+The pool of light dissolved, and darkness for ever covered Cyril
+Morland.
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+When those four took their seats in the Grand Circle at Queen's Hall
+the programme was already at the second number, which, in spite of all
+the efforts of patriotism, was of German origin—a Brandenburg concerto
+by Bach. More curious still, it was encored. Pierson did not applaud,
+he was too far gone in pleasure, and sat with a rapt smile on his face,
+oblivious of his surroundings. He remained thus removed from mortal joys
+and sorrows till the last applause had died away, and Leila's voice
+said in his ear:
+
+“Isn't it a wonderful audience, Edward? Look at all that
+khaki. Who'd have thought those young men cared for music—good
+music—German music, too?”
+
+Pierson looked down at the patient mass of standing figures in straw
+hats and military caps, with faces turned all one way, and sighed.
+
+“I wish I could get an audience like that in my church.”
+
+A smile crept out at the corner of Leila's lips. She was thinking:
+'Ah! Your Church is out of date, my dear, and so are you! Your Church,
+with its smell of mould and incense, its stained-glass, and narrowed
+length and droning organ. Poor Edward, so out of the world!' But she
+only pressed his arm, and whispered:
+
+“Look at Noel!”
+
+The girl was talking to Jimmy Fort. Her cheeks were gushed, and she
+looked prettier than Pierson had seen her look for a long time now, ever
+since Kestrel, indeed. He heard Leila sigh.
+
+“Does she get news of her boy? Do you remember that May Week, Edward?
+We were very young then; even you were young. That was such a pretty
+little letter you wrote me. I can see you still-wandering in your dress
+clothes along the river, among the 'holy' cows.”
+
+But her eyes slid round again, watching her other neighbour and the
+girl. A violinist had begun to play the Cesar Franck Sonata. It was
+Pierson's favourite piece of music, bringing him, as it were, a view
+of heaven, of devotional blue air where devout stars were shining in a
+sunlit noon, above ecstatic trees and waters where ecstatic swans were
+swimming.
+
+“Queer world, Mr. Pierson! Fancy those boys having to go back to
+barrack life after listening to that! What's your feeling? Are we
+moving back to the apes? Did we touch top note with that Sonata?”
+
+Pierson turned and contemplated his questioner shrewdly.
+
+“No, Captain Fort, I do not think we are moving back to the apes; if
+we ever came from them. Those boys have the souls of heroes!”
+
+“I know that, sir, perhaps better than you do.”
+
+“Ah! yes,” said Pierson humbly, “I forgot, of course.” But he
+still looked at his neighbour doubtfully. This Captain Fort, who was a
+friend of Leila's, and who had twice been to see them, puzzled him. He
+had a frank face, a frank voice, but queer opinions, or so it seemed to,
+Pierson—little bits of Moslemism, little bits of the backwoods,
+and the veldt; queer unexpected cynicisms, all sorts of side views on
+England had lodged in him, and he did not hide them. They came from
+him like bullets, in that frank voice, and drilled little holes in the
+listener. Those critical sayings flew so much more poignantly from one
+who had been through the same educational mill as himself, than if they
+had merely come from some rough diamond, some artist, some foreigner,
+even from a doctor like George. And they always made him uncomfortable,
+like the touch of a prickly leaf; they did not amuse him. Certainly
+Edward Pierson shrank from the rough touches of a knock-about
+philosophy. After all, it was but natural that he should.
+
+He and Noel left after the first part of the concert, parting from
+the other two at the door. He slipped his hand through her arm; and,
+following out those thoughts of his in the concert-hall, asked:
+
+“Do you like Captain Fort, Nollie?”
+
+“Yes; he's a nice man.”
+
+“He seems a nice man, certainly; he has a nice smile, but strange
+views, I'm afraid.”
+
+“He thinks the Germans are not much worse than we are; he says that a
+good many of us are bullies too.”
+
+“Yes, that is the sort of thing I mean.”
+
+“But are we, Daddy?”
+
+“Surely not.”
+
+“A policeman I talked to once said the same. Captain Fort says that
+very few men can stand having power put into their hands without
+being spoiled. He told me some dreadful stories. He says we have no
+imagination, so that we often do things without seeing how brutal they
+are.”
+
+“We're not perfect, Nollie; but on the whole I think we're a kind
+people.”
+
+Noel was silent a moment, then said suddenly:
+
+“Kind people often think others are kind too, when they really
+aren't. Captain Fort doesn't make that mistake.”
+
+“I think he's a little cynical, and a little dangerous.”
+
+“Are all people dangerous who don't think like others, Daddy?”
+
+Pierson, incapable of mockery, was not incapable of seeing when he was
+being mocked. He looked at his daughter with a smile.
+
+“Not quite so bad as that, Nollie; but Mr. Fort is certainly
+subversive. I think perhaps he has seen too many queer sides of life.”
+
+“I like him the better for that.”
+
+“Well, well,” Pierson answered absently. He had work to do in
+preparation for a Confirmation Class, and sought his study on getting
+in.
+
+Noel went to the dining-room to drink her hot milk. The curtains were
+not drawn, and bright moonlight was coming in. Without lighting up, she
+set the etna going, and stood looking at the moon-full for the second
+time since she and Cyril had waited for it in the Abbey. And pressing
+her hands to her breast, she shivered. If only she could summon him from
+the moonlight out there; if only she were a witch-could see him, know
+where he was, what doing! For a fortnight now she had received no
+letter. Every day since he had left she had read the casualty lists,
+with the superstitious feeling that to do so would keep him out of them.
+She took up the Times. There was just enough light, and she read the
+roll of honour—till the moon shone in on her, lying on the floor, with
+the dropped journal....
+
+But she was proud, and soon took grief to her room, as on that night
+after he left her, she had taken love. No sign betrayed to the house
+her disaster; the journal on the floor, and the smell of the burnt milk
+which had boiled over, revealed nothing. After all, she was but one of
+a thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony. Each night,
+year in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in pillows to smother
+that first awful sense of desolation, and grope for the secret
+spirit-place where bereaved souls go, to receive some feeble touch of
+healing from knowledge of each other's trouble....
+
+In the morning she got up from her sleepless bed, seemed to eat her
+breakfast, and went off to her hospital. There she washed up plates and
+dishes, with a stony face, dark under the eyes.
+
+The news came to Pierson in a letter from Thirza, received at
+lunch-time. He read it with a dreadful aching. Poor, poor little Nollie!
+What an awful trouble for her! And he, too, went about his work with
+the nightmare thought that he had to break the news to her that evening.
+Never had he felt more lonely, more dreadfully in want of the mother of
+his children. She would have known how to soothe, how to comfort. On her
+heart the child could have sobbed away grief. And all that hour, from
+seven to eight, when he was usually in readiness to fulfil the functions
+of God's substitute to his parishioners, he spent in prayer of his
+own, for guidance how to inflict and heal this blow. When, at last, Noel
+came, he opened the door to her himself, and, putting back the hair
+from her forehead, said: “Come in here a moment, my darling!” Noel
+followed him into the study, and sat down. “I know already, Daddy.”
+Pierson was more dismayed by this stoicism than he would have been by
+any natural out burst. He stood, timidly stroking her hair, murmuring
+to her what he had said to Gratian, and to so many others in these
+days: “There is no death; look forward to seeing him again; God is
+merciful” And he marvelled at the calmness of that pale face—so
+young.
+
+“You are very brave, my child!” he said.
+
+“There's nothing else to be, is there?”
+
+“Isn't there anything I can do for you, Nollie?”
+
+“No, Daddy.”
+
+“When did you see it?”
+
+“Last night.” She had already known for twenty-four hours without
+telling him!
+
+“Have you prayed, my darling?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Try, Nollie!”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Ah, try!”
+
+“It would be ridiculous, Daddy; you don't know.”
+
+Grievously upset and bewildered, Pierson moved away from her, and said:
+
+“You look dreadfully tired. Would you like a hot bath, and your dinner
+in bed?”
+
+“I'd like some tea; that's all.” And she went out.
+
+When he had seen that the tea had gone up to her, he too went out; and,
+moved by a longing for woman's help, took a cab to Leila's flat.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+On leaving the concert Leila and Jimmy Fort had secured a taxi; a
+vehicle which, at night, in wartime, has certain advantages for those
+who desire to become better acquainted. Vibration, sufficient noise,
+darkness, are guaranteed; and all that is lacking for the furtherance
+of emotion is the scent of honeysuckle and roses, or even of the white
+flowering creeper which on the stoep at High Constantia had smelled so
+much sweeter than petrol.
+
+When Leila found herself with Fort in that loneliness to which she had
+been looking forward, she was overcome by an access of nervous silence.
+She had been passing through a strange time for weeks past. Every night
+she examined her sensations without quite understanding them as yet.
+When a woman comes to her age, the world-force is liable to take
+possession, saying:
+
+“You were young, you were beautiful, you still have beauty, you are
+not, cannot be, old. Cling to youth, cling to beauty; take all you can
+get, before your face gets lines and your hair grey; it is impossible
+that you have been loved for the last time.”
+
+To see Jimmy Fort at the concert, talking to Noel, had brought this
+emotion to a head. She was not of a grudging nature, and could genuinely
+admire Noel, but the idea that Jimmy Fort might also admire disturbed
+her greatly. He must not; it was not fair; he was too old—besides,
+the girl had her boy; and she had taken care that he should know it. So,
+leaning towards him, while a bare-shouldered young lady sang, she had
+whispered:
+
+“Penny?”
+
+And he had whispered back:
+
+“Tell you afterwards.”
+
+That had comforted her. She would make him take her home. It was time
+she showed her heart.
+
+And now, in the cab, resolved to make her feelings known, in sudden
+shyness she found it very difficult. Love, to which for quite three
+years she had been a stranger, was come to life within her. The
+knowledge was at once so sweet, and so disturbing, that she sat with
+face averted, unable to turn the precious minutes to account. They
+arrived at the flat without having done more than agree that the
+streets were dark, and the moon bright. She got out with a sense of
+bewilderment, and said rather desperately:
+
+“You must come up and have a cigarette. It's quite early, still.”
+
+He went up.
+
+“Wait just a minute,” said Leila.
+
+Sitting there with his drink and his cigarette, he stared at some
+sunflowers in a bowl—Famille Rose—and waited just ten; smiling a
+little, recalling the nose of the fairy princess, and the dainty way
+her lips shaped the words she spoke. If she had not had that lucky young
+devil of a soldier boy, one would have wanted to buckle her shoes, lay
+one's coat in the mud for her, or whatever they did in fairytales.
+One would have wanted—ah! what would one not have wanted! Hang that
+soldier boy! Leila said he was twenty-two. By George! how old it made
+a man feel who was rising forty, and tender on the off-fore! No fairy
+princesses for him! Then a whiff of perfume came to his nostrils; and,
+looking up, he saw Leila standing before him, in a long garment of dark
+silk, whence her white arms peeped out.
+
+“Another penny? Do you remember these things, Jimmy? The Malay women
+used to wear them in Cape Town. You can't think what a relief it is
+to get out of my slave's dress. Oh! I'm so sick of nursing! Jimmy, I
+want to live again a little!”
+
+The garment had taken fifteen years off her age, and a gardenia, just
+where the silk crossed on her breast, seemed no whiter than her skin. He
+wondered whimsically whether it had dropped to her out of the dark!
+
+“Live?” he said. “Why! Don't you always?”
+
+She raised her hands so that the dark silk fell, back from the whole
+length of those white arms.
+
+“I haven't lived for two years. Oh, Jimmy! Help me to live a little!
+Life's so short, now.”
+
+Her eyes disturbed him, strained and pathetic; the sight of her arms;
+the scent of the flower disturbed him; he felt his cheeks growing warm,
+and looked down.
+
+She slipped suddenly forward on to her knees at his feet, took his hand,
+pressed it with both of hers, and murmured:
+
+“Love me a little! What else is there? Oh! Jimmy, what else is
+there?”
+
+And with the scent of the flower, crushed by their hands, stirring
+his senses, Fort thought: 'Ah, what else is there, in these forsaken
+days?'
+
+To Jimmy Fort, who had a sense of humour, and was in some sort a
+philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom failed to seem
+amusing. But when he walked away from Leila's he was pensive. She was
+a good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an enchantress; but—she
+was decidedly mature. And here he was—involved in helping her to
+“live”; involved almost alarmingly, for there had been no mistaking
+the fact that she had really fallen in love with him.
+
+This was flattering and sweet. Times were sad, and pleasure scarce,
+but—! The roving instinct which had kept him, from his youth up,
+rolling about the world, shied instinctively at bonds, however pleasant,
+the strength and thickness of which he could not gauge; or, was it
+that perhaps for the first time in his life he had been peeping into
+fairyland of late, and this affair with Leila was by no means fairyland?
+He had another reason, more unconscious, for uneasiness. His heart, for
+all his wanderings, was soft, he had always found it difficult to hurt
+anyone, especially anyone who did him the honour to love him. A sort of
+presentiment weighed on him while he walked the moonlit streets at this
+most empty hour, when even the late taxis had ceased to run. Would she
+want him to marry her? Would it be his duty, if she did? And then he
+found himself thinking of the concert, and that girl's face, listening
+to the tales he was telling her. 'Deuced queer world,' he thought,
+'the way things go! I wonder what she would think of us, if she
+knew—and that good padre! Phew!'
+
+He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in his leg, and
+having to spend the night on a door-step, that he had plenty of time for
+rumination; but since it brought him no confidence whatever, he began at
+last to feel: 'Well; it might be a lot worse. Take the goods the gods
+send you and don't fuss!' And suddenly he remembered with extreme
+vividness that night on the stoep at High Constantia, and thought with
+dismay: 'I could have plunged in over head and ears then; and
+now—I can't! That's life all over! Poor Leila! Me miserum, too,
+perhaps—who knows!'
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+When Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were smiling, and
+her lips were soft. She seemed to smile and be soft all over, and she
+took both his hands. Everything was a pleasure to her that day, even
+the sight of this sad face. She was in love and was loved again; had a
+present and a future once more, not only her own full past; and she must
+finish with Edward in half an hour, for Jimmy was coming. She sat down
+on the divan, took his hand in a sisterly way, and said:
+
+“Tell me, Edward; I can see you're in trouble. What is it?”
+
+“Noel. The boy she was fond of has been killed.”
+
+She dropped his hand.
+
+“Oh, no! Poor child! It's too cruel!” Tears started up in her
+grey eyes, and she touched them with a tiny handkerchief. “Poor, poor
+little Noel! Was she very fond of him?”
+
+“A very sudden, short engagement; but I'm afraid she takes it
+desperately to heart. I don't know how to comfort her; only a woman
+could. I came to ask you: Do you think she ought to go on with her work?
+What do you think, Leila? I feel lost!”
+
+Leila, gazing at him, thought: 'Lost? Yes, you look lost, my poor
+Edward!'
+
+“I should let her go on,” she said: “it helps; it's the only
+thing that does help. I'll see if I can get them to let her come into
+the wards. She ought to be in touch with suffering and the men; that
+kitchen work will try her awfully just now: Was he very young?”
+
+“Yes. They wanted to get married. I was opposed to it.”
+
+Leila's lip curled ever so little. 'You would be!' she thought.
+
+“I couldn't bear to think of Nollie giving herself hastily, like
+that; they had only known each other three weeks. It was very hard for
+me, Leila. And then suddenly he was sent to the front.”
+
+Resentment welled up in Leila. The kill-Joys! As if life didn't kill
+joy fast enough! Her cousin's face at that moment was almost abhorrent
+to her, its gentle perplexed goodness darkened and warped by that
+monkish look. She turned away, glanced at the clock over the hearth, and
+thought: 'Yes, and he would stop Jimmy and me! He would say: “Oh,
+no! dear Leila—you mustn't love—it's sin!” How I hate that
+word!'
+
+“I think the most dreadful thing in life,” she said abruptly, “is
+the way people suppress their natural instincts; what they suppress
+in themselves they make other people suppress too, if they can; and
+that's the cause of half the misery in this world.”
+
+Then at the surprise on his face at this little outburst, whose cause
+he could not know, she added hastily: “I hope Noel will get over it
+quickly, and find someone else.”
+
+“Yes. If they had been married—how much worse it would have been.
+Thank God, they weren't!”
+
+“I don't know. They would have had an hour of bliss. Even an hour of
+bliss is worth something in these days.”
+
+“To those who only believe in this 'life—perhaps.”
+
+'Ten minutes more!' she thought: 'Oh, why doesn't he go?' But
+at that very moment he got up, and instantly her heart went out to him
+again.
+
+“I'm so sorry, Edward. If I can help in any way—I'll try my best
+with Noel to-morrow; and do come to me whenever you feel inclined.”
+
+She took his hand in hers; afraid that he would sit down again, she yet
+could not help a soft glance into his eyes, and a little rush of pitying
+warmth in the pressure of her hand.
+
+Pierson smiled; the smile which always made her sorry for him.
+
+“Good-bye, Leila; you're very good and kind to me. Good-bye.”
+
+Her bosom swelled with relief and compassion; and—she let him out.
+
+Running upstairs again she thought: 'I've just time. What shall I
+put on? Poor Edward, poor Noel! What colour does Jimmy like? Oh! Why
+didn't I keep him those ten years ago—what utter waste!' And,
+feverishly adorning herself, she came back to the window, and stood
+there in the dark to watch, while some jasmine which grew below sent up
+its scent to her. 'Would I marry him?' she thought, 'if he asked
+me? But he won't ask me—why should he now? Besides, I couldn't
+bear him to feel I wanted position or money from him. I only want
+love—love—love!' The silent repetition of that word gave her a
+wonderful sense of solidity and comfort. So long as she only wanted
+love, surely he would give it.
+
+A tall figure turned down past the church, coming towards her. It was
+he! And suddenly she bethought herself. She went to the little black
+piano, sat down, and began to sing the song she had sung to him ten
+years ago: “If I could be the falling dew and fall on thee all day!”
+She did not even look round when he came in, but continued to croon out
+the words, conscious of him just behind her shoulder in the dark. But
+when she had finished, she got up and threw her arms round him, strained
+him to her, and burst into tears on his shoulder; thinking of Noel and
+that dead boy, thinking of the millions of other boys, thinking of her
+own happiness, thinking of those ten years wasted, of how short was
+life, and love; thinking—hardly knowing what she thought! And Jimmy
+Fort, very moved by this emotion which he only half understood, pressed
+her tightly in his arms, and kissed her wet cheeks and her neck, pale
+and warm in the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+
+V 1
+
+Noel went on with her work for a month, and then, one morning, fainted
+over a pile of dishes. The noise attracted attention, and Mrs. Lynch was
+summoned.
+
+The sight of her lying there so deadly white taxed Leila's nerves
+severely. But the girl revived quickly, and a cab was sent for. Leila
+went with her, and told the driver to stop at Camelot Mansions. Why take
+her home in this state, why not save the jolting, and let her recover
+properly? They went upstairs arm in arm. Leila made her lie down on the
+divan, and put a hot-water bottle to her feet. Noel was still so passive
+and pale that even to speak to her seemed a cruelty. And, going to
+her little sideboard, Leila stealthily extracted a pint bottle of some
+champagne which Jimmy Fort had sent in, and took it with two glasses and
+a corkscrew into her bedroom. She drank a little herself, and came out
+bearing a glass to the girl. Noel shook her head, and her eyes seemed
+to say: “Do you really think I'm so easily mended?” But Leila had
+been through too much in her time to despise earthly remedies, and
+she held it to the girl's lips until she drank. It was excellent
+champagne, and, since Noel had never yet touched alcohol, had an
+instantaneous effect. Her eyes brightened; little red spots came up in
+her cheeks. And suddenly she rolled over and buried her face deep in a
+cushion. With her short hair, she looked so like a child lying there,
+that Leila knelt down, stroking her head, and saying: “There, there;
+my love! There, there!”
+
+At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, masklike despair
+of the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and her face had a
+wild look. She withdrew herself from Leila's touch, and, crossing her
+arms tightly across her chest, said:
+
+“I can't bear it; I can't sleep. I want him back; I hate life—I
+hate the world. We hadn't done anything—only just loved each other.
+God likes punishing; just because we loved each other; we had only one
+day to love each other—only one day—only one!”
+
+Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms straining
+and swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch it. The voice,
+uncannily dainty for all the wildness of the words and face, went on:
+
+“I won't—I don't want to live. If there's another life, I
+shall go to him. And if there isn't—it's just sleep.”
+
+Leila put out her hand to ward of these wild wanderings. Like most women
+who live simply the life of their senses and emotions, she was orthodox;
+or rather never speculated on such things.
+
+“Tell me about yourself and him,” she said.
+
+Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin. “We loved each other; and
+children are born, aren't they, after you've loved? But mine won't
+be!” From the look on her face rather than from her words, the full
+reality of her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again. Nonsense!
+But—what an awful thing, if true! That which had always seemed to her
+such an exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of life—why! now,
+it was a tragedy! Instinctively she raised herself and put her arms
+round the girl.
+
+“My poor dear!” she said; “you're fancying things!”
+
+The colour had faded out of Noel's face, and, with her head thrown
+back and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young
+ghost.
+
+“If it is—I shan't live. I don't mean to—it's easy to die. I
+don't mean Daddy to know.”
+
+“Oh! my dear, my dear!” was all Leila could stammer.
+
+“Was it wrong, Leila?”
+
+“Wrong? I don't know—wrong? If it really is so—it
+was—unfortunate. But surely, surely—you're mistaken?”
+
+Noel shook her head. “I did it so that we should belong to each other.
+Nothing could have taken him from me.”
+
+Leila caught at the girl's words.
+
+“Then, my dear—he hasn't quite gone from you, you see?”
+
+Noel's lips formed a “No” which was inaudible. “But Daddy!”
+she whispered.
+
+Edward's face came before Leila so vividly that she could hardly see
+the girl for the tortured shape of it. Then the hedonist in her revolted
+against that ascetic vision. Her worldly judgment condemned and deplored
+this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding that hour of life
+and love, snatched out of the jaws of death. “Need he ever know?”
+she said.
+
+“I could never lie to Daddy. But it doesn't matter. Why should one
+go on living, when life is rotten?”
+
+Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late October. Leila
+got up from her knees. She stood at the window thinking hard.
+
+“My dear,” she said at last, “you mustn't get morbid. Look at
+me! I've had two husbands, and—and—well, a pretty stormy up and
+down time of it; and I daresay I've got lots of trouble before me. But
+I'm not going to cave in. Nor must you. The Piersons have plenty
+of pluck; you mustn't be a traitor to your blood. That's the
+last thing. Your boy would have told you to stick it. These are your
+'trenches,' and you're not going to be downed, are you?”
+
+After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel said:
+
+“Give me a cigarette, Leila.”
+
+Leila produced the little flat case she carried.
+
+“That's brave,” she said. “Nothing's incurable at your age.
+Only one thing's incurable—getting old.”
+
+Noel laughed. “That's curable too, isn't it?”
+
+“Not without surrender.”
+
+Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two cigarettes
+fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling. Then Noel got up from the
+divan, and went over to the piano. She was still in her hospital dress
+of lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the
+keys, playing a chord now, and then, Leila's heart felt hollow from
+compassion; she was so happy herself just now, and this child so very
+wretched!
+
+“Play to me,” she said; “no—don't; I'll play to you.” And
+sitting down, she began to play and sing a little French song, whose
+first line ran: “Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous.” It was soft,
+gay, charming. If the girl cried, so much the better. But Noel did not
+cry. She seemed suddenly to have recovered all her self-possession. She
+spoke calmly, answered Leila's questions without emotion, and said
+she would go home. Leila went out with her, and walked some way in the
+direction of her home; distressed, but frankly at a loss. At the bottom
+of Portland Place Noel stopped and said: “I'm quite all right now,
+Leila; thank you awfully. I shall just go home and lie down. And I shall
+come to-morrow, the same as usual. Goodbye!” Leila could only grasp
+the girl's hand, and say: “My dear, that's splendid. There's
+many a slip—besides, it's war-time.”
+
+With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the girl
+moving slowly away; and turned back herself towards her hospital, with a
+disturbed and compassionate heart.
+
+2
+
+But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street. She had
+received a certain measure of comfort, been steadied by her experienced
+cousin's vitality, and the new thoughts suggested by those words:
+“He hasn't quite gone from you, has he?” “Besides, it's
+war-time.” Leila had spoken freely, too, and the physical ignorance in
+which the girl had been groping these last weeks was now removed. Like
+most proud natures, she did not naturally think much about the opinion
+of other people; besides, she knew nothing of the world, its feelings
+and judgments. Her nightmare was the thought of her father's horror
+and grief. She tried to lessen that nightmare by remembering his
+opposition to her marriage, and the resentment she had felt. He had
+never realised, never understood, how she and Cyril loved. Now, if she
+were really going to have a child, it would be Cyril's—Cyril's
+son—Cyril over again. The instinct stronger than reason, refinement,
+tradition, upbringing, which had pushed her on in such haste to
+make sure of union—the irrepressible pulse of life faced with
+annihilation—seemed to revive within her, and make her terrible secret
+almost precious. She had read about “War babies” in the papers,
+read with a dull curiosity; but now the atmosphere, as it were, of
+those writings was illumined for her. These babies were wrong, were a
+“problem,” and yet, behind all that, she seemed now to know that
+people were glad of them; they made up, they filled the gaps. Perhaps,
+when she had one, she would be proud, secretly proud, in spite of
+everyone, in spite of her father! They had tried to kill Cyril—God and
+everyone; but they hadn't been able, he was alive within her! A glow
+came into her face, walking among the busy shopping crowd, and people
+turned to look at her; she had that appearance of seeing no one,
+nothing, which is strange and attractive to those who have a moment
+to spare from contemplation of their own affairs. Fully two hours she
+wandered thus, before going in, and only lost that exalted feeling when,
+in her own little room, she had taken up his photograph, and was sitting
+on her bed gazing at it. She had a bad breakdown then. Locked in there,
+she lay on her bed, crying, dreadfully lonely, till she fell asleep
+exhausted, with the tear-stained photograph clutched in her twitching
+fingers. She woke with a start. It was dark, and someone was knocking on
+her door.
+
+“Miss Noel!”
+
+Childish perversity kept her silent. Why couldn't they leave her
+alone? They would leave her alone if they knew. Then she heard another
+kind of knocking, and her father's voice:
+
+“Nollie! Nollie!”
+
+She scrambled up, and opened. He looked scared, and her heart smote her.
+
+“It's all right, Daddy; I was asleep.”
+
+“My dear, I'm sorry, but dinner's ready.”
+
+“I don't want any dinner; I think I'll go to bed.”
+
+The frown between his brows deepened.
+
+“You shouldn't lock your door, Nollie: I was quite frightened. I
+went round to the hospital to bring you home, and they told me about
+your fainting. I want you to see a doctor.”
+
+Noel shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no! It's nothing!”
+
+“Nothing? To faint like that? Come, my child. To please me.” He took
+her face in his hands. Noel shrank away.
+
+“No, Daddy. I won't see a doctor. Extravagance in wartime! I
+won't. It's no good trying to make me. I'll come down if you like;
+I shall be all right to-morrow.”
+
+With this Pierson had to be content; but, often that evening, she saw
+him looking at her anxiously. And when she went up, he came out of his
+study, followed to her room, and insisted on lighting her fire. Kissing
+her at the door, he said very quietly:
+
+“I wish I could be a mother to you, my child!”
+
+For a moment it flashed through Noel: 'He knows!' then, by the
+puzzled look on his face, she knew that he did not. If only he did know;
+what a weight it would be off her mind! But she answered quietly too;
+“Good night, Daddy dear!” kissed him, and shut the door.
+
+She sat down before the little new fire, and spread her hands out to it;
+all was so cold and wintry in her heart. And the firelight flickered on
+her face, where shadows lay thick under her eyes, for all the roundness
+of her cheeks, and on her slim pale hands, and the supple grace of her
+young body. And out in the night, clouds raced over the moon, which had
+come full once more.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+Pierson went back to his study, and wrote to Gratian.
+
+“If you can get leave for a few days, my dear, I want you at home. I
+am troubled about Nollie. Ever since that disaster happened to her
+she has been getting paler; and to-day she fainted. She won't see a
+doctor, but perhaps you could get her to see George. If you come up, he
+will surely be able to run up to us for a day or two. If not, you must
+take her down to him at the sea. I have just seen the news of your
+second cousin Charlie Pierson's death; he was killed in one of the
+last attacks on the Somme; he was nephew of my cousin Leila whom, as you
+know, Noel sees every day at her hospital. Bertram has the D. S. O. I
+have been less hard-pressed lately; Lauder has been home on leave and
+has taken some Services for me. And now the colder weather has come, I
+am feeling much fresher. Try your best to come. I am seriously concerned
+for our beloved child.
+
+“Your affectionate father
+
+“EDWARD PIERSON.”
+
+Gratian answered that she could get week-end leave, and would come on
+Friday. He met her at the station, and they drove thence straight to the
+hospital, to pick up Noel. Leila came to them in the waiting-room, and
+Pierson, thinking they would talk more freely about Noel's health if
+he left them alone, went into the recreation room, and stood watching
+a game of bagatelle between two convalescents. When he returned to the
+little sitting-room they were still standing by the hearth, talking in
+low voices. Gratian must surely have been stooping over the fire, for
+her face was red, almost swollen, and her eyes looked as if she had
+scorched them.
+
+Leila said lightly:
+
+“Well, Edward, aren't the men delightful? When are we going to
+another concert together?”
+
+She, too, was flushed and looking almost young.
+
+“Ah! If we could do the things we want to.
+
+“That's very pretty, Edward; but you should, you know—for a
+tonic.” He shook his head and smiled.
+
+“You're a temptress, Leila. Will you let Nollie know, please, that
+we can take her back with us? Can you let her off to-morrow?”
+
+“For as long as you like; she wants a rest. I've been talking
+to Gratian. We oughtn't to have let her go on after a shock like
+that—my fault, I'm afraid. I thought that work might be best.”
+
+Pierson was conscious of Gratian walking past him out of the room. He
+held out his hand to Leila, and followed. A small noise occurred behind
+him such as a woman makes when she has put a foot through her own skirt,
+or has other powerful cause for dismay. Then he saw Noel in the hall,
+and was vaguely aware of being the centre of a triangle of women whose
+eyes were playing catch-glance. His daughters kissed each other; and he
+became seated between them in the taxi. The most unobservant of men, he
+parted from them in the hall without having perceived anything except
+that they were rather silent; and, going to his study, he took up a Life
+of Sir Thomas More. There was a passage therein which he itched to show
+George Laird, who was coming up that evening.
+
+Gratian and Noel had mounted the stairs with lips tight set, and eyes
+averted; both were very pale. When they reached the door of Gratian's
+room the room which had been their mother's—Noel was for passing on,
+but Gratian caught her by the arm, and said: “Come in.” The fire was
+burning brightly in there, and the two sisters stood in front of it,
+one on each side, their hands clutching the mantel-shelf, staring at the
+flames. At last Noel put one hand in front of her eyes, and said:
+
+“I asked her to tell you.”
+
+Gratian made the movement of one who is gripped by two strong emotions,
+and longs to surrender to one or to the other.
+
+“It's too horrible,” was all she said.
+
+Noel turned towards the door.
+
+“Stop, Nollie!”
+
+Noel stopped with her hand on the door knob. “I don't want to be
+forgiven and sympathised with. I just want to be let alone.”
+
+“How can you be let alone?”
+
+The tide of misery surged up in Noel, and she cried out passionately:
+
+“I hate sympathy from people who can't understand. I don't want
+anyone's. I can always go away, and lose myself.”
+
+The words “can't understand” gave Gratian a shock.
+
+“I can understand,” she said.
+
+“You can't; you never saw him. You never saw—” her lips quivered
+so that she had to stop and bite them, to keep back a rush of tears.
+
+“Besides you would never have done it yourself.”
+
+Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the bed. It was
+true. She would never have done it herself; it was just that which,
+for all her longing to help her sister, iced her love and sympathy. How
+terrible, wretched, humiliating! Her own sister, her only sister, in
+the position of all those poor, badly brought up girls, who forgot
+themselves! And her father—their father! Till that moment she had
+hardly thought of him, too preoccupied by the shock to her own pride.
+The word: “Dad!” was forced from her.
+
+Noel shuddered.
+
+“That boy!” said Gratian suddenly; “I can't forgive him. If you
+didn't know—he did. It was—it was—” She stopped at the sight
+of Noel's face.
+
+“I did know,” she said. “It was I. He was my husband, as much
+as yours is. If you say a word against him, I'll never speak to you
+again: I'm glad, and you would be, if you were going to have
+one. What's the difference, except that you've had luck, and
+I—haven't.” Her lips quivered again, and she was silent.
+
+Gratian stared up at her. She had a longing for George—to know what he
+thought and felt.
+
+“Do you mind if I tell George?” she said.
+
+Noel shook her head. “No! not now. Tell anybody.” And suddenly the
+misery behind the mask of her face went straight to Gratian's heart.
+She got up and put her arms round her sister.
+
+“Nollie dear, don't look like that!”
+
+Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was over, went
+to her own room.
+
+Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious. Her pride
+was deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry with herself. Why
+couldn't she have been more sympathetic? And yet, now that Noel was
+no longer there, she again condemned the dead. What he had done was
+unpardonable. Nollie was such—a child! He had committed sacrilege. If
+only George would come, and she could talk it all out with him! She, who
+had married for love and known passion, had insight enough to feel that
+Noel's love had been deep—so far as anything, of course, could be
+deep in such a child. Gratian was at the mature age of twenty. But to
+have forgotten herself like that! And this boy! If she had known him,
+that feeling might have been mitigated by the personal element, so
+important to all human judgment; but never having seen him, she thought
+of his conduct as “caddish.” And she knew that this was, and would
+be, the trouble between her and her sister. However she might disguise
+it, Noel would feel that judgment underneath.
+
+She stripped off her nurse's garb, put on an evening frock, and
+fidgeted about the room. Anything rather than go down and see her
+father again before she must. This, which had happened, was beyond words
+terrible for him; she dreaded the talk with him about Noel's health
+which would have to come. She could say nothing, of course, until Noel
+wished; and, very truthful by nature, the idea, of having to act a lie
+distressed her.
+
+She went down at last, and found them both in the drawing-room already;
+Noel in a frilly evening frock, sitting by the fire with her chin on
+her hand, while her father was reading out the war news from the evening
+paper. At sight of that cool, dainty, girlish figure brooding over the
+fire, and of her father's worn face, the tragedy of this business
+thrust itself on her with redoubled force. Poor Dad! Poor Nollie! Awful!
+Then Noel turned, and gave a little shake of her head, and her eyes
+said, almost as plainly as lips could have said it: 'Silence!'
+Gratian nodded, and came forward to the fire. And so began one of those
+calm, domestic evenings, which cover sometimes such depths of heartache.
+
+2
+
+Noel stayed up until her father went to bed, then went upstairs at
+once. She had evidently determined that they should not talk about her.
+Gratian sat on alone, waiting for her husband! It was nearly midnight
+when he came, and she did not tell him the family news till next
+morning. He received it with a curious little grunt. Gratian saw his
+eyes contract, as they might have, perhaps, looking at some bad and
+complicated wound, and then stare steadily at the ceiling. Though they
+had been married over a year, she did not yet know what he thought about
+many things, and she waited with a queer sinking at her heart. This
+skeleton in the family cupboard was a test of his affection for herself,
+a test of the quality of the man she had married. He did not speak for
+a little, and her anxiety grew. Then his hand sought hers, and gave it a
+hard squeeze.
+
+“Poor little Nollie! This is a case for Mark Tapleyism. But cheer up,
+Gracie! We'll get her through somehow.”
+
+“But father! It's impossible to keep it from him, and impossible to
+tell him! Oh George! I never knew what family pride was till now. It's
+incredible. That wretched boy!”
+
+“'De mortuis.' Come, Gracie! In the midst of death we are in life!
+Nollie was a plumb little idiot. But it's the war—the war!
+Your father must get used to it; it's a rare chance for his
+Christianity.”
+
+“Dad will be as sweet as anything—that's what makes it so
+horrible!”
+
+George Laird redoubled his squeeze. “Quite right! The old-fashioned
+father could let himself go. But need he know? We can get her away from
+London, and later on, we must manage somehow. If he does hear, we must
+make him feel that Nollie was 'doing her bit.'.rdquo;
+
+Gratian withdrew her hand. “Don't!” she said in a muffled voice.
+
+George Laird turned and looked at her. He was greatly upset himself,
+realising perhaps more truly than his young wife the violence of this
+disaster; he was quite capable, too, of feeling how deeply she was
+stirred and hurt; but, a born pragmatist, confronting life always in the
+experimental spirit, he was impatient of the: “How awful!” attitude.
+And this streak of her father's ascetic traditionalism in Gratian
+always roused in him a wish to break it up. If she had not been his wife
+he would have admitted at once that he might just as well try and alter
+the bone-formation of her head, as break down such a fundamental trait
+of character, but, being his wife, he naturally considered alteration
+as possible as putting a new staircase in a house, or throwing two rooms
+into one. And, taking her in his arms, he said: “I know; but it'll
+all come right, if we put a good face on it. Shall I talk to Nollie?”
+
+Gratian assented, from the desire to be able to say to her father:
+“George is seeing her!” and so stay the need for a discussion. But
+the whole thing seemed to her more and more a calamity which nothing
+could lessen or smooth away.
+
+George Laird had plenty of cool courage, invaluable in men who have to
+inflict as well as to alleviate pain, but he did not like his mission
+“a little bit” as he would have said; and he proposed a walk because
+he dreaded a scene. Noel accepted for the same reason. She liked George,
+and with the disinterested detachment of a sister-in-law, and the
+shrewdness of extreme youth, knew him perhaps better than did his wife.
+She was sure, at all events, of being neither condemned nor sympathised
+with.
+
+They might have gone, of course, in any direction, but chose to make for
+the City. Such deep decisions are subconscious. They sought, no doubt,
+a dry, unemotional region; or perhaps one where George, who was in
+uniform, might rest his arm from the automatic-toy game which the
+military play. They had reached Cheapside before he was conscious to
+the full of the bizarre nature of this walk with his pretty young
+sister-in-law among all the bustling, black-coated mob of money-makers.
+'I wish the devil we hadn't come out!' he thought; 'it would
+have been easier indoors, after all.'
+
+He cleared his throat, however, and squeezing her arm gently, began:
+“Gratian's told me, Nollie. The great thing is to keep your spirit
+up, and not worry.”
+
+“I suppose you couldn't cure me.”
+
+The words, in that delicate spurning voice, absolutely staggered George;
+but he said quickly:
+
+“Out of the question, Nollie; impossible! What are you thinking of?”
+
+“Daddy.”
+
+The words: “D—n Daddy!” rose to his teeth; he bit them off, and
+said: “Bless him! We shall have to see to all that. Do you really want
+to keep it from him? It must be one way or the other; no use concealing
+it, if it's to come out later.”
+
+“No.”
+
+He stole a look at her. She was gazing straight before her. How damnably
+young she was, how pretty! A lump came up in his throat.
+
+“I shouldn't do anything yet,” he said; “too early. Later on, if
+you'd like me to tell him. But that's entirely up to you, my dear;
+he need never know.”
+
+“No.”
+
+He could not follow her thought. Then she said:
+
+“Gratian condemns Cyril. Don't let her. I won't have him badly
+thought of. It was my doing. I wanted to make sure of him.”
+
+George answered stoutly:
+
+“Gracie's upset, of course, but she'll soon be all right. You
+mustn't let it come between you. The thing you've got to keep
+steadily before you is that life's a huge wide adaptable thing. Look
+at all these people! There's hardly one of them who hasn't got now,
+or hasn't had, some personal difficulty or trouble before them as big
+as yours almost; bigger perhaps. And here they are as lively as fleas.
+That's what makes the fascination of life—the jolly irony of it
+all. It would do you good to have a turn in France, and see yourself in
+proportion to the whole.” He felt her fingers suddenly slip under his
+arm, and went on with greater confidence:
+
+“Life's going to be the important thing in the future, Nollie; not
+comfort and cloistered virtue and security; but living, and pressure to
+the square inch. Do you twig? All the old hard-and-fast traditions and
+drags on life are in the melting-pot. Death's boiling their bones, and
+they'll make excellent stock for the new soup. When you prune and dock
+things, the sap flows quicker. Regrets and repinings and repressions
+are going out of fashion; we shall have no time or use for them in the
+future. You're going to make life—well, that's something to be
+thankful for, anyway. You've kept Cyril Morland alive. And—well, you
+know, we've all been born; some of us properly, and some improperly,
+and there isn't a ha'porth of difference in the value of the
+article, or the trouble of bringing it into the world. The cheerier
+you are the better your child will be, and that's all you've got to
+think about. You needn't begin to trouble at all for another couple of
+months, at least; after that, just let us know where you'd like to go,
+and I'll arrange it somehow.”
+
+She looked round at him, and under that young, clear, brooding gaze he
+had the sudden uncomfortable feeling of having spoken like a charlatan.
+Had he really touched the heart of the matter? What good were his
+generalities to this young, fastidiously nurtured girl, brought up
+to tell the truth, by a father so old-fashioned and devoted, whom
+she loved? It was George's nature, too, to despise words; and the
+conditions of his life these last two years had given him a sort of
+horror of those who act by talking. He felt inclined to say: 'Don't
+pay the slightest attention to me; it's all humbug; what will be will
+be, and there's an end of it:
+
+Then she said quietly:
+
+“Shall I tell Daddy or not?”
+
+He wanted to say: “No,” but somehow couldn't. After all, the
+straightforward course was probably the best. For this would have to be
+a lifelong concealment. It was impossible to conceal a thing for ever;
+sooner or later he would find out. But the doctor rose up in him, and he
+said:
+
+“Don't go to meet trouble, Nollie; it'll be time enough in two
+months. Then tell him, or let me.”
+
+She shook her head. “No; I will, if it is to be done.”
+
+He put his hand on hers, within his arm, and gave it a squeeze.
+
+“What shall I do till then?” she asked.
+
+“Take a week's complete rest, and then go on where you are.”
+
+Noel was silent a minute, then said: “Yes; I will.”
+
+They spoke no more on the subject, and George exerted himself to talk
+about hospital experiences, and that phenomenon, the British soldier.
+But just before they reached home he said:
+
+“Look here, Nollie! If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will
+be ashamed of you. If you put ashes on your own head, your fellow-beings
+will, assist you; for of such is their charity.”
+
+And, receiving another of those clear, brooding looks, he left her with
+the thought: 'A lonely child!'
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Noel went back to her hospital after a week's rest. George had done
+more for her than he suspected, for his saying: “Life's a huge wide
+adaptable thing!” had stuck in her mind. Did it matter what happened
+to her? And she used to look into the faces of the people she met, and
+wonder what was absorbing them. What secret griefs and joys were they
+carrying about with them? The loneliness of her own life now forced
+her to this speculation concerning others, for she was extraordinarily
+lonely; Gratian and George were back at work, her father must be kept
+at bay; with Leila she felt ill at ease, for the confession had hurt
+her pride; and family friends and acquaintances of all sorts she shunned
+like the plague. The only person she did not succeed in avoiding was
+Jimmy Fort, who came in one evening after dinner, bringing her a large
+bunch of hothouse violets. But then, he did not seem to matter—too new
+an acquaintance, too detached. Something he said made her aware that he
+had heard of her loss, and that the violets were a token of sympathy. He
+seemed awfully kind that evening, telling her “tales of Araby,” and
+saying nothing which would shock her father. It was wonderful to be
+a man and roll about the world as he had, and see all life, and queer
+places, and people—Chinamen, and Gauchos, and Boers, and Mexicans. It
+gave her a kind of thirst. And she liked to watch his brown, humorous
+face; which seemed made of dried leather. It gave her the feeling that
+life and experience were all that mattered, doing and seeing things; it
+made her own trouble seem smaller; less important. She squeezed his hand
+when she said good night: “Thank you for my violets and for coming;
+it was awfully kind of you! I wish I could have adventures!” And he
+answered: “You will, my dear fairy princess!” He said it queerly and
+very kindly.
+
+Fairy Princess! What a funny thing to call her! If he had only known!
+
+There were not many adventures to be had in those regions where she
+washed up. Not much “wide and adaptable life” to take her thoughts
+off herself. But on her journeys to and from the hospital she had more
+than one odd little experience. One morning she noticed a poorly dressed
+woman with a red and swollen face, flapping along Regent Street like a
+wounded bird, and biting strangely at her hand. Hearing her groan, Noel
+asked her what the matter was. The woman held out the hand. “Oh!”
+she moaned, “I was scrubbin' the floor and I got this great needle
+stuck through my 'and, and it's broke off, and I can't get it
+out. Oh! Oh!” She bit at the needle-end, not quite visible, but almost
+within reach of teeth, and suddenly went very white. In dismay, Noel put
+an arm round her, and turned her into a fine chemist's shop. Several
+ladies were in there, buying perfumes, and they looked with acerbity at
+this disordered dirty female entering among them. Noel went up to a man
+behind the counter. “Please give me something quick, for this poor
+woman, I think she's going to faint. She's run a needle through her
+hand, and can't get it out.” The man gave her “something quick,”
+and Noel pushed past two of the dames back to where the woman was
+sitting. She was still obstinately biting at her hand, and suddenly her
+chin flew up, and there, between her teeth, was the needle. She took
+it from them with her other hand, stuck it proudly in the front of her
+dress, and out tumbled the words: “Oh! there—I've got it!”
+
+When she had swallowed the draught, she looked round her, bewildered,
+and said:
+
+“Thank you kindly, miss!” and shuffled out. Noel paid for the
+draught, and followed; and, behind her, the shining shop seemed to
+exhale a perfumed breath of relief.
+
+“You can't go back to work,” she said to the woman. “Where do
+you live?”
+
+“'Ornsey, miss.”
+
+“You must take a 'bus and go straight home, and put your hand at
+once into weak Condy's fluid and water. It's swelling. Here's five
+shillings.”
+
+“Yes, miss; thank you, miss, I'm sure. It's very kind of you. It
+does ache cruel.”
+
+“If it's not better this afternoon, you must go to a doctor.
+Promise!”
+
+“Oh, dear, yes. 'Ere's my 'bus. Thank you kindly, miss.”
+
+Noel saw her borne away, still sucking at her dirty swollen hand. She
+walked on in a glow of love for the poor woman, and hate for the ladies
+in the chemist's shop, and forgot her own trouble till she had almost
+reached the hospital.
+
+Another November day, a Saturday, leaving early, she walked to Hyde
+Park. The plane-trees were just at the height of their spotted beauty.
+Few—very few-yellow leaves still hung; and the slender pretty trees
+seemed rejoicing in their freedom from summer foliage. All their
+delicate boughs and twigs were shaking and dancing in the wind; and
+their rain-washed leopard-like bodies had a lithe un-English gaiety.
+Noel passed down their line, and seated herself on a bench. Close by, an
+artist was painting. His easel was only some three yards away from her,
+and she could see the picture; a vista of the Park Lane houses through,
+the gay plane-tree screen. He was a tall man, about forty, evidently
+foreign, with a thin, long, oval, beardless face, high brow, large grey
+eyes which looked as if he suffered from headaches and lived much within
+himself. He cast many glances at her, and, pursuant of her new interest
+in “life” she watched him discreetly; a little startled however,
+when, taking off his broad-brimmed squash hat, he said in a broken
+accent:
+
+“Forgive me the liberty I take, mademoiselle, but would you so very
+kindly allow me to make a sketch of you sitting there? I work very
+quick. I beg you will let me. I am Belgian, and have no manners, you
+see.” And he smiled.
+
+“If you like,” said Noel.
+
+“I thank you very much:”
+
+He shifted his easel, and began to draw. She felt flattered, and a
+little fluttered. He was so pale, and had a curious, half-fed look,
+which moved her.
+
+“Have you been long in England?” she said presently.
+
+“Ever since the first months of the war.”
+
+“Do you like it?”
+
+“I was very homesick at first. But I live in my pictures; there are
+wonderful things in London.”
+
+“Why did you want to sketch me?”
+
+The painter smiled again. “Mademoiselle, youth is so mysterious. Those
+young trees I have been painting mean so much more than the old big
+trees. Your eyes are seeing things that have not yet happened. There is
+Fate in them, and a look of defending us others from seeing it. We
+have not such faces in my country; we are simpler; we do not defend our
+expressions. The English are very mysterious. We are like children to
+them. Yet in some ways you are like children to us. You are not people
+of the world at all. You English have been good to us, but you do not
+like us.”
+
+“And I suppose you do not like us, either?”
+
+He smiled again, and she noticed how white his teeth were.
+
+“Well, not very much. The English do things from duty, but their
+hearts they keep to themselves. And their Art—well, that is really
+amusing!”
+
+“I don't know much about Art,” Noel murmured.
+
+“It is the world to me,” said the painter, and was silent, drawing
+with increased pace and passion.
+
+“It is so difficult to get subjects,” he remarked abruptly. “I
+cannot afford to pay models, and they are not fond of me painting out of
+doors. If I had always a subject like you! You—you have a grief, have
+you not?”
+
+At that startling little question, Noel looked up, frowning.
+
+“Everybody has, now.”
+
+The painter grasped his chin; his eyes had suddenly become tragical.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “everybody. Tragedy is daily bread. I have lost my
+family; they are in Belgium. How they live I do not know.”
+
+“I'm sorry; very sorry, too, if we aren't nice to you, here. We
+ought to be.”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. “What would you have? We are different.
+That is unpardonable. An artist is always lonely, too; he has a skin
+fewer than other people, and he sees things that they do not. People do
+not like you to be different. If ever in your life you act differently
+from others, you will find it so, mademoiselle.”
+
+Noel felt herself flushing. Was he reading her secret? His eyes had such
+a peculiar, secondsighted look.
+
+“Have you nearly finished?” she asked.
+
+“No, mademoiselle; I could go on for hours; but I do not wish to keep
+you. It is cold for you, sitting there.”
+
+Noel got up. “May I look?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+She did not quite recognise herself—who does?—but she saw a face
+which affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something which was, and
+yet was not, in front of her.
+
+“My name is Lavendie,” the painter said; “my wife and I live
+here,” and he gave her a card.
+
+Noel could not help answering: “My name is Noel Pierson; I live with
+my father; here's the address”—she found her case, and fished out
+a card. “My father is a clergyman; would you care to come and see him?
+He loves music and painting.”
+
+“It would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be allowed to paint
+you. Alas! I have no studio.”
+
+Noel drew back. “I'm afraid that I work in a hospital all day,
+and—and I don't want to be painted, thank you. But, Daddy would like
+to meet you, I'm sure.”
+
+The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.
+
+“Of course I can see that you're a very fine painter,” she said
+quickly; “only—only—I don't want to, you see. Perhaps you'd
+like to paint Daddy; he's got a most interesting face.”
+
+The painter smiled. “He is your father, mademoiselle. May I ask you
+one question? Why do you not want to be painted?”
+
+“Because—because I don't, I'm afraid.” She held out her hand.
+The painter bowed over it. “Au revoir, mademoiselle.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Noel; “it was awfully interesting.” And she
+walked away. The sky had become full of clouds round the westerly sun;
+and the foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree branches against
+that French-grey, golden-edged mass, was very lovely. Beauty, and the
+troubles of others, soothed her. She felt sorry for the painter, but his
+eyes saw too much! And his words: “If ever you act differently from
+others,” made her feel him uncanny. Was it true that people always
+disliked and condemned those who acted differently? If her old
+school-fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat her?
+In her father's study hung a little reproduction of a tiny picture in
+the Louvre, a “Rape of Europa,” by an unknown painter—a humorous
+delicate thing, of an enraptured; fair-haired girl mounted on a prancing
+white bull, crossing a shallow stream, while on the bank all her white
+girl-companions were gathered, turning half-sour, half-envious faces
+away from that too-fearful spectacle, while one of them tried with timid
+desperation to mount astride of a sitting cow, and follow. The face of
+the girl on the bull had once been compared by someone with her own.
+She thought of this picture now, and saw her school fellows-a throng
+of shocked and wondering girls. Suppose one of them had been in her
+position! 'Should I have been turning my face away, like the rest?
+I wouldn't no, I wouldn't,' she thought; 'I should have
+understood!' But she knew there was a kind of false emphasis in
+her thought. Instinctively she felt the painter right. One who acted
+differently from others, was lost.
+
+She told her father of the encounter, adding:
+
+“I expect he'll come, Daddy.”
+
+Pierson answered dreamily: “Poor fellow, I shall be glad to see him if
+he does.”
+
+“And you'll sit to him, won't you?”
+
+“My dear—I?”
+
+“He's lonely, you know, and people aren't nice to him. Isn't
+it hateful that people should hurt others, because they're foreign or
+different?”
+
+She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on: “I know you
+think people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren't, of course.”
+
+“That's not exactly charitable, Nollie.”
+
+“You know they're not. I think sin often just means doing things
+differently. It's not real sin when it only hurts yourself; but that
+doesn't prevent people condemning you, does it?”
+
+“I don't know what you mean, Nollie.”
+
+Noel bit her lips, and murmured: “Are you sure we're really
+Christians, Daddy?”
+
+The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson took
+refuge in an attempt at wit. “I should like notice of that question,
+Nollie, as they say in Parliament.”
+
+“That means you don't.”
+
+Pierson flushed. “We're fallible enough; but, don't get such ideas
+into your head, my child. There's a lot of rebellious talk and writing
+in these days....”
+
+Noel clasped her hands behind her head. “I think,” she said, looking
+straight before her, and speaking to the air, “that Christianity is
+what you do, not what you think or say. And I don't believe people
+can be Christians when they act like others—I mean, when they join
+together to judge and hurt people.”
+
+Pierson rose and paced the room. “You have not seen enough of life to
+talk like that,” he said. But Noel went on:
+
+“One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of
+conscientious objectors—it was horrible. Why do they treat them like
+that, just because they disagree? Captain Fort says it's fear which
+makes people bullies. But how can it be fear when they're hundreds to
+one? He says man has domesticated his animals but has never succeeded in
+domesticating himself. Man must be a wild beast, you know, or the world
+couldn't be so awfully brutal. I don't see much difference between
+being brutal for good reasons, and being brutal for bad ones.”
+
+Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile. There was something
+fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom he had
+watched grow up from a tiny thing. Out of the mouths of babes and
+sucklings—sometimes! But then the young generation was always
+something of a sealed book to him; his sensitive shyness, and, still
+more, his cloth, placed a sort of invisible barrier between him and the
+hearts of others, especially the young. There were so many things of
+which he was compelled to disapprove, or which at least he couldn't
+discuss. And they knew it too well. Until these last few months he had
+never realised that his own daughters had remained as undiscovered by
+him as the interior of Brazil. And now that he perceived this, he was
+bewildered, yet could not imagine how to get on terms with them.
+
+And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting nothing of
+the hard fact which was altering her—vaguely jealous, anxious, pained.
+And when she had gone up to bed, he roamed up and down the room a long
+time, thinking. He longed for a friend to confide in, and consult; but
+he knew no one. He shrank from them all, as too downright, bluff, and
+active; too worldly and unaesthetic; or too stiff and narrow. Amongst
+the younger men in his profession he was often aware of faces which
+attracted him, but one could not confide deep personal questions to men
+half one's age. But of his own generation, or his elders, he knew not
+one to whom he could have gone.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Leila was deep in her new draught of life. When she fell in love it had
+always been over head and ears, and so far her passion had always burnt
+itself out before that of her partner. This had been, of course, a great
+advantage to her. Not that Leila had ever expected her passions to burn
+themselves out. When she fell in love she had always thought it was for
+always. This time she was sure it was, surer than she had ever been.
+Jimmy Fort seemed to her the man she had been looking for all her life.
+He was not so good-looking as either Farie or Lynch, but beside him
+these others seemed to her now almost ridiculous. Indeed they did not
+figure at all, they shrank, they withered, they were husks, together
+with the others for whom she had known passing weaknesses. There was
+only one man in the world for her now, and would be for evermore. She
+did not idealise him either, it was more serious than that; she was
+thrilled by his voice, and his touch, she dreamed of him, longed for him
+when he was not with her. She worried, too, for she was perfectly
+aware that he was not half as fond of her as she was of him. Such a new
+experience puzzled her, kept her instincts painfully on the alert. It
+was perhaps just this uncertainty about his affection which made him
+seem more precious than any of the others. But there was ever the other
+reason, too-consciousness that Time was after her, and this her last
+grand passion. She watched him as a mother-cat watches her kitten,
+without seeming to, of course, for she had much experience. She had
+begun to have a curious secret jealousy of Noel though why she could not
+have said. It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or sprang from
+that vague resemblance between her and one who outrivalled even what she
+had been as a girl; or from the occasional allusions Fort made to
+what he called “that little fairy princess.” Something intangible,
+instinctive, gave her that jealousy. Until the death of her young
+cousin's lover she had felt safe, for she knew that Jimmy Fort would
+not hanker after another man's property; had he not proved that in
+old days, with herself, by running away from her? And she had often
+regretted having told him of Cyril Morland's death. One day she
+determined to repair that error. It was at the Zoo, where they often
+went on Sunday afternoons. They were standing before a creature called
+the meercat, which reminded them both of old days on the veldt. Without
+turning her head she said, as if to the little animal: “Do you know
+that your fairy princess, as you call her, is going to have what is
+known as a war-baby?”
+
+The sound of his “What!” gave her quite a stab. It was so utterly
+horrified.
+
+She said stubbornly: “She came and told me all about it. The boy is
+dead, as you know. Yes, terrible, isn't it?” And she looked at him.
+His face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity.
+
+“That lovely child! But it's impossible!”
+
+“The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy.”
+
+“I refuse to believe it.”
+
+“I tell you it is so,” she said angrily.
+
+“What a ghastly shame!”
+
+“It was her own doing; she said so, herself.”
+
+“And her father—the padre! My God!”
+
+Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt. She had thought it
+would disgust him, cure him of any little tendency to romanticise that
+child; and now she perceived that it was rousing in him, instead, a
+dangerous compassion. She could have bitten her tongue out for having
+spoken. When he got on the high horse of some championship, he was not
+to be trusted, she had found that out; was even finding it out bitterly
+in her own relations with him, constantly aware that half her hold on
+him, at least, lay in his sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her
+lurking dread of being flung on the beach, by age. Only ten minutes
+ago he had uttered a tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed
+unhappy. And now she had roused that dangerous side of him in favour of
+Noel. What an idiot she had been!
+
+“Don't look like that, Jimmy. I'm sorry I told you.”
+
+His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he muttered:
+
+“Well, I do think that's the limit. What's to be done for her?”
+
+Leila answered softly: “Nothing, I'm afraid. Do you love me?” And
+she pressed his hand hard.
+
+“Of course.”
+
+But Leila thought: 'If I were that meercat he'd have taken more
+notice of my paw!' Her heart began suddenly to ache, and she walked on
+to the next cage with head up, and her mouth hard set.
+
+Jimmy Fort walked away from Camelot Mansions that evening in extreme
+discomfort of mind. Leila had been so queer that he had taken leave
+immediately after supper. She had refused to talk about Noel; had even
+seemed angry when he had tried to. How extraordinary some women were!
+Did they think that a man could hear of a thing like that about such
+a dainty young creature without being upset! It was the most perfectly
+damnable news! What on earth would she do—poor little fairy princess!
+Down had come her house of cards with a vengeance! The whole of her
+life—the whole of her life! With her bringing-up and her father and
+all—it seemed inconceivable that she could ever survive it. And Leila
+had been almost callous about the monstrous business. Women were hard to
+each other! Bad enough, these things, when it was a simple working girl,
+but this dainty, sheltered, beautiful child! No, it was altogether
+too strong—too painful! And following an impulse which he could not
+resist, he made his way to the old Square. But having reached the house,
+he nearly went away again. While he stood hesitating with his hand on
+the bell, a girl and a soldier passed, appearing as if by magic out
+of the moonlit November mist, blurred and solid shapes embraced, then
+vanished into it again, leaving the sound of footsteps. Fort jerked the
+bell. He was shown into what seemed, to one coming out of that mist, to
+be a brilliant, crowded room, though in truth there were but two lamps
+and five people in it. They were sitting round the fire, talking, and
+paused when he came in. When he had shaken hands with Pierson and
+been introduced to “my daughter Gratian” and a man in khaki “my
+son-in-law George Laird,” to a tall thin-faced, foreign-looking man in
+a black stock and seemingly no collar, he went up to Noel, who had risen
+from a chair before the fire. 'No!' he thought, 'I've dreamed
+it, or Leila has lied!' She was so perfectly the self-possessed,
+dainty maiden he remembered. Even the feel of her hand was the same-warm
+and confident; and sinking into a chair, he said: “Please go on, and
+let me chip in.”
+
+“We were quarrelling about the Universe, Captain Fort,” said the man
+in khaki; “delighted to have your help. I was just saying that
+this particular world has no particular importance, no more than a
+newspaper-seller would accord to it if it were completely destroyed
+tomorrow—''.rrible catastrophe, total destruction of the
+world—six o'clock edition-pyper!' I say that it will become again
+the nebula out of which it was formed, and by friction with other
+nebula re-form into a fresh shape and so on ad infinitum—but I can't
+explain why. My wife wonders if it exists at all except in the human
+mind—but she can't explain what the human mind is. My father-in-law
+thinks that it is God's hobby—but he can't explain who or what God
+is. Nollie is silent. And Monsieur Lavendie hasn't yet told us what he
+thinks. What do you think, monsieur?” The thin-faced, big-eyed man put
+up his hand to his high, veined brow as if he had a headache, reddened,
+and began to speak in French, which Fort followed with difficulty.
+
+“For me the Universe is a limitless artist, monsieur, who from
+all time and to all time is ever expressing himself in differing
+forms—always trying to make a masterpiece, and generally failing. For
+me this world, and all the worlds, are like ourselves, and the flowers
+and trees—little separate works of art, more or less perfect, whose
+little lives run their course, and are spilled or powdered back into
+this Creative Artist, whence issue ever fresh attempts at art. I agree
+with Monsieur Laird, if I understand him right; but I agree also with
+Madame Laird, if I understand her. You see, I think mind and matter are
+one, or perhaps there is no such thing as either mind or matter,
+only growth and decay and growth again, for ever and ever; but
+always conscious growth—an artist expressing himself in millions of
+ever-changing forms; decay and death as we call them, being but rest and
+sleep, the ebbing of the tide, which must ever come between two rising
+tides, or the night which comes between two days. But the next day is
+never the same as the day before, nor the tide as the last tide; so the
+little shapes of the world and of ourselves, these works of art by the
+Eternal Artist, are never renewed in the same form, are never twice
+alike, but always fresh-fresh worlds, fresh individuals, fresh flowers,
+fresh everything. I do not see anything depressing in that. To me it
+would be depressing to think that I would go on living after death, or
+live again in a new body, myself yet not myself. How stale that would
+be! When I finish a picture it is inconceivable to me that this
+picture should ever become another picture, or that one can divide the
+expression from the mind-stuff it has expressed. The Great Artist who is
+the whole of Everything, is ever in fresh effort to achieve new things.
+He is as a fountain who throws up new drops, no two ever alike, which
+fall back into the water, flow into the pipe, and so are thrown up again
+in fresh-shaped drops. But I cannot explain why there should be this
+Eternal Energy, ever expressing itself in fresh individual shapes, this
+Eternal Working Artist, instead of nothing at all—just empty dark for
+always; except indeed that it must be one thing or the other, either all
+or nothing; and it happens to be this and not that, the all and not the
+nothing.”
+
+He stopped speaking, and his big eyes, which had fixed themselves on
+Fort's face, seemed to the latter not to be seeing him at all, but
+to rest on something beyond. The man in khaki, who had risen and was
+standing with his hand on his wife's shoulder, said:
+
+“Bravo, monsieur; Jolly well put from the artist's point of view.
+The idea is pretty, anyway; but is there any need for an idea at all?
+Things are; and we have just to take them.” Fort had the impression
+of something dark and writhing; the thin black form of his host, who had
+risen and come close to the fire.
+
+“I cannot admit,” he was saying, “the identity of the Creator with
+the created. God exists outside ourselves. Nor can I admit that there
+is no defnite purpose and fulfilment. All is shaped to His great ends. I
+think we are too given to spiritual pride. The world has lost reverence;
+I regret it, I bitterly regret it.”
+
+“I rejoice at it,” said the man in khaki. “Now, Captain Fort, your
+turn to bat!”
+
+Fort, who had been looking at Noel, gave himself a shake, and said: “I
+think what monsieur calls expression, I call fighting. I suspect the
+Universe of being simply a long fight, a sum of conquests and defeats.
+Conquests leading to defeats, defeats to conquests. I want to win while
+I'm alive, and because I want to win, I want to live on after death.
+Death is a defeat. I don't want to admit it. While I have that
+instinct, I don't think I shall really die; when I lose it, I think I
+shall.” He was conscious of Noel's face turning towards him, but had
+the feeling that she wasn't really listening. “I suspect that what
+we call spirit is just the fighting instinct; that what we call matter
+is the mood of lying down. Whether, as Mr. Pierson says, God is outside
+us, or, as monsieur thinks, we are all part of God, I don't know,
+I'm sure.”
+
+“Ah! There we are!” said the man in khaki. “We all speak after our
+temperaments, and none of us know. The religions of the world are just
+the poetic expressions of certain strongly marked temperaments. Monsieur
+was a poet just now, and his is the only temperament which has never yet
+been rammed down the world's throat in the form of religion. Go out
+and proclaim your views from the housetops, monsieur, and see what
+happens.”
+
+The painter shook his head with a smile which seemed to Fort very bright
+on the surface, and very sad underneath.
+
+“Non, monsieur,” he said; “the artist does not wish to impose his
+temperament. Difference of temperament is the very essence of his joy,
+and his belief in life. Without difference there would be no life for
+him. 'Tout casse, tout lasse,' but change goes on for ever: We
+artists reverence change, monsieur; we reverence the newness of each
+morning, of each night, of each person, of each expression of energy.
+Nothing is final for us; we are eager for all and always for more. We
+are in love, you see, even with-death.”
+
+There was a silence; then Fort heard Pierson murmur:
+
+“That is beautiful, monsieur; but oh! how wrong!” “And what do
+you think, Nollie?” said the man in khaki suddenly. The girl had been
+sitting very still in her low chair, with her hands crossed in her lap,
+her eyes on the fire, and the lamplight shining down on her fair hair;
+she looked up, startled, and her eyes met Fort's.
+
+“I don't know; I wasn't listening.” Something moved in him, a
+kind of burning pity, a rage of protection. He said quickly:
+
+“These are times of action. Philosophy seems to mean nothing nowadays.
+The one thing is to hate tyranny and cruelty, and protect everything
+that's weak and lonely. It's all that's left to make life worth
+living, when all the packs of all the world are out for blood.”
+
+Noel was listening now, and he went on fervently: “Why! Even we
+who started out to fight this Prussian pack, have caught the pack
+feeling—so that it's hunting all over the country, on every sort of
+scent. It's a most infectious thing.”
+
+“I cannot see that we are being infected, Captain Fort.”
+
+“I'm afraid we are, Mr. Pierson. The great majority of people are
+always inclined to run with the hounds; the pressure's great just now;
+the pack spirit's in the air.”
+
+Pierson shook his head. “No, I cannot see it,” he repeated; “it
+seems to me that we are all more brotherly, and more tolerant.”
+
+“Ah! monsieur le cure,” Fort heard the painter say very gently,
+“it is difficult for a good man to see the evil round him. There are
+those whom the world's march leaves apart, and reality cannot touch.
+They walk with God, and the bestialities of us animals are fantastic to
+them. The spirit of the pack, as monsieur says, is in the air. I see
+all human nature now, running with gaping mouths and red tongues lolling
+out, their breath and their cries spouting thick before them. On whom
+they will fall next—one never knows; the innocent with the guilty.
+Perhaps if you were to see some one dear to you devoured before your
+eyes, monsieur le cure, you would feel it too; and yet I do not know.”
+
+Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expression at that
+moment was very strange, searching, half frightened. No! Leila had not
+lied, and he had not dreamed! That thing was true!
+
+When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the Square, he
+could see nothing but her face and form before him in the moonlight: its
+soft outline, fair colouring, slender delicacy, and the brooding of the
+big grey eyes. He had already crossed New Oxford Street and was some
+way down towards the Strand, when a voice behind him murmured: “Ah!
+c'est vous, monsieur!” and the painter loomed up at his elbow.
+
+“Are you going my way?” said Fort. “I go slowly, I'm afraid.”
+
+“The slower the better, monsieur. London is so beautiful in the dark.
+It is the despair of the painter—these moonlit nights. There
+are moments when one feels that reality does not exist. All is in
+dreams—like the face of that young lady.”
+
+Fort stared sharply round at him. “Oh! She strikes you like that, does
+she?”
+
+“Ah! What a charming figure! What an atmosphere of the past and future
+round her! And she will not let me paint her! Well, perhaps only Mathieu
+Maris.” He raised his broad Bohemian hat, and ran his fingers through
+his hair.
+
+“Yes,” said Fort, “she'd make a wonderful picture. I'm not a
+judge of Art, but I can see that.”
+
+The painter smiled, and went on in his rapid French:
+
+“She has youth and age all at once—that is rare. Her father is an
+interesting man, too; I am trying to paint him; he is very difficult. He
+sits lost in some kind of vacancy of his own; a man whose soul has gone
+before him somewhere, like that of his Church, escaped from this age of
+machines, leaving its body behind—is it not? He is so kind; a saint,
+I think. The other clergymen I see passing in the street are not at all
+like him; they look buttoned-up and busy, with faces of men who might be
+schoolmasters or lawyers, or even soldiers—men of this world. Do you
+know this, monsieur—it is ironical, but it is true, I think a man
+cannot be a successful priest unless he is a man of this world. I do not
+see any with that look of Monsieur Pierson, a little tortured within,
+and not quite present. He is half an artist, really a lover of music,
+that man. I am painting him at the piano; when he is playing his face is
+alive, but even then, so far away. To me, monsieur, he is exactly like a
+beautiful church which knows it is being deserted. I find him pathetic.
+Je suis socialiste, but I have always an aesthetic admiration for that
+old Church, which held its children by simple emotion. The times have
+changed; it can no longer hold them so; it stands in the dusk, with its
+spire to a heaven which exists no more, its bells, still beautiful but
+out of tune with the music of the streets. It is something of that which
+I wish to get into my picture of Monsieur Pierson; and sapristi! it
+is difficult!” Fort grunted assent. So far as he could make out the
+painter's words, it seemed to him a large order.
+
+“To do it, you see,” went on the painter, “one should have the
+proper background—these currents of modern life and modern types,
+passing him and leaving him untouched. There is no illusion, and no
+dreaming, in modern life. Look at this street. La, la!”
+
+In the darkened Strand, hundreds of khaki-clad figures and girls were
+streaming by, and all their voices had a hard, half-jovial vulgarity.
+The motor-cabs and buses pushed along remorselessly; newspaper-sellers
+muttered their ceaseless invitations. Again the painter made his gesture
+of despair: “How am I to get into my picture this modern life, which
+washes round him as round that church, there, standing in the middle of
+the street? See how the currents sweep round it, as if to wash it away;
+yet it stands, seeming not to see them. If I were a phantasist, it would
+be easy enough: but to be a phantasist is too simple for me—those
+romantic gentlemen bring what they like from anywhere, to serve their
+ends. Moi, je suis realiste. And so, monsieur, I have invented an idea.
+I am painting over his head while he sits there at the piano a picture
+hanging on the wall—of one of these young town girls who have no
+mysteriousness at all, no youth; nothing but a cheap knowledge and
+defiance, and good humour. He is looking up at it, but he does not see
+it. I will make the face of that girl the face of modern life, and
+he shall sit staring at it, seeing nothing. What do you think of my
+idea?”
+
+But Fort had begun to feel something of the revolt which the man of
+action so soon experiences when he listens to an artist talking.
+
+“It sounds all right,” he said abruptly; “all the same, monsieur,
+all my sympathy is with modern life. Take these young girls, and these
+Tommies. For all their feather-pated vulgarity and they are damned
+vulgar, I must say—they're marvellous people; they do take the rough
+with the smooth; they're all 'doing their bit,' you know, and
+facing this particularly beastly world. Aesthetically, I daresay,
+they're deplorable, but can you say that on the whole their philosophy
+isn't an advance on anything we've had up till now? They worship
+nothing, it's true; but they keep their ends up marvellously.”
+
+The painter, who seemed to feel the wind blowing cold on his ideas,
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I am not concerned with that, monsieur; I set down what I see; better
+or worse, I do not know. But look at this!” And he pointed down the
+darkened and moonlit street. It was all jewelled and enamelled with
+little spots and splashes of subdued red and green-blue light, and the
+downward orange glow of the high lamps—like an enchanted dream-street
+peopled by countless moving shapes, which only came to earth-reality
+when seen close to. The painter drew his breath in with a hiss.
+
+“Ah!” he said, “what beauty! And they don't see it—not one in
+a thousand! Pity, isn't it? Beauty is the holy thing!”
+
+Fort, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders. “Every man to his
+vision!” he said. “My leg's beginning to bother me; I'm afraid
+I must take a cab. Here's my address; any time you like to come. I'm
+often in about seven. I can't take you anywhere, I suppose?”
+
+“A thousand thanks, monsieur; but I go north. I loved your words about
+the pack. I often wake at night and hear the howling of all the packs
+of the world. Those who are by nature gentle nowadays feel they are
+strangers in a far land. Good night, monsieur!”
+
+He took off his queer hat, bowed low, and crossed out into the Strand,
+like one who had come in a dream, and faded out with the waking. Fort
+hailed a cab, and went home, still seeing Noel's face. There was
+one, if you liked, waiting to be thrown to the wolves, waiting for the
+world's pack to begin howling round her—that lovely child; and the
+first, the loudest of all the pack, perhaps, must be her own father, the
+lean, dark figure with the gentle face, and the burnt bright eyes. What
+a ghastly business! His dreams that night were not such as Leila would
+have approved.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+When in the cupboard there is a real and very bony skeleton, carefully
+kept from the sight of a single member of the family, the position of
+that member is liable to become lonely. But Pierson, who had been lonely
+fifteen years, did not feel it so much, perhaps, as most men would have.
+In his dreamy nature there was a curious self-sufficiency, which only
+violent shocks disturbed, and he went on with his routine of duty, which
+had become for him as set as the pavements he trod on his way to and
+from it. It was not exactly true, as the painter had said, that this
+routine did not bring him into touch with life. After all he saw people
+when they were born, when they married, when they died. He helped them
+when they wanted money, and when they were ill; he told their children
+Bible stories on Sunday afternoons; he served those who were in need
+with soup and bread from his soup kitchen. He never spared himself in
+any way, and his ears were always at the service of their woes. And yet
+he did not understand them, and they knew that. It was as though he, or
+they, were colour-blind. The values were all different. He was seeing
+one set of objects, they another.
+
+One street of his parish touched a main line of thoroughfare, and formed
+a little part of the new hunting-grounds of women, who, chased forth
+from their usual haunts by the Authorities under pressure of the
+country's danger, now pursued their calling in the dark. This
+particular evil had always been a sort of nightmare to Pierson. The
+starvation which ruled his own existence inclined him to a particularly
+severe view and severity was not his strong point. In consequence there
+was ever within him a sort of very personal and poignant struggle going
+on beneath that seeming attitude of rigid disapproval. He joined the
+hunters, as it were, because he was afraid-not, of course, of his own
+instincts, for he was fastidious, a gentleman, and a priest, but of
+being lenient to a sin, to something which God abhorred: He was, as it
+were, bound to take a professional view of this particular offence. When
+in his walks abroad he passed one of these women, he would unconsciously
+purse his lips, and frown. The darkness of the streets seemed to lend
+them such power, such unholy sovereignty over the night. They were such
+a danger to the soldiers, too; and in turn, the soldiers were such a
+danger to the lambs of his flock. Domestic disasters in his parish came
+to his ears from time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were
+turned by soldiers, so that they were about to become mothers. They
+seemed to him pitiful indeed; but he could not forgive them for their
+giddiness, for putting temptation in the way of brave young men,
+fighting, or about to fight. The glamour which surrounded soldiers was
+not excuse enough. When the babies were born, and came to his notice,
+he consulted a Committee he had formed, of three married and two maiden
+ladies, who visited the mothers, and if necessary took the babies into
+a creche; for those babies had a new value to the country, and were
+not—poor little things!—to be held responsible for their mothers'
+faults. He himself saw little of the young mothers; shy of them,
+secretly afraid, perhaps, of not being censorious enough. But once in a
+way Life set him face to face with one.
+
+On New Year's Eve he was sitting in his study after tea, at that hour
+which he tried to keep for his parishioners, when a Mrs. Mitchett was
+announced, a small bookseller's wife, whom he knew for an occasional
+Communicant. She came in, accompanied by a young dark-eyed girl in a
+loose mouse-coloured coat. At his invitation they sat down in front of
+the long bookcase on the two green leather chairs which had grown worn
+in the service of the parish; and, screwed round in his chair at the
+bureau, with his long musician's fingers pressed together, he looked
+at them and waited. The woman had taken out her handkerchief, and was
+wiping her eyes; but the girl sat quiet, as the mouse she somewhat
+resembled in that coat.
+
+“Yes, Mrs. Mitchett?” He said gently, at last.
+
+The woman put away her handkerchief, sniffed resolutely, and began:
+
+“It's 'Ilda, sir. Such a thing Mitchett and me never could 'ave
+expected, comin' on us so sudden. I thought it best to bring 'er
+round, poor girl. Of course, it's all the war. I've warned 'er
+a dozen times; but there it is, comin' next month, and the man in
+France.” Pierson instinctively averted his gaze from the girl, who
+had not moved her eyes from his face, which she scanned with a seeming
+absence of interest, as if she had long given up thinking over her lot,
+and left it now to others.
+
+“That is sad,” he said; “very, very sad.”
+
+“Yes,” murmured Mrs. Mitchett; “that's what I tell 'Ilda.”
+
+The girl's glance, lowered for a second, resumed its impersonal
+scrutiny of Pierson's face.
+
+“What is the man's name and regiment? Perhaps we can get leave for
+him to come home and marry Hilda at once.”
+
+Mrs. Mitchett sniffed. “She won't give it, sir. Now, 'Ilda, give
+it to Mr. Pierson.” And her voice had a real note of entreaty. The
+girl shook her head. Mrs. Mitchett murmured dolefully: “That's 'ow
+she is, sir; not a word will she say. And as I tell her, we can only
+think there must 'ave been more than one. And that does put us to
+shame so!”
+
+But still the girl made no sign.
+
+“You speak to her, sir; I'm really at my wit's end.”
+
+“Why won't you tell us?” said Pierson. “The man will want to do
+the right thing, 'I'm sure.”
+
+The girl shook her head, and spoke for the first time.
+
+“I don't know his name.”
+
+Mrs. Mitchett's face twitched.
+
+“Oh, dear!” she said: “Think of that! She's never said as much
+to us.”
+
+“Not know his name?” Pierson murmured. “But how—how could
+you—” he stopped, but his face had darkened. “Surely you would
+never have done such a thing without affection? Come, tell me!”
+
+“I don't know it,” the girl repeated.
+
+“It's these Parks,” said Mrs. Mitchett, from behind her
+handkerchief. “And to think that this'll be our first grandchild and
+all! 'Ilda is difficult; as quiet, as quiet; but that stubborn—”
+
+Pierson looked at the girl, who seemed, if anything, less interested
+than ever. This impenetrability and something mulish in her attitude
+annoyed him. “I can't think,” he said, “how you could so have
+forgotten yourself. It's truly grievous.”
+
+Mrs. Mitchett murmured: “Yes, sir; the girls gets it into their heads
+that there's going to be no young men for them.”
+
+“That's right,” said the girl sullenly.
+
+Pierson's lips grew tighter. “Well, what can I do for you, Mrs.
+Mitchett?” he said. “Does your daughter come to church?”
+
+Mrs. Mitchett shook her head mournfully. “Never since she had her
+byke.”
+
+Pierson rose from his chair. The old story! Control and discipline
+undermined, and these bitter apples the result!
+
+“Well,” he said, “if you need our creche, you have only to come
+to me,” and he turned to the girl. “And you—won't you let this
+dreadful experience move your heart? My dear girl, we must all master
+ourselves, our passions, and our foolish wilfulness, especially in
+these times when our country needs us strong, and self-disciplined, not
+thinking of ourselves. I'm sure you're a good girl at heart.”
+
+The girl's dark eyes, unmoved from his face, roused in him a spasm of
+nervous irritation. “Your soul is in great danger, and you're very
+unhappy, I can see. Turn to God for help, and in His mercy everything
+will be made so different for you—so very different! Come!”
+
+The girl said with a sort of surprising quietness: “I don't want the
+baby!”
+
+The remark staggered him, almost as if she had uttered a hideous oath.
+
+“'Ilda was in munitions,” said her mother in an explanatory voice:
+“earnin' a matter of four pound a week. Oh! dear, it is a waste
+an' all!” A queer, rather terrible little smile curled Pierson's
+lips.
+
+“A judgment!” he said. “Good evening, Mrs. Mitchett. Good evening,
+Hilda. If you want me when the time comes, send for me.”
+
+They stood up; he shook hands with them; and was suddenly aware that the
+door was open, and Noel standing there. He had heard no sound; and how
+long she had been there he could not tell. There was a singular fixity
+in her face and attitude. She was staring at the girl, who, as she
+passed, lifted her face, so that the dark eyes and the grey eyes met.
+The door was shut, and Noel stood there alone with him.
+
+“Aren't you early, my child?” said Pierson. “You came in very
+quietly.”
+
+“Yes; I heard.”
+
+A slight shock went through him at the tone of her voice; her face had
+that possessed look which he always dreaded. “What did you hear?” he
+said.
+
+“I heard you say: 'A judgment!' You'll say the same to me,
+won't you? Only, I do want my baby.”
+
+She was standing with her back to the door, over which a dark curtain
+hung; her face looked young and small against its stuff, her eyes very
+large. With one hand she plucked at her blouse, just over her heart.
+
+Pierson stared at her, and gripped the back of the chair he had been
+sitting in. A lifetime of repression served him in the half-realised
+horror of that moment. He stammered out the single word—
+
+“Nollie!”
+
+“It's quite true,” she said, turned round, and went out.
+
+Pierson had a sort of vertigo; if he had moved, he must have fallen
+down. Nollie! He slid round and sank into his chair, and by some
+horrible cruel fiction of his nerves, he seemed to feel Noel on his
+knee, as, when a little girl, she had been wont to sit, with her fair
+hair fluffing against his cheek. He seemed to feel that hair tickling
+his skin; it used to be the greatest comfort he had known since her
+mother died. At that moment his pride shrivelled like a flower held to a
+flame; all that abundant secret pride of a father who loves and admires,
+who worships still a dead wife in the children she has left him; who,
+humble by nature, yet never knows how proud he is till the bitter thing
+happens; all the long pride of the priest who, by dint of exhortation
+and remonstrance has coated himself in a superiority he hardly
+suspects—all this pride shrivelled in him. Then something writhed and
+cried within, as a tortured beast cries, at loss to know why it is being
+tortured. How many times has not a man used those words: “My God! My
+God! Why hast Thou forsaken me!” He sprang up and tried to pace his
+way out of this cage of confusion: His thoughts and feelings made the
+strangest medley, spiritual and worldly—Social ostracism—her soul in
+peril—a trial sent by God! The future! Imagination failed him. He went
+to his little piano, opened it, closed it again; took his hat, and stole
+out. He walked fast, without knowing where. It was very cold—a clear,
+bitter evening. Silent rapid motion in the frosty air was some relief.
+As Noel had fled from him, having uttered her news, so did he fly from
+her. The afflicted walk fast. He was soon down by the river, and turned
+West along its wall. The moon was up, bright and nearly full, and the
+steel-like shimmer of its light burnished the ebbing water. A cruel
+night! He came to the Obelisk, and leaned against it, overcome by a
+spasm of realisation. He seemed to see his dead wife's face staring
+at him out of the past, like an accusation. “How have you cared for
+Nollie, that she should have come to this?” It became the face of the
+moonlit sphinx, staring straight at him, the broad dark face with
+wide nostrils, cruel lips, full eyes blank of pupils, all livened and
+whitened by the moonlight—an embodiment of the marvellous unseeing
+energy of Life, twisting and turning hearts without mercy. He gazed into
+those eyes with a sort of scared defiance. The great clawed paws of the
+beast, the strength and remorseless serenity of that crouching creature
+with human head, made living by his imagination and the moonlight,
+seemed to him like a temptation to deny God, like a refutation of human
+virtue.
+
+Then, the sense of beauty stirred in him; he moved where he could see
+its flanks coated in silver by the moonlight, the ribs and the great
+muscles, and the tail with tip coiled over the haunch, like the head of
+a serpent. It was weirdly living; fine and cruel, that great man-made
+thing. It expressed something in the soul of man, pitiless and remote
+from love—or rather, the remorselessness which man had seen, lurking
+within man's fate. Pierson recoiled from it, and resumed his march
+along the Embankment, almost deserted in the bitter cold. He came to
+where, in the opening of the Underground railway, he could see the
+little forms of people moving, little orange and red lights glowing.
+The sight arrested him by its warmth and motion. Was it not all a dream?
+That woman and her daughter, had they really come? Had not Noel been but
+an apparition, her words a trick which his nerves had played him?
+Then, too vividly again, he saw her face against the dark stuff of the
+curtain, the curve of her hand plucking at her blouse, heard the sound
+of his own horrified: “Nollie!” No illusion, no deception! The
+edifice of his life was in the dust. And a queer and ghastly company
+of faces came about him; faces he had thought friendly, of good men and
+women whom he knew, yet at that moment did not know, all gathered round
+Noel, with fingers pointing at her. He staggered back from that vision,
+could not bear it, could not recognise this calamity. With a sort of
+comfort, yet an aching sense of unreality, his mind flew to all those
+summer holidays spent in Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, by mountain
+and lake, with his two girls; what sunsets, and turning leaves, birds,
+beasts, and insects they had watched together! From their youthful
+companionship, their eagerness, their confidence in him, he had known so
+much warmth and pleasure. If all those memories were true, surely this
+could not be true. He felt suddenly that he must hurry back, go straight
+to Noel, tell her that she had been cruel to him, or assure himself
+that, for the moment, she had been insane: His temper rose suddenly,
+took fire. He felt anger against her, against every one he knew, against
+life itself. Thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his thin black
+overcoat, he plunged into that narrow glowing tunnel of the station
+booking-office, which led back to the crowded streets. But by the time
+he reached home his anger had evaporated; he felt nothing but utter
+lassitude. It was nine o'clock, and the maids had cleared the dining
+table. In despair Noel had gone up to her room. He had no courage left,
+and sat down supperless at his little piano, letting his fingers
+find soft painful harmonies, so that Noel perhaps heard the faint far
+thrumming of that music through uneasy dreams. And there he stayed, till
+it became time for him to go forth to the Old Year's Midnight Service.
+
+When he returned, Pierson wrapped himself in a rug and lay down on the
+old sofa in his study. The maid, coming in next morning to “do” the
+grate, found him still asleep. She stood contemplating him in awe; a
+broad-faced, kindly, fresh-coloured girl. He lay with his face resting
+on his hand, his dark, just grizzling hair unruffled, as if he had not
+stirred all night; his other hand clutched the rug to his chest, and
+his booted feet protruded beyond it. To her young eyes he looked rather
+appallingly neglected. She gazed with interest at the hollows in his
+cheeks, and the furrows in his brow, and the lips, dark-moustached and
+bearded, so tightly compressed, even in sleep. Being holy didn't make
+a man happy, it seemed! What fascinated her were the cindery eyelashes
+resting on the cheeks, the faint movement of face and body as he
+breathed, the gentle hiss of breath escaping through the twitching
+nostrils. She moved nearer, bending down over him, with the childlike
+notion of counting those lashes. Her lips parted in readiness to say:
+“Oh!” if he waked. Something in his face, and the little twitches
+which passed over it, made her feel “that sorry” for him. He was a
+gentleman, had money, preached to her every Sunday, and was not so very
+old—what more could a man want? And yet—he looked so tired, with
+those cheeks.
+
+She pitied him; helpless and lonely he seemed to her, asleep there
+instead of going to bed properly. And sighing, she tiptoed towards the
+door.
+
+“Is that you, Bessie?”
+
+The girl turned: “Yes, sir. I'm sorry I woke you, sir. 'Appy New
+Year, sir!”
+
+“Ah, yes. A Happy New Year, Bessie.”
+
+She saw his usual smile, saw it die, and a fixed look come on his face;
+it scared her, and she hurried away. Pierson had remembered. For full
+five minutes he lay there staring at nothing. Then he rose, folded the
+rug mechanically, and looked at the clock. Eight! He went upstairs,
+knocked on Noel's door, and entered.
+
+The blinds were drawn up, but she was still in bed. He stood looking
+down at her. “A Happy New Year, my child!” he said; and he trembled
+all over, shivering visibly. She looked so young and innocent, so
+round-faced and fresh, after her night's sleep, that the thought
+sprang up in him again: 'It must have been a dream!' She did not
+move, but a slow flush came up in her cheeks. No dream—dream! He
+said tremulously: “I can't realise. I—I hoped I had heard wrong.
+Didn't I, Nollie? Didn't I?”
+
+She just shook her head.
+
+“Tell me—everything,” he said; “for God's sake!”
+
+He saw her lips moving, and caught the murmur: “There 's nothing
+more. Gratian and George know, and Leila. It can't be undone, Daddy.
+Perhaps I wouldn't have wanted to make sure, if you hadn't tried
+to stop Cyril and me—and I'm glad sometimes, because I shall have
+something of his—” She looked up at him. “After all, it's the
+same, really; only, there's no ring. It's no good talking to me now,
+as if I hadn't been thinking of this for ages. I'm used to anything
+you can say; I've said it to myself, you see. There's nothing but to
+make the best of it.”
+
+Her hot hand came out from under the bedclothes, and clutched his very
+tight. Her flush had deepened, and her eyes seemed to him to glitter.
+
+“Oh, Daddy! You do look tired! Haven't you been to bed? Poor
+Daddy!”
+
+That hot clutch, and the words: “Poor Daddy!” brought tears into his
+eyes. They rolled slowly down to his beard, and he covered his face with
+the other hand. Her grip tightened convulsively; suddenly she dragged it
+to her lips, kissed it, and let it drop.
+
+“Don't!” she said, and turned away her face.
+
+Pierson effaced his emotion, and said quite calmly:
+
+“Shall you wish to be at home, my dear, or to go elsewhere?”
+
+Noel had begun to toss her head on her pillow, like a feverish child
+whose hair gets in its eyes and mouth.
+
+“Oh! I don't know; what does it matter?”
+
+“Kestrel; would you like to go there? Your aunt—I could write to
+her.” Noel stared at him a moment; a struggle seemed going on within
+her.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “I would. Only, not Uncle Bob.”
+
+“Perhaps your uncle would come up here, and keep me company.”
+
+She turned her face away, and that tossing movement of the limbs
+beneath the clothes began again. “I don't care,” she said;
+“anywhere—it doesn't matter.”
+
+Pierson put his chilly hand on her forehead. “Gently!” he said, and
+knelt down by the bed. “Merciful Father,” he murmured, “give us
+strength to bear this dreadful trial. Keep my beloved child safe, and
+bring her peace; and give me to understand how I have done wrong, how I
+have failed towards Thee, and her. In all things chasten and strengthen
+her, my child, and me.”
+
+His thoughts moved on in the confused, inarticulate suspense of prayer,
+till he heard her say: “You haven't failed; why do you talk of
+failing—it isn't true; and don't pray for me, Daddy.”
+
+Pierson raised himself, and moved back from the bed. Her words
+confounded him, yet he was afraid to answer. She pushed her head deep
+into the pillow, and lay looking up at the ceiling.
+
+“I shall have a son; Cyril won't quite have died. And I don't want
+to be forgiven.”
+
+He dimly perceived what long dumb processes of thought and feeling had
+gone on in her to produce this hardened state of mind, which to him
+seemed almost blasphemous. And in the very midst of this turmoil in his
+heart, he could not help thinking how lovely her face looked, lying back
+so that the curve of her throat was bared, with the short tendrils of
+hair coiling about it. That flung-back head, moving restlessly from side
+to side in the heat of the soft pillow, had such a passion of protesting
+life in it! And he kept silence.
+
+“I want you to know it was all me. But I can't pretend. Of course
+I'll try and not let it hurt you more than I possibly can. I'm
+sorry for you, poor Daddy; oh! I'm sorry for you!” With a movement
+incredibly lithe and swift, she turned and pressed her face down in the
+pillow, so that all he could see was her tumbled hair and the bedclothes
+trembling above her shoulders. He tried to stroke that hair, but she
+shook her head free, and he stole out.
+
+She did not come to breakfast; and when his own wretched meal was over,
+the mechanism of his professional life caught him again at once. New
+Year's Day! He had much to do. He had, before all, to be of a cheerful
+countenance before his flock, to greet all and any with an air of hope
+and courage.
+
+
+
+
+
+X 1
+
+Thirza Pierson, seeing her brother-in-law's handwriting, naturally
+said: “Here's a letter from Ted.”
+
+Bob Pierson, with a mouth full of sausage, as naturally responded:
+
+“What does he say?”
+
+In reading on, she found that to answer that question was one of the
+most difficult tasks ever set her. Its news moved and disturbed her
+deeply. Under her wing this disaster had happened! Down here had been
+wrought this most deplorable miracle, fraught with such dislocation of
+lives! Noel's face, absorbed and passionate, outside the door of her
+room on the night when Cyril Morland went away—her instinct had been
+right!
+
+“He wants you to go up and stay with him, Bob.”
+
+“Why not both of us?”
+
+“He wants Nollie to come down to me; she's not well.”
+
+“Not well? What's the matter?”
+
+To tell him seemed disloyalty to her sex; not to tell him, disloyalty
+to her husband. A simple consideration of fact and not of principle,
+decided her. He would certainly say in a moment: 'Here! Pitch it
+over!' and she would have to. She said tranquilly:
+
+“You remember that night when Cyril Morland went away, and Noel
+behaved so strangely. Well, my dear; she is going to have a child at
+the beginning of April. The poor boy is dead, Bob; he died for the
+Country.”
+
+She saw the red tide flow up into his face.
+
+“What!”
+
+“Poor Edward is dreadfully upset. We must do what we can. I blame
+myself.” By instinct she used those words.
+
+“Blame yourself? Stuff! That young—!” He stopped.
+
+Thirza said quietly: “No, Bob; of the two, I'm sure it was Noel;
+she was desperate that day. Don't you remember her face? Oh! this war!
+It's turned the whole world upside down. That's the only comfort;
+nothing's normal.”
+
+Bob Pierson possessed beyond most men the secret of happiness, for he
+was always absorbed in the moment, to the point of unself-consciousness.
+Eating an egg, cutting down a tree, sitting on a Tribunal, making up
+his accounts, planting potatoes, looking at the moon, riding his cob,
+reading the Lessons—no part of him stood aside to see how he was doing
+it, or wonder why he was doing it, or not doing it better. He grew like
+a cork-tree, and acted like a sturdy and well-natured dog. His griefs,
+angers, and enjoyments were simple as a child's, or as his somewhat
+noisy slumbers. They were notably well-suited, for Thirza had the same
+secret of happiness, though her, absorption in the moment did not—as
+became a woman—prevent her being conscious of others; indeed, such
+formed the chief subject of her absorptions. One might say that they
+neither of them had philosophy yet were as philosophic a couple as one
+could meet on this earth of the self-conscious. Daily life to these two
+was still of simple savour. To be absorbed in life—the queer endless
+tissue of moments and things felt and done and said and made, the odd
+inspiriting conjunctions of countless people—was natural to them;
+but they never thought whether they were absorbed or not, or had any
+particular attitude to Life or Death—a great blessing at the epoch in
+which they were living.
+
+Bob Pierson, then, paced the room, so absorbed in his dismay and
+concern, that he was almost happy.
+
+“By Jove!” he said, “what a ghastly thing!
+
+“Nollie, of all people! I feel perfectly wretched, Thirza; wretched
+beyond words.” But with each repetition his voice grew cheerier, and
+Thirza felt that he was already over the worst.
+
+“Your coffee's getting cold!” she said.
+
+“What do you advise? Shall I go up, heh?”
+
+“I think you'll be a godsend to poor Ted; you'll keep his spirits
+up. Eve won't get any leave till Easter; and I can be quite alone, and
+see to Nollie here. The servants can have a holiday—, Nurse and I will
+run the house together. I shall enjoy it.”
+
+“You're a good woman, Thirza!” Taking his wife's hand, he put it
+to his lips. “There isn't another woman like you in the world.”
+
+Thirza's eyes smiled. “Pass me your cup; I'll give you some fresh
+coffee.”
+
+It was decided to put the plan into operation at mid-month, and she bent
+all her wits to instilling into her husband the thought that a baby more
+or less was no great matter in a world which already contained twelve
+hundred million people. With a man's keener sense of family propriety,
+he could not see that this baby would be the same as any other baby.
+“By heaven!” he would say, “I simply can't get used to it; in
+our family! And Ted a parson! What the devil shall we do with it?”
+
+“If Nollie will let us, why shouldn't we adopt it? It'll be
+something to take my thoughts off the boys.”
+
+“That's an idea! But Ted's a funny fellow. He'll have some
+doctrine of atonement, or other in his bonnet.”
+
+“Oh, bother!” said Thirza with asperity.
+
+The thought of sojourning in town for a spell was not unpleasant to Bob
+Pierson. His Tribunal work was over, his early, potatoes in, and he had
+visions of working for the Country, of being a special constable, and
+dining at his Club. The nearer he was to the front, and the more he
+could talk about the war, the greater the service he felt he would
+be doing. He would ask for a job where his brains would be of use. He
+regretted keenly that Thirza wouldn't be with him; a long separation
+like this would be a great trial. And he would sigh and run his fingers
+through his whiskers. Still for the Country, and for Nollie, one must
+put up with it!
+
+When Thirza finally saw him into the train, tears stood in the eyes of
+both, for they were honestly attached, and knew well enough that
+this job, once taken in hand, would have to be seen through; a three
+months' separation at least.
+
+“I shall write every day.”
+
+“So shall I, Bob.”
+
+“You won't fret, old girl?”
+
+“Only if you do.”
+
+“I shall be up at 5.5, and she'll be down at 4.50. Give us
+a kiss—damn the porters. God bless you! I suppose she'd mind
+if—I—were to come down now and then?”
+
+“I'm afraid she would. It's—it's—well, you know.”
+
+“Yes, Yes; I do.” And he really did; for underneath, he had true
+delicacy.
+
+Her last words: “You're very sweet, Bob,” remained in his ears all
+the way to Severn Junction.
+
+She went back to the house, emptied of her husband, daughter, boys,
+and maids; only the dogs left and the old nurse whom she had taken into
+confidence. Even in that sheltered, wooded valley it was very cold
+this winter. The birds hid themselves, not one flower bloomed, and the
+red-brown river was full and swift. The sound of trees being felled for
+trench props, in the wood above the house resounded all day long in the
+frosty air. She meant to do the cooking herself; and for the rest of the
+morning and early afternoon she concocted nice things, and thought
+out how she herself would feel if she were Noel and Noel she, so as
+to smooth out of the way anything which would hurt the girl. In the
+afternoon she went down to the station in the village car, the same
+which had borne Cyril Morland away that July night, for their coachman
+had been taken for the army, and the horses were turned out.
+
+Noel looked tired and white, but calm—too calm. Her face seemed to
+Thirza to have fined down, and with those brooding eyes, to be more
+beautiful. In the car she possessed herself of the girl's hand, and
+squeezed it hard; their only allusion to the situation, except Noel's
+formal:
+
+“Thank you so much, Auntie, for having me; it's most awfully sweet
+of you and Uncle Bob.”
+
+“There's no one in the house, my dear, except old Nurse. It'll be
+very dull for you; but I thought I'd teach you to cook; it's rather
+useful.”
+
+The smile which slipped on to Noel's face gave Thirza quite a turn.
+
+She had assigned the girl a different room, and had made it
+extraordinarily cheerful with a log fire, chrysanthemums, bright copper
+candlesticks, warming-pans, and such like.
+
+She went up with her at bedtime, and standing before the fire, said:
+
+“You know, Nollie, I absolutely refuse to regard this as any sort of
+tragedy. To bring life into the worlds in these days, no matter how,
+ought to make anyone happy. I only wish I could do it again, then I
+should feel some use. Good night dear; and if you want anything, knock
+on the wall. I'm next door. Bless you!” She saw that the girl was
+greatly moved, underneath her pale mask; and went out astonished at her
+niece's powers of self-control.
+
+But she did not sleep at all well; for in imagination, she kept on
+seeing Noel turning from side to side in the big bed, and those great
+eyes of hers staring at the dark.
+
+2
+
+The meeting of the brothers Pierson took place at the dinner-hour,
+and was characterised by a truly English lack of display. They were so
+extremely different, and had been together so little since early days
+in their old Buckinghamshire home, that they were practically strangers,
+with just the potent link of far-distant memories in common. It was of
+these they talked, and about the war. On this subject they agreed in the
+large, and differed in the narrow. For instance, both thought they knew
+about Germany and other countries, and neither of course had any real
+knowledge of any country outside their own; for, though both had passed
+through considerable tracts of foreign ground at one time or another,
+they had never remarked anything except its surface,—its churches, and
+its sunsets. Again, both assumed that they were democrats, but neither
+knew the meaning of the word, nor felt that the working man could
+be really trusted; and both revered Church and, King: Both disliked
+conscription, but considered it necessary. Both favoured Home Rule for
+Ireland, but neither thought it possible to grant it. Both wished for
+the war to end, but were for prosecuting it to Victory, and neither knew
+what they meant by that word. So much for the large. On the narrower
+issues, such as strategy, and the personality of their country's
+leaders, they were opposed. Edward was a Westerner, Robert an Easterner,
+as was natural in one who had lived twenty-five years in Ceylon. Edward
+favoured the fallen government, Robert the risen. Neither had any
+particular reasons for their partisanship except what he had read in
+the journals. After all—what other reasons could they have had? Edward
+disliked the Harmsworth Press; Robert thought it was doing good. Robert
+was explosive, and rather vague; Edward dreamy, and a little didactic.
+Robert thought poor Ted looking like a ghost; Edward thought poor Bob
+looking like the setting sun. Their faces were indeed as curiously
+contrasted as their views and voices; the pale-dark, hollowed, narrow
+face of Edward, with its short, pointed beard, and the red-skinned,
+broad, full, whiskered face of Robert. They parted for the night with an
+affectionate hand-clasp. So began a queer partnership which consisted,
+as the days went on, of half an hour's companionship at breakfast,
+each reading the paper; and of dinner together perhaps three times
+a week. Each thought his brother very odd, but continued to hold the
+highest opinion of him. And, behind it all, the deep tribal sense that
+they stood together in trouble, grew. But of that trouble they never
+spoke, though not seldom Robert would lower his journal, and above the
+glasses perched on his well-shaped nose, contemplate his brother, and
+a little frown of sympathy would ridge his forehead between his bushy
+eyebrows. And once in a way he would catch Edward's eyes coming
+off duty from his journal, to look, not at his brother, but at—the
+skeleton; when that happened, Robert would adjust his glasses hastily,
+damn the newspaper type, and apologise to Edward for swearing. And
+he would think: 'Poor Ted! He ought to drink port, and—and enjoy
+himself, and forget it. What a pity he's a parson!'
+
+In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward's asceticism. “He
+eats nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable cigarette once
+in a blue moon. He's as lonely as a coot; it's a thousand pities he
+ever lost his wife. I expect to see his wings sprout any day; but—dash
+it all I—I don't believe he's got the flesh to grow them on. Send
+him up some clotted cream; I'll see if I can get him to eat it.”
+When the cream came, he got Edward to eat some the first morning, and at
+tea time found that he had finished it himself. “We never talk about
+Nollie,” he wrote, “I'm always meaning to have it out with him and
+tell him to buck up, but when it comes to the point I dry up; because,
+after all, I feel it too; it sticks in my gizzard horribly. We Piersons
+are pretty old, and we've always been respectable, ever since St.
+Bartholomew, when that Huguenot chap came over and founded us. The only
+black sheep I ever heard of is Cousin Leila. By the way, I saw her the
+other day; she came round here to see Ted. I remember going to stay with
+her and her first husband; young Fane, at Simla, when I was coming home,
+just before we were married. Phew! That was a queer menage; all the
+young chaps fluttering round her, and young Fane looking like a cynical
+ghost. Even now she can't help setting her cap a little at Ted, and he
+swallows her whole; thinks her a devoted creature reformed to the nines
+with her hospital and all that. Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap
+that ever was.”
+
+“We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end,” he wrote
+a little later; “I don't like her so well as Nollie; too serious and
+downright for me. Her husband seems a sensible fellow, though; but the
+devil of a free-thinker. He and poor Ted are like cat and dog. We had
+Leila in to dinner again on Saturday, and a man called Fort came too.
+She's sweet on him, I could see with half an eye, but poor old Ted
+can't. The doctor and Ted talked up hill and down dale. The doctor
+said a thing which struck me. 'What divides us from the beasts? Will
+power: nothing else. What's this war, really, but a death carnival of
+proof that man's will is invincible?' I stuck it down to tell you,
+when I got upstairs. He's a clever fellow. I believe in God, as you
+know, but I must say when it comes to an argument, poor old Ted does
+seem a bit weak, with his: 'We're told this,' and 'We're told
+that: Nobody mentioned Nollie. I must have the whole thing out with Ted;
+we must know how to act when it's all over.”
+
+But not till the middle of March, when the brothers had been sitting
+opposite each other at meals for two months, was the subject broached
+between them, and then not by Robert. Edward, standing by the hearth
+after dinner, in his familiar attitude, one foot on the fender, one
+hand grasping the mantel-shelf, and his eyes fixed on the flames, said:
+“I've never asked your forgiveness, Bob.”
+
+Robert, lingering at the table over his glass of port, started, looked
+at Edward's back in its parson's coat, and answered:
+
+“My dear old chap!”
+
+“It has been very difficult to speak of this.”
+
+“Of course, of course!” And there was a silence, while Robert's
+eyes travelled round the walls for inspiration. They encountered only
+the effigies of past Piersons very oily works, and fell back on the
+dining-table. Edward went on speaking to the fire:
+
+“It still seems to me incredible. Day and night I think of what it's
+my duty to do.”
+
+“Nothing!” ejaculated Robert. “Leave the baby with Thirza; we'll
+take care of it, and when Nollie's fit, let her go back to work in a
+hospital again. She'll soon get over it.” He saw his brother shake
+his head, and thought: 'Ah! yes; now there's going to be some d—d
+conscientious complication.'
+
+Edward turned round on him: “That is very sweet of you both, but it
+would be wrong and cowardly for me to allow it.”
+
+The resentment which springs up in fathers when other fathers dispose of
+young lives, rose in Robert.
+
+“Dash it all, my dear Ted, that's for Nollie to say. She's a woman
+now, remember.”
+
+A smile went straying about in the shadows of his brother's face. “A
+woman? Little Nollie! Bob, I've made a terrible mess of it with my
+girls.” He hid his lips with his hand, and turned again to the flames.
+Robert felt a lump in his throat. “Oh! Hang it, old boy, I don't
+think that. What else could you have done? You take too much on
+yourself. After all, they're fine girls. I'm sure Nollie's a
+darling. It's these modern notions, and this war. Cheer up! It'll
+all dry straight.” He went up to his brother and put a hand on his
+shoulder. Edward seemed to stiffen under that touch.
+
+“Nothing comes straight,” he said, “unless it's faced; you know
+that, Bob.”
+
+Robert's face was a study at that moment. His cheeks filled and
+collapsed again like a dog's when it has been rebuked. His colour
+deepened, and he rattled some money in a trouser pocket.
+
+“Something in that, of course,” he said gruffly. “All the same,
+the decision's with Nollie. We'll see what Thirza says. Anyway,
+there's no hurry. It's a thousand pities you're a parson; the
+trouble's enough without that:”
+
+Edward shook his head. “My position is nothing; it's the thought of
+my child, my wife's child. It's sheer pride; and I can't subdue
+it. I can't fight it down. God forgive me, I rebel.”
+
+And Robert thought: 'By George, he does take it to heart! Well,
+so should I! I do, as it is!' He took out his pipe, and filled it,
+pushing the tobacco down and down.
+
+“I'm not a man of the world,” he heard his brother say; “I'm
+out of touch with many things. It's almost unbearable to me to feel
+that I'm joining with the world to condemn my own daughter; not for
+their reasons, perhaps—I don't know; I hope not, but still, I'm
+against her.”
+
+Robert lit his pipe.
+
+“Steady, old man!” he said. “It's a misfortune. But if I were
+you I should feel: 'She's done a wild, silly thing, but, hang it, if
+anybody says a word against her, I'll wring his neck.' And what's
+more, you'll feel much the same, when it comes to the point.” He
+emitted a huge puff of smoke, which obscured his brother's face,
+and the blood, buzzing in his temples, seemed to thicken the sound of
+Edward's voice.
+
+“I don't know; I've tried to see clearly. I have prayed to be
+shown what her duty is, and mine. It seems to me there can be no peace
+for her until she has atoned, by open suffering; that the world's
+judgment is her cross, and she must bear it; especially in these days,
+when all the world is facing suffering so nobly. And then it seems so
+hard-so bitter; my poor little Nollie!”
+
+There was a silence, broken only by the gurgling of Robert's pipe,
+till he said abruptly:
+
+“I don't follow you, Ted; no, I don't. I think a man should screen
+his children all he can. Talk to her as you like, but don't let the
+world do it. Dash it, the world's a rotten gabbling place. I call
+myself a man of the world, but when it comes to private matters—well,
+then I draw the line. It seems to me it seems to me inhuman. What
+does George Laird think about it? He's a knowing chap. I suppose
+you've—no, I suppose you haven't—” For a peculiar smile had
+come on Edward's face.
+
+“No,” he said, “I should hardly ask George Laird's opinion.”
+
+And Robert realised suddenly the stubborn loneliness of that thin black
+figure, whose fingers were playing with a little gold cross. 'By
+Jove!' he thought, 'I believe old Ted's like one of those Eastern
+chaps who go into lonely places. He's got himself surrounded by
+visions of things that aren't there. He lives in unreality—something
+we can't understand. I shouldn't be surprised if he heard voices,
+like—'who was it? Tt, tt! What a pity!' Ted was deceptive. He was
+gentle and—all that, a gentleman of course, and that disguised him;
+but underneath; what was there—a regular ascetic, a fakir! And a sense
+of bewilderment, of dealing with something which he could not grasp,
+beset Bob Pierson, so that he went back to the table, and sat down again
+beside his port.
+
+“It seems to me,” he said rather gruffly, “that the chicken
+had better be hatched before we count it.” And then, sorry for his
+brusqueness, emptied his glass. As the fluid passed over his palate, he
+thought: 'Poor old Ted! He doesn't even drink—hasn't a pleasure
+in life, so far as I can see, except doing his duty, and doesn't even
+seem to know what that is. There aren't many like him—luckily! And
+yet I love him—pathetic chap!'
+
+The “pathetic chap” was still staring at the flames. 3
+
+And at this very hour, when the brothers were talking—for thought and
+feeling do pass mysteriously over the invisible wires of space Cyril
+Morland's son was being born of Noel, a little before his time.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Down by the River Wye, among plum-trees in blossom, Noel had laid her
+baby in a hammock, and stood reading a letter:
+
+“MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
+
+“Now that you are strong again, I feel that I must put before you my
+feeling as to your duty in this crisis of your life. Your aunt and uncle
+have made the most kind and generous offer to adopt your little boy. I
+have known that this was in their minds for some time, and have thought
+it over day and night for weeks. In the worldly sense it would be the
+best thing, no doubt. But this is a spiritual matter. The future of
+our souls depends on how we meet the consequences of our conduct. And
+painful, dreadful, indeed, as they must be, I am driven to feel that you
+can only reach true peace by facing them in a spirit of brave humility.
+I want you to think and think—till you arrive at a certainty which
+satisfies your conscience. If you decide, as I trust you will, to come
+back to me here with your boy, I shall do all in my power to make you
+happy while we face the future together. To do as your aunt and uncle
+in their kindness wish, would, I am sore afraid, end in depriving you
+of the inner strength and happiness which God only gives to those who
+do their duty and try courageously to repair their errors. I have
+confidence in you, my dear child.
+
+“Ever your most loving father,
+
+“EDWARD PIERSON.”
+
+She read it through a second time, and looked at her baby. Daddy seemed
+to think that she might be willing to part from this wonderful creature!
+Sunlight fell through the plum blossom, in an extra patchwork quilt over
+the bundle lying there, touched the baby's nose and mouth, so that he
+sneezed. Noel laughed, and put her lips close to his face. 'Give you
+up!' she thought: 'Oh, no! And I'm going to be happy too. They
+shan't stop me:
+
+In answer to the letter she said simply that she was coming up; and a
+week later she went, to the dismay of her uncle and aunt. The old nurse
+went too. Everything had hitherto been so carefully watched and guarded
+against by Thirza, that Noel did not really come face to face with her
+position till she reached home.
+
+Gratian, who had managed to get transferred to a London Hospital, was
+now living at home. She had provided the house with new maids against
+her sister's return; and though Noel was relieved not to meet her old
+familiars, she encountered with difficulty the stolid curiosity of new
+faces. That morning before she left Kestrel, her aunt had come into her
+room while she was dressing, taken her left hand and slipped a little
+gold band on to its third finger. “To please me, Nollie, now that
+you're going, just for the foolish, who know nothing about you.”
+
+Noel had suffered it with the thought: 'It's all very silly!' But
+now, when the new maid was pouring out her hot water, she was
+suddenly aware of the girl's round blue eyes wandering, as it were,
+mechanically to her hand. This little hoop of gold, then, had an awful
+power! A rush of disgust came over her. All life seemed suddenly a thing
+of forms and sham. Everybody then would look at that little ring; and
+she was a coward, saving herself from them! When she was alone again,
+she slipped it off, and laid it on the washstand, where the sunlight
+fell. Only this little shining band of metal, this little yellow ring,
+stood between her and the world's hostile scorn! Her lips trembled.
+She took up the ring, and went to the open window; to throw it out. But
+she did not, uncertain and unhappy—half realising the cruelty of life.
+A knock at the door sent her flying back to the washstand. The visitor
+was Gratian.
+
+“I've been looking at him,” she said softly; “he's like you,
+Nollie, except for his nose.”
+
+“He's hardly got one yet. But aren't his eyes intelligent? I think
+they're wonderful.” She held up the ring: “What shall I do about
+this, Gratian?”
+
+Gratian flushed. “Wear it. I don't see why outsiders should know.
+For the sake of Dad I think you ought. There's the parish.”
+
+Noel slipped the ring back on to her finger. “Would you?”
+
+“I can't tell. I think I would.”
+
+Noel laughed suddenly. “I'm going to get cynical; I can feel it in
+my bones. How is Daddy looking?”
+
+“Very thin; Mr. Lauder is back again from the Front for a bit, and
+taking some of the work now.”
+
+“Do I hurt him very much still?”
+
+“He's awfully pleased that you've come. He's as sweet as he can
+be about you.”
+
+“Yes,” murmured Noel, “that's what's dreadful. I'm glad he
+wasn't in when I came. Has he told anyone?”
+
+Gratian shook her head. “I don't think anybody knows;
+unless—perhaps Captain Fort. He came in again the other night; and
+somehow—”
+
+Noel flushed. “Leila!” she said enigmatically. “Have you seen
+her?”
+
+“I went to her flat last week with Dad—he likes her.”
+
+“Delilah is her real name, you know. All men like her. And Captain
+Fort is her lover.”
+
+Gratian gasped. Noel would say things sometimes which made her feel the
+younger of the two.
+
+“Of course he is,” went on Noel in a hard voice. “She has no men
+friends; her sort never have, only lovers. Why do you think he knows
+about me?”
+
+“When he asked after you he looked—”
+
+“Yes; I've seen him look like that when he's sorry for anything. I
+don't care. Has Monsieur Lavendie been in lately?”
+
+“Yes; he looks awfully unhappy.”
+
+“His wife drugs.”
+
+“Oh, Nollie! How do you know?”
+
+“I saw her once; I'm sure she does; there was a smell; and she's
+got wandering eyes that go all glassy. He can paint me now, if he likes.
+I wouldn't let him before. Does he know?”
+
+“Of course not.”
+
+“He knows there was something; he's got second sight, I think. But I
+mind him less than anybody. Is his picture of Daddy good?”
+
+“Powerful, but it hurts, somehow.”
+
+“Let's go down and see it.”
+
+The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its intense modernity made
+that old-fashioned room seem lifeless and strange. The black figure,
+with long pale fingers touching the paler piano keys, had a frightening
+actuality. The face, three-quarters full, was raised as if for
+inspiration, and the eyes rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the face of a
+girl painted and hung on a background of wall above the piano.
+
+“It's the face of that girl,” said Gratian, when they had looked
+at the picture for some time in silence:
+
+“No,” said Noel, “it's the look in his eyes.”
+
+“But why did he choose such a horrid, common girl? Isn't
+she fearfully alive, though? She looks as if she were saying:
+'Cheerio!'.rdquo;
+
+“She is; it's awfully pathetic, I think. Poor Daddy!”
+
+“It's a libel,” said Gratian stubbornly.
+
+“No. That's what hurts. He isn't quite—quite all there. Will he
+be coming in soon?”
+
+Gratian took her arm, and pressed it hard. “Would you like me at
+dinner or not; I can easily be out?”
+
+Noel shook her head. “It's no good to funk it. He wanted me, and now
+he's got me. Oh! why did he? It'll be awful for him.”
+
+Gratian sighed. “I've tried my best, but he always said: 'I've
+thought so long about it all that I can't think any longer. I can only
+feel the braver course is the best. When things are bravely and humbly
+met, there will be charity and forgiveness.'.rdquo;
+
+“There won't,” said Noel, “Daddy's a saint, and he doesn't
+see.”
+
+“Yes, he is a saint. But one must think for oneself—one simply must.
+I can't believe as he does, any more; can you, Nollie?”
+
+“I don't know. When I was going through it, I prayed; but I don't
+know whether I really believed. I don't think I mind much about that,
+one way or the other.”
+
+“I mind terribly,” said Gratian, “I want the truth.”
+
+“I don't know what I want,” said Noel slowly, “except that
+sometimes I want—life; awfully.”
+
+And the two sisters were silent, looking at each other with a sort of
+wonder.
+
+Noel had a fancy to put on a bright-coloured blue frock that evening,
+and at her neck she hung a Breton cross of old paste, which had belonged
+to her mother. When she had finished dressing she went into the nursery
+and stood by the baby's cot. The old nurse who was sitting there
+beside him, got up at once and said:
+
+“He's sleeping beautiful—the lamb. I'll go down and get a
+cup o' tea, and come up, ma'am, when the gong goes.” In the
+way peculiar to those who have never to initiate, but only to support
+positions in which they are placed by others, she had adopted for
+herself the theory that Noel was a real war-widow. She knew the truth
+perfectly; for she had watched that hurried little romance at Kestrel,
+but by dint of charity and blurred meditations it was easy for her to
+imagine the marriage ceremony which would and should have taken place;
+and she was zealous that other people should imagine it too. It was so
+much more regular and natural like that, and “her” baby invested
+with his proper dignity. She went downstairs to get a “cup o'
+tea,” thinking: 'A picture they make—that they do, bless his
+little heart; and his pretty little mother—no more than a child, all
+said and done.'
+
+Noel had been standing there some minutes in the failing light, absorbed
+in the face of the sleeping baby, when, raising her eyes, she saw in
+a mirror the refection of her father's dark figure by the door. She
+could hear him breathing as if the ascent of the stairs had tired him;
+and moving to the head of the cot, she rested her hand on it, and turned
+her face towards him. He came up and stood beside her, looking silently
+down at the baby. She saw him make the sign of the Cross above it, and
+the movement of his lips in prayer. Love for her father, and rebellion
+against this intercession for her perfect baby fought so hard in the
+girl's heart that she felt suffocated, and glad of the dark, so that
+he could not see her eyes. Then he took her hand and put it to his lips,
+but still without a word; and for the life of her she could not speak
+either. In silence, he kissed her forehead; and there mounted in Noel a
+sudden passion of longing to show him her pride and love for her baby.
+She put her finger down and touched one of his hands. The tiny sleeping
+fingers uncurled and, like some little sea anemone, clutched round it.
+She heard her father draw his breath in; saw him turn away quickly,
+silently, and go out. And she stayed, hardly breathing, with the hand of
+her baby squeezing her finger.
+
+
+
+
+
+II 1
+
+When Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit nursery,
+he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees beside his bed,
+absorbed in the vision he had seen. That young figure in Madonna blue,
+with the halo of bright hair; the sleeping babe in the fine dusk; the
+silence, the adoration in that white room! He saw, too; a vision of the
+past, when Noel herself had been the sleeping babe within her mother's
+arm, and he had stood beside them, wondering and giving praise. It
+passed with its other-worldliness and the fine holiness which belongs to
+beauty, passed and left the tormenting realism of life. Ah! to live with
+only the inner meaning, spiritual and beautifed, in a rare wonderment
+such as he had experienced just now!
+
+His alarum clock, while he knelt in his narrow, monkish little
+room—ticked the evening hour away into darkness. And still he knelt,
+dreading to come back into it all, to face the world's eyes, and the
+sound of the world's tongue, and the touch of the rough, the gross,
+the unseemly. How could he guard his child? How preserve that vision in
+her life, in her spirit, about to enter such cold, rough waters? But the
+gong sounded; he got up, and went downstairs.
+
+But this first family moment, which all had dreaded, was relieved,
+as dreaded moments so often are, by the unexpected appearance of the
+Belgian painter. He had a general invitation, of which he often availed
+himself; but he was so silent, and his thin, beardless face, which
+seemed all eyes and brow, so mournful, that all three felt in the
+presence of a sorrow deeper even than their own family grief. During the
+meal he gazed silently at Noel. Once he said: “You will let me paint
+you now, mademoiselle, I hope?” and his face brightened a little when
+she nodded. There was never much talk when he came, for any depth of
+discussion, even of art, brought out at once too wide a difference. And
+Pierson could never avoid a vague irritation with one who clearly had
+spirituality, but of a sort which he could not understand. After dinner
+he excused himself, and went off to his study. Monsieur would be happier
+alone with the two girls! Gratian, too, got up. She had remembered
+Noel's words: “I mind him less than anybody.” It was a chance for
+Nollie to break the ice.
+
+2
+
+“I have not seen you for a long time, mademoiselle,” said the
+painter, when they were alone.
+
+Noel was sitting in front of the empty drawing-room hearth, with her
+arms stretched out as if there had been a fire there.
+
+“I've been away. How are you going to paint me, monsieur?”
+
+“In that dress, mademoiselle; Just as you are now, warming yourself at
+the fire of life.”
+
+“But it isn't there.”
+
+“Yes, fires soon go out. Mademoiselle, will you come and see my wife?
+She is ill.”
+
+“Now?” asked Noel, startled.
+
+“Yes, now. She is really ill, and I have no one there. That is what I
+came to ask of your sister; but—now you are here, it's even better.
+She likes you.”
+
+Noel got up. “Wait one minute!” she said, and ran upstairs. Her baby
+was asleep, and the old nurse dozing. Putting on a cloak and cap of grey
+rabbit's fur, she ran down again to the hall where the painter was
+waiting; and they went out together.
+
+“I do not know if I am to blame,” he said, “my wife has been no
+real wife to me since she knew I had a mistress and was no real husband
+to her.”
+
+Noel stared round at his face lighted by a queer, smile.
+
+“Yes,” he went on, “from that has come her tragedy. But she should
+have known before I married her. Nothing was concealed. Bon Dieu!
+she should have known! Why cannot a woman see things as they are? My
+mistress, mademoiselle, is not a thing of flesh. It is my art. It has
+always been first with me, and always will. She has never accepted that,
+she is incapable of accepting it. I am sorry for her. But what would
+you? I was a fool to marry her. Chere mademoiselle, no troubles are
+anything beside the trouble which goes on day and night, meal after
+meal, year, after year, between two people who should never have
+married, because one loves too much and requires all, and the other
+loves not at all—no, not at all, now, it is long dead—and can give
+but little.”
+
+“Can't you separate?” asked Noel, wondering.
+
+“It is hard to separate from one who craves for you as she craves her
+drugs—yes, she takes drugs now, mademoiselle. It is impossible for one
+who has any compassion in his soul. Besides, what would she do? We live
+from hand to mouth, in a strange land. She has no friends here, not one.
+How could I leave her while this war lasts? As well could two persons on
+a desert island separate. She is killing herself, too, with these drugs,
+and I cannot stop her.”
+
+“Poor madame!” murmured Noel. “Poor monsieur!”
+
+The painter drew his hand across his eyes.
+
+“I cannot change my nature,” he said in a stifled voice, “nor she
+hers. So we go on. But life will stop suddenly some day for one of us.
+After all, it is much worse for her than for me. Enter, mademoiselle. Do
+not tell her I am going to paint you; she likes you, because you refused
+to let me.”
+
+Noel went up the stairs, shuddering; she had been there once before, and
+remembered that sickly scent of drugs. On the third floor they entered a
+small sitting-room whose walls were covered with paintings and drawings;
+from one corner a triangular stack of canvases jutted out. There was
+little furniture save an old red sofa, and on this was seated a stoutish
+man in the garb of a Belgian soldier, with his elbows on his knees and
+his bearded cheeks resting on his doubled fists. Beside him on the sofa,
+nursing a doll, was a little girl, who looked up at Noel. She had a most
+strange, attractive, pale little face, with pointed chin and large eyes,
+which never moved from this apparition in grey rabbits' skins.
+
+“Ah, Barra! You here!” said the painter:
+
+“Mademoiselle, this is Monsieur Barra, a friend of ours from the
+front; and this is our landlady's little girl. A little refugee, too,
+aren't you, Chica?”
+
+The child gave him a sudden brilliant smile and resumed her grave
+scrutiny of the visitor. The soldier, who had risen heavily, offered
+Noel one of his podgy hands, with a sad and heavy giggle.
+
+“Sit down, mademoiselle,” said Lavendie, placing a chair for her:
+“I will bring my wife in,” and he went out through some double
+doors.
+
+Noel sat down. The soldier had resumed his old attitude, and the little
+girl her nursing of the doll, though her big eyes still watched the
+visitor. Overcome by strangeness, Noel made no attempt to talk. And
+presently through the double doors the painter and his wife came in. She
+was a thin woman in a red wrapper, with hollow cheeks, high cheek-bones,
+and hungry eyes; her dark hair hung loose, and one hand played
+restlessly with a fold of her gown. She took Noel's hand; and her
+uplifted eyes seemed to dig into the girl's face, to let go suddenly,
+and flutter.
+
+“How do you do?” she said in English. “So Pierre brought you, to
+see me again. I remember you so well. You would not let him paint you.
+Ah! que c'est drole! You are so pretty, too. Hein, Monsieur Barra, is
+not mademoiselle pretty?”
+
+The soldier gave his heavy giggle, and resumed his scrutiny of the
+floor.
+
+“Henriette,” said Lavendie, “sit down beside Chica—you must not
+stand. Sit down, mademoiselle, I beg.”
+
+“I'm so sorry you're not well,” said Noel, and sat down again.
+
+The painter stood leaning against the wall, and his wife looked up at
+his tall, thin figure, with eyes which had in them anger, and a sort of
+cunning.
+
+“A great painter, my husband, is he not?” she said to Noel. “You
+would not imagine what that man can do. And how he paints—all day
+long; and all night in his head. And so you would not let him paint you,
+after all?”
+
+Lavendie said impatiently: “Voyons, Henriette, causez d'autre
+chose.”
+
+His wife plucked nervously at a fold in her red gown, and gave him the
+look of a dog that has been rebuked.
+
+“I am a prisoner here, mademoiselle, I never leave the house. Here
+I live day after day—my husband is always painting. Who would go out
+alone under this grey sky of yours, and the hatreds of the war in every
+face? I prefer to keep my room. My husband goes painting; every face
+he sees interests him, except that which he sees every day. But I am a
+prisoner. Monsieur Barra is our first visitor for a long time.”
+
+The soldier raised his face from his fists. “Prisonnier, madame! What
+would you say if you were out there?” And he gave his thick giggle.
+“We are the prisoners, we others. What would you say to imprisonment
+by explosion day and night; never a minute free. Bom! Bom! Bom! Ah! les
+tranchees! It's not so free as all that, there.”
+
+“Every one has his own prison,” said Lavendie bitterly.
+“Mademoiselle even, has her prison—and little Chica, and her doll.
+Every one has his prison, Barra. Monsieur Barra is also a painter,
+mademoiselle.”
+
+“Moi!” said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand. “I paint puddles,
+star-bombs, horses' ribs—I paint holes and holes and holes, wire and
+wire and wire, and water—long white ugly water. I paint splinters,
+and men's souls naked, and men's bodies dead, and
+nightmare—nightmare—all day and all night—I paint them in my
+head.” He suddenly ceased speaking and relapsed into contemplation of
+the carpet, with his bearded cheeks resting on his fists. “And their
+souls as white as snow, les camarades,” he added suddenly and loudly,
+“millions of Belgians, English, French, even the Boches, with white
+souls. I paint those souls!”
+
+A little shiver ran through Noel, and she looked appealingly at
+Lavendie.
+
+“Barra,” he said, as if the soldier were not there, “is a great
+painter, but the Front has turned his head a little. What he says is
+true, though. There is no hatred out there. It is here that we are
+prisoners of hatred, mademoiselle; avoid hatreds—they are poison!”
+
+His wife put out her hand and touched the child's shoulder.
+
+“Why should we not hate?” she said. “Who killed Chica's
+father, and blew her home to-rags? Who threw her out into this horrible
+England—pardon, mademoiselle, but it is horrible. Ah! les Boches!
+If my hatred could destroy them there would not be one left. Even my
+husband was not so mad about his painting when we lived at home. But
+here—!” Her eyes darted at his face again, and then sank as if
+rebuked. Noel saw the painter's lips move. The sick woman's whole
+figure writhed.
+
+“It is mania, your painting!” She looked at Noel with a smile.
+“Will you have some tea, mademoiselle? Monsieur Barra, some tea?”
+
+The soldier said thickly: “No, madame; in the trenches we have tea
+enough. It consoles us. But when we get away—give us wine, le bon vin;
+le bon petit vin!”
+
+“Get some wine, Pierre!”
+
+Noel saw from the painter's face that there was no wine, and perhaps
+no money to get any; but he went quickly out. She rose and said:
+
+“I must be going, madame.”
+
+Madame Lavendie leaned forward and clutched her wrist. “Wait a little,
+mademoiselle. We shall have some wine, and Pierre shall take you back
+presently. You cannot go home alone—you are too pretty. Is she not,
+Monsieur Barra?”
+
+The soldier looked up: “What would you say,” he said, “to bottles
+of wine bursting in the air, bursting red and bursting white, all day
+long, all night long? Great steel bottles, large as Chica: bits of
+bottles, carrying off men's heads? Bsum, garra-a-a, and a house comes
+down, and little bits of people ever so small, ever so small, tiny bits
+in the air and all over the ground. Great souls out there, madame. But I
+will tell you a secret,” and again he gave his heavy giggle, “all a
+little, little mad; nothing to speak of—just a little bit mad; like
+a watch, you know, that you can wind for ever. That is the discovery of
+this war, mademoiselle,” he said, addressing Noel for the first
+time, “you cannot gain a great soul till you are a little mad.” And
+lowering his piggy grey eyes at once, he resumed his former attitude.
+“It is that madness I shall paint some day,” he announced to
+the carpet; “lurking in one tiny corner of each soul of all those
+millions, as it creeps, as it peeps, ever so sudden, ever so little when
+we all think it has been put to bed, here—there, now—then, when you
+least think; in and out like a mouse with bright eyes. Millions of men
+with white souls, all a little mad. A great subject, I think,” he
+added heavily. Involuntarily Noel put her hand to her heart, which was
+beating fast. She felt quite sick.
+
+“How long have you been at the Front, monsieur?”
+
+“Two years, mademoiselle. Time to go home and paint, is it not? But
+art—!” he shrugged his heavy round shoulders, his whole bear-like
+body. “A little mad,” he muttered once more. “I will tell you a
+story. Once in winter after I had rested a fortnight, I go back to the
+trenches at night, and I want some earth to fill up a hole in the
+ground where I was sleeping; when one has slept in a bed one becomes
+particular. Well, I scratch it from my parapet, and I come to something
+funny. I strike my briquet, and there is a Boche's face all frozen and
+earthy and dead and greeny-white in the flame from my briquet.”
+
+“Oh, no!”
+
+“Oh! but yes, mademoiselle; true as I sit here. Very useful in the
+parapet—dead Boche. Once a man like me. But in the morning I could not
+stand him; we dug him out and buried him, and filled the hole up with
+other things. But there I stood in the night, and my face as close to
+his as this”—and he held his thick hand a foot before his face.
+“We talked of our homes; he had a soul, that man. 'Il me disait des
+choses', how he had suffered; and I, too, told him my sufferings. Dear
+God, we know all; we shall never know more than we know out there, we
+others, for we are mad—nothing to speak of, but just a little, little
+mad. When you see us, mademoiselle, walking the streets, remember
+that.” And he dropped his face on to his fists again.
+
+A silence had fallen in the room-very queer and complete. The little
+girl nursed her doll, the soldier gazed at the floor, the woman's
+mouth moved stealthily, and in Noel the thought rushed continually to
+the verge of action: 'Couldn't I get up and run downstairs?' But
+she sat on, hypnotised by that silence, till Lavendie reappeared with a
+bottle and four glasses.
+
+“To drink our health, and wish us luck, mademoiselle,” he said.
+
+Noel raised the glass he had given her. “I wish you all happiness.”
+
+“And you, mademoiselle,” the two men murmured.
+
+She drank a little, and rose.
+
+“And now, mademoiselle,” said Lavendie, “if you must go, I will
+see you home.”
+
+Noel took Madame Lavendie's hand; it was cold, and returned no
+pressure; her eyes had the glazed look that she remembered. The
+soldier had put his empty glass down on the floor, and was regarding it
+unconscious of her. Noel turned quickly to the door; the last thing she
+saw was the little girl nursing her doll.
+
+In the street the painter began at once in his rapid French:
+
+“I ought not to have asked you to come, mademoiselle; I did not know
+our friend Barra was there. Besides, my wife is not fit to receive
+a lady; vous voyez qu'il y a de la manie dans cette pauvre tote. I
+should not have asked you; but I was so miserable.”
+
+“Oh!” murmured Noel, “I know.”
+
+“In our home over there she had interests. In this great town she can
+only nurse her grief against me. Ah! this war! It seems to me we are all
+in the stomach of a great coiling serpent. We lie there, being digested.
+In a way it is better out there in the trenches; they are beyond hate,
+they have attained a height that we have not. It is wonderful how they
+still can be for going on till they have beaten the Boche; that is
+curious and it is very great. Did Barra tell you how, when they come
+back—all these fighters—they are going to rule, and manage the
+future of the world? But it will not be so. They will mix in with life,
+separate—be scattered, and they will be ruled as they were before. The
+tongue and the pen will rule them: those who have not seen the war will
+rule them.”
+
+“Oh!”' cried Noel, “surely they will be the bravest and
+strongest in the future.”
+
+The painter smiled.
+
+“War makes men simple,” he said, “elemental; life in peace
+is neither simple nor elemental, it is subtle, full of changing
+environments, to which man must adapt himself; the cunning, the astute,
+the adaptable, will ever rule in times of peace. It is pathetic, the
+belief of those brave soldiers that the-future is theirs.”
+
+“He said, a strange thing,” murmured Noel; “that they were all a
+little mad.”
+
+“He is a man of queer genius—Barra; you should see some of his
+earlier pictures. Mad is not quite the word, but something is loosened,
+is rattling round in them, they have lost proportion, they are being
+forced in one direction. I tell you, mademoiselle, this war is one great
+forcing-house; every living plant is being made to grow too fast, each
+quality, each passion; hate and love, intolerance and lust and avarice,
+courage and energy; yes, and self-sacrifice—all are being forced and
+forced beyond their strength, beyond the natural flow of the sap,
+forced till there has come a great wild luxuriant crop, and then—Psum!
+Presto! The change comes, and these plants will wither and rot and
+stink. But we who see Life in forms of Art are the only ones who feel
+that; and we are so few. The natural shape of things is lost. There is a
+mist of blood before all eyes. Men are afraid of being fair. See how we
+all hate not only our enemies, but those who differ from us. Look at the
+streets too—see how men and women rush together, how Venus reigns in
+this forcing-house. Is it not natural that Youth about to die should
+yearn for pleasure, for love, for union, before death?”
+
+Noel stared up at him. 'Now!' she thought: I will.'
+
+“Yes,” she said, “I know that's true, because I rushed, myself.
+I'd like you to know. We couldn't be married—there wasn't time.
+And—he was killed. But his son is alive. That's why I've been away
+so long. I want every one to know.” She spoke very calmly, but her
+cheeks felt burning hot.
+
+The painter had made an upward movement of his hands, as if they had
+been jerked by an electric current, then he said quite quietly:
+
+“My profound respect, mademoiselle, and my great sympathy. And your
+father?”
+
+“It's awful for him.”
+
+The painter said gently: “Ah! mademoiselle, I am not so sure. Perhaps
+he does not suffer so greatly. Perhaps not even your trouble can hurt
+him very much. He lives in a world apart. That, I think, is his true
+tragedy to be alive, and yet not living enough to feel reality. Do you
+know Anatole France's description of an old woman: 'Elle vivait,
+mais si peu.' Would that not be well said of the Church in these days:
+'Elle vivait, mais si peu.' I see him always like a rather beautiful
+dark spire in the night-time when you cannot see how it is attached to
+the earth. He does not know, he never will know, Life.”
+
+Noel looked round at him. “What do you mean by Life, monsieur? I'm
+always reading about Life, and people talk of seeing Life! What is
+it—where is it? I never see anything that you could call Life.”
+
+The painter smiled.
+
+“To 'see life'.” he said. “Ah! that is different. To enjoy
+yourself! Well, it is my experience that when people are 'seeing
+life' as they call it, they are not enjoying themselves. You know when
+one is very thirsty one drinks and drinks, but the thirst remains all
+the same. There are places where one can see life as it is called, but
+the only persons you will see enjoying themselves at such places are a
+few humdrums like myself, who go there for a talk over a cup of coffee.
+Perhaps at your age, though, it is different.”
+
+Noel clasped her hands, and her eyes seemed to shine in the gloom. “I
+want music and dancing and light, and beautiful things and faces; but I
+never get them.”
+
+“No, there does not exist in this town, or in any other, a place which
+will give you that. Fox-trots and ragtime and paint and powder and glare
+and half-drunken young men, and women with red lips you can get them in
+plenty. But rhythm and beauty and charm never. In Brussels when I was
+younger I saw much 'life' as they call it, but not one lovely thing
+unspoiled; it was all as ashes in the mouth. Ah! you may smile, but I
+know what I am talking of. Happiness never comes when you are looking
+for it, mademoiselle; beauty is in Nature and in real art, never in
+these false silly make believes. There is a place just here where we
+Belgians go; would you like to see how true my words are?
+
+“Oh, yes!”
+
+“Tres-bien! Let us go in?”
+
+They passed into a revolving doorway with little glass compartments
+which shot them out into a shining corridor. At the end of this the
+painter looked at Noel and seemed to hesitate, then he turned off from
+the room they were about to enter into a room on the right. It was
+large, full of gilt and plush and marble tables, where couples were
+seated; young men in khaki and older men in plain clothes, together or
+with young women. At these last Noel looked, face after face, while they
+were passing down a long way to an empty table. She saw that some were
+pretty, and some only trying to be, that nearly all were powdered and
+had their eyes darkened and their lips reddened, till she felt her own
+face to be dreadfully ungarnished: Up in a gallery a small band was
+playing an attractive jingling hollow little tune; and the buzz of talk
+and laughter was almost deafening.
+
+“What will you have, mademoiselle?” said the painter. “It is just
+nine o'clock; we must order quickly.”
+
+“May I have one of those green things?”
+
+“Deux cremes de menthe,” said Lavendie to the waiter.
+
+Noel was too absorbed to see the queer, bitter little smile hovering
+about his face. She was busy looking at the faces of women whose eyes,
+furtively cold and enquiring, were fixed on her; and at the faces of men
+with eyes that were furtively warm and wondering.
+
+“I wonder if Daddy was ever in a place like this?” she said, putting
+the glass of green stuff to her lips. “Is it nice? It smells of
+peppermint.”
+
+“A beautiful colour. Good luck, mademoiselle!” and he chinked his
+glass with hers.
+
+Noel sipped, held it away, and sipped again.
+
+“It's nice; but awfully sticky. May I have a cigarette?”
+
+“Des cigarettes,” said Lavendie to the waiter, “Et deux cafes
+noirs. Now, mademoiselle,” he murmured when they were brought, “if
+we imagine that we have drunk a bottle of wine each, we shall have
+exhausted all the preliminaries of what is called Vice. Amusing, isn't
+it?” He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+His face struck Noel suddenly as tarnished and almost sullen.
+
+“Don't be angry, monsieur, it's all new to me, you see.”
+
+The painter smiled, his bright, skin-deep smile.
+
+“Pardon! I forget myself. Only, it hurts me to see beauty in a place
+like this. It does not go well with that tune, and these voices, and
+these faces. Enjoy yourself, mademoiselle; drink it all in! See the way
+these people look at each other; what love shines in their eyes! A pity,
+too, we cannot hear what they are saying. Believe me, their talk is most
+subtle, tres-spirituel. These young women are 'doing their bit,'
+as you call it; bringing le plaisir to all these who are serving their
+country. Eat, drink, love, for tomorrow we die. Who cares for the world
+simple or the world beautiful, in days like these? The house of the
+spirit is empty.”
+
+He was looking at her sidelong as if he would enter her very soul.
+
+Noel got up. “I'm ready to go, monsieur.”
+
+He put her cloak on her shoulders, paid the bill, and they went out,
+threading again through the little tables, through the buzz of talk
+and laughter and the fumes of tobacco, while another hollow little tune
+jingled away behind them.
+
+“Through there,” said the painter, pointing to another door, “they
+dance. So it goes. London in war-time! Well, after all, it is never very
+different; no great town is. Did you enjoy your sight of 'life,'
+mademoiselle?”
+
+“I think one must dance, to be happy. Is that where your friends
+go?”
+
+“Oh, no! To a room much rougher, and play dominoes, and drink coffee
+and beer, and talk. They have no money to throw away.”
+
+“Why didn't you show me?”
+
+“Mademoiselle, in that room you might see someone perhaps whom one day
+you would meet again; in the place we visited you were safe enough at
+least I hope so.”
+
+Noel shrugged. “I suppose it doesn't matter now, what I do.”
+
+And a rush of emotion caught at her throat—a wave from the past—the
+moonlit night, the dark old Abbey, the woods and the river. Two tears
+rolled down her cheeks.
+
+“I was thinking of—something,” she said in a muffled voice.
+“It's all right.”
+
+“Chere mademoiselle!” Lavendie murmured; and all the way home he was
+timid and distressed. Shaking his hand at the door, she murmured:
+
+“I'm sorry I was such a fool; and thank you awfully, monsieur. Good
+night.”
+
+“Good night; and better dreams. There is a good time coming—Peace
+and Happiness once more in the world. It will not always be this
+Forcing-House. Good night, chere mademoiselle!”
+
+Noel went up to the nursery, and stole in. A night-light was burning,
+Nurse and baby were fast asleep. She tiptoed through into her own room.
+Once there, she felt suddenly so tired that she could hardly undress;
+and yet curiously rested, as if with that rush of emotion, Cyril and the
+past had slipped from her for ever.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Noel's first encounter with Opinion took place the following day.
+The baby had just come in from its airing; she had seen it comfortably
+snoozing, and was on her way downstairs, when a voice from the hall
+said:
+
+“How do you do?” and she saw the khaki-clad figure of Adrian Lauder,
+her father's curate! Hesitating just a moment, she finished
+her descent, and put her fingers in his. He was a rather heavy,
+dough-coloured young man of nearly thirty, unsuited by khaki, with a
+round white collar buttoned behind; but his aspiring eyes redeemed him,
+proclaiming the best intentions in the world, and an inclination towards
+sentiment in the presence of beauty.
+
+“I haven't seen you for ages,” he said rather fatuously, following
+her into her father's study.
+
+“No,” said Noel. “How—do you like being at the Front?”
+
+“Ah!” he said, “they're wonderful!” And his eyes shone.
+“It's so nice to see you again.”
+
+“Is it?”
+
+He seemed puzzled by that answer; stammered, and said:
+
+“I didn't know your sister had a baby. A jolly baby.”
+
+“She hasn't.”
+
+Lauder's mouth opened. 'A silly mouth,' she thought.
+
+“Oh!” he said. “Is it a protegee—Belgian or something?”
+
+“No, it's mine; my own.” And, turning round, she slipped the
+little ring off her finger. When she turned back to him, his face had
+not recovered from her words. It had a hapless look, as of one to whom
+such a thing ought not to have happened.
+
+“Don't look like that,” said Noel. “Didn't you understand?
+It's mine-mine.” She put out her left hand. “Look! There's no
+ring.”
+
+He stammered: “I say, you oughtn't to—you oughtn't to—!”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Joke about—about such things; ought you?”
+
+“One doesn't joke if one's had a baby without being married, you
+know.”
+
+Lauder went suddenly slack. A shell might have burst a few paces from
+him. And then, just as one would in such a case, he made an effort,
+braced himself, and said in a curious voice, both stiff and heavy: “I
+can't—one doesn't—it's not—”
+
+“It is,” said Noel. “If you don't believe me, ask Daddy.”
+
+He put his hand up to his round collar; and with the wild thought that
+he was going to tear it off, she cried: “Don't!”
+
+“You!” he said. “You! But—”
+
+Noel turned away from him to the window: She stood looking out, but saw
+nothing whatever.
+
+“I don't want it hidden,” she said without turning round, “I
+want every one to know. It's stupid as it is—stupid!” and she
+stamped her foot. “Can't you see how stupid it is—everybody's
+mouth falling open!”
+
+He uttered a little sound which had pain in it, and she felt a real pang
+of compunction. He had gripped the back of a chair; his face had lost
+its heaviness. A dull flush coloured his cheeks. Noel had a feeling, as
+if she had been convicted of treachery. It was his silence, the curious
+look of an impersonal pain beyond power of words; she felt in him
+something much deeper than mere disapproval—something which echoed
+within herself. She walked quickly past him and escaped. She ran
+upstairs and threw herself on her bed. He was nothing: it was not that!
+It was in herself, the awful feeling, for the first time developed and
+poignant, that she had betrayed her caste, forfeited the right to be
+thought a lady, betrayed her secret reserve and refinement, repaid with
+black ingratitude the love lavished on her up bringing, by behaving like
+any uncared-for common girl. She had never felt this before—not even
+when Gratian first heard of it, and they had stood one at each end of
+the hearth, unable to speak. Then she still had her passion, and her
+grief for the dead. That was gone now as if it had never been; and she
+had no defence, nothing between her and this crushing humiliation and
+chagrin. She had been mad! She must have been mad! The Belgian Barra was
+right: “All a little mad” in this “forcing-house” of a war! She
+buried her face deep in the pillow, till it almost stopped her power of
+breathing; her head and cheeks and ears seemed to be on fire. If only he
+had shown disgust, done something which roused her temper, her sense
+of justice, her feeling that Fate had been too cruel to her; but he had
+just stood there, bewilderment incarnate, like a creature with some very
+deep illusion shattered. It was horrible! Then, feeling that she could
+not stay still, must walk, run, get away somehow from this feeling of
+treachery and betrayal, she sprang up. All was quiet below, and
+she slipped downstairs and out, speeding along with no knowledge of
+direction, taking the way she had taken day after day to her hospital.
+It was the last of April, trees and shrubs were luscious with blossom
+and leaf; the dogs ran gaily; people had almost happy faces in the
+sunshine. 'If I could get away from myself, I wouldn't care,' she
+thought. Easy to get away from people, from London, even from England
+perhaps; but from oneself—impossible! She passed her hospital; and
+looked at it dully, at the Red Cross flag against its stucco wall, and
+a soldier in his blue slops and red tie, coming out. She had spent many
+miserable hours there, but none quite so miserable as this. She passed
+the church opposite to the flats where Leila lived, and running suddenly
+into a tall man coming round the corner, saw Fort. She bent her head,
+and tried to hurry past. But his hand was held out, she could not help
+putting hers into it; and looking up hardily, she said:
+
+“You know about me, don't you?”
+
+His face, naturally so frank, seemed to clench up, as if he were riding
+at a fence. 'He'll tell a lie,' she thought bitterly. But he did
+not.
+
+“Yes, Leila told me.”
+
+And she thought: 'I suppose he'll try and pretend that I've not
+been a beast!'
+
+“I admire your pluck,” he said.
+
+“I haven't any.”
+
+“We never know ourselves, do we? I suppose you wouldn't walk my pace
+a minute or two, would you? I'm going the same way.”
+
+“I don't know which way I'm going.”
+
+“That is my case, too.”
+
+They walked on in silence.
+
+“I wish to God I were back in France,” said Fort abruptly. “One
+doesn't feel clean here.”
+
+Noel's heart applauded.
+
+Ah! to get away—away from oneself! But at the thought of her baby, her
+heart fell again. “Is your leg quite hopeless?” she said.
+
+“Quite.”
+
+“That must be horrid.”
+
+“Hundreds of thousands would look on it as splendid luck; and so it
+is if you count it better to be alive than dead, which I do, in spite of
+the blues.”
+
+“How is Cousin Leila?”
+
+“Very well. She goes on pegging away at the hospital; she's a
+brick.” But he did not look at her, and again there was silence, till
+he stopped by Lord's Cricket-ground.
+
+“I mustn't keep you crawling along at this pace.”
+
+“Oh, I don't mind!”
+
+“I only wanted to say that if I can be of any service to you at any
+time in any way whatever, please command me.”
+
+He gave her hand a squeeze, took his hat off; and Noel walked slowly on.
+The little interview, with its suppressions, and its implications, had
+but exasperated her restlessness, and yet, in a way, it had soothed the
+soreness of her heart. Captain Fort at all events did not despise her;
+and he was in trouble like herself. She felt that somehow by the look
+of his face, and the tone of his voice when he spoke of Leila. She
+quickened her pace. George's words came back to her: “If you're
+not ashamed of yourself, no one will be of you!” How easy to say! The
+old days, her school, the little half grown-up dances she used to go to,
+when everything was happy. Gone! All gone!
+
+But her meetings with Opinion were not over for the day, for turning
+again at last into the home Square, tired out by her three hours'
+ramble, she met an old lady whom she and Gratian had known from
+babyhood—a handsome dame, the widow of an official, who spent her
+days, which showed no symptom of declining, in admirable works. Her
+daughter, the widow of an officer killed at the Marne, was with her, and
+the two greeted Noel with a shower of cordial questions: So she was
+back from the country, and was she quite well again? And working at her
+hospital? And how was her dear father? They had thought him looking very
+thin and worn. But now Gratian was at home—How dreadfully the war kept
+husbands and wives apart! And whose was the dear little baby they had in
+the house?
+
+“Mine,” said Noel, walking straight past them with her head up.
+In every fibre of her being she could feel the hurt, startled, utterly
+bewildered looks of those firm friendly persons left there on the
+pavement behind her; could feel the way they would gather themselves
+together, and walk on, perhaps without a word, and then round the corner
+begin: “What has come to Noel? What did she mean?” And taking the
+little gold hoop out of her pocket, she flung it with all her might into
+the Square Garden. The action saved her from a breakdown; and she went
+in calmly. Lunch was long over, but her father had not gone out, for he
+met her in the hall and drew her into the dining-room.
+
+“You must eat, my child,” he said. And while she was swallowing down
+what he had caused to be kept back for her, he stood by the hearth in
+that favourite attitude of his, one foot on the fender, and one hand
+gripping the mantel-shelf.
+
+“You've got your wish, Daddy,” she said dully: “Everybody knows
+now. I've told Mr. Lauder, and Monsieur, and the Dinnafords.”
+
+She saw his fingers uncrisp, then grip the shelf again. “I'm
+glad,” he said.
+
+“Aunt Thirza gave me a ring to wear, but I've thrown it away.”
+
+“My dearest child,” he began, but could not go on, for the quivering
+of his lips.
+
+“I wanted to say once more, Daddy, that I'm fearfully sorry about
+you. And I am ashamed of myself; I thought I wasn't, but I am—only,
+I think it was cruel, and I'm not penitent to God; and it's no good
+trying to make me.”
+
+Pierson turned and looked at her. For a long time after, she could not
+get that look out of her memory.
+
+Jimmy Fort had turned away from Noel feeling particularly wretched. Ever
+since the day when Leila had told him of the girl's misfortune he had
+been aware that his liaison had no decent foundation, save a sort of
+pity. One day, in a queer access of compunction, he had made Leila an
+offer of marriage. She had refused; and he had respected her the more,
+realising by the quiver in her voice and the look in her eyes that she
+refused him, not because she did not love him well enough, but because
+she was afraid of losing any of his affection. She was a woman of great
+experience.
+
+To-day he had taken advantage of the luncheon interval to bring her some
+flowers, with a note to say that he could not come that evening. Letting
+himself in with his latchkey, he had carefully put those Japanese
+azaleas in the bowl “Famille Rose,” taking water from her bedroom.
+Then he had sat down on the divan with his head in his hands.
+
+Though he had rolled so much about the world, he had never had much to
+do with women. And there was nothing in him of the Frenchman, who takes
+what life puts in his way as so much enjoyment on the credit side, and
+accepts the ends of such affairs as they naturally and rather rapidly
+arrive. It had been a pleasure, and was no longer a pleasure; but this
+apparently did not dissolve it, or absolve him. He felt himself bound by
+an obscure but deep instinct to go on pretending that he was not tired
+of her, so long as she was not tired of him. And he sat there trying to
+remember any sign, however small, of such a consummation, quite without
+success. On the contrary, he had even the wretched feeling that if only
+he had loved her, she would have been much more likely to have tired of
+him by now. For her he was still the unconquered, in spite of his loyal
+endeavour to seem conquered. He had made a fatal mistake, that evening
+after the concert at Queen's Hall, to let himself go, on a mixed tide
+of desire and pity!
+
+His folly came to him with increased poignancy after he had parted from
+Noel. How could he have been such a base fool, as to have committed
+himself to Leila on an evening when he had actually been in the company
+of that child? Was it the vague, unseizable likeness between them which
+had pushed him over the edge? 'I've been an ass,' he thought; 'a
+horrible ass.' I would always have given every hour I've ever spent
+with Leila, for one real smile from that girl.'
+
+This sudden sight of Noel after months during which he had tried loyally
+to forget her existence, and not succeeded at all, made him realise as
+he never had yet that he was in love with her; so very much in love
+with her that the thought of Leila was become nauseating. And yet the
+instincts of a gentleman seemed to forbid him to betray that secret to
+either of them. It was an accursed coil! He hailed a cab, for he was
+late; and all the way back to the War Office he continued to see
+the girl's figure and her face with its short hair. And a fearful
+temptation rose within him. Was it not she who was now the real object
+for chivalry and pity? Had he not the right to consecrate himself to
+championship of one in such a deplorable position? Leila had lived her
+life; but this child's life—pretty well wrecked—was all before
+her. And then he grinned from sheer disgust. For he knew that this
+was Jesuitry. Not chivalry was moving him, but love! Love! Love of
+the unattainable! And with a heavy heart, indeed, he entered the great
+building, where, in a small room, companioned by the telephone, and
+surrounded by sheets of paper covered with figures, he passed his days.
+The war made everything seem dreary, hopeless. No wonder he had caught
+at any distraction which came along—caught at it, till it had caught
+him!
+
+
+
+
+
+IV 1
+
+To find out the worst is, for human nature, only a question of time. But
+where the “worst” is attached to a family haloed, as it were, by the
+authority and reputation of an institution like the Church, the
+process of discovery has to break through many a little hedge.
+Sheer unlikelihood, genuine respect, the defensive instinct in those
+identified with an institution, who will themselves feel weaker if its
+strength be diminished, the feeling that the scandal is too good to be
+true—all these little hedges, and more, had to be broken through.
+To the Dinnafords, the unholy importance of what Noel had said to them
+would have continued to keep them dumb, out of self-protection; but its
+monstrosity had given them the feeling that there must be some mistake,
+that the girl had been overtaken by a wild desire to “pull their
+legs” as dear Charlie would say. With the hope of getting this view
+confirmed, they lay in wait for the old nurse who took the baby out, and
+obtained the information, shortly imparted: “Oh, yes; Miss Noel's.
+Her 'usband was killed—poor lamb!” And they felt rewarded. They
+had been sure there was some mistake. The relief of hearing that word
+“'usband” was intense. One of these hasty war marriages, of which
+the dear Vicar had not approved, and so it had been kept dark. Quite
+intelligible, but so sad! Enough misgiving however remained in their
+minds, to prevent their going to condole with the dear Vicar; but not
+enough to prevent their roundly contradicting the rumours and gossip
+already coming to their ears. And then one day, when their friend
+Mrs. Curtis had said too positively: “Well, she doesn't wear a
+wedding-ring, that I'll swear, because I took very good care
+to look!” they determined to ask Mr. Lauder. He would—indeed
+must—know; and, of course, would not tell a story. When they asked
+him it was so manifest that he did know, that they almost withdrew the
+question. The poor young man had gone the colour of a tomato.
+
+“I prefer not to answer,” he said. The rest of a very short
+interview was passed in exquisite discomfort. Indeed discomfort,
+exquisite and otherwise, within a few weeks of Noel's return, had
+begun to pervade all the habitual congregation of Pierson's church.
+It was noticed that neither of the two sisters attended Service now.
+Certain people who went in the sincere hope of seeing Noel, only fell
+off again when she did not appear. After all, she would not have the
+face! And Gratian was too ashamed, no doubt. It was constantly remarked
+that the Vicar looked very grave and thin, even for him. As the rumours
+hardened into certainty, the feeling towards him became a curious medley
+of sympathy and condemnation. There was about the whole business that
+which English people especially resent. By the very fact of his
+presence before them every Sunday, and his public ministrations, he
+was exhibiting to them, as it were, the seamed and blushing face of
+his daughter's private life, besides affording one long and glaring
+demonstration of the failure of the Church to guide its flock: If a man
+could not keep his own daughter in the straight path—whom could he?
+Resign! The word began to be thought about, but not yet spoken. He had
+been there so long; he had spent so much money on the church and the
+parish; his gentle dreamy manner was greatly liked. He was a gentleman;
+and had helped many people; and, though his love of music and vestments
+had always caused heart-burnings, yet it had given a certain cachet to
+the church. The women, at any rate, were always glad to know that the
+church they went to was capable of drawing their fellow women away from
+other churches. Besides, it was war-time, and moral delinquency which
+in time of peace would have bulked too large to neglect, was now less
+insistently dwelt on, by minds preoccupied by food and air-raids.
+Things, of course, could not go on as they were; but as yet they did go
+on.
+
+The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk; and nothing
+concrete or tangible came Pierson's way. He went about his usual
+routine without seeming change. And yet there was a change, secret and
+creeping. Wounded almost to death himself, he felt as though surrounded
+by one great wound in others; but it was some weeks before anything
+occurred to rouse within him the weapon of anger or the protective
+impulse.
+
+And then one day a little swift brutality shook him to the very soul.
+He was coming home from a long parish round, and had turned into the
+Square, when a low voice behind him said:
+
+“Wot price the little barstard?”
+
+A cold, sick feeling stifled his very breathing; he gasped, and spun
+round, to see two big loutish boys walking fast away. With swift and
+stealthy passion he sprang after them, and putting his hands on their
+two neighbouring shoulders, wrenched them round so that they faced him,
+with mouths fallen open in alarm. Shaking them with all his force, he
+said:
+
+“How dare you—how dare you use that word?” His face and voice must
+have been rather terrible, for the scare in their faces brought him to
+sudden consciousness of his own violence, and he dropped his hands. In
+two seconds they were at the corner. They stopped there for a second;
+one of them shouted “Gran'pa”; then they vanished. He was left
+with lips and hands quivering, and a feeling that he had not known for
+years—the weak white empty feeling one has after yielding utterly to
+sudden murderous rage. He crossed over, and stood leaning against the
+Garden railings, with the thought: 'God forgive me! I could have
+killed them—I could have killed them!' There had been a devil in
+him. If he had had something in his hand, he might now have been a
+murderer: How awful! Only one had spoken; but he could have killed them
+both! And the word was true, and was in all mouths—all low common
+mouths, day after day, of his own daughter's child! The ghastliness
+of this thought, brought home so utterly, made him writhe, and grasp the
+railings as if he would have bent them.
+
+From that day on, a creeping sensation of being rejected of men, never
+left him; the sense of identification with Noel and her tiny outcast
+became ever more poignant, more real; the desire to protect them ever
+more passionate; and the feeling that round about there were whispering
+voices, pointing fingers, and a growing malevolence was ever more
+sickening. He was beginning too to realise the deep and hidden truth:
+How easily the breath of scandal destroys the influence and sanctity
+of those endowed therewith by vocation; how invaluable it is to feel
+untarnished, and how difficult to feel that when others think you
+tarnished.
+
+He tried to be with Noel as much as possible; and in the evenings they
+sometimes went walks together, without ever talking of what was always
+in their minds. Between six and eight the girl was giving sittings to
+Lavendie in the drawing-room, and sometimes Pierson would come there and
+play to them. He was always possessed now by a sense of the danger Noel
+ran from companionship with any man. On three occasions, Jimmy Fort
+made his appearance after dinner. He had so little to say that it was
+difficult to understand why he came; but, sharpened by this new dread
+for his daughter, Pierson noticed his eyes always following her. 'He
+admires her,' he thought; and often he would try his utmost to grasp
+the character of this man, who had lived such a roving life. 'Is
+he—can he be the sort of man I would trust Nollie to?' he would
+think. 'Oh, that I should have to hope like this that some good man
+would marry her—my little Nollie, a child only the other day!'
+
+In these sad, painful, lonely weeks he found a spot of something like
+refuge in Leila's sitting-room, and would go there often for half an
+hour when she was back from her hospital. That little black-walled room
+with its Japanese prints and its flowers, soothed him. And Leila soothed
+him, innocent as he was of any knowledge of her latest aberration,
+and perhaps conscious that she herself was not too happy. To watch
+her arranging flowers, singing her little French songs, or to find her
+beside him, listening to his confidences, was the only real pleasure
+he knew in these days. And Leila, in turn, would watch him and think:
+'Poor Edward! He has never lived; and never will; now!' But
+sometimes the thought would shoot through her: 'Perhaps he's to be
+envied. He doesn't feel what I feel, anyway. Why did I fall in love
+again?'
+
+They did not speak of Noel as a rule, but one evening she expressed her
+views roundly.
+
+“It was a great mistake to make Noel come back. Edward. It was
+Quixotic. You'll be lucky if real mischief doesn't come of it.
+She's not a patient character; one day she'll do something rash.
+And, mind you, she'll be much more likely to break out if she sees the
+world treating you badly than if it happens to herself. I should send
+her back to the country, before she makes bad worse.”
+
+“I can't do that, Leila. We must live it down together.”
+
+“Wrong, Edward. You should take things as they are.”
+
+With a heavy sigh Pierson answered:
+
+“I wish I could see her future. She's so attractive. And her
+defences are gone. She's lost faith, and belief in all that a good
+woman should be. The day after she came back she told me she was ashamed
+of herself. But since—she's not given a sign. She's so proud—my
+poor little Nollie. I see how men admire her, too. Our Belgian friend is
+painting her. He's a good man; but he finds her beautiful, and who can
+wonder. And your friend Captain Fort. Fathers are supposed to be blind,
+but they see very clear sometimes.”
+
+Leila rose and drew down a blind.
+
+“This sun,” she said. “Does Jimmy Fort come to you—often?”
+
+“Oh! no; very seldom. But still—I can see.”
+
+'You bat—you blunderer!' thought Leila: 'See! You can't even
+see this beside you!'
+
+“I expect he's sorry for her,” she said in a queer voice.
+
+“Why should he be sorry? He doesn't know:”
+
+“Oh, yes! He knows; I told him.”
+
+“You told him!”
+
+“Yes,” Leila repeated stubbornly; “and he's sorry for her.”
+
+And even then “this monk” beside her did not see, and went
+blundering on.
+
+“No, no; it's not merely that he's sorry. By the way he looks at
+her, I know I'm not mistaken. I've wondered—what do you think,
+Leila. He's too old for her; but he seems an honourable, kind man.”
+
+“Oh! a most honourable, kind man.” But only by pressing her hand
+against her lips had she smothered a burst of bitter laughter. He, who
+saw nothing, could yet notice Fort's eyes when he looked at Noel, and
+be positive that he was in love with her! How plainly those eyes must
+speak! Her control gave way.
+
+“All this is very interesting,” she said, spurning her words like
+Noel, “considering that he's more than my friend, Edward.” It gave
+her a sort of pleasure to see him wince. 'These blind bats!' she
+thought, terribly stung that he should so clearly assume her out of the
+running. Then she was sorry, his face had become so still and wistful.
+And turning away, she said:
+
+“Oh! I shan't break my heart; I'm a good loser. And I'm a good
+fighter, too; perhaps I shan't lose.” And snapping off a sprig of
+geranium, she pressed it to her lips.
+
+“Forgive me,” said Pierson slowly; “I didn't know. I'm stupid.
+I thought your love for your poor soldiers had left no room for other
+feelings.”
+
+Leila uttered a shrill laugh. “What have they to do with each other?
+Did you never hear of passion, Edward? Oh! Don't look at me like that.
+Do you think a woman can't feel passion at my age? As much as ever,
+more than ever, because it's all slipping away.”
+
+She took her hand from her lips, but a geranium petal was left clinging
+there, like a bloodstain. “What has your life been all these years,”
+she went on vehemently—“suppression of passion, nothing else! You
+monks twist Nature up with holy words, and try to disguise what the
+eeriest simpleton can see. Well, I haven't suppressed passion, Edward.
+That's all.”
+
+“And are you happier for that?”
+
+“I was; and I shall be again.”
+
+A little smile curled Pierson's lips. “Shall be?” he said. “I
+hope so. It's just two ways of looking at things, Leila.”
+
+“Oh, Edward! Don't be so gentle! I suppose you don't think a
+person like me can ever really love?”
+
+He was standing before her with his head down, and a sense that, naive
+and bat-like as he was, there was something in him she could not reach
+or understand, made her cry out:
+
+“I've not been nice to you. Forgive me, Edward! I'm so unhappy.”
+
+“There was a Greek who used to say: 'God is the helping of man by
+man.' It isn't true, but it's beautiful. Good-bye, dear Leila, and
+don't be sorrowful.”
+
+She squeezed his hand, and turned to the window.
+
+She stood there watching his black figure cross the road in the
+sunshine, and pass round the corner by the railings of the church. He
+walked quickly, very upright; there was something unseeing even about
+that back view of him; or was it that he saw-another world? She had
+never lost the mental habits of her orthodox girlhood, and in spite of
+all impatience, recognised his sanctity. When he had disappeared she
+went into her bedroom. What he had said, indeed, was no discovery. She
+had known. Oh! She had known. 'Why didn't I accept Jimmy's offer?
+Why didn't I marry him? Is it too late?' she thought. 'Could I?
+Would he—even now?' But then she started away from her own thought.
+Marry him! knowing his heart was with this girl?
+
+She looked long at her face in the mirror, studying with a fearful
+interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light
+coating of powder. She examined the cunning touches of colouring matter
+here and there in her front hair. Were they cunning enough? Did they
+deceive? They seemed to her suddenly to stare out. She fingered and
+smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin below her chin.
+She stretched herself, and passed her hands down over her whole form,
+searching as it were for slackness, or thickness. And she had the bitter
+thought: 'I'm all out. I'm doing all I can.' The lines of a
+little poem Fort had showed her went thrumming through her head:
+
+“Time, you old gipsy man Will you not stay Put up your caravan Just
+for a day?”
+
+
+What more could she do? He did not like to see her lips reddened. She
+had marked his disapprovals, watched him wipe his mouth after a kiss,
+when he thought she couldn't see him. 'I need'nt!' she thought.
+'Noel's lips are no redder, really. What has she better than I?
+Youth—dew on the grass!' That didn't last long! But long enough to
+“do her in” as her soldier-men would say. And, suddenly she revolted
+against herself, against Fort, against this chilled and foggy country;
+felt a fierce nostalgia for African sun, and the African flowers; the
+happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth existence of those five years before the
+war began. High Constantia at grape harvest! How many years ago—ten
+years, eleven years! Ah! To have before her those ten years, with him!
+Ten years in the sun! He would have loved her then, and gone on loving
+her! And she would not have tired of him, as she had tired of those
+others. 'In half an hour,' she thought, 'he'll be here,
+sit opposite me; I shall see him struggling forcing himself to seem
+affectionate! It's too humbling! But I don't care; I want him!'
+
+She searched her wardrobe, for some garment or touch of colour, novelty
+of any sort, to help her. But she had tried them all—those little
+tricks—was bankrupt. And such a discouraged, heavy mood came on her,
+that she did not even “change,” but went back in her nurse's dress
+and lay down on the divan, pretending to sleep, while the maid set
+out the supper. She lay there moody and motionless, trying to summon
+courage, feeling that if she showed herself beaten she was beaten;
+knowing that she only held him by pity. But when she heard his footstep
+on the stairs she swiftly passed her hands over her cheeks, as if to
+press the blood out of them, and lay absolutely still. She hoped that
+she was white, and indeed she was, with finger-marks under the eyes, for
+she had suffered greatly this last hour. Through her lashes she saw him
+halt, and look at her in surprise. Asleep, or-ill, which? She did not
+move. She wanted to watch him. He tiptoed across the room and stood
+looking down at her. There was a furrow between his eyes. 'Ah!' she
+thought, 'it would suit you, if I were dead, my kind friend.' He
+bent a little towards her; and she wondered suddenly whether she looked
+graceful lying there, sorry now that she had not changed her dress.
+She saw him shrug his shoulders ever so faintly with a puzzled little
+movement. He had not seen that she was shamming. How nice his face
+was—not mean, secret, callous! She opened her eyes, which against her
+will had in them the despair she was feeling. He went on his knees, and
+lifting her hand to his lips, hid them with it.
+
+“Jimmy,” she said gently, “I'm an awful bore to you. Poor
+Jimmy! No! Don't pretend! I know what I know!” 'Oh, God! What am
+I saying?' she thought. 'It's fatal-fatal. I ought never!' And
+drawing his head to her, she put it to her heart. Then, instinctively
+aware that this moment had been pressed to its uttermost, she scrambled
+up, kissed his forehead, stretched herself, and laughed.
+
+“I was asleep, dreaming; dreaming you loved me. Wasn't it funny?
+Come along. There are oysters, for the last time this season.”
+
+All that evening, as if both knew they had been looking over a
+precipice, they seemed to be treading warily, desperately anxious not
+to rouse emotion in each other, or touch on things which must bring a
+scene. And Leila talked incessantly of Africa.
+
+“Don't you long for the sun, Jimmy? Couldn't we—couldn't you
+go? Oh! why doesn't this wretched war end? All that we've got here
+at home every scrap of wealth, and comfort, and age, and art, and
+music, I'd give it all for the light and the sun out there. Wouldn't
+you?”
+
+And Fort said he would, knowing well of one thing which he would not
+give. And she knew that, as well as he.
+
+They were both gayer than they had been for a long time; so that when he
+had gone, she fell back once more on to the divan, and burying her face
+in a cushion, wept bitterly.
+
+
+
+
+
+V 1
+
+It was not quite disillusionment that Pierson felt while he walked away.
+Perhaps he had not really believed in Leila's regeneration. It was
+more an acute discomfort, an increasing loneliness. A soft and restful
+spot was now denied him; a certain warmth and allurement had gone out
+of his life. He had not even the feeling that it was his duty to try
+and save Leila by persuading her to marry Fort. He had always been too
+sensitive, too much as it were of a gentleman, for the robuster sorts of
+evangelism. Such delicacy had been a stumbling-block to him all through
+professional life. In the eight years when his wife was with him, all
+had been more certain, more direct and simple, with the help of her
+sympathy, judgment; and companionship. At her death a sort of mist
+had gathered in his soul. No one had ever spoken plainly to him. To a
+clergyman, who does? No one had told him in so many words that he should
+have married again—that to stay unmarried was bad for him, physically
+and spiritually, fogging and perverting life; not driving him, indeed,
+as it drove many, to intolerance and cruelty, but to that half-living
+dreaminess, and the vague unhappy yearnings which so constantly beset
+him. All these celibate years he had really only been happy in his
+music, or in far-away country places, taking strong exercise, and losing
+himself in the beauties of Nature; and since the war began he had only
+once, for those three days at Kestrel, been out of London.
+
+He walked home, going over in his mind very anxiously all the evidence
+he had of Fort's feeling for Noel. How many times had he been to them
+since she came back? Only three times—three evening visits! And he had
+not been alone with her a single minute! Before this calamity befell his
+daughter, he would never have observed anything in Fort's demeanour;
+but, in his new watchfulness, he had seen the almost reverential way he
+looked at her, noticed the extra softness of his voice when he spoke
+to her, and once a look of sudden pain, a sort of dulling of his whole
+self, when Noel had got up and gone out of the room. And the girl
+herself? Twice he had surprised her gazing at Fort when he was not
+looking, with a sort of brooding interest. He remembered how, as a
+little girl, she would watch a grown-up, and then suddenly one day
+attach herself to him, and be quite devoted. Yes, he must warn her,
+before she could possibly become entangled. In his fastidious chastity,
+the opinion he had held of Fort was suddenly lowered. He, already a
+free-thinker, was now revealed as a free-liver. Poor little Nollie!
+Endangered again already! Every man a kind of wolf waiting to pounce on
+her!
+
+He found Lavendie and Noel in the drawing-room, standing before the
+portrait which was nearing completion. He looked at it for a long
+minute, and turned away:
+
+“Don't you think it's like me, Daddy?”
+
+“It's like you; but it hurts me. I can't tell why.”
+
+He saw the smile of a painter whose picture is being criticised come on
+Lavendie's face.
+
+“It is perhaps the colouring which does not please you, monsieur?”
+
+“No, no; deeper. The expression; what is she waiting for?”
+
+The defensive smile died on Lavendie's lips.
+
+“It is as I see her, monsieur le cure.”
+
+Pierson turned again to the picture, and suddenly covered his eyes.
+“She looks 'fey,'” he said, and went out of the room.
+
+Lavendie and Noel remained staring at the picture. “Fey? What does
+that mean, mademoiselle?”
+
+“Possessed, or something.”
+
+And they continued to stare at the picture, till Lavendie said:
+
+“I think there is still a little too much light on that ear.”
+
+The same evening, at bedtime, Pierson called Noel back.
+
+“Nollie, I want you to know something. In all but the name, Captain
+Fort is a married man.”
+
+He saw her flush, and felt his own face darkening with colour.
+
+She said calmly: “I know; to Leila.”
+
+“Do you mean she has told you?”
+
+Noel shook her head.
+
+“Then how?”
+
+“I guessed. Daddy, don't treat me as a child any more. What's the
+use, now?”
+
+He sat down in the chair before the hearth, and covered his face with
+his hands. By the quivering of those hands, and the movement of his
+shoulders, she could tell that he was stifling emotion, perhaps even
+crying; and sinking down on his knees she pressed his hands and face to
+her, murmuring: “Oh, Daddy dear! Oh, Daddy dear!”
+
+He put his arms round her, and they sat a long time with their cheeks
+pressed together, not speaking a word.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI 1
+
+The day after that silent outburst of emotion in the drawing-room was a
+Sunday. And, obeying the longing awakened overnight to be as good as she
+could to her father; Noel said to him:
+
+“Would you like me to come to Church?”
+
+“Of course, Nollie.”
+
+How could he have answered otherwise? To him Church was the home
+of comfort and absolution, where people must bring their sins and
+troubles—a haven of sinners, the fount of charity, of forgiveness, and
+love. Not to have believed that, after all these years, would have been
+to deny all his usefulness in life, and to cast a slur on the House of
+God.
+
+And so Noel walked there with him, for Gratian had gone down to George,
+for the week-end. She slipped quietly up the side aisle to their empty
+pew, under the pulpit. Never turning her eyes from the chancel, she
+remained unconscious of the stir her presence made, during that hour and
+twenty minutes. Behind her, the dumb currents of wonder, disapproval,
+and resentment ran a stealthy course. On her all eyes were fixed sooner
+or later, and every mind became the play ground of judgments. From every
+soul, kneeling, standing, or sitting, while the voice of the Service
+droned, sang, or spoke, a kind of glare radiated on to that one small
+devoted head, which seemed so ludicrously devout. She disturbed their
+devotions, this girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class.
+She ought to repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet
+there was something brazen in her repenting there before their very
+eyes; she was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's
+authority, too visible a rent in the raiment of their priest. Her figure
+focused all the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last
+weeks. Mothers quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could
+see her; wives with the idea that their husbands were seeing her.
+Men experienced sensations varying from condemnation to a sort of
+covetousness. Young folk wondered, and felt inclined to giggle. Old
+maids could hardly bear to look. Here and there a man or woman who had
+seen life face to face, was simply sorry! The consciousness of all who
+knew her personally was at stretch how to behave if they came within
+reach of her in going out. For, though only half a dozen would actually
+rub shoulders with her, all knew that they might be, and many felt it
+their duty to be, of that half-dozen, so as to establish their attitude
+once for all. It was, in fact, too severe a test for human nature and
+the feelings which Church ought to arouse. The stillness of that young
+figure, the impossibility of seeing her face and judging of her state
+of mind thereby; finally, a faint lurking shame that they should be so
+intrigued and disturbed by something which had to do with sex, in
+this House of Worship—all combined to produce in every mind that
+herd-feeling of defence, which so soon becomes, offensive. And, half
+unconscious, half aware of it all, Noel stood, and sat, and knelt. Once
+or twice she saw her father's eyes fixed on her; and, still in the
+glow of last night's pity and remorse, felt a kind of worship for
+his thin grave face. But for the most part, her own wore the expression
+Lavendie had translated to his canvas—the look of one ever waiting
+for the extreme moments of life, for those few and fleeting poignancies
+which existence holds for the human heart. A look neither hungry nor
+dissatisfied, but dreamy and expectant, which might blaze into warmth
+and depth at any moment, and then go back to its dream.
+
+When the last notes of the organ died away she continued to sit very
+still, without looking round.
+
+There was no second Service, and the congregation melted out behind
+her, and had dispersed into the streets and squares long before she
+came forth. After hesitating whether or no to go to the vestry door, she
+turned away and walked home alone.
+
+It was this deliberate evasion of all contact which probably clinched
+the business. The absence of vent, of any escape-pipe for the feelings,
+is always dangerous. They felt cheated. If Noel had come out amongst all
+those whose devotions her presence had disturbed, if in that exit, some
+had shown and others had witnessed one knows not what of a manifested
+ostracism, the outraged sense of social decency might have been appeased
+and sleeping dogs allowed to lie, for we soon get used to things;
+and, after all, the war took precedence in every mind even over social
+decency. But none of this had occurred, and a sense that Sunday after
+Sunday the same little outrage would happen to them, moved more than a
+dozen quite unrelated persons, and caused the posting that evening of
+as many letters, signed and unsigned, to a certain quarter. London is no
+place for parish conspiracy, and a situation which in the country would
+have provoked meetings more or less public, and possibly a resolution,
+could perhaps only thus be dealt with. Besides, in certain folk there
+is ever a mysterious itch to write an unsigned letter—such missives
+satisfy some obscure sense of justice, some uncontrollable longing to
+get even with those who have hurt or disturbed them, without affording
+the offenders chance for further hurt or disturbance.
+
+Letters which are posted often reach their destination.
+
+On Wednesday morning Pierson was sitting in his study at the hour
+devoted to the calls of his parishioners, when the maid announced,
+“Canon Rushbourne, sir,” and he saw before him an old College friend
+whom he had met but seldom in recent years. His visitor was a
+short, grey-haired man of rather portly figure, whose round, rosy,
+good-humoured face had a look of sober goodness, and whose light-blue
+eyes shone a little. He grasped Pierson's hand, and said in a voice
+to whose natural heavy resonance professional duty had added a certain
+unction:
+
+“My dear Edward, how many years it is since we met! Do you remember
+dear old Blakeway? I saw him only yesterday. He's just the same. I'm
+delighted to see you again,” and he laughed a little soft nervous
+laugh. Then for a few moments he talked of the war and old College days,
+and Pierson looked at him and thought: 'What has he come for?'
+
+“You've something to say to me, Alec,” he said, at last.
+
+Canon Rushbourne leaned forward in his chair, and answered with evident
+effort: “Yes; I wanted to have a little talk with you, Edward. I hope
+you won't mind. I do hope you won't.”
+
+“Why should I mind?”
+
+Canon Rushbourne's eyes shone more than ever, there was real
+friendliness in his face.
+
+“I know you've every right to say to me: 'Mind your own
+business.' But I made up my mind to come as a friend, hoping to save
+you from—er” he stammered, and began again: “I think you ought to
+know of the feeling in your parish that—er—that—er—your position
+is very delicate. Without breach of confidence I may tell you that
+letters have been sent to headquarters; you can imagine perhaps what
+I mean. Do believe, my dear friend, that I'm actuated by my old
+affection for you; nothing else, I do assure you.”
+
+In the silence, his breathing could be heard, as of a man a little
+touched with asthma, while he continually smoothed his thick black
+knees, his whole face radiating an anxious kindliness. The sun shone
+brightly on those two black figures, so very different, and drew out
+of their well-worn garments the faint latent green mossiness which.
+underlies the clothes of clergymen.
+
+At last Pierson said: “Thank you, Alec; I understand.”
+
+The Canon uttered a resounding sigh. “You didn't realise how very
+easily people misinterpret her being here with you; it seems to them a
+kind—a kind of challenge. They were bound, I think, to feel that; and
+I'm afraid, in consequence—” He stopped, moved by the fact that
+Pierson had closed his eyes.
+
+“I am to choose, you mean, between my daughter and my parish?”
+
+The Canon seemed, with a stammer of words, to try and blunt the edge of
+that clear question.
+
+“My visit is quite informal, my dear fellow; I can't say at all. But
+there is evidently much feeling; that is what I wanted you to know. You
+haven't quite seen, I think, that—”
+
+Pierson raised his hand. “I can't talk of this.”
+
+The Canon rose. “Believe me, Edward, I sympathise deeply. I felt I had
+to warn you.” He held out his hand. “Good-bye, my dear friend, do
+forgive me”; and he went out. In the hall an adventure befell him so
+plump, and awkward, that he could barely recite it to Mrs. Rushbourne
+that night.
+
+“Coming out from my poor friend,” he said, “I ran into a baby's
+perambulator and that young mother, whom I remember as a little
+thing”—he held his hand at the level of his thigh—“arranging it
+for going out. It startled me; and I fear I asked quite foolishly: 'Is
+it a boy?' The poor young thing looked up at me. She has very large
+eyes, quite beautiful, strange eyes. 'Have you been speaking to Daddy
+about me?' 'My dear young lady,' I said, 'I'm such an old
+friend, you see. You must forgive me.' And then she said: 'Are they
+going to ask him to resign?' 'That depends on you,' I said. Why
+do I say these things, Charlotte? I ought simply to have held my tongue.
+Poor young thing; so very young! And the little baby!” “She has
+brought it on herself, Alec,” Mrs. Rushbourne replied.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII 1
+
+The moment his visitor had vanished, Pierson paced up and down the
+study, with anger rising in his, heart. His daughter or his parish! The
+old saw, “An Englishman's house is his castle!” was being attacked
+within him. Must he not then harbour his own daughter, and help her by
+candid atonement to regain her inward strength and peace? Was he not
+thereby acting as a true Christian, in by far the hardest course he
+and she could pursue? To go back on that decision and imperil his
+daughter's spirit, or else resign his parish—the alternatives were
+brutal! This was the centre of his world, the only spot where so lonely
+a man could hope to feel even the semblance of home; a thousand
+little threads tethered him to his church, his parishioners, and this
+house—for, to live on here if he gave up his church was out of the
+question. But his chief feeling was a bewildered anger that for doing
+what seemed to him his duty, he should be attacked by his parishioners.
+
+A passion of desire to know what they really thought and felt—these
+parishioners of his, whom he had befriended, and for whom he had worked
+so long—beset him now, and he went out. But the absurdity of his quest
+struck him before he had gone the length of the Square. One could not go
+to people and say: “Stand and deliver me your inmost judgments.” And
+suddenly he was aware of how far away he really was from them. Through
+all his ministrations had he ever come to know their hearts? And now, in
+this dire necessity for knowledge, there seemed no way of getting it. He
+went at random into a stationer's shop; the shopman sang bass in his
+choir. They had met Sunday after Sunday for the last seven years. But
+when, with this itch for intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man
+behind the counter, it was as if he were looking on him for the first
+time. The Russian proverb, “The heart of another is a dark forest,”
+gashed into his mind, while he said:
+
+“Well, Hodson, what news of your son?”
+
+“Nothing more, Mr. Pierson, thank you, sir, nothing more at
+present.”
+
+And it seemed to Pierson, gazing at the man's face clothed in a short,
+grizzling beard cut rather like his own, that he must be thinking:
+'Ah! sir, but what news of your daughter?' No one would ever tell
+him to his face what he was thinking. And buying two pencils, he went
+out. On the other side of the road was a bird-fancier's shop, kept by
+a woman whose husband had been taken for the Army. She was not friendly
+towards him, for it was known to her that he had expostulated with her
+husband for keeping larks, and other wild birds. And quite deliberately
+he crossed the road, and stood looking in at the window, with the morbid
+hope that from this unfriendly one he might hear truth. She was in her
+shop, and came to the door.
+
+“Have you any news of your husband, Mrs. Cherry?”
+
+“No, Mr. Pierson, I 'ave not; not this week.”
+
+“He hasn't gone out yet?”
+
+“No, Mr. Pierson; 'e 'as not.”
+
+There was no expression on her face, perfectly blank it was—Pierson
+had a mad longing to say 'For God's sake, woman, speak out what's
+in your mind; tell me what you think of me and my daughter. Never mind
+my cloth!' But he could no more say it than the woman could tell him
+what was in her mind. And with a “Good morning” he passed on. No man
+or woman would tell him anything, unless, perhaps, they were drunk. He
+came to a public house, and for a moment even hesitated before it, but
+the thought of insult aimed at Noel stopped him, and he passed that too.
+And then reality made itself known to him. Though he had come out to
+hear what they were thinking, he did not really want to hear it, could
+not endure it if he did. He had been too long immune from criticism, too
+long in the position of one who may tell others what he thinks of
+them. And standing there in the crowded street, he was attacked by that
+longing for the country which had always come on him when he was hard
+pressed. He looked at his memoranda. By stupendous luck it was almost a
+blank day. An omnibus passed close by which would take him far out. He
+climbed on to it, and travelled as far as Hendon; then getting down, set
+forth on foot. It was bright and hot, and the May blossom in full foam.
+He walked fast along the perfectly straight road till he came to the top
+of Elstree Hill. There for a few moments he stood gazing at the school
+chapel, the cricket-field, the wide land beyond. All was very quiet, for
+it was lunch-time. A horse was tethered there, and a strolling cat, as
+though struck by the tall black incongruity of his figure, paused in her
+progress, then, slithering under the wicket gate, arched her back and
+rubbed herself against his leg, crinkling and waving the tip of her
+tail. Pierson bent down and stroked the creature's head; but uttering
+a faint miaou, the cat stepped daintily across the road, Pierson too
+stepped on, past the village, and down over the stile, into a field
+path. At the edge of the young clover, under a bank of hawthorn, he lay
+down on his back, with his hat beside him and his arms crossed over his
+chest, like the effigy of some crusader one may see carved on an old
+tomb. Though he lay quiet as that old knight, his eyes were not closed,
+but fixed on the blue, where a lark was singing. Its song refreshed his
+spirit; its passionate light-heartedness stirred all the love of beauty
+in him, awoke revolt against a world so murderous and uncharitable.
+Oh! to pass up with that song into a land of bright spirits, where
+was nothing ugly, hard, merciless, and the gentle face of the Saviour
+radiated everlasting love! The scent of the mayflowers, borne down by
+the sun shine, drenched his senses; he closed his eyes, and, at once,
+as if resenting that momentary escape, his mind resumed debate with
+startling intensity. This matter went to the very well-springs, had
+a terrible and secret significance. If to act as conscience bade him
+rendered him unfit to keep his parish, all was built on sand, had no
+deep reality, was but rooted in convention. Charity, and the forgiveness
+of sins honestly atoned for—what became of them? Either he was wrong
+to have espoused straightforward confession and atonement for her, or
+they were wrong in chasing him from that espousal. There could be no
+making those extremes to meet. But if he were wrong, having done the
+hardest thing already—where could he turn? His Church stood bankrupt
+of ideals. He felt as if pushed over the edge of the world, with feet on
+space, and head in some blinding cloud. 'I cannot have been wrong,'
+he thought; 'any other course was so much easier. I sacrificed my
+pride, and my poor girl's pride; I would have loved to let her run
+away. If for this we are to be stoned and cast forth, what living force
+is there in the religion I have loved; what does it all come to? Have I
+served a sham? I cannot and will not believe it. Something is wrong with
+me, something is wrong—but where—what?' He rolled over, lay on his
+face, and prayed. He prayed for guidance and deliverance from the gusts
+of anger which kept sweeping over him; even more for relief from the
+feeling of personal outrage, and the unfairness of this thing. He had
+striven to be loyal to what he thought the right, had sacrificed all his
+sensitiveness, all his secret fastidious pride in his child and himself.
+For that he was to be thrown out! Whether through prayer, or in the
+scent and feel of the clover, he found presently a certain rest. Away in
+the distance he could see the spire of Harrow Church.
+
+The Church! No! She was not, could not be, at fault. The fault was in
+himself. 'I am unpractical,' he thought. 'It is so, I know. Agnes
+used to say so, Bob and Thirza think so. They all think me unpractical
+and dreamy. Is it a sin—I wonder?' There were lambs in the next
+field; he watched their gambollings and his heart relaxed; brushing the
+clover dust off his black clothes, he began to retrace his steps. The
+boys were playing cricket now, and he stood a few minutes watching them.
+He had not seen cricket played since the war began; it seemed almost
+otherworldly, with the click of the bats, and the shrill young
+'voices, under the distant drone of that sky-hornet threshing along to
+Hendon. A boy made a good leg hit. “Well played!” he called. Then,
+suddenly conscious of his own incongruity and strangeness in that green
+spot, he turned away on the road back to London. To resign; to await
+events; to send Noel away—of those three courses, the last alone
+seemed impossible. 'Am I really so far from them,' he thought,
+'that they can wish me to go, for this? If so, I had better go. It
+will be just another failure. But I won't believe it yet; I can't
+believe it.'
+
+The heat was sweltering, and he became very tired before at last he
+reached his omnibus, and could sit with the breeze cooling his hot face.
+He did not reach home till six, having eaten nothing since breakfast.
+Intending to have a bath and lie down till dinner, he went upstairs.
+
+Unwonted silence reigned. He tapped on the nursery door. It was
+deserted; he passed through to Noel's room; but that too was empty.
+The wardrobe stood open as if it had been hastily ransacked, and her
+dressing-table was bare. In alarm he went to the bell and pulled
+it sharply. The old-fashioned ring of it jingled out far below. The
+parlour-maid came up.
+
+“Where are Miss Noel and Nurse, Susan?”
+
+“I didn't know you were in, sir. Miss Noel left me this note to give
+you. They—I—”
+
+Pierson stopped her with his hand. “Thank you, Susan; get me some tea,
+please.” With the note unopened in his hand, he waited till she was
+gone. His head was going round, and he sat down on the side of Noel's
+bed to read:
+
+“DARLING DADDY,
+
+“The man who came this morning told me of what is going to happen. I
+simply won't have it. I'm sending Nurse and baby down to Kestrel at
+once, and going to Leila's for the night, until I've made up my mind
+what to do. I knew it was a mistake my coming back. I don't care what
+happens to me, but I won't have you hurt. I think it's hateful of
+people to try and injure you for my fault. I've had to borrow money
+from Susan—six pounds. Oh! Daddy dear, forgive me.
+
+“Your loving
+
+“NOLLIE.”
+
+He read it with unutterable relief; at all events he knew where she
+was—poor, wilful, rushing, loving-hearted child; knew where she
+was, and could get at her. After his bath and some tea, he would go to
+Leila's and bring her back. Poor little Nollie, thinking that by just
+leaving his house she could settle this deep matter! He did not hurry,
+feeling decidedly exhausted, and it was nearly eight before he set out,
+leaving a message for Gratian, who did not as a rule come in from her
+hospital till past nine.
+
+The day was still glowing, and now, in the cool of evening, his
+refreshed senses soaked up its beauty. 'God has so made this world,'
+he thought, 'that, no matter what our struggles and sufferings, it's
+ever a joy to live when the sun shines, or the moon is bright, or the
+night starry. Even we can't spoil it.' In Regent's Park the lilacs
+and laburnums were still in bloom though June had come, and he gazed at
+them in passing, as a lover might at his lady. His conscience pricked
+him suddenly. Mrs. Mitchett and the dark-eyed girl she had brought
+to him on New Year's Eve, the very night he had learned of his own
+daughter's tragedy—had he ever thought of them since? How had that
+poor girl fared? He had been too impatient of her impenetrable mood.
+What did he know of the hearts of others, when he did not even know his
+own, could not rule his feelings of anger and revolt, had not guided his
+own daughter into the waters of safety! And Leila! Had he not been too
+censorious in thought? How powerful, how strange was this instinct of
+sex, which hovered and swooped on lives, seized them, bore them away,
+then dropped them exhausted and defenceless! Some munition-wagons,
+painted a dull grey, lumbered past, driven by sunburned youths in drab.
+Life-force, Death-force—was it all one; the great unknowable momentum
+from which there was but the one escape, in the arms of their Heavenly
+Father? Blake's little old stanzas came into his mind:
+
+“And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the
+beams of love; And these black bodies and this sunburnt face Are but a
+cloud, and like a shady grove.
+
+“For when our souls have learned the heat to bear, The cloud will
+vanish, we shall hear His voice, Saying: Come out from the grove, my
+love and care, And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!”
+
+
+Learned the heat to bear! Those lambs he had watched in a field that
+afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their funny quivering
+wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts—what little miracles
+of careless joy among the meadow flowers! Lambs, and flowers, and
+sunlight! Famine, lust, and the great grey guns! A maze, a wilderness;
+and but for faith, what issue, what path for man to take which did not
+keep him wandering hopeless, in its thicket? 'God preserve our faith
+in love, in charity, and the life to come!' he thought. And a blind
+man with a dog, to whose neck was tied a little deep dish for pennies,
+ground a hurdy-gurdy as he passed. Pierson put a shilling in the dish.
+The man stopped playing, his whitish eyes looked up. “Thank you
+kindly, sir; I'll go home now. Come on, Dick!” He tapped his way
+round the corner, with his dog straining in front. A blackbird hidden
+among the blossoms of an acacia, burst into evening song, and another
+great grey munition-wagon rumbled out through the Park gate. 2
+
+The Church-clock was striking nine when he reached Leila's flat, went
+up, and knocked. Sounds from-a piano ceased; the door was opened by
+Noel. She recoiled when she saw who it was, and said:
+
+“Why did you come, Daddy? It was much better not.”
+
+“Are you alone here?”
+
+“Yes; Leila gave me her key. She has to be at the hospital till ten
+to-night.”
+
+“You must come home with me, my dear.”
+
+Noel closed the piano, and sat down on the divan. Her face had the
+same expression as when he had told her that she could not marry Cyril
+Morland.
+
+“Come, Nollie,” he said; “don't be unreasonable. We must see
+this through together.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“My dear, that's childish. Do you think the mere accident of your
+being or not being at home can affect my decision as to what my duty
+is?”
+
+“Yes; it's my being there that matters. Those people don't care,
+so long as it isn't an open scandal.”
+
+“Nollie!”
+
+“But it is so, Daddy. Of course it's so, and you know it. If I'm
+away they'll just pity you for having a bad daughter. And quite right
+too. I am a bad daughter.”
+
+Pierson smiled. “Just like when you were a tiny.”
+
+“I wish I were a tiny again, or ten years older. It's this half
+age—But I'm not coming back with you, Daddy; so it's no good.”
+
+Pierson sat down beside her.
+
+“I've been thinking this over all day,” he said quietly.
+“Perhaps in my pride I made a mistake when I first knew of your
+trouble. Perhaps I ought to have accepted the consequences of my
+failure, then, and have given up, and taken you away at once. After all,
+if a man is not fit to have the care of souls, he should have the grace
+to know it.”
+
+“But you are fit,” cried Noel passionately; “Daddy, you are
+fit!”
+
+“I'm afraid not. There is something wanting in me, I don't know
+exactly what; but something very wanting.”
+
+“There isn't. It's only that you're too good—that's why!”
+
+Pierson shook his head. “Don't, Nollie!”
+
+“I will,” cried Noel. “You're too gentle, and you're too good.
+You're charitable, and you're simple, and you believe in another
+world; that's what's the matter with you, Daddy. Do you think they
+do, those people who want to chase us out? They don't even begin to
+believe, whatever they say or think. I hate them, and sometimes I hate
+the Church; either it's hard and narrow, or else it's worldly.”
+She stopped at the expression on her father's face, the most strange
+look of pain, and horror, as if an unspoken treachery of his own had
+been dragged forth for his inspection.
+
+“You're talking wildly,” he said, but his lips were trembling.
+“You mustn't say things like that; they're blasphemous and
+wicked.”
+
+Noel bit her lips, sitting very stiff and still, against a high blue
+cushion. Then she burst out again:
+
+“You've slaved for those people years and years, and you've had no
+pleasure and you've had no love; and they wouldn't care that if
+you broke your heart. They don't care for anything, so long as it all
+seems proper. Daddy, if you let them hurt you, I won't forgive you!”
+
+“And what if you hurt me now, Nollie?”
+
+Noel pressed his hand against her warm cheek.
+
+“Oh, no! Oh, no! I don't—I won't. Not again. I've done that
+already.”
+
+“Very well, my dear! then come home with me, and we'll see what's
+best to be done. It can't be settled by running away.”
+
+Noel dropped his hand. “No. Twice I've done what you wanted, and
+it's been a mistake. If I hadn't gone to Church on Sunday to please
+you, perhaps it would never have come to this. You don't see things,
+Daddy. I could tell, though I was sitting right in front. I knew what
+their faces were like, and what they were thinking.”
+
+“One must do right, Nollie, and not mind.”
+
+“Yes; but what is right? It's not right for me to hurt you, and
+I'm not going to.”
+
+Pierson understood all at once that it was useless to try and move her.
+
+“What are you going to do, then?”
+
+“I suppose I shall go to Kestrel to-morrow. Auntie will have me, I
+know; I shall talk to Leila.”
+
+“Whatever you do, promise to let me know.”
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+“Daddy, you—look awfully, awfully tired. I'm going to give you
+some medicine.” She went to a little three-cornered cupboard, and bent
+down. Medicine! The medicine he wanted was not for the body; knowledge
+of what his duty was—that alone could heal him!
+
+The loud popping of a cork roused him. “What are you doing, Nollie?”
+
+Noel rose with a flushed face, holding in one hand a glass of champagne,
+in the other a biscuit.
+
+“You're to take this; and I'm going to have some myself.”
+
+“My dear,” said Pierson bewildered; “it's not yours.”
+
+“Drink it; Daddy! Don't you know that Leila would never forgive me
+if I let you go home looking like that. Besides, she told me I was to
+eat. Drink it. You can send her a nice present. Drink it!” And she
+stamped her foot.
+
+Pierson took the glass, and sat there nibbling and sipping. It was nice,
+very! He had not quite realised how much he needed food and drink. Noel
+returned from the cupboard a second time; she too had a glass and a
+biscuit.
+
+“There, you look better already. Now you're to go home at once, in
+a cab if you can get one; and tell Gratian to make you feed up, or you
+won't have a body at all; you can't do your duty if you haven't
+one, you know.”
+
+Pierson smiled, and finished the champagne.
+
+Noel took the glass from him. “You're my child to-night, and
+I'm going to send you to bed. Don't worry, Daddy; it'll all come
+right.” And, taking his arm, she went downstairs with him, and blew
+him a kiss from the doorway.
+
+He walked away in a sort of dream. Daylight was not quite gone, but the
+moon was up, just past its full, and the search-lights had begun their
+nightly wanderings. It was a sky of ghosts and shadows, fitting to the
+thought which came to him. The finger of Providence was in all this,
+perhaps! Why should he not go out to France! At last; why not? Some
+better man, who understood men's hearts, who knew the world, would
+take his place; and he could go where death made all things simple, and
+he could not fail. He walked faster and faster, full of an intoxicating
+relief. Thirza and Gratian would take care of Nollie far better than
+he. Yes, surely it was ordained! Moonlight had the town now; and all was
+steel blue, the very air steel-blue; a dream-city of marvellous beauty,
+through which he passed, exalted. Soon he would be where that poor boy,
+and a million others, had given their lives; with the mud and the shells
+and the scarred grey ground, and the jagged trees, where Christ was
+daily crucified—there where he had so often longed to be these three
+years past. It was ordained!
+
+And two women whom he met looked at each other when he had gone by, and
+those words 'the blighted crow' which they had been about to speak,
+died on their lips.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Noel felt light-hearted too, as if she had won a victory. She found some
+potted meat, spread it on another biscuit, ate it greedily, and finished
+the pint bottle of champagne. Then she hunted for the cigarettes, and
+sat down at the piano. She played old tunes—“There is a Tavern in
+the Town,” “Once I Loved a Maiden Fair,” “Mowing the Barley,”
+“Clementine,” “Lowlands,” and sang to them such words as she
+remembered. There was a delicious running in her veins, and once she
+got up and danced. She was kneeling at the window, looking out, when she
+heard the door open, and without getting up, cried out:
+
+“Isn't it a gorgeous night! I've had Daddy here. I gave him some
+of your champagne, and drank the rest—” then was conscious of a
+figure far too tall for Leila, and a man's voice saying:
+
+“I'm awfully sorry. It's only I, Jimmy Fort.”
+
+Noel scrambled up. “Leila isn't in; but she will be
+directly—it's past ten.”
+
+He was standing stock-still in the middle of the room.
+
+“Won't you sit down? Oh! and won't you have a cigarette?”
+
+“Thanks.”
+
+By the flash of his briquette she saw his face clearly; the look on it
+filled her with a sort of malicious glee.
+
+“I'm going now,” she said. “Would you mind telling Leila that I
+found I couldn't stop?” She made towards the divan to get her hat.
+When she had put it on, she found him standing just in front of her.
+
+“Noel-if you don't mind me calling you that?”
+
+“Not a bit.”
+
+“Don't go; I'm going myself.”
+
+“Oh, no! Not for worlds.” She tried to slip past, but he took hold
+of her wrist.
+
+“Please; just one minute!”
+
+Noel stayed motionless, looking at him, while his hand still held her
+wrist. He said quietly:
+
+“Do you mind telling me why you came here?”
+
+“Oh, just to see Leila.”
+
+“Things have come to a head at home, haven't they?”
+
+Noel shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“You came for refuge, didn't you?”
+
+“From whom?”
+
+“Don't be angry; from the need of hurting your father.”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“I knew it would come to that. What are you going to do?”
+
+“Enjoy myself.” She was saying something fatuous, yet she meant it.
+
+“That's absurd. Don't be angry! You're quite right. Only, you
+must begin at the right end, mustn't you? Sit down!”
+
+Noel tried to free her wrist.
+
+“No; sit down, please.”
+
+Noel sat down; but as he loosed her wrist, she laughed. This was where
+he sat with Leila, where they would sit when she was gone. “It's
+awfully funny, isn't it?” she said.
+
+“Funny?” he muttered savagely. “Most things are, in this funny
+world.”
+
+The sound of a taxi stopping not far off had come to her ears, and she
+gathered her feet under her, planting them firmly. If she sprang up,
+could she slip by him before he caught her arm again, and get that taxi?
+
+“If I go now,” he said, “will you promise me to stop till you've
+seen Leila?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“That's foolish. Come, promise!”
+
+Noel shook her head. She felt a perverse pleasure at his embarrassment.
+
+“Leila's lucky, isn't she? No children, no husband, no father, no
+anything. Lovely!”
+
+She saw his arm go up as if to ward off a blow. “Poor Leila!” he
+said.
+
+“Why are you sorry for her? She has freedom! And she has you!”
+
+She knew it would hurt; but she wanted to hurt him.
+
+“You needn't envy her for that.”
+
+He had just spoken, when Noel saw a figure over by the door.
+
+She jumped up, and said breathlessly:
+
+“Oh, here you are, Leila! Father's been here, and we've had some
+of your champagne!”
+
+“Capital! You are in the dark!”
+
+Noel felt the blood rush into her cheeks. The light leaped up, and Leila
+came forward. She looked extremely pale, calm, and self-contained, in
+her nurse's dress; her full lips were tightly pressed together, but
+Noel could see her breast heaving violently. A turmoil of shame and
+wounded pride began raging in the girl. Why had she not flown long ago?
+Why had she let herself be trapped like this? Leila would think she
+had been making up to him! Horrible! Disgusting! Why didn't he—why
+didn't some one, speak? Then Leila said:
+
+“I didn't expect you, Jimmy; I'm glad you haven't been dull.
+Noel is staying here to-night. Give me a cigarette. Sit down, both of
+you. I'm awfully tired!”
+
+She sank into a chair, leaning back, with her knees crossed; and at
+that moment Noel admired her. She had said it beautifully; she looked
+so calm. Fort was lighting her cigarette; his hand was shaking, his face
+all sorry and mortified.
+
+“Give Noel one, too, and draw the curtains, Jimmy. Quick! Not that it
+makes any difference; it's as light as day. Sit down, dear.”
+
+But Noel remained standing.
+
+“What have you been talking of? Love and Chinese lanterns, or only
+me?”
+
+At those words Fort, who was drawing the last curtain, turned round; his
+tall figure was poised awkwardly against the wall, his face, unsuited to
+diplomacy, had a look as of flesh being beaten. If weals had started up
+across it, Noel would not have been surprised.
+
+He said with painful slowness:
+
+“I don't exactly know; we had hardly begun, had we?”
+
+“The night is young,” said Leila. “Go on while I just take off my
+things.”
+
+She rose with the cigarette between her lips, and went into the inner
+room. In passing, she gave Noel a look. What there was in that look,
+the girl could never make clear even to herself. Perhaps a creature shot
+would gaze like that, with a sort of profound and distant questioning,
+reproach, and anger, with a sort of pride, and the quiver of death. As
+the door closed, Fort came right across the room.
+
+“Go to her;” cried Noel; “she wants you. Can't you see, she
+wants you?”
+
+And before he could move, she was at the door. She flew downstairs, and
+out into the moonlight. The taxi, a little way off, was just beginning
+to move away; she ran towards it, calling out:
+
+“Anywhere! Piccadilly!” and jumping in, blotted herself against the
+cushions in the far corner.
+
+She did not come to herself, as it were, for several minutes, and then
+feeling she 'could no longer bear the cab, stopped it, and got out.
+Where was she? Bond Street! She began, idly, wandering down its narrow
+length; the fullest street by day, the emptiest by night. Oh! it had
+been horrible! Nothing said by any of them—nothing, and yet everything
+dragged out—of him, of Leila, of herself! She seemed to have no pride
+or decency left, as if she had been caught stealing. All her happy
+exhilaration was gone, leaving a miserable recklessness. Nothing she
+did was right, nothing turned out well, so what did it all matter? The
+moonlight flooding down between the tall houses gave her a peculiar
+heady feeling. “Fey” her father had called her. She laughed. 'But
+I'm not going home,' she thought. Bored with the street's length;
+she turned off, and was suddenly in Hanover Square. There was the
+Church, grey-white, where she had been bridesmaid to a second cousin,
+when she was fifteen. She seemed to see it all again—her frock, the
+lilies in her hand, the surplices of the choir, the bride's dress, all
+moonlight-coloured, and unreal. 'I wonder what's become of her!'
+she thought. 'He's dead, I expect, like Cyril!' She saw her
+father's face as he was marrying them, heard his voice: “For better,
+for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death
+do you part.” And the moonlight on the Church seemed to shift and
+quiver-some pigeons perhaps had been disturbed up there. Then instead
+of that wedding vision, she saw Monsieur Barra, sitting on his
+chair, gazing at the floor, and Chica nursing her doll. “All mad,
+mademoiselle, a little mad. Millions of men with white souls, but all a
+little tiny bit mad, you know.” Then Leila's face came before her,
+with that look in her eyes. She felt again the hot clasp of Fort's
+fingers on her wrist, and walked on, rubbing it with the other hand. She
+turned into Regent Street. The wide curve of the Quadrant swept into
+a sky of unreal blue, and the orange-shaded lamps merely added to the
+unreality. 'Love and Chinese lanterns! I should like some coffee,'
+she thought suddenly. She was quite close to the place where Lavendie
+had taken her. Should she go in there? Why not? She must go somewhere.
+She turned into the revolving cage of glass. But no sooner was she
+imprisoned there than in a flash Lavendie's face of disgust; and the
+red-lipped women, the green stuff that smelled of peppermint came back,
+filling her with a rush of dismay. She made the full circle in the
+revolving cage; and came out into the street again with a laugh. A tall
+young man in khaki stood there: “Hallo!” he said. “Come in and
+dance!” She started, recoiled from him and began to walk away as fast
+as ever she could. She passed a woman whose eyes seemed to scorch her. A
+woman like a swift vision of ruin with those eyes, and thickly powdered
+cheeks, and loose red mouth. Noel shuddered and fled along, feeling that
+her only safety lay in speed. But she could not walk about all night.
+There would be no train for Kestrel till the morning—and did she
+really want to go there, and eat her heart out? Suddenly she thought of
+George. Why should she not go down to him? He would know what was best
+for her to do. At the foot of the steps below the Waterloo Column
+she stood still. All was quiet there and empty, the great buildings
+whitened, the trees blurred and blue; and sweeter air was coming across
+their flowering tops. The queer “fey” moony sensation was still
+with her; so that she felt small and light, as if she could have floated
+through a ring. Faint rims of light showed round the windows of the
+Admiralty. The war! However lovely the night, however sweet the lilac
+smelt-that never stopped! She turned away and passed out under the arch,
+making for the station. The train of the wounded had just come in, and
+she stood in the cheering crowd watching the ambulances run out. Tears
+of excited emotion filled her eyes, and trickled down. Steady, smooth,
+grey, one after the other they came gliding, with a little burst of
+cheers greeting each one. All were gone now, and she could pass in.
+She went to the buffet and got a large cup of coffee, and a bun.
+Then, having noted the time of her early morning train, she sought the
+ladies' waiting-room, and sitting down in a corner, took out her purse
+and counted her money. Two pounds fifteen-enough to go to the hotel, if
+she liked. But, without luggage—it was so conspicuous, and she could
+sleep in this corner all right, if she wanted. What did girls do who
+had no money, and no friends to go to? Tucked away in the corner of that
+empty, heavy, varnished room, she seemed to see the cruelty and hardness
+of life as she had never before seen it, not even when facing her
+confinement. How lucky she had been, and was! Everyone was good to her.
+She had no real want or dangers, to face. But, for women—yes, and men
+too—who had no one to fall back on, nothing but their own hands and
+health and luck, it must be awful. That girl whose eyes had scorched
+her—perhaps she had no one—nothing. And people who were born ill,
+and the millions of poor women, like those whom she had gone visiting
+with Gratian sometimes in the poorer streets of her father's
+parish—for the first time she seemed to really know and feel the
+sort of lives they led. And then, Leila's face came back to her
+once more—Leila whom she had robbed. And the worst of it was, that,
+alongside her remorseful sympathy, she felt a sort of satisfaction. She
+could not help his not loving Leila, she could not help it if he loved
+herself! And he did—she knew it! To feel that anyone loved her was
+so comforting. But it was all awful! And she—the cause of it! And
+yet—she had never done or said anything to attract him. No! She could
+not have helped it.
+
+She had begun to feel drowsy, and closed her eyes. And gradually there
+came on her a cosey sensation, as if she were leaning up against someone
+with her head tucked in against his shoulder, as she had so often leaned
+as a child against her father, coming back from some long darkening
+drive in Wales or Scotland. She seemed even to feel the wet soft
+Westerly air on her face and eyelids, and to sniff the scent of a frieze
+coat; to hear the jog of hoofs and the rolling of the wheels; to feel
+the closing in of the darkness. Then, so dimly and drowsily, she seemed
+to know that it was not her father, but someone—someone—then no
+more, no more at all.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+She was awakened by the scream of an engine, and looked around her
+amazed. Her neck had fallen sideways while she slept, and felt horridly
+stiff; her head ached, and she was shivering. She saw by the clock
+that it was past five. 'If only I could get some tea!' she thought.
+'Anyway I won't stay here any longer!' When she had washed, and
+rubbed some of the stiffness out of her neck, the tea renewed her sense
+of adventure wonderfully. Her train did not start for an hour; she had
+time for a walk, to warm herself, and went down to the river. There
+was an early haze, and all looked a little mysterious; but people were
+already passing on their way to work. She walked along, looking at the
+water flowing up under the bright mist to which the gulls gave a sort of
+hovering life. She went as far as Blackfriars Bridge, and turning back,
+sat down on a bench under a plane-tree, just as the sun broke through.
+A little pasty woman with a pinched yellowish face was already sitting
+there, so still, and seeming to see so little, that Noel wondered of
+what she could be thinking. While she watched, the woman's face began
+puckering, and tears rolled slowly, down, trickling from pucker to
+pucker, till, summoning up her courage, Noel sidled nearer, and said:
+
+“Oh! What's the matter?”
+
+The tears seemed to stop from sheer surprise; little grey eyes gazed
+round, patient little eyes from above an almost bridgeless nose.
+
+“I'ad a baby. It's dead.... its father's dead in France.... I
+was goin' in the water, but I didn't like the look of it, and now I
+never will.”
+
+That “Now I never will,” moved Noel terribly. She slid her arm along
+the back of the bench and clasped the skinniest of shoulders.
+
+“Don't cry!”
+
+“It was my first. I'm thirty-eight. I'll never 'ave another. Oh!
+Why didn't I go in the water?”
+
+The face puckered again, and the squeezed-out tears ran down. 'Of
+course she must cry,' thought Noel; 'cry and cry till it feels
+better.' And she stroked the shoulder of the little woman, whose
+emotion was disengaging the scent of old clothes.
+
+“The father of my baby was killed in France, too,” she said at last.
+The little sad grey eyes looked curiously round.
+
+“Was 'e? 'Ave you got your baby still?”
+
+“Yes, oh, yes!”
+
+“I'm glad of that. It 'urts so bad, it does. I'd rather lose me
+'usband than me baby, any day.” The sun was shining now on a cheek
+of that terribly patient face; its brightness seemed cruel perching
+there.
+
+“Can I do anything to help you?” Noel murmured.
+
+“No, thank you, miss. I'm goin' 'ome now. I don't live
+far. Thank you kindly.” And raising her eyes for one more of those
+half-bewildered looks, she moved away along the Embankment wall. When
+she was out of sight, Noel walked back to the station. The train was in,
+and she took her seat. She had three fellow passengers, all in khaki;
+very silent and moody, as men are when they have to get up early. One
+was tall, dark, and perhaps thirty-five; the second small, and about
+fifty, with cropped, scanty grey hair; the third was of medium height
+and quite sixty-five, with a long row of little coloured patches on his
+tunic, and a bald, narrow, well-shaped head, grey hair brushed back at
+the sides, and the thin, collected features and drooping moustache of
+the old school. It was at him that Noel looked. When he glanced out of
+the window, or otherwise retired within himself, she liked his face; but
+when he turned to the ticket-collector or spoke to the others, she did
+not like it half so much. It was as if the old fellow had two selves,
+one of which he used when alone, the other in which he dressed every
+morning to meet the world. They had begun to talk about some Tribunal on
+which they had to sit. Noel did not listen, but a word or two carried to
+her now and then.
+
+“How many to-day?” she heard the old fellow ask, and the little
+cropped man answering: “Hundred and fourteen.”
+
+Fresh from the sight of the poor little shabby woman and her grief, she
+could not help a sort of shrinking from that trim old soldier, with his
+thin, regular face, who held the fate of a “Hundred and fourteen”
+in his firm, narrow grasp, perhaps every day. Would he understand their
+troubles or wants? Of course he wouldn't! Then, she saw him looking at
+her critically with his keen eyes. If he had known her secret, he would
+be thinking: 'A lady and act like that! Oh, no! Quite-quite out of
+the question!' And she felt as if she could, sink under the seat with
+shame. But no doubt he was only thinking: 'Very young to be travelling
+by herself at this hour of the morning. Pretty too!' If he knew
+the real truth of her—how he would stare! But why should this utter
+stranger, this old disciplinarian, by a casual glance, by the mere form
+of his face, make her feel more guilty and ashamed than she had yet
+felt? That puzzled her. He was, must be, a narrow, conventional old man;
+but he had this power to make her feel ashamed, because she felt that he
+had faith in his gods, and was true to them; because she knew he would
+die sooner than depart from his creed of conduct. She turned to the
+window, biting her lips-angry and despairing. She would never—never
+get used to her position; it was no good! And again she had the longing
+of her dream, to tuck her face away into that coat, smell the scent of
+the frieze, snuggle in, be protected, and forget. 'If I had been that
+poor lonely little woman,' she thought, 'and had lost everything, I
+should have gone into the water. I should have rushed and jumped. It's
+only luck that I'm alive. I won't look at that old man again: then I
+shan't feel so bad.'
+
+She had bought some chocolate at the station, and nibbled it, gazing
+steadily at the fields covered with daisies and the first of the
+buttercups and cowslips. The three soldiers were talking now in
+carefully lowered voices. The words: “women,” “under control,”
+“perfect plague,” came to her, making her ears burn. In the
+hypersensitive mood caused by the strain of yesterday, her broken night,
+and the emotional meeting with the little woman, she felt as if they
+were including her among those “women.” 'If we stop, I'll get
+out,' she thought. But when the train did stop it was they who got
+out. She felt the old General's keen veiled glance sum her up for the
+last time, and looked full at him just for a moment. He touched his cap,
+and said: “Will you have the window up or down?” and lingered to
+draw it half-way up.' His punctiliousness made her feel worse than
+ever. When the train had started again she roamed up and down her empty
+carriage; there was no more a way out of her position than out of this
+rolling cushioned carriage! And then she seemed to hear Fort's voice
+saying: 'Sit down, please!' and to feel his fingers clasp her wrist,
+Oh! he was nice and comforting; he would never reproach or remind her!
+And now, probably, she would never see him again.
+
+The train drew up at last. She did not know where George lodged, and
+would have to go to his hospital. She planned to get there at half past
+nine, and having eaten a sort of breakfast at the station, went forth
+into the town. The seaside was still wrapped in the early glamour which
+haunts chalk of a bright morning. But the streets were very much alive.
+Here was real business of the war. She passed houses which had been
+wrecked. Trucks clanged and shunted, great lorries rumbled smoothly by.
+Sea—and Air-planes were moving like great birds far up in the bright
+haze, and khaki was everywhere. But it was the sea Noel wanted. She made
+her way westward to a little beach; and, sitting down on a stone, opened
+her arms to catch the sun on her face and chest. The tide was nearly
+up, with the wavelets of a blue bright sea. The great fact, the greatest
+fact in the world, except the sun; vast and free, making everything
+human seem small and transitory! It did her good, like a tranquillising
+friend. The sea might be cruel and terrible, awful things it could do,
+and awful things were being done on it; but its wide level line, its
+never-ending song, its sane savour, were the best medicine she could
+possibly have taken. She rubbed the Shelly sand between her fingers
+in absurd ecstasy; took off her shoes and stockings, paddled, and sat
+drying her legs in the sun.
+
+When she left the little beach, she felt as if someone had said to her:
+
+'Your troubles are very little. There's the sun, the sea, the air;
+enjoy them. They can't take those from you.'
+
+At the hospital she had to wait half an hour in a little bare room
+before George came.
+
+“Nollie! Splendid. I've got an hour. Let's get out of this
+cemetery. We'll have time for a good stretch on the tops. Jolly of you
+to have come to me. Tell us all about it.”
+
+When she had finished, he squeezed her arm. 348
+
+“I knew it wouldn't do. Your Dad forgot that he's a public figure,
+and must expect to be damned accordingly. But though you've cut and
+run, he'll resign all the same, Nollie.”
+
+“Oh, no!” cried Noel.
+
+George shook his head.
+
+“Yes, he'll resign, you'll see, he's got no worldly sense; not a
+grain.”
+
+“Then I shall have spoiled his life, just as if—oh, no!”
+
+“Let's sit down here. I must be back at eleven.”
+
+They sat down on a bench, where the green cliff stretched out before
+them, over a sea quite clear of haze, far down and very blue.
+
+“Why should he resign,” cried Noel again, “now that I've gone?
+He'll be lost without it all.”
+
+George smiled.
+
+“Found, my dear. He'll be where he ought to be, Nollie, where the
+Church is, and the Churchmen are not—in the air!”
+
+“Don't!” cried Noel passionately.
+
+“No, no, I'm not chaffing. There's no room on earth for saints
+in authority. There's use for a saintly symbol, even if one doesn't
+hold with it, but there's no mortal use for those who try to have
+things both ways—to be saints and seers of visions, and yet to come
+the practical and worldly and rule ordinary men's lives. Saintly
+example yes; but not saintly governance. You've been his deliverance,
+Nollie.”
+
+“But Daddy loves his Church.”
+
+George frowned. “Of course, it'll be a wrench. A man's bound to
+have a cosey feeling about a place where he's been boss so long;
+and there is something about a Church—the drone, the scent, the half
+darkness; there's beauty in it, it's a pleasant drug. But he's not
+being asked to give up the drug habit; only to stop administering drugs
+to others. Don't worry, Nollie; I don't believe that's ever suited
+him, it wants a thicker skin than he's got.”
+
+“But all the people he helps?”
+
+“No reason he shouldn't go on helping people, is there?”
+
+“But to go on living there, without—Mother died there, you know!”
+
+George grunted. “Dreams, Nollie, all round him; of the past and the
+future, of what people are and what he can do with them. I never see him
+without a skirmish, as you know, and yet I'm fond of him. But I should
+be twice as fond, and half as likely to skirmish, if he'd drop the
+habits of authority. Then I believe he'd have some real influence over
+me; there's something beautiful about him, I know that quite well.”
+
+“Yes,” murmured Noel fervently.
+
+“He's such a queer mixture,” mused George. “Clean out of his
+age; chalks above most of the parsons in a spiritual sense and chalks
+below most of them in the worldly. And yet I believe he's in the right
+of it. The Church ought to be a forlorn hope, Nollie; then we should
+believe in it. Instead of that, it's a sort of business that no one
+can take too seriously. You see, the Church spiritual can't make good
+in this age—has no chance of making good, and so in the main it's
+given it up for vested interests and social influence. Your father is a
+symbol of what the Church is not. But what about you, my dear? There's
+a room at my boarding-house, and only one old lady besides myself, who
+knits all the time. If Grace can get shifted we'll find a house, and
+you can have the baby. They'll send your luggage on from Paddington if
+you write; and in the meantime Gracie's got some things here that you
+can have.”
+
+“I'll have to send a wire to Daddy.”
+
+“I'll do that. You come to my diggings at half past one, and I'll
+settle you in. Until then, you'd better stay up here.”
+
+When he had gone she roamed a little farther, and lay down on the
+short grass, where the chalk broke through in patches. She could hear a
+distant rumbling, very low, travelling in that grass, the long mutter
+of the Flanders guns. 'I wonder if it's as beautiful a day there,'
+she thought. 'How dreadful to see no green, no butterflies, no
+flowers-not even sky-for the dust of the shells. Oh! won't it ever,
+ever end?' And a sort of passion for the earth welled up in her, the
+warm grassy earth along which she lay, pressed so close that she could
+feel it with every inch of her body, and the soft spikes of the grass
+against her nose and lips. An aching sweetness tortured her, she wanted
+the earth to close its arms about her, she wanted the answer to
+her embrace of it. She was alive, and wanted love. Not death—not
+loneliness—not death! And out there, where the guns muttered, millions
+of men would be thinking that same thought!
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Pierson had passed nearly the whole night with the relics of his past,
+the records of his stewardship, the tokens of his short married life.
+The idea which had possessed him walking home in the moonlight sustained
+him in that melancholy task of docketing and destruction. There was
+not nearly so much to do as one would have supposed, for, with all
+his dreaminess, he had been oddly neat and businesslike in all parish
+matters. But a hundred times that night he stopped, overcome by
+memories. Every corner, drawer, photograph, paper was a thread in the
+long-spun web of his life in this house. Some phase of his work,
+some vision of his wife or daughters started forth from each bit of
+furniture, picture, doorway. Noiseless, in his slippers, he stole up and
+down between the study, diningroom, drawing-room, and anyone seeing him
+at his work in the dim light which visited the staircase from above the
+front door and the upper-passage window, would have thought: 'A ghost,
+a ghost gone into mourning for the condition of the world.' He had to
+make this reckoning to-night, while the exaltation of his new idea was
+on him; had to rummage out the very depths of old association, so that
+once for all he might know whether he had strength to close the door
+on the past. Five o'clock struck before he had finished, and, almost
+dropping from fatigue, sat down at his little piano in bright daylight.
+The last memory to beset him was the first of all; his honeymoon, before
+they came back to live in this house, already chosen, furnished, and
+waiting for them. They had spent it in Germany—the first days in
+Baden-baden, and each morning had been awakened by a Chorale played down
+in the gardens of the Kurhaus, a gentle, beautiful tune, to remind them
+that they were in heaven. And softly, so softly that the tunes seemed to
+be but dreams he began playing those old Chorales, one after another, so
+that the stilly sounds floated out, through the opened window, puzzling
+the early birds and cats and those few humans who were abroad as
+yet.....
+
+He received the telegram from Noel in the afternoon of the same day,
+just as he was about to set out for Leila's to get news of her; and
+close on the top of it came Lavendie. He found the painter standing
+disconsolate in front of his picture.
+
+“Mademoiselle has deserted me?”
+
+“I'm afraid we shall all desert you soon, monsieur.”
+
+“You are going?”
+
+“Yes, I am leaving here. I hope to go to France.”
+
+“And mademoiselle?”
+
+“She is at the sea with my son-in-law.”
+
+The painter ran his hands through his hair, but stopped them half-way,
+as if aware that he was being guilty of ill-breeding.
+
+“Mon dieu!” he said: “Is this not a calamity for you, monsieur le
+cure?” But his sense of the calamity was so patently limited to his
+unfinished picture that Pierson could not help a smile.
+
+“Ah, monsieur!” said the painter, on whom nothing was lost. “Comme
+je suis egoiste! I show my feelings; it is deplorable. My disappointment
+must seem a bagatelle to you, who will be so distressed at leaving
+your old home. This must be a time of great trouble. Believe me; I
+understand. But to sympathise with a grief which is not shown would
+be an impertinence, would it not? You English gentlefolk do not let us
+share your griefs; you keep them to yourselves.”
+
+Pierson stared. “True,” he said. “Quite true!”
+
+“I am no judge of Christianity, monsieur, but for us artists the doors
+of the human heart stand open, our own and others. I suppose we have no
+pride—c'est tres-indelicat. Tell me, monsieur, you would not think
+it worthy of you to speak to me of your troubles, would you, as I have
+spoken of mine?”
+
+Pierson bowed his head, abashed.
+
+“You preach of universal charity and love,” went on Lavendie; “but
+how can there be that when you teach also secretly the keeping of your
+troubles to yourselves? Man responds to example, not to teaching; you
+set the example of the stranger, not the brother. You expect from others
+what you do not give. Frankly, monsieur, do you not feel that with every
+revelation of your soul and feelings, virtue goes out of you? And I
+will tell you why, if you will not think it an offence. In opening your
+hearts you feel that you lose authority. You are officers, and must
+never forget that. Is it not so?”
+
+Pierson grew red. “I hope there is another feeling too. I think we
+feel that to speak of our sufferings or, deeper feelings is to obtrude
+oneself, to make a fuss, to be self-concerned, when we might be
+concerned with others.”
+
+“Monsieur, au fond we are all concerned with self. To seem selfless is
+but your particular way of cultivating the perfection of self. You admit
+that not to obtrude self is the way to perfect yourself. Eh bien! What
+is that but a deeper concern with self? To be free of this, there is no
+way but to forget all about oneself in what one is doing, as I forget
+everything when I am painting. But,” he added, with a sudden smile,
+“you would not wish to forget the perfecting of self—it would not be
+right in your profession. So I must take away this picture, must I not?
+It is one of my best works: I regret much not to have finished it.”
+
+“Some day, perhaps—”
+
+“Some day! The picture will stand still, but mademoiselle will not.
+She will rush at something, and behold! this face will be gone. No; I
+prefer to keep it as it is. It has truth now.” And lifting down the
+canvas, he stood it against the wall and folded up the easel. “Bon
+soir, monsieur, you have been very good to me.” He wrung Pierson's
+hand; and his face for a moment seemed all eyes and spirit. “Adieu!”
+
+“Good-bye,” Pierson murmured. “God bless you!”
+
+“I don't know if I have great confidence in Him,” replied
+Lavendie, “but I shall ever remember that so good a man as you has
+wished it. To mademoiselle my distinguished salutations, if you
+please. If you will permit me, I will come back for my other things
+to-morrow.” And carrying easel and canvas, he departed.
+
+Pierson stayed in the old drawing-room, waiting for Gratian to come in,
+and thinking over the painter's words. Had his education and position
+really made it impossible for him to be brotherly? Was this the secret
+of the impotence which he sometimes felt; the reason why charity and
+love were not more alive in the hearts of his congregation? 'God knows
+I've no consciousness of having felt myself superior,' he thought;
+'and yet I would be truly ashamed to tell people of my troubles and of
+my struggles. Can it be that Christ, if he were on earth, would count us
+Pharisees, believing ourselves not as other men? But surely it is not as
+Christians but rather as gentlemen that we keep ourselves to ourselves.
+Officers, he called us. I fear—I fear it is true.' Ah, well! There
+would not be many more days now. He would learn out there how to open
+the hearts of others, and his own. Suffering and death levelled all
+barriers, made all men brothers. He was still sitting there when Gratian
+came in; and taking her hand, he said:
+
+“Noel has gone down to George, and I want you to get transferred
+and go to them, Gracie. I'm giving up the parish and asking for a
+chaplaincy.”
+
+“Giving up? After all this time? Is it because of Nollie?”
+
+“No, I think not; I think the time has come. I feel my work here is
+barren.”
+
+“Oh, no! And even if it is, it's only because—”
+
+Pierson smiled. “Because of what, Gracie?”
+
+“Dad, it's what I've felt in myself. We want to think and decide
+things for ourselves, we want to own our consciences, we can't take
+things at second-hand any longer.”
+
+Pierson's face darkened. “Ah!” he said, “to have lost faith is a
+grievous thing.”
+
+“We're gaining charity,” cried Gratian.
+
+“The two things are not opposed, my dear.”
+
+“Not in theory; but in practice I think they often are. Oh, Dad!
+you look so tired. Have you really made up your mind? Won't you feel
+lost?”
+
+“For a little. I shall find myself, out there.”
+
+But the look on his face was too much for Gratian's composure, and she
+turned away.
+
+Pierson went down to his study to write his letter of resignation.
+Sitting before that blank sheet of paper, he realised to the full how
+strongly he had resented the public condemnation passed on his own flesh
+and blood, how much his action was the expression of a purely mundane
+championship of his daughter; of a mundane mortification. 'Pride,'
+he thought. 'Ought I to stay and conquer it?' Twice he set his pen
+down, twice took it up again. He could not conquer it. To stay where he
+was not wanted, on a sort of sufferance—never! And while he sat before
+that empty sheet of paper he tried to do the hardest thing a man can
+do—to see himself as others see him; and met with such success as one
+might expect—harking at once to the verdicts, not of others at all,
+but of his own conscience; and coming soon to that perpetual gnawing
+sense which had possessed him ever since the war began, that it was his
+duty to be dead. This feeling that to be alive was unworthy of him when
+so many of his flock had made the last sacrifice, was reinforced by his
+domestic tragedy and the bitter disillusionment it had brought. A sense
+of having lost caste weighed on him, while he sat there with his past
+receding from him, dusty and unreal. He had the queerest feeling of
+his old life falling from him, dropping round his feet like the outworn
+scales of a serpent, rung after rung of tasks and duties performed day
+after day, year after year. Had they ever been quite real? Well, he
+had shed them now, and was to move out into life illumined by the great
+reality-death! And taking up his pen, he wrote his resignation.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI 1
+
+The last Sunday, sunny and bright! Though he did not ask her to go,
+Gratian went to every Service that day. And the sight of her, after this
+long interval, in their old pew, where once he had been wont to see his
+wife's face, and draw refreshment therefrom, affected Pierson
+more than anything else. He had told no one of his coming departure,
+shrinking from the falsity and suppression which must underlie every
+allusion and expression of regret. In the last minute of his last sermon
+he would tell them! He went through the day in a sort of dream. Truly
+proud and sensitive, under this social blight, he shrank from all alike,
+made no attempt to single out supporters or adherents from those who
+had fallen away. He knew there would be some, perhaps many, seriously
+grieved that he was going; but to try and realise who they were, to
+weigh them in the scales against the rest and so forth, was quite
+against his nature. It was all or nothing. But when for the last time of
+all those hundreds, he mounted the steps of his dark pulpit, he showed
+no trace of finality, did not perhaps even feel it yet. For so beautiful
+a summer evening the congregation was large. In spite of all reticence,
+rumour was busy and curiosity still rife. The writers of the letters,
+anonymous and otherwise, had spent a week, not indeed in proclaiming
+what they had done, but in justifying to themselves the secret fact
+that they had done it. And this was best achieved by speaking to their
+neighbours of the serious and awkward situation of the poor Vicar.
+The result was visible in a better attendance than had been seen since
+summer-time began.
+
+Pierson had never been a great preacher, his voice lacked resonance and
+pliancy, his thought breadth and buoyancy, and he was not free from,
+the sing-song which mars the utterance of many who have to speak
+professionally. But he always made an impression of goodness and
+sincerity. On this last Sunday evening he preached again the first
+sermon he had ever preached from that pulpit, fresh from the honeymoon
+with his young wife. “Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
+one of these.” It lacked now the happy fervour of that most happy
+of all his days, yet gained poignancy, coming from so worn a face and
+voice. Gratian, who knew that he was going to end with his farewell, was
+in a choke of emotion long before he came to it. She sat winking away
+her tears, and not till he paused, for so long that she thought his
+strength had failed, did she look up. He was leaning a little forward,
+seeming to see nothing; but his hands, grasping the pulpit's edge,
+were quivering. There was deep silence in the Church, for the look of
+his face and figure was strange, even to Gratian. When his lips parted
+again to speak, a mist covered her eyes, and she lost sight of him.
+
+“Friends, I am leaving you; these are the last words I shall ever
+speak in this place. I go to other work. You have been very good to me.
+God has been very good to me. I pray with my whole heart that He may
+bless you all. Amen! Amen!”
+
+The mist cleared into tears, and she could see him again gazing down at
+her. Was it at her? He was surely seeing something—some vision sweeter
+than reality, something he loved more dearly. She fell on her knees, and
+buried her face in her hand. All through the hymn she knelt, and through
+his clear slow Benediction: “The peace of God, which passeth all
+understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love
+of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of God
+Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you and
+remain with you always.” And still she knelt on; till she was alone
+in the Church. Then she rose and stole home. He did not come in; she did
+not expect him. 'It's over,' she kept thinking; 'all over. My
+beloved Daddy! Now he has no home; Nollie and I have pulled him
+down. And yet I couldn't help it, and perhaps she couldn't. Poor
+Nollie!...'
+
+2
+
+Pierson had stayed in the vestry, talking with his choir and wardens;
+there was no hitch, for his resignation had been accepted, and he had
+arranged with a friend to carry on till the new Vicar was appointed.
+When they were gone he went back into the empty Church, and mounted to
+the organ-loft. A little window up there was open, and he stood leaning
+against the stone, looking out, resting his whole being. Only now that
+it was over did he know what stress he had been through. Sparrows were
+chirping, but sound of traffic had almost ceased, in that quiet Sunday
+hour of the evening meal. Finished! Incredible that he would never come
+up here again, never see those roof-lines, that corner of Square Garden,
+and hear this familiar chirping of the sparrows. He sat down at the
+organ and began to play. The last time the sound would roll out and echo
+'round the emptied House of God. For a long time he played, while
+the building darkened slowly down there below him. Of all that he would
+leave, he would miss this most—the right to come and play here in the
+darkening Church, to release emotional sound in this dim empty space
+growing ever more beautiful. From chord to chord he let himself go
+deeper and deeper into the surge and swell of those sound waves, losing
+all sense of actuality, till the music and the whole dark building were
+fused in one rapturous solemnity. Away down there the darkness crept
+over the Church, till the pews, the altar-all was invisible, save the
+columns; and the walls. He began playing his favourite slow movement
+from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony—kept to the end, for the visions
+it ever brought him. And a cat, which had been stalking the sparrows,
+crept in through the little window, and crouched, startled, staring at
+him with her green eyes. He closed the organ, went quickly down, and
+locked up his Church for the last time. It was warmer outside than in,
+and lighter, for daylight was not quite gone. He moved away a few yards,
+and stood looking up. Walls, buttresses, and spire were clothed in milky
+shadowy grey. The top of the spire seemed to touch a star. 'Goodbye,
+my Church!' he thought. 'Good-bye, good-bye!' He felt his face
+quiver; clenched his teeth, and turned away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+When Noel fled, Fort had started forward to stop her; then, realising
+that with his lameness he could never catch her, he went back and
+entered Leila's bedroom.
+
+She had taken off her dress, and was standing in front of her glass,
+with the cigarette still in her mouth; and the only movement was the
+curling of its blue smoke. He could see her face reflected, pale, with
+a little spot of red in each cheek, and burning red ears. She had not
+seemed to hear him coming in, but he saw her eyes change when they
+caught his reflection in the mirror. From lost and blank, they became
+alive and smouldering.
+
+“Noel's gone!” he said.
+
+She answered, as if to his reflection in the glass
+
+“And you haven't gone too? Ah, no! Of course—your leg! She fled, I
+suppose? It was rather a jar, my coming in, I'm afraid.”
+
+“No; it was my coming in that was the jar.”
+
+Leila turned round. “Jimmy! I wonder you could discuss me. The
+rest—” She shrugged her shoulders—“But that!”
+
+“I was not discussing you. I merely said you were not to be envied for
+having me. Are you?”
+
+The moment he had spoken, he was sorry. The anger in her eyes changed
+instantly, first to searching, then to misery. She cried out:
+
+“I was to be envied. Oh! Jimmy; I was!” and flung herself face down
+on the bed.
+
+Through Fort's mind went the thought: 'Atrocious!' How could he
+soothe—make her feel that he loved her, when he didn't—that he
+wanted her, when he wanted Noel. He went up to the bedside and touched
+her timidly:
+
+“Leila, what is it? You're overtired. What's the matter? I
+couldn't help the child's being here. Why do you let it upset you?
+She's gone. It's all right. Things are just as they were.”
+
+“Yes!” came the strangled echo; “just!”
+
+He knelt down and stroked her arm. It shivered under the touch, seemed
+to stop shivering and wait for the next touch, as if hoping it might be
+warmer; shivered again.
+
+“Look at me!” he said. “What is it you want? I'm ready to do
+anything.”
+
+She turned and drew herself up on the bed, screwing herself back against
+the pillow as if for support, with her knees drawn under her. He was
+astonished at the strength of her face and figure, thus entrenched.
+
+“My dear Jimmy!” she said, “I want you to do nothing but get me
+another cigarette. At my age one expects no more than one gets!” She
+held out her thumb and finger: “Do you mind?”
+
+Fort turned away to get the cigarette. With what bitter restraint and
+curious little smile she had said that! But no sooner was he out of the
+room and hunting blindly for the cigarettes, than his mind was filled
+with an aching concern for Noel, fleeing like that, reckless and hurt,
+with nowhere to go. He found the polished birch-wood box which held the
+cigarettes, and made a desperate effort to dismiss the image of the girl
+before he again reached Leila. She was still sitting there, with her
+arms crossed, in the stillness of one whose every nerve and fibre was
+stretched taut.
+
+“Have one yourself,” she said. “The pipe of peace.”
+
+Fort lit the cigarettes, and sat down on the edge of the bed; and his
+mind at once went back to Noel.
+
+“Yes,” she said suddenly; “I wonder where she's gone. Can you
+see her? She might do something reckless a second time. Poor Jimmy! It
+would be a pity. And so that monk's been here, and drunk champagne.
+Good idea! Get me some, Jimmy!”
+
+Again Fort went, and with him the image of the girl. When he came back
+the second time; she had put on that dark silk garment in which she
+had appeared suddenly radiant the fatal night after the Queen's
+Hall concert. She took the wineglass, and passed him, going into the
+sitting-room.
+
+“Come and sit down,” she said. “Is your leg hurting you?”
+
+“Not more than usual,” and he sat down beside her.
+
+“Won't you have some? 'In vino veritas;' my friend.”
+
+He shook his head, and said humbly: “I admire you, Leila.”
+
+“That's lucky. I don't know anyone else who, would.” And she
+drank her champagne at a draught.
+
+“Don't you wish,” she said suddenly, “that I had been one of
+those wonderful New Women, all brain and good works. How I should have
+talked the Universe up and down, and the war, and Causes, drinking tea,
+and never boring you to try and love me. What a pity!”
+
+But to Fort there had come Noel's words: “It's awfully funny,
+isn't it?”
+
+“Leila,” he said suddenly, “something's got to be done. So
+long as you don't wish me to, I'll promise never to see that child
+again.”
+
+“My dear boy, she's not a child. She's ripe for love; and—I'm
+too ripe for love. That's what's the matter, and I've got to lump
+it.” She wrenched her hand out of his and, dropping the empty glass,
+covered her face. The awful sensation which visits the true Englishman
+when a scene stares him in the face spun in Fort's brain. Should he
+seize her hands, drag them down, and kiss her? Should he get up and
+leave her alone? Speak, or keep silent; try to console; try to pretend?
+And he did absolutely nothing. So far as a man can understand that
+moment in a woman's life when she accepts the defeat of Youth
+and Beauty, he understood perhaps; but it was only a glimmering. He
+understood much better how she was recognising once for all that she
+loved where she was not loved.
+
+'And I can't help that,' he thought dumbly; 'simply can't
+help that!' Nothing he could say or do would alter it. No words can
+convince a woman when kisses have lost reality. Then, to his infinite
+relief, she took her hands from her face, and said:
+
+“This is very dull. I think you'd better go, Jimmy.”
+
+He made an effort to speak, but was too afraid of falsity in his voice.
+
+“Very nearly a scene!” said Leila. “My God!
+
+“How men hate them! So do I. I've had too many in my time; nothing
+comes of them but a headache next morning. I've spared you that,
+Jimmy. Give me a kiss for it.”
+
+He bent down and put his lips to hers. With all his heart he tried to
+answer the passion in her kiss. She pushed him away suddenly, and said
+faintly:
+
+“Thank you; you did try!”
+
+Fort dashed his hand across his eyes. The sight of her face just then
+moved him horribly. What a brute he felt! He took her limp hand, put it
+to his lips, and murmured:
+
+“I shall come in to-morrow. We'll go to the theatre, shall we? Good
+night, Leila!”
+
+But, in opening the door, he caught sight of her face, staring at him,
+evidently waiting for him to turn; the eyes had a frightened look. They
+went suddenly soft, so soft as to give his heart a squeeze.
+
+She lifted her hand, blew him a kiss, and he saw her smiling. Without
+knowing what his own lips answered, he went out. He could not make
+up his mind to go away, but, crossing to the railings, stood leaning
+against them, looking up at her windows. She had been very good to him.
+He felt like a man who has won at cards, and sneaked away without giving
+the loser his revenge. If only she hadn't loved him; and it had been
+a soulless companionship, a quite sordid business. Anything rather than
+this! English to the backbone, he could not divest himself of a sense of
+guilt. To see no way of making up to her, of straightening it out, made
+him feel intensely mean. 'Shall I go up again?' he thought. The
+window-curtain moved. Then the shreds of light up there vanished.
+'She's gone to bed,' he thought. 'I should only upset her worse.
+Where is Noel, now, I wonder? I shall never see her again, I suppose.
+Altogether a bad business. My God, yes! A bad-bad business!'
+
+And, painfully, for his leg was hurting him, he walked away.
+
+Leila was only too well aware of a truth that feelings are no less real,
+poignant, and important to those outside morality's ring fence than
+to those within. Her feelings were, indeed, probably even more real and
+poignant, just as a wild fruit's flavour is sharper than that of
+the tame product. Opinion—she knew—would say, that having wilfully
+chosen a position outside morality she had not half the case for
+brokenheartedness she would have had if Fort had been her husband:
+Opinion—she knew—would say she had no claim on him, and the sooner
+an illegal tie was broken, the better! But she felt fully as wretched
+as if she had been married. She had not wanted to be outside morality;
+never in her life wanted to be that. She was like those who by
+confession shed their sins and start again with a clear conscience. She
+never meant to sin, only to love, and when she was in love, nothing else
+mattered for the moment. But, though a gambler, she had always so far
+paid up. Only, this time the stakes were the heaviest a woman can
+put down. It was her last throw; and she knew it. So long as a woman
+believed in her attraction, there was hope, even when the curtain fell
+on a love-affair! But for Leila the lamp of belief had suddenly gone
+out, and when this next curtain dropped she felt that she must sit in
+the dark until old age made her indifferent. And between forty-four and
+real old age a gulf is fixed. This was the first time a man had tired
+of her. Why! he had been tired before he began, or so she felt. In one
+swift moment as of a drowning person, she saw again all the passages
+of their companionship, knew with certainty that it had never been a
+genuine flame. Shame ran, consuming, in her veins. She buried her face
+in the cushions. This girl had possessed his real heart all the time.
+With a laugh she thought: 'I put my money on the wrong horse; I ought
+to have backed Edward. I could have turned that poor monk's head. If
+only I had never seen Jimmy again; if I had torn his letter up, I could
+have made poor Edward love me!' Ifs! What folly! Things happened as
+they must!
+
+And, starting up, she began to roam the little room. Without Jimmy she
+would be wretched, with him she would be wretched too! 'I can't bear
+to see his face,' she thought; 'and I can't live here without
+him! It's really funny!' The thought of her hospital filled her
+with loathing. To go there day after day with this despair eating at her
+heart—she simply could not. She went over her resources. She had more
+money than she thought; Jimmy had given her a Christmas present of five
+hundred pounds. She had wanted to tear up the cheque, or force him to
+take it back; but the realities of the previous five years had prevailed
+with her, and she had banked it. She was glad now. She had not to
+consider money. Her mind sought to escape in the past. She thought of
+her first husband, Ronny Fane; of their mosquito-curtained rooms in
+that ghastly Madras heat. Poor Ronny! What a pale, cynical young
+ghost started up under that name. She thought of Lynch, his horsey,
+matter-of-fact solidity. She had loved them both—for a time. She
+thought of the veldt, of Constantia, and the loom of Table Mountain
+under the stars; and the first sight of Jimmy, his straight look, the
+curve of his crisp head, the kind, fighting-schoolboy frankness of his
+face. Even now, after all those months of their companionship, that
+long-ago evening at grape harvest, when she sang to him under the
+scented creepers, was the memory of him most charged with real feeling.
+That one evening at any rate he had longed for her, eleven: years ago,
+when she was in her prime. She could have held her own then; Noel would
+have come in vain. To think that this girl had still fifteen years
+before she would be even in her prime. Fifteen years of witchery; and
+then another ten before she was on the shelf. Why! if Noel married
+Jimmy, he would be an old man doting on her still, by the time she had
+reached this fatal age of forty-four: She felt as if she must scream,
+and; stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, turned out the light.
+Darkness cooled her, a little. She pulled aside the curtains, and let in
+the moon light. Jimmy and that girl were out in it some where, seeking
+each other, if not in body, then in thought. And soon, somehow,
+somewhere, they would come together—come together because Fate meant
+them to! Fate which had given her young cousin a likeness to herself;
+placed her, too, in just such a hopeless position as appealed to Jimmy,
+and gave him a chance against younger men. She saw it with bitter
+surety. Good gamblers cut their losses! Yes, and proud women did not
+keep unwilling lovers! If she had even an outside chance, she would
+trail her pride, drag it through the mud, through thorns! But she had
+not. And she clenched her fist, and struck out at the night, as though
+at the face of that Fate which one could never reach—impalpable,
+remorseless, surrounding Fate with its faint mocking smile, devoid of
+all human warmth. Nothing could set back the clock, and give her what
+this girl had. Time had “done her in,” as it “did in” every
+woman, one by one. And she saw herself going down the years, powdering
+a little more, painting a little more, touching up her hair, till it was
+all artifice, holding on by every little device—and all, to what end?
+To see his face get colder and colder, hear his voice more and more
+constrained to gentleness; and know that underneath, aversion was
+growing with the thought 'You are keeping me from life, and love!'
+till one evening, in sheer nerve-break, she would say or do some fearful
+thing, and he would come no more. 'No, Jimmy!' she thought; 'find
+her, and stay with her. You're not worth all that!' And puffing
+to the curtains, as though with that gesture she could shut out her
+creeping fate, she turned up the light and sat down at her writing
+table. She stayed some minutes motionless, her chin resting on her
+hands, the dark silk fallen down from her arms. A little mirror,
+framed in curiously carved ivory, picked up by her in an Indian bazaar
+twenty-five years ago, hung on a level with her face and gave that face
+back to her. 'I'm not ugly,' she thought passionately, 'I'm
+not. I still have some looks left. If only that girl hadn't come. And
+it was all my doing. Oh, what made me write to both of them, Edward and
+Jimmy?' She turned the mirror aside, and took up a pen.
+
+“MY DEAR JIMMY,” she wrote: “It will be better for us both if you
+take a holiday from here. Don't come again till I write for you. I'm
+sorry I made you so much disturbance to-night. Have a good time, and a
+good rest; and don't worry. Your—”
+
+So far she had written when a tear dropped on the page, and she had to
+tear it up and begin again. This time she wrote to the end—“Your
+Leila.” 'I must post it now,' she thought, 'or he may not get
+it before to-morrow evening. I couldn't go through with this again.'
+She hurried out with it and slipped it in a pillar box. The night
+smelled of flowers; and, hastening back, she lay down, and stayed awake
+for hours, tossing, and staring at the dark.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII 1
+
+Leila had pluck, but little patience. Her one thought was to get away
+and she at once began settling up her affairs and getting a permit to
+return to South Africa. The excitements of purchase and preparation were
+as good an anodyne as she could have taken. The perils of the sea
+were at full just then, and the prospect of danger gave her a sort of
+pleasure. 'If I go down,' she thought, 'all the better; brisk,
+instead of long and dreary.' But when she had the permit and her cabin
+was booked, the irrevocability of her step came to her with full force.
+Should she see him again or no? Her boat started in three days, and she
+must decide. If in compunction he were to be affectionate, she knew she
+would never keep to her decision, and then the horror would begin again,
+till again she was forced to this same action. She let the hours go and
+go till the very day before, when the ache to see him and the dread of
+it had become so unbearable that she could not keep quiet. Late that
+afternoon—everything, to the last label, ready—she went out, still
+undecided. An itch to turn the dagger in her wound, to know what had
+become of Noel, took her to Edward's house. Almost unconsciously she
+had put on her prettiest frock, and spent an hour before the glass. A
+feverishness of soul, more than of body, which had hung about her ever
+since that night, gave her colour. She looked her prettiest; and she
+bought a gardenia at a shop in Baker Street and fastened it in her
+dress. Reaching the old Square, she was astonished to see a board up
+with the words: “To let,” though the house still looked inhabited.
+She rang, and was shown into the drawing-room. She had only twice been
+in this house before; and for some reason, perhaps because of her own
+unhappiness, the old, rather shabby room struck her as pathetic, as
+if inhabited by the past. 'I wonder what his wife was like,' she
+thought: And then she saw, hanging against a strip of black velvet on
+the wall, that faded colour sketch of the slender young woman leaning
+forward, with her hands crossed in her lap. The colouring was lavender
+and old ivory, with faint touches of rose. The eyes, so living, were
+a little like Gratian's; the whole face delicate, eager, good.
+'Yes,' she thought, 'he must have loved you very much. To say
+good-bye must have been hard.' She was still standing before it when
+Pierson came in.
+
+“That's a dear face, Edward. I've come to say good-bye. I'm
+leaving for South Africa to-morrow.” And, as her hand touched his,
+she thought: 'I must have been mad to think I could ever have made him
+love me.'
+
+“Are you—are you leaving him?”
+
+Leila nodded:
+
+“That's very brave, and wonderful.”
+
+“Oh! no. Needs must when the devil drives—that's all. I don't
+give up happiness of my own accord. That's not within a hundred miles
+of the truth. What I shall become, I don't know, but nothing better,
+you may be sure. I give up because I can't keep, and you know why.
+Where is Noel?”
+
+“Down at the sea, with George and Gratian.”
+
+He was looking at her in wonder; and the pained, puzzled expression on
+his face angered her.
+
+“I see the house is to let. Who'd have thought a child like that
+could root up two fossils like us? Never mind, Edward, there's the
+same blood in us. We'll keep our ends up in our own ways. Where are
+you going?”
+
+“They'll give me a chaplaincy in the East, I think.”
+
+For a wild moment Leila thought: 'Shall I offer to go with him—the
+two lost dogs together?'
+
+“What would have happened, Edward, if you had proposed to me that May
+week, when we were—a little bit in love? Which would it have been,
+worst for, you or me?”
+
+“You wouldn't have taken me, Leila.”
+
+“Oh, one never knows. But you'd never have been a priest then, and
+you'd never have become a saint.”
+
+“Don't use that silly word. If you knew—”
+
+“I do; I can see that you've been half burned alive; half burned
+and half buried! Well, you have your reward, whatever it is, and I
+mine. Good-bye, Edward!” She took his hand. “You might give me your
+blessing; I want it.”
+
+Pierson put his other hand on her shoulder and, bending forward, kissed
+her forehead.
+
+The tears rushed up in Leila's eyes. “Ah me!” she said, “it's
+a sad world!” And wiping the quivering off her lips with the back of
+her gloved hand, she went quickly past him to the door. She looked back
+from there. He had not stirred, but his lips were moving. 'He's
+praying for me!' she thought. 'How funny!'
+
+2
+
+The moment she was outside, she forgot him; the dreadful ache for Fort
+seemed to have been whipped up within her, as if that figure of lifelong
+repression had infuriated the love of life and pleasure in her. She
+must and would see Jimmy again, if she had to wait and seek for him all
+night! It was nearly seven, he would surely have finished at the War
+Office; he might be at his Club or at his rooms. She made for the
+latter.
+
+The little street near Buckingham Gate, where no wag had chalked
+“Peace” on the doors for nearly a year now, had an arid look after
+a hot day's sun. The hair-dresser's shop below his rooms was still
+open, and the private door ajar: 'I won't ring,' she thought;
+'I'll go straight up.' While she was mounting the two flights
+of stairs, she stopped twice, breathless, from a pain in her side. She
+often had that pain now, as if the longing in her heart strained it
+physically. On the modest landing at the top, outside his rooms, she
+waited, leaning against the wall, which was covered with a red paper.
+A window at the back was open and the confused sound of singing came
+in—a chorus “Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve. Vive la compagnie.” So
+it came to her. 'O God!' she thought: 'Let him be in, let him be
+nice to me. It's the last time.' And, sick from anxiety, she opened
+the door. He was in—lying on a wicker-couch against the wall in the
+far corner, with his arms crossed behind his head, and a pipe in his
+mouth; his eyes were closed, and he neither moved, nor opened them,
+perhaps supposing her to be the servant. Noiseless as a cat, Leila
+crossed the room till she stood above him. And waiting for him to come
+out of that defiant lethargy, she took her fill of his thin, bony face,
+healthy and hollow at the same time. With teeth clenched on the pipe it
+had a look of hard resistance, as of a man with his head back, his arms
+pinioned to his sides, stiffened against some creature, clinging and
+climbing and trying to drag him down. The pipe was alive, and dribbled
+smoke; and his leg, the injured one, wriggled restlessly, as if worrying
+him; but the rest of him was as utterly and obstinately still as though
+he were asleep. His hair grew thick and crisp, not a thread of grey in
+it, the teeth which held the pipe glinted white and strong. His face was
+young; so much younger than hers. Why did she love it—the face of a
+man who couldn't love her? For a second she felt as if she could seize
+the cushion which had slipped down off the couch, and smother him as he
+lay there, refusing, so it seemed to her, to come to consciousness. Love
+despised! Humiliation! She nearly turned and stole away. Then through
+the door, left open, behind her, the sound of that chorus: “Vive-la,
+vive-la, vive-la ve!” came in and jolted her nerves unbearably.
+Tearing the gardenia from her breast, she flung it on to his upturned
+face.
+
+“Jimmy!”
+
+Fort struggled up, and stared at her. His face was comic from
+bewilderment, and she broke into a little nervous laugh.
+
+“You weren't dreaming of me, dear Jimmy, that's certain. In what
+garden were you wandering?”
+
+“Leila! You! How—how jolly!”
+
+“How—how jolly! I wanted to see you, so I came. And I have seen you,
+as you are, when you aren't with me. I shall remember it; it was good
+for me—awfully good for me.”
+
+“I didn't hear you.”
+
+“Far, far away, my dear. Put my gardenia in, your buttonhole. Stop,
+I'll pin it in. Have you had a good rest all this week? Do you like my
+dress? It's new. You wouldn't have noticed it, would you?”
+
+“I should have noticed. I think it's charming.
+
+“Jimmy, I believe that nothing—nothing will ever shake your
+chivalry.”
+
+“Chivalry? I have none.”
+
+“I am going to shut the door, do you mind?” But he went to the door
+himself, shut it, and came back to her. Leila looked up at him.
+
+“Jimmy, if ever you loved me a little bit, be nice to me today. And
+if I say things—if I'm bitter—don't mind; don't notice it.
+Promise!”
+
+“I promise.”
+
+She took off her hat and sat leaning against him on the couch, so that
+she could not see his face. And with his arm round her, she let herself
+go, deep into the waters of illusion; down-down, trying to forget there
+was a surface to which she must return; like a little girl she played
+that game of make-believe. 'He loves me-he loves me—he loves me!'
+To lose herself like that for, just an hour, only an hour; she felt that
+she would give the rest of the time vouchsafed to her; give it all and
+willingly. Her hand clasped his against her heart, she turned her face
+backward, up to his, closing her eyes so as still not to see his face;
+the scent of the gardenia in his coat hurt her, so sweet and strong it
+was.
+
+3
+
+When with her hat on she stood ready to go, it was getting dark. She had
+come out of her dream now, was playing at make-believe no more. And she
+stood with a stony smile, in the half-dark, looking between her lashes
+at the mortified expression on his unconscious face.
+
+“Poor Jimmy!” she said; “I'm not going to keep you from dinner
+any longer. No, don't come with me. I'm going alone; and don't
+light up, for heaven's sake.”
+
+She put her hand on the lapel of his coat. “That flower's gone brown
+at the edges. Throw it away; I can't bear faded flowers. Nor can you.
+Get yourself a fresh one tomorrow.”
+
+She pulled the flower from his buttonhole and, crushing it in her hand,
+held her face up.
+
+“Well, kiss me once more; it won't hurt you.”
+
+For one moment her lips clung to his with all their might. She wrenched
+them away, felt for the handle blindly, opened the door, and, shutting
+it in his face, went slowly, swaying a little, down the stairs. She
+trailed a gloved hand along the wall, as if its solidity could help
+her. At the last half-landing, where a curtain hung, dividing off back
+premises, she stopped and listened. There wasn't a sound. 'If I
+stand here behind this curtain,' she thought, 'I shall see him
+again.' She slipped behind the curtain, close drawn but for a little
+chink. It was so dark there that she could not see her own hand. She
+heard the door open, and his slow footsteps coming down the stairs. His
+feet, knees, whole figure came into sight, his face just a dim blur. He
+passed, smoking a cigarette. She crammed her hand against her mouth to
+stop herself from speaking and the crushed gardenia filled her nostrils
+with its cold, fragrant velvet. He was gone, the door below was shut. A
+wild, half-stupid longing came on her to go up again, wait till he came
+in, throw herself upon him, tell him she was going, beg him to keep her
+with him. Ah! and he would! He would look at her with that haggard pity
+she could not bear, and say, “Of course, Leila, of course.” No! By
+God, no! “I am going quietly home,” she muttered; “just quietly
+home! Come along, be brave; don't be a fool! Come along!” And she
+went down into the street: At the entrance to the Park she saw him,
+fifty yards in front, dawdling along. And, as if she had been his shadow
+lengthened out to that far distance, she moved behind him. Slowly,
+always at that distance, she followed him under the plane-trees, along
+the Park railings, past St. James's Palace, into Pall Mall. He went up
+some steps, and vanished into his Club. It was the end. She looked up
+at the building; a monstrous granite tomb, all dark. An emptied cab was
+just moving from the door. She got in. “Camelot Mansions, St. John's
+Wood.” And braced against the cushions, panting, and clenching her
+hands, she thought: 'Well, I've seen him again. Hard crust's
+better than no bread. Oh, God! All finished—not a crumb, not a crumb!
+Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve. Vive-la compagnie!'
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Fort had been lying there about an hour, sleeping and awake, before that
+visit: He had dreamed a curious and wonderfully emotionalising dream. A
+long grey line, in a dim light, neither of night nor morning, the whole
+length of the battle-front in France, charging in short drives, which
+carried the line a little forward, with just a tiny pause and suck-back;
+then on again irresistibly, on and on; and at each rush, every voice,
+his own among them, shouted “Hooray! the English! Hooray! the
+English!” The sensation of that advancing tide of dim figures in grey
+light, the throb and roar, the wonderful, rhythmic steady drive of it,
+no more to be stopped than the waves of an incoming tide, was gloriously
+fascinating; life was nothing, death nothing. “Hooray, the English!”
+In that dream, he was his country, he was every one of that long
+charging line, driving forward in. those great heaving pulsations,
+irresistible, on and on. Out of the very centre of this intoxicating
+dream he had been dragged by some street noise, and had closed his eyes
+again, in the vain hope that he might dream it on to its end. But it
+came no more; and lighting his pipe, he lay there wondering at its
+fervid, fantastic realism. Death was nothing, if his country lived and
+won. In waking hours he never had quite that single-hearted knowledge of
+himself. And what marvellously real touches got mixed into the fantastic
+stuff of dreams, as if something were at work to convince the dreamer
+in spite of himself—“Hooray!” not “Hurrah!” Just common
+“Hooray!” And “the English,” not the literary “British.” And
+then the soft flower had struck his forehead, and Leila's voice cried:
+“Jimmy!”
+
+When she left him, his thought was just a tired: 'Well, so it's
+begun again!' What did it matter, since common loyalty and compassion
+cut him off from what his heart desired; and that desire was absurd, as
+little likely of attainment as the moon. What did it matter? If it gave
+her any pleasure to love him, let it go on! Yet, all the time that he
+was walking across under the plane trees, Noel seemed to walk in front
+of him, just out of reach, so that he ached with the thought that he
+would never catch her up, and walk beside her.
+
+Two days later, on reaching his rooms in the evening, he found this
+letter on ship's note-paper, with the Plymouth postmark—
+
+“Fare thee well, and if for ever, Then for ever fare thee well”
+“Leila”
+
+
+He read it with a really horrible feeling, for all the world as if he
+had been accused of a crime and did not know whether he had committed it
+or not. And, trying to collect his thoughts, he took a cab and drove to
+her fiat. It was closed, but her address was given him; a bank in
+Cape Town. He had received his release. In his remorse and relief, so
+confusing and so poignant, he heard the driver of the cab asking where
+he wanted to go now. “Oh, back again!” But before they had gone a
+mile he corrected the address, in an impulse of which next moment he
+felt thoroughly ashamed. What he was doing indeed, was as indecent as if
+he were driving from the funeral of his wife to the boudoir of another
+woman. When he reached the old Square, and the words “To let” stared
+him in the face, he felt a curious relief, though it meant that he would
+not see her whom to see for ten minutes he felt he would give a year of
+life. Dismissing his cab, he stood debating whether to ring the bell.
+The sight of a maid's face at the window decided him. Mr. Pierson
+was out, and the young ladies were away. He asked for Mrs. Laird's
+address, and turned away, almost into the arms of Pierson himself. The
+greeting was stiff and strange. 'Does he know that Leila's gone?'
+he thought. 'If so, he must think me the most awful skunk. And am I?
+Am I?' When he reached home, he sat down to write to Leila. But having
+stared at the paper for an hour and written these three lines—
+
+“MY DEAR LEILA,
+
+“I cannot express to you the feelings with which I received your
+letter—”
+
+he tore it up. Nothing would be adequate, nothing would be decent. Let
+the dead past bury its dead—the dead past which in his heart had never
+been alive! Why pretend? He had done his best to keep his end up. Why
+pretend?
+
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+In the boarding-house, whence the Lairds had not yet removed, the old
+lady who knitted, sat by the fireplace, and light from the setting
+sun threw her shadow on the wall, moving spidery and grey, over the
+yellowish distemper, in time to the tune of her needles. She was a very
+old lady—the oldest lady in the world, Noel thought—and she knitted
+without stopping, without breathing, so that the girl felt inclined to
+scream. In the evening when George and Gratian were not in, Noel would
+often sit watching the needles, brooding over her as yet undecided
+future. And now and again the old lady would look up above her
+spectacles; move the corners of her lips ever so slightly, and drop her
+gaze again. She had pitted herself against Fate; so long as she knitted,
+the war could not stop—such was the conclusion Noel had come to. This
+old lady knitted the epic of acquiescence to the tune of her needles;
+it was she who kept the war going such a thin old lady! 'If I were
+to hold her elbows from behind,' the girl used to think, 'I believe
+she'd die. I expect I ought to; then the war would stop. And if
+the war stopped, there'd be love and life again.' Then the little
+silvery tune would click itself once more into her brain, and stop her
+thinking. In her lap this evening lay a letter from her father.
+
+“MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
+
+“I am glad to say I have my chaplaincy, and am to start for Egypt very
+soon. I should have wished to go to France, but must take what I can
+get, in view of my age, for they really don't want us who are getting
+on, I fear. It is a great comfort to me to think that Gratian is with
+you, and no doubt you will all soon be in a house where my little
+grandson can join you. I have excellent accounts of him in a letter from
+your aunt, just received: My child, you must never again think that my
+resignation has been due to you. It is not so. You know, or perhaps you
+don't, that ever since the war broke out, I have chafed over staying
+at home, my heart has been with our boys out there, and sooner or later
+it must have come to this, apart from anything else. Monsieur Lavendie
+has been round in the evening, twice; he is a nice man, I like him very
+much, in spite of our differences of view. He wanted to give me the
+sketch he made of you in the Park, but what can I do with it now? And to
+tell you the truth, I like it no better than the oil painting. It is
+not a likeness, as I know you. I hope I didn't hurt his feelings, the
+feelings of an artist are so very easily wounded. There is one thing I
+must tell you. Leila has gone back to South Africa; she came round one
+evening about ten days ago, to say goodbye. She was very brave, for
+I fear it means a great wrench for her. I hope and pray she may find
+comfort and tranquillity out there. And now, my dear, I want you to
+promise me not to see Captain Fort. I know that he admires you. But,
+apart from the question of his conduct in regard to Leila, he made the
+saddest impression on me by coming to our house the very day after her
+departure. There is something about that which makes me feel he cannot
+be the sort of man in whom I could feel any confidence. I don't
+suppose for a moment that he is in your thoughts, and yet before going
+so far from you, I feel I must warn you. I should rejoice to see you
+married to a good man; but, though I don't wish to think hardly of
+anyone, I cannot believe Captain Fort is that.
+
+“I shall come down to you before I start, which may be in quite a
+short time now. My dear love to you and Gracie, and best wishes to
+George.
+
+“Your ever loving father,
+
+“EDWARD PIERSON”
+
+Across this letter lying on her knees, Noel gazed at the spidery
+movement on the wall. Was it acquiescence that the old lady knitted, or
+was it resistance—a challenge to death itself, a challenge dancing to
+the tune of the needles like the grey ghost of human resistance to Fate!
+She wouldn't give in, this oldest lady in the world, she meant to knit
+till she fell into the grave. And so Leila had gone! It hurt her to know
+that; and yet it pleased her. Acquiescence—resistance! Why did Daddy
+always want to choose the way she should go? So gentle he was, yet he
+always wanted to! And why did he always make her feel that she must go
+the other way? The sunlight ceased to stream in, the old lady's shadow
+faded off the wall, but the needles still sang their little tune. And
+the girl said:
+
+“Do you enjoy knitting, Mrs. Adam?”
+
+The old lady looked at her above the spectacles.
+
+“Enjoy, my dear? It passes the time.”
+
+“But do you want the time to pass?”
+
+There was no answer for a moment, and Noel thought: 'How dreadful of
+me to have said that!'
+
+“Eh?” said the old lady.
+
+“I said: Isn't it very tiring?”
+
+“Not when I don't think about it, my dear.”
+
+“What do you think about?”
+
+The old lady cackled gently.
+
+“Oh—well!” she said.
+
+And Noel thought: 'It must be dreadful to grow old, and pass the
+time!'
+
+She took up her father's letter, and bent it meditatively against her
+chin. He wanted her to pass the time—not to live, not to enjoy! To
+pass the time. What else had he been doing himself, all these years,
+ever since she could remember, ever since her mother died, but just
+passing the time? Passing the time because he did not believe in this
+life; not living at all, just preparing for the life he did believe in.
+Denying himself everything that was exciting and nice, so that when he
+died he might pass pure and saintly to his other world. He could not
+believe Captain Fort a good man, because he had not passed the time, and
+resisted Leila; and Leila was gone! And now it was a sin for him to love
+someone else; he must pass the time again. 'Daddy doesn't believe in
+life,' she thought; 'it's monsieur's picture. Daddy's a saint;
+but I don't want to be a saint, and pass the time. He doesn't
+mind making people unhappy, because the more they're repressed, the
+saintlier they'll be. But I can't bear to be unhappy, or to see
+others unhappy. I wonder if I could bear to be unhappy to save someone
+else—as Leila is? I admire her! Oh! I admire her! She's not doing it
+because she thinks it good for her soul; only because she can't bear
+making him unhappy. She must love him very much. Poor Leila! And she's
+done it all by herself, of her own accord.' It was like what George
+said of the soldiers; they didn't know why they were heroes, it was
+not because they'd been told to be, or because they believed in a
+future life. They just had to be, from inside somewhere, to save others.
+'And they love life as much as I do,' she thought. 'What a beast
+it makes one feel!' Those needles! Resistance—acquiescence? Both
+perhaps. The oldest lady in the world, with her lips moving at the
+corners, keeping things in, had lived her life, and knew it. How
+dreadful to live on when you were of no more interest to anyone, but
+must just “pass the time” and die. But how much more dreadful to
+“pass the time” when you were strong, and life and love were yours
+for the taking! 'I shan't answer Daddy,' she thought.
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The maid, who one Saturday in July opened the door to Jimmy Fort, had
+never heard the name of Laird, for she was but a unit in the ceaseless
+procession which pass through the boarding-houses of places subject to
+air-raids. Placing him in a sitting-room, she said she would find Miss
+'Allow. There he waited, turning the leaves of an illustrated Journal,
+wherein Society beauties; starving Servians, actresses with pretty
+legs, prize dogs, sinking ships, Royalties, shells bursting, and padres
+reading funeral services, testified to the catholicity of the public
+taste, but did not assuage his nerves. What if their address were not
+known here? Why, in his fear of putting things to the test, had he let
+this month go by? An old lady was sitting by the hearth, knitting, the
+click of whose needles blended with the buzzing of a large bee on the
+window-pane. 'She may know,' he thought, 'she looks as if she'd
+been here for ever.' And approaching her, he said:
+
+“I can assure you those socks are very much appreciated, ma'am.”
+
+The old lady bridled over her spectacles.
+
+“It passes the time,” she said.
+
+“Oh, more than that; it helps to win the war, ma'am.”
+
+The old lady's lips moved at the corners; she did not answer.
+'Deaf!' he thought.
+
+“May I ask if you knew my friends, Doctor and Mrs. Laird, and Miss
+Pierson?”
+
+The old lady cackled gently.
+
+“Oh, yes! A pretty young girl; as pretty as life. She used to sit with
+me. Quite a pleasure to watch her; such large eyes she had.”
+
+“Where have they gone? Can you tell me?”
+
+“Oh, I don't know at all.”
+
+It was a little cold douche on his heart. He longed to say: 'Stop
+knitting a minute, please. It's my life, to know.' But the tune of
+the needles answered: 'It's my life to knit.' And he turned away
+to the window.
+
+“She used to sit just there; quite still; quite still.”
+
+Fort looked down at the window-seat. So, she used to sit just here,
+quite still.
+
+“What a dreadful war this is!” said the old lady. “Have you been
+at the front?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“To think of the poor young girls who'll never have husbands! I'm
+sure I think it's dreadful.”
+
+“Yes,” said Fort; “it's dreadful—” And then a voice from the
+doorway said:
+
+“Did you want Doctor and Mrs. Laird, sir? East Bungalow their address
+is; it's a little way out on the North Road. Anyone will tell you.”
+
+With a sigh of relief Fort looked gratefully at the old lady who had
+called Noel as pretty as life. “Good afternoon, ma'am.”
+
+“Good afternoon.” The needles clicked, and little movements occurred
+at the corners of her mouth. Fort went out. He could not find a vehicle,
+and was a long time walking. The Bungalow was ugly, of yellow brick
+pointed with red. It lay about two-thirds up between the main road and
+cliffs, and had a rock-garden and a glaring, brand-new look, in the
+afternoon sunlight. He opened the gate, uttering one of those prayers
+which come so glibly from unbelievers when they want anything. A
+baby's crying answered it, and he thought with ecstasy: 'Heaven, she
+is here!' Passing the rock-garden he could see a lawn at the back
+of the house and a perambulator out there under a holm-oak tree, and
+Noel—surely Noel herself! Hardening his heart, he went forward. In a
+lilac sunbonnet she was bending over the perambulator. He trod softly on
+the grass, and was quite close before she heard him. He had prepared no
+words, but just held out his hand. The baby, interested in the shadow
+failing across its pram, ceased crying. Noel took his hand. Under the
+sunbonnet, which hid her hair, she seemed older and paler, as if she
+felt the heat. He had no feeling that she was glad to see him.
+
+“How do you do? Have you seen Gratian; she ought to be in.”
+
+“I didn't come to see her; I came to see you.”
+
+Noel turned to the baby.
+
+“Here he is.”
+
+Fort stood at the end of the perambulator, and looked at that other
+fellow's baby. In the shade of the hood, with the frilly clothes, it
+seemed to him lying with its head downhill. It had scratched its snub
+nose and bumpy forehead, and it stared up at its mother with blue eyes,
+which seemed to have no underlids so fat were its cheeks.
+
+“I wonder what they think about,” he said.
+
+Noel put her finger into the baby's fist.
+
+“They only think when they want some thing.”
+
+“That's a deep saying: but his eyes are awfully interested in
+you.”
+
+Noel smiled; and very slowly the baby's curly mouth unclosed, and
+discovered his toothlessness.
+
+“He's a darling,” she said in a whisper.
+
+'And so are you,' he thought, 'if only I dared say it!'
+
+“Daddy is here,” she said suddenly, without looking up. “He's
+sailing for Egypt the day after to-morrow. He doesn't like you.”
+
+Fort's heart gave a jump. Why did she tell him that, unless—unless
+she was just a little on his side?
+
+“I expected that,” he said. “I'm a sinner, as you know.”
+
+Noel looked up at him. “Sin!” she said, and bent again over her
+baby. The word, the tone in which she said it, crouching over her baby,
+gave him the thought: 'If it weren't for that little creature, I
+shouldn't have a dog's chance.' He said, “I'll go and see your
+father. Is he in?”
+
+“I think so.”
+
+“May I come to-morrow?”
+
+“It's Sunday; and Daddy's last day.”
+
+“Ah! Of course.” He did not dare look back, to see if her gaze was
+following him, but he thought: 'Chance or no chance, I'm going to
+fight for her tooth and nail.'
+
+In a room darkened against the evening sun Pierson was sitting on a sofa
+reading. The sight of that figure in khaki disconcerted Fort, who had
+not realised that there would be this metamorphosis. The narrow face,
+clean-shaven now, with its deep-set eyes and compressed lips, looked
+more priestly than ever, in spite of this brown garb. He felt his hope
+suddenly to be very forlorn indeed. And rushing at the fence, he began
+abruptly:
+
+“I've come to ask you, sir, for your permission to marry Noel, if
+she will have me.”
+
+He had thought Pierson's face gentle; it was not gentle now. “Did
+you know I was here, then, Captain Fort?”
+
+“I saw Noel in the garden. I've said nothing to her, of course. But
+she told me you were starting to-morrow for Egypt, so I shall have no
+other chance.”
+
+“I am sorry you have come. It is not for me to judge, but I don't
+think you will make Noel happy.”
+
+“May I ask you why, sir?”
+
+“Captain Fort, the world's judgment of these things is not mine; but
+since you ask me. I will tell you frankly. My cousin Leila has a claim
+on you. It is her you should ask to marry you.”
+
+“I did ask her; she refused.”
+
+“I know. She would not refuse you again if you went out to her.”
+
+“I am not free to go out to her; besides, she would refuse. She knows
+I don't love her, and never have.”
+
+“Never have?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then why—”
+
+“Because I'm a man, I suppose, and a fool”
+
+“If it was simply, 'because you are a man' as you call it, it is
+clear that no principle or faith governs you. And yet you ask me to
+give you Noel; my poor Noel, who wants the love and protection not of a
+'man' but of a good man. No, Captain Fort, no!”
+
+Fort bit his lips. “I'm clearly not a good man in your sense of the
+word; but I love her terribly, and I would protect her. I don't in the
+least know whether she'll have me. I don't expect her to, naturally.
+But I warn you that I mean to ask her, and to wait for her. I'm so
+much in love that I can do nothing else.”
+
+“The man who is truly in love does what is best for the one he
+loves.” Fort bent his head; he felt as if he were at school again,
+confronting his head-master. “That's true,” he said. “And I
+shall never trade on her position. If she can't feel anything for me
+now or in the future, I shan't trouble her, you may be sure of that.
+But if by some wonderful chance she should, I know I can make her happy,
+sir.”
+
+“She is a child.”
+
+“No, she's not a child,” said Fort stubbornly.
+
+Pierson touched the lapel of his new tunic. “Captain Fort, I am going
+far away from her, and leaving her without protection. I trust to your
+chivalry not to ask her, till I come back.”
+
+Fort threw back his head. “No, no, I won't accept that position.
+With or without your presence the facts will be the same. Either she can
+love me, or she can't. If she can, she'll be happier with me. If she
+can't, there's an end of it.”
+
+Pierson came slowly up to him. “In my view,” he said, “you are as
+bound to Leila as if you were married to her.”
+
+“You can't, expect me to take the priest's view, sir.”
+
+Pierson's lips trembled.
+
+“You call it a priest's view; I think it is only the view of a man
+of honour.”
+
+Fort reddened. “That's for my conscience,” he said stubbornly.
+“I can't tell you, and I'm not going to, how things began. I was
+a fool. But I did my best, and I know that Leila doesn't think
+I'm bound. If she had, she would never have gone. When there's no
+feeling—there never was real feeling on my side—and when there's
+this terribly real feeling for Noel, which I never sought, which I tried
+to keep down, which I ran away from—”
+
+“Did you?”
+
+“Yes. To go on with the other was foul. I should have thought you
+might have seen that, sir; but I did go on with it. It was Leila who
+made an end.”
+
+“Leila behaved nobly, I think.”
+
+“She was splendid; but that doesn't make me a brute.”.
+
+Pierson turned away to the window, whence he must see Noel.
+
+“It is repugnant to me,” he said. “Is there never to be any purity
+in her life?”
+
+“Is there never to be any life for her? At your rate, sir, there will
+be none. I'm no worse than other men, and I love her more than they
+could.”
+
+For fully a minute Pierson stood silent, before he said: “Forgive me
+if I've spoken harshly. I didn't mean to. I love her intensely; I
+wish for nothing but her good. But all my life I have believed that for
+a man there is only one woman—for a woman only one man.”
+
+“Then, Sir,” Fort burst out, “you wish her—”
+
+Pierson had put his hand up, as if to ward off a blow; and, angry though
+he was, Fort stopped.
+
+“We are all made of flesh and blood,” he continued coldly, “and it
+seems to me that you think we aren't.”
+
+“We have spirits too, Captain Fort.” The voice was suddenly so
+gentle that Fort's anger evaporated.
+
+“I have a great respect for you, sir; but a greater love for Noel, and
+nothing in this world will prevent me trying to give my life to her.”
+
+A smile quivered over Pierson's face. “If you try, then I can but
+pray that you will fail.”
+
+Fort did not answer, and went out.
+
+He walked slowly away from the bungalow, with his head down, sore,
+angry, and yet-relieved. He knew where he stood; nor did he feel that
+he had been worsted—those strictures had not touched him. Convicted
+of immorality, he remained conscious of private justifications, in a
+way that human beings have. Only one little corner of memory, unseen
+and uncriticised by his opponent, troubled him. He pardoned himself the
+rest; the one thing he did not pardon was the fact that he had known
+Noel before his liaison with Leila commenced; had even let Leila sweep
+him away on, an evening when he had been in Noel's company. For that
+he felt a real disgust with himself. And all the way back to the station
+he kept thinking: 'How could I? I deserve to lose her! Still, I shall
+try; but not now—not yet!' And, wearily enough, he took the train
+back to town.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Both girls rose early that last day, and went with their father to
+Communion. As Gratian had said to George: “It's nothing to me now,
+but it will mean a lot to him out there, as a memory of us. So I must
+go.” And he had answered: “Quite right, my dear. Let him have all he
+can get of you both to-day. I'll keep out of the way, and be back the
+last thing at night.” Their father's smile when he saw them waiting
+for him went straight to both their hearts. It was a delicious day, and
+the early freshness had not yet dried out of the air, when they were
+walking home to breakfast. Each girl had slipped a hand under his arm.
+'It's like Moses or was it Aaron?' Noel thought absurdly Memory
+had complete hold of her. All the old days! Nursery hours on Sundays
+after tea, stories out of the huge Bible bound in mother-o'pearl, with
+photogravures of the Holy Land—palms, and hills, and goats, and
+little Eastern figures, and funny boats on the Sea of Galilee, and
+camels—always camels. The book would be on his knee, and they one on
+each arm of his chair, waiting eagerly for the pages to be turned so
+that a new picture came. And there would be the feel of his cheek,
+prickly against theirs; and the old names with the old glamour—to
+Gratian, Joshua, Daniel, Mordecai, Peter; to Noel Absalom because of his
+hair, and Haman because she liked the sound, and Ruth because she was
+pretty and John because he leaned on Jesus' breast. Neither of them
+cared for Job or David, and Elijah and Elisha they detested because they
+hated the name Eliza. And later days by firelight in the drawing-room,
+roasting chestnuts just before evening church, and telling ghost
+stories, and trying to make Daddy eat his share. And hours beside him
+at the piano, each eager for her special hymns—for Gratian, “Onward,
+Christian Soldiers,” “Lead, Kindly Light,” and “O God Our
+Help”; for Noel, “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” the one with “The
+Hosts of Midian” in it, and “For Those in Peril on the Sea.”
+And carols! Ah! And Choristers! Noel had loved one deeply—the word
+“chorister” was so enchanting; and because of his whiteness, and
+hair which had no grease on it, but stood up all bright; she had never
+spoken to him—a far worship, like that for a star. And always, always
+Daddy had been gentle; sometimes angry, but always gentle; and they
+sometimes not at all! And mixed up with it all, the dogs they had had,
+and the cats they had had, and the cockatoo, and the governesses, and
+their red cloaks, and the curates, and the pantomimes, and “Peter
+Pan,” and “Alice in Wonderland”—Daddy sitting between them, so
+that one could snuggle up. And later, the school-days, the hockey,
+the prizes, the holidays, the rush into his arms; and the great and
+wonderful yearly exodus to far places, fishing and bathing; walks and
+drives; rides and climbs, always with him. And concerts and Shakespeare
+plays in the Christmas and Easter holidays; and the walk home through
+the streets—all lighted in those days—one on each side of him. And
+this was the end! They waited on him at breakfast: they kept stealing
+glances at him, photographing him in their minds. Gratian got her camera
+and did actually photograph him in the morning sunlight with Noel,
+without Noel, with the baby; against all regulations for the defence of
+the realm. It was Noel who suggested: “Daddy, let's take lunch
+out and go for all day on the cliffs, us three, and forget there's a
+war.”
+
+So easy to say, so difficult to do, with the boom of the guns travelling
+to their ears along the grass, mingled with the buzz of insects. Yet
+that hum of summer, the innumerable voices of tiny lives, gossamer
+things all as alive as they, and as important to their frail selves; and
+the white clouds, few and so slow-moving, and the remote strange purity
+which clings to the chalky downs, all this white and green and blue of
+land and sea had its peace, which crept into the spirits of those three
+alone with Nature, this once more, the last time for—who could say how
+long? They talked, by tacit agreement, of nothing but what had happened
+before the war began, while the flock of the blown dandelions drifted
+past. Pierson sat cross-legged on the grass, without his cap, suffering
+a little still from the stiffness of his unwonted garments. And the
+girls lay one on each side of him, half critical, and half admiring.
+Noel could not bear his collar.
+
+“If you had a soft collar you'd be lovely, Daddy. Perhaps out there
+they'll let you take it off. It must be fearfully hot in Egypt. Oh!
+I wish I were going. I wish I were going everywhere in the world.
+Some day!” Presently he read to them, Murray's “Hippolytus” of
+Euripides. And now and then Gratian and he discussed a passage. But Noel
+lay silent, looking at the sky. Whenever his voice ceased, there was the
+song of the larks, and very faint, the distant mutter of the guns.
+
+They stayed up there till past six, and it was time to go and have tea
+before Evening Service. Those hours in the baking sun had drawn virtue
+out of them; they were silent and melancholy all the evening. Noel
+was the first to go up to her bedroom. She went without saying good
+night—she knew her father would come to her room that last evening.
+George had not yet come in; and Gratian was left alone with Pierson
+in the drawing-room, round whose single lamp, in spite of close-drawn
+curtains, moths were circling: She moved over to him on the sofa.
+
+“Dad, promise me not to worry about Nollie; we'll take care of
+her.”
+
+“She can only take care of herself, Gracie, and will she? Did you know
+that Captain Fort was here yesterday?”
+
+“She told me.”
+
+“What is her feeling about him?”
+
+“I don't think she knows. Nollie dreams along, and then suddenly
+rushes.”
+
+“I wish she were safe from that man.”
+
+“But, Dad, why? George likes him and so do I.”
+
+A big grey moth was fluttering against the lamp. Pierson got up and
+caught it in the curve of his palm. “Poor thing! You're like my
+Nollie; so soft, and dreamy, so feckless, so reckless.” And going to
+the curtains, he thrust his hand through, and released the moth.
+
+“Dad!” said Gratian suddenly, “we can only find out for ourselves,
+even if we do singe our wings in doing it. We've been reading
+James's 'Pragmatism.' George says the only chapter that's
+important is missing—the one on ethics, to show that what we do is not
+wrong till it's proved wrong by the result. I suppose he was afraid to
+deliver that lecture.”
+
+Pierson's face wore the smile which always came on it when he had to
+deal with George, the smile which said: “Ah, George, that's very
+clever; but I know.”
+
+“My dear,” he said, “that doctrine is the most dangerous in the
+world. I am surprised at George.”
+
+“I don't think George is in danger, Dad.”
+
+“George is a man of wide experience and strong judgment and character;
+but think how fatal it would be for Nollie, my poor Nollie, whom a
+little gust can blow into the candle.”
+
+“All the same,” said Gratian stubbornly, “I don't think anyone
+can be good or worth anything unless they judge for themselves and take
+risks.”
+
+Pierson went close to her; his face was quivering.
+
+“Don't let us differ on this last night; I must go up to Nollie for
+a minute, and then to bed. I shan't see you to-morrow; you mustn't
+get up; I can bear parting better like this. And my train goes at eight.
+God bless you, Gracie; give George my love. I know, I have always known
+that he's a good man, though we do fight so. Good-bye, my darling.”
+
+He went out with his cheeks wet from Gratian's tears, and stood in
+the porch a minute to recover his composure. The shadow of the house
+stretched velvet and blunt over the rock-garden. A night-jar was
+spinning; the churring sound affected him oddly. The last English
+night-bird he would hear. England! What a night-to say good-bye! 'My
+country!' he thought; 'my beautiful country!' The dew was lying
+thick and silvery already on the little patch of grass-the last dew,
+the last scent of an English night. The call of a bugle floated out.
+“England!” he prayed; “God be about you!” A little sound
+answered from across the grass, like an old man's cough, and the
+scrape and rattle of a chain. A face emerged at the edge of the
+house's shadow; bearded and horned like that of Pan, it seemed to
+stare at him. And he saw the dim grey form of the garden goat, heard it
+scuttle round the stake to which it was tethered, as though alarmed at
+this visitor to its' domain.
+
+He went up the half-flight of stairs to Noel's narrow little room,
+next the nursery. No voice answered his tap. It was dark, but he could
+see her at the window, leaning far out, with her chin on her hands.
+
+“Nollie!”
+
+She answered without turning: “Such a lovely night, Daddy. Come and
+look! I'd like to set the goat free, only he'd eat the rock plants.
+But it is his night, isn't it? He ought to be running and skipping in
+it: it's such a shame to tie things up. Did you never, feel wild in
+your heart, Daddy?”
+
+“Always, I think, Nollie; too wild. It's been hard to tame
+oneself.”
+
+Noel slipped her hand through his arm. “Let's go and take the goat
+and skip together on the hills. If only we had a penny whistle! Did you
+hear the bugle? The bugle and the goat!”
+
+Pierson pressed the hand against him.
+
+“Nollie, be good while I'm away. You know what I don't want. I
+told you in my letter.” He looked at her cheek, and dared say no more.
+Her face had its “fey” look again.
+
+“Don't you feel,” she said suddenly, “on a night like this, all
+the things, all the things—the stars have lives, Daddy, and the moon
+has a big life, and the shadows have, and the moths and the birds and
+the goats and the trees, and the flowers, and all of us—escaped? Oh!
+Daddy, why is there a war? And why are people so bound and so unhappy?
+Don't tell me it's God—don't!”
+
+Pierson could not answer, for there came into his mind the Greek song he
+had been reading aloud that afternoon—
+
+“O for a deep and dewy Spring, With runlets cold to draw and drink,
+And a great meadow blossoming, Long-grassed, and poplars in a ring, To
+rest me by the brink. O take me to the mountain, O, Past the great pines
+and through the wood, Up where the lean hounds softly go, A-whine for
+wild things' blood, And madly flies the dappled roe, O God, to shout
+and speed them there; An arrow by my chestnut hair Drawn tight and one
+keen glimmering spear Ah! if I could!”
+
+
+All that in life had been to him unknown, of venture and wild savour;
+all the emotion he had stifled; the swift Pan he had denied; the sharp
+fruits, the burning suns, the dark pools, the unearthly moonlight, which
+were not of God—all came with the breath of that old song, and the
+look on the girl's face. And he covered his eyes.
+
+Noel's hand tugged at his arm. “Isn't beauty terribly alive,”
+she murmured, “like a lovely person? it makes you ache to kiss it.”
+
+His lips felt parched. “There is a beauty beyond all that,” he said
+stubbornly.
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Holiness, duty, faith. O Nollie, my love!” But Noel's hand
+tightened on his arm.
+
+“Shall I tell you what I should like?” she whispered. “To
+take God's hand and show Him things. I'm certain He's not seen
+everything.”
+
+A shudder went through Pierson, one of those queer sudden shivers, which
+come from a strange note in a voice, or a new sharp scent or sight.
+
+“My dear, what things you say!”
+
+“But He hasn't, and it's time He did. We'd creep, and peep, and
+see it all for once, as He can't in His churches. Daddy, oh! Daddy! I
+can't bear it any more; to think of them being killed on a night like
+this; killed and killed so that they never see it all again—never see
+it—never see it!” She sank down, and covered her face with her arms.
+
+“I can't, I can't! Oh! take it all away, the cruelty! Why does
+it come—why the stars and the flowers, if God doesn't care any more
+than that?”
+
+Horribly affected he stood bending over her, stroking her head. Then the
+habit of a hundred death-beds helped him. “Come, Nollie! This life is
+but a minute. We must all die.”
+
+“But not they—not so young!” She clung to his knees, and looked
+up. “Daddy, I don't want you to go; promise me to come back!”
+
+The childishness of those words brought back his balance.
+
+“My dear sweetheart, of course! Come, Nollie, get up. The sun's been
+too much for you.”
+
+Noel got up, and put her hands on her father's shoulders. “Forgive
+me for all my badness, and all my badness to come, especially all my
+badness to come!”
+
+Pierson smiled. “I shall always forgive you, Nollie; but there won't
+be—there mustn't be any badness to come. I pray God to keep you, and
+make you like your mother.”
+
+“Mother never had a devil, like you and me.”
+
+He was silent from surprise. How did this child know the devil of wild
+feeling he had fought against year after year; until with the many years
+he had felt it weakening within him! She whispered on: “I don't hate
+my devil.
+
+“Why should I?—it's part of me. Every day when the sun sets,
+I'll think of you, Daddy; and you might do the same—that'll keep
+me good. I shan't come to the station tomorrow, I should only cry. And
+I shan't say good-bye now. It's unlucky.”
+
+She flung her arms round him; and half smothered by that fervent
+embrace, he kissed her cheeks and hair. Freed of each other at last, he
+stood for a moment looking at her by the moonlight.
+
+“There never was anyone more loving than you; Nollie!” he said
+quietly. “Remember my letter. And good night, my love!” Then, afraid
+to stay another second, he went quickly out of the dark little room....
+
+George Laird, returning half an hour later, heard a voice saying softly:
+“George, George!”
+
+Looking up, he saw a little white blur at the window, and Noel's face
+just visible.
+
+“George, let the goat loose, just for to-night, to please me.”
+
+Something in that voice, and in the gesture of her stretched-out arm
+moved George in a queer way, although, as Pierson had once said, he had
+no music in his soul. He loosed the goat.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV 1
+
+In the weeks which succeeded Pierson's departure, Gratian and George
+often discussed Noel's conduct and position by the light of the
+Pragmatic theory. George held a suitably scientific view. Just as he
+would point out to his wife—in the physical world, creatures who
+diverged from the normal had to justify their divergence in competition
+with their environments, or else go under, so in the ethical world it
+was all a question of whether Nollie could make good her vagary. If she
+could, and grew in strength of character thereby, it was ipso facto all
+right, her vagary would be proved an advantage, and the world enriched.
+If not, the world by her failure to make good would be impoverished, and
+her vagary proved wrong. The orthodox and academies—he insisted—were
+always forgetting the adaptability of living organisms; how every action
+which was out of the ordinary, unconsciously modified all the other
+actions together with the outlook, and philosophy of the doer. “Of
+course Nollie was crazy,” he said, “but when she did what she
+did, she at once began to think differently about life and morals. The
+deepest instinct we all have is the instinct that we must do what we
+must, and think that what we've done is really all right; in fact
+the—instinct of self-preservation. We're all fighting animals; and
+we feel in our bones that if we admit we're beaten—we are beaten;
+but that every fight we win, especially against odds, hardens those
+bones. But personally I don't think she can make good on her own.”
+
+Gratian, whose Pragmatism was not yet fully baked, responded doubtfully:
+
+“No, I don't think she can. And if she could I'm not sure. But
+isn't Pragmatism a perfectly beastly word, George? It has no sense of
+humour in it at all.”
+
+“It is a bit thick, and in the hands of the young, deuced likely to
+become Prigmatism; but not with Nollie.”
+
+They watched the victim of their discussions with real anxiety. The
+knowledge that she would never be more sheltered than she was with them,
+at all events until she married, gravely impeded the formation of any
+judgment as to whether or no she could make good. Now and again
+there would come to Gratian who after all knew her sister better than
+George—the disquieting thought that whatever conclusion Noel led them
+to form, she would almost certainly force them to abandon sooner or
+later.
+
+Three days after her father's departure Noel had declared that she
+wanted to work on the land. This George had promptly vetoed.
+
+“You aren't strong enough yet, my dear: Wait till the harvest
+begins. Then you can go and help on the farm here. If you can stand that
+without damage, we'll think about it.”
+
+But the weather was wet and harvest late, and Noel had nothing much to
+do but attend to her baby, already well attended to by Nurse, and dream
+and brood, and now and then cook an omelette or do some housework for
+the sake of a gnawing conscience. Since Gratian and George were away in
+hospital all day, she was very much alone. Several times in the evenings
+Gratian tried to come at the core of her thoughts, Twice she flew the
+kite of Leila. The first time Noel only answered: “Yes, she's a
+brick.” The second time, she said: “I don't want to think about
+her.”
+
+But, hardening her heart, Gratian went on: “Don't you think it's
+queer we've never heard from Captain Fort since he came down?”
+
+In her calmest voice Noel answered: “Why should we, after being told
+that he wasn't liked?”
+
+“Who told him that?”
+
+“I told him, that Daddy didn't; but I expect Daddy said much worse
+things.” She gave a little laugh, then softly added: “Daddy's
+wonderful, isn't he?”
+
+“How?”
+
+“The way he drives one to do the other thing. If he hadn't opposed
+my marriage to Cyril, you know, that wouldn't have happened, it just
+made all the difference. It stirred me up so fearfully.” Gratian
+stared at her, astonished that she could see herself so clearly. Towards
+the end of August she had a letter from Fort.
+
+“DEAR MRS. LAIRD,
+
+“You know all about things, of course, except the one thing which to
+me is all important. I can't go on without knowing whether I have a
+chance with your sister. It is against your father's expressed wish
+that she should have anything to do with me, but I told him that I could
+not and would not promise not to ask her. I get my holiday at the end of
+this month, and am coming down to put it to the touch. It means more to
+me than you can possibly imagine.
+
+“I am, dear Mrs. Laird,
+
+“Your very faithful servant,
+
+“JAMES FORT.”
+
+She discussed the letter with George, whose advice was: “Answer it
+politely, but say nothing; and nothing to Nollie. I think it would be a
+very good thing. Of course it's a bit of a make-shift—twice her age;
+but he's a genuine man, if not exactly brilliant.”
+
+Gratian answered almost sullenly: “I've always wanted the very best
+for Nollie.”
+
+George screwed up his steel-coloured eyes, as he might have looked at
+one on whom he had to operate. “Quite so,” he said. “But you must
+remember, Gracie, that out of the swan she was, Nollie has made herself
+into a lame duck. Fifty per cent at least is off her value, socially. We
+must look at things as they are.”
+
+“Father is dead against it.”
+
+George smiled, on the point of saying: 'That makes me feel it must be
+a good thing!' But he subdued the impulse.
+
+“I agree that we're bound by his absence not to further it actively.
+Still Nollie knows his wishes, and it's up to her and no one else.
+After all, she's no longer a child.”
+
+His advice was followed. But to write that polite letter, which said
+nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or three hours'
+penmanship. She was very conscientious. Knowledge of this impending
+visit increased the anxiety with which she watched her sister, but the
+only inkling she obtained of Noel's state of mind was when the girl
+showed her a letter she had received from Thirza, asking her to come
+back to Kestrel. A postscript, in Uncle Bob's handwriting, added these
+words:
+
+“We're getting quite fossilised down here; Eve's gone and left us
+again. We miss you and the youngster awfully. Come along down, Nollie
+there's a dear!”
+
+“They're darlings,” Noel said, “but I shan't go. I'm too
+restless, ever since Daddy went; you don't know how restless. This
+rain simply makes me want to die.”
+
+2
+
+The weather improved next day, and at the end of that week harvest
+began. By what seemed to Noel a stroke of luck the farmer's binder was
+broken; he could not get it repaired, and wanted all the human binders
+he could get. That first day in the fields blistered her hands, burnt
+her face and neck, made every nerve and bone in her body ache; but was
+the happiest day she had spent for weeks, the happiest perhaps since
+Cyril Morland left her, over a year ago. She had a bath and went to bed
+the moment she got in.
+
+Lying there nibbling chocolate and smoking a cigarette, she luxuriated
+in the weariness which had stilled her dreadful restlessness. Watching
+the smoke of her cigarette curl up against the sunset glow which filled
+her window, she mused: If only she could be tired out like this every
+day! She would be all right then, would lose the feeling of not knowing
+what she wanted, of being in a sort o of large box, with the lid slammed
+down, roaming round it like a dazed and homesick bee in an overturned
+tumbler; the feeling of being only half alive, of having a wing maimed
+so that she could only fly a little way, and must then drop.
+
+She slept like a top that night. But the next day's work was real
+torture, and the third not much better. By the end of the week, however,
+she was no longer stiff.
+
+Saturday was cloudless; a perfect day. The field she was working in lay
+on a slope. It was the last field to be cut, and the best wheat yet,
+with a glorious burnt shade in its gold and the ears blunt and full. She
+had got used now to the feel of the great sheaves in her arms, and the
+binding wisps drawn through her hand till she held them level, below the
+ears, ready for the twist. There was no new sensation in it now;
+just steady, rather dreamy work, to keep her place in the row, to the
+swish-swish of the cutter and the call of the driver to his horses at
+the turns; with continual little pauses, to straighten and rest her back
+a moment, and shake her head free from the flies, or suck her finger,
+sore from the constant pushing of the straw ends under. So the hours
+went on, rather hot and wearisome, yet with a feeling of something good
+being done, of a job getting surely to its end. And gradually the centre
+patch narrowed, and the sun slowly slanted down.
+
+When they stopped for tea, instead of running home as usual, she drank
+it cold out of a flask she had brought, ate a bun and some chocolate,
+and lay down on her back against the hedge. She always avoided that
+group of her fellow workers round the tea-cans which the farmer's wife
+brought out. To avoid people, if she could, had become habitual to
+her now. They must know about her, or would soon if she gave them the
+chance. She had never lost consciousness of her ring-finger, expecting
+every eye to fall on it as a matter of course. Lying on her face, she
+puffed her cigarette into the grass, and watched a beetle, till one of
+the sheep-dogs, scouting for scraps, came up, and she fed him with her
+second bun. Having finished the bun, he tried to eat the beetle, and,
+when she rescued it, convinced that she had nothing more to give him,
+sneezed at her, and went away. Pressing the end of her cigarette out
+against the bank, she turned over. Already the driver was perched on his
+tiny seat, and his companion, whose business it was to free the falling
+corn, was getting up alongside. Swish-swish! It had begun again. She
+rose, stretched herself, and went back to her place in the row. The
+field would be finished to-night; she would have a lovely rest-all
+Sunday I Towards seven o'clock a narrow strip, not twenty yards broad,
+alone was left. This last half hour was what Noel dreaded. To-day it was
+worse, for the farmer had no cartridges left, and the rabbits were dealt
+with by hullabaloo and sticks and chasing dogs. Rabbits were vermin, of
+course, and ate the crops, and must be killed; besides, they were good
+food, and fetched two shillings apiece; all this she knew but to see
+the poor frightened things stealing out, pounced on, turned, shouted
+at, chased, rolled over by great swift dogs, fallen on by the boys and
+killed and carried with their limp grey bodies upside down, so dead
+and soft and helpless, always made her feel quite sick. She stood very
+still, trying not to see or hear, and in the corn opposite to her a
+rabbit stole along, crouched, and peeped. 'Oh!' she thought, 'come
+out here, bunny. I'll let you away—can't you see I will? It's
+your only chance. Come out!' But the rabbit crouched, and gazed, with
+its little cowed head poked forward, and its ears laid flat; it seemed
+trying to understand whether this still thing in front of it was the
+same as those others. With the thought, 'Of course it won't while I
+look at it,' Noel turned her head away. Out of the corner of her eye
+she could see a man standing a few yards off. The rabbit bolted out. Now
+the man would shout and turn it. But he did not, and the rabbit scuttled
+past him and away to the hedge. She heard a shout from the end of the
+row, saw a dog galloping. Too late! Hurrah! And clasping her hands, she
+looked at the man. It was Fort! With the queerest feeling—amazement,
+pleasure, the thrill of conspiracy, she saw him coming up to her.
+
+“I did want that rabbit to get off,” she sighed out; “I've been
+watching it. Thank you!”
+
+He looked at her. “My goodness!” was all he said.
+
+Noel's hands flew up to her cheeks. “Yes, I know; is my nose very
+red?”
+
+“No; you're as lovely as Ruth, if she was lovely.”
+
+Swish-swish! The cutter came by; Noel started forward to her place in
+the row; but catching her arm, he said: “No, let me do this little
+bit. I haven't had a day in the fields since the war began. Talk to me
+while I'm binding.”
+
+She stood watching him. He made a different, stronger twist from hers,
+and took larger sheaves, so that she felt a sort of jealousy.
+
+“I didn't know you knew about this sort of thing.”
+
+“Oh, Lord, yes! I had a farm once out West. Nothing like field-work,
+to make you feel good. I've been watching you; you bind jolly well.”
+
+Noel gave a sigh of pleasure.
+
+“Where have you come from?” she asked.
+
+“Straight from the station. I'm on my holiday.” He looked up at
+her, and they both fell silent.
+
+Swish-swish! The cutter was coming again. Noel went to the beginning
+of her portion of the falling corn, he to the end of it. They worked
+towards each other, and met before the cutter was on them a third time.
+
+“Will you come in to supper?”
+
+“I'd love to.”
+
+“Then let's go now, please. I don't want to see any more rabbits
+killed.”
+
+They spoke very little on the way to the bungalow, but she felt his eyes
+on her all the time. She left him with George and Gratian who had just
+come in, and went up for her bath.
+
+Supper had been laid out in the verandah, and it was nearly dark before
+they had finished. In rhyme with the failing of the light Noel became
+more and more silent. When they went in, she ran up to her baby. She
+did not go down again, but as on the night before her father went
+away, stood at her window, leaning out. A dark night, no moon; in the
+starlight she could only just see the dim garden, where no goat was
+grazing. Now that her first excitement had worn off, this sudden
+reappearance of Fort filled her with nervous melancholy: She knew
+perfectly well what he had come for, she had always known. She had no
+certain knowledge of her own mind; but she knew that all these weeks she
+had been between his influence and her father's, listening to them,
+as it were, pleading with her. And, curiously, the pleading of each,
+instead of drawing her towards the pleader, had seemed dragging her away
+from him, driving her into the arms of the other. To the protection of
+one or the other she felt she must go; and it humiliated her to think
+that in all the world there was no other place for her. The wildness of
+that one night in the old Abbey seemed to have power to govern all her
+life to come. Why should that one night, that one act, have this uncanny
+power to drive her this way or that, to those arms or these? Must she,
+because of it, always need protection? Standing there in the dark it was
+almost as if they had come up behind her, with their pleadings; and a
+shiver ran down her back. She longed to turn on them, and cry out: “Go
+away; oh; go away! I don't want either of you; I just want to be left
+alone!” Then something, a moth perhaps, touched her neck. She gasped
+and shook herself. How silly!
+
+She heard the back door round the corner of the house opening; a man's
+low voice down in the dark said:
+
+“Who's the young lady that comes out in the fields?”
+
+Another voice—one of the maids—answered:
+
+“The Missis's sister.”
+
+“They say she's got a baby.”
+
+“Never you mind what she's got.”
+
+Noel heard the man's laugh. It seemed to her the most odious laugh
+she had ever heard. She thought swiftly and absurdly: 'I'll get away
+from all this.' The window was only a few feet up. She got out on to
+the ledge, let herself down, and dropped. There was a flower-bed below,
+quite soft, with a scent of geranium-leaves and earth. She brushed
+herself, and went tiptoeing across the gravel and the little front lawn,
+to the gate. The house was quite dark, quite silent. She walked on, down
+the road. 'Jolly!' she thought. 'Night after night we sleep,
+and never see the nights: sleep until we're called, and never see
+anything. If they want to catch me they'll have to run.' And she
+began running down the road in her evening frock and shoes, with nothing
+on her head. She stopped after going perhaps three hundred yards, by the
+edge of the wood. It was splendidly dark in there, and she groped
+her way from trunk to trunk, with a delicious, half-scared sense of
+adventure and novelty. She stopped at last by a thin trunk whose bark
+glimmered faintly. She felt it with her cheek, quite smooth—a
+birch tree; and, with her arms round it, she stood perfectly still.
+Wonderfully, magically silent, fresh and sweet-scented and dark! The
+little tree trembled suddenly within her arms, and she heard the low
+distant rumble, to which she had grown so accustomed—the guns, always
+at work, killing—killing men and killing trees, little trees perhaps
+like this within her arms, little trembling trees! Out there, in this
+dark night, there would not be a single unscarred tree like this smooth
+quivering thing, no fields of corn, not even a bush or a blade of grass,
+no leaves to rustle and smell sweet, not a bird, no little soft-footed
+night beasts, except the rats; and she shuddered, thinking of the
+Belgian soldier-painter. Holding the tree tight, she squeezed its smooth
+body against her. A rush of the same helpless, hopeless revolt and
+sorrow overtook her, which had wrung from her that passionate little
+outburst to her father, the night before he went away. Killed, torn, and
+bruised; burned, and killed, like Cyril! All the young things, like this
+little tree.
+
+Rumble! Rumble! Quiver! Quiver! And all else so still, so sweet and
+still, and starry, up there through the leaves.... 'I can't bear
+it!' she thought. She pressed her lips, which the sun had warmed all
+day, against the satiny smooth bark. But the little tree stood within
+her arms insentient, quivering only to the long rumbles. With each of
+those dull mutterings, life and love were going out, like the flames of
+candles on a Christmas-tree, blown, one by one. To her eyes, accustomed
+by now to the darkness in there, the wood seemed slowly to be gathering
+a sort of life, as though it were a great thing watching her; a great
+thing with hundreds of limbs and eyes, and the power of breathing. The
+little tree, which had seemed so individual and friendly, ceased to be a
+comfort and became a part of the whole living wood, absorbed in itself,
+and coldly watching her, this intruder of the mischievous breed, the
+fatal breed which loosed those rumblings on the earth. Noel unlocked her
+arms, and recoiled. A bough scraped her neck, some leaves flew against
+her eyes; she stepped aside, tripped over a root, and fell. A bough
+had hit her too, and she lay a little dazed, quivering at such dark
+unfriendliness. She held her hands up to her face for the mere pleasure
+of seeing something a little less dark; it was childish, and absurd, but
+she was frightened. The wood seemed to have so many eyes, so many arms,
+and all unfriendly; it seemed waiting to give her other blows, other
+falls, and to guard her within its darkness until—! She got up, moved
+a few steps, and stood still, she had forgotten from where she had come
+in. And afraid of moving deeper into the unfriendly wood, she turned
+slowly round, trying to tell which way to go. It was all just one dark
+watching thing, of limbs on the ground and in the air. 'Any way,'
+she thought; 'any way of course will take me out!' And she groped
+forward, keeping her hands up to guard her face. It was silly, but she
+could not help the sinking, scattered feeling which comes to one bushed,
+or lost in a fog. If the wood had not been so dark, so,—alive! And for
+a second she had the senseless, terrifying thought of a child: 'What
+if I never get out!' Then she laughed at it, and stood still again,
+listening. There was no sound to guide her, no sound at all except that
+faint dull rumble, which seemed to come from every side, now. And the
+trees watched her. 'Ugh!' she thought; 'I hate this wood!' She
+saw it now, its snaky branches, its darkness, and great forms, as an
+abode of giants and witches. She groped and scrambled on again, tripped
+once more, and fell, hitting her forehead against a trunk. The blow
+dazed and sobered her. 'It's idiotic,' she thought; 'I'm a
+baby! I'll Just walk very slowly till I reach the edge. I know it
+isn't a large wood!' She turned deliberately to face each direction;
+solemnly selected that from which the muttering of the guns seemed to
+come, and started again, moving very slowly with her hands stretched
+out. Something rustled in the undergrowth, quite close; she saw a
+pair of green eyes shining. Her heart jumped into her mouth. The thing
+sprang—there was a swish of ferns and twigs, and silence. Noel clasped
+her breast. A poaching cat! And again she moved forward. But she had
+lost direction. 'I'm going round and round,' she thought. 'They
+always do.' And the sinking scattered feeling of the “bushed”
+clutched at her again. 'Shall I call?' she thought. 'I must be
+near the road. But it's so babyish.' She moved on again. Her foot
+struck something soft. A voice muttered a thick oath; a hand seized
+her ankle. She leaped, and dragged and wrenched it free; and, utterly
+unnerved, she screamed, and ran forward blindly.
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+No one could have so convinced a feeling as Jimmy Fort that he would be
+a 'bit of a makeshift' for Noel. He had spent the weeks after his
+interview with her father obsessed by her image, often saying to himself
+“It won't do. It's playing it too low down to try and get that
+child, when I know that, but for her trouble, I shouldn't have a
+chance.” He had never had much opinion of his looks, but now he seemed
+to himself absurdly old and dried-up in this desert of a London.
+He loathed the Office job to which they had put him, and the whole
+atmosphere of officialdom. Another year of it, and he would shrivel like
+an old apple! He began to look at himself anxiously, taking stock of his
+physical assets now that he had this dream of young beauty. He would
+be forty next month, and she was nineteen! But there would be times
+too when he would feel that, with her, he could be as much of a
+“three-year-old” as the youngster she had loved. Having little hope
+of winning her, he took her “past” but lightly. Was it not that past
+which gave him what chance he had? On two things he was determined: He
+would not trade on her past. And if by any chance she took him, he would
+never show her that he remembered that she had one.
+
+After writing to Gratian he had spent the week before his holiday began,
+in an attempt to renew the youthfulness of his appearance, which made
+him feel older, leaner, bonier and browner than ever. He got up early,
+rode in the rain, took Turkish baths, and did all manner of exercises;
+neither smoked nor drank, and went to bed early, exactly as if he had
+been going to ride a steeplechase. On the afternoon, when at last he
+left on that terrific pilgrimage, he gazed at his face with a sort of
+despair, it was so lean, and leather-coloured, and he counted almost a
+dozen grey hairs.
+
+When he reached the bungalow, and was told that she was working in the
+corn-fields, he had for the first time a feeling that Fate was on
+his side. Such a meeting would be easier than any other! He had been
+watching her for several minutes before she saw him, with his heart
+beating more violently than it had ever beaten in the trenches; and
+that new feeling of hope stayed with him—all through the greeting,
+throughout supper, and even after she had left them and gone upstairs.
+Then, with the suddenness of a blind drawn down, it vanished, and he
+sat on, trying to talk, and slowly getting more and more silent and
+restless.
+
+“Nollie gets so tired, working,” Gratian said: He knew she meant it
+kindly but that she should say it at all was ominous. He got up at
+last, having lost hope of seeing Noel again, conscious too that he had
+answered the last three questions at random.
+
+In the porch George said: “You'll come in to lunch tomorrow, won't
+you?”
+
+“Oh, thanks, I'm afraid it'll bore you all.”
+
+“Not a bit. Nollie won't be so tired.”
+
+Again—so well meant. They were very kind. He looked up from the gate,
+trying to make out which her window might be; but all was dark. A little
+way down the road he stopped to light a cigarette; and, leaning against
+a gate, drew the smoke of it deep into his lungs, trying to assuage the
+ache in his heart. So it was hopeless! She had taken the first, the very
+first chance, to get away from him! She knew that he loved her, could
+not help knowing, for he had never been able to keep it out of his eyes
+and voice. If she had felt ever so little for him, she would not have
+avoided him this first evening. 'I'll go back to that desert,' he
+thought; 'I'm not going to whine and crawl. I'll go back, and bite
+on it; one must have some pride. Oh, why the hell am I crocked-up like
+this? If only I could get out to France again!' And then Noel's
+figure bent over the falling corn formed before him. 'I'll have one
+more try,' he thought; 'one more—tomorrow somewhere, I'll get to
+know for certain. And if I get what Leila's got I shall deserve it, I
+suppose. Poor Leila! Where is she? Back at High Constantia?' What was
+that? A cry—of terror—in that wood! Crossing to the edge, he called
+“Coo-ee!” and stood peering into its darkness. He heard the sound
+of bushes being brushed aside, and whistled. A figure came bursting out,
+almost into his arms.
+
+“Hallo!” he said; “what's up?”
+
+A voice gasped: “Oh! It's—it's nothing!”
+
+He saw Noel. She had swayed back, and stood about a yard away. He could
+dimly see her covering her face with her arms. Feeling instinctively
+that she wanted to hide her fright, he said quietly:
+
+“What luck! I was just passing. It's awfully dark.”
+
+“I—I got lost; and a man—caught my foot, in there!”
+
+Moved beyond control by the little gulps and gasps of her breathing, he
+stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders. He held her lightly,
+without speaking, terrified lest he should wound her pride.
+
+“I-I got in there,” she gasped, “and the trees—and I stumbled
+over a roan asleep, and he—”
+
+“Yes, Yes, I know,” he murmured, as if to a child. She had dropped
+her arms now, and he could see her face, with eyes unnaturally dilated,
+and lips quivering. Then moved again beyond control, he drew her so
+close that he could feel the throbbing of her heart, and put his lips
+to her forehead all wet with heat. She closed her eyes, gave a little
+choke, and buried her face against his coat.
+
+“There, there, my darling!” he kept on saying. “There, there,
+my darling!” He could feel the snuggling of her cheek against his
+shoulder. He had got her—had got her! He was somehow certain that she
+would not draw back now. And in the wonder and ecstasy of that thought,
+all the world above her head, the stars in their courses, the wood
+which had frightened her, seemed miracles of beauty and fitness. By such
+fortune as had never come to man, he had got her! And he murmured over
+and over again:
+
+“I love you!” She was resting perfectly quiet against him, while her
+heart ceased gradually to beat so fast. He could feel her cheek rubbing
+against his coat of Harris tweed. Suddenly she sniffed at it, and
+whispered:
+
+“It smells good.”
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+When summer sun has burned all Egypt, the white man looks eagerly each
+day for evening, whose rose-coloured veil melts opalescent into the dun
+drift, of the hills, and iridescent above, into the slowly deepening
+blue. Pierson stood gazing at the mystery of the desert from under the
+little group of palms and bougainvillea which formed the garden of the
+hospital. Even-song was in full voice: From the far wing a gramophone
+was grinding out a music-hall ditty; two aeroplanes, wheeling exactly
+like the buzzards of the desert, were letting drip the faint whir of
+their flight; metallic voices drifted from the Arab village; the wheels
+of the water-wells creaked; and every now and then a dry rustle was
+stirred from the palm-leaves by puffs of desert wind. On either hand
+an old road ran out, whose line could be marked by the little old
+watch-towers of another age. For how many hundred years had human
+life passed along it to East and West; the brown men and their camels,
+threading that immemorial track over the desert, which ever filled him
+with wonder, so still it was, so wide, so desolate, and every evening so
+beautiful! He sometimes felt that he could sit for ever looking at it;
+as though its cruel mysterious loveliness were—home; and yet he never
+looked at it without a spasm of homesickness.
+
+So far his new work had brought him no nearer to the hearts of men. Or
+at least he did not feel it had. Both at the regimental base, and now in
+this hospital—an intermediate stage—waiting for the draft with
+which he would be going into Palestine, all had been very nice to him,
+friendly, and as it were indulgent; so might schoolboys have treated
+some well-intentioned dreamy master, or business men a harmless
+idealistic inventor who came visiting their offices. He had even the
+feeling that they were glad to have him about, just as they were glad to
+have their mascots and their regimental colours; but of heart-to-heart
+simple comradeship—it seemed they neither wanted it of him nor
+expected him to give it, so that he had a feeling that he would be
+forward and impertinent to offer it. Moreover, he no longer knew how.
+He was very lonely. 'When I come face to face with death,' he would
+think, 'it will be different. Death makes us all brothers. I may be of
+real use to them then.'
+
+They brought him a letter while he stood there listening to that
+even-song, gazing at the old desert road.
+
+“DARLING DAD,
+
+“I do hope this will reach you before you move on to Palestine. You
+said in your last—at the end of September, so I hope you'll just get
+it. There is one great piece of news, which I'm afraid will hurt and
+trouble you; Nollie is married to Jimmy Fort. They were married down
+here this afternoon, and have just gone up to Town. They have to find
+a house of course. She has been very restless, lonely, and unhappy ever
+since you went, and I'm sure it is really for the best: She is quite
+another creature, and simply devoted, headlong. It's just like Nollie.
+She says she didn't know what she wanted, up to the last minute. But
+now she seems as if she could never want anything else.
+
+“Dad dear, Nollie could never have made good by herself. It isn't
+her nature, and it's much better like this, I feel sure, and so does
+George. Of course it isn't ideal—and one wanted that for her; but
+she did break her wing, and he is so awfully good and devoted to her,
+though you didn't believe it, and perhaps won't, even now. The
+great thing is to feel her happy again, and know she's safe. Nollie is
+capable of great devotion; only she must be anchored. She was drifting
+all about; and one doesn't know what she might have done, in one of
+her moods. I do hope you won't grieve about it. She's dreadfully
+anxious about how you'll feel. I know it will be wretched for you, so
+far off; but do try and believe it's for the best.... She's out of
+danger; and she was really in a horrible position. It's so good for
+the baby, too, and only fair to him. I do think one must take things as
+they are, Dad dear. It was impossible to mend Nollie's wing. If she
+were a fighter, and gloried in it, or if she were the sort who would
+'take the veil'—but she isn't either. So it is all right, Dad.
+She's writing to you herself. I'm sure Leila didn't want Jimmy
+Fort to be unhappy because he couldn't love her; or she would never
+have gone away. George sends you his love; we are both very well. And
+Nollie is looking splendid still, after her harvest work. All, all my
+love, Dad dear. Is there anything we can get, and send you? Do take care
+of your blessed self, and don't grieve about Nollie.
+
+“GRATIAN.”
+
+A half-sheet of paper fluttered down; he picked it up from among the
+parched fibre of dead palm-leaves.
+
+“DADDY DARLING,
+
+“I've done it. Forgive me—I'm so happy.
+
+“Your NOLLIE.”
+
+The desert shimmered, the palm-leaves rustled, and Pierson stood trying
+to master the emotion roused in him by those two letters. He felt no
+anger, not even vexation; he felt no sorrow, but a loneliness so utter
+and complete that he did not know how to bear it. It seemed as if
+some last link with life had' snapped. 'My girls are happy,'
+he thought. 'If I am not—what does it matter? If my faith and my
+convictions mean nothing to them—why should they follow? I must and
+will not feel lonely. I ought to have the sense of God present, to feel
+His hand in mine. If I cannot, what use am I—what use to the poor
+fellows in there, what use in all the world?'
+
+An old native on a donkey went by, piping a Soudanese melody on a little
+wooden Arab flute. Pierson turned back into the hospital humming it. A
+nurse met him there.
+
+“The poor boy at the end of A ward is sinking fast, sir; I expect
+he'd like to see you.”
+
+He went into A ward, and walked down between the beds to the west window
+end, where two screens had been put, to block off the cot. Another
+nurse, who was sitting beside it, rose at once.
+
+“He's quite conscious,” she whispered; “he can still speak a
+little. He's such a dear.” A tear rolled down her cheek, and she
+passed out behind the screens. Pierson looked down at the boy; perhaps
+he was twenty, but the unshaven down on his cheeks was soft and almost
+colourless. His eyes were closed. He breathed regularly, and did not
+seem in pain; but there was about him that which told he was going;
+something resigned, already of the grave. The window was wide open,
+covered by mosquito-netting, and a tiny line of sunlight, slanting
+through across the foot of the cot, crept slowly backwards over the
+sheets and the boy's body, shortening as it crept. In the grey
+whiteness of the walls; the bed, the boy's face, just that pale yellow
+bar of sunlight, and one splash of red and blue from a little flag on
+the wall glowed out. At this cooler hour, the ward behind the screens
+was almost empty, and few sounds broke the stillness; but from without
+came that intermittent rustle of dry palm-leaves. Pierson waited in
+silence, watching the sun sink. If the boy might pass like this, it
+would be God's mercy. Then he saw the boy's eyes open, wonderfully
+clear eyes of the lighted grey which has dark rims; his lips moved, and
+Pierson bent down to hear.
+
+“I'm goin' West, zurr.” The whisper had a little soft burr; the
+lips quivered; a pucker as of a child formed on his face, and passed.
+
+Through Pierson's mind there flashed the thought: 'O God! Let me be
+some help to him!'
+
+“To God, my dear son!” he said.
+
+A flicker of humour, of ironic question, passed over the boy's lips.
+
+Terribly moved, Pierson knelt down, and began softly, fervently praying.
+His whispering mingled with the rustle of the palm-leaves, while the bar
+of sunlight crept up the body. In the boy's smile had been the
+whole of stoic doubt, of stoic acquiescence. It had met him with an
+unconscious challenge; had seemed to know so much. Pierson took his
+hand, which lay outside the sheet. The boy's lips moved, as though
+in thanks; he drew a long feeble breath, as if to suck in the thread
+of sunlight; and his eyes closed. Pierson bent over the hand. When he
+looked up the boy was dead. He kissed his forehead and went quietly out.
+
+The sun had set, and he walked away from the hospital to a hillock
+beyond the track on the desert's edge, and stood looking at the
+afterglow. The sun and the boy—together they had gone West, into that
+wide glowing nothingness.
+
+The muezzin call to sunset prayer in the Arab village came to him clear
+and sharp, while he sat there, unutterably lonely. Why had that smile
+so moved him? Other death smiles had been like this evening smile on
+the desert hills—a glowing peace, a promise of heaven. But the
+boy's smile had said: 'Waste no breath on me—you cannot help.
+Who knows—who knows? I have no hope, no faith; but I am adventuring.
+Good-bye!' Poor boy! He had braved all things, and moved out
+uncertain, yet undaunted! Was that, then, the uttermost truth, was faith
+a smaller thing? But from that strange notion he recoiled with horror.
+'In faith I have lived, in faith I will die!' he thought, 'God
+helping me!' And the breeze, ruffling the desert sand, blew the grains
+against the palms of his hands, outstretched above the warm earth.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Saint's Progress, by John
+Galsworthy
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Saints Progress, by John Galsworthy
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd7; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 2em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    pre     { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Saint's Progress
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: June 14, 2006 [EBook #2683]
+Last Updated: February 18, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAINT'S PROGRESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      SAINTS PROGRESS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By John Galsworthy
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART1"> <b>PART I</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART2"> <b>PART II</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART3"> <b>PART III</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <br /> <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART4"> <b>PART IV</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0039"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0040"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0041"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0042"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0043"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0044"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART1" id="link2H_PART1">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PART I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Such a day made glad the heart. All the flags of July were waving; the sun
+      and the poppies flaming; white butterflies spiring up and twining, and the
+      bees busy on the snapdragons. The lime-trees were coming into flower. Tall
+      white lilies in the garden beds already rivaled the delphiniums; the York
+      and Lancaster roses were full-blown round their golden hearts. There was a
+      gentle breeze, and a swish and stir and hum rose and fell above the head
+      of Edward Pierson, coming back from his lonely ramble over Tintern Abbey.
+      He had arrived at Kestrel, his brother Robert's home on the bank of the
+      Wye only that morning, having stayed at Bath on the way down; and now he
+      had got his face burnt in that parti-coloured way peculiar to the faces of
+      those who have been too long in London. As he came along the narrow,
+      rather overgrown avenue, the sound of a waltz thrummed out on a piano fell
+      on his ears, and he smiled, for music was the greatest passion he had. His
+      dark grizzled hair was pushed back off his hot brow, which he fanned with
+      his straw hat. Though not broad, that brow was the broadest part of a
+      narrow oval face whose length was increased by a short, dark, pointed
+      beard&mdash;a visage such as Vandyk might have painted, grave and gentle,
+      but for its bright grey eyes, cinder-lashed and crow's-footed, and its
+      strange look of not seeing what was before it. He walked quickly, though
+      he was tired and hot; tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit,
+      on whose black kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Above his brother's house, whose sloping garden ran down to the railway
+      line and river, a large room had been built out apart. Pierson stood where
+      the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the waltz, and the cool whipping
+      of the breeze in the sycamores and birches. A man of fifty, with a sense
+      of beauty, born and bred in the country, suffers fearfully from nostalgia
+      during a long unbroken spell of London; so that his afternoon in the old
+      Abbey had been almost holy. He had let his senses sink into the sunlit
+      greenery of the towering woods opposite; he had watched the spiders and
+      the little shining beetles, the flycatchers, and sparrows in the ivy;
+      touched the mosses and the lichens; looked the speedwells in the eye;
+      dreamed of he knew not what. A hawk had been wheeling up there above the
+      woods, and he had been up there with it in the blue. He had taken a real
+      spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret of London off his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a year he had been working his parish single-handed&mdash;no joke&mdash;for
+      his curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real holiday
+      since the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to his brother's
+      home. He looked down at the garden, and up at the trees of the avenue. Bob
+      had found a perfect retreat after his quarter of a century in Ceylon. Dear
+      old Bob! And he smiled at the thought of his elder brother, whose burnt
+      face and fierce grey whiskers somewhat recalled a Bengal tiger; the
+      kindest fellow that ever breathed! Yes, he had found a perfect home for
+      Thirza and himself. And Edward Pierson sighed. He too had once had a
+      perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose death, fifteen years ago,
+      still bled a little in his heart. Their two daughters, Gratian and Noel,
+      had not &ldquo;taken after&rdquo; her; Gratian was like his own mother,
+      and Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded him of his cousin
+      Leila, who&mdash;poor thing!&mdash;had made that sad mess of her life, and
+      now, he had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa. Ah! What a
+      pretty girl she had been!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the music-room.
+      A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet slipping on polished
+      boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly in the arms of a young
+      officer in khaki: Round and round they went, circling, backing, moving
+      sideways with curious steps which seemed to have come in recently, for he
+      did not recognise them. At the piano sat his niece Eve, with a teasing
+      smile on her rosy face. But it was at his young daughter that Edward
+      Pierson looked. Her eyes were half-closed, her cheeks rather pale, and her
+      fair hair, cut quite short, curled into her slim round neck. Quite cool
+      she seemed, though the young man in whose arms she was gliding along
+      looked fiery hot; a handsome boy, with blue eyes and a little golden down
+      on the upper lip of his sunny red-cheeked face. Edward Pierson thought:
+      'Nice couple!' And had a moment's vision of himself and Leila, dancing at
+      that long-ago Cambridge May Week&mdash;on her seventeenth birthday, he
+      remembered, so that she must have been a year younger than Nollie was now!
+      This would be the young man she had talked of in her letters during the
+      last three weeks. Were they never going to stop?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed into view of those within, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't you very hot, Nollie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and self-conscious, and
+      Eve called out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a bet, Uncle. They've got to dance me down.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson said mildly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A bet? My dears!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel murmured over her shoulder:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right, Daddy!&rdquo; And the young man gasped:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson sat down, a little hypnotized by the sleepy strumming, the slow
+      giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-closed swimming eyes of his
+      young daughter, looking at him over her shoulder as she went by. He sat
+      with a smile on his lips. Nollie was growing up! Now that Gratian was
+      married, she had become a great responsibility. If only his dear wife had
+      lived! The smile faded from his lips; he looked suddenly very tired. The
+      struggle, physical and spiritual, he had been through, these fifteen
+      years, sometimes weighed him almost to the ground: Most men would have
+      married again, but he had always felt it would be sacrilege. Real unions
+      were for ever, even though the Church permitted remarriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He watched his young daughter with a mixture of aesthetic pleasure and
+      perplexity. Could this be good for her? To go on dancing indefinitely with
+      one young man could that possibly be good for her? But they looked very
+      happy; and there was so much in young creatures that he did not
+      understand. Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy, seemed sometimes possessed
+      of a little devil. Edward Pierson was naif; attributed those outbursts of
+      demonic possession to the loss of her mother when she was such a mite;
+      Gratian, but two years older, had never taken a mother's place. That had
+      been left to himself, and he was more or less conscious of failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat there looking up at her with a sort of whimsical distress. And,
+      suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn each word a
+      little, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to stop!&rdquo; and, sitting down beside him, took up his
+      hat to fan herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eve struck a triumphant chord. &ldquo;Hurrah I've won!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man muttered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Noel, we weren't half done!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren't you, dear? This is
+      Cyril Morland.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson shook the young man's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daddy, your nose is burnt!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear; I know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can give you some white stuff for it. You have to sleep with it
+      on all night. Uncle and Auntie both use it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Eve says so. If you're going to bathe, Cyril, look out for
+      that current!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration, muttered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel's eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you're going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you'd better
+      hurry up.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lovely; like a great piece of music.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daddy always puts everything into music. You ought to see it by
+      moonlight; it's gorgeous then. All right, Eve; I'm coming.&rdquo; But she
+      did not get up, and when Eve was gone, cuddled her arm through her
+      father's and murmured:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What d'you think of Cyril?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, how can I tell? He seems a nice-looking young man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Daddy; don't strain yourself. It's jolly down here,
+      isn't it?&rdquo; She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away,
+      looking like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round her
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a lovely
+      thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following, went to the
+      piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in E minor. He
+      had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion. It was his way
+      out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which never quite failed
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a profession, but family
+      tradition had destined him for Holy Orders, and an emotional Church
+      revival of that day had caught him in its stream. He had always had
+      private means, and those early years before he married had passed happily
+      in an East-End parish. To have not only opportunity but power to help in
+      the lives of the poor had been fascinating; simple himself, the simple
+      folk of his parish had taken hold of his heart. When, however, he married
+      Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish of his own on the borders of East and
+      West, where he had been ever since, even after her death had nearly killed
+      him. It was better to go on where work and all reminded him of one whom he
+      had resolved never to forget in other ties. But he knew that his work had
+      not the zest it used to have in her day, or even before her day. It may
+      well be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy Orders twenty-six years,
+      quite knew now what he believed. Everything had become circumscribed, and
+      fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to have taken fresh stock of
+      his faith, to have gone deep into its roots, would have been like taking
+      up the foundations of a still-standing house. Some men naturally root
+      themselves in the inexpressible&mdash;for which one formula is much the
+      same as another; though Edward Pierson, gently dogmatic, undoubtedly
+      preferred his High-Church statement of the inexpressible to that of, say,
+      the Zoroastrians. The subtleties of change, the modifications by science,
+      left little sense of inconsistency or treason on his soul. Sensitive,
+      charitable, and only combative deep down, he instinctively avoided
+      discussion on matters where he might hurt others or they hurt him. And,
+      since explanation was the last thing which o could be expected of one who
+      did not base himself on Reason, he had found but scant occasion ever to
+      examine anything. Just as in the old Abbey he had soared off into the
+      infinite with the hawk, the beetles, and the grasses, so now, at the
+      piano, by these sounds of his own making, he was caught away again into
+      emotionalism, without realising that he was in one of his, most religious
+      moods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't you coming to tea, Edward?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown, had one of those
+      faces which remain innocent to the end of the chapter, in spite of the
+      complete knowledge of life which appertains to mothers. In days of
+      suffering and anxiety, like these of the great war, Thirza Pierson was a
+      valuable person. Without ever expressing an opinion on cosmic matters, she
+      reconfirmed certain cosmic truths, such as that though the whole world was
+      at war, there was such a thing as peace; that though all the sons of
+      mothers were being killed, there remained such a thing as motherhood; that
+      while everybody was living for the future, the present still existed. Her
+      tranquil, tender, matter-of-fact busyness, and the dew in her eyes, had
+      been proof against twenty-three years of life on a tea-plantation in the
+      hot part of Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against the anxiety of having two
+      sons at the front, and the confidences of nearly every one she came
+      across. Nothing disturbed her. She was like a painting of &ldquo;Goodness&rdquo;
+      by an Old Master, restored by Kate Greenaway. She never went to meet life,
+      but when it came, made the best of it. This was her secret, and Pierson
+      always felt rested in her presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose, and moved by her side, over the lawn, towards the big tree at the
+      bottom of the garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How d'you think Noel is looking, Edward?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very pretty. That young man, Thirza?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I'm afraid he's over head and ears in love with her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the dismayed sound he uttered, she slipped her soft round arm within
+      his. &ldquo;He's going to the front soon, poor boy!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have they talked to you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has. Nollie hasn't yet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie is a queer child, Thirza.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie is a darling, but rather a desperate character, Edward.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a swing under the tree, where the tea-things were set out, the &ldquo;rather
+      desperate character&rdquo; was swaying. &ldquo;What a picture she is!&rdquo;
+      he said, and sighed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice of his brother came to them,&mdash;high and steamy, as though
+      corrupted by the climate of Ceylon:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You incorrigible dreamy chap, Ted! We've eaten all the raspberries.
+      Eve, give him some jam; he must be dead! Phew! the heat! Come on, my dear,
+      and pour out his tea. Hallo, Cyril! Had a good bathe? By George, wish my
+      head was wet! Squattez-vous down over there, by Nollie; she'll swing, and
+      keep the flies off you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me a cigarette, Uncle Bob&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Your father doesn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just for the flies. You don't mind, Daddy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if it's necessary, my dear.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel smiled, showing her upper teeth, and her eyes seemed to swim under
+      their long lashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't necessary, but it's nice.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, ha!&rdquo; said Bob Pierson. &ldquo;Here you are, Nollie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Noel shook her head. At that moment she struck her father as
+      startlingly grown-up-so composed, swaying above that young man at her
+      feet, whose sunny face was all adoration. 'No longer a child!' he thought.
+      'Dear Nollie!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      1
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Awakened by that daily cruelty, the advent of hot water, Edward Pierson
+      lay in his chintz-curtained room, fancying himself back in London. A wild
+      bee hunting honey from the bowl of flowers on the window-sill, and the
+      scent of sweetbrier, shattered that illusion. He drew the curtain, and,
+      kneeling on the window-seat thrust his head out into the morning. The air
+      was intoxicatingly sweet. Haze clung over the river and the woods beyond;
+      the lawn sparkled with dew, and two wagtails strutted in the dewy
+      sunshine. 'Thank God for loveliness!' he thought. 'Those poor boys at the
+      front!' And kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he began to say his
+      prayers. The same feeling which made him beautify his church, use
+      vestments, good music, and incense, filled him now. God was in the
+      loveliness of His world, as well as in His churches. One could worship Him
+      in a grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a high hill, by the
+      banks of a bright river. God was in the rustle of the leaves, and the hum
+      of a bee, in the dew on the grass, and the scent of flowers; God was in
+      everything! And he added to his usual prayer this whisper: &ldquo;I give
+      Thee thanks for my senses, O Lord. In all of us, keep them bright, and
+      grateful for beauty.&rdquo; Then he remained motionless, prey to a sort of
+      happy yearning very near, to melancholy. Great beauty ever had that effect
+      on him. One could capture so little of it&mdash;could never enjoy it
+      enough! Who was it had said not long ago: &ldquo;Love of beauty is really
+      only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies.&rdquo;
+      Ah! yes, George&mdash;Gratian's husband. George Laird! And a little frown
+      came between his brows, as though at some thorn in the flesh. Poor George!
+      But then, all doctors were materialists at heart&mdash;splendid fellows,
+      though; a fine fellow, George, working himself to death out there in
+      France. One must not take them too seriously. He plucked a bit of
+      sweetbrier and put it to his nose, which still retained the shine of that
+      bleaching ointment Noel had insisted on his using. The sweet smell of
+      those little rough leaves stirred up an acute aching. He dropped them, and
+      drew back. No longings, no melancholy; one ought to be out, this beautiful
+      morning!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Sunday; but he had not to take three Services and preach at least
+      one sermon; this day of rest was really to be his own, for once. It was
+      almost disconcerting; he had so long felt like the cab horse who could not
+      be taken out of the shafts lest he should fall down. He dressed with
+      extraordinary deliberation, and had not quite finished when there came a
+      knock on his door, and Noel's voice said: &ldquo;Can I come in, Daddy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her flax-blue frock, with a Gloire de Dijon rose pinned where it met on
+      her faintly browned neck, she seemed to her father a perfect vision of
+      freshness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's a letter from Gratian; George has been sent home ill, and
+      he's gone to our house. She's got leave from her hospital to come home and
+      nurse him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson read the letter. &ldquo;Poor George!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When are you going to let me be a nurse, Daddy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must wait till you're eighteen, Nollie.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could easily say I was. It's only a month; and I look much more.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't I?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might be anything from fifteen to twenty-five, my dear,
+      according as you behave.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to go out as near the front as possible.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head was poised so that the sunlight framed her face, which was rather
+      broad&mdash;the brow rather too broad&mdash;under the waving light-brown
+      hair, the nose short and indeterminate; cheeks still round from youth,
+      almost waxen-pale, and faintly hollowed under the eyes. It was her lips,
+      dainty yet loving, and above all her grey eyes, big and dreamily alive,
+      which made her a swan. He could not imagine her in nurse's garb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is new, isn't it, Nollie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cyril Morland's sisters are both out; and he'll be going soon.
+      Everybody goes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gratian hasn't got out yet: It takes a long time to get trained.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know; all the more reason to begin.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She got up, looked at him, looked at her hands, seemed about to speak, but
+      did not. A little colour had come into her cheeks. Then, obviously making
+      conversation, she asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going to church? It's worth anything to hear Uncle Bob read
+      the Lessons, especially when he loses his place. No; you're not to put on
+      your long coat till just before church time. I won't have it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Obediently Pierson resigned his long coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, you see, you can have my rose. Your nose is better!&rdquo; She
+      kissed his nose, and transferred her rose to the buttonhole of his short
+      coat. &ldquo;That's all. Come along!&rdquo; And with her arm through his,
+      they went down. But he knew she had come to say something which she had
+      not said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob Pierson, in virtue of greater wealth than the rest of the
+      congregation, always read the Lessons, in his high steamy voice, his
+      breathing never adjusted to the length of any period. The congregation,
+      accustomed, heard nothing peculiar; he was the necessary gentry with the
+      necessary finger in the pie. It was his own family whom he perturbed. In
+      the second row, Noel, staring solemnly at the profile of her father in the
+      front row, was thinking: 'Poor Daddy! His eyes look as if they were coming
+      out. Oh, Daddy! Smile! or it'll hurt you!' Young Morland beside her, rigid
+      in his tunic, was thinking: 'She isn't thinking of me!' And just then her
+      little finger crooked into his. Edward Pierson was thinking: 'Oh! My dear
+      old Bob! Oh!' And, beside him, Thirza thought: 'Poor dear Ted I how nice
+      for him to be having a complete rest! I must make him eat he's so thin!'
+      And Eve was thinking: 'Oh, Father! Mercy!' But Bob Pierson was thinking:
+      'Cheer oh! Only another three verses!' Noel's little finger unhooked
+      itself, but her eyes stole round to young Morland's eyes, and there was a
+      light in them which lingered through the singing and the prayers. At last,
+      in the reverential rustle of the settling congregation, a surpliced figure
+      mounted the pulpit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come not to bring Peace, but a sword.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson looked up. He felt deep restfulness. There was a pleasant light in
+      this church; the hum of a country bluebottle made all the difference to
+      the quality of silence. No critical thought stirred within him, nor any
+      excitement. He was thinking: 'Now I shall hear something for my good; a
+      fine text; when did I preach from it last?' Turned a little away from the
+      others, he saw nothing but the preacher's homely face up there above the
+      carved oak; it was so long since he had been preached to, so long since he
+      had had a rest! The words came forth, dropped on his forehead, penetrated,
+      met something which absorbed them, and disappeared. 'A good plain sermon!'
+      he thought. 'I suppose I'm stale; I don't seem&mdash;' &ldquo;Let us not,
+      dear brethren,&rdquo; droned the preacher's earnest voice, &ldquo;think
+      that our dear Lord, in saying that He brought a sword, referred to a
+      physical sword. It was the sword of the spirit to which He was undoubtedly
+      referring, that bright sword of the spirit which in all ages has cleaved
+      its way through the fetters imposed on men themselves by their own
+      desires, imposed by men on other men in gratification of their ambitions,
+      as we have had so striking an example in the invasion by our cruel enemies
+      of a little neighbouring country which had done them no harm. Dear
+      brethren, we may all bring swords.&rdquo; Pierson's chin jerked; he raised
+      his hand quickly and passed it over his face. 'All bring swords,' he
+      thought, 'swords&mdash;I wasn't asleep&mdash;surely!' &ldquo;But let us be
+      sure that our swords are bright; bright with hope, and bright with faith,
+      that we may see them flashing among the carnal desires of this mortal
+      life, carving a path for us towards that heavenly kingdom where alone is
+      peace, perfect peace. Let us pray.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson did not shut his eyes; he opened them as he fell on his knees. In
+      the seat behind, Noel and young Morland had also fallen on their knees
+      their faces covered each with a single hand; but her left hand and his
+      right hung at their sides. They prayed a little longer than any others
+      and, on rising, sang the hymn a little louder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No paper came on Sundays&mdash;not even the local paper, which had so long
+      and so nobly done its bit with headlines to win the war. No news whatever
+      came, of men blown up, to enliven the hush of the hot July afternoon, or
+      the sense of drugging&mdash;which followed Aunt Thirza's Sunday lunch.
+      Some slept, some thought they were awake; but Noel and young Morland
+      walked upward through the woods towards a high common of heath and furze,
+      crowned by what was known as Kestrel rocks. Between these two young people
+      no actual word of love had yet been spoken. Their lovering had advanced by
+      glance and touch alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Morland was a school and college friend of the two Pierson boys now
+      at the front. He had no home of his own, for his parents were dead; and
+      this was not his first visit to Kestrel. Arriving three weeks ago, for his
+      final leave before he should go out, he had found a girl sitting in a
+      little wagonette outside the station, and had known his fate at once. But
+      who knows when Noel fell in love? She was&mdash;one supposes&mdash;just
+      ready for that sensation. For the last two years she had been at one of
+      those high-class finishing establishments where, in spite of the healthy
+      curriculum, perhaps because of it, there is ever an undercurrent of
+      interest in the opposing sex; and not even the gravest efforts to
+      eliminate instinct are quite successful. The disappearance of every young
+      male thing into the maw of the military machine put a premium on instinct.
+      The thoughts of Noel and her school companions were turned, perforce, to
+      that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they could afford to regard
+      as of secondary interest. Love and Marriage and Motherhood, fixed as the
+      lot of women by the countless ages, were threatened for these young
+      creatures. They not unnaturally pursued what they felt to be receding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When young Morland showed, by following her about with his eyes, what was
+      happening to him, Noel was pleased. From being pleased, she became a
+      little excited; from being excited she became dreamy. Then, about a week
+      before her father's arrival, she secretly began to follow the young man
+      about with her eyes; became capricious too, and a little cruel. If there
+      had been another young man to favour&mdash;but there was not; and she
+      favoured Uncle Bob's red setter. Cyril Morland grew desperate. During
+      those three days the demon her father dreaded certainly possessed her. And
+      then, one evening, while they walked back together from the hay-fields,
+      she gave him a sidelong glance; and he gasped out: &ldquo;Oh! Noel, what
+      have I done?&rdquo; She caught his hand, and gave it a quick squeeze. What
+      a change! What blissful alteration ever since!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up to
+      put things to the touch. Noel too mounted silently, thinking: 'I will kiss
+      him if he kisses me!' Eagerness, and a sort of languor, were running in
+      her veins; she did not look at him from under her shady hat. Sun light
+      poured down through every chink in the foliage; made the greenness of the
+      steep wood marvellously vivid and alive; flashed on beech leaves, ash
+      leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little runlets; painted bright
+      patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the ferns; butterflies chased
+      each other in that sunlight, and myriads of ants and gnats and flies
+      seemed possessed by a frenzy of life. The whole wood seemed possessed, as
+      if the sunshine were a happy Being which had come to dwell therein. At a
+      half-way spot, where the trees opened and they could see, far below them,
+      the gleam of the river, she sat down on the bole of a beech-tree, and
+      young Morland stood looking at her. Why should one face and not an other,
+      this voice and not that, make a heart beat; why should a touch from one
+      hand awaken rapture, and a touch from another awaken nothing? He knelt
+      down and pressed his lips to her foot. Her eyes grew very bright; but she
+      got up and ran on&mdash;she had not expected him to kiss her foot. She
+      heard him hurrying after her, and stopped, leaning against a birch trunk.
+      He rushed to her, and, without a word spoken, his lips were on her lips.
+      The moment in life, which no words can render, had come for them. They had
+      found their enchanted spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their
+      arms round each other, while the happy Being of the wood watched. A
+      marvellous speeder-up of Love is War. What might have taken six months,
+      was thus accomplished in three weeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A short hour passed, then Noel said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must tell Daddy, Cyril. I meant to tell him something this
+      morning, only I thought I'd better wait, in case you didn't.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morland answered: &ldquo;Oh, Noel!&rdquo; It was the staple of his
+      conversation while they sat there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall go off my chump if we're not married before I go out.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long does it take?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No time, if we hurry up. I've got six days before I rejoin, and
+      perhaps the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Daddy! Kiss me again; a long one.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the long one was over, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I can come and be near you till you go out? Oh, Cyril!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Noel!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you won't go so soon. Don't go if you can help it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan't be able.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, of course not; I know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Morland clutched his hair. &ldquo;Everyone's in the same boat, but
+      it can't last for ever; and now we're engaged we can be together all the
+      time till I've got the licence or whatever it is. And then&mdash;!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daddy won't like our not being married in a church; but I don't
+      care!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on her cheeks,
+      young Morland thought:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'My God! I'm in heaven!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another short hour passed before she freed herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must go, Cyril. Kiss me once more!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down. 4
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where he had read the
+      Lessons, saw them in the distance, and compressed his lips. Their long
+      absence had vexed him. What ought he to do? In the presence of Love's
+      young dream, he felt strange and helpless. That night, when he opened the
+      door of his room, he saw Noel on the window-seat, in her dressing-gown,
+      with the moonlight streaming in on her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't light up, Daddy; I've got something to say.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned it over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs; and at the sound
+      he made she hurried on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, we must be; he may be going out any day.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind of reason in
+      her words. But he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, you're only a child. Marriage is the most serious thing in
+      life; you've only known him three weeks.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know all that, Daddy&rdquo; her voice sounded so ridiculously
+      calm; &ldquo;but we can't afford to wait. He might never come back, you
+      see, and then I should have missed him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only be much
+      worse for you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it
+      against her heart. But still her voice was calm:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; much better, Daddy; you think I don't know my own feelings, but
+      I do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is
+      wanted. Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the same
+      things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know; but we do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But these aren't ordinary times, are they? People have to do things
+      in a hurry. Oh, Daddy! Be an angel! Mother would have understood, and let
+      me, I know!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his loss,
+      from reminder of the poor substitute he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look, Nollie!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;After all these years since
+      she left us, I'm as lonely as ever, because we were really one. If you
+      marry this young man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can
+      in such a little time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it turn
+      out, after all, nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if anything
+      happens to him before you've had any real married life together, you'll
+      have a much greater grief and sense of loss to put up with than if you
+      simply stay engaged till after the war. Besides, my child, you're much too
+      young.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm. &ldquo;But I must!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bit his lips, and said sharply: &ldquo;You can't, Nollie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone. With the closing of
+      the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took its place. Poor child!
+      What to do with this wayward chicken just out of the egg, and wanting to
+      be full-fledged at once? The thought that she would be lying miserable,
+      crying, perhaps, beset him so that he went out into the passage and tapped
+      on her door. Getting no answer, he went in. It was dark but for a streak
+      of moonlight, and in that he saw her, lying on her bed, face down; and
+      stealing up laid his hand on her head. She did not move; and, stroking her
+      hair, he said gently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie dear, I didn't mean to be harsh. If I were your mother, I
+      should know how to make you see, but I'm only an old bumble-daddy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on the bed. He
+      could see her eyes shining. But she did not speak; she seemed to know that
+      in silence was her strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said with a sort of despair:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must let me talk it over with your aunt. She has a lot of good
+      sense.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night, my dear; don't cry. Promise me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on his
+      forehead, and went away a little comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the night, to the
+      emptiness and silence; each minute so much lost of the little, little time
+      left, that she might have been with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he had thought
+      himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him more forcibly
+      than the needlessness of his words: &ldquo;Don't cry, Nollie!&rdquo; for
+      he had realised with uneasiness that she had not been near crying. No;
+      there was in her some emotion very different from the tearful. He kept
+      seeing her cross-legged figure on the bed in that dim light; tense,
+      enigmatic, almost Chinese; kept feeling the feverish touch of her lips. A
+      good girlish burst of tears would have done her good, and been a
+      guarantee. He had the uncomfortable conviction that his refusal had passed
+      her by, as if unspoken. And, since he could not go and make music at that
+      time of night, he had ended on his knees, in a long search for guidance,
+      which was not vouchsafed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told that for the
+      last hour they had been sitting with their arms round each other, watching
+      the river flow by, talking but little, through lips too busy. Pierson
+      pursued his sister-in-law to the room where she did her flowers every
+      morning. He watched her for a minute dividing ramblers from pansies,
+      cornflowers from sweet peas, before he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm very troubled, Thirza. Nollie came to me last night. Imagine!
+      They want to get married&mdash;those two!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her cheeks grew a
+      little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder. She took up a sprig of
+      mignonette, and said placidly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think of it, Thirza&mdash;that child! Why, it's only a year or two
+      since she used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with her hair.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirza went on arranging her flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her age. And
+      real married life wouldn't begin for them till after&mdash;if it ever
+      began.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson experienced a sort of shock. His sister-in-law's words seemed
+      criminally light-hearted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered; &ldquo;the union, Thirza!
+      Who can tell what will happen before they come together again!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in these
+      days, of what Noel might do. I told you there's a streak of desperation in
+      her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Noel will obey me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder! There are so many of these war marriages now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think they're dreadful. What do they mean&mdash;Just a momentary
+      gratification of passion. They might just as well not be.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They mean pensions, as a rule,&rdquo; said Thirza calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn't affect this case. I
+      can't bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a moment which
+      may come to nothing, or may turn out the beginning of an unhappy marriage.
+      Who is this boy&mdash;what is he? I know nothing of him. How can I give
+      her to him&mdash;it's impossible! If they had been engaged some time and I
+      knew something of him&mdash;yes, perhaps; even at her age. But this hasty
+      passionateness&mdash;it isn't right, it isn't decent. I don't understand,
+      I really don't&mdash;how a child like that can want it. The fact is, she
+      doesn't know what she's asking, poor little Nollie. She can't know the
+      nature of marriage, and she can't realise its sacredness. If only her
+      mother were here! Talk to her, Thirza; you can say things that I can't!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirza looked after the retreating figure. In spite of his cloth, perhaps
+      a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child who had come to show
+      her his sore finger. And, having finished the arrangement of her flowers,
+      she went out to find her niece. She had not far to go; for Noel was
+      standing in the hall, quite evidently lying in wait. They went out
+      together to the avenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl began at once:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't any use talking to me, Auntie; Cyril is going to get a
+      license.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! So you've made up your minds?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think that's fair by me, Nollie? Should I have asked him
+      here if I'd thought this was going to happen?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel only smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you the least idea what marriage means?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. Gratian is married. Besides, at school&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father is dead against it. This is a sad thing for him. He's a
+      perfect saint, and you oughtn't to hurt him. Can't you wait, at least till
+      Cyril's next leave?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He might never have one, you see.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heart of her whose boys were out there too, and might also never have
+      another leave; could not but be responsive to those words. She looked at
+      her niece, and a dim appreciation of this revolt of life menaced by death,
+      of youth threatened with extinction, stirred in her. Noel's teeth were
+      clenched, her lips drawn back, and she was staring in front of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daddy oughtn't to mind. Old people haven't to fight, and get
+      killed; they oughtn't to mind us taking what we can. They've had their
+      good time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was such a just little speech that Thirza answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; perhaps he hasn't quite realised that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to make sure of Cyril, Auntie; I want everything I can have
+      with him while there's the chance. I don't think it's much to ask, when
+      perhaps I'll never have any more of him again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirza slipped her hand through the girl's arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Only, Nollie, suppose, when
+      all this is over, and we breathe and live naturally once more, you found
+      you'd made a mistake?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shook her head. &ldquo;I haven't.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We all think that, my dear; but thousands of mistakes are made by
+      people who no more dream they're making them than you do now; and then
+      it's a very horrible business. It would be especially horrible for you;
+      your father believes heart and soul in marriage being for ever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes, you
+      know. Besides, I'm not making a mistake, Auntie! I love Cyril ever so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirza gave her waist a squeeze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't make a mistake. We love you too much, Nollie. I wish we
+      had Gratian here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gratian would back me up,&rdquo; said Noel; &ldquo;she knows what
+      the war is. And you ought to, Auntie. If Rex or Harry wanted to be
+      married, I'm sure you'd never oppose them. And they're no older than
+      Cyril. You must understand what it means to me Auntie dear, to feel that
+      we belong to each other properly before&mdash;before it all begins for
+      him, and&mdash;and there may be no more. Daddy doesn't realise. I know
+      he's awfully good, but&mdash;he's forgotten.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, I think he remembers only too well. He was desperately
+      attached to your mother.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel clenched her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was he? Well, so am I to Cyril, and he to me. We wouldn't be
+      unreasonable if it wasn't&mdash;wasn't necessary. Talk, to Cyril, Auntie;
+      then you'll understand. There he is; only, don't keep him long, because I
+      want him. Oh! Auntie; I want him so badly!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned; and slipped back into the house; and Thirza, conscious of
+      having been decoyed to this young man, who stood there with his arms
+      folded, like Napoleon before a battle, smiled and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Cyril, so you've betrayed me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in speaking she was conscious of the really momentous change in this
+      sunburnt, blue-eyed, lazily impudent youth since the day he arrived, three
+      weeks ago, in their little wagonette. He took her arm, just as Noel had,
+      and made her sit down beside him on the rustic bench, where he had
+      evidently been told to wait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, Mrs. Pierson,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it's not as if Noel
+      were an ordinary girl in an ordinary time, is it? Noel is the sort of girl
+      one would knock one's brains out for; and to send me out there knowing
+      that I could have been married to her and wasn't, will take all the heart
+      out of me. Of course I mean to come back, but chaps do get knocked over,
+      and I think it's cruel that we can't take what we can while we can.
+      Besides, I've got money; and that would be hers anyway. So, do be a
+      darling, won't you?&rdquo; He put his arm round her waist, just as if he
+      had been her son, and her heart, which wanted her own boys so badly, felt
+      warmed within her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, I don't know Mr. Pierson, but he seems awfully gentle and
+      jolly, and if he could see into me he wouldn't mind, I know. We don't mind
+      risking our lives and all that, but we do think we ought to have the run
+      of them while we're alive. I'll give him my dying oath or anything, that I
+      could never change towards Noel, and she'll do the same. Oh! Mrs. Pierson,
+      do be a jolly brick, and put in a word for me, quick! We've got so few
+      days!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear boy,&rdquo; said Thirza feebly, &ldquo;do you think
+      it's fair to such a child as Noel?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do. You don't understand; she's simply had to grow up. She
+      is grown-up&mdash;all in this week; she's quite as old as I am, really&mdash;and
+      I'm twenty-two. And you know it's going to be&mdash;it's got to be&mdash;a
+      young world, from now on; people will begin doing things much earlier.
+      What's the use of pretending it's like what it was, and being cautious,
+      and all that? If I'm going to be killed, I think we've got a right to be
+      married first; and if I'm not, then what does it matter?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've known each other twenty-one days, Cyril.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; twenty-one years! Every day's a year when&mdash;Oh! Mrs.
+      Pierson, this isn't like you, is it? You never go to meet trouble, do you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that shrewd remark, Thirza put her hand on the hand which still clasped
+      her waist, and pressed it closer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear,&rdquo; she said softly, &ldquo;we must see what can
+      be done.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cyril Morland kissed her cheek. &ldquo;I will bless you for ever,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;I haven't got any people, you know, except my two sisters.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And something like tears started up on Thirza's eyelashes. They seemed to
+      her like the babes in the wood&mdash;those two!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In the dining-room of her father's house in that old London Square between
+      East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor garb of a nurse, was writing
+      a telegram: &ldquo;Reverend Edward Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern,
+      Monmouthshire. George terribly ill. Please come if you can. Gratian.&rdquo;
+      Giving it to a maid, she took off her long coat and sat down for a moment.
+      She had been travelling all night, after a full day's work, and had only
+      just arrived, to find her husband between life and death. She was very
+      different from Noel; not quite so tall, but of a stronger build; with dark
+      chestnut-coloured hair, clear hazel eyes, and a broad brow. The expression
+      of her face was earnest, with a sort of constant spiritual enquiry; and a
+      singularly truthful look: She was just twenty; and of the year that she
+      had been married, had only spent six weeks with her husband; they had not
+      even a house of their own as yet. After resting five minutes, she passed
+      her hand vigorously over her face, threw back her head, and walked up
+      stairs to the room where he lay. He was not conscious, and there was
+      nothing to be done but sit and watch him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'If he dies,' she thought, 'I shall hate God for His cruelty. I have had
+      six weeks with George; some people have sixty years.' She fixed her eyes
+      on his face, short and broad, with bumps of &ldquo;observation&rdquo; on
+      the brows. He had been sunburnt. The dark lashes of his closed eyes lay on
+      deathly yellow cheeks; his thick hair grew rather low on his broad
+      forehead. The lips were just open and showed strong white teeth. He had a
+      little clipped moustache, and hair had grown on his clean-cut jaw. His
+      pyjama jacket had fallen open. Gratian drew it close. It was curiously
+      still, for a London day, though the window was wide open. Anything to
+      break this heavy stupor, which was not only George's, but her own, and the
+      very world's! The cruelty of it&mdash;when she might be going to lose him
+      for ever, in a few hours or days! She thought of their last parting. It
+      had not been very loving, had come too soon after one of those arguments
+      they were inclined to have, in which they could not as yet disagree with
+      suavity. George had said there was no future life for the individual; she
+      had maintained there was. They had grown hot and impatient. Even in the
+      cab on the way to his train they had pursued the wretched discussion, and
+      the last kiss had been from lips on lips yet warm from disagreement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since, as if in compunction, she had been wavering towards his point
+      of view; and now, when he was perhaps to solve the problem&mdash;find out
+      for certain&mdash;she had come to feel that if he died, she would never
+      see him after. It was cruel that such a blight should have come on her
+      belief at this, of all moments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid her hand on his. It was warm, felt strong, although so motionless
+      and helpless. George was so vigorous, so alive, and strong-willed; it
+      seemed impossible that life might be going to play him false. She recalled
+      the unflinching look of his steel-bright eyes, his deep, queerly vibrating
+      voice, which had no trace of self-consciousness or pretence. She slipped
+      her hand on to his heart, and began very slowly, gently rubbing it. He, as
+      doctor, and she, as nurse, had both seen so much of death these last two
+      years! Yet it seemed suddenly as if she had never seen death, and that the
+      young faces she had seen, empty and white, in the hospital wards, had just
+      been a show. Death would appear to her for the first time, if this face
+      which she loved were to be drained for ever of light and colour and
+      movement and meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A humblebee from the Square Garden boomed in and buzzed idly round the
+      room. She caught her breath in a little sob....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson received that telegram at midday, returning from a lonely walk
+      after his talk with Thirza. Coming from Gratian so self-reliant&mdash;it
+      meant the worst. He prepared at once to catch the next train. Noel was
+      out, no one knew where: so with a sick feeling he wrote:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAREST CHILD,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going up to Gratian; poor George is desperately ill. If it
+      goes badly you should be with your sister. I will wire to-morrow morning
+      early. I leave you in your aunt's hands, my dear. Be reasonable and
+      patient. God bless you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your devoted
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DADDY.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was alone in his third-class compartment, and, leaning forward, watched
+      the ruined Abbey across the river till it was out of sight. Those old
+      monks had lived in an age surely not so sad as this. They must have had
+      peaceful lives, remote down here, in days when the Church was great and
+      lovely, and men laid down their lives for their belief in her, and built
+      everlasting fanes to the glory of God! What a change to this age of rush
+      and hurry, of science, trade, material profit, and this terrible war! He
+      tried to read his paper, but it was full of horrors and hate. 'When will
+      it end?' he thought. And the train with its rhythmic jolting seemed
+      grinding out the answer: &ldquo;Never&mdash;never!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Chepstow a soldier got in, followed by a woman with a very flushed face
+      and curious, swimmy eyes; her hair was in disorder, and her lip bleeding,
+      as if she had bitten it through. The soldier, too, looked strained and
+      desperate. They sat down, far apart, on the seat opposite. Pierson,
+      feeling that he was in their way, tried to hide himself behind his paper;
+      when he looked again, the soldier had taken off his tunic and cap and was
+      leaning out of the window. The woman, on the seat's edge, sniffing and
+      wiping her face, met his glance with resentful eyes, then, getting up, she
+      pulled the man's sleeve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit dahn; don't 'ang out o' there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier flung himself back on the seat and looked at Pierson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wife an' me's 'ad a bit of a row,&rdquo; he said companionably.
+      &ldquo;Gits on me nerves; I'm not used to it. She was in a raid, and 'er
+      nerves are all gone funny; ain't they, old girl? Makes me feel me 'ead.
+      I've been wounded there, you know; can't stand much now. I might do
+      somethin' if she was to go on like this for long.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resentfully. The
+      soldier held out a packet of cigarettes. &ldquo;Take one,&rdquo; he said.
+      Pierson took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted him to speak,
+      murmured: &ldquo;We all have these troubles with those we're fond of; the
+      fonder we are of people, the more we feel them, don't we? I had one with
+      my daughter last night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the soldier; &ldquo;that's right. The wife and
+      me'll make it up. 'Ere, come orf it, old girl.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds of
+      reconciliation&mdash;reproaches because someone had been offered a drink,
+      kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse. When they got out at Bristol
+      the soldier shook his hand warmly, but the woman still gave him her
+      resentful stare, and he thought dreamily: 'The war! How it affects
+      everyone!' His carriage was invaded by a swarm of soldiers, and the rest
+      of the journey was passed in making himself small. When at last he reached
+      home, Gratian met him in the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the same. The doctor says we shall know in a few hours now.
+      How sweet of you to come! You must be tired, in this heat. It was dreadful
+      to spoil your holiday.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear! As if&mdash;May I go up and see him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Laird was still lying in that stupor. And Pierson stood gazing down
+      at him compassionately. Like most parsons, he had a wide acquaintance with
+      the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellowship with death. Death! The
+      commonest thing in the world, now&mdash;commoner than life! This young
+      doctor must have seen many die in these last two years, saved many from
+      death; and there he lay, not able to lift a finger to save himself.
+      Pierson looked at his daughter; what a strong, promising young couple they
+      were! And putting his arm round her, he led her away to the sofa, whence
+      they could see the sick man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he dies, Dad&mdash;&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as ever our
+      soldiers do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know; but that's no comfort. I've been watching here all day;
+      I've been thinking; men will be just as brutal afterwards&mdash;more
+      brutal. The world will go on the same.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must hope not. Shall we pray, Gracie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could believe that the world&mdash;if I could believe
+      anything! I've lost the power, Dad; I don't even believe in a future life.
+      If George dies, we shall never meet again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson stared at her without a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian went on: &ldquo;The last time we talked, I was angry with George
+      because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want belief, I feel
+      that he was right.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson said tremulously:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, my dear; it's only that you're overwrought. God in His
+      mercy will give you back belief.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no God, Dad&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling child, what are you saying?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No God who can help us; I feel it. If there were any God who could
+      take part in our lives, alter anything without our will, knew or cared
+      what we did&mdash;He wouldn't let the world go on as it does.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable. We dare not say He
+      should not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He is working.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then He's no good to us. It's the same as if He didn't exist. Why
+      should I pray for George's life to One whose ends are just His own? I know
+      George oughtn't to die. If there's a God who can help, it will be a wicked
+      shame if George dies; if there's a God who can help, it's a wicked shame
+      when babies die, and all these millions of poor boys. I would rather think
+      there's no God than a helpless or a wicked God&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father had suddenly thrown up his hands to his ears. She moved closer,
+      and put her arm round him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dad dear, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson pressed her face down to his shoulder; and said in a dull voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think would have happened to me, Gracie, if I had lost
+      belief when your mother died? I have never lost belief. Pray God I never
+      shall!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian murmured:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George would not wish me to pretend I believe&mdash;he would want
+      me to be honest. If I'm not honest, I shan't deserve that he should live.
+      I don't believe, and I can't pray.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling, you're overtired.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Dad.&rdquo; She raised her head from his shoulder and, clasping
+      her hands round her knees, looked straight before her. &ldquo;We can only
+      help ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could say would
+      touch her just then. The sick man's face was hardly visible now in the
+      twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed. She stood looking down at him
+      a long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and rest, Dad; the doctor's coming again at eleven. I'll call
+      you if I want anything. I shall lie down a little, beside him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson kissed her, and went out. To lie there beside him would be the
+      greatest comfort she could get. He went to the bare narrow little room he
+      had occupied ever since his wife died; and, taking off his boots, walked
+      up and down, with a feeling of almost crushing loneliness. Both his
+      daughters in such trouble, and he of no use to them! It was as if Life
+      were pushing him utterly aside! He felt confused, helpless, bewildered.
+      Surely if Gratian loved George, she had not left God's side, whatever she
+      might say. Then, conscious of the profound heresy of this thought, he
+      stood still at the open window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Earthly love&mdash;heavenly love; was there any analogy between them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves answered;
+      and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly tale of murder. 3
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Laird passed the crisis of his illness that night, and in the
+      morning was pronounced out of danger. He had a splendid constitution, and&mdash;Scotsman
+      on his father's side&mdash;a fighting character. He came back to life very
+      weak, but avid of recovery; and his first words were: &ldquo;I've been
+      hanging over the edge, Gracie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch, the merest
+      fraction of an inch more, and over he would have gone. Deuced rum
+      sensation! But not so horrible as it would have been in real life. With
+      the slip of that last inch he felt he would have passed at once into
+      oblivion, without the long horror of a fall. So this was what it was for
+      all the poor fellows he had seen slip in the past two years! Mercifully,
+      at the end, one was not alive enough to be conscious of what one was
+      leaving, not alive enough even to care. If he had been able to take in the
+      presence of his young wife, able to realise that he was looking at her
+      face, touching her for the last time&mdash;it would have been hell; if he
+      had been up to realising sunlight, moonlight, the sound of the world's
+      life outside, the softness of the bed he lay on&mdash;it would have meant
+      the most poignant anguish of defraudment. Life was a rare good thing, and
+      to be squashed out of it with your powers at full, a wretched mistake in
+      Nature's arrangements, a wretched villainy on the part of Man&mdash;for
+      his own death, like all those other millions of premature deaths, would
+      have been due to the idiocy and brutality of men! He could smile now, with
+      Gratian looking down at him, but the experience had heaped fuel on a fire
+      which had always smouldered in his doctor's soul against that half
+      emancipated breed of apes, the human race. Well, now he would get a few
+      days off from his death-carnival! And he lay, feasting his returning
+      senses on his wife. She made a pretty nurse, and his practised eye judged
+      her a good one&mdash;firm and quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Laird was thirty. At the opening of the war he was in an East-End
+      practice, and had volunteered at once for service with the Army. For the
+      first nine months he had been right up in the thick of it. A poisoned arm;
+      rather than the authorities, had sent him home. During that leave he
+      married Gratian. He had known the Piersons some time; and, made conscious
+      of the instability of life, had resolved to marry her at the first chance
+      he got. For his father-in-law he had respect and liking, ever mixed with
+      what was not quite contempt and not quite pity. The blend of authority
+      with humility, cleric with dreamer, monk with artist, mystic with man of
+      action, in Pierson, excited in him an interested, but often irritated,
+      wonder. He saw things so differently himself, and had little of the
+      humorous curiosity which enjoys what is strange simply because it is
+      strange. They could never talk together without soon reaching a point when
+      he wanted to say: &ldquo;If we're not to trust our reason and our senses
+      for what they're worth, sir&mdash;will you kindly tell me what we are to
+      trust? How can we exert them to the utmost in some matters, and in others
+      suddenly turn our backs on them?&rdquo; Once, in one of their discussions,
+      which often bordered on acrimony, he had expounded himself at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I grant,&rdquo; he had said, &ldquo;that there's a great ultimate
+      Mystery, that we shall never know anything for certain about the origin of
+      life and the principle of the Universe; but why should we suddenly shut up
+      our enquiring apparatus and deny all the evidence of our reason&mdash;say,
+      about the story of Christ, or the question of a future life, or our moral
+      code? If you want me to enter a temple of little mysteries, leaving my
+      reason and senses behind&mdash;as a Mohammedan leaves his shoes&mdash;it
+      won't do to say to me simply: 'There it is! Enter!' You must show me the
+      door; and you can't! And I'll tell you why, sir. Because in your brain
+      there's a little twist which is not in mine, or the lack of a little twist
+      which is in mine. Nothing more than that divides us into the two main
+      species of mankind, one of whom worships, and one of whom doesn't. Oh,
+      yes! I know; you won't admit that, because it makes your religions natural
+      instead of what you call supernatural. But I assure you there's nothing
+      more to it. Your eyes look up or they look down&mdash;they never look
+      straight before them. Well, mine do just the opposite.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That day Pierson had been feeling very tired, and though to meet this
+      attack was vital, he had been unable to meet it. His brain had stammered.
+      He had turned a little away, leaning his cheek on his hand, as if to cover
+      that momentary break in his defences. Some days later he had said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am able now to answer your questions, George. I think I can make
+      you understand.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Laird had answered: &ldquo;All right, sir; go ahead.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You begin by assuming that the human reason is the final test of
+      all things. What right have you to assume that? Suppose you were an ant.
+      You would take your ant's reason as the final test, wouldn't you? Would
+      that be the truth?&rdquo; And a smile had fixed itself on his lips above
+      his little grave beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Laird also had smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That seems a good point, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;until you
+      recognise that I don't take, the human reason as final test in any
+      absolute sense. I only say it's the highest test we can apply; and that,
+      behind that test all is quite dark and unknowable.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Revelation, then, means nothing to you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, sir.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think we can usefully go on, George.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think we can, sir. In talking with you, I always feel like
+      fighting a man with one hand tied behind his back.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I, perhaps, feel that I am arguing with one who was blind from
+      birth.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For all that, they had often argued since; but never without those
+      peculiar smiles coming on their faces. Still, they respected each other,
+      and Pierson had not opposed his daughter's marriage to this heretic, whom
+      he knew to be an honest and trustworthy man. It had taken place before
+      Laird's arm was well, and the two had snatched a month's honeymoon before
+      he went back to France, and she to her hospital in Manchester. Since then,
+      just one February fortnight by the sea had been all their time
+      together....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the afternoon he had asked for beef tea, and, having drunk a cup, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got something to tell your father.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But warned by the pallor of his smiling lips, Gratian answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me first, George.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our last talk, Gracie; well&mdash;there's nothing&mdash;on the
+      other side. I looked over; it's as black as your hat.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian shivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. While you were lying here last night, I told father.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He squeezed her hand, and said: &ldquo;I also want to tell him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dad will say the motive for life is gone.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say it leaps out all the more, Gracie. What a mess we make of it&mdash;we
+      angel-apes! When shall we be men, I wonder? You and I, Gracie, will fight
+      for a decent life for everybody. No hands-upping about that! Bend down!
+      It's good to touch you again; everything's good. I'm going to have a
+      sleep....&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the relief of the doctor's report in the early morning Pierson had
+      gone through a hard struggle. What should he wire to Noel? He longed to
+      get her back home, away from temptation to the burning indiscretion of
+      this marriage. But ought he to suppress reference to George's progress?
+      Would that be honest? At last he sent this telegram: &ldquo;George out of
+      danger but very weak. Come up.&rdquo; By the afternoon post, however, he
+      received a letter from Thirza:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had two long talks with Noel and Cyril. It is impossible to
+      budge them. And I really think, dear Edward, that it will be a mistake to
+      oppose it rigidly. He may not go out as soon as we think. How would it be
+      to consent to their having banns published?&mdash;that would mean another
+      three weeks anyway, and in absence from each other they might be
+      influenced to put it off. I'm afraid this is the only chance, for if you
+      simply forbid it, I feel they will run off and get married somewhere at a
+      registrar's.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson took this letter out with him into the Square Garden, for painful
+      cogitation. No man can hold a position of spiritual authority for long
+      years without developing the habit of judgment. He judged Noel's conduct
+      to be headlong and undisciplined, and the vein of stubbornness in his
+      character fortified the father and the priest within him. Thirza
+      disappointed him; she did not seem to see the irretrievable gravity of
+      this hasty marriage. She seemed to look on it as something much lighter
+      than it was, to consider that it might be left to Chance, and that if
+      Chance turned out unfavourable, there would still be a way out. To him
+      there would be no way out. He looked up at the sky, as if for inspiration.
+      It was such a beautiful day, and so bitter to hurt his child, even for her
+      good! What would her mother have advised? Surely Agnes had felt at least
+      as deeply as himself the utter solemnity of marriage! And, sitting there
+      in the sunlight, he painfully hardened his heart. He must do what he
+      thought right, no matter what the consequences. So he went in and wrote
+      that he could not agree, and wished Noel to come back home at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      But on the same afternoon, just about that hour, Noel was sitting on the
+      river-bank with her arms folded tight across her chest, and by her side
+      Cyril Morland, with despair in his face, was twisting a telegram &ldquo;Rejoin
+      tonight. Regiment leaves to-morrow.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What consolation that a million such telegrams had been read and sorrowed
+      over these last two years! What comfort that the sun was daily blotted dim
+      for hundreds of bright eyes; the joy of life poured out and sopped up by
+      the sands of desolation!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long have we got, Cyril?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've engaged a car from the Inn, so I needn't leave till midnight.
+      I've packed already, to have more time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's have it to ourselves, then. Let's go off somewhere. I've got
+      some chocolate.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morland answered miserably:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can send the car up here for my things, and have it pick me up at
+      the Inn, if you'll say goodbye to them for me, afterwards. We'll walk down
+      the line, then we shan't meet anyone.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the bright sunlight they walked hand in hand on each side of a
+      shining rail. About six they reached the Abbey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's get a boat,&rdquo; said Noel. &ldquo;We can come back here
+      when it's moonlight. I know a way of getting in, after the gate's shut.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They hired a boat, rowed over to the far bank, and sat on the stern seat,
+      side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep green by the
+      high woods. If they talked, it was but a word of love now and then, or to
+      draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a dragon-fly. What use
+      making plans&mdash;for lovers the chief theme? Longing paralysed their
+      brains. They could do nothing but press close to each other, their hands
+      enlaced, their lips meeting now and then. On Noel's face was a strange
+      fixed stillness, as if she were waiting&mdash;expecting! They ate their
+      chocolates. The sun set, dew began to fall; the river changed, and grew
+      whiter; the sky paled to the colour of an amethyst; shadows lengthened,
+      dissolved slowly. It was past nine already; a water-rat came out, a white
+      owl flew over the river, towards the Abbey. The moon had come up, but shed
+      no light as yet. They saw no beauty in all this&mdash;too young, too
+      passionate, too unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel said: &ldquo;When she's over those trees, Cyril, let's go. It'll be
+      half dark.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They waited, watching the moon, which crept with infinite slowness up and
+      up, brightening ever so little every minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now!&rdquo; said Noel. And Morland rowed across.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They left the boat, and she led the way past an empty cottage, to a shed
+      with a roof sloping up to the Abbey's low outer wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can get over here,&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They clambered up, and over, to a piece of grassy courtyard, and passed on
+      to an inner court, under the black shadow of the high walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the time?&rdquo; said Noel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half-past ten.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Already! Let's sit here in the dark, and watch for the moon.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat down close together. Noel's face still had on it that strange
+      look of waiting; and Morland sat obedient, with his hand on her heart, and
+      his own heart beating almost to suffocation. They sat, still as mice, and
+      the moon crept up. It laid a first vague greyness on the high wall, which
+      spread slowly down, and brightened till the lichen and the grasses up
+      there were visible; then crept on, silvering the dark above their heads.
+      Noel pulled his sleeve, and whispered: &ldquo;See!&rdquo; There came the
+      white owl, soft as a snowflake, drifting across in that unearthly light,
+      as if flying to the moon. And just then the top of the moon itself looked
+      over the wall, a shaving of silvery gold. It grew, became a bright spread
+      fan, then balanced there, full and round, the colour of pale honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ours!&rdquo; Noel whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the side of the road Noel listened till the sound of the car was lost
+      in the folds of the valley. She did not cry, but passed her hands over her
+      face, and began to walk home, keeping to the shadow of the trees. How many
+      years had been added to her age in those six hours since the telegram
+      came! Several times in that mile and a half she stepped into a patch of
+      brighter moonlight, to take out and kiss a little photograph, then slip it
+      back next her heart, heedless that so warm a place must destroy any
+      effigy. She felt not the faintest compunction for the recklessness of her
+      love&mdash;it was her only comfort against the crushing loneliness of the
+      night. It kept her up, made her walk on with a sort of pride, as if she
+      had got the best of Fate. He was hers for ever now, in spite of anything
+      that could be done. She did not even think what she would say when she got
+      in. She came to the avenue, and passed up it still in a sort of dream. Her
+      uncle was standing before the porch; she could hear his mutterings. She
+      moved out of the shadow of the trees, went straight up to him, and,
+      looking in his perturbed face, said calmly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cyril asked me to say good-bye to you all, Uncle. Good night!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, I say, Nollie look here you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had passed on. She went up to her room. There, by the door, her aunt
+      was standing, and would have kissed her. She drew back:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Auntie. Not to-night!&rdquo; And, slipping by, she locked her
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob and Thirza Pierson, meeting in their own room, looked at each other
+      askance. Relief at their niece's safe return was confused by other
+      emotions. Bob Pierson expressed his first:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Phew! I was beginning to think we should w have to drag the river.
+      What girls are coming to!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the war, Bob.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't like her face, old girl. I don't know what it was, but I
+      didn't like her face.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither did Thirza, but she would not admit it, and encourage Bob to take
+      it to heart. He took things so hardly, and with such a noise!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She only said: &ldquo;Poor young things! I suppose it will be a relief to
+      Edward!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love Nollie!&rdquo; said Bob Pierson suddenly. &ldquo;She's an
+      affectionate creature. D-nit, I'm sorry about this. It's not so bad for
+      young Morland; he's got the excitement&mdash;though I shouldn't like to be
+      leaving Nollie, if I were young again. Thank God, neither of our boys is
+      engaged. By George! when I think of them out there, and myself here, I
+      feel as if the top of my head would come off. And those politician chaps
+      spouting away in every country&mdash;how they can have the cheek!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirza looked at him anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And no dinner!&rdquo; he said suddenly. &ldquo;What d'you think
+      they've been doing with themselves?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holding each other's hands, poor dears! D'you know what time it is,
+      Bob? Nearly one o'clock.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, all I can say is, I've had a wretched evening. Get to bed,
+      old girl. You'll be fit for nothing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was soon asleep, but Thirza lay awake, not exactly worrying, for that
+      was not her nature, but seeing Noel's face, pale, languid, passionate,
+      possessed by memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Noel reached her father's house next day late in the afternoon. There was
+      a letter in the hall for her. She tore it open, and read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MY DARLING LOVE,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got back all right, and am posting this at once to tell you we
+      shall pass through London, and go from Charing Cross, I expect about nine
+      o'clock to-night. I shall look out for you, there, in case you are up in
+      time. Every minute I think of you, and of last night. Oh! Noel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your devoted lover,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;C.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at the wrist-watch which, like every other little patriot, she
+      possessed. Past seven! If she waited, Gratian or her father would seize on
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take my things up, Dinah. I've got a headache from travelling; I'm
+      going to walk it off. Perhaps I shan't be in till past nine or so. Give my
+      love to them all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Miss Noel, you can't,&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Noel was gone. She walked towards Charing Cross; and, to kill time,
+      went into a restaurant and had that simple repast, coffee and a bun, which
+      those in love would always take if Society did not forcibly feed them on
+      other things. Food was ridiculous to her. She sat there in the midst of a
+      perfect hive of creatures eating hideously. The place was shaped like a
+      modern prison, having tiers of gallery round an open space, and in the air
+      was the smell of viands and the clatter of plates and the music of a band.
+      Men in khaki everywhere, and Noel glanced from form to form to see if by
+      chance one might be that which represented, for her, Life and the British
+      Army. At half-past eight she went out and made her way: through the crowd,
+      still mechanically searching &ldquo;khaki&rdquo; for what she wanted; and
+      it was perhaps fortunate that there was about her face and walk something
+      which touched people. At the station she went up to an old porter, and,
+      putting a shilling into his astonished hand, asked him to find out for her
+      whence Morland's regiment would start. He came back presently, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come with me, miss.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel went. He was rather lame, had grey whiskers, and a ghostly thin
+      resemblance to her uncle Bob, which perhaps had been the reason why she
+      had chosen him. 64
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brother goin' out, miss?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! It's a crool war. I shan't be sorry when it's over. Goin' out
+      and comin' in, we see some sad sights 'ere. Wonderful spirit they've got,
+      too. I never look at the clock now but what I think: 'There you go,
+      slow-coach! I'd like to set you on to the day the boys come back!' When I
+      puts a bag in: 'Another for 'ell' I thinks. And so it is, miss, from all I
+      can 'ear. I've got a son out there meself. It's 'ere they'll come along.
+      You stand quiet and keep a lookout, and you'll get a few minutes with him
+      when he's done with 'is men. I wouldn't move, if I were you; he'll come to
+      you, all right&mdash;can't miss you, there.' And, looking at her face, he
+      thought: 'Astonishin' what a lot o' brothers go. Wot oh! Poor little
+      missy! A little lady, too. Wonderful collected she is. It's 'ard!'.rdquo;
+      And trying to find something consoling to say, he mumbled out: &ldquo;You
+      couldn't be in a better place for seen'im off. Good night, miss; anything
+      else I can do for you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you; you're very kind.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked back once or twice at her blue-clad figure standing very still.
+      He had left her against a little oasis of piled-up empty milk-cans, far
+      down the platform where a few civilians in similar case were scattered.
+      The trainway was empty as yet. In the grey immensity of the station and
+      the turmoil of its noise, she felt neither lonely nor conscious of others
+      waiting; too absorbed in the one thought of seeing him and touching him
+      again. The empty train began backing in, stopped, and telescoped with a
+      series of little clattering bangs, backed on again, and subsided to rest.
+      Noel turned her eyes towards the station arch ways. Already she felt
+      tremulous, as though the regiment were sending before it the vibration of
+      its march.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not as yet seen a troop-train start, and vague images of brave
+      array, of a flag fluttering, and the stir of drums, beset her. Suddenly
+      she saw a brown swirling mass down there at the very edge, out of which a
+      thin brown trickle emerged towards her; no sound of music, no waved flag.
+      She had a longing to rush down to the barrier, but remembering the words
+      of the porter, stayed where she was, with her hands tightly squeezed
+      together. The trickle became a stream, a flood, the head of which began to
+      reach her. With a turbulence of voices, sunburnt men, burdened up to the
+      nose, passed, with rifles jutting at all angles; she strained her eyes,
+      staring into that stream as one might into a walking wood, to isolate a
+      single tree. Her head reeled with the strain of it, and the effort to
+      catch his voice among the hubbub of all those cheery, common,
+      happy-go-lucky sounds. Some who saw her clucked their tongues, some went
+      by silent, others seemed to scan her as though she might be what they were
+      looking for. And ever the stream and the hubbub melted into the train, and
+      yet came pouring on. And still she waited motionless, with an awful fear.
+      How could he ever find her, or she him? Then she saw that others of those
+      waiting had found their men. And the longing to rush up and down the
+      platform almost overcame her; but still she waited. And suddenly she saw
+      him with two other officer boys, close to the carriages, coming slowly
+      down towards her. She stood with her eyes fixed on his face; they passed,
+      and she nearly cried out. Then he turned, broke away from the other two,
+      and came straight to her. He had seen her before she had seen him. He was
+      very flushed, had a little fixed frown between his blue eyes and a set
+      jaw. They stood looking at each other, their hands hard gripped; all the
+      emotion of last night welling up within them, so that to speak would have
+      been to break down. The milk-cans formed a kind of shelter, and they stood
+      so close together that none could see their faces. Noel was the first to
+      master her power of speech; her words came out, dainty as ever, through
+      trembling lips:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Write to me as much as ever you can, Cyril. I'm going to be a nurse
+      at once. And the first leave you get, I shall come to you&mdash;don't
+      forget.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forget! Move a little back, darling; they can't see us here. Kiss
+      me!&rdquo; She moved back, thrust her face forward so that he need not
+      stoop, and put her lips up to his. Then, feeling that she might swoon and
+      fall over among the cans, she withdrew her mouth, leaving her forehead
+      against his lips. He murmured:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it all right when you got in last night?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I said good-bye for you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Noel&mdash;I've been afraid&mdash;I oughtn't&mdash;I oughtn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes; nothing can take you from me now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have got pluck. More than!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Along whistle sounded. Morland grasped her hands convulsively:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, my little wife! Don't fret. Goodbye! I must go. God bless
+      you, Noel!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They looked at each other, just another moment, then she took her hands
+      from his and stood back in the shadow of the milk-cans, rigid, following
+      him with her eyes till he was lost in the train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every carriage window was full of those brown figures and red-brown faces,
+      hands were waving vaguely, voices calling vaguely, here and there one
+      cheered; someone leaning far out started to sing: &ldquo;If auld
+      acquaintance&mdash;&rdquo; But Noel stood quite still in the shadow of the
+      milk-cans, her lips drawn in, her hands hard clenched in front of her; and
+      young Morland at his window gazed back at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How she came to be sitting in Trafalgar Square she did not know. Tears had
+      formed a mist between her and all that seething, summer-evening crowd. Her
+      eyes mechanically followed the wandering search-lights, those new milky
+      ways, quartering the heavens and leading nowhere. All was wonderfully
+      beautiful, the sky a deep dark blue, the moonlight whitening the spire of
+      St. Martin's, and everywhere endowing the great blacked-out buildings with
+      dream-life. Even the lions had come to life, and stared out over this
+      moonlit desert of little human figures too small to be worth the
+      stretching out of a paw. She sat there, aching dreadfully, as if the
+      longing of every bereaved heart in all the town had settled in her. She
+      felt it tonight a thousand times worse; for last night she had been
+      drugged on the new sensation of love triumphantly fulfilled. Now she felt
+      as if life had placed her in the corner of a huge silent room, blown out
+      the flame of joy, and locked the door. A little dry sob came from her. The
+      hay-fields and Cyril, with shirt unbuttoned at the neck, pitching hay and
+      gazing at her while she dabbled her fork in the thin leavings. The bright
+      river, and their boat grounded on the shallows, and the swallows flitting
+      over them. And that long dance, with the feel of his hand between her
+      shoulder-blades! Memories so sweet and sharp that she almost cried out.
+      She saw again their dark grassy courtyard in the Abbey, and the white owl
+      flying over them. The white owl! Flying there again to-night, with no
+      lovers on the grass below! She could only picture Cyril now as a brown
+      atom in that swirling brown flood of men, flowing to a huge brown sea.
+      Those cruel minutes on the platform, when she had searched and searched
+      the walking wood for her, one tree, seemed to have burned themselves into
+      her eyes. Cyril was lost, she could not single him out, all blurred among
+      those thousand other shapes. And suddenly she thought: 'And I&mdash;I'm
+      lost to him; he's never seen me at home, never seen me in London; he won't
+      be able to imagine me. It's all in the past, only the past&mdash;for both
+      of us. Is there anybody so unhappy?' And the town's voices-wheels, and
+      passing feet, whistles, talk, laughter&mdash;seemed to answer callously:
+      'Not one.' She looked at her wrist-watch; like his, it had luminous hands:
+      'Half-past ten' was greenishly imprinted there. She got up in dismay. They
+      would think she was lost, or run over, or something silly! She could not
+      find an empty taxi, and began to walk, uncertain of her way at night. At
+      last she stopped a policeman, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which is the way towards Bloomsbury, please? I can't find a taxi.&rdquo;
+      The man looked at her, and took time to think it over; then he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're linin' up for the theatres,&rdquo; and looked at her again.
+      Something seemed to move in his mechanism:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm goin' that way, miss. If you like, you can step along with me.&rdquo;
+      Noel stepped along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The streets aren't what they ought to be,&rdquo; the policeman
+      said. &ldquo;What with the darkness, and the war turning the girls heads&mdash;you'd
+      be surprised the number of them that comes out. It's the soldiers, of
+      course.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel felt her cheeks burning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay you wouldn't have noticed it,&rdquo; the policeman went
+      on: &ldquo;but this war's a funny thing. The streets are gayer and more
+      crowded at night than I've ever seen them; it's a fair picnic all the
+      time. What we're goin' to settle down to when peace comes, I don't know. I
+      suppose you find it quiet enough up your way, miss?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Noel; &ldquo;quite quiet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No soldiers up in Bloomsbury. You got anyone in the Army, miss?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! It's anxious times for ladies. What with the Zeps, and their
+      brothers and all in France, it's 'arassin'. I've lost a brother meself,
+      and I've got a boy out there in the Garden of Eden; his mother carries on
+      dreadful about him. What we shall think of it when it's all over, I can't
+      tell. These Huns are a wicked tough lot!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel looked at him; a tall man, regular and orderly, with one of those
+      perfectly decent faces so often seen in the London police.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry you've lost someone,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I haven't
+      lost anyone very near, yet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let's 'ope you won't, miss. These times make you feel for
+      others, an' that's something. I've noticed a great change in folks you'd
+      never think would feel for anyone. And yet I've seen some wicked things
+      too; we do, in the police. Some of these English wives of aliens, and
+      'armless little German bakers, an' Austrians, and what-not: they get a
+      crool time. It's their misfortune, not their fault, that's what I think;
+      and the way they get served&mdash;well, it makes you ashamed o' bein'
+      English sometimes&mdash;it does straight: And the women are the worst. I
+      said to my wife only last night, I said: 'They call themselves
+      Christians,' I said, 'but for all the charity that's in 'em they might as
+      well be Huns.' She couldn't see it-not she!' Well, why do they drop
+      bombs?' she says. 'What!' I said, 'those English wives and bakers drop
+      bombs? Don't be silly,' I said. 'They're as innocent as we.' It's the
+      innocent that gets punished for the guilty. 'But they're all spies,' she
+      says. 'Oh!' I said, 'old lady! Now really! At your time of life!' But
+      there it is; you can't get a woman to see reason. It's readin' the papers.
+      I often think they must be written by women&mdash;beggin' your pardon,
+      miss&mdash;but reely, the 'ysterics and the 'atred&mdash;they're a fair
+      knockout. D'you find much hatred in your household, miss?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shook her head. &ldquo;No; my father's a clergyman, you see.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the policeman. And in the glance he bestowed on her
+      could be seen an added respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;you're bound to have a sense
+      of justice against these Huns; some of their ways of goin' on have been
+      above the limit. But what I always think is&mdash;of course I don't say
+      these things&mdash;no use to make yourself unpopular&mdash;but to meself I
+      often think: Take 'em man for man, and you'd find 'em much the same as we
+      are, I daresay. It's the vicious way they're brought up, of actin' in the
+      mass, that's made 'em such a crool lot. I see a good bit of crowds in my
+      profession, and I've a very low opinion of them. Crowds are the most
+      blunderin' blighted things that ever was. They're like an angry woman with
+      a bandage over her eyes, an' you can't have anything more dangerous than
+      that. These Germans, it seems, are always in a crowd. They get a state o'
+      mind read out to them by Bill Kaser and all that bloody-minded lot, an'
+      they never stop to think for themselves.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose they'd be shot if they did,&rdquo; said Noel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there is that,&rdquo; said the policeman reflectively.
+      &ldquo;They've brought discipline to an 'igh pitch, no doubt. An' if you
+      ask me,&rdquo;&mdash;he lowered his voice till it was almost lost in his
+      chin-strap, &ldquo;we'll be runnin' 'em a good second 'ere, before long.
+      The things we 'ave to protect now are gettin' beyond a joke. There's the
+      City against lights, there's the streets against darkness, there's the
+      aliens, there's the aliens' shops, there's the Belgians, there's the
+      British wives, there's the soldiers against the women, there's the women
+      against the soldiers, there's the Peace Party, there's 'orses against
+      croolty, there's a Cabinet Minister every now an' then; and now we've got
+      these Conchies. And, mind you, they haven't raised our pay; no war wages
+      in the police. So far as I can see, there's only one good result of the
+      war&mdash;the burglaries are off. But there again, you wait a bit and see
+      if we don't have a prize crop of 'm, or my name's not 'Arris.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have an awfully exciting life!&rdquo; said Noel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The policeman looked down at her sideways, without lowering his face, as
+      only a policeman can, and said indulgently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're used to it, you see; there's no excitement in what you're
+      used to. They find that in the trenches, I'm told. Take our seamen&mdash;there's
+      lots of 'em been blown up over and over again, and there they go and sign
+      on again next day. That's where the Germans make their mistake! England in
+      war-time! I think a lot, you know, on my go; you can't 'elp it&mdash;the
+      mind will work&mdash;an' the more I think, the more I see the fightin'
+      spirit in the people. We don't make a fuss about it like Bill Kaser. But
+      you watch a little shopman, one o' those fellows who's had his house
+      bombed; you watch the way he looks at the mess&mdash;sort of disgusted.
+      You watch his face, and you see he's got his teeth into it. You watch one
+      of our Tommies on 'is crutches, with the sweat pourin' off his forehead
+      an' 'is eyes all strainy, stumpin' along&mdash;that gives you an idea! I
+      pity these Peace fellows, reely I pity them; they don't know what they're
+      up against. I expect there's times when you wish you was a man, don't you,
+      miss? I'm sure there's times when I feel I'd like to go in the trenches.
+      That's the worst o' my job; you can't be a human bein'&mdash;not in the
+      full sense of the word. You mustn't let your passions rise, you mustn't
+      drink, you mustn't talk; it's a narrow walk o' life. Well, here you are,
+      miss; your Square's the next turnin' to the right. Good night and thank
+      you for your conversation.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel held out her hand. &ldquo;Good night!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The policeman took her hand with a queer, flattered embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night, miss,&rdquo; he said again. &ldquo;I see you've got a
+      trouble; and I'm sure I hope it'll turn out for the best.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel gave his huge hand a squeeze; her eyes had filled with tears, and she
+      turned quickly up towards the Square, where a dark figure was coming
+      towards her, in whom she recognised her father. His face was worn and
+      harassed; he walked irresolutely, like a man who has lost something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Thank God!&rdquo; In his voice was
+      an infinite relief. &ldquo;My child, where have you been?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right, Daddy. Cyril has just gone to the front. I've been
+      seeing him off from Charing Cross.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson slipped his arm round her. They entered the house without
+      speaking....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the rail of his transport, as far&mdash;about two feet&mdash;as he
+      could get from anyone, Cyril Morland stood watching Calais, a dream city,
+      brighten out of the heat and grow solid. He could hear the guns already,
+      the voice of his new life-talking in the distance. It came with its
+      strange excitement into a being held by soft and marvellous memories, by
+      one long vision of Noel and the moonlit grass, under the dark Abbey wall.
+      This moment of passage from wonder to wonder was quite too much for a boy
+      unused to introspection, and he stood staring stupidly at Calais, while
+      the thunder of his new life came rolling in on that passionate moonlit
+      dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      After the emotions of those last three days Pierson woke with the feeling
+      a ship must have when it makes landfall. Such reliefs are natural, and as
+      a rule delusive; for events are as much the parents of the future as they
+      were the children of the past. To be at home with both his girls, and
+      resting&mdash;for his holiday would not be over for ten days&mdash;was
+      like old times. Now George was going on so well Gratian would be herself
+      again; now Cyril Morland was gone Noel would lose that sudden youthful
+      love fever. Perhaps in two or three days if George continued to progress,
+      one might go off with Noel somewhere for one's last week. In the meantime
+      the old house, wherein was gathered so much remembrance of happiness and
+      pain, was just as restful as anywhere else, and the companionship of his
+      girls would be as sweet as on any of their past rambling holidays in Wales
+      or Ireland. And that first morning of perfect idleness&mdash;for no one
+      knew he was back in London&mdash;pottering, and playing the piano in the
+      homely drawing-room where nothing to speak of was changed since his wife's
+      day, was very pleasant. He had not yet seen the girls, for Noel did not
+      come down to breakfast, and Gratian was with George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Discovery that there was still a barrier between him and them came but
+      slowly in the next two days. He would not acknowledge it, yet it was
+      there, in their voices, in their movements&mdash;rather an absence of
+      something old than the presence of something new. It was as if each had
+      said to him: &ldquo;We love you, but you are not in our secrets&mdash;and
+      you must not be, for you would try to destroy them.&rdquo; They showed no
+      fear of him, but seemed to be pushing him unconsciously away, lest he
+      should restrain or alter what was very dear to them. They were both fond
+      of him, but their natures had set foot on definitely diverging paths. The
+      closer the affection, the more watchful they were against interference by
+      that affection. Noel had a look on her face, half dazed, half proud, which
+      touched, yet vexed him. What had he done to forfeit her confidence&mdash;surely
+      she must see how natural and right his opposition had been! He made one
+      great effort to show the real sympathy he felt for her. But she only said:
+      &ldquo;I can't talk of Cyril, Daddy; I simply can't!&rdquo; And he, who
+      easily shrank into his shell, could not but acquiesce in her reserve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Gratian it was different. He knew that an encounter was before him; a
+      struggle between him and her husband&mdash;for characteristically he set
+      the change in her, the defection of her faith, down to George, not to
+      spontaneous thought and feeling in herself. He dreaded and yet looked
+      forward to this encounter. It came on the third day, when Laird was up,
+      lying on that very sofa where Pierson had sat listening to Gratian's
+      confession of disbelief. Except for putting in his head to say good
+      morning, he had not yet seen his son-in-law: The young doctor could not
+      look fragile, the build of his face, with that law and those heavy
+      cheekbones was too much against it, but there was about him enough of the
+      look of having come through a hard fight to give Pierson's heart a
+      squeeze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, George,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you gave us a dreadful fright!
+      I thank God's mercy.&rdquo; With that half-mechanical phrase he had flung
+      an unconscious challenge. Laird looked up whimsically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you really think God merciful, sir?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't let us argue, George; you're not strong enough.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I'm pining for something to bite on.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson looked at Gratian, and said softly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God's mercy is infinite, and you know it is.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Laird also looked at Gratian, before he answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God's mercy is surely the amount of mercy man has succeeded in
+      arriving at. How much that is, this war tells you, sir.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson flushed. &ldquo;I don't follow you,&rdquo; he said painfully.
+      &ldquo;How can you say such things, when you yourself are only just&mdash;No;
+      I refuse to argue, George; I refuse.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Laird stretched out his hand to his wife, who came to him, and stood
+      clasping it with her own. &ldquo;Well, I'm going to argue,&rdquo; he said;
+      &ldquo;I'm simply bursting with it. I challenge you, sir, to show me where
+      there's any sign of altruistic pity, except in man. Mother love doesn't
+      count&mdash;mother and child are too much one.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The curious smile had come already, on both their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear George, is not man the highest work of God, and mercy the
+      highest quality in man?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit. If geological time be taken as twenty-four hours, man's
+      existence on earth so far equals just two seconds of it; after a few more
+      seconds, when man has been frozen off the earth, geological time will
+      stretch for as long again, before the earth bumps into something, and
+      becomes nebula once more. God's hands haven't been particularly full, sir,
+      have they&mdash;two seconds out of twenty-four hours&mdash;if man is His
+      pet concern? And as to mercy being the highest quality in, man, that's
+      only a modern fashion of talking. Man's highest quality is the sense of
+      proportion, for that's what keeps him alive; and mercy, logically pursued,
+      would kill him off. It's a sort of a luxury or by-product.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George! You can have no music in your soul! Science is such a
+      little thing, if you could only see.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Show me a bigger, sir.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Faith.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what has been revealed to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! There it is again! By whom&mdash;how?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By God Himself&mdash;through our Lord.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint flush rose in Laird's yellow face, and his eyes brightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Christ,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;if He existed, which some people, as
+      you know, doubt, was a very beautiful character; there have been others.
+      But to ask us to believe in His supernaturalness or divinity at this time
+      of day is to ask us to walk through the world blindfold. And that's what
+      you do, don't you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Pierson looked at his daughter's face. She was standing quite still,
+      with her eyes fixed on her husband. Somehow he was aware that all these
+      words of the sick man's were for her benefit. Anger, and a sort of despair
+      rose within him, and he said painfully:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot explain. There are things that I can't make clear, because
+      you are wilfully blind to all that I believe in. For what do you imagine
+      we are fighting this great war, if it is not to reestablish the belief in
+      love as the guiding principle of life?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Laird shook his head. &ldquo;We are fighting to redress a balance, which
+      was in danger of being lost.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The balance of power?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavens!&mdash;no! The balance of philosophy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson smiled. &ldquo;That sounds very clever, George; but again, I don't
+      follow you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The balance between the sayings: 'Might is Right,' and 'Right is
+      Might.' They're both half-truth, but the first was beating the other out
+      of the field. All the rest of it is cant, you know. And by the way, sir,
+      your Church is solid for punishment of the evildoer. Where's mercy there?
+      Either its God is not merciful, or else it doesn't believe in its God.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just punishment does not preclude mercy, George.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does in Nature.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Nature, George&mdash;always Nature. God transcends Nature.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why does He give it a free rein? A man too fond of drink, or
+      women&mdash;how much mercy does he get from Nature? His overindulgence
+      brings its exact equivalent of penalty; let him pray to God as much as he
+      likes&mdash;unless he alters his ways he gets no mercy. If he does alter
+      his ways, he gets no mercy either; he just gets Nature's due reward. We
+      English who have neglected brain and education&mdash;how much mercy are we
+      getting in this war? Mercy's a man-made ornament, disease, or luxury&mdash;call
+      it what you will. Except that, I've nothing to say against it. On the
+      contrary, I am all for it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more Pierson looked at his daughter. Something in her face hurt him&mdash;the
+      silent intensity with which she was hanging on her husband's words, the
+      eager search of her eyes. And he turned to the door, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is bad for you, George.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw Gratian put her hand on her husband's forehead, and thought&mdash;jealously:
+      'How can I save my poor girl from this infidelity? Are my twenty years of
+      care to go for nothing, against this modern spirit?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down in his study, the words went through his mind: &ldquo;Holy, holy,
+      holy, Merciful and Mighty!&rdquo; And going to the little piano in the
+      corner, he opened it, and began playing the hymn. He played it softly on
+      the shabby keys of this thirty-year old friend, which had been with him
+      since College days; and sang it softly in his worn voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sound made him look up. Gratian had come in. She put her hand on his
+      shoulder, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it hurts you, Dad. But we've got to find out for ourselves,
+      haven't we? All the time you and George were talking, I felt that you
+      didn't see that it's I who've changed. It's not what he thinks, but what
+      I've come to think of my own accord. I wish you'd understand that I've got
+      a mind of my own, Dad.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson looked up with amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you have a mind.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian shook her head. &ldquo;No, you thought my mind was yours; and now
+      you think it's George's. But it's my own. When you were my age weren't you
+      trying hard to find the truth yourself, and differing from your father?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson did not answer. He could not remember. It was like stirring a
+      stick amongst a drift of last year's leaves, to awaken but a dry rustling,
+      a vague sense of unsubstantiality. Searched? No doubt he had searched, but
+      the process had brought him nothing. Knowledge was all smoke! Emotional
+      faith alone was truth&mdash;reality!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Gracie!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;search if you must, but where
+      will you find bottom? The well is too deep for us. You will come back to
+      God, my child, when you're tired out; the only rest is there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to rest. Some people search all their lives, and die
+      searching. Why shouldn't I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be most unhappy, my child.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I'm unhappy, Dad, it'll be because the world's unhappy. I don't
+      believe it ought to be; I think it only is, because it shuts its eyes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson got up. &ldquo;You think I shut my eyes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I do, it is because there is no other way to happiness.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you happy; Dad?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As happy as my nature will let me be. I miss your mother. If I lose
+      you and Noel&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but we won't let you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson smiled. &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I think I have!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Some wag, with a bit of chalk, had written the word &ldquo;Peace&rdquo; on
+      three successive doors of a little street opposite Buckingham Palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It caught the eye of Jimmy Fort, limping home to his rooms from a very
+      late discussion at his Club, and twisted his lean shaven lips into a sort
+      of smile. He was one of those rolling-stone Englishmen, whose early lives
+      are spent in all parts of the world, and in all kinds of physical conflict&mdash;a
+      man like a hickory stick, tall, thin, bolt-upright, knotty, hard as nails,
+      with a curved fighting back to his head and a straight fighting front to
+      his brown face. His was the type which becomes, in a generation or so,
+      typically Colonial or American; but no one could possibly have taken Jimmy
+      Fort for anything but an Englishman. Though he was nearly forty, there was
+      still something of the boy in his face, something frank and curly-headed,
+      gallant and full of steam, and his small steady grey eyes looked out on
+      life with a sort of combative humour. He was still in uniform, though they
+      had given him up as a bad job after keeping him nine months trying to mend
+      a wounded leg which would never be sound again; and he was now in the War
+      Office in connection with horses, about which he knew. He did not like it,
+      having lived too long with all sorts and conditions of men who were
+      neither English nor official, a combination which he found trying. His
+      life indeed, just now, bored him to distraction, and he would ten times
+      rather have been back in France. This was why he found the word &ldquo;Peace&rdquo;
+      so exceptionally tantalising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reaching his rooms, he threw off his tunic, to whose stiff regularity he
+      still had a rooted aversion; and, pulling out a pipe, filled it and sat
+      down at his window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moonshine could not cool the hot town, and it seemed sleeping badly&mdash;the
+      seven million sleepers in their million homes. Sound lingered on, never
+      quite ceased; the stale odours clung in the narrow street below, though a
+      little wind was creeping about to sweeten the air. 'Curse the war!' he
+      thought. 'What wouldn't I give to be sleeping out, instead of in this
+      damned city!' They who slept in the open, neglecting morality, would
+      certainly have the best of it tonight, for no more dew was falling than
+      fell into Jimmy Fort's heart to cool the fret of that ceaseless thought:
+      'The war! The cursed war!' In the unending rows of little grey houses, in
+      huge caravanserais, and the mansions of the great, in villas, and high
+      slum tenements; in the government offices, and factories, and railway
+      stations where they worked all night; in the long hospitals where they lay
+      in rows; in the camp prisons of the interned; in bar racks, work-houses,
+      palaces&mdash;no head, sleeping or waking, would be free of that thought:
+      'The cursed war!' A spire caught his eye, rising ghostly over the roofs.
+      Ah! churches alone, void of the human soul, would be unconscious! But for
+      the rest, even sleep would not free them! Here a mother would be
+      whispering the name of her boy; there a merchant would snore and dream he
+      was drowning, weighted with gold; and a wife would be turning to stretch
+      out her arms to-no one; and a wounded soldier wake out of a dream trench
+      with sweat on his brow; and a newsvendor in his garret mutter hoarsely. By
+      thousands the bereaved would be tossing, stifling their moans; by
+      thousands the ruined would be gazing into the dark future; and housewives
+      struggling with sums; and soldiers sleeping like logs&mdash;for to morrow
+      they died; and children dreaming of them; and prostitutes lying in stale
+      wonder at the busyness of their lives; and journalists sleeping the sleep
+      of the just. And over them all, in the moonlight that thought 'The cursed
+      war!' flapped its black wings, like an old crow! &ldquo;If Christ were
+      real,&rdquo; he mused, &ldquo;He'd reach that moon down, and go chalking
+      'Peace' with it on every door of every house, all over Europe. But
+      Christ's not real, and Hindenburg and Harmsworth are!&rdquo; As real they
+      were as two great bulls he had once seen in South Africa, fighting. He
+      seemed to hear again the stamp and snort and crash of those thick skulls,
+      to see the beasts recoiling and driving at each other, and the little red
+      eyes of them. And pulling a letter out of his pocket, he read it again by
+      the light of the moon:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;15, Camelot Mansions,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;St. John's Wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR MR. FORT, &ldquo;I came across your Club address to-night,
+      looking at some old letters. Did you know that I was in London? I left
+      Steenbok when my husband died, five years ago. I've had a simply terrific
+      time since. While the German South West campaign was on I was nursing out
+      there, but came back about a year ago to lend a hand here. It would be
+      awfully nice to meet you again, if by any chance you are in England. I'm
+      working in a V. A. D. hospital in these parts, but my evenings are usually
+      free. Do you remember that moonlit night at grape harvest? The nights here
+      aren't scented quite like that. Listerine! Oh! This war! &ldquo;With all
+      good remembrances,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;LEILA LYNCH.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A terrific time! If he did not mistake, Leila Lynch had always had a
+      terrific time. And he smiled, seeing again the stoep of an old Dutch house
+      at High Constantia, and a woman sitting there under the white flowers of a
+      sweet-scented creeper&mdash;a pretty woman, with eyes which could put a
+      spell on you, a woman he would have got entangled with if he had not cut
+      and run for it! Ten years ago, and here she was again, refreshing him out
+      of the past. He sniffed the fragrance of the little letter. How everybody
+      always managed to work into a letter what they were doing in the war! If
+      he answered her he would be sure to say: &ldquo;Since I got lamed, I've
+      been at the War Office, working on remounts, and a dull job it is!&rdquo;
+      Leila Lynch! Women didn't get younger, and he suspected her of being older
+      than himself. But he remembered agreeably her white shoulders and that
+      turn of her neck when she looked at you with those big grey eyes of hers.
+      Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one
+      did in a strange land. The episode had been a green and dangerous spot,
+      like one of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-shooting,
+      to set foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at least. Well,
+      there was none of that danger now, for her husband was dead-poor chap! It
+      would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody spent any time whatever
+      except in the service of the country, to improve his powers of service by
+      a few hours' recreation in her society. 'What humbugs we are!' he thought:
+      'To read the newspapers and the speeches you'd believe everybody thought
+      of nothing but how to get killed for the sake of the future. Drunk on
+      verbiage! What heads and mouths we shall all have when we wake up some
+      fine morning with Peace shining in at the window! Ah! If only we could;
+      and enjoy ourselves again!' And he gazed at the moon. She was dipping
+      already, reeling away into the dawn. Water carts and street sweepers had
+      come out into the glimmer; sparrows twittered in the eaves. The city was
+      raising a strange unknown face to the grey light, shuttered and deserted
+      as Babylon. Jimmy Fort tapped out his pipe, sighed, and got into bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming off duty at that very moment, Leila Lynch decided to have her
+      hour's walk before she went home. She was in charge of two wards, and as a
+      rule took the day watches; but some slight upset had given her this extra
+      spell. She was, therefore, at her worst, or perhaps at her best, after
+      eighteen hours in hospital. Her cheeks were pale, and about her eyes were
+      little lines, normally in hiding. There was in this face a puzzling blend
+      of the soft and hard, for the eyes, the rather full lips, and pale cheeks,
+      were naturally soft; but they were hardened by the self-containment which
+      grows on women who have to face life for themselves, and, conscious of
+      beauty, intend to keep it, in spite of age. Her figure was contradictory,
+      also; its soft modelling a little too rigidified by stays. In this desert
+      of the dawn she let her long blue overcoat flap loose, and swung her hat
+      on a finger, so that her light-brown, touched-up hair took the morning
+      breeze with fluffy freedom. Though she could not see herself, she
+      appreciated her appearance, swaying along like that, past lonely trees and
+      houses. A pity there was no one to see her in that round of Regent's Park,
+      which took her the best part of an hour, walking in meditation, enjoying
+      the colour coming back into the world, as if especially for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was character in Leila Lynch, and she had lived an interesting life
+      from a certain point of view. In her girlhood she had fluttered the hearts
+      of many besides Cousin Edward Pierson, and at eighteen had made a
+      passionate love match with a good-looking young Indian civilian, named
+      Fane. They had loved each other to a standstill in twelve months. Then had
+      begun five years of petulance, boredom, and growing cynicism, with
+      increasing spells of Simla, and voyages home for her health which was
+      really harmed by the heat. All had culminated, of course, in another
+      passion for a rifleman called Lynch. Divorce had followed, remarriage, and
+      then the Boer War, in which he had been badly wounded. She had gone out
+      and nursed him back to half his robust health, and, at twenty-eight, taken
+      up life with him on an up-country farm in Cape Colony. This middle period
+      had lasted ten years, between the lonely farm and an old Dutch house at
+      High Constantia. Lynch was not a bad fellow, but, like most soldiers of
+      the old Army, had been quite carefully divested of an aesthetic sense. And
+      it was Leila's misfortune to have moments when aesthetic sense seemed
+      necessary. She had struggled to overcome this weakness, and that other
+      weakness of hers&mdash;a liking for men's admiration; but there had
+      certainly been intervals when she had not properly succeeded. Her
+      acquaintance with Jimmy Fort had occurred during one of these intervals,
+      and when he went back to England so abruptly, she had been feeling very
+      tenderly towards him. She still remembered him with a certain pleasure.
+      Before Lynch died, these &ldquo;intervals&rdquo; had been interrupted by a
+      spell of returning warmth for the invalided man to whom she had joined her
+      life under the romantic conditions of divorce. He had failed, of course,
+      as a farmer, and his death left her with nothing but her own settled
+      income of a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Faced by the prospect of
+      having almost to make her living, at thirty-eight, she felt but momentary
+      dismay&mdash;for she had real pluck. Like many who have played with
+      amateur theatricals, she fancied herself as an actress; but, after much
+      effort, found that only her voice and the perfect preservation of her legs
+      were appreciated by the discerning managers and public of South Africa;
+      and for three chequered years she made face against fortune with the help
+      of them, under an assumed name. What she did&mdash;keeping a certain bloom
+      of refinement, was far better than the achievements of many more
+      respectable ladies in her shoes. At least she never bemoaned her &ldquo;reduced
+      circumstances,&rdquo; and if her life was irregular and had at least three
+      episodes, it was very human. She bravely took the rough with the smooth,
+      never lost the power of enjoying herself, and grew in sympathy with the
+      hardships of others. But she became deadly tired. When the war broke out,
+      remembering that she was a good nurse, she took her real name again and a
+      change of occupation. For one who liked to please men, and to be pleased
+      by them, there was a certain attraction about that life in war-time; and
+      after two years of it she could still appreciate the way her Tommies
+      turned their heads to look at her when she passed their beds. But in a
+      hard school she had learned perfect self-control; and though the sour and
+      puritanical perceived her attraction, they knew her to be forty-three.
+      Besides, the soldiers liked her; and there was little trouble in her
+      wards. The war moved her in simple ways; for she was patriotic in the
+      direct fashion of her class. Her father had been a sailor, her husbands an
+      official and a soldier; the issue for her was uncomplicated by any
+      abstract meditation. The Country before everything! And though she had
+      tended during those two years so many young wrecked bodies, she had taken
+      it as all in the a day's work, lavishing her sympathy on the individual,
+      without much general sense of pity and waste. Yes, she had worked really
+      hard, had &ldquo;done her bit&rdquo;; but of late she had felt rising
+      within her the old vague craving for &ldquo;life,&rdquo; for pleasure, for
+      something more than the mere negative admiration bestowed on her by her
+      &ldquo;Tommies.&rdquo; Those old letters&mdash;to look them through them
+      had been a sure sign of this vague craving&mdash;had sharpened to
+      poignancy the feeling that life was slipping away from her while she was
+      still comely. She had been long out of England, and so hard-worked since
+      she came back that there were not many threads she could pick up suddenly.
+      Two letters out of that little budget of the past, with a far cry between
+      them, had awakened within her certain sentimental longings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR LADY OF THE STARRY FLOWERS,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exiturus (sic) to saluto! The tender carries you this message of
+      good-bye. Simply speaking, I hate leaving South Africa. And of all my
+      memories, the last will live the longest. Grape harvest at Constantia, and
+      you singing: 'If I could be the falling dew: If ever you and your husband
+      come to England, do let me know, that I may try and repay a little the
+      happiest five days I've spent out here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your very faithful servant,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;TIMMY FORT.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remembered a very brown face, a tall slim figure, and something
+      gallant about the whole of him. What was he like after ten years?
+      Grizzled, married, with a large family? An odious thing&mdash;Time! And
+      Cousin Edward's little yellow letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good heavens! Twenty-six years ago&mdash;before he was a parson, or
+      married or anything! Such a good partner, really musical; a queer, dear
+      fellow, devoted, absentminded, easily shocked, yet with flame burning in
+      him somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'DEAR LEILA,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After our last dance I went straight off'&mdash;I couldn't go in. I
+      went down to the river, and walked along the bank; it was beautiful, all
+      grey and hazy, and the trees whispered, and the cows looked holy; and I
+      walked along and thought of you. And a farmer took me for a lunatic, in my
+      dress clothes. Dear Leila, you were so pretty last night, and I did love
+      our dances. I hope you are not tired, and that I shall see you soon again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your affectionate cousin,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;EDWARD PIERSON.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he had gone and become a parson, and married, and been a widower
+      fifteen years. She remembered the death of his wife, just before she left
+      for South Africa, at that period of disgrace when she had so shocked her
+      family by her divorce. Poor Edward&mdash;quite the nicest of her cousins!
+      The only one she would care to see again. He would be very old and
+      terribly good and proper, by now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her wheel of Regent's Park was coming full circle, and the sun was up
+      behind the houses, but still no sound of traffic stirred. She stopped
+      before a flower-bed where was some heliotrope, and took a long, luxurious
+      sniff: She could not resist plucking a sprig, too, and holding it to her
+      nose. A sudden want of love had run through every nerve and fibre of her;
+      she shivered, standing there with her eyes half closed, above the pale
+      violet blossom. Then, noting by her wrist-watch that it was four o'clock,
+      she hurried on, to get to her bed, for she would have to be on duty again
+      at noon. Oh! the war! She was tired! If only it were over, and one could
+      live!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhere by Twickenham the moon had floated down; somewhere up from
+      Kentish Town the sun came soaring; wheels rolled again, and the seven
+      million sleepers in their million houses woke from morning sleep to that
+      same thought....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Edward Pierson, dreaming over an egg at breakfast, opened a letter in a
+      handwriting which he did not recognise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;V. A. D. Hospital,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mulberry Road, St. John's Wood N. W.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR COUSIN EDWARD,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember me, or have I gone too far into the shades of
+      night? I was Leila Pierson once upon a time, and I often think of you and
+      wonder what you are like now, and what your girls are like. I have been
+      here nearly a year, working for our wounded, and for a year before that
+      was nursing in South Africa. My husband died five years ago out there.
+      Though we haven't met for I dare not think how long, I should awfully like
+      to see you again. Would you care to come some day and look over my
+      hospital? I have two wards under me; our men are rather dears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your forgotten but still affectionate cousin
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;LEILA LYNCH.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;P. S. I came across a little letter you once wrote me; it brought
+      back old days.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No! He had not forgotten. There was a reminder in the house. And he looked
+      up at Noel sitting opposite. How like the eyes were! And he thought: 'I
+      wonder what Leila has become. One mustn't be uncharitable. That man is
+      dead; she has been nursing two years. She must be greatly changed; I
+      should certainly like to see her. I will go!' Again he looked at Noel.
+      Only yesterday she had renewed her request to be allowed to begin her
+      training as a nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to see a hospital to-day, Nollie,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;if
+      you like, I'll make enquiries. I'm afraid it'll mean you have to begin by
+      washing up.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know; anything, so long as I do begin.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well; I'll see about it.&rdquo; And he went back to his egg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel's voice roused him. &ldquo;Do you feel the war much, Daddy? Does it
+      hurt you here?&rdquo; She had put her hand on her heart. &ldquo;Perhaps it
+      doesn't, because you live half in the next world, don't you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words: &ldquo;God forbid,&rdquo; sprang to Pierson's lips; he did not
+      speak them, but put his egg-spoon down, hurt and bewildered. What did the
+      child mean? Not feel the war! He smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I'm able to help people sometimes, Nollie,&rdquo; and was
+      conscious that he had answered his own thoughts, not her words. He
+      finished his breakfast quickly, and very soon went out. He crossed the
+      Square, and passed East, down two crowded streets to his church. In the
+      traffic of those streets, all slipshod and confused, his black-clothed
+      figure and grave face, with its Vandyk beard, had a curious remote
+      appearance, like a moving remnant of a past civilisation. He went in by
+      the side door. Only five days he had been away, but they had been so full
+      of emotion that the empty familiar building seemed almost strange to him.
+      He had come there unconsciously, groping for anchorage and guidance in
+      this sudden change of relationship between him and his daughters. He stood
+      by the pale brazen eagle, staring into the chancel. The choir were wanting
+      new hymn-books&mdash;he must not forget to order them! His eyes sought the
+      stained-glass window he had put in to the memory of his wife. The sun, too
+      high to slant, was burnishing its base, till it glowed of a deep sherry
+      colour. &ldquo;In the next world!&rdquo; What strange words of Noel's! His
+      eyes caught the glimmer of the organ-pipes; and, mounting to the loft, he
+      began to play soft chords wandering into each other. He finished, and
+      stood gazing down. This space within high walls, under high vaulted roof,
+      where light was toned to a perpetual twilight, broken here and there by a
+      little glow of colour from glass and flowers, metal, and dark wood, was
+      his home, his charge, his refuge. Nothing moved down there, and yet&mdash;was
+      not emptiness mysteriously living, the closed-in air imprinted in strange
+      sort, as though the drone of music and voices in prayer and praise clung
+      there still? Had not sanctity a presence? Outside, a barrel-organ drove
+      its tune along; a wagon staggered on the paved street, and the driver
+      shouted to his horses; some distant guns boomed out in practice, and the
+      rolling of wheels on wheels formed a net of sound. But those invading
+      noises were transmuted to a mere murmuring in here; only the silence and
+      the twilight were real to Pierson, standing there, a little black figure
+      in a great empty space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he left the church, it was still rather early to go to Leila's
+      hospital; and, having ordered the new hymn-books, he called in at the
+      house of a parishioner whose son had been killed in France. He found her
+      in her kitchen; an oldish woman who lived by charing. She wiped a seat for
+      the Vicar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just makin' meself a cup o' tea, sir.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! What a comfort tea is, Mrs. Soles!&rdquo; And he sat down, so
+      that she should feel &ldquo;at home.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it gives me 'eart-burn; I take eight or ten cups a day, now. I
+      take 'em strong, too. I don't seem able to get on without it. I 'ope the
+      young ladies are well, sir?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, thank you. Miss Noel is going to begin nursing, too.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deary-me! She's very young; but all the young gells are doin'
+      something these days. I've got a niece in munitions-makin' a pretty penny
+      she is. I've been meanin' to tell you&mdash;I don't come to church now;
+      since my son was killed, I don't seem to 'ave the 'eart to go anywhere&mdash;'aven't
+      been to a picture-palace these three months. Any excitement starts me
+      cryin'.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know; but you'd find rest in church.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Soles shook her head, and the small twisted bob of her discoloured
+      hair wobbled vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't take any recreation,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I'd rather sit
+      'ere, or be at work. My son was a real son to me. This tea's the only
+      thing that does me any good. I can make you a fresh cup in a minute.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Mrs. Soles, but I must be getting on. We must all look
+      forward to meeting our beloved again, in God's mercy. And one of these
+      days soon I shall be seeing you in church, shan't I.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Soles shifted her weight from one slippered foot to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! let's 'ope so,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But I dunno when I
+      shall 'ave the spirit. Good day, sir, and thank you kindly for calling,
+      I'm sure.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson walked away with a very faint smile. Poor queer old soul!&mdash;she
+      was no older than himself, but he thought of her as ancient&mdash;cut off
+      from her son, like so many&mdash;so many; and how good and patient! The
+      melody of an anthem began running in his head. His fingers moved on the
+      air beside him, and he stood still, waiting for an omnibus to take him to
+      St. John's Wood. A thousand people went by while he was waiting, but he
+      did not notice them, thinking of that anthem, of his daughters, and the
+      mercy of God; and on the top of his 'bus, when it came along, he looked
+      lonely and apart, though the man beside him was so fat that there was
+      hardly any seat left to sit on. Getting down at Lord's Cricket-ground, he
+      asked his way of a lady in a nurse's dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you'll come with me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I'm just going
+      there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Do you happen to know a Mrs. Lynch who nurses&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Mrs. Lynch. Why, you're Edward Pierson!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked into her face, which he had not yet observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leila!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Leila! How awfully nice of you to come, Edward!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They continued to stand, searching each for the other's youth, till she
+      murmured:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In spite of your beard, I should have known you anywhere!&rdquo;
+      But she thought: 'Poor Edward! He is old, and monk-like!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Pierson, in answer, murmured:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're very little changed, Leila! We haven't, seen each other
+      since my youngest girl was born. She's just a little like you.&rdquo; But
+      he thought: 'My Nollie! So much more dewy; poor Leila!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked on, talking of his daughters, till they reached the hospital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you'll wait here a minute, I'll take you over my wards.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had left him in a bare hall, holding his hat in one hand and touching
+      his gold cross with the other; but she soon came hack, and a little warmth
+      crept about his heart. How works of mercy suited women! She looked so
+      different, so much softer, beneath the white coif, with a white apron over
+      the bluish frock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the change in his face, a little warmth crept about Leila, too, just
+      where the bib of her apron stopped; and her eyes slid round at him while
+      they went towards what had once been a billiard-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My men are dears,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;they love to be talked
+      to.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under a skylight six beds jutted out from a green distempered wall,
+      opposite to six beds jutting out from another green distempered wall, and
+      from each bed a face was turned towards them young faces, with but little
+      expression in them. A nurse, at the far end, looked round, and went on
+      with her work. The sight of the ward was no more new to Pierson than to
+      anyone else in these days. It was so familiar, indeed, that it had
+      practically no significance. He stood by the first bed, and Leila stood
+      alongside. The man smiled up when she spoke, and did not smile when he
+      spoke, and that again was familiar to him. They passed from bed to bed,
+      with exactly the same result, till she was called away, and he sat down by
+      a young soldier with a long, very narrow head and face, and a heavily
+      bandaged shoulder. Touching the bandage reverently, Pierson said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear fellow-still bad?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; replied the soldier. &ldquo;Shrapnel wound: It's cut the
+      flesh properly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not the spirit, I can see!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young soldier gave him a quaint look, as much as to say: &ldquo;Not
+      'arf bad!&rdquo; and a gramophone close to the last bed began to play:
+      &ldquo;God bless Daddy at the war!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you fond of music?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like it well enough. Passes the time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid the time hangs heavy in hospital.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it hangs a bit 'eavy; it's just 'orspital life. I've been
+      wounded before, you see. It's better than bein' out there. I expect I'll
+      lose the proper use o' this arm. I don't worry; I'll get my discharge.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got some good nurses here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I like Mrs. Lynch; she's the lady I like.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My cousin.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see you come in together. I see everything 'ere. I think a lot,
+      too. Passes the time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do they let you smoke?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes! They let us smoke.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have one of mine?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young soldier smiled for the first time. &ldquo;Thank you; I've got
+      plenty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nurse came by, and smiled at Pierson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's one of our blase ones; been in before, haven't you, Simson?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson looked at the young man, whose long, narrow face; where one
+      sandy-lashed eyelid drooped just a little, seemed armoured with a sort of
+      limited omniscience. The gramophone had whirred and grunted into &ldquo;Sidi
+      Brahim.&rdquo; The nurse passed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Seedy Abram,'.rdquo; said the young soldier. &ldquo;The Frenchies
+      sing it; they takes it up one after the other, ye know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; murmured Pierson; &ldquo;it's pretty.&rdquo; And his
+      fingers drummed on the counterpane, for the tune was new to him. Something
+      seemed to move in the young man's face, as if a blind had been drawn up a
+      little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mind France,&rdquo; he said abruptly; &ldquo;I don't mind
+      the shells and that; but I can't stick the mud. There's a lot o' wounded
+      die in the mud; can't get up&mdash;smothered.&rdquo; His unwounded arm
+      made a restless movement. &ldquo;I was nearly smothered myself. Just
+      managed to keep me nose up.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson shuddered. &ldquo;Thank God you did!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I didn't like that. I told Mrs. Lynch about that one day when
+      I had the fever. She's a nice lady; she's seen a lot of us boys: That
+      mud's not right, you know.&rdquo; And again his unwounded arm made that
+      restless movement; while the gramophone struck up: &ldquo;The boys in
+      brown.&rdquo; The movement of the arm affected Pierson horribly; he rose
+      and, touching the bandaged shoulder, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye; I hope you'll soon be quite recovered.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young soldier's lips twisted in the semblance of a smile; his drooped
+      eyelid seemed to try and raise itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good day, sir,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;and thank you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson went back to the hall. The sunlight fell in a pool just inside the
+      open door, and an uncontrollable impulse made him move into it, so that it
+      warmed him up to the waist. The mud! How ugly life was! Life and Death!
+      Both ugly! Poor boys! Poor boys!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A voice behind him said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! There you are, Edward! Would you like to see the other ward, or
+      shall I show you our kitchen?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson took her hand impulsively. &ldquo;You're doing a noble work,
+      Leila. I wanted to ask you: Could you arrange for Noel to come and get
+      trained here? She wants to begin at once. The fact is, a boy she is
+      attracted to has just gone out to the Front.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; murmured Leila, and her eyes looked very soft. &ldquo;Poor
+      child! We shall be wanting an extra hand next week. I'll see if she could
+      come now. I'll speak to our Matron, and let you know to-night.&rdquo; She
+      squeezed his hand hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Edward, I'm so glad to see you again. You're the first of our
+      family I've seen for sixteen years. I wonder if you'd bring Noel to have
+      supper at my flat to-night&mdash;Just nothing to eat, you know! It's a
+      tiny place. There's a Captain Fort coming; a nice man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson accepted, and as he walked away he thought: 'Dear Leila! I believe
+      it was Providence. She wants sympathy. She wants to feel the past is the
+      past. How good women are!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the sun, blazing suddenly out of a cloud, shone on his black figure
+      and the little gold cross, in the middle of Portland Place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Men, even if they are not artistic, who have been in strange places and
+      known many nooks of the world, get the scenic habit, become open to
+      pictorial sensation. It was as a picture or series of pictures that Jimmy
+      Fort ever afterwards remembered his first supper at Leila's. He happened
+      to have been all day in the open, motoring about to horse farms under a
+      hot sun; and Leila's hock cup possessed a bland and subtle strength. The
+      scenic sense derived therefrom had a certain poignancy, the more so
+      because the tall child whom he met there did not drink it, and her father
+      seemed but to wet his lips, so that Leila and he had all the rest. Rather
+      a wonderful little scene it made in his mind, very warm, glowing, yet with
+      a strange dark sharpness to it, which came perhaps from the black walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flat had belonged to an artist who was at the war. It was but a pocket
+      dwelling on the third floor. The two windows of the little square
+      sitting-room looked out on some trees and a church. But Leila, who hated
+      dining by daylight, had soon drawn curtains of a deep blue over them. The
+      picture which Fort remembered was this: A little four-square table of dark
+      wood, with a Chinese mat of vivid blue in the centre, whereon stood a
+      silver lustre bowl of clove carnations; some greenish glasses with hock
+      cup in them; on his left, Leila in a low lilac frock, her neck and
+      shoulders very white, her face a little powdered, her eyes large, her lips
+      smiling; opposite him a black-clothed padre with a little gold cross, over
+      whose thin darkish face, with its grave pointed beard, passed little
+      gentle smiles, but whose deep sunk grey eyes were burnt and bright; on his
+      right, a girl in a high grey frock, almost white, just hollowed at the
+      neck, with full sleeves to the elbow, so that her slim arms escaped; her
+      short fair hair a little tumbled; her big grey eyes grave; her full lips
+      shaping with a strange daintiness round every word&mdash;and they not
+      many; brilliant red shades over golden lights dotting the black walls; a
+      blue divan; a little black piano flush with the wall; a dark polished
+      floor; four Japanese prints; a white ceiling. He was conscious that his
+      own khaki spoiled something as curious and rare as some old Chinese
+      tea-chest. He even remembered what they ate; lobster; cold pigeon pie;
+      asparagus; St. Ivel cheese; raspberries and cream. He did not remember
+      half so well what they talked of, except that he himself told them stories
+      of the Boer War, in which he had served in the Yeomanry, and while he was
+      telling them, the girl, like a child listening to a fairy-tale, never
+      moved her eyes from his face. He remembered that after supper they all
+      smoked cigarettes, even the tall child, after the padre had said to her
+      mildly, &ldquo;My dear!&rdquo; and she had answered: &ldquo;I simply must,
+      Daddy, just one.&rdquo; He remembered Leila brewing Turkish coffee&mdash;very
+      good, and how beautiful her white arms looked, hovering about the cups. He
+      remembered her making the padre sit down at the piano, and play to them.
+      And she and the girl on the divan together, side by side, a strange
+      contrast; with just as strange a likeness to each other. He always
+      remembered how fine and rare that music sounded in the little room,
+      flooding him with a dreamy beatitude. Then&mdash;he remembered&mdash;Leila
+      sang, the padre standing-by; and the tall child on the divan bending
+      forward over her knees, with her chin on her hands. He remembered rather
+      vividly how Leila turned her neck and looked up, now at the padre, now at
+      himself; and, all through, the delightful sense of colour and warmth, a
+      sort of glamour over all the evening; and the lingering pressure of
+      Leila's hand when he said good-bye and they went away, for they all went
+      together. He remembered talking a great deal to the padre in the cab,
+      about the public school they had both been at, and thinking: 'It's a good
+      padre&mdash;this!' He remembered how their taxi took them to an old Square
+      which he did not know, where the garden trees looked densely black in the
+      starshine. He remembered that a man outside the house had engaged the
+      padre in earnest talk, while the tall child and himself stood in the open
+      doorway, where the hall beyond was dark. Very exactly he remembered the
+      little conversation which then took place between them, while they waited
+      for her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it very horrid in the trenches, Captain Fort?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Miss Pierson; it is very horrid, as a rule.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it dangerous all the time?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty well.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do officers run more risks than the men?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not unless there's an attack.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there attacks very often?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had seemed to him so strangely primitive a little catechism, that he
+      had smiled. And, though it was so dark, she had seen that smile, for her
+      face went proud and close all of a sudden. He had cursed himself, and said
+      gently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you a brother out there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But someone?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Someone! He had heard that answer with a little shock. This child&mdash;this
+      fairy princess of a child already to have someone! He wondered if she went
+      about asking everyone these questions, with that someone in her thoughts.
+      Poor child! And quickly he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all, look at me! I was out there a year, and here I am with
+      only half a game leg; times were a lot worse, then, too. I often wish I
+      were back there. Anything's better than London and the War Office.&rdquo;
+      But just then he saw the padre coming, and took her hand. &ldquo;Good
+      night, Miss Pierson. Don't worry. That does no good, and there isn't half
+      the risk you think.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hand stirred, squeezed his gratefully, as a child's would squeeze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night,&rdquo; she murmured; &ldquo;thank you awfully.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, in the dark cab again, he remembered thinking: 'Fancy that child! A
+      jolly lucky boy, out there! Too bad! Poor little fairy princess!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      1
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To wash up is not an exciting operation. To wash up in August became for
+      Noel a process which taxed her strength and enthusiasm. She combined it
+      with other forms of instruction in the art of nursing, had very little
+      leisure, and in the evenings at home would often fall asleep curled up in
+      a large chintz-covered chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George and Gratian had long gone back to their respective hospitals, and
+      she and her father had the house to themselves. She received many letters
+      from Cyril which she carried about with her and read on her way to and
+      from the hospital; and every other day she wrote to him. He was not yet in
+      the firing line; his letters were descriptive of his men, his food, or the
+      natives, or reminiscent of Kestrel; hers descriptive of washing up, or
+      reminiscent of Kestrel. But in both there was always some little word of
+      the longing within them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was towards the end of August when she had the letter which said that
+      he had been moved up. From now on he would be in hourly danger! That
+      evening after dinner she did not go to sleep in the chair, but sat under
+      the open window, clenching her hands, and reading &ldquo;Pride and
+      Prejudice&rdquo; without understanding a word. While she was so engaged
+      her father came up and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain Fort, Nollie. Will you give him some coffee? I'm afraid I
+      must go out.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had gone, Noel looked at her visitor drinking his coffee. He had
+      been out there, too, and he was alive; with only a little limp. The
+      visitor smiled and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What were you thinking about when we came in?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only the war.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any news of him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel frowned, she hated to show her feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! he's gone to the Front. Won't you have a cigarette?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks. Will you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want one awfully. I think sitting still and waiting is more
+      dreadful than anything in the world.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Except, knowing that others are waiting. When I was out there I
+      used to worry horribly over my mother. She was ill at the time. The
+      cruelest thing in war is the anxiety of people about each other&mdash;nothing
+      touches that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words exactly summed up Noel's hourly thought. He said nice things,
+      this man with the long legs and the thin brown bumpy face!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I were a man,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I think women have
+      much the worst time in the war. Is your mother old?&rdquo; But of course
+      she was old why he was old himself!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She died last Christmas.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I'm so sorry!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lost your mother when you were a babe, didn't you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. That's her portrait.&rdquo; At the end of the room, hanging on
+      a strip of black velvet was a pastel, very faint in colouring, as though
+      faded, of a young woman, with an eager, sweet face, dark eyes, and bent a
+      little forward, as if questioning her painter. Fort went up to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not a bit like you. But she must have been a very sweet woman.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a sort of presence in the room. I wish I were like her!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort turned. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;no. Better as you are. It
+      would only have spoiled a complete thing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was good.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And aren't you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! no. I get a devil.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You! Why, you're out of a fairy-tale!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It comes from Daddy&mdash;only he doesn't know, because he's a
+      perfect saint; but I know he's had a devil somewhere, or he couldn't be
+      the saint he is.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;H'm!&rdquo; said Fort. &ldquo;That's very deep: and I believe it's
+      true&mdash;the saints did have devils.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Daddy's devil has been dead ages. It's been starved out of
+      him, I think.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does your devil ever get away with you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel felt her cheeks growing red under his stare, and she turned to the
+      window:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. It's a real devil.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vividly there had come before her the dark Abbey, and the moon balancing
+      over the top of the crumbling wall, and the white owl flying across. And,
+      speaking to the air, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes you do things that you want to do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wondered if he would laugh&mdash;it sounded so silly. But he did not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And damn the consequences? I know. It's rather a jolly thing to
+      have.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shook her head. &ldquo;Here's Daddy coming back!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort held out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't stay. Good night; and don't worry too much, will you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept her hand rather a long time, and gave it a hard squeeze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don't worry! What advice! Ah! if she could see Cyril just for a minute!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In September, 1916, Saturday still came before Sunday, in spite of the
+      war. For Edward Pierson this Saturday had been a strenuous day, and even
+      now, at nearly midnight, he was still conning his just-completed sermon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A patriot of patriots, he had often a passionate longing to resign his
+      parish, and go like his curate for a chaplain at the Front. It seemed to
+      him that people must think his life idle and sheltered and useless. Even
+      in times of peace he had been sensitive enough to feel the cold draughty
+      blasts which the Church encounters in a material age. He knew that nine
+      people out of ten looked on him as something of a parasite, with no real
+      work in the world. And since he was nothing if not conscientious, he
+      always worked himself to the bone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-day he had risen at half-past six, and after his bath and exercises,
+      had sat down to his sermon&mdash;for, even now, he wrote a new sermon once
+      a month, though he had the fruits of twenty-six years to choose from.
+      True, these new sermons were rather compiled than written, because, bereft
+      of his curate, he had not time enough for fresh thought on old subjects.
+      At eight he had breakfasted with Noel, before she went off to her
+      hospital, whence she would return at eight in the evening. Nine to ten was
+      his hour for seeing parishioners who had troubles, or wanted help or
+      advice, and he had received three to-day who all wanted help, which he had
+      given. From ten to eleven he had gone back to his sermon, and had spent
+      from eleven to one at his church, attending to small matters, writing
+      notices, fixing hymns, holding the daily half-hour Service instituted
+      during wartime, to which but few ever came. He had hurried back to lunch,
+      scamping it so that he might get to his piano for an hour of
+      forgetfulness. At three he had christened a very noisy baby, and been
+      detained by its parents who wished for information on a variety of topics.
+      At half-past four he had snatched a cup of tea, reading the paper; and had
+      spent from five to seven visiting two Parish Clubs, and those whose
+      war-pension matters he had in hand, and filling up forms which would be
+      kept in official places till such time as the system should be changed and
+      a fresh set of forms issued. From seven to eight he was at home again, in
+      case his flock wanted to see him; to-day four sheep had come, and gone
+      away, he was afraid, but little the wiser. From half-past eight to
+      half-past nine he had spent in choir practice, because the organist was on
+      his holiday. Slowly in the cool of the evening he had walked home, and
+      fallen asleep in his chair on getting in. At eleven he had woken with a
+      start, and, hardening his heart, had gone back to his sermon. And now, at
+      nearly midnight, it was still less than twenty minutes long. He lighted
+      one of his rare cigarettes, and let thought wander. How beautiful those
+      pale pink roses were in that old silver bowl-like a little strange poem,
+      or a piece of Debussy music, or a Mathieu Maris picture-reminding him
+      oddly of the word Leila. Was he wrong in letting Noel see so much of
+      Leila? But then she was so improved&mdash;dear Leila!... The pink roses
+      were just going to fall! And yet how beautiful!... It was quiet to-night;
+      he felt very drowsy.... Did Nollie still think of that young man, or had
+      it passed? She had never confided in him since! After the war, it would be
+      nice to take her to Italy, to all the little towns. They would see the
+      Assisi of St. Francis. The Little Flowers of St. Francis. The Little
+      Flowers!... His hand dropped, the cigarette went out. He slept with his
+      face in shadow. Slowly into the silence of his sleep little sinister
+      sounds intruded. Short concussions, dragging him back out of that deep
+      slumber. He started up. Noel was standing at the door, in a long coat. She
+      said in her calm voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zeps, Daddy!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear. Where are the maids?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An Irish voice answered from the hall: &ldquo;Here, sir; trustin' in God;
+      but 'tis better on the ground floor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw a huddle of three figures, queerly costumed, against the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Yes, Bridgie; you're safe down here.&rdquo; Then he noticed
+      that Noel was gone. He followed her out into the Square, alive with faces
+      faintly luminous in the darkness, and found her against the garden
+      railings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must come back in, Nollie.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! Cyril has this every day.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood beside her; not loth, for excitement had begun to stir his blood.
+      They stayed there for some minutes, straining their eyes for sight of
+      anything save the little zagged splashes of bursting shrapnel, while
+      voices buzzed, and muttered: &ldquo;Look! There! There! There it is!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the seers had eyes of greater faith than Pierson's, for he saw
+      nothing: He took her arm at last, and led her in. In the hall she broke
+      from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's go up on the roof, Daddy!&rdquo; and ran upstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he followed, mounting by a ladder, through a trapdoor on to the
+      roof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's splendid up here!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could see her eyes blazing, and thought: 'How my child does love
+      excitement&mdash;it's almost terrible!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the wide, dark, star-strewn sky travelling searchlights, were
+      lighting up the few little clouds; the domes and spires rose from among
+      the spread-out roofs, all fine and ghostly. The guns had ceased firing, as
+      though puzzled. One distant bang rumbled out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A bomb! Oh! If we could only get one of the Zeps!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A furious outburst of firing followed, lasting perhaps a minute, then
+      ceased as if by magic. They saw two searchlights converge and meet right
+      overhead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's above us!&rdquo; murmured Noel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson put his arm round her waist. 'She feels no fear!' he thought. The
+      search-lights switched apart; and suddenly, from far away, came a
+      confusion of weird sounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it? They're cheering. Oh! Daddy, look!&rdquo; There in the
+      heavens, towards the east, hung a dull red thing, lengthening as they
+      gazed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've got it. It's on fire! Hurrah!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the dark firmament that fiery orange shape began canting downward;
+      and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy of sound. And Pierson's arm
+      tightened on her waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God!&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bright oblong seemed to break and spread, tilted down below the level
+      of the roofs; and suddenly the heavens flared, as if some huge jug of
+      crimson light had been flung out on them. Something turned over in
+      Pierson's heart; he flung up his hand to his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor men in it!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How terrible!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel's voice answered, hard and pitiless:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They needn't have come. They're murderers!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, they were murderers&mdash;but how terrible! And he stood quivering,
+      with his hands pressed to his face, till the cheering had died out into
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's pray, Nollie!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;O God, Who in Thy
+      great mercy hath delivered us from peril, take into Thy keeping the souls
+      of these our enemies, consumed by Thy wrath before our eyes; give us the
+      power to pity them&mdash;men like ourselves.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even while he prayed he could see Noel's face flame-white in the
+      darkness; and, as that glow in the sky faded out, he felt once more the
+      thrill of triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went down to tell the maids, and for some time after sat up together,
+      talking over what they had seen, eating biscuits and drinking milk, which
+      they warmed on an etna. It was nearly two o'clock before they went to bed.
+      Pierson fell asleep at once, and never turned till awakened at half-past
+      six by his alarum. He had Holy Communion to administer at eight, and he
+      hurried to get early to his church and see that nothing untoward had
+      happened to it. There it stood in the sunlight; tall, grey, quiet,
+      unharmed, with bell gently ringing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at that hour Cyril Morland, under the parapet of his trench,
+      tightening his belt, was looking at his wrist-watch for the hundredth
+      time, calculating exactly where he meant to put foot and hand for the
+      going over: 'I absolutely mustn't let those chaps get in front of me,' he
+      thought. So many yards before the first line of trenches, so many yards to
+      the second line, and there stop. So his rehearsals had gone; it was the
+      performance now! Another minute before the terrific racket of the
+      drum-fire should become the curtain-fire, which would advance before them.
+      He ran his eye down the trench. The man next him was licking his two first
+      fingers, as if he might be going to bowl at cricket. Further down, a man
+      was feeling his puttees. A voice said: &ldquo;Wot price the orchestra nah!&rdquo;
+      He saw teeth gleam in faces burnt almost black. Then he looked up; the sky
+      was blue beyond the brownish film of dust raised by the striking shells.
+      Noel! Noel! Noel!... He dug his fingers deep into the left side of his
+      tunic till he could feel the outline of her photograph between his
+      dispatch-case and his heart. His heart fluttered just as it used when he
+      was stretched out with hand touching the ground, before the start of the
+      &ldquo;hundred yards&rdquo; at school. Out of the corner of his eye he
+      caught the flash of a man's &ldquo;briquet&rdquo; lighting a cigarette.
+      All right for those chaps, but not for him; he wanted all his breath&mdash;this
+      rifle, and kit were handicap enough! Two days ago he had been reading in
+      some paper how men felt just before an attack. And now he knew. He just
+      felt nervous. If only the moment would come, and get itself over! For all
+      the thought he gave to the enemy there might have been none&mdash;nothing
+      but shells and bullets, with lives of their own. He heard the whistle; his
+      foot was on the spot he had marked down; his hand where he had seen it; he
+      called out: &ldquo;Now, boys!&rdquo; His head was over the top, his body
+      over; he was conscious of someone falling, and two men neck and neck
+      beside him. Not to try and run, not to break out of a walk; to go steady,
+      and yet keep ahead! D&mdash;n these holes! A bullet tore through his
+      sleeve, grazing his arm&mdash;a red-hot sensation, like the touch of an
+      iron. A British shell from close over his head burst sixty yards ahead; he
+      stumbled, fell flat, picked himself up. Three ahead of him now! He walked
+      faster, and drew alongside. Two of them fell. 'What luck!' he thought; and
+      gripping his rifle harder, pitched headlong into a declivity. Dead bodies
+      lay there! The first German trench line, and nothing alive in it, nothing
+      to clean up, nothing of it left! He stopped, getting his wind; watching
+      the men panting and stumbling in. The roar of the guns was louder than
+      ever again, barraging the second line. So far, good! And here was his
+      captain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ready, boys? On, then!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time he moved more slowly still, over terrible going, all holes and
+      hummocks. Half consciously he took cover all he could. The air was alive
+      with the whistle from machine-gun fire storming across zigzag
+      fashion-alive it was with bullets, dust, and smoke. 'How shall I tell
+      her?' he thought. There would be nothing to tell but just a sort of jagged
+      brown sensation. He kept his eyes steadily before him, not wanting to
+      seethe men falling, not wanting anything to divert him from getting there.
+      He felt the faint fanning of the passing bullets. The second line must be
+      close now. Why didn't that barrage lift? Was this new dodge of firing till
+      the last second going to do them in? Another hundred yards and he would be
+      bang into it. He flung himself flat and waited; looking at his wrist-watch
+      he noted that his arm was soaked with blood. He thought: 'A wound! Now I
+      shall go home. Thank God! Oh, Noel!' The passing bullets whirled above
+      him; he could hear them even through the screech and thunder of the
+      shell-fire. 'The beastly things!' he thought: A voice beside him gasped
+      out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's lifted, sir.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He called: &ldquo;Come on, boys!&rdquo; and went forward, stooping. A
+      bullet struck his rifle. The shock made him stagger and sent an electric
+      shock spinning up his arm. 'Luck again!' he thought. 'Now for it! I
+      haven't seen a German yet!' He leaped forward, spun round, flung up his
+      arms, and fell on his back, shot through and through....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The position was consolidated, as they say, and in the darkness
+      stretcher-bearers were out over the half-mile. Like will-o'-the-wisps,
+      with their shaded lanterns, they moved, hour after hour, slowly quartering
+      the black honeycomb which lay behind the new British line. Now and then in
+      the light of some star-shell their figures were disclosed, bending and
+      raising the forms of the wounded, or wielding pick and shovel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Officer.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Search.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the shaded lantern, lowered to just above the body, a yellowish glare
+      fell on face and breast. The hands of the searcher moved in that little
+      pool of light. The bearer who was taking notes bent down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another boy,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That all he has?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The searcher raised himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just those, and a photo.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dispatch-case; pound loose; cigarette-case; wristwatch; photo.
+      Let's see it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The searcher placed the photo in the pool of light. The tiny face of a
+      girl stared up at them, unmoved, from its short hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Noel,&rdquo; said the searcher, reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;H'm! Take care of it. Stick it in his case. Come on!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pool of light dissolved, and darkness for ever covered Cyril Morland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When those four took their seats in the Grand Circle at Queen's Hall the
+      programme was already at the second number, which, in spite of all the
+      efforts of patriotism, was of German origin&mdash;a Brandenburg concerto
+      by Bach. More curious still, it was encored. Pierson did not applaud, he
+      was too far gone in pleasure, and sat with a rapt smile on his face,
+      oblivious of his surroundings. He remained thus removed from mortal joys
+      and sorrows till the last applause had died away, and Leila's voice said
+      in his ear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it a wonderful audience, Edward? Look at all that khaki.
+      Who'd have thought those young men cared for music&mdash;good music&mdash;German
+      music, too?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson looked down at the patient mass of standing figures in straw hats
+      and military caps, with faces turned all one way, and sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could get an audience like that in my church.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A smile crept out at the corner of Leila's lips. She was thinking: 'Ah!
+      Your Church is out of date, my dear, and so are you! Your Church, with its
+      smell of mould and incense, its stained-glass, and narrowed length and
+      droning organ. Poor Edward, so out of the world!' But she only pressed his
+      arm, and whispered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at Noel!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl was talking to Jimmy Fort. Her cheeks were gushed, and she looked
+      prettier than Pierson had seen her look for a long time now, ever since
+      Kestrel, indeed. He heard Leila sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she get news of her boy? Do you remember that May Week,
+      Edward? We were very young then; even you were young. That was such a
+      pretty little letter you wrote me. I can see you still-wandering in your
+      dress clothes along the river, among the 'holy' cows.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her eyes slid round again, watching her other neighbour and the girl.
+      A violinist had begun to play the Cesar Franck Sonata. It was Pierson's
+      favourite piece of music, bringing him, as it were, a view of heaven, of
+      devotional blue air where devout stars were shining in a sunlit noon,
+      above ecstatic trees and waters where ecstatic swans were swimming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Queer world, Mr. Pierson! Fancy those boys having to go back to
+      barrack life after listening to that! What's your feeling? Are we moving
+      back to the apes? Did we touch top note with that Sonata?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson turned and contemplated his questioner shrewdly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Captain Fort, I do not think we are moving back to the apes; if
+      we ever came from them. Those boys have the souls of heroes!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that, sir, perhaps better than you do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! yes,&rdquo; said Pierson humbly, &ldquo;I forgot, of course.&rdquo;
+      But he still looked at his neighbour doubtfully. This Captain Fort, who
+      was a friend of Leila's, and who had twice been to see them, puzzled him.
+      He had a frank face, a frank voice, but queer opinions, or so it seemed
+      to, Pierson&mdash;little bits of Moslemism, little bits of the backwoods,
+      and the veldt; queer unexpected cynicisms, all sorts of side views on
+      England had lodged in him, and he did not hide them. They came from him
+      like bullets, in that frank voice, and drilled little holes in the
+      listener. Those critical sayings flew so much more poignantly from one who
+      had been through the same educational mill as himself, than if they had
+      merely come from some rough diamond, some artist, some foreigner, even
+      from a doctor like George. And they always made him uncomfortable, like
+      the touch of a prickly leaf; they did not amuse him. Certainly Edward
+      Pierson shrank from the rough touches of a knock-about philosophy. After
+      all, it was but natural that he should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He and Noel left after the first part of the concert, parting from the
+      other two at the door. He slipped his hand through her arm; and, following
+      out those thoughts of his in the concert-hall, asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you like Captain Fort, Nollie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he's a nice man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seems a nice man, certainly; he has a nice smile, but strange
+      views, I'm afraid.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He thinks the Germans are not much worse than we are; he says that
+      a good many of us are bullies too.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is the sort of thing I mean.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are we, Daddy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely not.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A policeman I talked to once said the same. Captain Fort says that
+      very few men can stand having power put into their hands without being
+      spoiled. He told me some dreadful stories. He says we have no imagination,
+      so that we often do things without seeing how brutal they are.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're not perfect, Nollie; but on the whole I think we're a kind
+      people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel was silent a moment, then said suddenly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kind people often think others are kind too, when they really
+      aren't. Captain Fort doesn't make that mistake.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think he's a little cynical, and a little dangerous.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are all people dangerous who don't think like others, Daddy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson, incapable of mockery, was not incapable of seeing when he was
+      being mocked. He looked at his daughter with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not quite so bad as that, Nollie; but Mr. Fort is certainly
+      subversive. I think perhaps he has seen too many queer sides of life.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like him the better for that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; Pierson answered absently. He had work to do in
+      preparation for a Confirmation Class, and sought his study on getting in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel went to the dining-room to drink her hot milk. The curtains were not
+      drawn, and bright moonlight was coming in. Without lighting up, she set
+      the etna going, and stood looking at the moon-full for the second time
+      since she and Cyril had waited for it in the Abbey. And pressing her hands
+      to her breast, she shivered. If only she could summon him from the
+      moonlight out there; if only she were a witch-could see him, know where he
+      was, what doing! For a fortnight now she had received no letter. Every day
+      since he had left she had read the casualty lists, with the superstitious
+      feeling that to do so would keep him out of them. She took up the Times.
+      There was just enough light, and she read the roll of honour&mdash;till
+      the moon shone in on her, lying on the floor, with the dropped journal....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was proud, and soon took grief to her room, as on that night after
+      he left her, she had taken love. No sign betrayed to the house her
+      disaster; the journal on the floor, and the smell of the burnt milk which
+      had boiled over, revealed nothing. After all, she was but one of a
+      thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony. Each night, year
+      in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in pillows to smother that
+      first awful sense of desolation, and grope for the secret spirit-place
+      where bereaved souls go, to receive some feeble touch of healing from
+      knowledge of each other's trouble....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning she got up from her sleepless bed, seemed to eat her
+      breakfast, and went off to her hospital. There she washed up plates and
+      dishes, with a stony face, dark under the eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The news came to Pierson in a letter from Thirza, received at lunch-time.
+      He read it with a dreadful aching. Poor, poor little Nollie! What an awful
+      trouble for her! And he, too, went about his work with the nightmare
+      thought that he had to break the news to her that evening. Never had he
+      felt more lonely, more dreadfully in want of the mother of his children.
+      She would have known how to soothe, how to comfort. On her heart the child
+      could have sobbed away grief. And all that hour, from seven to eight, when
+      he was usually in readiness to fulfil the functions of God's substitute to
+      his parishioners, he spent in prayer of his own, for guidance how to
+      inflict and heal this blow. When, at last, Noel came, he opened the door
+      to her himself, and, putting back the hair from her forehead, said:
+      &ldquo;Come in here a moment, my darling!&rdquo; Noel followed him into
+      the study, and sat down. &ldquo;I know already, Daddy.&rdquo; Pierson was
+      more dismayed by this stoicism than he would have been by any natural out
+      burst. He stood, timidly stroking her hair, murmuring to her what he had
+      said to Gratian, and to so many others in these days: &ldquo;There is no
+      death; look forward to seeing him again; God is merciful&rdquo; And he
+      marvelled at the calmness of that pale face&mdash;so young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very brave, my child!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing else to be, is there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't there anything I can do for you, Nollie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Daddy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did you see it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last night.&rdquo; She had already known for twenty-four hours
+      without telling him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you prayed, my darling?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try, Nollie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, try!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be ridiculous, Daddy; you don't know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grievously upset and bewildered, Pierson moved away from her, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look dreadfully tired. Would you like a hot bath, and your
+      dinner in bed?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like some tea; that's all.&rdquo; And she went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had seen that the tea had gone up to her, he too went out; and,
+      moved by a longing for woman's help, took a cab to Leila's flat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On leaving the concert Leila and Jimmy Fort had secured a taxi; a vehicle
+      which, at night, in wartime, has certain advantages for those who desire
+      to become better acquainted. Vibration, sufficient noise, darkness, are
+      guaranteed; and all that is lacking for the furtherance of emotion is the
+      scent of honeysuckle and roses, or even of the white flowering creeper
+      which on the stoep at High Constantia had smelled so much sweeter than
+      petrol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Leila found herself with Fort in that loneliness to which she had
+      been looking forward, she was overcome by an access of nervous silence.
+      She had been passing through a strange time for weeks past. Every night
+      she examined her sensations without quite understanding them as yet. When
+      a woman comes to her age, the world-force is liable to take possession,
+      saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were young, you were beautiful, you still have beauty, you are
+      not, cannot be, old. Cling to youth, cling to beauty; take all you can
+      get, before your face gets lines and your hair grey; it is impossible that
+      you have been loved for the last time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To see Jimmy Fort at the concert, talking to Noel, had brought this
+      emotion to a head. She was not of a grudging nature, and could genuinely
+      admire Noel, but the idea that Jimmy Fort might also admire disturbed her
+      greatly. He must not; it was not fair; he was too old&mdash;besides, the
+      girl had her boy; and she had taken care that he should know it. So,
+      leaning towards him, while a bare-shouldered young lady sang, she had
+      whispered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Penny?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he had whispered back:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you afterwards.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That had comforted her. She would make him take her home. It was time she
+      showed her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, in the cab, resolved to make her feelings known, in sudden
+      shyness she found it very difficult. Love, to which for quite three years
+      she had been a stranger, was come to life within her. The knowledge was at
+      once so sweet, and so disturbing, that she sat with face averted, unable
+      to turn the precious minutes to account. They arrived at the flat without
+      having done more than agree that the streets were dark, and the moon
+      bright. She got out with a sense of bewilderment, and said rather
+      desperately:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must come up and have a cigarette. It's quite early, still.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait just a minute,&rdquo; said Leila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sitting there with his drink and his cigarette, he stared at some
+      sunflowers in a bowl&mdash;Famille Rose&mdash;and waited just ten; smiling
+      a little, recalling the nose of the fairy princess, and the dainty way her
+      lips shaped the words she spoke. If she had not had that lucky young devil
+      of a soldier boy, one would have wanted to buckle her shoes, lay one's
+      coat in the mud for her, or whatever they did in fairytales. One would
+      have wanted&mdash;ah! what would one not have wanted! Hang that soldier
+      boy! Leila said he was twenty-two. By George! how old it made a man feel
+      who was rising forty, and tender on the off-fore! No fairy princesses for
+      him! Then a whiff of perfume came to his nostrils; and, looking up, he saw
+      Leila standing before him, in a long garment of dark silk, whence her
+      white arms peeped out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another penny? Do you remember these things, Jimmy? The Malay women
+      used to wear them in Cape Town. You can't think what a relief it is to get
+      out of my slave's dress. Oh! I'm so sick of nursing! Jimmy, I want to live
+      again a little!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The garment had taken fifteen years off her age, and a gardenia, just
+      where the silk crossed on her breast, seemed no whiter than her skin. He
+      wondered whimsically whether it had dropped to her out of the dark!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Live?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Why! Don't you always?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her hands so that the dark silk fell, back from the whole
+      length of those white arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't lived for two years. Oh, Jimmy! Help me to live a little!
+      Life's so short, now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes disturbed him, strained and pathetic; the sight of her arms; the
+      scent of the flower disturbed him; he felt his cheeks growing warm, and
+      looked down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She slipped suddenly forward on to her knees at his feet, took his hand,
+      pressed it with both of hers, and murmured:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Love me a little! What else is there? Oh! Jimmy, what else is
+      there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with the scent of the flower, crushed by their hands, stirring his
+      senses, Fort thought: 'Ah, what else is there, in these forsaken days?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Jimmy Fort, who had a sense of humour, and was in some sort a
+      philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom failed to seem
+      amusing. But when he walked away from Leila's he was pensive. She was a
+      good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an enchantress; but&mdash;she
+      was decidedly mature. And here he was&mdash;involved in helping her to
+      &ldquo;live&rdquo;; involved almost alarmingly, for there had been no
+      mistaking the fact that she had really fallen in love with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was flattering and sweet. Times were sad, and pleasure scarce, but&mdash;!
+      The roving instinct which had kept him, from his youth up, rolling about
+      the world, shied instinctively at bonds, however pleasant, the strength
+      and thickness of which he could not gauge; or, was it that perhaps for the
+      first time in his life he had been peeping into fairyland of late, and
+      this affair with Leila was by no means fairyland? He had another reason,
+      more unconscious, for uneasiness. His heart, for all his wanderings, was
+      soft, he had always found it difficult to hurt anyone, especially anyone
+      who did him the honour to love him. A sort of presentiment weighed on him
+      while he walked the moonlit streets at this most empty hour, when even the
+      late taxis had ceased to run. Would she want him to marry her? Would it be
+      his duty, if she did? And then he found himself thinking of the concert,
+      and that girl's face, listening to the tales he was telling her. 'Deuced
+      queer world,' he thought, 'the way things go! I wonder what she would
+      think of us, if she knew&mdash;and that good padre! Phew!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in his leg, and
+      having to spend the night on a door-step, that he had plenty of time for
+      rumination; but since it brought him no confidence whatever, he began at
+      last to feel: 'Well; it might be a lot worse. Take the goods the gods send
+      you and don't fuss!' And suddenly he remembered with extreme vividness
+      that night on the stoep at High Constantia, and thought with dismay: 'I
+      could have plunged in over head and ears then; and now&mdash;I can't!
+      That's life all over! Poor Leila! Me miserum, too, perhaps&mdash;who
+      knows!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were smiling, and
+      her lips were soft. She seemed to smile and be soft all over, and she took
+      both his hands. Everything was a pleasure to her that day, even the sight
+      of this sad face. She was in love and was loved again; had a present and a
+      future once more, not only her own full past; and she must finish with
+      Edward in half an hour, for Jimmy was coming. She sat down on the divan,
+      took his hand in a sisterly way, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, Edward; I can see you're in trouble. What is it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Noel. The boy she was fond of has been killed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! Poor child! It's too cruel!&rdquo; Tears started up in her
+      grey eyes, and she touched them with a tiny handkerchief. &ldquo;Poor,
+      poor little Noel! Was she very fond of him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very sudden, short engagement; but I'm afraid she takes it
+      desperately to heart. I don't know how to comfort her; only a woman could.
+      I came to ask you: Do you think she ought to go on with her work? What do
+      you think, Leila? I feel lost!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila, gazing at him, thought: 'Lost? Yes, you look lost, my poor Edward!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should let her go on,&rdquo; she said: &ldquo;it helps; it's the
+      only thing that does help. I'll see if I can get them to let her come into
+      the wards. She ought to be in touch with suffering and the men; that
+      kitchen work will try her awfully just now: Was he very young?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. They wanted to get married. I was opposed to it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila's lip curled ever so little. 'You would be!' she thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't bear to think of Nollie giving herself hastily, like
+      that; they had only known each other three weeks. It was very hard for me,
+      Leila. And then suddenly he was sent to the front.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Resentment welled up in Leila. The kill-Joys! As if life didn't kill joy
+      fast enough! Her cousin's face at that moment was almost abhorrent to her,
+      its gentle perplexed goodness darkened and warped by that monkish look.
+      She turned away, glanced at the clock over the hearth, and thought: 'Yes,
+      and he would stop Jimmy and me! He would say: &ldquo;Oh, no! dear Leila&mdash;you
+      mustn't love&mdash;it's sin!&rdquo; How I hate that word!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think the most dreadful thing in life,&rdquo; she said abruptly,
+      &ldquo;is the way people suppress their natural instincts; what they
+      suppress in themselves they make other people suppress too, if they can;
+      and that's the cause of half the misery in this world.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at the surprise on his face at this little outburst, whose cause he
+      could not know, she added hastily: &ldquo;I hope Noel will get over it
+      quickly, and find someone else.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. If they had been married&mdash;how much worse it would have
+      been. Thank God, they weren't!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. They would have had an hour of bliss. Even an hour of
+      bliss is worth something in these days.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To those who only believe in this 'life&mdash;perhaps.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Ten minutes more!' she thought: 'Oh, why doesn't he go?' But at that very
+      moment he got up, and instantly her heart went out to him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so sorry, Edward. If I can help in any way&mdash;I'll try my
+      best with Noel to-morrow; and do come to me whenever you feel inclined.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took his hand in hers; afraid that he would sit down again, she yet
+      could not help a soft glance into his eyes, and a little rush of pitying
+      warmth in the pressure of her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson smiled; the smile which always made her sorry for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Leila; you're very good and kind to me. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her bosom swelled with relief and compassion; and&mdash;she let him out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Running upstairs again she thought: 'I've just time. What shall I put on?
+      Poor Edward, poor Noel! What colour does Jimmy like? Oh! Why didn't I keep
+      him those ten years ago&mdash;what utter waste!' And, feverishly adorning
+      herself, she came back to the window, and stood there in the dark to
+      watch, while some jasmine which grew below sent up its scent to her.
+      'Would I marry him?' she thought, 'if he asked me? But he won't ask me&mdash;why
+      should he now? Besides, I couldn't bear him to feel I wanted position or
+      money from him. I only want love&mdash;love&mdash;love!' The silent
+      repetition of that word gave her a wonderful sense of solidity and
+      comfort. So long as she only wanted love, surely he would give it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A tall figure turned down past the church, coming towards her. It was he!
+      And suddenly she bethought herself. She went to the little black piano,
+      sat down, and began to sing the song she had sung to him ten years ago:
+      &ldquo;If I could be the falling dew and fall on thee all day!&rdquo; She
+      did not even look round when he came in, but continued to croon out the
+      words, conscious of him just behind her shoulder in the dark. But when she
+      had finished, she got up and threw her arms round him, strained him to
+      her, and burst into tears on his shoulder; thinking of Noel and that dead
+      boy, thinking of the millions of other boys, thinking of her own
+      happiness, thinking of those ten years wasted, of how short was life, and
+      love; thinking&mdash;hardly knowing what she thought! And Jimmy Fort, very
+      moved by this emotion which he only half understood, pressed her tightly
+      in his arms, and kissed her wet cheeks and her neck, pale and warm in the
+      darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Noel went on with her work for a month, and then, one morning, fainted
+      over a pile of dishes. The noise attracted attention, and Mrs. Lynch was
+      summoned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight of her lying there so deadly white taxed Leila's nerves
+      severely. But the girl revived quickly, and a cab was sent for. Leila went
+      with her, and told the driver to stop at Camelot Mansions. Why take her
+      home in this state, why not save the jolting, and let her recover
+      properly? They went upstairs arm in arm. Leila made her lie down on the
+      divan, and put a hot-water bottle to her feet. Noel was still so passive
+      and pale that even to speak to her seemed a cruelty. And, going to her
+      little sideboard, Leila stealthily extracted a pint bottle of some
+      champagne which Jimmy Fort had sent in, and took it with two glasses and a
+      corkscrew into her bedroom. She drank a little herself, and came out
+      bearing a glass to the girl. Noel shook her head, and her eyes seemed to
+      say: &ldquo;Do you really think I'm so easily mended?&rdquo; But Leila had
+      been through too much in her time to despise earthly remedies, and she
+      held it to the girl's lips until she drank. It was excellent champagne,
+      and, since Noel had never yet touched alcohol, had an instantaneous
+      effect. Her eyes brightened; little red spots came up in her cheeks. And
+      suddenly she rolled over and buried her face deep in a cushion. With her
+      short hair, she looked so like a child lying there, that Leila knelt down,
+      stroking her head, and saying: &ldquo;There, there; my love! There, there!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, masklike despair of
+      the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and her face had a wild
+      look. She withdrew herself from Leila's touch, and, crossing her arms
+      tightly across her chest, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't bear it; I can't sleep. I want him back; I hate life&mdash;I
+      hate the world. We hadn't done anything&mdash;only just loved each other.
+      God likes punishing; just because we loved each other; we had only one day
+      to love each other&mdash;only one day&mdash;only one!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms straining and
+      swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch it. The voice, uncannily
+      dainty for all the wildness of the words and face, went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't&mdash;I don't want to live. If there's another life, I
+      shall go to him. And if there isn't&mdash;it's just sleep.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila put out her hand to ward of these wild wanderings. Like most women
+      who live simply the life of their senses and emotions, she was orthodox;
+      or rather never speculated on such things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me about yourself and him,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin. &ldquo;We loved each other;
+      and children are born, aren't they, after you've loved? But mine won't be!&rdquo;
+      From the look on her face rather than from her words, the full reality of
+      her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again. Nonsense! But&mdash;what
+      an awful thing, if true! That which had always seemed to her such an
+      exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of life&mdash;why! now, it was
+      a tragedy! Instinctively she raised herself and put her arms round the
+      girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor dear!&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;you're fancying things!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colour had faded out of Noel's face, and, with her head thrown back
+      and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it is&mdash;I shan't live. I don't mean to&mdash;it's easy to
+      die. I don't mean Daddy to know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! my dear, my dear!&rdquo; was all Leila could stammer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it wrong, Leila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wrong? I don't know&mdash;wrong? If it really is so&mdash;it was&mdash;unfortunate.
+      But surely, surely&mdash;you're mistaken?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shook her head. &ldquo;I did it so that we should belong to each
+      other. Nothing could have taken him from me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila caught at the girl's words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, my dear&mdash;he hasn't quite gone from you, you see?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel's lips formed a &ldquo;No&rdquo; which was inaudible. &ldquo;But
+      Daddy!&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward's face came before Leila so vividly that she could hardly see the
+      girl for the tortured shape of it. Then the hedonist in her revolted
+      against that ascetic vision. Her worldly judgment condemned and deplored
+      this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding that hour of life
+      and love, snatched out of the jaws of death. &ldquo;Need he ever know?&rdquo;
+      she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could never lie to Daddy. But it doesn't matter. Why should one
+      go on living, when life is rotten?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late October. Leila
+      got up from her knees. She stood at the window thinking hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; she said at last, &ldquo;you mustn't get morbid.
+      Look at me! I've had two husbands, and&mdash;and&mdash;well, a pretty
+      stormy up and down time of it; and I daresay I've got lots of trouble
+      before me. But I'm not going to cave in. Nor must you. The Piersons have
+      plenty of pluck; you mustn't be a traitor to your blood. That's the last
+      thing. Your boy would have told you to stick it. These are your
+      'trenches,' and you're not going to be downed, are you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me a cigarette, Leila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila produced the little flat case she carried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's brave,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Nothing's incurable at your
+      age. Only one thing's incurable&mdash;getting old.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel laughed. &ldquo;That's curable too, isn't it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not without surrender.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two cigarettes
+      fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling. Then Noel got up from the
+      divan, and went over to the piano. She was still in her hospital dress of
+      lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the keys, playing
+      a chord now, and then, Leila's heart felt hollow from compassion; she was
+      so happy herself just now, and this child so very wretched!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Play to me,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;no&mdash;don't; I'll play to
+      you.&rdquo; And sitting down, she began to play and sing a little French
+      song, whose first line ran: &ldquo;Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous.&rdquo;
+      It was soft, gay, charming. If the girl cried, so much the better. But
+      Noel did not cry. She seemed suddenly to have recovered all her
+      self-possession. She spoke calmly, answered Leila's questions without
+      emotion, and said she would go home. Leila went out with her, and walked
+      some way in the direction of her home; distressed, but frankly at a loss.
+      At the bottom of Portland Place Noel stopped and said: &ldquo;I'm quite
+      all right now, Leila; thank you awfully. I shall just go home and lie
+      down. And I shall come to-morrow, the same as usual. Goodbye!&rdquo; Leila
+      could only grasp the girl's hand, and say: &ldquo;My dear, that's
+      splendid. There's many a slip&mdash;besides, it's war-time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the girl moving
+      slowly away; and turned back herself towards her hospital, with a
+      disturbed and compassionate heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street. She had received
+      a certain measure of comfort, been steadied by her experienced cousin's
+      vitality, and the new thoughts suggested by those words: &ldquo;He hasn't
+      quite gone from you, has he?&rdquo; &ldquo;Besides, it's war-time.&rdquo;
+      Leila had spoken freely, too, and the physical ignorance in which the girl
+      had been groping these last weeks was now removed. Like most proud
+      natures, she did not naturally think much about the opinion of other
+      people; besides, she knew nothing of the world, its feelings and
+      judgments. Her nightmare was the thought of her father's horror and grief.
+      She tried to lessen that nightmare by remembering his opposition to her
+      marriage, and the resentment she had felt. He had never realised, never
+      understood, how she and Cyril loved. Now, if she were really going to have
+      a child, it would be Cyril's&mdash;Cyril's son&mdash;Cyril over again. The
+      instinct stronger than reason, refinement, tradition, upbringing, which
+      had pushed her on in such haste to make sure of union&mdash;the
+      irrepressible pulse of life faced with annihilation&mdash;seemed to revive
+      within her, and make her terrible secret almost precious. She had read
+      about &ldquo;War babies&rdquo; in the papers, read with a dull curiosity;
+      but now the atmosphere, as it were, of those writings was illumined for
+      her. These babies were wrong, were a &ldquo;problem,&rdquo; and yet,
+      behind all that, she seemed now to know that people were glad of them;
+      they made up, they filled the gaps. Perhaps, when she had one, she would
+      be proud, secretly proud, in spite of everyone, in spite of her father!
+      They had tried to kill Cyril&mdash;God and everyone; but they hadn't been
+      able, he was alive within her! A glow came into her face, walking among
+      the busy shopping crowd, and people turned to look at her; she had that
+      appearance of seeing no one, nothing, which is strange and attractive to
+      those who have a moment to spare from contemplation of their own affairs.
+      Fully two hours she wandered thus, before going in, and only lost that
+      exalted feeling when, in her own little room, she had taken up his
+      photograph, and was sitting on her bed gazing at it. She had a bad
+      breakdown then. Locked in there, she lay on her bed, crying, dreadfully
+      lonely, till she fell asleep exhausted, with the tear-stained photograph
+      clutched in her twitching fingers. She woke with a start. It was dark, and
+      someone was knocking on her door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Noel!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Childish perversity kept her silent. Why couldn't they leave her alone?
+      They would leave her alone if they knew. Then she heard another kind of
+      knocking, and her father's voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie! Nollie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She scrambled up, and opened. He looked scared, and her heart smote her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right, Daddy; I was asleep.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, I'm sorry, but dinner's ready.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want any dinner; I think I'll go to bed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The frown between his brows deepened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shouldn't lock your door, Nollie: I was quite frightened. I
+      went round to the hospital to bring you home, and they told me about your
+      fainting. I want you to see a doctor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shook her head vigorously. &ldquo;Oh, no! It's nothing!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing? To faint like that? Come, my child. To please me.&rdquo;
+      He took her face in his hands. Noel shrank away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Daddy. I won't see a doctor. Extravagance in wartime! I won't.
+      It's no good trying to make me. I'll come down if you like; I shall be all
+      right to-morrow.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this Pierson had to be content; but, often that evening, she saw him
+      looking at her anxiously. And when she went up, he came out of his study,
+      followed to her room, and insisted on lighting her fire. Kissing her at
+      the door, he said very quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could be a mother to you, my child!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment it flashed through Noel: 'He knows!' then, by the puzzled
+      look on his face, she knew that he did not. If only he did know; what a
+      weight it would be off her mind! But she answered quietly too; &ldquo;Good
+      night, Daddy dear!&rdquo; kissed him, and shut the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down before the little new fire, and spread her hands out to it;
+      all was so cold and wintry in her heart. And the firelight flickered on
+      her face, where shadows lay thick under her eyes, for all the roundness of
+      her cheeks, and on her slim pale hands, and the supple grace of her young
+      body. And out in the night, clouds raced over the moon, which had come
+      full once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      1
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson went back to his study, and wrote to Gratian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you can get leave for a few days, my dear, I want you at home. I
+      am troubled about Nollie. Ever since that disaster happened to her she has
+      been getting paler; and to-day she fainted. She won't see a doctor, but
+      perhaps you could get her to see George. If you come up, he will surely be
+      able to run up to us for a day or two. If not, you must take her down to
+      him at the sea. I have just seen the news of your second cousin Charlie
+      Pierson's death; he was killed in one of the last attacks on the Somme; he
+      was nephew of my cousin Leila whom, as you know, Noel sees every day at
+      her hospital. Bertram has the D. S. O. I have been less hard-pressed
+      lately; Lauder has been home on leave and has taken some Services for me.
+      And now the colder weather has come, I am feeling much fresher. Try your
+      best to come. I am seriously concerned for our beloved child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your affectionate father
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;EDWARD PIERSON.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian answered that she could get week-end leave, and would come on
+      Friday. He met her at the station, and they drove thence straight to the
+      hospital, to pick up Noel. Leila came to them in the waiting-room, and
+      Pierson, thinking they would talk more freely about Noel's health if he
+      left them alone, went into the recreation room, and stood watching a game
+      of bagatelle between two convalescents. When he returned to the little
+      sitting-room they were still standing by the hearth, talking in low
+      voices. Gratian must surely have been stooping over the fire, for her face
+      was red, almost swollen, and her eyes looked as if she had scorched them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila said lightly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Edward, aren't the men delightful? When are we going to
+      another concert together?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She, too, was flushed and looking almost young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! If we could do the things we want to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's very pretty, Edward; but you should, you know&mdash;for a
+      tonic.&rdquo; He shook his head and smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a temptress, Leila. Will you let Nollie know, please, that
+      we can take her back with us? Can you let her off to-morrow?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For as long as you like; she wants a rest. I've been talking to
+      Gratian. We oughtn't to have let her go on after a shock like that&mdash;my
+      fault, I'm afraid. I thought that work might be best.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson was conscious of Gratian walking past him out of the room. He held
+      out his hand to Leila, and followed. A small noise occurred behind him
+      such as a woman makes when she has put a foot through her own skirt, or
+      has other powerful cause for dismay. Then he saw Noel in the hall, and was
+      vaguely aware of being the centre of a triangle of women whose eyes were
+      playing catch-glance. His daughters kissed each other; and he became
+      seated between them in the taxi. The most unobservant of men, he parted
+      from them in the hall without having perceived anything except that they
+      were rather silent; and, going to his study, he took up a Life of Sir
+      Thomas More. There was a passage therein which he itched to show George
+      Laird, who was coming up that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian and Noel had mounted the stairs with lips tight set, and eyes
+      averted; both were very pale. When they reached the door of Gratian's room
+      the room which had been their mother's&mdash;Noel was for passing on, but
+      Gratian caught her by the arm, and said: &ldquo;Come in.&rdquo; The fire
+      was burning brightly in there, and the two sisters stood in front of it,
+      one on each side, their hands clutching the mantel-shelf, staring at the
+      flames. At last Noel put one hand in front of her eyes, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I asked her to tell you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian made the movement of one who is gripped by two strong emotions,
+      and longs to surrender to one or to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too horrible,&rdquo; was all she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel turned towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, Nollie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel stopped with her hand on the door knob. &ldquo;I don't want to be
+      forgiven and sympathised with. I just want to be let alone.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you be let alone?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tide of misery surged up in Noel, and she cried out passionately:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hate sympathy from people who can't understand. I don't want
+      anyone's. I can always go away, and lose myself.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words &ldquo;can't understand&rdquo; gave Gratian a shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can understand,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't; you never saw him. You never saw&mdash;&rdquo; her lips
+      quivered so that she had to stop and bite them, to keep back a rush of
+      tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides you would never have done it yourself.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the bed. It was
+      true. She would never have done it herself; it was just that which, for
+      all her longing to help her sister, iced her love and sympathy. How
+      terrible, wretched, humiliating! Her own sister, her only sister, in the
+      position of all those poor, badly brought up girls, who forgot themselves!
+      And her father&mdash;their father! Till that moment she had hardly thought
+      of him, too preoccupied by the shock to her own pride. The word: &ldquo;Dad!&rdquo;
+      was forced from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That boy!&rdquo; said Gratian suddenly; &ldquo;I can't forgive him.
+      If you didn't know&mdash;he did. It was&mdash;it was&mdash;&rdquo; She
+      stopped at the sight of Noel's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did know,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It was I. He was my husband, as
+      much as yours is. If you say a word against him, I'll never speak to you
+      again: I'm glad, and you would be, if you were going to have one. What's
+      the difference, except that you've had luck, and I&mdash;haven't.&rdquo;
+      Her lips quivered again, and she was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian stared up at her. She had a longing for George&mdash;to know what
+      he thought and felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mind if I tell George?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shook her head. &ldquo;No! not now. Tell anybody.&rdquo; And suddenly
+      the misery behind the mask of her face went straight to Gratian's heart.
+      She got up and put her arms round her sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie dear, don't look like that!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was over, went to
+      her own room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious. Her pride was
+      deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry with herself. Why couldn't
+      she have been more sympathetic? And yet, now that Noel was no longer
+      there, she again condemned the dead. What he had done was unpardonable.
+      Nollie was such&mdash;a child! He had committed sacrilege. If only George
+      would come, and she could talk it all out with him! She, who had married
+      for love and known passion, had insight enough to feel that Noel's love
+      had been deep&mdash;so far as anything, of course, could be deep in such a
+      child. Gratian was at the mature age of twenty. But to have forgotten
+      herself like that! And this boy! If she had known him, that feeling might
+      have been mitigated by the personal element, so important to all human
+      judgment; but never having seen him, she thought of his conduct as &ldquo;caddish.&rdquo;
+      And she knew that this was, and would be, the trouble between her and her
+      sister. However she might disguise it, Noel would feel that judgment
+      underneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stripped off her nurse's garb, put on an evening frock, and fidgeted
+      about the room. Anything rather than go down and see her father again
+      before she must. This, which had happened, was beyond words terrible for
+      him; she dreaded the talk with him about Noel's health which would have to
+      come. She could say nothing, of course, until Noel wished; and, very
+      truthful by nature, the idea, of having to act a lie distressed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went down at last, and found them both in the drawing-room already;
+      Noel in a frilly evening frock, sitting by the fire with her chin on her
+      hand, while her father was reading out the war news from the evening
+      paper. At sight of that cool, dainty, girlish figure brooding over the
+      fire, and of her father's worn face, the tragedy of this business thrust
+      itself on her with redoubled force. Poor Dad! Poor Nollie! Awful! Then
+      Noel turned, and gave a little shake of her head, and her eyes said,
+      almost as plainly as lips could have said it: 'Silence!' Gratian nodded,
+      and came forward to the fire. And so began one of those calm, domestic
+      evenings, which cover sometimes such depths of heartache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel stayed up until her father went to bed, then went upstairs at once.
+      She had evidently determined that they should not talk about her. Gratian
+      sat on alone, waiting for her husband! It was nearly midnight when he
+      came, and she did not tell him the family news till next morning. He
+      received it with a curious little grunt. Gratian saw his eyes contract, as
+      they might have, perhaps, looking at some bad and complicated wound, and
+      then stare steadily at the ceiling. Though they had been married over a
+      year, she did not yet know what he thought about many things, and she
+      waited with a queer sinking at her heart. This skeleton in the family
+      cupboard was a test of his affection for herself, a test of the quality of
+      the man she had married. He did not speak for a little, and her anxiety
+      grew. Then his hand sought hers, and gave it a hard squeeze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little Nollie! This is a case for Mark Tapleyism. But cheer
+      up, Gracie! We'll get her through somehow.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But father! It's impossible to keep it from him, and impossible to
+      tell him! Oh George! I never knew what family pride was till now. It's
+      incredible. That wretched boy!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'De mortuis.' Come, Gracie! In the midst of death we are in life!
+      Nollie was a plumb little idiot. But it's the war&mdash;the war! Your
+      father must get used to it; it's a rare chance for his Christianity.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dad will be as sweet as anything&mdash;that's what makes it so
+      horrible!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Laird redoubled his squeeze. &ldquo;Quite right! The old-fashioned
+      father could let himself go. But need he know? We can get her away from
+      London, and later on, we must manage somehow. If he does hear, we must
+      make him feel that Nollie was 'doing her bit.'.rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian withdrew her hand. &ldquo;Don't!&rdquo; she said in a muffled
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Laird turned and looked at her. He was greatly upset himself,
+      realising perhaps more truly than his young wife the violence of this
+      disaster; he was quite capable, too, of feeling how deeply she was stirred
+      and hurt; but, a born pragmatist, confronting life always in the
+      experimental spirit, he was impatient of the: &ldquo;How awful!&rdquo;
+      attitude. And this streak of her father's ascetic traditionalism in
+      Gratian always roused in him a wish to break it up. If she had not been
+      his wife he would have admitted at once that he might just as well try and
+      alter the bone-formation of her head, as break down such a fundamental
+      trait of character, but, being his wife, he naturally considered
+      alteration as possible as putting a new staircase in a house, or throwing
+      two rooms into one. And, taking her in his arms, he said: &ldquo;I know;
+      but it'll all come right, if we put a good face on it. Shall I talk to
+      Nollie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian assented, from the desire to be able to say to her father: &ldquo;George
+      is seeing her!&rdquo; and so stay the need for a discussion. But the whole
+      thing seemed to her more and more a calamity which nothing could lessen or
+      smooth away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Laird had plenty of cool courage, invaluable in men who have to
+      inflict as well as to alleviate pain, but he did not like his mission
+      &ldquo;a little bit&rdquo; as he would have said; and he proposed a walk
+      because he dreaded a scene. Noel accepted for the same reason. She liked
+      George, and with the disinterested detachment of a sister-in-law, and the
+      shrewdness of extreme youth, knew him perhaps better than did his wife.
+      She was sure, at all events, of being neither condemned nor sympathised
+      with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They might have gone, of course, in any direction, but chose to make for
+      the City. Such deep decisions are subconscious. They sought, no doubt, a
+      dry, unemotional region; or perhaps one where George, who was in uniform,
+      might rest his arm from the automatic-toy game which the military play.
+      They had reached Cheapside before he was conscious to the full of the
+      bizarre nature of this walk with his pretty young sister-in-law among all
+      the bustling, black-coated mob of money-makers. 'I wish the devil we
+      hadn't come out!' he thought; 'it would have been easier indoors, after
+      all.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He cleared his throat, however, and squeezing her arm gently, began:
+      &ldquo;Gratian's told me, Nollie. The great thing is to keep your spirit
+      up, and not worry.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you couldn't cure me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words, in that delicate spurning voice, absolutely staggered George;
+      but he said quickly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out of the question, Nollie; impossible! What are you thinking of?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daddy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words: &ldquo;D&mdash;n Daddy!&rdquo; rose to his teeth; he bit them
+      off, and said: &ldquo;Bless him! We shall have to see to all that. Do you
+      really want to keep it from him? It must be one way or the other; no use
+      concealing it, if it's to come out later.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stole a look at her. She was gazing straight before her. How damnably
+      young she was, how pretty! A lump came up in his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't do anything yet,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;too early.
+      Later on, if you'd like me to tell him. But that's entirely up to you, my
+      dear; he need never know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not follow her thought. Then she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gratian condemns Cyril. Don't let her. I won't have him badly
+      thought of. It was my doing. I wanted to make sure of him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George answered stoutly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gracie's upset, of course, but she'll soon be all right. You
+      mustn't let it come between you. The thing you've got to keep steadily
+      before you is that life's a huge wide adaptable thing. Look at all these
+      people! There's hardly one of them who hasn't got now, or hasn't had, some
+      personal difficulty or trouble before them as big as yours almost; bigger
+      perhaps. And here they are as lively as fleas. That's what makes the
+      fascination of life&mdash;the jolly irony of it all. It would do you good
+      to have a turn in France, and see yourself in proportion to the whole.&rdquo;
+      He felt her fingers suddenly slip under his arm, and went on with greater
+      confidence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life's going to be the important thing in the future, Nollie; not
+      comfort and cloistered virtue and security; but living, and pressure to
+      the square inch. Do you twig? All the old hard-and-fast traditions and
+      drags on life are in the melting-pot. Death's boiling their bones, and
+      they'll make excellent stock for the new soup. When you prune and dock
+      things, the sap flows quicker. Regrets and repinings and repressions are
+      going out of fashion; we shall have no time or use for them in the future.
+      You're going to make life&mdash;well, that's something to be thankful for,
+      anyway. You've kept Cyril Morland alive. And&mdash;well, you know, we've
+      all been born; some of us properly, and some improperly, and there isn't a
+      ha'porth of difference in the value of the article, or the trouble of
+      bringing it into the world. The cheerier you are the better your child
+      will be, and that's all you've got to think about. You needn't begin to
+      trouble at all for another couple of months, at least; after that, just
+      let us know where you'd like to go, and I'll arrange it somehow.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked round at him, and under that young, clear, brooding gaze he had
+      the sudden uncomfortable feeling of having spoken like a charlatan. Had he
+      really touched the heart of the matter? What good were his generalities to
+      this young, fastidiously nurtured girl, brought up to tell the truth, by a
+      father so old-fashioned and devoted, whom she loved? It was George's
+      nature, too, to despise words; and the conditions of his life these last
+      two years had given him a sort of horror of those who act by talking. He
+      felt inclined to say: 'Don't pay the slightest attention to me; it's all
+      humbug; what will be will be, and there's an end of it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she said quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell Daddy or not?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wanted to say: &ldquo;No,&rdquo; but somehow couldn't. After all, the
+      straightforward course was probably the best. For this would have to be a
+      lifelong concealment. It was impossible to conceal a thing for ever;
+      sooner or later he would find out. But the doctor rose up in him, and he
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't go to meet trouble, Nollie; it'll be time enough in two
+      months. Then tell him, or let me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head. &ldquo;No; I will, if it is to be done.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put his hand on hers, within his arm, and gave it a squeeze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shall I do till then?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a week's complete rest, and then go on where you are.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel was silent a minute, then said: &ldquo;Yes; I will.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They spoke no more on the subject, and George exerted himself to talk
+      about hospital experiences, and that phenomenon, the British soldier. But
+      just before they reached home he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Nollie! If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will
+      be ashamed of you. If you put ashes on your own head, your fellow-beings
+      will, assist you; for of such is their charity.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, receiving another of those clear, brooding looks, he left her with
+      the thought: 'A lonely child!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Noel went back to her hospital after a week's rest. George had done more
+      for her than he suspected, for his saying: &ldquo;Life's a huge wide
+      adaptable thing!&rdquo; had stuck in her mind. Did it matter what happened
+      to her? And she used to look into the faces of the people she met, and
+      wonder what was absorbing them. What secret griefs and joys were they
+      carrying about with them? The loneliness of her own life now forced her to
+      this speculation concerning others, for she was extraordinarily lonely;
+      Gratian and George were back at work, her father must be kept at bay; with
+      Leila she felt ill at ease, for the confession had hurt her pride; and
+      family friends and acquaintances of all sorts she shunned like the plague.
+      The only person she did not succeed in avoiding was Jimmy Fort, who came
+      in one evening after dinner, bringing her a large bunch of hothouse
+      violets. But then, he did not seem to matter&mdash;too new an
+      acquaintance, too detached. Something he said made her aware that he had
+      heard of her loss, and that the violets were a token of sympathy. He
+      seemed awfully kind that evening, telling her &ldquo;tales of Araby,&rdquo;
+      and saying nothing which would shock her father. It was wonderful to be a
+      man and roll about the world as he had, and see all life, and queer
+      places, and people&mdash;Chinamen, and Gauchos, and Boers, and Mexicans.
+      It gave her a kind of thirst. And she liked to watch his brown, humorous
+      face; which seemed made of dried leather. It gave her the feeling that
+      life and experience were all that mattered, doing and seeing things; it
+      made her own trouble seem smaller; less important. She squeezed his hand
+      when she said good night: &ldquo;Thank you for my violets and for coming;
+      it was awfully kind of you! I wish I could have adventures!&rdquo; And he
+      answered: &ldquo;You will, my dear fairy princess!&rdquo; He said it
+      queerly and very kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fairy Princess! What a funny thing to call her! If he had only known!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were not many adventures to be had in those regions where she washed
+      up. Not much &ldquo;wide and adaptable life&rdquo; to take her thoughts
+      off herself. But on her journeys to and from the hospital she had more
+      than one odd little experience. One morning she noticed a poorly dressed
+      woman with a red and swollen face, flapping along Regent Street like a
+      wounded bird, and biting strangely at her hand. Hearing her groan, Noel
+      asked her what the matter was. The woman held out the hand. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+      she moaned, &ldquo;I was scrubbin' the floor and I got this great needle
+      stuck through my 'and, and it's broke off, and I can't get it out. Oh! Oh!&rdquo;
+      She bit at the needle-end, not quite visible, but almost within reach of
+      teeth, and suddenly went very white. In dismay, Noel put an arm round her,
+      and turned her into a fine chemist's shop. Several ladies were in there,
+      buying perfumes, and they looked with acerbity at this disordered dirty
+      female entering among them. Noel went up to a man behind the counter.
+      &ldquo;Please give me something quick, for this poor woman, I think she's
+      going to faint. She's run a needle through her hand, and can't get it out.&rdquo;
+      The man gave her &ldquo;something quick,&rdquo; and Noel pushed past two
+      of the dames back to where the woman was sitting. She was still
+      obstinately biting at her hand, and suddenly her chin flew up, and there,
+      between her teeth, was the needle. She took it from them with her other
+      hand, stuck it proudly in the front of her dress, and out tumbled the
+      words: &ldquo;Oh! there&mdash;I've got it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she had swallowed the draught, she looked round her, bewildered, and
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you kindly, miss!&rdquo; and shuffled out. Noel paid for the
+      draught, and followed; and, behind her, the shining shop seemed to exhale
+      a perfumed breath of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't go back to work,&rdquo; she said to the woman. &ldquo;Where
+      do you live?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ornsey, miss.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must take a 'bus and go straight home, and put your hand at
+      once into weak Condy's fluid and water. It's swelling. Here's five
+      shillings.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, miss; thank you, miss, I'm sure. It's very kind of you. It
+      does ache cruel.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it's not better this afternoon, you must go to a doctor.
+      Promise!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear, yes. 'Ere's my 'bus. Thank you kindly, miss.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel saw her borne away, still sucking at her dirty swollen hand. She
+      walked on in a glow of love for the poor woman, and hate for the ladies in
+      the chemist's shop, and forgot her own trouble till she had almost reached
+      the hospital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another November day, a Saturday, leaving early, she walked to Hyde Park.
+      The plane-trees were just at the height of their spotted beauty. Few&mdash;very
+      few-yellow leaves still hung; and the slender pretty trees seemed
+      rejoicing in their freedom from summer foliage. All their delicate boughs
+      and twigs were shaking and dancing in the wind; and their rain-washed
+      leopard-like bodies had a lithe un-English gaiety. Noel passed down their
+      line, and seated herself on a bench. Close by, an artist was painting. His
+      easel was only some three yards away from her, and she could see the
+      picture; a vista of the Park Lane houses through, the gay plane-tree
+      screen. He was a tall man, about forty, evidently foreign, with a thin,
+      long, oval, beardless face, high brow, large grey eyes which looked as if
+      he suffered from headaches and lived much within himself. He cast many
+      glances at her, and, pursuant of her new interest in &ldquo;life&rdquo;
+      she watched him discreetly; a little startled however, when, taking off
+      his broad-brimmed squash hat, he said in a broken accent:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me the liberty I take, mademoiselle, but would you so very
+      kindly allow me to make a sketch of you sitting there? I work very quick.
+      I beg you will let me. I am Belgian, and have no manners, you see.&rdquo;
+      And he smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you like,&rdquo; said Noel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you very much:&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shifted his easel, and began to draw. She felt flattered, and a little
+      fluttered. He was so pale, and had a curious, half-fed look, which moved
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been long in England?&rdquo; she said presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever since the first months of the war.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you like it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was very homesick at first. But I live in my pictures; there are
+      wonderful things in London.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you want to sketch me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter smiled again. &ldquo;Mademoiselle, youth is so mysterious.
+      Those young trees I have been painting mean so much more than the old big
+      trees. Your eyes are seeing things that have not yet happened. There is
+      Fate in them, and a look of defending us others from seeing it. We have
+      not such faces in my country; we are simpler; we do not defend our
+      expressions. The English are very mysterious. We are like children to
+      them. Yet in some ways you are like children to us. You are not people of
+      the world at all. You English have been good to us, but you do not like
+      us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I suppose you do not like us, either?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled again, and she noticed how white his teeth were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, not very much. The English do things from duty, but their
+      hearts they keep to themselves. And their Art&mdash;well, that is really
+      amusing!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know much about Art,&rdquo; Noel murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the world to me,&rdquo; said the painter, and was silent,
+      drawing with increased pace and passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is so difficult to get subjects,&rdquo; he remarked abruptly.
+      &ldquo;I cannot afford to pay models, and they are not fond of me painting
+      out of doors. If I had always a subject like you! You&mdash;you have a
+      grief, have you not?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that startling little question, Noel looked up, frowning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody has, now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter grasped his chin; his eyes had suddenly become tragical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;everybody. Tragedy is daily bread. I
+      have lost my family; they are in Belgium. How they live I do not know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry; very sorry, too, if we aren't nice to you, here. We
+      ought to be.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;What would you have? We are different.
+      That is unpardonable. An artist is always lonely, too; he has a skin fewer
+      than other people, and he sees things that they do not. People do not like
+      you to be different. If ever in your life you act differently from others,
+      you will find it so, mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel felt herself flushing. Was he reading her secret? His eyes had such a
+      peculiar, secondsighted look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you nearly finished?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, mademoiselle; I could go on for hours; but I do not wish to
+      keep you. It is cold for you, sitting there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel got up. &ldquo;May I look?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not quite recognise herself&mdash;who does?&mdash;but she saw a
+      face which affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something which was,
+      and yet was not, in front of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Lavendie,&rdquo; the painter said; &ldquo;my wife and I
+      live here,&rdquo; and he gave her a card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel could not help answering: &ldquo;My name is Noel Pierson; I live with
+      my father; here's the address&rdquo;&mdash;she found her case, and fished
+      out a card. &ldquo;My father is a clergyman; would you care to come and
+      see him? He loves music and painting.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be allowed to
+      paint you. Alas! I have no studio.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel drew back. &ldquo;I'm afraid that I work in a hospital all day, and&mdash;and
+      I don't want to be painted, thank you. But, Daddy would like to meet you,
+      I'm sure.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I can see that you're a very fine painter,&rdquo; she
+      said quickly; &ldquo;only&mdash;only&mdash;I don't want to, you see.
+      Perhaps you'd like to paint Daddy; he's got a most interesting face.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter smiled. &ldquo;He is your father, mademoiselle. May I ask you
+      one question? Why do you not want to be painted?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because&mdash;because I don't, I'm afraid.&rdquo; She held out her
+      hand. The painter bowed over it. &ldquo;Au revoir, mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Noel; &ldquo;it was awfully interesting.&rdquo;
+      And she walked away. The sky had become full of clouds round the westerly
+      sun; and the foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree branches against
+      that French-grey, golden-edged mass, was very lovely. Beauty, and the
+      troubles of others, soothed her. She felt sorry for the painter, but his
+      eyes saw too much! And his words: &ldquo;If ever you act differently from
+      others,&rdquo; made her feel him uncanny. Was it true that people always
+      disliked and condemned those who acted differently? If her old
+      school-fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat her? In
+      her father's study hung a little reproduction of a tiny picture in the
+      Louvre, a &ldquo;Rape of Europa,&rdquo; by an unknown painter&mdash;a
+      humorous delicate thing, of an enraptured; fair-haired girl mounted on a
+      prancing white bull, crossing a shallow stream, while on the bank all her
+      white girl-companions were gathered, turning half-sour, half-envious faces
+      away from that too-fearful spectacle, while one of them tried with timid
+      desperation to mount astride of a sitting cow, and follow. The face of the
+      girl on the bull had once been compared by someone with her own. She
+      thought of this picture now, and saw her school fellows-a throng of
+      shocked and wondering girls. Suppose one of them had been in her position!
+      'Should I have been turning my face away, like the rest? I wouldn't no, I
+      wouldn't,' she thought; 'I should have understood!' But she knew there was
+      a kind of false emphasis in her thought. Instinctively she felt the
+      painter right. One who acted differently from others, was lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She told her father of the encounter, adding:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect he'll come, Daddy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson answered dreamily: &ldquo;Poor fellow, I shall be glad to see him
+      if he does.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you'll sit to him, won't you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear&mdash;I?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's lonely, you know, and people aren't nice to him. Isn't it
+      hateful that people should hurt others, because they're foreign or
+      different?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on: &ldquo;I know you
+      think people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren't, of course.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not exactly charitable, Nollie.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know they're not. I think sin often just means doing things
+      differently. It's not real sin when it only hurts yourself; but that
+      doesn't prevent people condemning you, does it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what you mean, Nollie.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel bit her lips, and murmured: &ldquo;Are you sure we're really
+      Christians, Daddy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson took
+      refuge in an attempt at wit. &ldquo;I should like notice of that question,
+      Nollie, as they say in Parliament.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means you don't.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson flushed. &ldquo;We're fallible enough; but, don't get such ideas
+      into your head, my child. There's a lot of rebellious talk and writing in
+      these days....&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel clasped her hands behind her head. &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; she said,
+      looking straight before her, and speaking to the air, &ldquo;that
+      Christianity is what you do, not what you think or say. And I don't
+      believe people can be Christians when they act like others&mdash;I mean,
+      when they join together to judge and hurt people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson rose and paced the room. &ldquo;You have not seen enough of life
+      to talk like that,&rdquo; he said. But Noel went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of
+      conscientious objectors&mdash;it was horrible. Why do they treat them like
+      that, just because they disagree? Captain Fort says it's fear which makes
+      people bullies. But how can it be fear when they're hundreds to one? He
+      says man has domesticated his animals but has never succeeded in
+      domesticating himself. Man must be a wild beast, you know, or the world
+      couldn't be so awfully brutal. I don't see much difference between being
+      brutal for good reasons, and being brutal for bad ones.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile. There was something
+      fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom he had watched
+      grow up from a tiny thing. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings&mdash;sometimes!
+      But then the young generation was always something of a sealed book to
+      him; his sensitive shyness, and, still more, his cloth, placed a sort of
+      invisible barrier between him and the hearts of others, especially the
+      young. There were so many things of which he was compelled to disapprove,
+      or which at least he couldn't discuss. And they knew it too well. Until
+      these last few months he had never realised that his own daughters had
+      remained as undiscovered by him as the interior of Brazil. And now that he
+      perceived this, he was bewildered, yet could not imagine how to get on
+      terms with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting nothing of the
+      hard fact which was altering her&mdash;vaguely jealous, anxious, pained.
+      And when she had gone up to bed, he roamed up and down the room a long
+      time, thinking. He longed for a friend to confide in, and consult; but he
+      knew no one. He shrank from them all, as too downright, bluff, and active;
+      too worldly and unaesthetic; or too stiff and narrow. Amongst the younger
+      men in his profession he was often aware of faces which attracted him, but
+      one could not confide deep personal questions to men half one's age. But
+      of his own generation, or his elders, he knew not one to whom he could
+      have gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Leila was deep in her new draught of life. When she fell in love it had
+      always been over head and ears, and so far her passion had always burnt
+      itself out before that of her partner. This had been, of course, a great
+      advantage to her. Not that Leila had ever expected her passions to burn
+      themselves out. When she fell in love she had always thought it was for
+      always. This time she was sure it was, surer than she had ever been. Jimmy
+      Fort seemed to her the man she had been looking for all her life. He was
+      not so good-looking as either Farie or Lynch, but beside him these others
+      seemed to her now almost ridiculous. Indeed they did not figure at all,
+      they shrank, they withered, they were husks, together with the others for
+      whom she had known passing weaknesses. There was only one man in the world
+      for her now, and would be for evermore. She did not idealise him either,
+      it was more serious than that; she was thrilled by his voice, and his
+      touch, she dreamed of him, longed for him when he was not with her. She
+      worried, too, for she was perfectly aware that he was not half as fond of
+      her as she was of him. Such a new experience puzzled her, kept her
+      instincts painfully on the alert. It was perhaps just this uncertainty
+      about his affection which made him seem more precious than any of the
+      others. But there was ever the other reason, too-consciousness that Time
+      was after her, and this her last grand passion. She watched him as a
+      mother-cat watches her kitten, without seeming to, of course, for she had
+      much experience. She had begun to have a curious secret jealousy of Noel
+      though why she could not have said. It was perhaps merely incidental to
+      her age, or sprang from that vague resemblance between her and one who
+      outrivalled even what she had been as a girl; or from the occasional
+      allusions Fort made to what he called &ldquo;that little fairy princess.&rdquo;
+      Something intangible, instinctive, gave her that jealousy. Until the death
+      of her young cousin's lover she had felt safe, for she knew that Jimmy
+      Fort would not hanker after another man's property; had he not proved that
+      in old days, with herself, by running away from her? And she had often
+      regretted having told him of Cyril Morland's death. One day she determined
+      to repair that error. It was at the Zoo, where they often went on Sunday
+      afternoons. They were standing before a creature called the meercat, which
+      reminded them both of old days on the veldt. Without turning her head she
+      said, as if to the little animal: &ldquo;Do you know that your fairy
+      princess, as you call her, is going to have what is known as a war-baby?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of his &ldquo;What!&rdquo; gave her quite a stab. It was so
+      utterly horrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said stubbornly: &ldquo;She came and told me all about it. The boy is
+      dead, as you know. Yes, terrible, isn't it?&rdquo; And she looked at him.
+      His face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That lovely child! But it's impossible!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I refuse to believe it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you it is so,&rdquo; she said angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a ghastly shame!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was her own doing; she said so, herself.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And her father&mdash;the padre! My God!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt. She had thought it would
+      disgust him, cure him of any little tendency to romanticise that child;
+      and now she perceived that it was rousing in him, instead, a dangerous
+      compassion. She could have bitten her tongue out for having spoken. When
+      he got on the high horse of some championship, he was not to be trusted,
+      she had found that out; was even finding it out bitterly in her own
+      relations with him, constantly aware that half her hold on him, at least,
+      lay in his sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her lurking dread of
+      being flung on the beach, by age. Only ten minutes ago he had uttered a
+      tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed unhappy. And now she had
+      roused that dangerous side of him in favour of Noel. What an idiot she had
+      been!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't look like that, Jimmy. I'm sorry I told you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he muttered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I do think that's the limit. What's to be done for her?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila answered softly: &ldquo;Nothing, I'm afraid. Do you love me?&rdquo;
+      And she pressed his hand hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Leila thought: 'If I were that meercat he'd have taken more notice of
+      my paw!' Her heart began suddenly to ache, and she walked on to the next
+      cage with head up, and her mouth hard set.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmy Fort walked away from Camelot Mansions that evening in extreme
+      discomfort of mind. Leila had been so queer that he had taken leave
+      immediately after supper. She had refused to talk about Noel; had even
+      seemed angry when he had tried to. How extraordinary some women were! Did
+      they think that a man could hear of a thing like that about such a dainty
+      young creature without being upset! It was the most perfectly damnable
+      news! What on earth would she do&mdash;poor little fairy princess! Down
+      had come her house of cards with a vengeance! The whole of her life&mdash;the
+      whole of her life! With her bringing-up and her father and all&mdash;it
+      seemed inconceivable that she could ever survive it. And Leila had been
+      almost callous about the monstrous business. Women were hard to each
+      other! Bad enough, these things, when it was a simple working girl, but
+      this dainty, sheltered, beautiful child! No, it was altogether too strong&mdash;too
+      painful! And following an impulse which he could not resist, he made his
+      way to the old Square. But having reached the house, he nearly went away
+      again. While he stood hesitating with his hand on the bell, a girl and a
+      soldier passed, appearing as if by magic out of the moonlit November mist,
+      blurred and solid shapes embraced, then vanished into it again, leaving
+      the sound of footsteps. Fort jerked the bell. He was shown into what
+      seemed, to one coming out of that mist, to be a brilliant, crowded room,
+      though in truth there were but two lamps and five people in it. They were
+      sitting round the fire, talking, and paused when he came in. When he had
+      shaken hands with Pierson and been introduced to &ldquo;my daughter
+      Gratian&rdquo; and a man in khaki &ldquo;my son-in-law George Laird,&rdquo;
+      to a tall thin-faced, foreign-looking man in a black stock and seemingly
+      no collar, he went up to Noel, who had risen from a chair before the fire.
+      'No!' he thought, 'I've dreamed it, or Leila has lied!' She was so
+      perfectly the self-possessed, dainty maiden he remembered. Even the feel
+      of her hand was the same-warm and confident; and sinking into a chair, he
+      said: &ldquo;Please go on, and let me chip in.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were quarrelling about the Universe, Captain Fort,&rdquo; said
+      the man in khaki; &ldquo;delighted to have your help. I was just saying
+      that this particular world has no particular importance, no more than a
+      newspaper-seller would accord to it if it were completely destroyed
+      tomorrow&mdash;''.rrible catastrophe, total destruction of the world&mdash;six
+      o'clock edition-pyper!' I say that it will become again the nebula out of
+      which it was formed, and by friction with other nebula re-form into a
+      fresh shape and so on ad infinitum&mdash;but I can't explain why. My wife
+      wonders if it exists at all except in the human mind&mdash;but she can't
+      explain what the human mind is. My father-in-law thinks that it is God's
+      hobby&mdash;but he can't explain who or what God is. Nollie is silent. And
+      Monsieur Lavendie hasn't yet told us what he thinks. What do you think,
+      monsieur?&rdquo; The thin-faced, big-eyed man put up his hand to his high,
+      veined brow as if he had a headache, reddened, and began to speak in
+      French, which Fort followed with difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me the Universe is a limitless artist, monsieur, who from all
+      time and to all time is ever expressing himself in differing forms&mdash;always
+      trying to make a masterpiece, and generally failing. For me this world,
+      and all the worlds, are like ourselves, and the flowers and trees&mdash;little
+      separate works of art, more or less perfect, whose little lives run their
+      course, and are spilled or powdered back into this Creative Artist, whence
+      issue ever fresh attempts at art. I agree with Monsieur Laird, if I
+      understand him right; but I agree also with Madame Laird, if I understand
+      her. You see, I think mind and matter are one, or perhaps there is no such
+      thing as either mind or matter, only growth and decay and growth again,
+      for ever and ever; but always conscious growth&mdash;an artist expressing
+      himself in millions of ever-changing forms; decay and death as we call
+      them, being but rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide, which must ever
+      come between two rising tides, or the night which comes between two days.
+      But the next day is never the same as the day before, nor the tide as the
+      last tide; so the little shapes of the world and of ourselves, these works
+      of art by the Eternal Artist, are never renewed in the same form, are
+      never twice alike, but always fresh-fresh worlds, fresh individuals, fresh
+      flowers, fresh everything. I do not see anything depressing in that. To me
+      it would be depressing to think that I would go on living after death, or
+      live again in a new body, myself yet not myself. How stale that would be!
+      When I finish a picture it is inconceivable to me that this picture should
+      ever become another picture, or that one can divide the expression from
+      the mind-stuff it has expressed. The Great Artist who is the whole of
+      Everything, is ever in fresh effort to achieve new things. He is as a
+      fountain who throws up new drops, no two ever alike, which fall back into
+      the water, flow into the pipe, and so are thrown up again in fresh-shaped
+      drops. But I cannot explain why there should be this Eternal Energy, ever
+      expressing itself in fresh individual shapes, this Eternal Working Artist,
+      instead of nothing at all&mdash;just empty dark for always; except indeed
+      that it must be one thing or the other, either all or nothing; and it
+      happens to be this and not that, the all and not the nothing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped speaking, and his big eyes, which had fixed themselves on
+      Fort's face, seemed to the latter not to be seeing him at all, but to rest
+      on something beyond. The man in khaki, who had risen and was standing with
+      his hand on his wife's shoulder, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo, monsieur; Jolly well put from the artist's point of view.
+      The idea is pretty, anyway; but is there any need for an idea at all?
+      Things are; and we have just to take them.&rdquo; Fort had the impression
+      of something dark and writhing; the thin black form of his host, who had
+      risen and come close to the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot admit,&rdquo; he was saying, &ldquo;the identity of the
+      Creator with the created. God exists outside ourselves. Nor can I admit
+      that there is no defnite purpose and fulfilment. All is shaped to His
+      great ends. I think we are too given to spiritual pride. The world has
+      lost reverence; I regret it, I bitterly regret it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I rejoice at it,&rdquo; said the man in khaki. &ldquo;Now, Captain
+      Fort, your turn to bat!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort, who had been looking at Noel, gave himself a shake, and said:
+      &ldquo;I think what monsieur calls expression, I call fighting. I suspect
+      the Universe of being simply a long fight, a sum of conquests and defeats.
+      Conquests leading to defeats, defeats to conquests. I want to win while
+      I'm alive, and because I want to win, I want to live on after death. Death
+      is a defeat. I don't want to admit it. While I have that instinct, I don't
+      think I shall really die; when I lose it, I think I shall.&rdquo; He was
+      conscious of Noel's face turning towards him, but had the feeling that she
+      wasn't really listening. &ldquo;I suspect that what we call spirit is just
+      the fighting instinct; that what we call matter is the mood of lying down.
+      Whether, as Mr. Pierson says, God is outside us, or, as monsieur thinks,
+      we are all part of God, I don't know, I'm sure.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! There we are!&rdquo; said the man in khaki. &ldquo;We all speak
+      after our temperaments, and none of us know. The religions of the world
+      are just the poetic expressions of certain strongly marked temperaments.
+      Monsieur was a poet just now, and his is the only temperament which has
+      never yet been rammed down the world's throat in the form of religion. Go
+      out and proclaim your views from the housetops, monsieur, and see what
+      happens.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter shook his head with a smile which seemed to Fort very bright
+      on the surface, and very sad underneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Non, monsieur,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;the artist does not wish to
+      impose his temperament. Difference of temperament is the very essence of
+      his joy, and his belief in life. Without difference there would be no life
+      for him. 'Tout casse, tout lasse,' but change goes on for ever: We artists
+      reverence change, monsieur; we reverence the newness of each morning, of
+      each night, of each person, of each expression of energy. Nothing is final
+      for us; we are eager for all and always for more. We are in love, you see,
+      even with-death.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a silence; then Fort heard Pierson murmur:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is beautiful, monsieur; but oh! how wrong!&rdquo; &ldquo;And
+      what do you think, Nollie?&rdquo; said the man in khaki suddenly. The girl
+      had been sitting very still in her low chair, with her hands crossed in
+      her lap, her eyes on the fire, and the lamplight shining down on her fair
+      hair; she looked up, startled, and her eyes met Fort's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know; I wasn't listening.&rdquo; Something moved in him, a
+      kind of burning pity, a rage of protection. He said quickly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These are times of action. Philosophy seems to mean nothing
+      nowadays. The one thing is to hate tyranny and cruelty, and protect
+      everything that's weak and lonely. It's all that's left to make life worth
+      living, when all the packs of all the world are out for blood.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel was listening now, and he went on fervently: &ldquo;Why! Even we who
+      started out to fight this Prussian pack, have caught the pack feeling&mdash;so
+      that it's hunting all over the country, on every sort of scent. It's a
+      most infectious thing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot see that we are being infected, Captain Fort.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid we are, Mr. Pierson. The great majority of people are
+      always inclined to run with the hounds; the pressure's great just now; the
+      pack spirit's in the air.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson shook his head. &ldquo;No, I cannot see it,&rdquo; he repeated;
+      &ldquo;it seems to me that we are all more brotherly, and more tolerant.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! monsieur le cure,&rdquo; Fort heard the painter say very
+      gently, &ldquo;it is difficult for a good man to see the evil round him.
+      There are those whom the world's march leaves apart, and reality cannot
+      touch. They walk with God, and the bestialities of us animals are
+      fantastic to them. The spirit of the pack, as monsieur says, is in the
+      air. I see all human nature now, running with gaping mouths and red
+      tongues lolling out, their breath and their cries spouting thick before
+      them. On whom they will fall next&mdash;one never knows; the innocent with
+      the guilty. Perhaps if you were to see some one dear to you devoured
+      before your eyes, monsieur le cure, you would feel it too; and yet I do
+      not know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expression at that
+      moment was very strange, searching, half frightened. No! Leila had not
+      lied, and he had not dreamed! That thing was true!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the Square, he
+      could see nothing but her face and form before him in the moonlight: its
+      soft outline, fair colouring, slender delicacy, and the brooding of the
+      big grey eyes. He had already crossed New Oxford Street and was some way
+      down towards the Strand, when a voice behind him murmured: &ldquo;Ah!
+      c'est vous, monsieur!&rdquo; and the painter loomed up at his elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going my way?&rdquo; said Fort. &ldquo;I go slowly, I'm
+      afraid.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The slower the better, monsieur. London is so beautiful in the
+      dark. It is the despair of the painter&mdash;these moonlit nights. There
+      are moments when one feels that reality does not exist. All is in dreams&mdash;like
+      the face of that young lady.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort stared sharply round at him. &ldquo;Oh! She strikes you like that,
+      does she?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! What a charming figure! What an atmosphere of the past and
+      future round her! And she will not let me paint her! Well, perhaps only
+      Mathieu Maris.&rdquo; He raised his broad Bohemian hat, and ran his
+      fingers through his hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Fort, &ldquo;she'd make a wonderful picture. I'm
+      not a judge of Art, but I can see that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter smiled, and went on in his rapid French:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has youth and age all at once&mdash;that is rare. Her father is
+      an interesting man, too; I am trying to paint him; he is very difficult.
+      He sits lost in some kind of vacancy of his own; a man whose soul has gone
+      before him somewhere, like that of his Church, escaped from this age of
+      machines, leaving its body behind&mdash;is it not? He is so kind; a saint,
+      I think. The other clergymen I see passing in the street are not at all
+      like him; they look buttoned-up and busy, with faces of men who might be
+      schoolmasters or lawyers, or even soldiers&mdash;men of this world. Do you
+      know this, monsieur&mdash;it is ironical, but it is true, I think a man
+      cannot be a successful priest unless he is a man of this world. I do not
+      see any with that look of Monsieur Pierson, a little tortured within, and
+      not quite present. He is half an artist, really a lover of music, that
+      man. I am painting him at the piano; when he is playing his face is alive,
+      but even then, so far away. To me, monsieur, he is exactly like a
+      beautiful church which knows it is being deserted. I find him pathetic. Je
+      suis socialiste, but I have always an aesthetic admiration for that old
+      Church, which held its children by simple emotion. The times have changed;
+      it can no longer hold them so; it stands in the dusk, with its spire to a
+      heaven which exists no more, its bells, still beautiful but out of tune
+      with the music of the streets. It is something of that which I wish to get
+      into my picture of Monsieur Pierson; and sapristi! it is difficult!&rdquo;
+      Fort grunted assent. So far as he could make out the painter's words, it
+      seemed to him a large order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To do it, you see,&rdquo; went on the painter, &ldquo;one should
+      have the proper background&mdash;these currents of modern life and modern
+      types, passing him and leaving him untouched. There is no illusion, and no
+      dreaming, in modern life. Look at this street. La, la!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the darkened Strand, hundreds of khaki-clad figures and girls were
+      streaming by, and all their voices had a hard, half-jovial vulgarity. The
+      motor-cabs and buses pushed along remorselessly; newspaper-sellers
+      muttered their ceaseless invitations. Again the painter made his gesture
+      of despair: &ldquo;How am I to get into my picture this modern life, which
+      washes round him as round that church, there, standing in the middle of
+      the street? See how the currents sweep round it, as if to wash it away;
+      yet it stands, seeming not to see them. If I were a phantasist, it would
+      be easy enough: but to be a phantasist is too simple for me&mdash;those
+      romantic gentlemen bring what they like from anywhere, to serve their
+      ends. Moi, je suis realiste. And so, monsieur, I have invented an idea. I
+      am painting over his head while he sits there at the piano a picture
+      hanging on the wall&mdash;of one of these young town girls who have no
+      mysteriousness at all, no youth; nothing but a cheap knowledge and
+      defiance, and good humour. He is looking up at it, but he does not see it.
+      I will make the face of that girl the face of modern life, and he shall
+      sit staring at it, seeing nothing. What do you think of my idea?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fort had begun to feel something of the revolt which the man of action
+      so soon experiences when he listens to an artist talking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sounds all right,&rdquo; he said abruptly; &ldquo;all the same,
+      monsieur, all my sympathy is with modern life. Take these young girls, and
+      these Tommies. For all their feather-pated vulgarity and they are damned
+      vulgar, I must say&mdash;they're marvellous people; they do take the rough
+      with the smooth; they're all 'doing their bit,' you know, and facing this
+      particularly beastly world. Aesthetically, I daresay, they're deplorable,
+      but can you say that on the whole their philosophy isn't an advance on
+      anything we've had up till now? They worship nothing, it's true; but they
+      keep their ends up marvellously.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter, who seemed to feel the wind blowing cold on his ideas,
+      shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not concerned with that, monsieur; I set down what I see;
+      better or worse, I do not know. But look at this!&rdquo; And he pointed
+      down the darkened and moonlit street. It was all jewelled and enamelled
+      with little spots and splashes of subdued red and green-blue light, and
+      the downward orange glow of the high lamps&mdash;like an enchanted
+      dream-street peopled by countless moving shapes, which only came to
+      earth-reality when seen close to. The painter drew his breath in with a
+      hiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;what beauty! And they don't see it&mdash;not
+      one in a thousand! Pity, isn't it? Beauty is the holy thing!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;Every man to his vision!&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;My leg's beginning to bother me; I'm afraid I must take a
+      cab. Here's my address; any time you like to come. I'm often in about
+      seven. I can't take you anywhere, I suppose?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A thousand thanks, monsieur; but I go north. I loved your words
+      about the pack. I often wake at night and hear the howling of all the
+      packs of the world. Those who are by nature gentle nowadays feel they are
+      strangers in a far land. Good night, monsieur!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took off his queer hat, bowed low, and crossed out into the Strand,
+      like one who had come in a dream, and faded out with the waking. Fort
+      hailed a cab, and went home, still seeing Noel's face. There was one, if
+      you liked, waiting to be thrown to the wolves, waiting for the world's
+      pack to begin howling round her&mdash;that lovely child; and the first,
+      the loudest of all the pack, perhaps, must be her own father, the lean,
+      dark figure with the gentle face, and the burnt bright eyes. What a
+      ghastly business! His dreams that night were not such as Leila would have
+      approved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When in the cupboard there is a real and very bony skeleton, carefully
+      kept from the sight of a single member of the family, the position of that
+      member is liable to become lonely. But Pierson, who had been lonely
+      fifteen years, did not feel it so much, perhaps, as most men would have.
+      In his dreamy nature there was a curious self-sufficiency, which only
+      violent shocks disturbed, and he went on with his routine of duty, which
+      had become for him as set as the pavements he trod on his way to and from
+      it. It was not exactly true, as the painter had said, that this routine
+      did not bring him into touch with life. After all he saw people when they
+      were born, when they married, when they died. He helped them when they
+      wanted money, and when they were ill; he told their children Bible stories
+      on Sunday afternoons; he served those who were in need with soup and bread
+      from his soup kitchen. He never spared himself in any way, and his ears
+      were always at the service of their woes. And yet he did not understand
+      them, and they knew that. It was as though he, or they, were colour-blind.
+      The values were all different. He was seeing one set of objects, they
+      another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One street of his parish touched a main line of thoroughfare, and formed a
+      little part of the new hunting-grounds of women, who, chased forth from
+      their usual haunts by the Authorities under pressure of the country's
+      danger, now pursued their calling in the dark. This particular evil had
+      always been a sort of nightmare to Pierson. The starvation which ruled his
+      own existence inclined him to a particularly severe view and severity was
+      not his strong point. In consequence there was ever within him a sort of
+      very personal and poignant struggle going on beneath that seeming attitude
+      of rigid disapproval. He joined the hunters, as it were, because he was
+      afraid-not, of course, of his own instincts, for he was fastidious, a
+      gentleman, and a priest, but of being lenient to a sin, to something which
+      God abhorred: He was, as it were, bound to take a professional view of
+      this particular offence. When in his walks abroad he passed one of these
+      women, he would unconsciously purse his lips, and frown. The darkness of
+      the streets seemed to lend them such power, such unholy sovereignty over
+      the night. They were such a danger to the soldiers, too; and in turn, the
+      soldiers were such a danger to the lambs of his flock. Domestic disasters
+      in his parish came to his ears from time to time; cases of young girls
+      whose heads were turned by soldiers, so that they were about to become
+      mothers. They seemed to him pitiful indeed; but he could not forgive them
+      for their giddiness, for putting temptation in the way of brave young men,
+      fighting, or about to fight. The glamour which surrounded soldiers was not
+      excuse enough. When the babies were born, and came to his notice, he
+      consulted a Committee he had formed, of three married and two maiden
+      ladies, who visited the mothers, and if necessary took the babies into a
+      creche; for those babies had a new value to the country, and were not&mdash;poor
+      little things!&mdash;to be held responsible for their mothers' faults. He
+      himself saw little of the young mothers; shy of them, secretly afraid,
+      perhaps, of not being censorious enough. But once in a way Life set him
+      face to face with one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On New Year's Eve he was sitting in his study after tea, at that hour
+      which he tried to keep for his parishioners, when a Mrs. Mitchett was
+      announced, a small bookseller's wife, whom he knew for an occasional
+      Communicant. She came in, accompanied by a young dark-eyed girl in a loose
+      mouse-coloured coat. At his invitation they sat down in front of the long
+      bookcase on the two green leather chairs which had grown worn in the
+      service of the parish; and, screwed round in his chair at the bureau, with
+      his long musician's fingers pressed together, he looked at them and
+      waited. The woman had taken out her handkerchief, and was wiping her eyes;
+      but the girl sat quiet, as the mouse she somewhat resembled in that coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Mrs. Mitchett?&rdquo; He said gently, at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman put away her handkerchief, sniffed resolutely, and began:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's 'Ilda, sir. Such a thing Mitchett and me never could 'ave
+      expected, comin' on us so sudden. I thought it best to bring 'er round,
+      poor girl. Of course, it's all the war. I've warned 'er a dozen times; but
+      there it is, comin' next month, and the man in France.&rdquo; Pierson
+      instinctively averted his gaze from the girl, who had not moved her eyes
+      from his face, which she scanned with a seeming absence of interest, as if
+      she had long given up thinking over her lot, and left it now to others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is sad,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;very, very sad.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; murmured Mrs. Mitchett; &ldquo;that's what I tell
+      'Ilda.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's glance, lowered for a second, resumed its impersonal scrutiny
+      of Pierson's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the man's name and regiment? Perhaps we can get leave for
+      him to come home and marry Hilda at once.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Mitchett sniffed. &ldquo;She won't give it, sir. Now, 'Ilda, give it
+      to Mr. Pierson.&rdquo; And her voice had a real note of entreaty. The girl
+      shook her head. Mrs. Mitchett murmured dolefully: &ldquo;That's 'ow she
+      is, sir; not a word will she say. And as I tell her, we can only think
+      there must 'ave been more than one. And that does put us to shame so!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But still the girl made no sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak to her, sir; I'm really at my wit's end.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why won't you tell us?&rdquo; said Pierson. &ldquo;The man will
+      want to do the right thing, 'I'm sure.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl shook her head, and spoke for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know his name.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Mitchett's face twitched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear!&rdquo; she said: &ldquo;Think of that! She's never said
+      as much to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not know his name?&rdquo; Pierson murmured. &ldquo;But how&mdash;how
+      could you&mdash;&rdquo; he stopped, but his face had darkened. &ldquo;Surely
+      you would never have done such a thing without affection? Come, tell me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know it,&rdquo; the girl repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's these Parks,&rdquo; said Mrs. Mitchett, from behind her
+      handkerchief. &ldquo;And to think that this'll be our first grandchild and
+      all! 'Ilda is difficult; as quiet, as quiet; but that stubborn&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson looked at the girl, who seemed, if anything, less interested than
+      ever. This impenetrability and something mulish in her attitude annoyed
+      him. &ldquo;I can't think,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;how you could so have
+      forgotten yourself. It's truly grievous.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Mitchett murmured: &ldquo;Yes, sir; the girls gets it into their
+      heads that there's going to be no young men for them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right,&rdquo; said the girl sullenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson's lips grew tighter. &ldquo;Well, what can I do for you, Mrs.
+      Mitchett?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Does your daughter come to church?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Mitchett shook her head mournfully. &ldquo;Never since she had her
+      byke.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson rose from his chair. The old story! Control and discipline
+      undermined, and these bitter apples the result!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if you need our creche, you have only
+      to come to me,&rdquo; and he turned to the girl. &ldquo;And you&mdash;won't
+      you let this dreadful experience move your heart? My dear girl, we must
+      all master ourselves, our passions, and our foolish wilfulness, especially
+      in these times when our country needs us strong, and self-disciplined, not
+      thinking of ourselves. I'm sure you're a good girl at heart.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's dark eyes, unmoved from his face, roused in him a spasm of
+      nervous irritation. &ldquo;Your soul is in great danger, and you're very
+      unhappy, I can see. Turn to God for help, and in His mercy everything will
+      be made so different for you&mdash;so very different! Come!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl said with a sort of surprising quietness: &ldquo;I don't want the
+      baby!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The remark staggered him, almost as if she had uttered a hideous oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ilda was in munitions,&rdquo; said her mother in an explanatory
+      voice: &ldquo;earnin' a matter of four pound a week. Oh! dear, it is a
+      waste an' all!&rdquo; A queer, rather terrible little smile curled
+      Pierson's lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A judgment!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Good evening, Mrs. Mitchett.
+      Good evening, Hilda. If you want me when the time comes, send for me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood up; he shook hands with them; and was suddenly aware that the
+      door was open, and Noel standing there. He had heard no sound; and how
+      long she had been there he could not tell. There was a singular fixity in
+      her face and attitude. She was staring at the girl, who, as she passed,
+      lifted her face, so that the dark eyes and the grey eyes met. The door was
+      shut, and Noel stood there alone with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't you early, my child?&rdquo; said Pierson. &ldquo;You came in
+      very quietly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I heard.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A slight shock went through him at the tone of her voice; her face had
+      that possessed look which he always dreaded. &ldquo;What did you hear?&rdquo;
+      he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you say: 'A judgment!' You'll say the same to me, won't
+      you? Only, I do want my baby.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was standing with her back to the door, over which a dark curtain
+      hung; her face looked young and small against its stuff, her eyes very
+      large. With one hand she plucked at her blouse, just over her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson stared at her, and gripped the back of the chair he had been
+      sitting in. A lifetime of repression served him in the half-realised
+      horror of that moment. He stammered out the single word&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's quite true,&rdquo; she said, turned round, and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson had a sort of vertigo; if he had moved, he must have fallen down.
+      Nollie! He slid round and sank into his chair, and by some horrible cruel
+      fiction of his nerves, he seemed to feel Noel on his knee, as, when a
+      little girl, she had been wont to sit, with her fair hair fluffing against
+      his cheek. He seemed to feel that hair tickling his skin; it used to be
+      the greatest comfort he had known since her mother died. At that moment
+      his pride shrivelled like a flower held to a flame; all that abundant
+      secret pride of a father who loves and admires, who worships still a dead
+      wife in the children she has left him; who, humble by nature, yet never
+      knows how proud he is till the bitter thing happens; all the long pride of
+      the priest who, by dint of exhortation and remonstrance has coated himself
+      in a superiority he hardly suspects&mdash;all this pride shrivelled in
+      him. Then something writhed and cried within, as a tortured beast cries,
+      at loss to know why it is being tortured. How many times has not a man
+      used those words: &ldquo;My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me!&rdquo;
+      He sprang up and tried to pace his way out of this cage of confusion: His
+      thoughts and feelings made the strangest medley, spiritual and worldly&mdash;Social
+      ostracism&mdash;her soul in peril&mdash;a trial sent by God! The future!
+      Imagination failed him. He went to his little piano, opened it, closed it
+      again; took his hat, and stole out. He walked fast, without knowing where.
+      It was very cold&mdash;a clear, bitter evening. Silent rapid motion in the
+      frosty air was some relief. As Noel had fled from him, having uttered her
+      news, so did he fly from her. The afflicted walk fast. He was soon down by
+      the river, and turned West along its wall. The moon was up, bright and
+      nearly full, and the steel-like shimmer of its light burnished the ebbing
+      water. A cruel night! He came to the Obelisk, and leaned against it,
+      overcome by a spasm of realisation. He seemed to see his dead wife's face
+      staring at him out of the past, like an accusation. &ldquo;How have you
+      cared for Nollie, that she should have come to this?&rdquo; It became the
+      face of the moonlit sphinx, staring straight at him, the broad dark face
+      with wide nostrils, cruel lips, full eyes blank of pupils, all livened and
+      whitened by the moonlight&mdash;an embodiment of the marvellous unseeing
+      energy of Life, twisting and turning hearts without mercy. He gazed into
+      those eyes with a sort of scared defiance. The great clawed paws of the
+      beast, the strength and remorseless serenity of that crouching creature
+      with human head, made living by his imagination and the moonlight, seemed
+      to him like a temptation to deny God, like a refutation of human virtue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, the sense of beauty stirred in him; he moved where he could see its
+      flanks coated in silver by the moonlight, the ribs and the great muscles,
+      and the tail with tip coiled over the haunch, like the head of a serpent.
+      It was weirdly living; fine and cruel, that great man-made thing. It
+      expressed something in the soul of man, pitiless and remote from love&mdash;or
+      rather, the remorselessness which man had seen, lurking within man's fate.
+      Pierson recoiled from it, and resumed his march along the Embankment,
+      almost deserted in the bitter cold. He came to where, in the opening of
+      the Underground railway, he could see the little forms of people moving,
+      little orange and red lights glowing. The sight arrested him by its warmth
+      and motion. Was it not all a dream? That woman and her daughter, had they
+      really come? Had not Noel been but an apparition, her words a trick which
+      his nerves had played him? Then, too vividly again, he saw her face
+      against the dark stuff of the curtain, the curve of her hand plucking at
+      her blouse, heard the sound of his own horrified: &ldquo;Nollie!&rdquo; No
+      illusion, no deception! The edifice of his life was in the dust. And a
+      queer and ghastly company of faces came about him; faces he had thought
+      friendly, of good men and women whom he knew, yet at that moment did not
+      know, all gathered round Noel, with fingers pointing at her. He staggered
+      back from that vision, could not bear it, could not recognise this
+      calamity. With a sort of comfort, yet an aching sense of unreality, his
+      mind flew to all those summer holidays spent in Scotland, Ireland,
+      Cornwall, Wales, by mountain and lake, with his two girls; what sunsets,
+      and turning leaves, birds, beasts, and insects they had watched together!
+      From their youthful companionship, their eagerness, their confidence in
+      him, he had known so much warmth and pleasure. If all those memories were
+      true, surely this could not be true. He felt suddenly that he must hurry
+      back, go straight to Noel, tell her that she had been cruel to him, or
+      assure himself that, for the moment, she had been insane: His temper rose
+      suddenly, took fire. He felt anger against her, against every one he knew,
+      against life itself. Thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his thin
+      black overcoat, he plunged into that narrow glowing tunnel of the station
+      booking-office, which led back to the crowded streets. But by the time he
+      reached home his anger had evaporated; he felt nothing but utter
+      lassitude. It was nine o'clock, and the maids had cleared the dining
+      table. In despair Noel had gone up to her room. He had no courage left,
+      and sat down supperless at his little piano, letting his fingers find soft
+      painful harmonies, so that Noel perhaps heard the faint far thrumming of
+      that music through uneasy dreams. And there he stayed, till it became time
+      for him to go forth to the Old Year's Midnight Service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he returned, Pierson wrapped himself in a rug and lay down on the old
+      sofa in his study. The maid, coming in next morning to &ldquo;do&rdquo;
+      the grate, found him still asleep. She stood contemplating him in awe; a
+      broad-faced, kindly, fresh-coloured girl. He lay with his face resting on
+      his hand, his dark, just grizzling hair unruffled, as if he had not
+      stirred all night; his other hand clutched the rug to his chest, and his
+      booted feet protruded beyond it. To her young eyes he looked rather
+      appallingly neglected. She gazed with interest at the hollows in his
+      cheeks, and the furrows in his brow, and the lips, dark-moustached and
+      bearded, so tightly compressed, even in sleep. Being holy didn't make a
+      man happy, it seemed! What fascinated her were the cindery eyelashes
+      resting on the cheeks, the faint movement of face and body as he breathed,
+      the gentle hiss of breath escaping through the twitching nostrils. She
+      moved nearer, bending down over him, with the childlike notion of counting
+      those lashes. Her lips parted in readiness to say: &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; if he
+      waked. Something in his face, and the little twitches which passed over
+      it, made her feel &ldquo;that sorry&rdquo; for him. He was a gentleman,
+      had money, preached to her every Sunday, and was not so very old&mdash;what
+      more could a man want? And yet&mdash;he looked so tired, with those
+      cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pitied him; helpless and lonely he seemed to her, asleep there instead
+      of going to bed properly. And sighing, she tiptoed towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that you, Bessie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl turned: &ldquo;Yes, sir. I'm sorry I woke you, sir. 'Appy New
+      Year, sir!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes. A Happy New Year, Bessie.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw his usual smile, saw it die, and a fixed look come on his face; it
+      scared her, and she hurried away. Pierson had remembered. For full five
+      minutes he lay there staring at nothing. Then he rose, folded the rug
+      mechanically, and looked at the clock. Eight! He went upstairs, knocked on
+      Noel's door, and entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blinds were drawn up, but she was still in bed. He stood looking down
+      at her. &ldquo;A Happy New Year, my child!&rdquo; he said; and he trembled
+      all over, shivering visibly. She looked so young and innocent, so
+      round-faced and fresh, after her night's sleep, that the thought sprang up
+      in him again: 'It must have been a dream!' She did not move, but a slow
+      flush came up in her cheeks. No dream&mdash;dream! He said tremulously:
+      &ldquo;I can't realise. I&mdash;I hoped I had heard wrong. Didn't I,
+      Nollie? Didn't I?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She just shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me&mdash;everything,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;for God's sake!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw her lips moving, and caught the murmur: &ldquo;There 's nothing
+      more. Gratian and George know, and Leila. It can't be undone, Daddy.
+      Perhaps I wouldn't have wanted to make sure, if you hadn't tried to stop
+      Cyril and me&mdash;and I'm glad sometimes, because I shall have something
+      of his&mdash;&rdquo; She looked up at him. &ldquo;After all, it's the
+      same, really; only, there's no ring. It's no good talking to me now, as if
+      I hadn't been thinking of this for ages. I'm used to anything you can say;
+      I've said it to myself, you see. There's nothing but to make the best of
+      it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hot hand came out from under the bedclothes, and clutched his very
+      tight. Her flush had deepened, and her eyes seemed to him to glitter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Daddy! You do look tired! Haven't you been to bed? Poor Daddy!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That hot clutch, and the words: &ldquo;Poor Daddy!&rdquo; brought tears
+      into his eyes. They rolled slowly down to his beard, and he covered his
+      face with the other hand. Her grip tightened convulsively; suddenly she
+      dragged it to her lips, kissed it, and let it drop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't!&rdquo; she said, and turned away her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson effaced his emotion, and said quite calmly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall you wish to be at home, my dear, or to go elsewhere?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel had begun to toss her head on her pillow, like a feverish child whose
+      hair gets in its eyes and mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I don't know; what does it matter?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kestrel; would you like to go there? Your aunt&mdash;I could write
+      to her.&rdquo; Noel stared at him a moment; a struggle seemed going on
+      within her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I would. Only, not Uncle Bob.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps your uncle would come up here, and keep me company.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her face away, and that tossing movement of the limbs beneath
+      the clothes began again. &ldquo;I don't care,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;anywhere&mdash;it
+      doesn't matter.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson put his chilly hand on her forehead. &ldquo;Gently!&rdquo; he
+      said, and knelt down by the bed. &ldquo;Merciful Father,&rdquo; he
+      murmured, &ldquo;give us strength to bear this dreadful trial. Keep my
+      beloved child safe, and bring her peace; and give me to understand how I
+      have done wrong, how I have failed towards Thee, and her. In all things
+      chasten and strengthen her, my child, and me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His thoughts moved on in the confused, inarticulate suspense of prayer,
+      till he heard her say: &ldquo;You haven't failed; why do you talk of
+      failing&mdash;it isn't true; and don't pray for me, Daddy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson raised himself, and moved back from the bed. Her words confounded
+      him, yet he was afraid to answer. She pushed her head deep into the
+      pillow, and lay looking up at the ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have a son; Cyril won't quite have died. And I don't want
+      to be forgiven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dimly perceived what long dumb processes of thought and feeling had
+      gone on in her to produce this hardened state of mind, which to him seemed
+      almost blasphemous. And in the very midst of this turmoil in his heart, he
+      could not help thinking how lovely her face looked, lying back so that the
+      curve of her throat was bared, with the short tendrils of hair coiling
+      about it. That flung-back head, moving restlessly from side to side in the
+      heat of the soft pillow, had such a passion of protesting life in it! And
+      he kept silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to know it was all me. But I can't pretend. Of course
+      I'll try and not let it hurt you more than I possibly can. I'm sorry for
+      you, poor Daddy; oh! I'm sorry for you!&rdquo; With a movement incredibly
+      lithe and swift, she turned and pressed her face down in the pillow, so
+      that all he could see was her tumbled hair and the bedclothes trembling
+      above her shoulders. He tried to stroke that hair, but she shook her head
+      free, and he stole out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not come to breakfast; and when his own wretched meal was over,
+      the mechanism of his professional life caught him again at once. New
+      Year's Day! He had much to do. He had, before all, to be of a cheerful
+      countenance before his flock, to greet all and any with an air of hope and
+      courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thirza Pierson, seeing her brother-in-law's handwriting, naturally said:
+      &ldquo;Here's a letter from Ted.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob Pierson, with a mouth full of sausage, as naturally responded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he say?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In reading on, she found that to answer that question was one of the most
+      difficult tasks ever set her. Its news moved and disturbed her deeply.
+      Under her wing this disaster had happened! Down here had been wrought this
+      most deplorable miracle, fraught with such dislocation of lives! Noel's
+      face, absorbed and passionate, outside the door of her room on the night
+      when Cyril Morland went away&mdash;her instinct had been right!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants you to go up and stay with him, Bob.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not both of us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants Nollie to come down to me; she's not well.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not well? What's the matter?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To tell him seemed disloyalty to her sex; not to tell him, disloyalty to
+      her husband. A simple consideration of fact and not of principle, decided
+      her. He would certainly say in a moment: 'Here! Pitch it over!' and she
+      would have to. She said tranquilly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You remember that night when Cyril Morland went away, and Noel
+      behaved so strangely. Well, my dear; she is going to have a child at the
+      beginning of April. The poor boy is dead, Bob; he died for the Country.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw the red tide flow up into his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Edward is dreadfully upset. We must do what we can. I blame
+      myself.&rdquo; By instinct she used those words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blame yourself? Stuff! That young&mdash;!&rdquo; He stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirza said quietly: &ldquo;No, Bob; of the two, I'm sure it was Noel; she
+      was desperate that day. Don't you remember her face? Oh! this war! It's
+      turned the whole world upside down. That's the only comfort; nothing's
+      normal.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob Pierson possessed beyond most men the secret of happiness, for he was
+      always absorbed in the moment, to the point of unself-consciousness.
+      Eating an egg, cutting down a tree, sitting on a Tribunal, making up his
+      accounts, planting potatoes, looking at the moon, riding his cob, reading
+      the Lessons&mdash;no part of him stood aside to see how he was doing it,
+      or wonder why he was doing it, or not doing it better. He grew like a
+      cork-tree, and acted like a sturdy and well-natured dog. His griefs,
+      angers, and enjoyments were simple as a child's, or as his somewhat noisy
+      slumbers. They were notably well-suited, for Thirza had the same secret of
+      happiness, though her, absorption in the moment did not&mdash;as became a
+      woman&mdash;prevent her being conscious of others; indeed, such formed the
+      chief subject of her absorptions. One might say that they neither of them
+      had philosophy yet were as philosophic a couple as one could meet on this
+      earth of the self-conscious. Daily life to these two was still of simple
+      savour. To be absorbed in life&mdash;the queer endless tissue of moments
+      and things felt and done and said and made, the odd inspiriting
+      conjunctions of countless people&mdash;was natural to them; but they never
+      thought whether they were absorbed or not, or had any particular attitude
+      to Life or Death&mdash;a great blessing at the epoch in which they were
+      living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob Pierson, then, paced the room, so absorbed in his dismay and concern,
+      that he was almost happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;what a ghastly thing!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie, of all people! I feel perfectly wretched, Thirza; wretched
+      beyond words.&rdquo; But with each repetition his voice grew cheerier, and
+      Thirza felt that he was already over the worst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your coffee's getting cold!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you advise? Shall I go up, heh?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you'll be a godsend to poor Ted; you'll keep his spirits
+      up. Eve won't get any leave till Easter; and I can be quite alone, and see
+      to Nollie here. The servants can have a holiday&mdash;, Nurse and I will
+      run the house together. I shall enjoy it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a good woman, Thirza!&rdquo; Taking his wife's hand, he put
+      it to his lips. &ldquo;There isn't another woman like you in the world.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirza's eyes smiled. &ldquo;Pass me your cup; I'll give you some fresh
+      coffee.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was decided to put the plan into operation at mid-month, and she bent
+      all her wits to instilling into her husband the thought that a baby more
+      or less was no great matter in a world which already contained twelve
+      hundred million people. With a man's keener sense of family propriety, he
+      could not see that this baby would be the same as any other baby. &ldquo;By
+      heaven!&rdquo; he would say, &ldquo;I simply can't get used to it; in our
+      family! And Ted a parson! What the devil shall we do with it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Nollie will let us, why shouldn't we adopt it? It'll be
+      something to take my thoughts off the boys.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's an idea! But Ted's a funny fellow. He'll have some doctrine
+      of atonement, or other in his bonnet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, bother!&rdquo; said Thirza with asperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thought of sojourning in town for a spell was not unpleasant to Bob
+      Pierson. His Tribunal work was over, his early, potatoes in, and he had
+      visions of working for the Country, of being a special constable, and
+      dining at his Club. The nearer he was to the front, and the more he could
+      talk about the war, the greater the service he felt he would be doing. He
+      would ask for a job where his brains would be of use. He regretted keenly
+      that Thirza wouldn't be with him; a long separation like this would be a
+      great trial. And he would sigh and run his fingers through his whiskers.
+      Still for the Country, and for Nollie, one must put up with it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Thirza finally saw him into the train, tears stood in the eyes of
+      both, for they were honestly attached, and knew well enough that this job,
+      once taken in hand, would have to be seen through; a three months'
+      separation at least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall write every day.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So shall I, Bob.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't fret, old girl?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only if you do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be up at 5.5, and she'll be down at 4.50. Give us a kiss&mdash;damn
+      the porters. God bless you! I suppose she'd mind if&mdash;I&mdash;were to
+      come down now and then?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid she would. It's&mdash;it's&mdash;well, you know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Yes; I do.&rdquo; And he really did; for underneath, he had
+      true delicacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her last words: &ldquo;You're very sweet, Bob,&rdquo; remained in his ears
+      all the way to Severn Junction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went back to the house, emptied of her husband, daughter, boys, and
+      maids; only the dogs left and the old nurse whom she had taken into
+      confidence. Even in that sheltered, wooded valley it was very cold this
+      winter. The birds hid themselves, not one flower bloomed, and the
+      red-brown river was full and swift. The sound of trees being felled for
+      trench props, in the wood above the house resounded all day long in the
+      frosty air. She meant to do the cooking herself; and for the rest of the
+      morning and early afternoon she concocted nice things, and thought out how
+      she herself would feel if she were Noel and Noel she, so as to smooth out
+      of the way anything which would hurt the girl. In the afternoon she went
+      down to the station in the village car, the same which had borne Cyril
+      Morland away that July night, for their coachman had been taken for the
+      army, and the horses were turned out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel looked tired and white, but calm&mdash;too calm. Her face seemed to
+      Thirza to have fined down, and with those brooding eyes, to be more
+      beautiful. In the car she possessed herself of the girl's hand, and
+      squeezed it hard; their only allusion to the situation, except Noel's
+      formal:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you so much, Auntie, for having me; it's most awfully sweet
+      of you and Uncle Bob.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no one in the house, my dear, except old Nurse. It'll be
+      very dull for you; but I thought I'd teach you to cook; it's rather
+      useful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smile which slipped on to Noel's face gave Thirza quite a turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had assigned the girl a different room, and had made it
+      extraordinarily cheerful with a log fire, chrysanthemums, bright copper
+      candlesticks, warming-pans, and such like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went up with her at bedtime, and standing before the fire, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, Nollie, I absolutely refuse to regard this as any sort of
+      tragedy. To bring life into the worlds in these days, no matter how, ought
+      to make anyone happy. I only wish I could do it again, then I should feel
+      some use. Good night dear; and if you want anything, knock on the wall.
+      I'm next door. Bless you!&rdquo; She saw that the girl was greatly moved,
+      underneath her pale mask; and went out astonished at her niece's powers of
+      self-control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did not sleep at all well; for in imagination, she kept on seeing
+      Noel turning from side to side in the big bed, and those great eyes of
+      hers staring at the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The meeting of the brothers Pierson took place at the dinner-hour, and was
+      characterised by a truly English lack of display. They were so extremely
+      different, and had been together so little since early days in their old
+      Buckinghamshire home, that they were practically strangers, with just the
+      potent link of far-distant memories in common. It was of these they
+      talked, and about the war. On this subject they agreed in the large, and
+      differed in the narrow. For instance, both thought they knew about Germany
+      and other countries, and neither of course had any real knowledge of any
+      country outside their own; for, though both had passed through
+      considerable tracts of foreign ground at one time or another, they had
+      never remarked anything except its surface,&mdash;its churches, and its
+      sunsets. Again, both assumed that they were democrats, but neither knew
+      the meaning of the word, nor felt that the working man could be really
+      trusted; and both revered Church and, King: Both disliked conscription,
+      but considered it necessary. Both favoured Home Rule for Ireland, but
+      neither thought it possible to grant it. Both wished for the war to end,
+      but were for prosecuting it to Victory, and neither knew what they meant
+      by that word. So much for the large. On the narrower issues, such as
+      strategy, and the personality of their country's leaders, they were
+      opposed. Edward was a Westerner, Robert an Easterner, as was natural in
+      one who had lived twenty-five years in Ceylon. Edward favoured the fallen
+      government, Robert the risen. Neither had any particular reasons for their
+      partisanship except what he had read in the journals. After all&mdash;what
+      other reasons could they have had? Edward disliked the Harmsworth Press;
+      Robert thought it was doing good. Robert was explosive, and rather vague;
+      Edward dreamy, and a little didactic. Robert thought poor Ted looking like
+      a ghost; Edward thought poor Bob looking like the setting sun. Their faces
+      were indeed as curiously contrasted as their views and voices; the
+      pale-dark, hollowed, narrow face of Edward, with its short, pointed beard,
+      and the red-skinned, broad, full, whiskered face of Robert. They parted
+      for the night with an affectionate hand-clasp. So began a queer
+      partnership which consisted, as the days went on, of half an hour's
+      companionship at breakfast, each reading the paper; and of dinner together
+      perhaps three times a week. Each thought his brother very odd, but
+      continued to hold the highest opinion of him. And, behind it all, the deep
+      tribal sense that they stood together in trouble, grew. But of that
+      trouble they never spoke, though not seldom Robert would lower his
+      journal, and above the glasses perched on his well-shaped nose,
+      contemplate his brother, and a little frown of sympathy would ridge his
+      forehead between his bushy eyebrows. And once in a way he would catch
+      Edward's eyes coming off duty from his journal, to look, not at his
+      brother, but at&mdash;the skeleton; when that happened, Robert would
+      adjust his glasses hastily, damn the newspaper type, and apologise to
+      Edward for swearing. And he would think: 'Poor Ted! He ought to drink
+      port, and&mdash;and enjoy himself, and forget it. What a pity he's a
+      parson!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward's asceticism. &ldquo;He
+      eats nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable cigarette once in a
+      blue moon. He's as lonely as a coot; it's a thousand pities he ever lost
+      his wife. I expect to see his wings sprout any day; but&mdash;dash it all
+      I&mdash;I don't believe he's got the flesh to grow them on. Send him up
+      some clotted cream; I'll see if I can get him to eat it.&rdquo; When the
+      cream came, he got Edward to eat some the first morning, and at tea time
+      found that he had finished it himself. &ldquo;We never talk about Nollie,&rdquo;
+      he wrote, &ldquo;I'm always meaning to have it out with him and tell him
+      to buck up, but when it comes to the point I dry up; because, after all, I
+      feel it too; it sticks in my gizzard horribly. We Piersons are pretty old,
+      and we've always been respectable, ever since St. Bartholomew, when that
+      Huguenot chap came over and founded us. The only black sheep I ever heard
+      of is Cousin Leila. By the way, I saw her the other day; she came round
+      here to see Ted. I remember going to stay with her and her first husband;
+      young Fane, at Simla, when I was coming home, just before we were married.
+      Phew! That was a queer menage; all the young chaps fluttering round her,
+      and young Fane looking like a cynical ghost. Even now she can't help
+      setting her cap a little at Ted, and he swallows her whole; thinks her a
+      devoted creature reformed to the nines with her hospital and all that.
+      Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap that ever was.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end,&rdquo; he
+      wrote a little later; &ldquo;I don't like her so well as Nollie; too
+      serious and downright for me. Her husband seems a sensible fellow, though;
+      but the devil of a free-thinker. He and poor Ted are like cat and dog. We
+      had Leila in to dinner again on Saturday, and a man called Fort came too.
+      She's sweet on him, I could see with half an eye, but poor old Ted can't.
+      The doctor and Ted talked up hill and down dale. The doctor said a thing
+      which struck me. 'What divides us from the beasts? Will power: nothing
+      else. What's this war, really, but a death carnival of proof that man's
+      will is invincible?' I stuck it down to tell you, when I got upstairs.
+      He's a clever fellow. I believe in God, as you know, but I must say when
+      it comes to an argument, poor old Ted does seem a bit weak, with his:
+      'We're told this,' and 'We're told that: Nobody mentioned Nollie. I must
+      have the whole thing out with Ted; we must know how to act when it's all
+      over.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not till the middle of March, when the brothers had been sitting
+      opposite each other at meals for two months, was the subject broached
+      between them, and then not by Robert. Edward, standing by the hearth after
+      dinner, in his familiar attitude, one foot on the fender, one hand
+      grasping the mantel-shelf, and his eyes fixed on the flames, said: &ldquo;I've
+      never asked your forgiveness, Bob.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Robert, lingering at the table over his glass of port, started, looked at
+      Edward's back in its parson's coat, and answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear old chap!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has been very difficult to speak of this.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, of course!&rdquo; And there was a silence, while
+      Robert's eyes travelled round the walls for inspiration. They encountered
+      only the effigies of past Piersons very oily works, and fell back on the
+      dining-table. Edward went on speaking to the fire:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It still seems to me incredible. Day and night I think of what it's
+      my duty to do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing!&rdquo; ejaculated Robert. &ldquo;Leave the baby with
+      Thirza; we'll take care of it, and when Nollie's fit, let her go back to
+      work in a hospital again. She'll soon get over it.&rdquo; He saw his
+      brother shake his head, and thought: 'Ah! yes; now there's going to be
+      some d&mdash;d conscientious complication.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward turned round on him: &ldquo;That is very sweet of you both, but it
+      would be wrong and cowardly for me to allow it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The resentment which springs up in fathers when other fathers dispose of
+      young lives, rose in Robert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dash it all, my dear Ted, that's for Nollie to say. She's a woman
+      now, remember.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A smile went straying about in the shadows of his brother's face. &ldquo;A
+      woman? Little Nollie! Bob, I've made a terrible mess of it with my girls.&rdquo;
+      He hid his lips with his hand, and turned again to the flames. Robert felt
+      a lump in his throat. &ldquo;Oh! Hang it, old boy, I don't think that.
+      What else could you have done? You take too much on yourself. After all,
+      they're fine girls. I'm sure Nollie's a darling. It's these modern
+      notions, and this war. Cheer up! It'll all dry straight.&rdquo; He went up
+      to his brother and put a hand on his shoulder. Edward seemed to stiffen
+      under that touch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing comes straight,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;unless it's faced;
+      you know that, Bob.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Robert's face was a study at that moment. His cheeks filled and collapsed
+      again like a dog's when it has been rebuked. His colour deepened, and he
+      rattled some money in a trouser pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something in that, of course,&rdquo; he said gruffly. &ldquo;All
+      the same, the decision's with Nollie. We'll see what Thirza says. Anyway,
+      there's no hurry. It's a thousand pities you're a parson; the trouble's
+      enough without that:&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward shook his head. &ldquo;My position is nothing; it's the thought of
+      my child, my wife's child. It's sheer pride; and I can't subdue it. I
+      can't fight it down. God forgive me, I rebel.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Robert thought: 'By George, he does take it to heart! Well, so should
+      I! I do, as it is!' He took out his pipe, and filled it, pushing the
+      tobacco down and down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not a man of the world,&rdquo; he heard his brother say;
+      &ldquo;I'm out of touch with many things. It's almost unbearable to me to
+      feel that I'm joining with the world to condemn my own daughter; not for
+      their reasons, perhaps&mdash;I don't know; I hope not, but still, I'm
+      against her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Robert lit his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steady, old man!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's a misfortune. But if I
+      were you I should feel: 'She's done a wild, silly thing, but, hang it, if
+      anybody says a word against her, I'll wring his neck.' And what's more,
+      you'll feel much the same, when it comes to the point.&rdquo; He emitted a
+      huge puff of smoke, which obscured his brother's face, and the blood,
+      buzzing in his temples, seemed to thicken the sound of Edward's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know; I've tried to see clearly. I have prayed to be shown
+      what her duty is, and mine. It seems to me there can be no peace for her
+      until she has atoned, by open suffering; that the world's judgment is her
+      cross, and she must bear it; especially in these days, when all the world
+      is facing suffering so nobly. And then it seems so hard-so bitter; my poor
+      little Nollie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a silence, broken only by the gurgling of Robert's pipe, till he
+      said abruptly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't follow you, Ted; no, I don't. I think a man should screen
+      his children all he can. Talk to her as you like, but don't let the world
+      do it. Dash it, the world's a rotten gabbling place. I call myself a man
+      of the world, but when it comes to private matters&mdash;well, then I draw
+      the line. It seems to me it seems to me inhuman. What does George Laird
+      think about it? He's a knowing chap. I suppose you've&mdash;no, I suppose
+      you haven't&mdash;&rdquo; For a peculiar smile had come on Edward's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I should hardly ask George Laird's
+      opinion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Robert realised suddenly the stubborn loneliness of that thin black
+      figure, whose fingers were playing with a little gold cross. 'By Jove!' he
+      thought, 'I believe old Ted's like one of those Eastern chaps who go into
+      lonely places. He's got himself surrounded by visions of things that
+      aren't there. He lives in unreality&mdash;something we can't understand. I
+      shouldn't be surprised if he heard voices, like&mdash;'who was it? Tt, tt!
+      What a pity!' Ted was deceptive. He was gentle and&mdash;all that, a
+      gentleman of course, and that disguised him; but underneath; what was
+      there&mdash;a regular ascetic, a fakir! And a sense of bewilderment, of
+      dealing with something which he could not grasp, beset Bob Pierson, so
+      that he went back to the table, and sat down again beside his port.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; he said rather gruffly, &ldquo;that the
+      chicken had better be hatched before we count it.&rdquo; And then, sorry
+      for his brusqueness, emptied his glass. As the fluid passed over his
+      palate, he thought: 'Poor old Ted! He doesn't even drink&mdash;hasn't a
+      pleasure in life, so far as I can see, except doing his duty, and doesn't
+      even seem to know what that is. There aren't many like him&mdash;luckily!
+      And yet I love him&mdash;pathetic chap!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;pathetic chap&rdquo; was still staring at the flames. 3
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at this very hour, when the brothers were talking&mdash;for thought
+      and feeling do pass mysteriously over the invisible wires of space Cyril
+      Morland's son was being born of Noel, a little before his time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Down by the River Wye, among plum-trees in blossom, Noel had laid her baby
+      in a hammock, and stood reading a letter:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that you are strong again, I feel that I must put before you my
+      feeling as to your duty in this crisis of your life. Your aunt and uncle
+      have made the most kind and generous offer to adopt your little boy. I
+      have known that this was in their minds for some time, and have thought it
+      over day and night for weeks. In the worldly sense it would be the best
+      thing, no doubt. But this is a spiritual matter. The future of our souls
+      depends on how we meet the consequences of our conduct. And painful,
+      dreadful, indeed, as they must be, I am driven to feel that you can only
+      reach true peace by facing them in a spirit of brave humility. I want you
+      to think and think&mdash;till you arrive at a certainty which satisfies
+      your conscience. If you decide, as I trust you will, to come back to me
+      here with your boy, I shall do all in my power to make you happy while we
+      face the future together. To do as your aunt and uncle in their kindness
+      wish, would, I am sore afraid, end in depriving you of the inner strength
+      and happiness which God only gives to those who do their duty and try
+      courageously to repair their errors. I have confidence in you, my dear
+      child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever your most loving father,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;EDWARD PIERSON.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She read it through a second time, and looked at her baby. Daddy seemed to
+      think that she might be willing to part from this wonderful creature!
+      Sunlight fell through the plum blossom, in an extra patchwork quilt over
+      the bundle lying there, touched the baby's nose and mouth, so that he
+      sneezed. Noel laughed, and put her lips close to his face. 'Give you up!'
+      she thought: 'Oh, no! And I'm going to be happy too. They shan't stop me:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer to the letter she said simply that she was coming up; and a week
+      later she went, to the dismay of her uncle and aunt. The old nurse went
+      too. Everything had hitherto been so carefully watched and guarded against
+      by Thirza, that Noel did not really come face to face with her position
+      till she reached home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian, who had managed to get transferred to a London Hospital, was now
+      living at home. She had provided the house with new maids against her
+      sister's return; and though Noel was relieved not to meet her old
+      familiars, she encountered with difficulty the stolid curiosity of new
+      faces. That morning before she left Kestrel, her aunt had come into her
+      room while she was dressing, taken her left hand and slipped a little gold
+      band on to its third finger. &ldquo;To please me, Nollie, now that you're
+      going, just for the foolish, who know nothing about you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel had suffered it with the thought: 'It's all very silly!' But now,
+      when the new maid was pouring out her hot water, she was suddenly aware of
+      the girl's round blue eyes wandering, as it were, mechanically to her
+      hand. This little hoop of gold, then, had an awful power! A rush of
+      disgust came over her. All life seemed suddenly a thing of forms and sham.
+      Everybody then would look at that little ring; and she was a coward,
+      saving herself from them! When she was alone again, she slipped it off,
+      and laid it on the washstand, where the sunlight fell. Only this little
+      shining band of metal, this little yellow ring, stood between her and the
+      world's hostile scorn! Her lips trembled. She took up the ring, and went
+      to the open window; to throw it out. But she did not, uncertain and
+      unhappy&mdash;half realising the cruelty of life. A knock at the door sent
+      her flying back to the washstand. The visitor was Gratian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been looking at him,&rdquo; she said softly; &ldquo;he's like
+      you, Nollie, except for his nose.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's hardly got one yet. But aren't his eyes intelligent? I think
+      they're wonderful.&rdquo; She held up the ring: &ldquo;What shall I do
+      about this, Gratian?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian flushed. &ldquo;Wear it. I don't see why outsiders should know.
+      For the sake of Dad I think you ought. There's the parish.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel slipped the ring back on to her finger. &ldquo;Would you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't tell. I think I would.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel laughed suddenly. &ldquo;I'm going to get cynical; I can feel it in
+      my bones. How is Daddy looking?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very thin; Mr. Lauder is back again from the Front for a bit, and
+      taking some of the work now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I hurt him very much still?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's awfully pleased that you've come. He's as sweet as he can be
+      about you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; murmured Noel, &ldquo;that's what's dreadful. I'm glad
+      he wasn't in when I came. Has he told anyone?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian shook her head. &ldquo;I don't think anybody knows; unless&mdash;perhaps
+      Captain Fort. He came in again the other night; and somehow&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel flushed. &ldquo;Leila!&rdquo; she said enigmatically. &ldquo;Have you
+      seen her?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went to her flat last week with Dad&mdash;he likes her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Delilah is her real name, you know. All men like her. And Captain
+      Fort is her lover.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian gasped. Noel would say things sometimes which made her feel the
+      younger of the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course he is,&rdquo; went on Noel in a hard voice. &ldquo;She
+      has no men friends; her sort never have, only lovers. Why do you think he
+      knows about me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When he asked after you he looked&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I've seen him look like that when he's sorry for anything. I
+      don't care. Has Monsieur Lavendie been in lately?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he looks awfully unhappy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His wife drugs.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Nollie! How do you know?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw her once; I'm sure she does; there was a smell; and she's got
+      wandering eyes that go all glassy. He can paint me now, if he likes. I
+      wouldn't let him before. Does he know?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows there was something; he's got second sight, I think. But I
+      mind him less than anybody. Is his picture of Daddy good?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Powerful, but it hurts, somehow.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's go down and see it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its intense modernity made
+      that old-fashioned room seem lifeless and strange. The black figure, with
+      long pale fingers touching the paler piano keys, had a frightening
+      actuality. The face, three-quarters full, was raised as if for
+      inspiration, and the eyes rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the face of a
+      girl painted and hung on a background of wall above the piano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the face of that girl,&rdquo; said Gratian, when they had
+      looked at the picture for some time in silence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Noel, &ldquo;it's the look in his eyes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why did he choose such a horrid, common girl? Isn't she
+      fearfully alive, though? She looks as if she were saying:
+      'Cheerio!'.rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is; it's awfully pathetic, I think. Poor Daddy!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a libel,&rdquo; said Gratian stubbornly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. That's what hurts. He isn't quite&mdash;quite all there. Will
+      he be coming in soon?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian took her arm, and pressed it hard. &ldquo;Would you like me at
+      dinner or not; I can easily be out?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shook her head. &ldquo;It's no good to funk it. He wanted me, and now
+      he's got me. Oh! why did he? It'll be awful for him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian sighed. &ldquo;I've tried my best, but he always said: 'I've
+      thought so long about it all that I can't think any longer. I can only
+      feel the braver course is the best. When things are bravely and humbly
+      met, there will be charity and forgiveness.'.rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There won't,&rdquo; said Noel, &ldquo;Daddy's a saint, and he
+      doesn't see.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he is a saint. But one must think for oneself&mdash;one simply
+      must. I can't believe as he does, any more; can you, Nollie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. When I was going through it, I prayed; but I don't
+      know whether I really believed. I don't think I mind much about that, one
+      way or the other.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mind terribly,&rdquo; said Gratian, &ldquo;I want the truth.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what I want,&rdquo; said Noel slowly, &ldquo;except
+      that sometimes I want&mdash;life; awfully.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the two sisters were silent, looking at each other with a sort of
+      wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel had a fancy to put on a bright-coloured blue frock that evening, and
+      at her neck she hung a Breton cross of old paste, which had belonged to
+      her mother. When she had finished dressing she went into the nursery and
+      stood by the baby's cot. The old nurse who was sitting there beside him,
+      got up at once and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's sleeping beautiful&mdash;the lamb. I'll go down and get a cup
+      o' tea, and come up, ma'am, when the gong goes.&rdquo; In the way peculiar
+      to those who have never to initiate, but only to support positions in
+      which they are placed by others, she had adopted for herself the theory
+      that Noel was a real war-widow. She knew the truth perfectly; for she had
+      watched that hurried little romance at Kestrel, but by dint of charity and
+      blurred meditations it was easy for her to imagine the marriage ceremony
+      which would and should have taken place; and she was zealous that other
+      people should imagine it too. It was so much more regular and natural like
+      that, and &ldquo;her&rdquo; baby invested with his proper dignity. She
+      went downstairs to get a &ldquo;cup o' tea,&rdquo; thinking: 'A picture
+      they make&mdash;that they do, bless his little heart; and his pretty
+      little mother&mdash;no more than a child, all said and done.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel had been standing there some minutes in the failing light, absorbed
+      in the face of the sleeping baby, when, raising her eyes, she saw in a
+      mirror the refection of her father's dark figure by the door. She could
+      hear him breathing as if the ascent of the stairs had tired him; and
+      moving to the head of the cot, she rested her hand on it, and turned her
+      face towards him. He came up and stood beside her, looking silently down
+      at the baby. She saw him make the sign of the Cross above it, and the
+      movement of his lips in prayer. Love for her father, and rebellion against
+      this intercession for her perfect baby fought so hard in the girl's heart
+      that she felt suffocated, and glad of the dark, so that he could not see
+      her eyes. Then he took her hand and put it to his lips, but still without
+      a word; and for the life of her she could not speak either. In silence, he
+      kissed her forehead; and there mounted in Noel a sudden passion of longing
+      to show him her pride and love for her baby. She put her finger down and
+      touched one of his hands. The tiny sleeping fingers uncurled and, like
+      some little sea anemone, clutched round it. She heard her father draw his
+      breath in; saw him turn away quickly, silently, and go out. And she
+      stayed, hardly breathing, with the hand of her baby squeezing her finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit nursery,
+      he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees beside his bed,
+      absorbed in the vision he had seen. That young figure in Madonna blue,
+      with the halo of bright hair; the sleeping babe in the fine dusk; the
+      silence, the adoration in that white room! He saw, too; a vision of the
+      past, when Noel herself had been the sleeping babe within her mother's
+      arm, and he had stood beside them, wondering and giving praise. It passed
+      with its other-worldliness and the fine holiness which belongs to beauty,
+      passed and left the tormenting realism of life. Ah! to live with only the
+      inner meaning, spiritual and beautifed, in a rare wonderment such as he
+      had experienced just now!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His alarum clock, while he knelt in his narrow, monkish little room&mdash;ticked
+      the evening hour away into darkness. And still he knelt, dreading to come
+      back into it all, to face the world's eyes, and the sound of the world's
+      tongue, and the touch of the rough, the gross, the unseemly. How could he
+      guard his child? How preserve that vision in her life, in her spirit,
+      about to enter such cold, rough waters? But the gong sounded; he got up,
+      and went downstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this first family moment, which all had dreaded, was relieved, as
+      dreaded moments so often are, by the unexpected appearance of the Belgian
+      painter. He had a general invitation, of which he often availed himself;
+      but he was so silent, and his thin, beardless face, which seemed all eyes
+      and brow, so mournful, that all three felt in the presence of a sorrow
+      deeper even than their own family grief. During the meal he gazed silently
+      at Noel. Once he said: &ldquo;You will let me paint you now, mademoiselle,
+      I hope?&rdquo; and his face brightened a little when she nodded. There was
+      never much talk when he came, for any depth of discussion, even of art,
+      brought out at once too wide a difference. And Pierson could never avoid a
+      vague irritation with one who clearly had spirituality, but of a sort
+      which he could not understand. After dinner he excused himself, and went
+      off to his study. Monsieur would be happier alone with the two girls!
+      Gratian, too, got up. She had remembered Noel's words: &ldquo;I mind him
+      less than anybody.&rdquo; It was a chance for Nollie to break the ice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not seen you for a long time, mademoiselle,&rdquo; said the
+      painter, when they were alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel was sitting in front of the empty drawing-room hearth, with her arms
+      stretched out as if there had been a fire there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been away. How are you going to paint me, monsieur?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that dress, mademoiselle; Just as you are now, warming yourself
+      at the fire of life.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it isn't there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, fires soon go out. Mademoiselle, will you come and see my
+      wife? She is ill.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now?&rdquo; asked Noel, startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, now. She is really ill, and I have no one there. That is what
+      I came to ask of your sister; but&mdash;now you are here, it's even
+      better. She likes you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel got up. &ldquo;Wait one minute!&rdquo; she said, and ran upstairs.
+      Her baby was asleep, and the old nurse dozing. Putting on a cloak and cap
+      of grey rabbit's fur, she ran down again to the hall where the painter was
+      waiting; and they went out together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know if I am to blame,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;my wife has
+      been no real wife to me since she knew I had a mistress and was no real
+      husband to her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel stared round at his face lighted by a queer, smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;from that has come her tragedy. But
+      she should have known before I married her. Nothing was concealed. Bon
+      Dieu! she should have known! Why cannot a woman see things as they are? My
+      mistress, mademoiselle, is not a thing of flesh. It is my art. It has
+      always been first with me, and always will. She has never accepted that,
+      she is incapable of accepting it. I am sorry for her. But what would you?
+      I was a fool to marry her. Chere mademoiselle, no troubles are anything
+      beside the trouble which goes on day and night, meal after meal, year,
+      after year, between two people who should never have married, because one
+      loves too much and requires all, and the other loves not at all&mdash;no,
+      not at all, now, it is long dead&mdash;and can give but little.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you separate?&rdquo; asked Noel, wondering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is hard to separate from one who craves for you as she craves
+      her drugs&mdash;yes, she takes drugs now, mademoiselle. It is impossible
+      for one who has any compassion in his soul. Besides, what would she do? We
+      live from hand to mouth, in a strange land. She has no friends here, not
+      one. How could I leave her while this war lasts? As well could two persons
+      on a desert island separate. She is killing herself, too, with these
+      drugs, and I cannot stop her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor madame!&rdquo; murmured Noel. &ldquo;Poor monsieur!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter drew his hand across his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot change my nature,&rdquo; he said in a stifled voice,
+      &ldquo;nor she hers. So we go on. But life will stop suddenly some day for
+      one of us. After all, it is much worse for her than for me. Enter,
+      mademoiselle. Do not tell her I am going to paint you; she likes you,
+      because you refused to let me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel went up the stairs, shuddering; she had been there once before, and
+      remembered that sickly scent of drugs. On the third floor they entered a
+      small sitting-room whose walls were covered with paintings and drawings;
+      from one corner a triangular stack of canvases jutted out. There was
+      little furniture save an old red sofa, and on this was seated a stoutish
+      man in the garb of a Belgian soldier, with his elbows on his knees and his
+      bearded cheeks resting on his doubled fists. Beside him on the sofa,
+      nursing a doll, was a little girl, who looked up at Noel. She had a most
+      strange, attractive, pale little face, with pointed chin and large eyes,
+      which never moved from this apparition in grey rabbits' skins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Barra! You here!&rdquo; said the painter:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle, this is Monsieur Barra, a friend of ours from the
+      front; and this is our landlady's little girl. A little refugee, too,
+      aren't you, Chica?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child gave him a sudden brilliant smile and resumed her grave scrutiny
+      of the visitor. The soldier, who had risen heavily, offered Noel one of
+      his podgy hands, with a sad and heavy giggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down, mademoiselle,&rdquo; said Lavendie, placing a chair for
+      her: &ldquo;I will bring my wife in,&rdquo; and he went out through some
+      double doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel sat down. The soldier had resumed his old attitude, and the little
+      girl her nursing of the doll, though her big eyes still watched the
+      visitor. Overcome by strangeness, Noel made no attempt to talk. And
+      presently through the double doors the painter and his wife came in. She
+      was a thin woman in a red wrapper, with hollow cheeks, high cheek-bones,
+      and hungry eyes; her dark hair hung loose, and one hand played restlessly
+      with a fold of her gown. She took Noel's hand; and her uplifted eyes
+      seemed to dig into the girl's face, to let go suddenly, and flutter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do?&rdquo; she said in English. &ldquo;So Pierre brought
+      you, to see me again. I remember you so well. You would not let him paint
+      you. Ah! que c'est drole! You are so pretty, too. Hein, Monsieur Barra, is
+      not mademoiselle pretty?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier gave his heavy giggle, and resumed his scrutiny of the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Henriette,&rdquo; said Lavendie, &ldquo;sit down beside Chica&mdash;you
+      must not stand. Sit down, mademoiselle, I beg.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so sorry you're not well,&rdquo; said Noel, and sat down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter stood leaning against the wall, and his wife looked up at his
+      tall, thin figure, with eyes which had in them anger, and a sort of
+      cunning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great painter, my husband, is he not?&rdquo; she said to Noel.
+      &ldquo;You would not imagine what that man can do. And how he paints&mdash;all
+      day long; and all night in his head. And so you would not let him paint
+      you, after all?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lavendie said impatiently: &ldquo;Voyons, Henriette, causez d'autre chose.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife plucked nervously at a fold in her red gown, and gave him the
+      look of a dog that has been rebuked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a prisoner here, mademoiselle, I never leave the house. Here I
+      live day after day&mdash;my husband is always painting. Who would go out
+      alone under this grey sky of yours, and the hatreds of the war in every
+      face? I prefer to keep my room. My husband goes painting; every face he
+      sees interests him, except that which he sees every day. But I am a
+      prisoner. Monsieur Barra is our first visitor for a long time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier raised his face from his fists. &ldquo;Prisonnier, madame!
+      What would you say if you were out there?&rdquo; And he gave his thick
+      giggle. &ldquo;We are the prisoners, we others. What would you say to
+      imprisonment by explosion day and night; never a minute free. Bom! Bom!
+      Bom! Ah! les tranchees! It's not so free as all that, there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every one has his own prison,&rdquo; said Lavendie bitterly.
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle even, has her prison&mdash;and little Chica, and her
+      doll. Every one has his prison, Barra. Monsieur Barra is also a painter,
+      mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moi!&rdquo; said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand. &ldquo;I
+      paint puddles, star-bombs, horses' ribs&mdash;I paint holes and holes and
+      holes, wire and wire and wire, and water&mdash;long white ugly water. I
+      paint splinters, and men's souls naked, and men's bodies dead, and
+      nightmare&mdash;nightmare&mdash;all day and all night&mdash;I paint them
+      in my head.&rdquo; He suddenly ceased speaking and relapsed into
+      contemplation of the carpet, with his bearded cheeks resting on his fists.
+      &ldquo;And their souls as white as snow, les camarades,&rdquo; he added
+      suddenly and loudly, &ldquo;millions of Belgians, English, French, even
+      the Boches, with white souls. I paint those souls!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little shiver ran through Noel, and she looked appealingly at Lavendie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Barra,&rdquo; he said, as if the soldier were not there, &ldquo;is
+      a great painter, but the Front has turned his head a little. What he says
+      is true, though. There is no hatred out there. It is here that we are
+      prisoners of hatred, mademoiselle; avoid hatreds&mdash;they are poison!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife put out her hand and touched the child's shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should we not hate?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Who killed Chica's
+      father, and blew her home to-rags? Who threw her out into this horrible
+      England&mdash;pardon, mademoiselle, but it is horrible. Ah! les Boches! If
+      my hatred could destroy them there would not be one left. Even my husband
+      was not so mad about his painting when we lived at home. But here&mdash;!&rdquo;
+      Her eyes darted at his face again, and then sank as if rebuked. Noel saw
+      the painter's lips move. The sick woman's whole figure writhed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is mania, your painting!&rdquo; She looked at Noel with a smile.
+      &ldquo;Will you have some tea, mademoiselle? Monsieur Barra, some tea?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier said thickly: &ldquo;No, madame; in the trenches we have tea
+      enough. It consoles us. But when we get away&mdash;give us wine, le bon
+      vin; le bon petit vin!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get some wine, Pierre!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel saw from the painter's face that there was no wine, and perhaps no
+      money to get any; but he went quickly out. She rose and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must be going, madame.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Lavendie leaned forward and clutched her wrist. &ldquo;Wait a
+      little, mademoiselle. We shall have some wine, and Pierre shall take you
+      back presently. You cannot go home alone&mdash;you are too pretty. Is she
+      not, Monsieur Barra?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier looked up: &ldquo;What would you say,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to
+      bottles of wine bursting in the air, bursting red and bursting white, all
+      day long, all night long? Great steel bottles, large as Chica: bits of
+      bottles, carrying off men's heads? Bsum, garra-a-a, and a house comes
+      down, and little bits of people ever so small, ever so small, tiny bits in
+      the air and all over the ground. Great souls out there, madame. But I will
+      tell you a secret,&rdquo; and again he gave his heavy giggle, &ldquo;all a
+      little, little mad; nothing to speak of&mdash;just a little bit mad; like
+      a watch, you know, that you can wind for ever. That is the discovery of
+      this war, mademoiselle,&rdquo; he said, addressing Noel for the first
+      time, &ldquo;you cannot gain a great soul till you are a little mad.&rdquo;
+      And lowering his piggy grey eyes at once, he resumed his former attitude.
+      &ldquo;It is that madness I shall paint some day,&rdquo; he announced to
+      the carpet; &ldquo;lurking in one tiny corner of each soul of all those
+      millions, as it creeps, as it peeps, ever so sudden, ever so little when
+      we all think it has been put to bed, here&mdash;there, now&mdash;then,
+      when you least think; in and out like a mouse with bright eyes. Millions
+      of men with white souls, all a little mad. A great subject, I think,&rdquo;
+      he added heavily. Involuntarily Noel put her hand to her heart, which was
+      beating fast. She felt quite sick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long have you been at the Front, monsieur?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two years, mademoiselle. Time to go home and paint, is it not? But
+      art&mdash;!&rdquo; he shrugged his heavy round shoulders, his whole
+      bear-like body. &ldquo;A little mad,&rdquo; he muttered once more. &ldquo;I
+      will tell you a story. Once in winter after I had rested a fortnight, I go
+      back to the trenches at night, and I want some earth to fill up a hole in
+      the ground where I was sleeping; when one has slept in a bed one becomes
+      particular. Well, I scratch it from my parapet, and I come to something
+      funny. I strike my briquet, and there is a Boche's face all frozen and
+      earthy and dead and greeny-white in the flame from my briquet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! but yes, mademoiselle; true as I sit here. Very useful in the
+      parapet&mdash;dead Boche. Once a man like me. But in the morning I could
+      not stand him; we dug him out and buried him, and filled the hole up with
+      other things. But there I stood in the night, and my face as close to his
+      as this&rdquo;&mdash;and he held his thick hand a foot before his face.
+      &ldquo;We talked of our homes; he had a soul, that man. 'Il me disait des
+      choses', how he had suffered; and I, too, told him my sufferings. Dear
+      God, we know all; we shall never know more than we know out there, we
+      others, for we are mad&mdash;nothing to speak of, but just a little,
+      little mad. When you see us, mademoiselle, walking the streets, remember
+      that.&rdquo; And he dropped his face on to his fists again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A silence had fallen in the room-very queer and complete. The little girl
+      nursed her doll, the soldier gazed at the floor, the woman's mouth moved
+      stealthily, and in Noel the thought rushed continually to the verge of
+      action: 'Couldn't I get up and run downstairs?' But she sat on, hypnotised
+      by that silence, till Lavendie reappeared with a bottle and four glasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To drink our health, and wish us luck, mademoiselle,&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel raised the glass he had given her. &ldquo;I wish you all happiness.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, mademoiselle,&rdquo; the two men murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drank a little, and rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, mademoiselle,&rdquo; said Lavendie, &ldquo;if you must go,
+      I will see you home.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel took Madame Lavendie's hand; it was cold, and returned no pressure;
+      her eyes had the glazed look that she remembered. The soldier had put his
+      empty glass down on the floor, and was regarding it unconscious of her.
+      Noel turned quickly to the door; the last thing she saw was the little
+      girl nursing her doll.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the street the painter began at once in his rapid French:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought not to have asked you to come, mademoiselle; I did not know
+      our friend Barra was there. Besides, my wife is not fit to receive a lady;
+      vous voyez qu'il y a de la manie dans cette pauvre tote. I should not have
+      asked you; but I was so miserable.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; murmured Noel, &ldquo;I know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In our home over there she had interests. In this great town she
+      can only nurse her grief against me. Ah! this war! It seems to me we are
+      all in the stomach of a great coiling serpent. We lie there, being
+      digested. In a way it is better out there in the trenches; they are beyond
+      hate, they have attained a height that we have not. It is wonderful how
+      they still can be for going on till they have beaten the Boche; that is
+      curious and it is very great. Did Barra tell you how, when they come back&mdash;all
+      these fighters&mdash;they are going to rule, and manage the future of the
+      world? But it will not be so. They will mix in with life, separate&mdash;be
+      scattered, and they will be ruled as they were before. The tongue and the
+      pen will rule them: those who have not seen the war will rule them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;' cried Noel, &ldquo;surely they will be the bravest and
+      strongest in the future.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;War makes men simple,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;elemental; life in
+      peace is neither simple nor elemental, it is subtle, full of changing
+      environments, to which man must adapt himself; the cunning, the astute,
+      the adaptable, will ever rule in times of peace. It is pathetic, the
+      belief of those brave soldiers that the-future is theirs.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said, a strange thing,&rdquo; murmured Noel; &ldquo;that they
+      were all a little mad.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a man of queer genius&mdash;Barra; you should see some of his
+      earlier pictures. Mad is not quite the word, but something is loosened, is
+      rattling round in them, they have lost proportion, they are being forced
+      in one direction. I tell you, mademoiselle, this war is one great
+      forcing-house; every living plant is being made to grow too fast, each
+      quality, each passion; hate and love, intolerance and lust and avarice,
+      courage and energy; yes, and self-sacrifice&mdash;all are being forced and
+      forced beyond their strength, beyond the natural flow of the sap, forced
+      till there has come a great wild luxuriant crop, and then&mdash;Psum!
+      Presto! The change comes, and these plants will wither and rot and stink.
+      But we who see Life in forms of Art are the only ones who feel that; and
+      we are so few. The natural shape of things is lost. There is a mist of
+      blood before all eyes. Men are afraid of being fair. See how we all hate
+      not only our enemies, but those who differ from us. Look at the streets
+      too&mdash;see how men and women rush together, how Venus reigns in this
+      forcing-house. Is it not natural that Youth about to die should yearn for
+      pleasure, for love, for union, before death?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel stared up at him. 'Now!' she thought: I will.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I know that's true, because I rushed,
+      myself. I'd like you to know. We couldn't be married&mdash;there wasn't
+      time. And&mdash;he was killed. But his son is alive. That's why I've been
+      away so long. I want every one to know.&rdquo; She spoke very calmly, but
+      her cheeks felt burning hot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter had made an upward movement of his hands, as if they had been
+      jerked by an electric current, then he said quite quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My profound respect, mademoiselle, and my great sympathy. And your
+      father?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's awful for him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter said gently: &ldquo;Ah! mademoiselle, I am not so sure.
+      Perhaps he does not suffer so greatly. Perhaps not even your trouble can
+      hurt him very much. He lives in a world apart. That, I think, is his true
+      tragedy to be alive, and yet not living enough to feel reality. Do you
+      know Anatole France's description of an old woman: 'Elle vivait, mais si
+      peu.' Would that not be well said of the Church in these days: 'Elle
+      vivait, mais si peu.' I see him always like a rather beautiful dark spire
+      in the night-time when you cannot see how it is attached to the earth. He
+      does not know, he never will know, Life.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel looked round at him. &ldquo;What do you mean by Life, monsieur? I'm
+      always reading about Life, and people talk of seeing Life! What is it&mdash;where
+      is it? I never see anything that you could call Life.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To 'see life'.&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Ah! that is different. To
+      enjoy yourself! Well, it is my experience that when people are 'seeing
+      life' as they call it, they are not enjoying themselves. You know when one
+      is very thirsty one drinks and drinks, but the thirst remains all the
+      same. There are places where one can see life as it is called, but the
+      only persons you will see enjoying themselves at such places are a few
+      humdrums like myself, who go there for a talk over a cup of coffee.
+      Perhaps at your age, though, it is different.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel clasped her hands, and her eyes seemed to shine in the gloom. &ldquo;I
+      want music and dancing and light, and beautiful things and faces; but I
+      never get them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, there does not exist in this town, or in any other, a place
+      which will give you that. Fox-trots and ragtime and paint and powder and
+      glare and half-drunken young men, and women with red lips you can get them
+      in plenty. But rhythm and beauty and charm never. In Brussels when I was
+      younger I saw much 'life' as they call it, but not one lovely thing
+      unspoiled; it was all as ashes in the mouth. Ah! you may smile, but I know
+      what I am talking of. Happiness never comes when you are looking for it,
+      mademoiselle; beauty is in Nature and in real art, never in these false
+      silly make believes. There is a place just here where we Belgians go;
+      would you like to see how true my words are?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tres-bien! Let us go in?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed into a revolving doorway with little glass compartments which
+      shot them out into a shining corridor. At the end of this the painter
+      looked at Noel and seemed to hesitate, then he turned off from the room
+      they were about to enter into a room on the right. It was large, full of
+      gilt and plush and marble tables, where couples were seated; young men in
+      khaki and older men in plain clothes, together or with young women. At
+      these last Noel looked, face after face, while they were passing down a
+      long way to an empty table. She saw that some were pretty, and some only
+      trying to be, that nearly all were powdered and had their eyes darkened
+      and their lips reddened, till she felt her own face to be dreadfully
+      ungarnished: Up in a gallery a small band was playing an attractive
+      jingling hollow little tune; and the buzz of talk and laughter was almost
+      deafening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will you have, mademoiselle?&rdquo; said the painter. &ldquo;It
+      is just nine o'clock; we must order quickly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I have one of those green things?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deux cremes de menthe,&rdquo; said Lavendie to the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel was too absorbed to see the queer, bitter little smile hovering about
+      his face. She was busy looking at the faces of women whose eyes, furtively
+      cold and enquiring, were fixed on her; and at the faces of men with eyes
+      that were furtively warm and wondering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if Daddy was ever in a place like this?&rdquo; she said,
+      putting the glass of green stuff to her lips. &ldquo;Is it nice? It smells
+      of peppermint.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A beautiful colour. Good luck, mademoiselle!&rdquo; and he chinked
+      his glass with hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel sipped, held it away, and sipped again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's nice; but awfully sticky. May I have a cigarette?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Des cigarettes,&rdquo; said Lavendie to the waiter, &ldquo;Et deux
+      cafes noirs. Now, mademoiselle,&rdquo; he murmured when they were brought,
+      &ldquo;if we imagine that we have drunk a bottle of wine each, we shall
+      have exhausted all the preliminaries of what is called Vice. Amusing,
+      isn't it?&rdquo; He shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face struck Noel suddenly as tarnished and almost sullen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be angry, monsieur, it's all new to me, you see.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter smiled, his bright, skin-deep smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon! I forget myself. Only, it hurts me to see beauty in a place
+      like this. It does not go well with that tune, and these voices, and these
+      faces. Enjoy yourself, mademoiselle; drink it all in! See the way these
+      people look at each other; what love shines in their eyes! A pity, too, we
+      cannot hear what they are saying. Believe me, their talk is most subtle,
+      tres-spirituel. These young women are 'doing their bit,' as you call it;
+      bringing le plaisir to all these who are serving their country. Eat,
+      drink, love, for tomorrow we die. Who cares for the world simple or the
+      world beautiful, in days like these? The house of the spirit is empty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was looking at her sidelong as if he would enter her very soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel got up. &ldquo;I'm ready to go, monsieur.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put her cloak on her shoulders, paid the bill, and they went out,
+      threading again through the little tables, through the buzz of talk and
+      laughter and the fumes of tobacco, while another hollow little tune
+      jingled away behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Through there,&rdquo; said the painter, pointing to another door,
+      &ldquo;they dance. So it goes. London in war-time! Well, after all, it is
+      never very different; no great town is. Did you enjoy your sight of
+      'life,' mademoiselle?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think one must dance, to be happy. Is that where your friends go?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! To a room much rougher, and play dominoes, and drink coffee
+      and beer, and talk. They have no money to throw away.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn't you show me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle, in that room you might see someone perhaps whom one
+      day you would meet again; in the place we visited you were safe enough at
+      least I hope so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shrugged. &ldquo;I suppose it doesn't matter now, what I do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And a rush of emotion caught at her throat&mdash;a wave from the past&mdash;the
+      moonlit night, the dark old Abbey, the woods and the river. Two tears
+      rolled down her cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking of&mdash;something,&rdquo; she said in a muffled
+      voice. &ldquo;It's all right.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chere mademoiselle!&rdquo; Lavendie murmured; and all the way home
+      he was timid and distressed. Shaking his hand at the door, she murmured:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry I was such a fool; and thank you awfully, monsieur. Good
+      night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night; and better dreams. There is a good time coming&mdash;Peace
+      and Happiness once more in the world. It will not always be this
+      Forcing-House. Good night, chere mademoiselle!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel went up to the nursery, and stole in. A night-light was burning,
+      Nurse and baby were fast asleep. She tiptoed through into her own room.
+      Once there, she felt suddenly so tired that she could hardly undress; and
+      yet curiously rested, as if with that rush of emotion, Cyril and the past
+      had slipped from her for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Noel's first encounter with Opinion took place the following day. The baby
+      had just come in from its airing; she had seen it comfortably snoozing,
+      and was on her way downstairs, when a voice from the hall said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do?&rdquo; and she saw the khaki-clad figure of Adrian
+      Lauder, her father's curate! Hesitating just a moment, she finished her
+      descent, and put her fingers in his. He was a rather heavy, dough-coloured
+      young man of nearly thirty, unsuited by khaki, with a round white collar
+      buttoned behind; but his aspiring eyes redeemed him, proclaiming the best
+      intentions in the world, and an inclination towards sentiment in the
+      presence of beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't seen you for ages,&rdquo; he said rather fatuously,
+      following her into her father's study.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Noel. &ldquo;How&mdash;do you like being at the
+      Front?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;they're wonderful!&rdquo; And his eyes
+      shone. &ldquo;It's so nice to see you again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed puzzled by that answer; stammered, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know your sister had a baby. A jolly baby.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She hasn't.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lauder's mouth opened. 'A silly mouth,' she thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Is it a protegee&mdash;Belgian or
+      something?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it's mine; my own.&rdquo; And, turning round, she slipped the
+      little ring off her finger. When she turned back to him, his face had not
+      recovered from her words. It had a hapless look, as of one to whom such a
+      thing ought not to have happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't look like that,&rdquo; said Noel. &ldquo;Didn't you
+      understand? It's mine-mine.&rdquo; She put out her left hand. &ldquo;Look!
+      There's no ring.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stammered: &ldquo;I say, you oughtn't to&mdash;you oughtn't to&mdash;!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joke about&mdash;about such things; ought you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One doesn't joke if one's had a baby without being married, you
+      know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lauder went suddenly slack. A shell might have burst a few paces from him.
+      And then, just as one would in such a case, he made an effort, braced
+      himself, and said in a curious voice, both stiff and heavy: &ldquo;I can't&mdash;one
+      doesn't&mdash;it's not&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; said Noel. &ldquo;If you don't believe me, ask Daddy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put his hand up to his round collar; and with the wild thought that he
+      was going to tear it off, she cried: &ldquo;Don't!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You! But&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel turned away from him to the window: She stood looking out, but saw
+      nothing whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want it hidden,&rdquo; she said without turning round,
+      &ldquo;I want every one to know. It's stupid as it is&mdash;stupid!&rdquo;
+      and she stamped her foot. &ldquo;Can't you see how stupid it is&mdash;everybody's
+      mouth falling open!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He uttered a little sound which had pain in it, and she felt a real pang
+      of compunction. He had gripped the back of a chair; his face had lost its
+      heaviness. A dull flush coloured his cheeks. Noel had a feeling, as if she
+      had been convicted of treachery. It was his silence, the curious look of
+      an impersonal pain beyond power of words; she felt in him something much
+      deeper than mere disapproval&mdash;something which echoed within herself.
+      She walked quickly past him and escaped. She ran upstairs and threw
+      herself on her bed. He was nothing: it was not that! It was in herself,
+      the awful feeling, for the first time developed and poignant, that she had
+      betrayed her caste, forfeited the right to be thought a lady, betrayed her
+      secret reserve and refinement, repaid with black ingratitude the love
+      lavished on her up bringing, by behaving like any uncared-for common girl.
+      She had never felt this before&mdash;not even when Gratian first heard of
+      it, and they had stood one at each end of the hearth, unable to speak.
+      Then she still had her passion, and her grief for the dead. That was gone
+      now as if it had never been; and she had no defence, nothing between her
+      and this crushing humiliation and chagrin. She had been mad! She must have
+      been mad! The Belgian Barra was right: &ldquo;All a little mad&rdquo; in
+      this &ldquo;forcing-house&rdquo; of a war! She buried her face deep in the
+      pillow, till it almost stopped her power of breathing; her head and cheeks
+      and ears seemed to be on fire. If only he had shown disgust, done
+      something which roused her temper, her sense of justice, her feeling that
+      Fate had been too cruel to her; but he had just stood there, bewilderment
+      incarnate, like a creature with some very deep illusion shattered. It was
+      horrible! Then, feeling that she could not stay still, must walk, run, get
+      away somehow from this feeling of treachery and betrayal, she sprang up.
+      All was quiet below, and she slipped downstairs and out, speeding along
+      with no knowledge of direction, taking the way she had taken day after day
+      to her hospital. It was the last of April, trees and shrubs were luscious
+      with blossom and leaf; the dogs ran gaily; people had almost happy faces
+      in the sunshine. 'If I could get away from myself, I wouldn't care,' she
+      thought. Easy to get away from people, from London, even from England
+      perhaps; but from oneself&mdash;impossible! She passed her hospital; and
+      looked at it dully, at the Red Cross flag against its stucco wall, and a
+      soldier in his blue slops and red tie, coming out. She had spent many
+      miserable hours there, but none quite so miserable as this. She passed the
+      church opposite to the flats where Leila lived, and running suddenly into
+      a tall man coming round the corner, saw Fort. She bent her head, and tried
+      to hurry past. But his hand was held out, she could not help putting hers
+      into it; and looking up hardily, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know about me, don't you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face, naturally so frank, seemed to clench up, as if he were riding at
+      a fence. 'He'll tell a lie,' she thought bitterly. But he did not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Leila told me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she thought: 'I suppose he'll try and pretend that I've not been a
+      beast!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I admire your pluck,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't any.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We never know ourselves, do we? I suppose you wouldn't walk my pace
+      a minute or two, would you? I'm going the same way.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know which way I'm going.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is my case, too.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked on in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to God I were back in France,&rdquo; said Fort abruptly.
+      &ldquo;One doesn't feel clean here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel's heart applauded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! to get away&mdash;away from oneself! But at the thought of her baby,
+      her heart fell again. &ldquo;Is your leg quite hopeless?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That must be horrid.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hundreds of thousands would look on it as splendid luck; and so it
+      is if you count it better to be alive than dead, which I do, in spite of
+      the blues.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Cousin Leila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well. She goes on pegging away at the hospital; she's a brick.&rdquo;
+      But he did not look at her, and again there was silence, till he stopped
+      by Lord's Cricket-ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mustn't keep you crawling along at this pace.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't mind!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only wanted to say that if I can be of any service to you at any
+      time in any way whatever, please command me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave her hand a squeeze, took his hat off; and Noel walked slowly on.
+      The little interview, with its suppressions, and its implications, had but
+      exasperated her restlessness, and yet, in a way, it had soothed the
+      soreness of her heart. Captain Fort at all events did not despise her; and
+      he was in trouble like herself. She felt that somehow by the look of his
+      face, and the tone of his voice when he spoke of Leila. She quickened her
+      pace. George's words came back to her: &ldquo;If you're not ashamed of
+      yourself, no one will be of you!&rdquo; How easy to say! The old days, her
+      school, the little half grown-up dances she used to go to, when everything
+      was happy. Gone! All gone!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her meetings with Opinion were not over for the day, for turning again
+      at last into the home Square, tired out by her three hours' ramble, she
+      met an old lady whom she and Gratian had known from babyhood&mdash;a
+      handsome dame, the widow of an official, who spent her days, which showed
+      no symptom of declining, in admirable works. Her daughter, the widow of an
+      officer killed at the Marne, was with her, and the two greeted Noel with a
+      shower of cordial questions: So she was back from the country, and was she
+      quite well again? And working at her hospital? And how was her dear
+      father? They had thought him looking very thin and worn. But now Gratian
+      was at home&mdash;How dreadfully the war kept husbands and wives apart!
+      And whose was the dear little baby they had in the house?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine,&rdquo; said Noel, walking straight past them with her head
+      up. In every fibre of her being she could feel the hurt, startled, utterly
+      bewildered looks of those firm friendly persons left there on the pavement
+      behind her; could feel the way they would gather themselves together, and
+      walk on, perhaps without a word, and then round the corner begin: &ldquo;What
+      has come to Noel? What did she mean?&rdquo; And taking the little gold
+      hoop out of her pocket, she flung it with all her might into the Square
+      Garden. The action saved her from a breakdown; and she went in calmly.
+      Lunch was long over, but her father had not gone out, for he met her in
+      the hall and drew her into the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must eat, my child,&rdquo; he said. And while she was
+      swallowing down what he had caused to be kept back for her, he stood by
+      the hearth in that favourite attitude of his, one foot on the fender, and
+      one hand gripping the mantel-shelf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got your wish, Daddy,&rdquo; she said dully: &ldquo;Everybody
+      knows now. I've told Mr. Lauder, and Monsieur, and the Dinnafords.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw his fingers uncrisp, then grip the shelf again. &ldquo;I'm glad,&rdquo;
+      he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Thirza gave me a ring to wear, but I've thrown it away.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dearest child,&rdquo; he began, but could not go on, for the
+      quivering of his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to say once more, Daddy, that I'm fearfully sorry about
+      you. And I am ashamed of myself; I thought I wasn't, but I am&mdash;only,
+      I think it was cruel, and I'm not penitent to God; and it's no good trying
+      to make me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson turned and looked at her. For a long time after, she could not get
+      that look out of her memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmy Fort had turned away from Noel feeling particularly wretched. Ever
+      since the day when Leila had told him of the girl's misfortune he had been
+      aware that his liaison had no decent foundation, save a sort of pity. One
+      day, in a queer access of compunction, he had made Leila an offer of
+      marriage. She had refused; and he had respected her the more, realising by
+      the quiver in her voice and the look in her eyes that she refused him, not
+      because she did not love him well enough, but because she was afraid of
+      losing any of his affection. She was a woman of great experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-day he had taken advantage of the luncheon interval to bring her some
+      flowers, with a note to say that he could not come that evening. Letting
+      himself in with his latchkey, he had carefully put those Japanese azaleas
+      in the bowl &ldquo;Famille Rose,&rdquo; taking water from her bedroom.
+      Then he had sat down on the divan with his head in his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though he had rolled so much about the world, he had never had much to do
+      with women. And there was nothing in him of the Frenchman, who takes what
+      life puts in his way as so much enjoyment on the credit side, and accepts
+      the ends of such affairs as they naturally and rather rapidly arrive. It
+      had been a pleasure, and was no longer a pleasure; but this apparently did
+      not dissolve it, or absolve him. He felt himself bound by an obscure but
+      deep instinct to go on pretending that he was not tired of her, so long as
+      she was not tired of him. And he sat there trying to remember any sign,
+      however small, of such a consummation, quite without success. On the
+      contrary, he had even the wretched feeling that if only he had loved her,
+      she would have been much more likely to have tired of him by now. For her
+      he was still the unconquered, in spite of his loyal endeavour to seem
+      conquered. He had made a fatal mistake, that evening after the concert at
+      Queen's Hall, to let himself go, on a mixed tide of desire and pity!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His folly came to him with increased poignancy after he had parted from
+      Noel. How could he have been such a base fool, as to have committed
+      himself to Leila on an evening when he had actually been in the company of
+      that child? Was it the vague, unseizable likeness between them which had
+      pushed him over the edge? 'I've been an ass,' he thought; 'a horrible
+      ass.' I would always have given every hour I've ever spent with Leila, for
+      one real smile from that girl.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This sudden sight of Noel after months during which he had tried loyally
+      to forget her existence, and not succeeded at all, made him realise as he
+      never had yet that he was in love with her; so very much in love with her
+      that the thought of Leila was become nauseating. And yet the instincts of
+      a gentleman seemed to forbid him to betray that secret to either of them.
+      It was an accursed coil! He hailed a cab, for he was late; and all the way
+      back to the War Office he continued to see the girl's figure and her face
+      with its short hair. And a fearful temptation rose within him. Was it not
+      she who was now the real object for chivalry and pity? Had he not the
+      right to consecrate himself to championship of one in such a deplorable
+      position? Leila had lived her life; but this child's life&mdash;pretty
+      well wrecked&mdash;was all before her. And then he grinned from sheer
+      disgust. For he knew that this was Jesuitry. Not chivalry was moving him,
+      but love! Love! Love of the unattainable! And with a heavy heart, indeed,
+      he entered the great building, where, in a small room, companioned by the
+      telephone, and surrounded by sheets of paper covered with figures, he
+      passed his days. The war made everything seem dreary, hopeless. No wonder
+      he had caught at any distraction which came along&mdash;caught at it, till
+      it had caught him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      To find out the worst is, for human nature, only a question of time. But
+      where the &ldquo;worst&rdquo; is attached to a family haloed, as it were,
+      by the authority and reputation of an institution like the Church, the
+      process of discovery has to break through many a little hedge. Sheer
+      unlikelihood, genuine respect, the defensive instinct in those identified
+      with an institution, who will themselves feel weaker if its strength be
+      diminished, the feeling that the scandal is too good to be true&mdash;all
+      these little hedges, and more, had to be broken through. To the
+      Dinnafords, the unholy importance of what Noel had said to them would have
+      continued to keep them dumb, out of self-protection; but its monstrosity
+      had given them the feeling that there must be some mistake, that the girl
+      had been overtaken by a wild desire to &ldquo;pull their legs&rdquo; as
+      dear Charlie would say. With the hope of getting this view confirmed, they
+      lay in wait for the old nurse who took the baby out, and obtained the
+      information, shortly imparted: &ldquo;Oh, yes; Miss Noel's. Her 'usband
+      was killed&mdash;poor lamb!&rdquo; And they felt rewarded. They had been
+      sure there was some mistake. The relief of hearing that word &ldquo;'usband&rdquo;
+      was intense. One of these hasty war marriages, of which the dear Vicar had
+      not approved, and so it had been kept dark. Quite intelligible, but so
+      sad! Enough misgiving however remained in their minds, to prevent their
+      going to condole with the dear Vicar; but not enough to prevent their
+      roundly contradicting the rumours and gossip already coming to their ears.
+      And then one day, when their friend Mrs. Curtis had said too positively:
+      &ldquo;Well, she doesn't wear a wedding-ring, that I'll swear, because I
+      took very good care to look!&rdquo; they determined to ask Mr. Lauder. He
+      would&mdash;indeed must&mdash;know; and, of course, would not tell a
+      story. When they asked him it was so manifest that he did know, that they
+      almost withdrew the question. The poor young man had gone the colour of a
+      tomato.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I prefer not to answer,&rdquo; he said. The rest of a very short
+      interview was passed in exquisite discomfort. Indeed discomfort, exquisite
+      and otherwise, within a few weeks of Noel's return, had begun to pervade
+      all the habitual congregation of Pierson's church. It was noticed that
+      neither of the two sisters attended Service now. Certain people who went
+      in the sincere hope of seeing Noel, only fell off again when she did not
+      appear. After all, she would not have the face! And Gratian was too
+      ashamed, no doubt. It was constantly remarked that the Vicar looked very
+      grave and thin, even for him. As the rumours hardened into certainty, the
+      feeling towards him became a curious medley of sympathy and condemnation.
+      There was about the whole business that which English people especially
+      resent. By the very fact of his presence before them every Sunday, and his
+      public ministrations, he was exhibiting to them, as it were, the seamed
+      and blushing face of his daughter's private life, besides affording one
+      long and glaring demonstration of the failure of the Church to guide its
+      flock: If a man could not keep his own daughter in the straight path&mdash;whom
+      could he? Resign! The word began to be thought about, but not yet spoken.
+      He had been there so long; he had spent so much money on the church and
+      the parish; his gentle dreamy manner was greatly liked. He was a
+      gentleman; and had helped many people; and, though his love of music and
+      vestments had always caused heart-burnings, yet it had given a certain
+      cachet to the church. The women, at any rate, were always glad to know
+      that the church they went to was capable of drawing their fellow women
+      away from other churches. Besides, it was war-time, and moral delinquency
+      which in time of peace would have bulked too large to neglect, was now
+      less insistently dwelt on, by minds preoccupied by food and air-raids.
+      Things, of course, could not go on as they were; but as yet they did go
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk; and nothing concrete
+      or tangible came Pierson's way. He went about his usual routine without
+      seeming change. And yet there was a change, secret and creeping. Wounded
+      almost to death himself, he felt as though surrounded by one great wound
+      in others; but it was some weeks before anything occurred to rouse within
+      him the weapon of anger or the protective impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then one day a little swift brutality shook him to the very soul. He
+      was coming home from a long parish round, and had turned into the Square,
+      when a low voice behind him said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wot price the little barstard?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A cold, sick feeling stifled his very breathing; he gasped, and spun
+      round, to see two big loutish boys walking fast away. With swift and
+      stealthy passion he sprang after them, and putting his hands on their two
+      neighbouring shoulders, wrenched them round so that they faced him, with
+      mouths fallen open in alarm. Shaking them with all his force, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dare you&mdash;how dare you use that word?&rdquo; His face and
+      voice must have been rather terrible, for the scare in their faces brought
+      him to sudden consciousness of his own violence, and he dropped his hands.
+      In two seconds they were at the corner. They stopped there for a second;
+      one of them shouted &ldquo;Gran'pa&rdquo;; then they vanished. He was left
+      with lips and hands quivering, and a feeling that he had not known for
+      years&mdash;the weak white empty feeling one has after yielding utterly to
+      sudden murderous rage. He crossed over, and stood leaning against the
+      Garden railings, with the thought: 'God forgive me! I could have killed
+      them&mdash;I could have killed them!' There had been a devil in him. If he
+      had had something in his hand, he might now have been a murderer: How
+      awful! Only one had spoken; but he could have killed them both! And the
+      word was true, and was in all mouths&mdash;all low common mouths, day
+      after day, of his own daughter's child! The ghastliness of this thought,
+      brought home so utterly, made him writhe, and grasp the railings as if he
+      would have bent them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that day on, a creeping sensation of being rejected of men, never
+      left him; the sense of identification with Noel and her tiny outcast
+      became ever more poignant, more real; the desire to protect them ever more
+      passionate; and the feeling that round about there were whispering voices,
+      pointing fingers, and a growing malevolence was ever more sickening. He
+      was beginning too to realise the deep and hidden truth: How easily the
+      breath of scandal destroys the influence and sanctity of those endowed
+      therewith by vocation; how invaluable it is to feel untarnished, and how
+      difficult to feel that when others think you tarnished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to be with Noel as much as possible; and in the evenings they
+      sometimes went walks together, without ever talking of what was always in
+      their minds. Between six and eight the girl was giving sittings to
+      Lavendie in the drawing-room, and sometimes Pierson would come there and
+      play to them. He was always possessed now by a sense of the danger Noel
+      ran from companionship with any man. On three occasions, Jimmy Fort made
+      his appearance after dinner. He had so little to say that it was difficult
+      to understand why he came; but, sharpened by this new dread for his
+      daughter, Pierson noticed his eyes always following her. 'He admires her,'
+      he thought; and often he would try his utmost to grasp the character of
+      this man, who had lived such a roving life. 'Is he&mdash;can he be the
+      sort of man I would trust Nollie to?' he would think. 'Oh, that I should
+      have to hope like this that some good man would marry her&mdash;my little
+      Nollie, a child only the other day!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In these sad, painful, lonely weeks he found a spot of something like
+      refuge in Leila's sitting-room, and would go there often for half an hour
+      when she was back from her hospital. That little black-walled room with
+      its Japanese prints and its flowers, soothed him. And Leila soothed him,
+      innocent as he was of any knowledge of her latest aberration, and perhaps
+      conscious that she herself was not too happy. To watch her arranging
+      flowers, singing her little French songs, or to find her beside him,
+      listening to his confidences, was the only real pleasure he knew in these
+      days. And Leila, in turn, would watch him and think: 'Poor Edward! He has
+      never lived; and never will; now!' But sometimes the thought would shoot
+      through her: 'Perhaps he's to be envied. He doesn't feel what I feel,
+      anyway. Why did I fall in love again?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They did not speak of Noel as a rule, but one evening she expressed her
+      views roundly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a great mistake to make Noel come back. Edward. It was
+      Quixotic. You'll be lucky if real mischief doesn't come of it. She's not a
+      patient character; one day she'll do something rash. And, mind you, she'll
+      be much more likely to break out if she sees the world treating you badly
+      than if it happens to herself. I should send her back to the country,
+      before she makes bad worse.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't do that, Leila. We must live it down together.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wrong, Edward. You should take things as they are.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a heavy sigh Pierson answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could see her future. She's so attractive. And her
+      defences are gone. She's lost faith, and belief in all that a good woman
+      should be. The day after she came back she told me she was ashamed of
+      herself. But since&mdash;she's not given a sign. She's so proud&mdash;my
+      poor little Nollie. I see how men admire her, too. Our Belgian friend is
+      painting her. He's a good man; but he finds her beautiful, and who can
+      wonder. And your friend Captain Fort. Fathers are supposed to be blind,
+      but they see very clear sometimes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila rose and drew down a blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This sun,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Does Jimmy Fort come to you&mdash;often?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! no; very seldom. But still&mdash;I can see.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'You bat&mdash;you blunderer!' thought Leila: 'See! You can't even see
+      this beside you!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect he's sorry for her,&rdquo; she said in a queer voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should he be sorry? He doesn't know:&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes! He knows; I told him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Leila repeated stubbornly; &ldquo;and he's sorry for
+      her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even then &ldquo;this monk&rdquo; beside her did not see, and went
+      blundering on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; it's not merely that he's sorry. By the way he looks at
+      her, I know I'm not mistaken. I've wondered&mdash;what do you think,
+      Leila. He's too old for her; but he seems an honourable, kind man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! a most honourable, kind man.&rdquo; But only by pressing her
+      hand against her lips had she smothered a burst of bitter laughter. He,
+      who saw nothing, could yet notice Fort's eyes when he looked at Noel, and
+      be positive that he was in love with her! How plainly those eyes must
+      speak! Her control gave way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this is very interesting,&rdquo; she said, spurning her words
+      like Noel, &ldquo;considering that he's more than my friend, Edward.&rdquo;
+      It gave her a sort of pleasure to see him wince. 'These blind bats!' she
+      thought, terribly stung that he should so clearly assume her out of the
+      running. Then she was sorry, his face had become so still and wistful. And
+      turning away, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I shan't break my heart; I'm a good loser. And I'm a good
+      fighter, too; perhaps I shan't lose.&rdquo; And snapping off a sprig of
+      geranium, she pressed it to her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me,&rdquo; said Pierson slowly; &ldquo;I didn't know. I'm
+      stupid. I thought your love for your poor soldiers had left no room for
+      other feelings.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila uttered a shrill laugh. &ldquo;What have they to do with each other?
+      Did you never hear of passion, Edward? Oh! Don't look at me like that. Do
+      you think a woman can't feel passion at my age? As much as ever, more than
+      ever, because it's all slipping away.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took her hand from her lips, but a geranium petal was left clinging
+      there, like a bloodstain. &ldquo;What has your life been all these years,&rdquo;
+      she went on vehemently&mdash;&ldquo;suppression of passion, nothing else!
+      You monks twist Nature up with holy words, and try to disguise what the
+      eeriest simpleton can see. Well, I haven't suppressed passion, Edward.
+      That's all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And are you happier for that?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was; and I shall be again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little smile curled Pierson's lips. &ldquo;Shall be?&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;I hope so. It's just two ways of looking at things, Leila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Edward! Don't be so gentle! I suppose you don't think a person
+      like me can ever really love?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was standing before her with his head down, and a sense that, naive and
+      bat-like as he was, there was something in him she could not reach or
+      understand, made her cry out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've not been nice to you. Forgive me, Edward! I'm so unhappy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a Greek who used to say: 'God is the helping of man by
+      man.' It isn't true, but it's beautiful. Good-bye, dear Leila, and don't
+      be sorrowful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She squeezed his hand, and turned to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood there watching his black figure cross the road in the sunshine,
+      and pass round the corner by the railings of the church. He walked
+      quickly, very upright; there was something unseeing even about that back
+      view of him; or was it that he saw-another world? She had never lost the
+      mental habits of her orthodox girlhood, and in spite of all impatience,
+      recognised his sanctity. When he had disappeared she went into her
+      bedroom. What he had said, indeed, was no discovery. She had known. Oh!
+      She had known. 'Why didn't I accept Jimmy's offer? Why didn't I marry him?
+      Is it too late?' she thought. 'Could I? Would he&mdash;even now?' But then
+      she started away from her own thought. Marry him! knowing his heart was
+      with this girl?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked long at her face in the mirror, studying with a fearful
+      interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light
+      coating of powder. She examined the cunning touches of colouring matter
+      here and there in her front hair. Were they cunning enough? Did they
+      deceive? They seemed to her suddenly to stare out. She fingered and
+      smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin below her chin. She
+      stretched herself, and passed her hands down over her whole form,
+      searching as it were for slackness, or thickness. And she had the bitter
+      thought: 'I'm all out. I'm doing all I can.' The lines of a little poem
+      Fort had showed her went thrumming through her head:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+         &ldquo;Time, you old gipsy man
+            Will you not stay
+          Put up your caravan
+            Just for a day?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      What more could she do? He did not like to see her lips reddened. She had
+      marked his disapprovals, watched him wipe his mouth after a kiss, when he
+      thought she couldn't see him. 'I need'nt!' she thought. 'Noel's lips are
+      no redder, really. What has she better than I? Youth&mdash;dew on the
+      grass!' That didn't last long! But long enough to &ldquo;do her in&rdquo;
+      as her soldier-men would say. And, suddenly she revolted against herself,
+      against Fort, against this chilled and foggy country; felt a fierce
+      nostalgia for African sun, and the African flowers; the happy-go-lucky,
+      hand-to-mouth existence of those five years before the war began. High
+      Constantia at grape harvest! How many years ago&mdash;ten years, eleven
+      years! Ah! To have before her those ten years, with him! Ten years in the
+      sun! He would have loved her then, and gone on loving her! And she would
+      not have tired of him, as she had tired of those others. 'In half an
+      hour,' she thought, 'he'll be here, sit opposite me; I shall see him
+      struggling forcing himself to seem affectionate! It's too humbling! But I
+      don't care; I want him!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She searched her wardrobe, for some garment or touch of colour, novelty of
+      any sort, to help her. But she had tried them all&mdash;those little
+      tricks&mdash;was bankrupt. And such a discouraged, heavy mood came on her,
+      that she did not even &ldquo;change,&rdquo; but went back in her nurse's
+      dress and lay down on the divan, pretending to sleep, while the maid set
+      out the supper. She lay there moody and motionless, trying to summon
+      courage, feeling that if she showed herself beaten she was beaten; knowing
+      that she only held him by pity. But when she heard his footstep on the
+      stairs she swiftly passed her hands over her cheeks, as if to press the
+      blood out of them, and lay absolutely still. She hoped that she was white,
+      and indeed she was, with finger-marks under the eyes, for she had suffered
+      greatly this last hour. Through her lashes she saw him halt, and look at
+      her in surprise. Asleep, or-ill, which? She did not move. She wanted to
+      watch him. He tiptoed across the room and stood looking down at her. There
+      was a furrow between his eyes. 'Ah!' she thought, 'it would suit you, if I
+      were dead, my kind friend.' He bent a little towards her; and she wondered
+      suddenly whether she looked graceful lying there, sorry now that she had
+      not changed her dress. She saw him shrug his shoulders ever so faintly
+      with a puzzled little movement. He had not seen that she was shamming. How
+      nice his face was&mdash;not mean, secret, callous! She opened her eyes,
+      which against her will had in them the despair she was feeling. He went on
+      his knees, and lifting her hand to his lips, hid them with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jimmy,&rdquo; she said gently, &ldquo;I'm an awful bore to you.
+      Poor Jimmy! No! Don't pretend! I know what I know!&rdquo; 'Oh, God! What
+      am I saying?' she thought. 'It's fatal-fatal. I ought never!' And drawing
+      his head to her, she put it to her heart. Then, instinctively aware that
+      this moment had been pressed to its uttermost, she scrambled up, kissed
+      his forehead, stretched herself, and laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was asleep, dreaming; dreaming you loved me. Wasn't it funny?
+      Come along. There are oysters, for the last time this season.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that evening, as if both knew they had been looking over a precipice,
+      they seemed to be treading warily, desperately anxious not to rouse
+      emotion in each other, or touch on things which must bring a scene. And
+      Leila talked incessantly of Africa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you long for the sun, Jimmy? Couldn't we&mdash;couldn't you
+      go? Oh! why doesn't this wretched war end? All that we've got here at home
+      every scrap of wealth, and comfort, and age, and art, and music, I'd give
+      it all for the light and the sun out there. Wouldn't you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Fort said he would, knowing well of one thing which he would not give.
+      And she knew that, as well as he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were both gayer than they had been for a long time; so that when he
+      had gone, she fell back once more on to the divan, and burying her face in
+      a cushion, wept bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was not quite disillusionment that Pierson felt while he walked away.
+      Perhaps he had not really believed in Leila's regeneration. It was more an
+      acute discomfort, an increasing loneliness. A soft and restful spot was
+      now denied him; a certain warmth and allurement had gone out of his life.
+      He had not even the feeling that it was his duty to try and save Leila by
+      persuading her to marry Fort. He had always been too sensitive, too much
+      as it were of a gentleman, for the robuster sorts of evangelism. Such
+      delicacy had been a stumbling-block to him all through professional life.
+      In the eight years when his wife was with him, all had been more certain,
+      more direct and simple, with the help of her sympathy, judgment; and
+      companionship. At her death a sort of mist had gathered in his soul. No
+      one had ever spoken plainly to him. To a clergyman, who does? No one had
+      told him in so many words that he should have married again&mdash;that to
+      stay unmarried was bad for him, physically and spiritually, fogging and
+      perverting life; not driving him, indeed, as it drove many, to intolerance
+      and cruelty, but to that half-living dreaminess, and the vague unhappy
+      yearnings which so constantly beset him. All these celibate years he had
+      really only been happy in his music, or in far-away country places, taking
+      strong exercise, and losing himself in the beauties of Nature; and since
+      the war began he had only once, for those three days at Kestrel, been out
+      of London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked home, going over in his mind very anxiously all the evidence he
+      had of Fort's feeling for Noel. How many times had he been to them since
+      she came back? Only three times&mdash;three evening visits! And he had not
+      been alone with her a single minute! Before this calamity befell his
+      daughter, he would never have observed anything in Fort's demeanour; but,
+      in his new watchfulness, he had seen the almost reverential way he looked
+      at her, noticed the extra softness of his voice when he spoke to her, and
+      once a look of sudden pain, a sort of dulling of his whole self, when Noel
+      had got up and gone out of the room. And the girl herself? Twice he had
+      surprised her gazing at Fort when he was not looking, with a sort of
+      brooding interest. He remembered how, as a little girl, she would watch a
+      grown-up, and then suddenly one day attach herself to him, and be quite
+      devoted. Yes, he must warn her, before she could possibly become
+      entangled. In his fastidious chastity, the opinion he had held of Fort was
+      suddenly lowered. He, already a free-thinker, was now revealed as a
+      free-liver. Poor little Nollie! Endangered again already! Every man a kind
+      of wolf waiting to pounce on her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found Lavendie and Noel in the drawing-room, standing before the
+      portrait which was nearing completion. He looked at it for a long minute,
+      and turned away:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think it's like me, Daddy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's like you; but it hurts me. I can't tell why.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw the smile of a painter whose picture is being criticised come on
+      Lavendie's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is perhaps the colouring which does not please you, monsieur?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; deeper. The expression; what is she waiting for?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The defensive smile died on Lavendie's lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is as I see her, monsieur le cure.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson turned again to the picture, and suddenly covered his eyes.
+      &ldquo;She looks 'fey,'&rdquo; he said, and went out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lavendie and Noel remained staring at the picture. &ldquo;Fey? What does
+      that mean, mademoiselle?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possessed, or something.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they continued to stare at the picture, till Lavendie said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think there is still a little too much light on that ear.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same evening, at bedtime, Pierson called Noel back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie, I want you to know something. In all but the name, Captain
+      Fort is a married man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw her flush, and felt his own face darkening with colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said calmly: &ldquo;I know; to Leila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean she has told you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then how?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guessed. Daddy, don't treat me as a child any more. What's the
+      use, now?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down in the chair before the hearth, and covered his face with his
+      hands. By the quivering of those hands, and the movement of his shoulders,
+      she could tell that he was stifling emotion, perhaps even crying; and
+      sinking down on his knees she pressed his hands and face to her,
+      murmuring: &ldquo;Oh, Daddy dear! Oh, Daddy dear!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put his arms round her, and they sat a long time with their cheeks
+      pressed together, not speaking a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The day after that silent outburst of emotion in the drawing-room was a
+      Sunday. And, obeying the longing awakened overnight to be as good as she
+      could to her father; Noel said to him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like me to come to Church?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, Nollie.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How could he have answered otherwise? To him Church was the home of
+      comfort and absolution, where people must bring their sins and troubles&mdash;a
+      haven of sinners, the fount of charity, of forgiveness, and love. Not to
+      have believed that, after all these years, would have been to deny all his
+      usefulness in life, and to cast a slur on the House of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so Noel walked there with him, for Gratian had gone down to George,
+      for the week-end. She slipped quietly up the side aisle to their empty
+      pew, under the pulpit. Never turning her eyes from the chancel, she
+      remained unconscious of the stir her presence made, during that hour and
+      twenty minutes. Behind her, the dumb currents of wonder, disapproval, and
+      resentment ran a stealthy course. On her all eyes were fixed sooner or
+      later, and every mind became the play ground of judgments. From every
+      soul, kneeling, standing, or sitting, while the voice of the Service
+      droned, sang, or spoke, a kind of glare radiated on to that one small
+      devoted head, which seemed so ludicrously devout. She disturbed their
+      devotions, this girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class.
+      She ought to repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there
+      was something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she
+      was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's authority, too
+      visible a rent in the raiment of their priest. Her figure focused all the
+      uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks. Mothers
+      quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could see her; wives with
+      the idea that their husbands were seeing her. Men experienced sensations
+      varying from condemnation to a sort of covetousness. Young folk wondered,
+      and felt inclined to giggle. Old maids could hardly bear to look. Here and
+      there a man or woman who had seen life face to face, was simply sorry! The
+      consciousness of all who knew her personally was at stretch how to behave
+      if they came within reach of her in going out. For, though only half a
+      dozen would actually rub shoulders with her, all knew that they might be,
+      and many felt it their duty to be, of that half-dozen, so as to establish
+      their attitude once for all. It was, in fact, too severe a test for human
+      nature and the feelings which Church ought to arouse. The stillness of
+      that young figure, the impossibility of seeing her face and judging of her
+      state of mind thereby; finally, a faint lurking shame that they should be
+      so intrigued and disturbed by something which had to do with sex, in this
+      House of Worship&mdash;all combined to produce in every mind that
+      herd-feeling of defence, which so soon becomes, offensive. And, half
+      unconscious, half aware of it all, Noel stood, and sat, and knelt. Once or
+      twice she saw her father's eyes fixed on her; and, still in the glow of
+      last night's pity and remorse, felt a kind of worship for his thin grave
+      face. But for the most part, her own wore the expression Lavendie had
+      translated to his canvas&mdash;the look of one ever waiting for the
+      extreme moments of life, for those few and fleeting poignancies which
+      existence holds for the human heart. A look neither hungry nor
+      dissatisfied, but dreamy and expectant, which might blaze into warmth and
+      depth at any moment, and then go back to its dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the last notes of the organ died away she continued to sit very
+      still, without looking round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no second Service, and the congregation melted out behind her,
+      and had dispersed into the streets and squares long before she came forth.
+      After hesitating whether or no to go to the vestry door, she turned away
+      and walked home alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was this deliberate evasion of all contact which probably clinched the
+      business. The absence of vent, of any escape-pipe for the feelings, is
+      always dangerous. They felt cheated. If Noel had come out amongst all
+      those whose devotions her presence had disturbed, if in that exit, some
+      had shown and others had witnessed one knows not what of a manifested
+      ostracism, the outraged sense of social decency might have been appeased
+      and sleeping dogs allowed to lie, for we soon get used to things; and,
+      after all, the war took precedence in every mind even over social decency.
+      But none of this had occurred, and a sense that Sunday after Sunday the
+      same little outrage would happen to them, moved more than a dozen quite
+      unrelated persons, and caused the posting that evening of as many letters,
+      signed and unsigned, to a certain quarter. London is no place for parish
+      conspiracy, and a situation which in the country would have provoked
+      meetings more or less public, and possibly a resolution, could perhaps
+      only thus be dealt with. Besides, in certain folk there is ever a
+      mysterious itch to write an unsigned letter&mdash;such missives satisfy
+      some obscure sense of justice, some uncontrollable longing to get even
+      with those who have hurt or disturbed them, without affording the
+      offenders chance for further hurt or disturbance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Letters which are posted often reach their destination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Wednesday morning Pierson was sitting in his study at the hour devoted
+      to the calls of his parishioners, when the maid announced, &ldquo;Canon
+      Rushbourne, sir,&rdquo; and he saw before him an old College friend whom
+      he had met but seldom in recent years. His visitor was a short,
+      grey-haired man of rather portly figure, whose round, rosy, good-humoured
+      face had a look of sober goodness, and whose light-blue eyes shone a
+      little. He grasped Pierson's hand, and said in a voice to whose natural
+      heavy resonance professional duty had added a certain unction:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Edward, how many years it is since we met! Do you remember
+      dear old Blakeway? I saw him only yesterday. He's just the same. I'm
+      delighted to see you again,&rdquo; and he laughed a little soft nervous
+      laugh. Then for a few moments he talked of the war and old College days,
+      and Pierson looked at him and thought: 'What has he come for?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've something to say to me, Alec,&rdquo; he said, at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Canon Rushbourne leaned forward in his chair, and answered with evident
+      effort: &ldquo;Yes; I wanted to have a little talk with you, Edward. I
+      hope you won't mind. I do hope you won't.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I mind?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Canon Rushbourne's eyes shone more than ever, there was real friendliness
+      in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you've every right to say to me: 'Mind your own business.'
+      But I made up my mind to come as a friend, hoping to save you from&mdash;er&rdquo;
+      he stammered, and began again: &ldquo;I think you ought to know of the
+      feeling in your parish that&mdash;er&mdash;that&mdash;er&mdash;your
+      position is very delicate. Without breach of confidence I may tell you
+      that letters have been sent to headquarters; you can imagine perhaps what
+      I mean. Do believe, my dear friend, that I'm actuated by my old affection
+      for you; nothing else, I do assure you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the silence, his breathing could be heard, as of a man a little touched
+      with asthma, while he continually smoothed his thick black knees, his
+      whole face radiating an anxious kindliness. The sun shone brightly on
+      those two black figures, so very different, and drew out of their
+      well-worn garments the faint latent green mossiness which. underlies the
+      clothes of clergymen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Pierson said: &ldquo;Thank you, Alec; I understand.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Canon uttered a resounding sigh. &ldquo;You didn't realise how very
+      easily people misinterpret her being here with you; it seems to them a
+      kind&mdash;a kind of challenge. They were bound, I think, to feel that;
+      and I'm afraid, in consequence&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped, moved by the fact
+      that Pierson had closed his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am to choose, you mean, between my daughter and my parish?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Canon seemed, with a stammer of words, to try and blunt the edge of
+      that clear question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My visit is quite informal, my dear fellow; I can't say at all. But
+      there is evidently much feeling; that is what I wanted you to know. You
+      haven't quite seen, I think, that&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson raised his hand. &ldquo;I can't talk of this.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Canon rose. &ldquo;Believe me, Edward, I sympathise deeply. I felt I
+      had to warn you.&rdquo; He held out his hand. &ldquo;Good-bye, my dear
+      friend, do forgive me&rdquo;; and he went out. In the hall an adventure
+      befell him so plump, and awkward, that he could barely recite it to Mrs.
+      Rushbourne that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coming out from my poor friend,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I ran into a
+      baby's perambulator and that young mother, whom I remember as a little
+      thing&rdquo;&mdash;he held his hand at the level of his thigh&mdash;&ldquo;arranging
+      it for going out. It startled me; and I fear I asked quite foolishly: 'Is
+      it a boy?' The poor young thing looked up at me. She has very large eyes,
+      quite beautiful, strange eyes. 'Have you been speaking to Daddy about me?'
+      'My dear young lady,' I said, 'I'm such an old friend, you see. You must
+      forgive me.' And then she said: 'Are they going to ask him to resign?'
+      'That depends on you,' I said. Why do I say these things, Charlotte? I
+      ought simply to have held my tongue. Poor young thing; so very young! And
+      the little baby!&rdquo; &ldquo;She has brought it on herself, Alec,&rdquo;
+      Mrs. Rushbourne replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The moment his visitor had vanished, Pierson paced up and down the study,
+      with anger rising in his, heart. His daughter or his parish! The old saw,
+      &ldquo;An Englishman's house is his castle!&rdquo; was being attacked
+      within him. Must he not then harbour his own daughter, and help her by
+      candid atonement to regain her inward strength and peace? Was he not
+      thereby acting as a true Christian, in by far the hardest course he and
+      she could pursue? To go back on that decision and imperil his daughter's
+      spirit, or else resign his parish&mdash;the alternatives were brutal! This
+      was the centre of his world, the only spot where so lonely a man could
+      hope to feel even the semblance of home; a thousand little threads
+      tethered him to his church, his parishioners, and this house&mdash;for, to
+      live on here if he gave up his church was out of the question. But his
+      chief feeling was a bewildered anger that for doing what seemed to him his
+      duty, he should be attacked by his parishioners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A passion of desire to know what they really thought and felt&mdash;these
+      parishioners of his, whom he had befriended, and for whom he had worked so
+      long&mdash;beset him now, and he went out. But the absurdity of his quest
+      struck him before he had gone the length of the Square. One could not go
+      to people and say: &ldquo;Stand and deliver me your inmost judgments.&rdquo;
+      And suddenly he was aware of how far away he really was from them. Through
+      all his ministrations had he ever come to know their hearts? And now, in
+      this dire necessity for knowledge, there seemed no way of getting it. He
+      went at random into a stationer's shop; the shopman sang bass in his
+      choir. They had met Sunday after Sunday for the last seven years. But
+      when, with this itch for intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man behind
+      the counter, it was as if he were looking on him for the first time. The
+      Russian proverb, &ldquo;The heart of another is a dark forest,&rdquo;
+      gashed into his mind, while he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Hodson, what news of your son?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing more, Mr. Pierson, thank you, sir, nothing more at present.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it seemed to Pierson, gazing at the man's face clothed in a short,
+      grizzling beard cut rather like his own, that he must be thinking: 'Ah!
+      sir, but what news of your daughter?' No one would ever tell him to his
+      face what he was thinking. And buying two pencils, he went out. On the
+      other side of the road was a bird-fancier's shop, kept by a woman whose
+      husband had been taken for the Army. She was not friendly towards him, for
+      it was known to her that he had expostulated with her husband for keeping
+      larks, and other wild birds. And quite deliberately he crossed the road,
+      and stood looking in at the window, with the morbid hope that from this
+      unfriendly one he might hear truth. She was in her shop, and came to the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you any news of your husband, Mrs. Cherry?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Mr. Pierson, I 'ave not; not this week.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hasn't gone out yet?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Mr. Pierson; 'e 'as not.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no expression on her face, perfectly blank it was&mdash;Pierson
+      had a mad longing to say 'For God's sake, woman, speak out what's in your
+      mind; tell me what you think of me and my daughter. Never mind my cloth!'
+      But he could no more say it than the woman could tell him what was in her
+      mind. And with a &ldquo;Good morning&rdquo; he passed on. No man or woman
+      would tell him anything, unless, perhaps, they were drunk. He came to a
+      public house, and for a moment even hesitated before it, but the thought
+      of insult aimed at Noel stopped him, and he passed that too. And then
+      reality made itself known to him. Though he had come out to hear what they
+      were thinking, he did not really want to hear it, could not endure it if
+      he did. He had been too long immune from criticism, too long in the
+      position of one who may tell others what he thinks of them. And standing
+      there in the crowded street, he was attacked by that longing for the
+      country which had always come on him when he was hard pressed. He looked
+      at his memoranda. By stupendous luck it was almost a blank day. An omnibus
+      passed close by which would take him far out. He climbed on to it, and
+      travelled as far as Hendon; then getting down, set forth on foot. It was
+      bright and hot, and the May blossom in full foam. He walked fast along the
+      perfectly straight road till he came to the top of Elstree Hill. There for
+      a few moments he stood gazing at the school chapel, the cricket-field, the
+      wide land beyond. All was very quiet, for it was lunch-time. A horse was
+      tethered there, and a strolling cat, as though struck by the tall black
+      incongruity of his figure, paused in her progress, then, slithering under
+      the wicket gate, arched her back and rubbed herself against his leg,
+      crinkling and waving the tip of her tail. Pierson bent down and stroked
+      the creature's head; but uttering a faint miaou, the cat stepped daintily
+      across the road, Pierson too stepped on, past the village, and down over
+      the stile, into a field path. At the edge of the young clover, under a
+      bank of hawthorn, he lay down on his back, with his hat beside him and his
+      arms crossed over his chest, like the effigy of some crusader one may see
+      carved on an old tomb. Though he lay quiet as that old knight, his eyes
+      were not closed, but fixed on the blue, where a lark was singing. Its song
+      refreshed his spirit; its passionate light-heartedness stirred all the
+      love of beauty in him, awoke revolt against a world so murderous and
+      uncharitable. Oh! to pass up with that song into a land of bright spirits,
+      where was nothing ugly, hard, merciless, and the gentle face of the
+      Saviour radiated everlasting love! The scent of the mayflowers, borne down
+      by the sun shine, drenched his senses; he closed his eyes, and, at once,
+      as if resenting that momentary escape, his mind resumed debate with
+      startling intensity. This matter went to the very well-springs, had a
+      terrible and secret significance. If to act as conscience bade him
+      rendered him unfit to keep his parish, all was built on sand, had no deep
+      reality, was but rooted in convention. Charity, and the forgiveness of
+      sins honestly atoned for&mdash;what became of them? Either he was wrong to
+      have espoused straightforward confession and atonement for her, or they
+      were wrong in chasing him from that espousal. There could be no making
+      those extremes to meet. But if he were wrong, having done the hardest
+      thing already&mdash;where could he turn? His Church stood bankrupt of
+      ideals. He felt as if pushed over the edge of the world, with feet on
+      space, and head in some blinding cloud. 'I cannot have been wrong,' he
+      thought; 'any other course was so much easier. I sacrificed my pride, and
+      my poor girl's pride; I would have loved to let her run away. If for this
+      we are to be stoned and cast forth, what living force is there in the
+      religion I have loved; what does it all come to? Have I served a sham? I
+      cannot and will not believe it. Something is wrong with me, something is
+      wrong&mdash;but where&mdash;what?' He rolled over, lay on his face, and
+      prayed. He prayed for guidance and deliverance from the gusts of anger
+      which kept sweeping over him; even more for relief from the feeling of
+      personal outrage, and the unfairness of this thing. He had striven to be
+      loyal to what he thought the right, had sacrificed all his sensitiveness,
+      all his secret fastidious pride in his child and himself. For that he was
+      to be thrown out! Whether through prayer, or in the scent and feel of the
+      clover, he found presently a certain rest. Away in the distance he could
+      see the spire of Harrow Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Church! No! She was not, could not be, at fault. The fault was in
+      himself. 'I am unpractical,' he thought. 'It is so, I know. Agnes used to
+      say so, Bob and Thirza think so. They all think me unpractical and dreamy.
+      Is it a sin&mdash;I wonder?' There were lambs in the next field; he
+      watched their gambollings and his heart relaxed; brushing the clover dust
+      off his black clothes, he began to retrace his steps. The boys were
+      playing cricket now, and he stood a few minutes watching them. He had not
+      seen cricket played since the war began; it seemed almost otherworldly,
+      with the click of the bats, and the shrill young 'voices, under the
+      distant drone of that sky-hornet threshing along to Hendon. A boy made a
+      good leg hit. &ldquo;Well played!&rdquo; he called. Then, suddenly
+      conscious of his own incongruity and strangeness in that green spot, he
+      turned away on the road back to London. To resign; to await events; to
+      send Noel away&mdash;of those three courses, the last alone seemed
+      impossible. 'Am I really so far from them,' he thought, 'that they can
+      wish me to go, for this? If so, I had better go. It will be just another
+      failure. But I won't believe it yet; I can't believe it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heat was sweltering, and he became very tired before at last he
+      reached his omnibus, and could sit with the breeze cooling his hot face.
+      He did not reach home till six, having eaten nothing since breakfast.
+      Intending to have a bath and lie down till dinner, he went upstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unwonted silence reigned. He tapped on the nursery door. It was deserted;
+      he passed through to Noel's room; but that too was empty. The wardrobe
+      stood open as if it had been hastily ransacked, and her dressing-table was
+      bare. In alarm he went to the bell and pulled it sharply. The
+      old-fashioned ring of it jingled out far below. The parlour-maid came up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are Miss Noel and Nurse, Susan?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know you were in, sir. Miss Noel left me this note to give
+      you. They&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson stopped her with his hand. &ldquo;Thank you, Susan; get me some
+      tea, please.&rdquo; With the note unopened in his hand, he waited till she
+      was gone. His head was going round, and he sat down on the side of Noel's
+      bed to read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DARLING DADDY,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man who came this morning told me of what is going to happen. I
+      simply won't have it. I'm sending Nurse and baby down to Kestrel at once,
+      and going to Leila's for the night, until I've made up my mind what to do.
+      I knew it was a mistake my coming back. I don't care what happens to me,
+      but I won't have you hurt. I think it's hateful of people to try and
+      injure you for my fault. I've had to borrow money from Susan&mdash;six
+      pounds. Oh! Daddy dear, forgive me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your loving
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NOLLIE.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He read it with unutterable relief; at all events he knew where she was&mdash;poor,
+      wilful, rushing, loving-hearted child; knew where she was, and could get
+      at her. After his bath and some tea, he would go to Leila's and bring her
+      back. Poor little Nollie, thinking that by just leaving his house she
+      could settle this deep matter! He did not hurry, feeling decidedly
+      exhausted, and it was nearly eight before he set out, leaving a message
+      for Gratian, who did not as a rule come in from her hospital till past
+      nine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day was still glowing, and now, in the cool of evening, his refreshed
+      senses soaked up its beauty. 'God has so made this world,' he thought,
+      'that, no matter what our struggles and sufferings, it's ever a joy to
+      live when the sun shines, or the moon is bright, or the night starry. Even
+      we can't spoil it.' In Regent's Park the lilacs and laburnums were still
+      in bloom though June had come, and he gazed at them in passing, as a lover
+      might at his lady. His conscience pricked him suddenly. Mrs. Mitchett and
+      the dark-eyed girl she had brought to him on New Year's Eve, the very
+      night he had learned of his own daughter's tragedy&mdash;had he ever
+      thought of them since? How had that poor girl fared? He had been too
+      impatient of her impenetrable mood. What did he know of the hearts of
+      others, when he did not even know his own, could not rule his feelings of
+      anger and revolt, had not guided his own daughter into the waters of
+      safety! And Leila! Had he not been too censorious in thought? How
+      powerful, how strange was this instinct of sex, which hovered and swooped
+      on lives, seized them, bore them away, then dropped them exhausted and
+      defenceless! Some munition-wagons, painted a dull grey, lumbered past,
+      driven by sunburned youths in drab. Life-force, Death-force&mdash;was it
+      all one; the great unknowable momentum from which there was but the one
+      escape, in the arms of their Heavenly Father? Blake's little old stanzas
+      came into his mind:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &ldquo;And we are put on earth a little space,
+     That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
+     And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
+     Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
+
+    &ldquo;For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
+     The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
+     Saying: Come out from the grove, my love and care,
+     And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Learned the heat to bear! Those lambs he had watched in a field that
+      afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their funny quivering
+      wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts&mdash;what little
+      miracles of careless joy among the meadow flowers! Lambs, and flowers, and
+      sunlight! Famine, lust, and the great grey guns! A maze, a wilderness; and
+      but for faith, what issue, what path for man to take which did not keep
+      him wandering hopeless, in its thicket? 'God preserve our faith in love,
+      in charity, and the life to come!' he thought. And a blind man with a dog,
+      to whose neck was tied a little deep dish for pennies, ground a
+      hurdy-gurdy as he passed. Pierson put a shilling in the dish. The man
+      stopped playing, his whitish eyes looked up. &ldquo;Thank you kindly, sir;
+      I'll go home now. Come on, Dick!&rdquo; He tapped his way round the
+      corner, with his dog straining in front. A blackbird hidden among the
+      blossoms of an acacia, burst into evening song, and another great grey
+      munition-wagon rumbled out through the Park gate. 2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Church-clock was striking nine when he reached Leila's flat, went up,
+      and knocked. Sounds from-a piano ceased; the door was opened by Noel. She
+      recoiled when she saw who it was, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you come, Daddy? It was much better not.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you alone here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; Leila gave me her key. She has to be at the hospital till ten
+      to-night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must come home with me, my dear.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel closed the piano, and sat down on the divan. Her face had the same
+      expression as when he had told her that she could not marry Cyril Morland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Nollie,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;don't be unreasonable. We must
+      see this through together.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, that's childish. Do you think the mere accident of your
+      being or not being at home can affect my decision as to what my duty is?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it's my being there that matters. Those people don't care, so
+      long as it isn't an open scandal.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is so, Daddy. Of course it's so, and you know it. If I'm
+      away they'll just pity you for having a bad daughter. And quite right too.
+      I am a bad daughter.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson smiled. &ldquo;Just like when you were a tiny.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I were a tiny again, or ten years older. It's this half age&mdash;But
+      I'm not coming back with you, Daddy; so it's no good.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson sat down beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been thinking this over all day,&rdquo; he said quietly.
+      &ldquo;Perhaps in my pride I made a mistake when I first knew of your
+      trouble. Perhaps I ought to have accepted the consequences of my failure,
+      then, and have given up, and taken you away at once. After all, if a man
+      is not fit to have the care of souls, he should have the grace to know it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are fit,&rdquo; cried Noel passionately; &ldquo;Daddy, you
+      are fit!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid not. There is something wanting in me, I don't know
+      exactly what; but something very wanting.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There isn't. It's only that you're too good&mdash;that's why!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson shook his head. &ldquo;Don't, Nollie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will,&rdquo; cried Noel. &ldquo;You're too gentle, and you're too
+      good. You're charitable, and you're simple, and you believe in another
+      world; that's what's the matter with you, Daddy. Do you think they do,
+      those people who want to chase us out? They don't even begin to believe,
+      whatever they say or think. I hate them, and sometimes I hate the Church;
+      either it's hard and narrow, or else it's worldly.&rdquo; She stopped at
+      the expression on her father's face, the most strange look of pain, and
+      horror, as if an unspoken treachery of his own had been dragged forth for
+      his inspection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're talking wildly,&rdquo; he said, but his lips were trembling.
+      &ldquo;You mustn't say things like that; they're blasphemous and wicked.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel bit her lips, sitting very stiff and still, against a high blue
+      cushion. Then she burst out again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've slaved for those people years and years, and you've had no
+      pleasure and you've had no love; and they wouldn't care that if you broke
+      your heart. They don't care for anything, so long as it all seems proper.
+      Daddy, if you let them hurt you, I won't forgive you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what if you hurt me now, Nollie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel pressed his hand against her warm cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! Oh, no! I don't&mdash;I won't. Not again. I've done that
+      already.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, my dear! then come home with me, and we'll see what's
+      best to be done. It can't be settled by running away.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel dropped his hand. &ldquo;No. Twice I've done what you wanted, and
+      it's been a mistake. If I hadn't gone to Church on Sunday to please you,
+      perhaps it would never have come to this. You don't see things, Daddy. I
+      could tell, though I was sitting right in front. I knew what their faces
+      were like, and what they were thinking.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One must do right, Nollie, and not mind.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but what is right? It's not right for me to hurt you, and I'm
+      not going to.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson understood all at once that it was useless to try and move her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do, then?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I shall go to Kestrel to-morrow. Auntie will have me, I
+      know; I shall talk to Leila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever you do, promise to let me know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daddy, you&mdash;look awfully, awfully tired. I'm going to give you
+      some medicine.&rdquo; She went to a little three-cornered cupboard, and
+      bent down. Medicine! The medicine he wanted was not for the body;
+      knowledge of what his duty was&mdash;that alone could heal him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The loud popping of a cork roused him. &ldquo;What are you doing, Nollie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel rose with a flushed face, holding in one hand a glass of champagne,
+      in the other a biscuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're to take this; and I'm going to have some myself.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said Pierson bewildered; &ldquo;it's not yours.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drink it; Daddy! Don't you know that Leila would never forgive me
+      if I let you go home looking like that. Besides, she told me I was to eat.
+      Drink it. You can send her a nice present. Drink it!&rdquo; And she
+      stamped her foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson took the glass, and sat there nibbling and sipping. It was nice,
+      very! He had not quite realised how much he needed food and drink. Noel
+      returned from the cupboard a second time; she too had a glass and a
+      biscuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, you look better already. Now you're to go home at once, in a
+      cab if you can get one; and tell Gratian to make you feed up, or you won't
+      have a body at all; you can't do your duty if you haven't one, you know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson smiled, and finished the champagne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel took the glass from him. &ldquo;You're my child to-night, and I'm
+      going to send you to bed. Don't worry, Daddy; it'll all come right.&rdquo;
+      And, taking his arm, she went downstairs with him, and blew him a kiss
+      from the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked away in a sort of dream. Daylight was not quite gone, but the
+      moon was up, just past its full, and the search-lights had begun their
+      nightly wanderings. It was a sky of ghosts and shadows, fitting to the
+      thought which came to him. The finger of Providence was in all this,
+      perhaps! Why should he not go out to France! At last; why not? Some better
+      man, who understood men's hearts, who knew the world, would take his
+      place; and he could go where death made all things simple, and he could
+      not fail. He walked faster and faster, full of an intoxicating relief.
+      Thirza and Gratian would take care of Nollie far better than he. Yes,
+      surely it was ordained! Moonlight had the town now; and all was steel
+      blue, the very air steel-blue; a dream-city of marvellous beauty, through
+      which he passed, exalted. Soon he would be where that poor boy, and a
+      million others, had given their lives; with the mud and the shells and the
+      scarred grey ground, and the jagged trees, where Christ was daily
+      crucified&mdash;there where he had so often longed to be these three years
+      past. It was ordained!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And two women whom he met looked at each other when he had gone by, and
+      those words 'the blighted crow' which they had been about to speak, died
+      on their lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Noel felt light-hearted too, as if she had won a victory. She found some
+      potted meat, spread it on another biscuit, ate it greedily, and finished
+      the pint bottle of champagne. Then she hunted for the cigarettes, and sat
+      down at the piano. She played old tunes&mdash;&ldquo;There is a Tavern in
+      the Town,&rdquo; &ldquo;Once I Loved a Maiden Fair,&rdquo; &ldquo;Mowing
+      the Barley,&rdquo; &ldquo;Clementine,&rdquo; &ldquo;Lowlands,&rdquo; and
+      sang to them such words as she remembered. There was a delicious running
+      in her veins, and once she got up and danced. She was kneeling at the
+      window, looking out, when she heard the door open, and without getting up,
+      cried out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it a gorgeous night! I've had Daddy here. I gave him some of
+      your champagne, and drank the rest&mdash;&rdquo; then was conscious of a
+      figure far too tall for Leila, and a man's voice saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm awfully sorry. It's only I, Jimmy Fort.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel scrambled up. &ldquo;Leila isn't in; but she will be directly&mdash;it's
+      past ten.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was standing stock-still in the middle of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't you sit down? Oh! and won't you have a cigarette?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the flash of his briquette she saw his face clearly; the look on it
+      filled her with a sort of malicious glee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going now,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Would you mind telling Leila
+      that I found I couldn't stop?&rdquo; She made towards the divan to get her
+      hat. When she had put it on, she found him standing just in front of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Noel-if you don't mind me calling you that?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't go; I'm going myself.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! Not for worlds.&rdquo; She tried to slip past, but he took
+      hold of her wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please; just one minute!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel stayed motionless, looking at him, while his hand still held her
+      wrist. He said quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mind telling me why you came here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, just to see Leila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things have come to a head at home, haven't they?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shrugged her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You came for refuge, didn't you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From whom?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be angry; from the need of hurting your father.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew it would come to that. What are you going to do?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enjoy myself.&rdquo; She was saying something fatuous, yet she
+      meant it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's absurd. Don't be angry! You're quite right. Only, you must
+      begin at the right end, mustn't you? Sit down!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel tried to free her wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; sit down, please.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel sat down; but as he loosed her wrist, she laughed. This was where he
+      sat with Leila, where they would sit when she was gone. &ldquo;It's
+      awfully funny, isn't it?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Funny?&rdquo; he muttered savagely. &ldquo;Most things are, in this
+      funny world.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of a taxi stopping not far off had come to her ears, and she
+      gathered her feet under her, planting them firmly. If she sprang up, could
+      she slip by him before he caught her arm again, and get that taxi?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I go now,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;will you promise me to stop
+      till you've seen Leila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's foolish. Come, promise!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel shook her head. She felt a perverse pleasure at his embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leila's lucky, isn't she? No children, no husband, no father, no
+      anything. Lovely!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw his arm go up as if to ward off a blow. &ldquo;Poor Leila!&rdquo;
+      he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you sorry for her? She has freedom! And she has you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew it would hurt; but she wanted to hurt him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't envy her for that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had just spoken, when Noel saw a figure over by the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She jumped up, and said breathlessly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, here you are, Leila! Father's been here, and we've had some of
+      your champagne!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Capital! You are in the dark!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel felt the blood rush into her cheeks. The light leaped up, and Leila
+      came forward. She looked extremely pale, calm, and self-contained, in her
+      nurse's dress; her full lips were tightly pressed together, but Noel could
+      see her breast heaving violently. A turmoil of shame and wounded pride
+      began raging in the girl. Why had she not flown long ago? Why had she let
+      herself be trapped like this? Leila would think she had been making up to
+      him! Horrible! Disgusting! Why didn't he&mdash;why didn't some one, speak?
+      Then Leila said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't expect you, Jimmy; I'm glad you haven't been dull. Noel is
+      staying here to-night. Give me a cigarette. Sit down, both of you. I'm
+      awfully tired!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sank into a chair, leaning back, with her knees crossed; and at that
+      moment Noel admired her. She had said it beautifully; she looked so calm.
+      Fort was lighting her cigarette; his hand was shaking, his face all sorry
+      and mortified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give Noel one, too, and draw the curtains, Jimmy. Quick! Not that
+      it makes any difference; it's as light as day. Sit down, dear.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Noel remained standing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you been talking of? Love and Chinese lanterns, or only
+      me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At those words Fort, who was drawing the last curtain, turned round; his
+      tall figure was poised awkwardly against the wall, his face, unsuited to
+      diplomacy, had a look as of flesh being beaten. If weals had started up
+      across it, Noel would not have been surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said with painful slowness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't exactly know; we had hardly begun, had we?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The night is young,&rdquo; said Leila. &ldquo;Go on while I just
+      take off my things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose with the cigarette between her lips, and went into the inner
+      room. In passing, she gave Noel a look. What there was in that look, the
+      girl could never make clear even to herself. Perhaps a creature shot would
+      gaze like that, with a sort of profound and distant questioning, reproach,
+      and anger, with a sort of pride, and the quiver of death. As the door
+      closed, Fort came right across the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to her;&rdquo; cried Noel; &ldquo;she wants you. Can't you see,
+      she wants you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And before he could move, she was at the door. She flew downstairs, and
+      out into the moonlight. The taxi, a little way off, was just beginning to
+      move away; she ran towards it, calling out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anywhere! Piccadilly!&rdquo; and jumping in, blotted herself
+      against the cushions in the far corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not come to herself, as it were, for several minutes, and then
+      feeling she 'could no longer bear the cab, stopped it, and got out. Where
+      was she? Bond Street! She began, idly, wandering down its narrow length;
+      the fullest street by day, the emptiest by night. Oh! it had been
+      horrible! Nothing said by any of them&mdash;nothing, and yet everything
+      dragged out&mdash;of him, of Leila, of herself! She seemed to have no
+      pride or decency left, as if she had been caught stealing. All her happy
+      exhilaration was gone, leaving a miserable recklessness. Nothing she did
+      was right, nothing turned out well, so what did it all matter? The
+      moonlight flooding down between the tall houses gave her a peculiar heady
+      feeling. &ldquo;Fey&rdquo; her father had called her. She laughed. 'But
+      I'm not going home,' she thought. Bored with the street's length; she
+      turned off, and was suddenly in Hanover Square. There was the Church,
+      grey-white, where she had been bridesmaid to a second cousin, when she was
+      fifteen. She seemed to see it all again&mdash;her frock, the lilies in her
+      hand, the surplices of the choir, the bride's dress, all
+      moonlight-coloured, and unreal. 'I wonder what's become of her!' she
+      thought. 'He's dead, I expect, like Cyril!' She saw her father's face as
+      he was marrying them, heard his voice: &ldquo;For better, for worse, for
+      richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do you part.&rdquo;
+      And the moonlight on the Church seemed to shift and quiver-some pigeons
+      perhaps had been disturbed up there. Then instead of that wedding vision,
+      she saw Monsieur Barra, sitting on his chair, gazing at the floor, and
+      Chica nursing her doll. &ldquo;All mad, mademoiselle, a little mad.
+      Millions of men with white souls, but all a little tiny bit mad, you know.&rdquo;
+      Then Leila's face came before her, with that look in her eyes. She felt
+      again the hot clasp of Fort's fingers on her wrist, and walked on, rubbing
+      it with the other hand. She turned into Regent Street. The wide curve of
+      the Quadrant swept into a sky of unreal blue, and the orange-shaded lamps
+      merely added to the unreality. 'Love and Chinese lanterns! I should like
+      some coffee,' she thought suddenly. She was quite close to the place where
+      Lavendie had taken her. Should she go in there? Why not? She must go
+      somewhere. She turned into the revolving cage of glass. But no sooner was
+      she imprisoned there than in a flash Lavendie's face of disgust; and the
+      red-lipped women, the green stuff that smelled of peppermint came back,
+      filling her with a rush of dismay. She made the full circle in the
+      revolving cage; and came out into the street again with a laugh. A tall
+      young man in khaki stood there: &ldquo;Hallo!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Come
+      in and dance!&rdquo; She started, recoiled from him and began to walk away
+      as fast as ever she could. She passed a woman whose eyes seemed to scorch
+      her. A woman like a swift vision of ruin with those eyes, and thickly
+      powdered cheeks, and loose red mouth. Noel shuddered and fled along,
+      feeling that her only safety lay in speed. But she could not walk about
+      all night. There would be no train for Kestrel till the morning&mdash;and
+      did she really want to go there, and eat her heart out? Suddenly she
+      thought of George. Why should she not go down to him? He would know what
+      was best for her to do. At the foot of the steps below the Waterloo Column
+      she stood still. All was quiet there and empty, the great buildings
+      whitened, the trees blurred and blue; and sweeter air was coming across
+      their flowering tops. The queer &ldquo;fey&rdquo; moony sensation was
+      still with her; so that she felt small and light, as if she could have
+      floated through a ring. Faint rims of light showed round the windows of
+      the Admiralty. The war! However lovely the night, however sweet the lilac
+      smelt-that never stopped! She turned away and passed out under the arch,
+      making for the station. The train of the wounded had just come in, and she
+      stood in the cheering crowd watching the ambulances run out. Tears of
+      excited emotion filled her eyes, and trickled down. Steady, smooth, grey,
+      one after the other they came gliding, with a little burst of cheers
+      greeting each one. All were gone now, and she could pass in. She went to
+      the buffet and got a large cup of coffee, and a bun. Then, having noted
+      the time of her early morning train, she sought the ladies' waiting-room,
+      and sitting down in a corner, took out her purse and counted her money.
+      Two pounds fifteen-enough to go to the hotel, if she liked. But, without
+      luggage&mdash;it was so conspicuous, and she could sleep in this corner
+      all right, if she wanted. What did girls do who had no money, and no
+      friends to go to? Tucked away in the corner of that empty, heavy,
+      varnished room, she seemed to see the cruelty and hardness of life as she
+      had never before seen it, not even when facing her confinement. How lucky
+      she had been, and was! Everyone was good to her. She had no real want or
+      dangers, to face. But, for women&mdash;yes, and men too&mdash;who had no
+      one to fall back on, nothing but their own hands and health and luck, it
+      must be awful. That girl whose eyes had scorched her&mdash;perhaps she had
+      no one&mdash;nothing. And people who were born ill, and the millions of
+      poor women, like those whom she had gone visiting with Gratian sometimes
+      in the poorer streets of her father's parish&mdash;for the first time she
+      seemed to really know and feel the sort of lives they led. And then,
+      Leila's face came back to her once more&mdash;Leila whom she had robbed.
+      And the worst of it was, that, alongside her remorseful sympathy, she felt
+      a sort of satisfaction. She could not help his not loving Leila, she could
+      not help it if he loved herself! And he did&mdash;she knew it! To feel
+      that anyone loved her was so comforting. But it was all awful! And she&mdash;the
+      cause of it! And yet&mdash;she had never done or said anything to attract
+      him. No! She could not have helped it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had begun to feel drowsy, and closed her eyes. And gradually there
+      came on her a cosey sensation, as if she were leaning up against someone
+      with her head tucked in against his shoulder, as she had so often leaned
+      as a child against her father, coming back from some long darkening drive
+      in Wales or Scotland. She seemed even to feel the wet soft Westerly air on
+      her face and eyelids, and to sniff the scent of a frieze coat; to hear the
+      jog of hoofs and the rolling of the wheels; to feel the closing in of the
+      darkness. Then, so dimly and drowsily, she seemed to know that it was not
+      her father, but someone&mdash;someone&mdash;then no more, no more at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      She was awakened by the scream of an engine, and looked around her amazed.
+      Her neck had fallen sideways while she slept, and felt horridly stiff; her
+      head ached, and she was shivering. She saw by the clock that it was past
+      five. 'If only I could get some tea!' she thought. 'Anyway I won't stay
+      here any longer!' When she had washed, and rubbed some of the stiffness
+      out of her neck, the tea renewed her sense of adventure wonderfully. Her
+      train did not start for an hour; she had time for a walk, to warm herself,
+      and went down to the river. There was an early haze, and all looked a
+      little mysterious; but people were already passing on their way to work.
+      She walked along, looking at the water flowing up under the bright mist to
+      which the gulls gave a sort of hovering life. She went as far as
+      Blackfriars Bridge, and turning back, sat down on a bench under a
+      plane-tree, just as the sun broke through. A little pasty woman with a
+      pinched yellowish face was already sitting there, so still, and seeming to
+      see so little, that Noel wondered of what she could be thinking. While she
+      watched, the woman's face began puckering, and tears rolled slowly, down,
+      trickling from pucker to pucker, till, summoning up her courage, Noel
+      sidled nearer, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! What's the matter?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tears seemed to stop from sheer surprise; little grey eyes gazed
+      round, patient little eyes from above an almost bridgeless nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'ad a baby. It's dead.... its father's dead in France.... I was
+      goin' in the water, but I didn't like the look of it, and now I never
+      will.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That &ldquo;Now I never will,&rdquo; moved Noel terribly. She slid her arm
+      along the back of the bench and clasped the skinniest of shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't cry!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was my first. I'm thirty-eight. I'll never 'ave another. Oh! Why
+      didn't I go in the water?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The face puckered again, and the squeezed-out tears ran down. 'Of course
+      she must cry,' thought Noel; 'cry and cry till it feels better.' And she
+      stroked the shoulder of the little woman, whose emotion was disengaging
+      the scent of old clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The father of my baby was killed in France, too,&rdquo; she said at
+      last. The little sad grey eyes looked curiously round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was 'e? 'Ave you got your baby still?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, oh, yes!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad of that. It 'urts so bad, it does. I'd rather lose me
+      'usband than me baby, any day.&rdquo; The sun was shining now on a cheek
+      of that terribly patient face; its brightness seemed cruel perching there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I do anything to help you?&rdquo; Noel murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you, miss. I'm goin' 'ome now. I don't live far. Thank
+      you kindly.&rdquo; And raising her eyes for one more of those
+      half-bewildered looks, she moved away along the Embankment wall. When she
+      was out of sight, Noel walked back to the station. The train was in, and
+      she took her seat. She had three fellow passengers, all in khaki; very
+      silent and moody, as men are when they have to get up early. One was tall,
+      dark, and perhaps thirty-five; the second small, and about fifty, with
+      cropped, scanty grey hair; the third was of medium height and quite
+      sixty-five, with a long row of little coloured patches on his tunic, and a
+      bald, narrow, well-shaped head, grey hair brushed back at the sides, and
+      the thin, collected features and drooping moustache of the old school. It
+      was at him that Noel looked. When he glanced out of the window, or
+      otherwise retired within himself, she liked his face; but when he turned
+      to the ticket-collector or spoke to the others, she did not like it half
+      so much. It was as if the old fellow had two selves, one of which he used
+      when alone, the other in which he dressed every morning to meet the world.
+      They had begun to talk about some Tribunal on which they had to sit. Noel
+      did not listen, but a word or two carried to her now and then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many to-day?&rdquo; she heard the old fellow ask, and the
+      little cropped man answering: &ldquo;Hundred and fourteen.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fresh from the sight of the poor little shabby woman and her grief, she
+      could not help a sort of shrinking from that trim old soldier, with his
+      thin, regular face, who held the fate of a &ldquo;Hundred and fourteen&rdquo;
+      in his firm, narrow grasp, perhaps every day. Would he understand their
+      troubles or wants? Of course he wouldn't! Then, she saw him looking at her
+      critically with his keen eyes. If he had known her secret, he would be
+      thinking: 'A lady and act like that! Oh, no! Quite-quite out of the
+      question!' And she felt as if she could, sink under the seat with shame.
+      But no doubt he was only thinking: 'Very young to be travelling by herself
+      at this hour of the morning. Pretty too!' If he knew the real truth of her&mdash;how
+      he would stare! But why should this utter stranger, this old
+      disciplinarian, by a casual glance, by the mere form of his face, make her
+      feel more guilty and ashamed than she had yet felt? That puzzled her. He
+      was, must be, a narrow, conventional old man; but he had this power to
+      make her feel ashamed, because she felt that he had faith in his gods, and
+      was true to them; because she knew he would die sooner than depart from
+      his creed of conduct. She turned to the window, biting her lips-angry and
+      despairing. She would never&mdash;never get used to her position; it was
+      no good! And again she had the longing of her dream, to tuck her face away
+      into that coat, smell the scent of the frieze, snuggle in, be protected,
+      and forget. 'If I had been that poor lonely little woman,' she thought,
+      'and had lost everything, I should have gone into the water. I should have
+      rushed and jumped. It's only luck that I'm alive. I won't look at that old
+      man again: then I shan't feel so bad.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had bought some chocolate at the station, and nibbled it, gazing
+      steadily at the fields covered with daisies and the first of the
+      buttercups and cowslips. The three soldiers were talking now in carefully
+      lowered voices. The words: &ldquo;women,&rdquo; &ldquo;under control,&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;perfect plague,&rdquo; came to her, making her ears burn. In the
+      hypersensitive mood caused by the strain of yesterday, her broken night,
+      and the emotional meeting with the little woman, she felt as if they were
+      including her among those &ldquo;women.&rdquo; 'If we stop, I'll get out,'
+      she thought. But when the train did stop it was they who got out. She felt
+      the old General's keen veiled glance sum her up for the last time, and
+      looked full at him just for a moment. He touched his cap, and said:
+      &ldquo;Will you have the window up or down?&rdquo; and lingered to draw it
+      half-way up.' His punctiliousness made her feel worse than ever. When the
+      train had started again she roamed up and down her empty carriage; there
+      was no more a way out of her position than out of this rolling cushioned
+      carriage! And then she seemed to hear Fort's voice saying: 'Sit down,
+      please!' and to feel his fingers clasp her wrist, Oh! he was nice and
+      comforting; he would never reproach or remind her! And now, probably, she
+      would never see him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The train drew up at last. She did not know where George lodged, and would
+      have to go to his hospital. She planned to get there at half past nine,
+      and having eaten a sort of breakfast at the station, went forth into the
+      town. The seaside was still wrapped in the early glamour which haunts
+      chalk of a bright morning. But the streets were very much alive. Here was
+      real business of the war. She passed houses which had been wrecked. Trucks
+      clanged and shunted, great lorries rumbled smoothly by. Sea&mdash;and
+      Air-planes were moving like great birds far up in the bright haze, and
+      khaki was everywhere. But it was the sea Noel wanted. She made her way
+      westward to a little beach; and, sitting down on a stone, opened her arms
+      to catch the sun on her face and chest. The tide was nearly up, with the
+      wavelets of a blue bright sea. The great fact, the greatest fact in the
+      world, except the sun; vast and free, making everything human seem small
+      and transitory! It did her good, like a tranquillising friend. The sea
+      might be cruel and terrible, awful things it could do, and awful things
+      were being done on it; but its wide level line, its never-ending song, its
+      sane savour, were the best medicine she could possibly have taken. She
+      rubbed the Shelly sand between her fingers in absurd ecstasy; took off her
+      shoes and stockings, paddled, and sat drying her legs in the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she left the little beach, she felt as if someone had said to her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Your troubles are very little. There's the sun, the sea, the air; enjoy
+      them. They can't take those from you.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the hospital she had to wait half an hour in a little bare room before
+      George came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie! Splendid. I've got an hour. Let's get out of this cemetery.
+      We'll have time for a good stretch on the tops. Jolly of you to have come
+      to me. Tell us all about it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she had finished, he squeezed her arm. 348
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew it wouldn't do. Your Dad forgot that he's a public figure,
+      and must expect to be damned accordingly. But though you've cut and run,
+      he'll resign all the same, Nollie.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; cried Noel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he'll resign, you'll see, he's got no worldly sense; not a
+      grain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I shall have spoiled his life, just as if&mdash;oh, no!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's sit down here. I must be back at eleven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat down on a bench, where the green cliff stretched out before them,
+      over a sea quite clear of haze, far down and very blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should he resign,&rdquo; cried Noel again, &ldquo;now that I've
+      gone? He'll be lost without it all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Found, my dear. He'll be where he ought to be, Nollie, where the
+      Church is, and the Churchmen are not&mdash;in the air!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't!&rdquo; cried Noel passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, I'm not chaffing. There's no room on earth for saints in
+      authority. There's use for a saintly symbol, even if one doesn't hold with
+      it, but there's no mortal use for those who try to have things both ways&mdash;to
+      be saints and seers of visions, and yet to come the practical and worldly
+      and rule ordinary men's lives. Saintly example yes; but not saintly
+      governance. You've been his deliverance, Nollie.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Daddy loves his Church.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George frowned. &ldquo;Of course, it'll be a wrench. A man's bound to have
+      a cosey feeling about a place where he's been boss so long; and there is
+      something about a Church&mdash;the drone, the scent, the half darkness;
+      there's beauty in it, it's a pleasant drug. But he's not being asked to
+      give up the drug habit; only to stop administering drugs to others. Don't
+      worry, Nollie; I don't believe that's ever suited him, it wants a thicker
+      skin than he's got.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But all the people he helps?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No reason he shouldn't go on helping people, is there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to go on living there, without&mdash;Mother died there, you
+      know!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George grunted. &ldquo;Dreams, Nollie, all round him; of the past and the
+      future, of what people are and what he can do with them. I never see him
+      without a skirmish, as you know, and yet I'm fond of him. But I should be
+      twice as fond, and half as likely to skirmish, if he'd drop the habits of
+      authority. Then I believe he'd have some real influence over me; there's
+      something beautiful about him, I know that quite well.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; murmured Noel fervently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's such a queer mixture,&rdquo; mused George. &ldquo;Clean out of
+      his age; chalks above most of the parsons in a spiritual sense and chalks
+      below most of them in the worldly. And yet I believe he's in the right of
+      it. The Church ought to be a forlorn hope, Nollie; then we should believe
+      in it. Instead of that, it's a sort of business that no one can take too
+      seriously. You see, the Church spiritual can't make good in this age&mdash;has
+      no chance of making good, and so in the main it's given it up for vested
+      interests and social influence. Your father is a symbol of what the Church
+      is not. But what about you, my dear? There's a room at my boarding-house,
+      and only one old lady besides myself, who knits all the time. If Grace can
+      get shifted we'll find a house, and you can have the baby. They'll send
+      your luggage on from Paddington if you write; and in the meantime Gracie's
+      got some things here that you can have.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll have to send a wire to Daddy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do that. You come to my diggings at half past one, and I'll
+      settle you in. Until then, you'd better stay up here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had gone she roamed a little farther, and lay down on the short
+      grass, where the chalk broke through in patches. She could hear a distant
+      rumbling, very low, travelling in that grass, the long mutter of the
+      Flanders guns. 'I wonder if it's as beautiful a day there,' she thought.
+      'How dreadful to see no green, no butterflies, no flowers-not even sky-for
+      the dust of the shells. Oh! won't it ever, ever end?' And a sort of
+      passion for the earth welled up in her, the warm grassy earth along which
+      she lay, pressed so close that she could feel it with every inch of her
+      body, and the soft spikes of the grass against her nose and lips. An
+      aching sweetness tortured her, she wanted the earth to close its arms
+      about her, she wanted the answer to her embrace of it. She was alive, and
+      wanted love. Not death&mdash;not loneliness&mdash;not death! And out
+      there, where the guns muttered, millions of men would be thinking that
+      same thought!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Pierson had passed nearly the whole night with the relics of his past, the
+      records of his stewardship, the tokens of his short married life. The idea
+      which had possessed him walking home in the moonlight sustained him in
+      that melancholy task of docketing and destruction. There was not nearly so
+      much to do as one would have supposed, for, with all his dreaminess, he
+      had been oddly neat and businesslike in all parish matters. But a hundred
+      times that night he stopped, overcome by memories. Every corner, drawer,
+      photograph, paper was a thread in the long-spun web of his life in this
+      house. Some phase of his work, some vision of his wife or daughters
+      started forth from each bit of furniture, picture, doorway. Noiseless, in
+      his slippers, he stole up and down between the study, diningroom,
+      drawing-room, and anyone seeing him at his work in the dim light which
+      visited the staircase from above the front door and the upper-passage
+      window, would have thought: 'A ghost, a ghost gone into mourning for the
+      condition of the world.' He had to make this reckoning to-night, while the
+      exaltation of his new idea was on him; had to rummage out the very depths
+      of old association, so that once for all he might know whether he had
+      strength to close the door on the past. Five o'clock struck before he had
+      finished, and, almost dropping from fatigue, sat down at his little piano
+      in bright daylight. The last memory to beset him was the first of all; his
+      honeymoon, before they came back to live in this house, already chosen,
+      furnished, and waiting for them. They had spent it in Germany&mdash;the
+      first days in Baden-baden, and each morning had been awakened by a Chorale
+      played down in the gardens of the Kurhaus, a gentle, beautiful tune, to
+      remind them that they were in heaven. And softly, so softly that the tunes
+      seemed to be but dreams he began playing those old Chorales, one after
+      another, so that the stilly sounds floated out, through the opened window,
+      puzzling the early birds and cats and those few humans who were abroad as
+      yet.....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He received the telegram from Noel in the afternoon of the same day, just
+      as he was about to set out for Leila's to get news of her; and close on
+      the top of it came Lavendie. He found the painter standing disconsolate in
+      front of his picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle has deserted me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid we shall all desert you soon, monsieur.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am leaving here. I hope to go to France.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mademoiselle?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is at the sea with my son-in-law.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter ran his hands through his hair, but stopped them half-way, as
+      if aware that he was being guilty of ill-breeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mon dieu!&rdquo; he said: &ldquo;Is this not a calamity for you,
+      monsieur le cure?&rdquo; But his sense of the calamity was so patently
+      limited to his unfinished picture that Pierson could not help a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, monsieur!&rdquo; said the painter, on whom nothing was lost.
+      &ldquo;Comme je suis egoiste! I show my feelings; it is deplorable. My
+      disappointment must seem a bagatelle to you, who will be so distressed at
+      leaving your old home. This must be a time of great trouble. Believe me; I
+      understand. But to sympathise with a grief which is not shown would be an
+      impertinence, would it not? You English gentlefolk do not let us share
+      your griefs; you keep them to yourselves.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson stared. &ldquo;True,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Quite true!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am no judge of Christianity, monsieur, but for us artists the
+      doors of the human heart stand open, our own and others. I suppose we have
+      no pride&mdash;c'est tres-indelicat. Tell me, monsieur, you would not
+      think it worthy of you to speak to me of your troubles, would you, as I
+      have spoken of mine?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson bowed his head, abashed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You preach of universal charity and love,&rdquo; went on Lavendie;
+      &ldquo;but how can there be that when you teach also secretly the keeping
+      of your troubles to yourselves? Man responds to example, not to teaching;
+      you set the example of the stranger, not the brother. You expect from
+      others what you do not give. Frankly, monsieur, do you not feel that with
+      every revelation of your soul and feelings, virtue goes out of you? And I
+      will tell you why, if you will not think it an offence. In opening your
+      hearts you feel that you lose authority. You are officers, and must never
+      forget that. Is it not so?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson grew red. &ldquo;I hope there is another feeling too. I think we
+      feel that to speak of our sufferings or, deeper feelings is to obtrude
+      oneself, to make a fuss, to be self-concerned, when we might be concerned
+      with others.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, au fond we are all concerned with self. To seem selfless
+      is but your particular way of cultivating the perfection of self. You
+      admit that not to obtrude self is the way to perfect yourself. Eh bien!
+      What is that but a deeper concern with self? To be free of this, there is
+      no way but to forget all about oneself in what one is doing, as I forget
+      everything when I am painting. But,&rdquo; he added, with a sudden smile,
+      &ldquo;you would not wish to forget the perfecting of self&mdash;it would
+      not be right in your profession. So I must take away this picture, must I
+      not? It is one of my best works: I regret much not to have finished it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day, perhaps&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day! The picture will stand still, but mademoiselle will not.
+      She will rush at something, and behold! this face will be gone. No; I
+      prefer to keep it as it is. It has truth now.&rdquo; And lifting down the
+      canvas, he stood it against the wall and folded up the easel. &ldquo;Bon
+      soir, monsieur, you have been very good to me.&rdquo; He wrung Pierson's
+      hand; and his face for a moment seemed all eyes and spirit. &ldquo;Adieu!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; Pierson murmured. &ldquo;God bless you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know if I have great confidence in Him,&rdquo; replied
+      Lavendie, &ldquo;but I shall ever remember that so good a man as you has
+      wished it. To mademoiselle my distinguished salutations, if you please. If
+      you will permit me, I will come back for my other things to-morrow.&rdquo;
+      And carrying easel and canvas, he departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson stayed in the old drawing-room, waiting for Gratian to come in,
+      and thinking over the painter's words. Had his education and position
+      really made it impossible for him to be brotherly? Was this the secret of
+      the impotence which he sometimes felt; the reason why charity and love
+      were not more alive in the hearts of his congregation? 'God knows I've no
+      consciousness of having felt myself superior,' he thought; 'and yet I
+      would be truly ashamed to tell people of my troubles and of my struggles.
+      Can it be that Christ, if he were on earth, would count us Pharisees,
+      believing ourselves not as other men? But surely it is not as Christians
+      but rather as gentlemen that we keep ourselves to ourselves. Officers, he
+      called us. I fear&mdash;I fear it is true.' Ah, well! There would not be
+      many more days now. He would learn out there how to open the hearts of
+      others, and his own. Suffering and death levelled all barriers, made all
+      men brothers. He was still sitting there when Gratian came in; and taking
+      her hand, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Noel has gone down to George, and I want you to get transferred and
+      go to them, Gracie. I'm giving up the parish and asking for a chaplaincy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Giving up? After all this time? Is it because of Nollie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I think not; I think the time has come. I feel my work here is
+      barren.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! And even if it is, it's only because&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson smiled. &ldquo;Because of what, Gracie?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dad, it's what I've felt in myself. We want to think and decide
+      things for ourselves, we want to own our consciences, we can't take things
+      at second-hand any longer.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson's face darkened. &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to have lost
+      faith is a grievous thing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're gaining charity,&rdquo; cried Gratian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The two things are not opposed, my dear.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in theory; but in practice I think they often are. Oh, Dad! you
+      look so tired. Have you really made up your mind? Won't you feel lost?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a little. I shall find myself, out there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the look on his face was too much for Gratian's composure, and she
+      turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson went down to his study to write his letter of resignation. Sitting
+      before that blank sheet of paper, he realised to the full how strongly he
+      had resented the public condemnation passed on his own flesh and blood,
+      how much his action was the expression of a purely mundane championship of
+      his daughter; of a mundane mortification. 'Pride,' he thought. 'Ought I to
+      stay and conquer it?' Twice he set his pen down, twice took it up again.
+      He could not conquer it. To stay where he was not wanted, on a sort of
+      sufferance&mdash;never! And while he sat before that empty sheet of paper
+      he tried to do the hardest thing a man can do&mdash;to see himself as
+      others see him; and met with such success as one might expect&mdash;harking
+      at once to the verdicts, not of others at all, but of his own conscience;
+      and coming soon to that perpetual gnawing sense which had possessed him
+      ever since the war began, that it was his duty to be dead. This feeling
+      that to be alive was unworthy of him when so many of his flock had made
+      the last sacrifice, was reinforced by his domestic tragedy and the bitter
+      disillusionment it had brought. A sense of having lost caste weighed on
+      him, while he sat there with his past receding from him, dusty and unreal.
+      He had the queerest feeling of his old life falling from him, dropping
+      round his feet like the outworn scales of a serpent, rung after rung of
+      tasks and duties performed day after day, year after year. Had they ever
+      been quite real? Well, he had shed them now, and was to move out into life
+      illumined by the great reality-death! And taking up his pen, he wrote his
+      resignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The last Sunday, sunny and bright! Though he did not ask her to go,
+      Gratian went to every Service that day. And the sight of her, after this
+      long interval, in their old pew, where once he had been wont to see his
+      wife's face, and draw refreshment therefrom, affected Pierson more than
+      anything else. He had told no one of his coming departure, shrinking from
+      the falsity and suppression which must underlie every allusion and
+      expression of regret. In the last minute of his last sermon he would tell
+      them! He went through the day in a sort of dream. Truly proud and
+      sensitive, under this social blight, he shrank from all alike, made no
+      attempt to single out supporters or adherents from those who had fallen
+      away. He knew there would be some, perhaps many, seriously grieved that he
+      was going; but to try and realise who they were, to weigh them in the
+      scales against the rest and so forth, was quite against his nature. It was
+      all or nothing. But when for the last time of all those hundreds, he
+      mounted the steps of his dark pulpit, he showed no trace of finality, did
+      not perhaps even feel it yet. For so beautiful a summer evening the
+      congregation was large. In spite of all reticence, rumour was busy and
+      curiosity still rife. The writers of the letters, anonymous and otherwise,
+      had spent a week, not indeed in proclaiming what they had done, but in
+      justifying to themselves the secret fact that they had done it. And this
+      was best achieved by speaking to their neighbours of the serious and
+      awkward situation of the poor Vicar. The result was visible in a better
+      attendance than had been seen since summer-time began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson had never been a great preacher, his voice lacked resonance and
+      pliancy, his thought breadth and buoyancy, and he was not free from, the
+      sing-song which mars the utterance of many who have to speak
+      professionally. But he always made an impression of goodness and
+      sincerity. On this last Sunday evening he preached again the first sermon
+      he had ever preached from that pulpit, fresh from the honeymoon with his
+      young wife. &ldquo;Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
+      these.&rdquo; It lacked now the happy fervour of that most happy of all
+      his days, yet gained poignancy, coming from so worn a face and voice.
+      Gratian, who knew that he was going to end with his farewell, was in a
+      choke of emotion long before he came to it. She sat winking away her
+      tears, and not till he paused, for so long that she thought his strength
+      had failed, did she look up. He was leaning a little forward, seeming to
+      see nothing; but his hands, grasping the pulpit's edge, were quivering.
+      There was deep silence in the Church, for the look of his face and figure
+      was strange, even to Gratian. When his lips parted again to speak, a mist
+      covered her eyes, and she lost sight of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends, I am leaving you; these are the last words I shall ever
+      speak in this place. I go to other work. You have been very good to me.
+      God has been very good to me. I pray with my whole heart that He may bless
+      you all. Amen! Amen!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mist cleared into tears, and she could see him again gazing down at
+      her. Was it at her? He was surely seeing something&mdash;some vision
+      sweeter than reality, something he loved more dearly. She fell on her
+      knees, and buried her face in her hand. All through the hymn she knelt,
+      and through his clear slow Benediction: &ldquo;The peace of God, which
+      passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and
+      love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of God
+      Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you and
+      remain with you always.&rdquo; And still she knelt on; till she was alone
+      in the Church. Then she rose and stole home. He did not come in; she did
+      not expect him. 'It's over,' she kept thinking; 'all over. My beloved
+      Daddy! Now he has no home; Nollie and I have pulled him down. And yet I
+      couldn't help it, and perhaps she couldn't. Poor Nollie!...'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson had stayed in the vestry, talking with his choir and wardens;
+      there was no hitch, for his resignation had been accepted, and he had
+      arranged with a friend to carry on till the new Vicar was appointed. When
+      they were gone he went back into the empty Church, and mounted to the
+      organ-loft. A little window up there was open, and he stood leaning
+      against the stone, looking out, resting his whole being. Only now that it
+      was over did he know what stress he had been through. Sparrows were
+      chirping, but sound of traffic had almost ceased, in that quiet Sunday
+      hour of the evening meal. Finished! Incredible that he would never come up
+      here again, never see those roof-lines, that corner of Square Garden, and
+      hear this familiar chirping of the sparrows. He sat down at the organ and
+      began to play. The last time the sound would roll out and echo 'round the
+      emptied House of God. For a long time he played, while the building
+      darkened slowly down there below him. Of all that he would leave, he would
+      miss this most&mdash;the right to come and play here in the darkening
+      Church, to release emotional sound in this dim empty space growing ever
+      more beautiful. From chord to chord he let himself go deeper and deeper
+      into the surge and swell of those sound waves, losing all sense of
+      actuality, till the music and the whole dark building were fused in one
+      rapturous solemnity. Away down there the darkness crept over the Church,
+      till the pews, the altar-all was invisible, save the columns; and the
+      walls. He began playing his favourite slow movement from Beethoven's
+      Seventh Symphony&mdash;kept to the end, for the visions it ever brought
+      him. And a cat, which had been stalking the sparrows, crept in through the
+      little window, and crouched, startled, staring at him with her green eyes.
+      He closed the organ, went quickly down, and locked up his Church for the
+      last time. It was warmer outside than in, and lighter, for daylight was
+      not quite gone. He moved away a few yards, and stood looking up. Walls,
+      buttresses, and spire were clothed in milky shadowy grey. The top of the
+      spire seemed to touch a star. 'Goodbye, my Church!' he thought. 'Good-bye,
+      good-bye!' He felt his face quiver; clenched his teeth, and turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Noel fled, Fort had started forward to stop her; then, realising that
+      with his lameness he could never catch her, he went back and entered
+      Leila's bedroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had taken off her dress, and was standing in front of her glass, with
+      the cigarette still in her mouth; and the only movement was the curling of
+      its blue smoke. He could see her face reflected, pale, with a little spot
+      of red in each cheek, and burning red ears. She had not seemed to hear him
+      coming in, but he saw her eyes change when they caught his reflection in
+      the mirror. From lost and blank, they became alive and smouldering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Noel's gone!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She answered, as if to his reflection in the glass
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you haven't gone too? Ah, no! Of course&mdash;your leg! She
+      fled, I suppose? It was rather a jar, my coming in, I'm afraid.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it was my coming in that was the jar.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila turned round. &ldquo;Jimmy! I wonder you could discuss me. The rest&mdash;&rdquo;
+      She shrugged her shoulders&mdash;&ldquo;But that!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not discussing you. I merely said you were not to be envied
+      for having me. Are you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment he had spoken, he was sorry. The anger in her eyes changed
+      instantly, first to searching, then to misery. She cried out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was to be envied. Oh! Jimmy; I was!&rdquo; and flung herself face
+      down on the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through Fort's mind went the thought: 'Atrocious!' How could he soothe&mdash;make
+      her feel that he loved her, when he didn't&mdash;that he wanted her, when
+      he wanted Noel. He went up to the bedside and touched her timidly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leila, what is it? You're overtired. What's the matter? I couldn't
+      help the child's being here. Why do you let it upset you? She's gone. It's
+      all right. Things are just as they were.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; came the strangled echo; &ldquo;just!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knelt down and stroked her arm. It shivered under the touch, seemed to
+      stop shivering and wait for the next touch, as if hoping it might be
+      warmer; shivered again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at me!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What is it you want? I'm ready
+      to do anything.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned and drew herself up on the bed, screwing herself back against
+      the pillow as if for support, with her knees drawn under her. He was
+      astonished at the strength of her face and figure, thus entrenched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Jimmy!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I want you to do nothing but
+      get me another cigarette. At my age one expects no more than one gets!&rdquo;
+      She held out her thumb and finger: &ldquo;Do you mind?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort turned away to get the cigarette. With what bitter restraint and
+      curious little smile she had said that! But no sooner was he out of the
+      room and hunting blindly for the cigarettes, than his mind was filled with
+      an aching concern for Noel, fleeing like that, reckless and hurt, with
+      nowhere to go. He found the polished birch-wood box which held the
+      cigarettes, and made a desperate effort to dismiss the image of the girl
+      before he again reached Leila. She was still sitting there, with her arms
+      crossed, in the stillness of one whose every nerve and fibre was stretched
+      taut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have one yourself,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The pipe of peace.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort lit the cigarettes, and sat down on the edge of the bed; and his mind
+      at once went back to Noel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said suddenly; &ldquo;I wonder where she's gone.
+      Can you see her? She might do something reckless a second time. Poor
+      Jimmy! It would be a pity. And so that monk's been here, and drunk
+      champagne. Good idea! Get me some, Jimmy!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Fort went, and with him the image of the girl. When he came back the
+      second time; she had put on that dark silk garment in which she had
+      appeared suddenly radiant the fatal night after the Queen's Hall concert.
+      She took the wineglass, and passed him, going into the sitting-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and sit down,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Is your leg hurting you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not more than usual,&rdquo; and he sat down beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't you have some? 'In vino veritas;' my friend.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head, and said humbly: &ldquo;I admire you, Leila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's lucky. I don't know anyone else who, would.&rdquo; And she
+      drank her champagne at a draught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you wish,&rdquo; she said suddenly, &ldquo;that I had been
+      one of those wonderful New Women, all brain and good works. How I should
+      have talked the Universe up and down, and the war, and Causes, drinking
+      tea, and never boring you to try and love me. What a pity!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to Fort there had come Noel's words: &ldquo;It's awfully funny, isn't
+      it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leila,&rdquo; he said suddenly, &ldquo;something's got to be done.
+      So long as you don't wish me to, I'll promise never to see that child
+      again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear boy, she's not a child. She's ripe for love; and&mdash;I'm
+      too ripe for love. That's what's the matter, and I've got to lump it.&rdquo;
+      She wrenched her hand out of his and, dropping the empty glass, covered
+      her face. The awful sensation which visits the true Englishman when a
+      scene stares him in the face spun in Fort's brain. Should he seize her
+      hands, drag them down, and kiss her? Should he get up and leave her alone?
+      Speak, or keep silent; try to console; try to pretend? And he did
+      absolutely nothing. So far as a man can understand that moment in a
+      woman's life when she accepts the defeat of Youth and Beauty, he
+      understood perhaps; but it was only a glimmering. He understood much
+      better how she was recognising once for all that she loved where she was
+      not loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'And I can't help that,' he thought dumbly; 'simply can't help that!'
+      Nothing he could say or do would alter it. No words can convince a woman
+      when kisses have lost reality. Then, to his infinite relief, she took her
+      hands from her face, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is very dull. I think you'd better go, Jimmy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made an effort to speak, but was too afraid of falsity in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very nearly a scene!&rdquo; said Leila. &ldquo;My God!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How men hate them! So do I. I've had too many in my time; nothing
+      comes of them but a headache next morning. I've spared you that, Jimmy.
+      Give me a kiss for it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent down and put his lips to hers. With all his heart he tried to
+      answer the passion in her kiss. She pushed him away suddenly, and said
+      faintly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you; you did try!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort dashed his hand across his eyes. The sight of her face just then
+      moved him horribly. What a brute he felt! He took her limp hand, put it to
+      his lips, and murmured:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall come in to-morrow. We'll go to the theatre, shall we? Good
+      night, Leila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, in opening the door, he caught sight of her face, staring at him,
+      evidently waiting for him to turn; the eyes had a frightened look. They
+      went suddenly soft, so soft as to give his heart a squeeze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her hand, blew him a kiss, and he saw her smiling. Without
+      knowing what his own lips answered, he went out. He could not make up his
+      mind to go away, but, crossing to the railings, stood leaning against
+      them, looking up at her windows. She had been very good to him. He felt
+      like a man who has won at cards, and sneaked away without giving the loser
+      his revenge. If only she hadn't loved him; and it had been a soulless
+      companionship, a quite sordid business. Anything rather than this! English
+      to the backbone, he could not divest himself of a sense of guilt. To see
+      no way of making up to her, of straightening it out, made him feel
+      intensely mean. 'Shall I go up again?' he thought. The window-curtain
+      moved. Then the shreds of light up there vanished. 'She's gone to bed,' he
+      thought. 'I should only upset her worse. Where is Noel, now, I wonder? I
+      shall never see her again, I suppose. Altogether a bad business. My God,
+      yes! A bad-bad business!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, painfully, for his leg was hurting him, he walked away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila was only too well aware of a truth that feelings are no less real,
+      poignant, and important to those outside morality's ring fence than to
+      those within. Her feelings were, indeed, probably even more real and
+      poignant, just as a wild fruit's flavour is sharper than that of the tame
+      product. Opinion&mdash;she knew&mdash;would say, that having wilfully
+      chosen a position outside morality she had not half the case for
+      brokenheartedness she would have had if Fort had been her husband: Opinion&mdash;she
+      knew&mdash;would say she had no claim on him, and the sooner an illegal
+      tie was broken, the better! But she felt fully as wretched as if she had
+      been married. She had not wanted to be outside morality; never in her life
+      wanted to be that. She was like those who by confession shed their sins
+      and start again with a clear conscience. She never meant to sin, only to
+      love, and when she was in love, nothing else mattered for the moment. But,
+      though a gambler, she had always so far paid up. Only, this time the
+      stakes were the heaviest a woman can put down. It was her last throw; and
+      she knew it. So long as a woman believed in her attraction, there was
+      hope, even when the curtain fell on a love-affair! But for Leila the lamp
+      of belief had suddenly gone out, and when this next curtain dropped she
+      felt that she must sit in the dark until old age made her indifferent. And
+      between forty-four and real old age a gulf is fixed. This was the first
+      time a man had tired of her. Why! he had been tired before he began, or so
+      she felt. In one swift moment as of a drowning person, she saw again all
+      the passages of their companionship, knew with certainty that it had never
+      been a genuine flame. Shame ran, consuming, in her veins. She buried her
+      face in the cushions. This girl had possessed his real heart all the time.
+      With a laugh she thought: 'I put my money on the wrong horse; I ought to
+      have backed Edward. I could have turned that poor monk's head. If only I
+      had never seen Jimmy again; if I had torn his letter up, I could have made
+      poor Edward love me!' Ifs! What folly! Things happened as they must!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, starting up, she began to roam the little room. Without Jimmy she
+      would be wretched, with him she would be wretched too! 'I can't bear to
+      see his face,' she thought; 'and I can't live here without him! It's
+      really funny!' The thought of her hospital filled her with loathing. To go
+      there day after day with this despair eating at her heart&mdash;she simply
+      could not. She went over her resources. She had more money than she
+      thought; Jimmy had given her a Christmas present of five hundred pounds.
+      She had wanted to tear up the cheque, or force him to take it back; but
+      the realities of the previous five years had prevailed with her, and she
+      had banked it. She was glad now. She had not to consider money. Her mind
+      sought to escape in the past. She thought of her first husband, Ronny
+      Fane; of their mosquito-curtained rooms in that ghastly Madras heat. Poor
+      Ronny! What a pale, cynical young ghost started up under that name. She
+      thought of Lynch, his horsey, matter-of-fact solidity. She had loved them
+      both&mdash;for a time. She thought of the veldt, of Constantia, and the
+      loom of Table Mountain under the stars; and the first sight of Jimmy, his
+      straight look, the curve of his crisp head, the kind, fighting-schoolboy
+      frankness of his face. Even now, after all those months of their
+      companionship, that long-ago evening at grape harvest, when she sang to
+      him under the scented creepers, was the memory of him most charged with
+      real feeling. That one evening at any rate he had longed for her, eleven:
+      years ago, when she was in her prime. She could have held her own then;
+      Noel would have come in vain. To think that this girl had still fifteen
+      years before she would be even in her prime. Fifteen years of witchery;
+      and then another ten before she was on the shelf. Why! if Noel married
+      Jimmy, he would be an old man doting on her still, by the time she had
+      reached this fatal age of forty-four: She felt as if she must scream, and;
+      stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, turned out the light. Darkness
+      cooled her, a little. She pulled aside the curtains, and let in the moon
+      light. Jimmy and that girl were out in it some where, seeking each other,
+      if not in body, then in thought. And soon, somehow, somewhere, they would
+      come together&mdash;come together because Fate meant them to! Fate which
+      had given her young cousin a likeness to herself; placed her, too, in just
+      such a hopeless position as appealed to Jimmy, and gave him a chance
+      against younger men. She saw it with bitter surety. Good gamblers cut
+      their losses! Yes, and proud women did not keep unwilling lovers! If she
+      had even an outside chance, she would trail her pride, drag it through the
+      mud, through thorns! But she had not. And she clenched her fist, and
+      struck out at the night, as though at the face of that Fate which one
+      could never reach&mdash;impalpable, remorseless, surrounding Fate with its
+      faint mocking smile, devoid of all human warmth. Nothing could set back
+      the clock, and give her what this girl had. Time had &ldquo;done her in,&rdquo;
+      as it &ldquo;did in&rdquo; every woman, one by one. And she saw herself
+      going down the years, powdering a little more, painting a little more,
+      touching up her hair, till it was all artifice, holding on by every little
+      device&mdash;and all, to what end? To see his face get colder and colder,
+      hear his voice more and more constrained to gentleness; and know that
+      underneath, aversion was growing with the thought 'You are keeping me from
+      life, and love!' till one evening, in sheer nerve-break, she would say or
+      do some fearful thing, and he would come no more. 'No, Jimmy!' she
+      thought; 'find her, and stay with her. You're not worth all that!' And
+      puffing to the curtains, as though with that gesture she could shut out
+      her creeping fate, she turned up the light and sat down at her writing
+      table. She stayed some minutes motionless, her chin resting on her hands,
+      the dark silk fallen down from her arms. A little mirror, framed in
+      curiously carved ivory, picked up by her in an Indian bazaar twenty-five
+      years ago, hung on a level with her face and gave that face back to her.
+      'I'm not ugly,' she thought passionately, 'I'm not. I still have some
+      looks left. If only that girl hadn't come. And it was all my doing. Oh,
+      what made me write to both of them, Edward and Jimmy?' She turned the
+      mirror aside, and took up a pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MY DEAR JIMMY,&rdquo; she wrote: &ldquo;It will be better for us
+      both if you take a holiday from here. Don't come again till I write for
+      you. I'm sorry I made you so much disturbance to-night. Have a good time,
+      and a good rest; and don't worry. Your&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far she had written when a tear dropped on the page, and she had to
+      tear it up and begin again. This time she wrote to the end&mdash;&ldquo;Your
+      Leila.&rdquo; 'I must post it now,' she thought, 'or he may not get it
+      before to-morrow evening. I couldn't go through with this again.' She
+      hurried out with it and slipped it in a pillar box. The night smelled of
+      flowers; and, hastening back, she lay down, and stayed awake for hours,
+      tossing, and staring at the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Leila had pluck, but little patience. Her one thought was to get away and
+      she at once began settling up her affairs and getting a permit to return
+      to South Africa. The excitements of purchase and preparation were as good
+      an anodyne as she could have taken. The perils of the sea were at full
+      just then, and the prospect of danger gave her a sort of pleasure. 'If I
+      go down,' she thought, 'all the better; brisk, instead of long and
+      dreary.' But when she had the permit and her cabin was booked, the
+      irrevocability of her step came to her with full force. Should she see him
+      again or no? Her boat started in three days, and she must decide. If in
+      compunction he were to be affectionate, she knew she would never keep to
+      her decision, and then the horror would begin again, till again she was
+      forced to this same action. She let the hours go and go till the very day
+      before, when the ache to see him and the dread of it had become so
+      unbearable that she could not keep quiet. Late that afternoon&mdash;everything,
+      to the last label, ready&mdash;she went out, still undecided. An itch to
+      turn the dagger in her wound, to know what had become of Noel, took her to
+      Edward's house. Almost unconsciously she had put on her prettiest frock,
+      and spent an hour before the glass. A feverishness of soul, more than of
+      body, which had hung about her ever since that night, gave her colour. She
+      looked her prettiest; and she bought a gardenia at a shop in Baker Street
+      and fastened it in her dress. Reaching the old Square, she was astonished
+      to see a board up with the words: &ldquo;To let,&rdquo; though the house
+      still looked inhabited. She rang, and was shown into the drawing-room. She
+      had only twice been in this house before; and for some reason, perhaps
+      because of her own unhappiness, the old, rather shabby room struck her as
+      pathetic, as if inhabited by the past. 'I wonder what his wife was like,'
+      she thought: And then she saw, hanging against a strip of black velvet on
+      the wall, that faded colour sketch of the slender young woman leaning
+      forward, with her hands crossed in her lap. The colouring was lavender and
+      old ivory, with faint touches of rose. The eyes, so living, were a little
+      like Gratian's; the whole face delicate, eager, good. 'Yes,' she thought,
+      'he must have loved you very much. To say good-bye must have been hard.'
+      She was still standing before it when Pierson came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a dear face, Edward. I've come to say good-bye. I'm leaving
+      for South Africa to-morrow.&rdquo; And, as her hand touched his, she
+      thought: 'I must have been mad to think I could ever have made him love
+      me.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you&mdash;are you leaving him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leila nodded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's very brave, and wonderful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! no. Needs must when the devil drives&mdash;that's all. I don't
+      give up happiness of my own accord. That's not within a hundred miles of
+      the truth. What I shall become, I don't know, but nothing better, you may
+      be sure. I give up because I can't keep, and you know why. Where is Noel?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Down at the sea, with George and Gratian.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was looking at her in wonder; and the pained, puzzled expression on his
+      face angered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see the house is to let. Who'd have thought a child like that
+      could root up two fossils like us? Never mind, Edward, there's the same
+      blood in us. We'll keep our ends up in our own ways. Where are you going?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll give me a chaplaincy in the East, I think.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a wild moment Leila thought: 'Shall I offer to go with him&mdash;the
+      two lost dogs together?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would have happened, Edward, if you had proposed to me that
+      May week, when we were&mdash;a little bit in love? Which would it have
+      been, worst for, you or me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wouldn't have taken me, Leila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, one never knows. But you'd never have been a priest then, and
+      you'd never have become a saint.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't use that silly word. If you knew&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do; I can see that you've been half burned alive; half burned and
+      half buried! Well, you have your reward, whatever it is, and I mine.
+      Good-bye, Edward!&rdquo; She took his hand. &ldquo;You might give me your
+      blessing; I want it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson put his other hand on her shoulder and, bending forward, kissed
+      her forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tears rushed up in Leila's eyes. &ldquo;Ah me!&rdquo; she said,
+      &ldquo;it's a sad world!&rdquo; And wiping the quivering off her lips with
+      the back of her gloved hand, she went quickly past him to the door. She
+      looked back from there. He had not stirred, but his lips were moving.
+      'He's praying for me!' she thought. 'How funny!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment she was outside, she forgot him; the dreadful ache for Fort
+      seemed to have been whipped up within her, as if that figure of lifelong
+      repression had infuriated the love of life and pleasure in her. She must
+      and would see Jimmy again, if she had to wait and seek for him all night!
+      It was nearly seven, he would surely have finished at the War Office; he
+      might be at his Club or at his rooms. She made for the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little street near Buckingham Gate, where no wag had chalked &ldquo;Peace&rdquo;
+      on the doors for nearly a year now, had an arid look after a hot day's
+      sun. The hair-dresser's shop below his rooms was still open, and the
+      private door ajar: 'I won't ring,' she thought; 'I'll go straight up.'
+      While she was mounting the two flights of stairs, she stopped twice,
+      breathless, from a pain in her side. She often had that pain now, as if
+      the longing in her heart strained it physically. On the modest landing at
+      the top, outside his rooms, she waited, leaning against the wall, which
+      was covered with a red paper. A window at the back was open and the
+      confused sound of singing came in&mdash;a chorus &ldquo;Vive-la, vive-la,
+      vive-la ve. Vive la compagnie.&rdquo; So it came to her. 'O God!' she
+      thought: 'Let him be in, let him be nice to me. It's the last time.' And,
+      sick from anxiety, she opened the door. He was in&mdash;lying on a
+      wicker-couch against the wall in the far corner, with his arms crossed
+      behind his head, and a pipe in his mouth; his eyes were closed, and he
+      neither moved, nor opened them, perhaps supposing her to be the servant.
+      Noiseless as a cat, Leila crossed the room till she stood above him. And
+      waiting for him to come out of that defiant lethargy, she took her fill of
+      his thin, bony face, healthy and hollow at the same time. With teeth
+      clenched on the pipe it had a look of hard resistance, as of a man with
+      his head back, his arms pinioned to his sides, stiffened against some
+      creature, clinging and climbing and trying to drag him down. The pipe was
+      alive, and dribbled smoke; and his leg, the injured one, wriggled
+      restlessly, as if worrying him; but the rest of him was as utterly and
+      obstinately still as though he were asleep. His hair grew thick and crisp,
+      not a thread of grey in it, the teeth which held the pipe glinted white
+      and strong. His face was young; so much younger than hers. Why did she
+      love it&mdash;the face of a man who couldn't love her? For a second she
+      felt as if she could seize the cushion which had slipped down off the
+      couch, and smother him as he lay there, refusing, so it seemed to her, to
+      come to consciousness. Love despised! Humiliation! She nearly turned and
+      stole away. Then through the door, left open, behind her, the sound of
+      that chorus: &ldquo;Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve!&rdquo; came in and
+      jolted her nerves unbearably. Tearing the gardenia from her breast, she
+      flung it on to his upturned face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jimmy!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort struggled up, and stared at her. His face was comic from
+      bewilderment, and she broke into a little nervous laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You weren't dreaming of me, dear Jimmy, that's certain. In what
+      garden were you wandering?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leila! You! How&mdash;how jolly!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How&mdash;how jolly! I wanted to see you, so I came. And I have
+      seen you, as you are, when you aren't with me. I shall remember it; it was
+      good for me&mdash;awfully good for me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't hear you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Far, far away, my dear. Put my gardenia in, your buttonhole. Stop,
+      I'll pin it in. Have you had a good rest all this week? Do you like my
+      dress? It's new. You wouldn't have noticed it, would you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have noticed. I think it's charming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jimmy, I believe that nothing&mdash;nothing will ever shake your
+      chivalry.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chivalry? I have none.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to shut the door, do you mind?&rdquo; But he went to the
+      door himself, shut it, and came back to her. Leila looked up at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jimmy, if ever you loved me a little bit, be nice to me today. And
+      if I say things&mdash;if I'm bitter&mdash;don't mind; don't notice it.
+      Promise!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took off her hat and sat leaning against him on the couch, so that she
+      could not see his face. And with his arm round her, she let herself go,
+      deep into the waters of illusion; down-down, trying to forget there was a
+      surface to which she must return; like a little girl she played that game
+      of make-believe. 'He loves me-he loves me&mdash;he loves me!' To lose
+      herself like that for, just an hour, only an hour; she felt that she would
+      give the rest of the time vouchsafed to her; give it all and willingly.
+      Her hand clasped his against her heart, she turned her face backward, up
+      to his, closing her eyes so as still not to see his face; the scent of the
+      gardenia in his coat hurt her, so sweet and strong it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When with her hat on she stood ready to go, it was getting dark. She had
+      come out of her dream now, was playing at make-believe no more. And she
+      stood with a stony smile, in the half-dark, looking between her lashes at
+      the mortified expression on his unconscious face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Jimmy!&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I'm not going to keep you from
+      dinner any longer. No, don't come with me. I'm going alone; and don't
+      light up, for heaven's sake.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her hand on the lapel of his coat. &ldquo;That flower's gone brown
+      at the edges. Throw it away; I can't bear faded flowers. Nor can you. Get
+      yourself a fresh one tomorrow.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pulled the flower from his buttonhole and, crushing it in her hand,
+      held her face up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, kiss me once more; it won't hurt you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For one moment her lips clung to his with all their might. She wrenched
+      them away, felt for the handle blindly, opened the door, and, shutting it
+      in his face, went slowly, swaying a little, down the stairs. She trailed a
+      gloved hand along the wall, as if its solidity could help her. At the last
+      half-landing, where a curtain hung, dividing off back premises, she
+      stopped and listened. There wasn't a sound. 'If I stand here behind this
+      curtain,' she thought, 'I shall see him again.' She slipped behind the
+      curtain, close drawn but for a little chink. It was so dark there that she
+      could not see her own hand. She heard the door open, and his slow
+      footsteps coming down the stairs. His feet, knees, whole figure came into
+      sight, his face just a dim blur. He passed, smoking a cigarette. She
+      crammed her hand against her mouth to stop herself from speaking and the
+      crushed gardenia filled her nostrils with its cold, fragrant velvet. He
+      was gone, the door below was shut. A wild, half-stupid longing came on her
+      to go up again, wait till he came in, throw herself upon him, tell him she
+      was going, beg him to keep her with him. Ah! and he would! He would look
+      at her with that haggard pity she could not bear, and say, &ldquo;Of
+      course, Leila, of course.&rdquo; No! By God, no! &ldquo;I am going quietly
+      home,&rdquo; she muttered; &ldquo;just quietly home! Come along, be brave;
+      don't be a fool! Come along!&rdquo; And she went down into the street: At
+      the entrance to the Park she saw him, fifty yards in front, dawdling
+      along. And, as if she had been his shadow lengthened out to that far
+      distance, she moved behind him. Slowly, always at that distance, she
+      followed him under the plane-trees, along the Park railings, past St.
+      James's Palace, into Pall Mall. He went up some steps, and vanished into
+      his Club. It was the end. She looked up at the building; a monstrous
+      granite tomb, all dark. An emptied cab was just moving from the door. She
+      got in. &ldquo;Camelot Mansions, St. John's Wood.&rdquo; And braced
+      against the cushions, panting, and clenching her hands, she thought:
+      'Well, I've seen him again. Hard crust's better than no bread. Oh, God!
+      All finished&mdash;not a crumb, not a crumb! Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve.
+      Vive-la compagnie!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Fort had been lying there about an hour, sleeping and awake, before that
+      visit: He had dreamed a curious and wonderfully emotionalising dream. A
+      long grey line, in a dim light, neither of night nor morning, the whole
+      length of the battle-front in France, charging in short drives, which
+      carried the line a little forward, with just a tiny pause and suck-back;
+      then on again irresistibly, on and on; and at each rush, every voice, his
+      own among them, shouted &ldquo;Hooray! the English! Hooray! the English!&rdquo;
+      The sensation of that advancing tide of dim figures in grey light, the
+      throb and roar, the wonderful, rhythmic steady drive of it, no more to be
+      stopped than the waves of an incoming tide, was gloriously fascinating;
+      life was nothing, death nothing. &ldquo;Hooray, the English!&rdquo; In
+      that dream, he was his country, he was every one of that long charging
+      line, driving forward in. those great heaving pulsations, irresistible, on
+      and on. Out of the very centre of this intoxicating dream he had been
+      dragged by some street noise, and had closed his eyes again, in the vain
+      hope that he might dream it on to its end. But it came no more; and
+      lighting his pipe, he lay there wondering at its fervid, fantastic
+      realism. Death was nothing, if his country lived and won. In waking hours
+      he never had quite that single-hearted knowledge of himself. And what
+      marvellously real touches got mixed into the fantastic stuff of dreams, as
+      if something were at work to convince the dreamer in spite of himself&mdash;&ldquo;Hooray!&rdquo;
+      not &ldquo;Hurrah!&rdquo; Just common &ldquo;Hooray!&rdquo; And &ldquo;the
+      English,&rdquo; not the literary &ldquo;British.&rdquo; And then the soft
+      flower had struck his forehead, and Leila's voice cried: &ldquo;Jimmy!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she left him, his thought was just a tired: 'Well, so it's begun
+      again!' What did it matter, since common loyalty and compassion cut him
+      off from what his heart desired; and that desire was absurd, as little
+      likely of attainment as the moon. What did it matter? If it gave her any
+      pleasure to love him, let it go on! Yet, all the time that he was walking
+      across under the plane trees, Noel seemed to walk in front of him, just
+      out of reach, so that he ached with the thought that he would never catch
+      her up, and walk beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later, on reaching his rooms in the evening, he found this letter
+      on ship's note-paper, with the Plymouth postmark&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &ldquo;Fare thee well, and if for ever,
+     Then for ever fare thee well&rdquo;
+                          &ldquo;Leila&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      He read it with a really horrible feeling, for all the world as if he had
+      been accused of a crime and did not know whether he had committed it or
+      not. And, trying to collect his thoughts, he took a cab and drove to her
+      fiat. It was closed, but her address was given him; a bank in Cape Town.
+      He had received his release. In his remorse and relief, so confusing and
+      so poignant, he heard the driver of the cab asking where he wanted to go
+      now. &ldquo;Oh, back again!&rdquo; But before they had gone a mile he
+      corrected the address, in an impulse of which next moment he felt
+      thoroughly ashamed. What he was doing indeed, was as indecent as if he
+      were driving from the funeral of his wife to the boudoir of another woman.
+      When he reached the old Square, and the words &ldquo;To let&rdquo; stared
+      him in the face, he felt a curious relief, though it meant that he would
+      not see her whom to see for ten minutes he felt he would give a year of
+      life. Dismissing his cab, he stood debating whether to ring the bell. The
+      sight of a maid's face at the window decided him. Mr. Pierson was out, and
+      the young ladies were away. He asked for Mrs. Laird's address, and turned
+      away, almost into the arms of Pierson himself. The greeting was stiff and
+      strange. 'Does he know that Leila's gone?' he thought. 'If so, he must
+      think me the most awful skunk. And am I? Am I?' When he reached home, he
+      sat down to write to Leila. But having stared at the paper for an hour and
+      written these three lines&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MY DEAR LEILA,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot express to you the feelings with which I received your
+      letter&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      he tore it up. Nothing would be adequate, nothing would be decent. Let the
+      dead past bury its dead&mdash;the dead past which in his heart had never
+      been alive! Why pretend? He had done his best to keep his end up. Why
+      pretend?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART4" id="link2H_PART4">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0039" id="link2H_4_0039">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the boarding-house, whence the Lairds had not yet removed, the old lady
+      who knitted, sat by the fireplace, and light from the setting sun threw
+      her shadow on the wall, moving spidery and grey, over the yellowish
+      distemper, in time to the tune of her needles. She was a very old lady&mdash;the
+      oldest lady in the world, Noel thought&mdash;and she knitted without
+      stopping, without breathing, so that the girl felt inclined to scream. In
+      the evening when George and Gratian were not in, Noel would often sit
+      watching the needles, brooding over her as yet undecided future. And now
+      and again the old lady would look up above her spectacles; move the
+      corners of her lips ever so slightly, and drop her gaze again. She had
+      pitted herself against Fate; so long as she knitted, the war could not
+      stop&mdash;such was the conclusion Noel had come to. This old lady knitted
+      the epic of acquiescence to the tune of her needles; it was she who kept
+      the war going such a thin old lady! 'If I were to hold her elbows from
+      behind,' the girl used to think, 'I believe she'd die. I expect I ought
+      to; then the war would stop. And if the war stopped, there'd be love and
+      life again.' Then the little silvery tune would click itself once more
+      into her brain, and stop her thinking. In her lap this evening lay a
+      letter from her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad to say I have my chaplaincy, and am to start for Egypt
+      very soon. I should have wished to go to France, but must take what I can
+      get, in view of my age, for they really don't want us who are getting on,
+      I fear. It is a great comfort to me to think that Gratian is with you, and
+      no doubt you will all soon be in a house where my little grandson can join
+      you. I have excellent accounts of him in a letter from your aunt, just
+      received: My child, you must never again think that my resignation has
+      been due to you. It is not so. You know, or perhaps you don't, that ever
+      since the war broke out, I have chafed over staying at home, my heart has
+      been with our boys out there, and sooner or later it must have come to
+      this, apart from anything else. Monsieur Lavendie has been round in the
+      evening, twice; he is a nice man, I like him very much, in spite of our
+      differences of view. He wanted to give me the sketch he made of you in the
+      Park, but what can I do with it now? And to tell you the truth, I like it
+      no better than the oil painting. It is not a likeness, as I know you. I
+      hope I didn't hurt his feelings, the feelings of an artist are so very
+      easily wounded. There is one thing I must tell you. Leila has gone back to
+      South Africa; she came round one evening about ten days ago, to say
+      goodbye. She was very brave, for I fear it means a great wrench for her. I
+      hope and pray she may find comfort and tranquillity out there. And now, my
+      dear, I want you to promise me not to see Captain Fort. I know that he
+      admires you. But, apart from the question of his conduct in regard to
+      Leila, he made the saddest impression on me by coming to our house the
+      very day after her departure. There is something about that which makes me
+      feel he cannot be the sort of man in whom I could feel any confidence. I
+      don't suppose for a moment that he is in your thoughts, and yet before
+      going so far from you, I feel I must warn you. I should rejoice to see you
+      married to a good man; but, though I don't wish to think hardly of anyone,
+      I cannot believe Captain Fort is that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall come down to you before I start, which may be in quite a
+      short time now. My dear love to you and Gracie, and best wishes to George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your ever loving father,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;EDWARD PIERSON&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Across this letter lying on her knees, Noel gazed at the spidery movement
+      on the wall. Was it acquiescence that the old lady knitted, or was it
+      resistance&mdash;a challenge to death itself, a challenge dancing to the
+      tune of the needles like the grey ghost of human resistance to Fate! She
+      wouldn't give in, this oldest lady in the world, she meant to knit till
+      she fell into the grave. And so Leila had gone! It hurt her to know that;
+      and yet it pleased her. Acquiescence&mdash;resistance! Why did Daddy
+      always want to choose the way she should go? So gentle he was, yet he
+      always wanted to! And why did he always make her feel that she must go the
+      other way? The sunlight ceased to stream in, the old lady's shadow faded
+      off the wall, but the needles still sang their little tune. And the girl
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you enjoy knitting, Mrs. Adam?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady looked at her above the spectacles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enjoy, my dear? It passes the time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But do you want the time to pass?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer for a moment, and Noel thought: 'How dreadful of me to
+      have said that!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; said the old lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said: Isn't it very tiring?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not when I don't think about it, my dear.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think about?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady cackled gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;well!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Noel thought: 'It must be dreadful to grow old, and pass the time!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took up her father's letter, and bent it meditatively against her
+      chin. He wanted her to pass the time&mdash;not to live, not to enjoy! To
+      pass the time. What else had he been doing himself, all these years, ever
+      since she could remember, ever since her mother died, but just passing the
+      time? Passing the time because he did not believe in this life; not living
+      at all, just preparing for the life he did believe in. Denying himself
+      everything that was exciting and nice, so that when he died he might pass
+      pure and saintly to his other world. He could not believe Captain Fort a
+      good man, because he had not passed the time, and resisted Leila; and
+      Leila was gone! And now it was a sin for him to love someone else; he must
+      pass the time again. 'Daddy doesn't believe in life,' she thought; 'it's
+      monsieur's picture. Daddy's a saint; but I don't want to be a saint, and
+      pass the time. He doesn't mind making people unhappy, because the more
+      they're repressed, the saintlier they'll be. But I can't bear to be
+      unhappy, or to see others unhappy. I wonder if I could bear to be unhappy
+      to save someone else&mdash;as Leila is? I admire her! Oh! I admire her!
+      She's not doing it because she thinks it good for her soul; only because
+      she can't bear making him unhappy. She must love him very much. Poor
+      Leila! And she's done it all by herself, of her own accord.' It was like
+      what George said of the soldiers; they didn't know why they were heroes,
+      it was not because they'd been told to be, or because they believed in a
+      future life. They just had to be, from inside somewhere, to save others.
+      'And they love life as much as I do,' she thought. 'What a beast it makes
+      one feel!' Those needles! Resistance&mdash;acquiescence? Both perhaps. The
+      oldest lady in the world, with her lips moving at the corners, keeping
+      things in, had lived her life, and knew it. How dreadful to live on when
+      you were of no more interest to anyone, but must just &ldquo;pass the time&rdquo;
+      and die. But how much more dreadful to &ldquo;pass the time&rdquo; when
+      you were strong, and life and love were yours for the taking! 'I shan't
+      answer Daddy,' she thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0040" id="link2H_4_0040">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The maid, who one Saturday in July opened the door to Jimmy Fort, had
+      never heard the name of Laird, for she was but a unit in the ceaseless
+      procession which pass through the boarding-houses of places subject to
+      air-raids. Placing him in a sitting-room, she said she would find Miss
+      'Allow. There he waited, turning the leaves of an illustrated Journal,
+      wherein Society beauties; starving Servians, actresses with pretty legs,
+      prize dogs, sinking ships, Royalties, shells bursting, and padres reading
+      funeral services, testified to the catholicity of the public taste, but
+      did not assuage his nerves. What if their address were not known here?
+      Why, in his fear of putting things to the test, had he let this month go
+      by? An old lady was sitting by the hearth, knitting, the click of whose
+      needles blended with the buzzing of a large bee on the window-pane. 'She
+      may know,' he thought, 'she looks as if she'd been here for ever.' And
+      approaching her, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can assure you those socks are very much appreciated, ma'am.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady bridled over her spectacles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It passes the time,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, more than that; it helps to win the war, ma'am.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady's lips moved at the corners; she did not answer. 'Deaf!' he
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask if you knew my friends, Doctor and Mrs. Laird, and Miss
+      Pierson?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady cackled gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes! A pretty young girl; as pretty as life. She used to sit
+      with me. Quite a pleasure to watch her; such large eyes she had.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where have they gone? Can you tell me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know at all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a little cold douche on his heart. He longed to say: 'Stop knitting
+      a minute, please. It's my life, to know.' But the tune of the needles
+      answered: 'It's my life to knit.' And he turned away to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She used to sit just there; quite still; quite still.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort looked down at the window-seat. So, she used to sit just here, quite
+      still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a dreadful war this is!&rdquo; said the old lady. &ldquo;Have
+      you been at the front?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To think of the poor young girls who'll never have husbands! I'm
+      sure I think it's dreadful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Fort; &ldquo;it's dreadful&mdash;&rdquo; And then
+      a voice from the doorway said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you want Doctor and Mrs. Laird, sir? East Bungalow their
+      address is; it's a little way out on the North Road. Anyone will tell you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sigh of relief Fort looked gratefully at the old lady who had
+      called Noel as pretty as life. &ldquo;Good afternoon, ma'am.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good afternoon.&rdquo; The needles clicked, and little movements
+      occurred at the corners of her mouth. Fort went out. He could not find a
+      vehicle, and was a long time walking. The Bungalow was ugly, of yellow
+      brick pointed with red. It lay about two-thirds up between the main road
+      and cliffs, and had a rock-garden and a glaring, brand-new look, in the
+      afternoon sunlight. He opened the gate, uttering one of those prayers
+      which come so glibly from unbelievers when they want anything. A baby's
+      crying answered it, and he thought with ecstasy: 'Heaven, she is here!'
+      Passing the rock-garden he could see a lawn at the back of the house and a
+      perambulator out there under a holm-oak tree, and Noel&mdash;surely Noel
+      herself! Hardening his heart, he went forward. In a lilac sunbonnet she
+      was bending over the perambulator. He trod softly on the grass, and was
+      quite close before she heard him. He had prepared no words, but just held
+      out his hand. The baby, interested in the shadow failing across its pram,
+      ceased crying. Noel took his hand. Under the sunbonnet, which hid her
+      hair, she seemed older and paler, as if she felt the heat. He had no
+      feeling that she was glad to see him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do? Have you seen Gratian; she ought to be in.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't come to see her; I came to see you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel turned to the baby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here he is.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort stood at the end of the perambulator, and looked at that other
+      fellow's baby. In the shade of the hood, with the frilly clothes, it
+      seemed to him lying with its head downhill. It had scratched its snub nose
+      and bumpy forehead, and it stared up at its mother with blue eyes, which
+      seemed to have no underlids so fat were its cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what they think about,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel put her finger into the baby's fist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They only think when they want some thing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a deep saying: but his eyes are awfully interested in you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel smiled; and very slowly the baby's curly mouth unclosed, and
+      discovered his toothlessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a darling,&rdquo; she said in a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'And so are you,' he thought, 'if only I dared say it!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daddy is here,&rdquo; she said suddenly, without looking up.
+      &ldquo;He's sailing for Egypt the day after to-morrow. He doesn't like
+      you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort's heart gave a jump. Why did she tell him that, unless&mdash;unless
+      she was just a little on his side?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expected that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm a sinner, as you know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel looked up at him. &ldquo;Sin!&rdquo; she said, and bent again over
+      her baby. The word, the tone in which she said it, crouching over her
+      baby, gave him the thought: 'If it weren't for that little creature, I
+      shouldn't have a dog's chance.' He said, &ldquo;I'll go and see your
+      father. Is he in?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I come to-morrow?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Sunday; and Daddy's last day.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Of course.&rdquo; He did not dare look back, to see if her gaze
+      was following him, but he thought: 'Chance or no chance, I'm going to
+      fight for her tooth and nail.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a room darkened against the evening sun Pierson was sitting on a sofa
+      reading. The sight of that figure in khaki disconcerted Fort, who had not
+      realised that there would be this metamorphosis. The narrow face,
+      clean-shaven now, with its deep-set eyes and compressed lips, looked more
+      priestly than ever, in spite of this brown garb. He felt his hope suddenly
+      to be very forlorn indeed. And rushing at the fence, he began abruptly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've come to ask you, sir, for your permission to marry Noel, if
+      she will have me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had thought Pierson's face gentle; it was not gentle now. &ldquo;Did
+      you know I was here, then, Captain Fort?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw Noel in the garden. I've said nothing to her, of course. But
+      she told me you were starting to-morrow for Egypt, so I shall have no
+      other chance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry you have come. It is not for me to judge, but I don't
+      think you will make Noel happy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask you why, sir?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain Fort, the world's judgment of these things is not mine; but
+      since you ask me. I will tell you frankly. My cousin Leila has a claim on
+      you. It is her you should ask to marry you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did ask her; she refused.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. She would not refuse you again if you went out to her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not free to go out to her; besides, she would refuse. She
+      knows I don't love her, and never have.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never have?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I'm a man, I suppose, and a fool&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it was simply, 'because you are a man' as you call it, it is
+      clear that no principle or faith governs you. And yet you ask me to give
+      you Noel; my poor Noel, who wants the love and protection not of a 'man'
+      but of a good man. No, Captain Fort, no!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort bit his lips. &ldquo;I'm clearly not a good man in your sense of the
+      word; but I love her terribly, and I would protect her. I don't in the
+      least know whether she'll have me. I don't expect her to, naturally. But I
+      warn you that I mean to ask her, and to wait for her. I'm so much in love
+      that I can do nothing else.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man who is truly in love does what is best for the one he
+      loves.&rdquo; Fort bent his head; he felt as if he were at school again,
+      confronting his head-master. &ldquo;That's true,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And
+      I shall never trade on her position. If she can't feel anything for me now
+      or in the future, I shan't trouble her, you may be sure of that. But if by
+      some wonderful chance she should, I know I can make her happy, sir.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a child.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she's not a child,&rdquo; said Fort stubbornly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson touched the lapel of his new tunic. &ldquo;Captain Fort, I am
+      going far away from her, and leaving her without protection. I trust to
+      your chivalry not to ask her, till I come back.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort threw back his head. &ldquo;No, no, I won't accept that position.
+      With or without your presence the facts will be the same. Either she can
+      love me, or she can't. If she can, she'll be happier with me. If she
+      can't, there's an end of it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson came slowly up to him. &ldquo;In my view,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you
+      are as bound to Leila as if you were married to her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't, expect me to take the priest's view, sir.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson's lips trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You call it a priest's view; I think it is only the view of a man
+      of honour.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort reddened. &ldquo;That's for my conscience,&rdquo; he said stubbornly.
+      &ldquo;I can't tell you, and I'm not going to, how things began. I was a
+      fool. But I did my best, and I know that Leila doesn't think I'm bound. If
+      she had, she would never have gone. When there's no feeling&mdash;there
+      never was real feeling on my side&mdash;and when there's this terribly
+      real feeling for Noel, which I never sought, which I tried to keep down,
+      which I ran away from&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. To go on with the other was foul. I should have thought you
+      might have seen that, sir; but I did go on with it. It was Leila who made
+      an end.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leila behaved nobly, I think.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was splendid; but that doesn't make me a brute.&rdquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson turned away to the window, whence he must see Noel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is repugnant to me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Is there never to be
+      any purity in her life?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there never to be any life for her? At your rate, sir, there
+      will be none. I'm no worse than other men, and I love her more than they
+      could.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For fully a minute Pierson stood silent, before he said: &ldquo;Forgive me
+      if I've spoken harshly. I didn't mean to. I love her intensely; I wish for
+      nothing but her good. But all my life I have believed that for a man there
+      is only one woman&mdash;for a woman only one man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, Sir,&rdquo; Fort burst out, &ldquo;you wish her&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson had put his hand up, as if to ward off a blow; and, angry though
+      he was, Fort stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are all made of flesh and blood,&rdquo; he continued coldly,
+      &ldquo;and it seems to me that you think we aren't.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have spirits too, Captain Fort.&rdquo; The voice was suddenly so
+      gentle that Fort's anger evaporated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a great respect for you, sir; but a greater love for Noel,
+      and nothing in this world will prevent me trying to give my life to her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A smile quivered over Pierson's face. &ldquo;If you try, then I can but
+      pray that you will fail.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fort did not answer, and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked slowly away from the bungalow, with his head down, sore, angry,
+      and yet-relieved. He knew where he stood; nor did he feel that he had been
+      worsted&mdash;those strictures had not touched him. Convicted of
+      immorality, he remained conscious of private justifications, in a way that
+      human beings have. Only one little corner of memory, unseen and
+      uncriticised by his opponent, troubled him. He pardoned himself the rest;
+      the one thing he did not pardon was the fact that he had known Noel before
+      his liaison with Leila commenced; had even let Leila sweep him away on, an
+      evening when he had been in Noel's company. For that he felt a real
+      disgust with himself. And all the way back to the station he kept
+      thinking: 'How could I? I deserve to lose her! Still, I shall try; but not
+      now&mdash;not yet!' And, wearily enough, he took the train back to town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0041" id="link2H_4_0041">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Both girls rose early that last day, and went with their father to
+      Communion. As Gratian had said to George: &ldquo;It's nothing to me now,
+      but it will mean a lot to him out there, as a memory of us. So I must go.&rdquo;
+      And he had answered: &ldquo;Quite right, my dear. Let him have all he can
+      get of you both to-day. I'll keep out of the way, and be back the last
+      thing at night.&rdquo; Their father's smile when he saw them waiting for
+      him went straight to both their hearts. It was a delicious day, and the
+      early freshness had not yet dried out of the air, when they were walking
+      home to breakfast. Each girl had slipped a hand under his arm. 'It's like
+      Moses or was it Aaron?' Noel thought absurdly Memory had complete hold of
+      her. All the old days! Nursery hours on Sundays after tea, stories out of
+      the huge Bible bound in mother-o'pearl, with photogravures of the Holy
+      Land&mdash;palms, and hills, and goats, and little Eastern figures, and
+      funny boats on the Sea of Galilee, and camels&mdash;always camels. The
+      book would be on his knee, and they one on each arm of his chair, waiting
+      eagerly for the pages to be turned so that a new picture came. And there
+      would be the feel of his cheek, prickly against theirs; and the old names
+      with the old glamour&mdash;to Gratian, Joshua, Daniel, Mordecai, Peter; to
+      Noel Absalom because of his hair, and Haman because she liked the sound,
+      and Ruth because she was pretty and John because he leaned on Jesus'
+      breast. Neither of them cared for Job or David, and Elijah and Elisha they
+      detested because they hated the name Eliza. And later days by firelight in
+      the drawing-room, roasting chestnuts just before evening church, and
+      telling ghost stories, and trying to make Daddy eat his share. And hours
+      beside him at the piano, each eager for her special hymns&mdash;for
+      Gratian, &ldquo;Onward, Christian Soldiers,&rdquo; &ldquo;Lead, Kindly
+      Light,&rdquo; and &ldquo;O God Our Help&rdquo;; for Noel, &ldquo;Nearer,
+      My God, to Thee,&rdquo; the one with &ldquo;The Hosts of Midian&rdquo; in
+      it, and &ldquo;For Those in Peril on the Sea.&rdquo; And carols! Ah! And
+      Choristers! Noel had loved one deeply&mdash;the word &ldquo;chorister&rdquo;
+      was so enchanting; and because of his whiteness, and hair which had no
+      grease on it, but stood up all bright; she had never spoken to him&mdash;a
+      far worship, like that for a star. And always, always Daddy had been
+      gentle; sometimes angry, but always gentle; and they sometimes not at all!
+      And mixed up with it all, the dogs they had had, and the cats they had
+      had, and the cockatoo, and the governesses, and their red cloaks, and the
+      curates, and the pantomimes, and &ldquo;Peter Pan,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Alice
+      in Wonderland&rdquo;&mdash;Daddy sitting between them, so that one could
+      snuggle up. And later, the school-days, the hockey, the prizes, the
+      holidays, the rush into his arms; and the great and wonderful yearly
+      exodus to far places, fishing and bathing; walks and drives; rides and
+      climbs, always with him. And concerts and Shakespeare plays in the
+      Christmas and Easter holidays; and the walk home through the streets&mdash;all
+      lighted in those days&mdash;one on each side of him. And this was the end!
+      They waited on him at breakfast: they kept stealing glances at him,
+      photographing him in their minds. Gratian got her camera and did actually
+      photograph him in the morning sunlight with Noel, without Noel, with the
+      baby; against all regulations for the defence of the realm. It was Noel
+      who suggested: &ldquo;Daddy, let's take lunch out and go for all day on
+      the cliffs, us three, and forget there's a war.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So easy to say, so difficult to do, with the boom of the guns travelling
+      to their ears along the grass, mingled with the buzz of insects. Yet that
+      hum of summer, the innumerable voices of tiny lives, gossamer things all
+      as alive as they, and as important to their frail selves; and the white
+      clouds, few and so slow-moving, and the remote strange purity which clings
+      to the chalky downs, all this white and green and blue of land and sea had
+      its peace, which crept into the spirits of those three alone with Nature,
+      this once more, the last time for&mdash;who could say how long? They
+      talked, by tacit agreement, of nothing but what had happened before the
+      war began, while the flock of the blown dandelions drifted past. Pierson
+      sat cross-legged on the grass, without his cap, suffering a little still
+      from the stiffness of his unwonted garments. And the girls lay one on each
+      side of him, half critical, and half admiring. Noel could not bear his
+      collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had a soft collar you'd be lovely, Daddy. Perhaps out there
+      they'll let you take it off. It must be fearfully hot in Egypt. Oh! I wish
+      I were going. I wish I were going everywhere in the world. Some day!&rdquo;
+      Presently he read to them, Murray's &ldquo;Hippolytus&rdquo; of Euripides.
+      And now and then Gratian and he discussed a passage. But Noel lay silent,
+      looking at the sky. Whenever his voice ceased, there was the song of the
+      larks, and very faint, the distant mutter of the guns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stayed up there till past six, and it was time to go and have tea
+      before Evening Service. Those hours in the baking sun had drawn virtue out
+      of them; they were silent and melancholy all the evening. Noel was the
+      first to go up to her bedroom. She went without saying good night&mdash;she
+      knew her father would come to her room that last evening. George had not
+      yet come in; and Gratian was left alone with Pierson in the drawing-room,
+      round whose single lamp, in spite of close-drawn curtains, moths were
+      circling: She moved over to him on the sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dad, promise me not to worry about Nollie; we'll take care of her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She can only take care of herself, Gracie, and will she? Did you
+      know that Captain Fort was here yesterday?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She told me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is her feeling about him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think she knows. Nollie dreams along, and then suddenly
+      rushes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish she were safe from that man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Dad, why? George likes him and so do I.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A big grey moth was fluttering against the lamp. Pierson got up and caught
+      it in the curve of his palm. &ldquo;Poor thing! You're like my Nollie; so
+      soft, and dreamy, so feckless, so reckless.&rdquo; And going to the
+      curtains, he thrust his hand through, and released the moth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dad!&rdquo; said Gratian suddenly, &ldquo;we can only find out for
+      ourselves, even if we do singe our wings in doing it. We've been reading
+      James's 'Pragmatism.' George says the only chapter that's important is
+      missing&mdash;the one on ethics, to show that what we do is not wrong till
+      it's proved wrong by the result. I suppose he was afraid to deliver that
+      lecture.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson's face wore the smile which always came on it when he had to deal
+      with George, the smile which said: &ldquo;Ah, George, that's very clever;
+      but I know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that doctrine is the most dangerous
+      in the world. I am surprised at George.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think George is in danger, Dad.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George is a man of wide experience and strong judgment and
+      character; but think how fatal it would be for Nollie, my poor Nollie,
+      whom a little gust can blow into the candle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same,&rdquo; said Gratian stubbornly, &ldquo;I don't think
+      anyone can be good or worth anything unless they judge for themselves and
+      take risks.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson went close to her; his face was quivering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't let us differ on this last night; I must go up to Nollie for
+      a minute, and then to bed. I shan't see you to-morrow; you mustn't get up;
+      I can bear parting better like this. And my train goes at eight. God bless
+      you, Gracie; give George my love. I know, I have always known that he's a
+      good man, though we do fight so. Good-bye, my darling.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went out with his cheeks wet from Gratian's tears, and stood in the
+      porch a minute to recover his composure. The shadow of the house stretched
+      velvet and blunt over the rock-garden. A night-jar was spinning; the
+      churring sound affected him oddly. The last English night-bird he would
+      hear. England! What a night-to say good-bye! 'My country!' he thought; 'my
+      beautiful country!' The dew was lying thick and silvery already on the
+      little patch of grass-the last dew, the last scent of an English night.
+      The call of a bugle floated out. &ldquo;England!&rdquo; he prayed; &ldquo;God
+      be about you!&rdquo; A little sound answered from across the grass, like
+      an old man's cough, and the scrape and rattle of a chain. A face emerged
+      at the edge of the house's shadow; bearded and horned like that of Pan, it
+      seemed to stare at him. And he saw the dim grey form of the garden goat,
+      heard it scuttle round the stake to which it was tethered, as though
+      alarmed at this visitor to its' domain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went up the half-flight of stairs to Noel's narrow little room, next
+      the nursery. No voice answered his tap. It was dark, but he could see her
+      at the window, leaning far out, with her chin on her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She answered without turning: &ldquo;Such a lovely night, Daddy. Come and
+      look! I'd like to set the goat free, only he'd eat the rock plants. But it
+      is his night, isn't it? He ought to be running and skipping in it: it's
+      such a shame to tie things up. Did you never, feel wild in your heart,
+      Daddy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always, I think, Nollie; too wild. It's been hard to tame oneself.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel slipped her hand through his arm. &ldquo;Let's go and take the goat
+      and skip together on the hills. If only we had a penny whistle! Did you
+      hear the bugle? The bugle and the goat!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson pressed the hand against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie, be good while I'm away. You know what I don't want. I told
+      you in my letter.&rdquo; He looked at her cheek, and dared say no more.
+      Her face had its &ldquo;fey&rdquo; look again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you feel,&rdquo; she said suddenly, &ldquo;on a night like
+      this, all the things, all the things&mdash;the stars have lives, Daddy,
+      and the moon has a big life, and the shadows have, and the moths and the
+      birds and the goats and the trees, and the flowers, and all of us&mdash;escaped?
+      Oh! Daddy, why is there a war? And why are people so bound and so unhappy?
+      Don't tell me it's God&mdash;don't!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson could not answer, for there came into his mind the Greek song he
+      had been reading aloud that afternoon&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &ldquo;O for a deep and dewy Spring,
+     With runlets cold to draw and drink,
+     And a great meadow blossoming,
+     Long-grassed, and poplars in a ring,
+     To rest me by the brink.
+     O take me to the mountain, O,
+     Past the great pines and through the wood,
+     Up where the lean hounds softly go,
+     A-whine for wild things' blood,
+     And madly flies the dappled roe,
+     O God, to shout and speed them there;
+     An arrow by my chestnut hair
+     Drawn tight and one keen glimmering spear
+     Ah! if I could!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      All that in life had been to him unknown, of venture and wild savour; all
+      the emotion he had stifled; the swift Pan he had denied; the sharp fruits,
+      the burning suns, the dark pools, the unearthly moonlight, which were not
+      of God&mdash;all came with the breath of that old song, and the look on
+      the girl's face. And he covered his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel's hand tugged at his arm. &ldquo;Isn't beauty terribly alive,&rdquo;
+      she murmured, &ldquo;like a lovely person? it makes you ache to kiss it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His lips felt parched. &ldquo;There is a beauty beyond all that,&rdquo; he
+      said stubbornly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holiness, duty, faith. O Nollie, my love!&rdquo; But Noel's hand
+      tightened on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell you what I should like?&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;To
+      take God's hand and show Him things. I'm certain He's not seen everything.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shudder went through Pierson, one of those queer sudden shivers, which
+      come from a strange note in a voice, or a new sharp scent or sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, what things you say!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But He hasn't, and it's time He did. We'd creep, and peep, and see
+      it all for once, as He can't in His churches. Daddy, oh! Daddy! I can't
+      bear it any more; to think of them being killed on a night like this;
+      killed and killed so that they never see it all again&mdash;never see it&mdash;never
+      see it!&rdquo; She sank down, and covered her face with her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't, I can't! Oh! take it all away, the cruelty! Why does it
+      come&mdash;why the stars and the flowers, if God doesn't care any more
+      than that?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Horribly affected he stood bending over her, stroking her head. Then the
+      habit of a hundred death-beds helped him. &ldquo;Come, Nollie! This life
+      is but a minute. We must all die.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not they&mdash;not so young!&rdquo; She clung to his knees, and
+      looked up. &ldquo;Daddy, I don't want you to go; promise me to come back!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The childishness of those words brought back his balance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear sweetheart, of course! Come, Nollie, get up. The sun's been
+      too much for you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel got up, and put her hands on her father's shoulders. &ldquo;Forgive
+      me for all my badness, and all my badness to come, especially all my
+      badness to come!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierson smiled. &ldquo;I shall always forgive you, Nollie; but there won't
+      be&mdash;there mustn't be any badness to come. I pray God to keep you, and
+      make you like your mother.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother never had a devil, like you and me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent from surprise. How did this child know the devil of wild
+      feeling he had fought against year after year; until with the many years
+      he had felt it weakening within him! She whispered on: &ldquo;I don't hate
+      my devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I?&mdash;it's part of me. Every day when the sun sets,
+      I'll think of you, Daddy; and you might do the same&mdash;that'll keep me
+      good. I shan't come to the station tomorrow, I should only cry. And I
+      shan't say good-bye now. It's unlucky.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung her arms round him; and half smothered by that fervent embrace,
+      he kissed her cheeks and hair. Freed of each other at last, he stood for a
+      moment looking at her by the moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There never was anyone more loving than you; Nollie!&rdquo; he said
+      quietly. &ldquo;Remember my letter. And good night, my love!&rdquo; Then,
+      afraid to stay another second, he went quickly out of the dark little
+      room....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Laird, returning half an hour later, heard a voice saying softly:
+      &ldquo;George, George!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking up, he saw a little white blur at the window, and Noel's face just
+      visible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George, let the goat loose, just for to-night, to please me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in that voice, and in the gesture of her stretched-out arm moved
+      George in a queer way, although, as Pierson had once said, he had no music
+      in his soul. He loosed the goat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0042" id="link2H_4_0042">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      1
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In the weeks which succeeded Pierson's departure, Gratian and George often
+      discussed Noel's conduct and position by the light of the Pragmatic
+      theory. George held a suitably scientific view. Just as he would point out
+      to his wife&mdash;in the physical world, creatures who diverged from the
+      normal had to justify their divergence in competition with their
+      environments, or else go under, so in the ethical world it was all a
+      question of whether Nollie could make good her vagary. If she could, and
+      grew in strength of character thereby, it was ipso facto all right, her
+      vagary would be proved an advantage, and the world enriched. If not, the
+      world by her failure to make good would be impoverished, and her vagary
+      proved wrong. The orthodox and academies&mdash;he insisted&mdash;were
+      always forgetting the adaptability of living organisms; how every action
+      which was out of the ordinary, unconsciously modified all the other
+      actions together with the outlook, and philosophy of the doer. &ldquo;Of
+      course Nollie was crazy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but when she did what she
+      did, she at once began to think differently about life and morals. The
+      deepest instinct we all have is the instinct that we must do what we must,
+      and think that what we've done is really all right; in fact the&mdash;instinct
+      of self-preservation. We're all fighting animals; and we feel in our bones
+      that if we admit we're beaten&mdash;we are beaten; but that every fight we
+      win, especially against odds, hardens those bones. But personally I don't
+      think she can make good on her own.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian, whose Pragmatism was not yet fully baked, responded doubtfully:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't think she can. And if she could I'm not sure. But isn't
+      Pragmatism a perfectly beastly word, George? It has no sense of humour in
+      it at all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a bit thick, and in the hands of the young, deuced likely to
+      become Prigmatism; but not with Nollie.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They watched the victim of their discussions with real anxiety. The
+      knowledge that she would never be more sheltered than she was with them,
+      at all events until she married, gravely impeded the formation of any
+      judgment as to whether or no she could make good. Now and again there
+      would come to Gratian who after all knew her sister better than George&mdash;the
+      disquieting thought that whatever conclusion Noel led them to form, she
+      would almost certainly force them to abandon sooner or later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three days after her father's departure Noel had declared that she wanted
+      to work on the land. This George had promptly vetoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You aren't strong enough yet, my dear: Wait till the harvest
+      begins. Then you can go and help on the farm here. If you can stand that
+      without damage, we'll think about it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the weather was wet and harvest late, and Noel had nothing much to do
+      but attend to her baby, already well attended to by Nurse, and dream and
+      brood, and now and then cook an omelette or do some housework for the sake
+      of a gnawing conscience. Since Gratian and George were away in hospital
+      all day, she was very much alone. Several times in the evenings Gratian
+      tried to come at the core of her thoughts, Twice she flew the kite of
+      Leila. The first time Noel only answered: &ldquo;Yes, she's a brick.&rdquo;
+      The second time, she said: &ldquo;I don't want to think about her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, hardening her heart, Gratian went on: &ldquo;Don't you think it's
+      queer we've never heard from Captain Fort since he came down?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her calmest voice Noel answered: &ldquo;Why should we, after being told
+      that he wasn't liked?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told him that?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him, that Daddy didn't; but I expect Daddy said much worse
+      things.&rdquo; She gave a little laugh, then softly added: &ldquo;Daddy's
+      wonderful, isn't he?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The way he drives one to do the other thing. If he hadn't opposed
+      my marriage to Cyril, you know, that wouldn't have happened, it just made
+      all the difference. It stirred me up so fearfully.&rdquo; Gratian stared
+      at her, astonished that she could see herself so clearly. Towards the end
+      of August she had a letter from Fort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR MRS. LAIRD,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know all about things, of course, except the one thing which to
+      me is all important. I can't go on without knowing whether I have a chance
+      with your sister. It is against your father's expressed wish that she
+      should have anything to do with me, but I told him that I could not and
+      would not promise not to ask her. I get my holiday at the end of this
+      month, and am coming down to put it to the touch. It means more to me than
+      you can possibly imagine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am, dear Mrs. Laird,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your very faithful servant,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;JAMES FORT.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She discussed the letter with George, whose advice was: &ldquo;Answer it
+      politely, but say nothing; and nothing to Nollie. I think it would be a
+      very good thing. Of course it's a bit of a make-shift&mdash;twice her age;
+      but he's a genuine man, if not exactly brilliant.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratian answered almost sullenly: &ldquo;I've always wanted the very best
+      for Nollie.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George screwed up his steel-coloured eyes, as he might have looked at one
+      on whom he had to operate. &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But you
+      must remember, Gracie, that out of the swan she was, Nollie has made
+      herself into a lame duck. Fifty per cent at least is off her value,
+      socially. We must look at things as they are.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father is dead against it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George smiled, on the point of saying: 'That makes me feel it must be a
+      good thing!' But he subdued the impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I agree that we're bound by his absence not to further it actively.
+      Still Nollie knows his wishes, and it's up to her and no one else. After
+      all, she's no longer a child.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His advice was followed. But to write that polite letter, which said
+      nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or three hours'
+      penmanship. She was very conscientious. Knowledge of this impending visit
+      increased the anxiety with which she watched her sister, but the only
+      inkling she obtained of Noel's state of mind was when the girl showed her
+      a letter she had received from Thirza, asking her to come back to Kestrel.
+      A postscript, in Uncle Bob's handwriting, added these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're getting quite fossilised down here; Eve's gone and left us
+      again. We miss you and the youngster awfully. Come along down, Nollie
+      there's a dear!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're darlings,&rdquo; Noel said, &ldquo;but I shan't go. I'm too
+      restless, ever since Daddy went; you don't know how restless. This rain
+      simply makes me want to die.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weather improved next day, and at the end of that week harvest began.
+      By what seemed to Noel a stroke of luck the farmer's binder was broken; he
+      could not get it repaired, and wanted all the human binders he could get.
+      That first day in the fields blistered her hands, burnt her face and neck,
+      made every nerve and bone in her body ache; but was the happiest day she
+      had spent for weeks, the happiest perhaps since Cyril Morland left her,
+      over a year ago. She had a bath and went to bed the moment she got in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lying there nibbling chocolate and smoking a cigarette, she luxuriated in
+      the weariness which had stilled her dreadful restlessness. Watching the
+      smoke of her cigarette curl up against the sunset glow which filled her
+      window, she mused: If only she could be tired out like this every day! She
+      would be all right then, would lose the feeling of not knowing what she
+      wanted, of being in a sort o of large box, with the lid slammed down,
+      roaming round it like a dazed and homesick bee in an overturned tumbler;
+      the feeling of being only half alive, of having a wing maimed so that she
+      could only fly a little way, and must then drop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She slept like a top that night. But the next day's work was real torture,
+      and the third not much better. By the end of the week, however, she was no
+      longer stiff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Saturday was cloudless; a perfect day. The field she was working in lay on
+      a slope. It was the last field to be cut, and the best wheat yet, with a
+      glorious burnt shade in its gold and the ears blunt and full. She had got
+      used now to the feel of the great sheaves in her arms, and the binding
+      wisps drawn through her hand till she held them level, below the ears,
+      ready for the twist. There was no new sensation in it now; just steady,
+      rather dreamy work, to keep her place in the row, to the swish-swish of
+      the cutter and the call of the driver to his horses at the turns; with
+      continual little pauses, to straighten and rest her back a moment, and
+      shake her head free from the flies, or suck her finger, sore from the
+      constant pushing of the straw ends under. So the hours went on, rather hot
+      and wearisome, yet with a feeling of something good being done, of a job
+      getting surely to its end. And gradually the centre patch narrowed, and
+      the sun slowly slanted down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they stopped for tea, instead of running home as usual, she drank it
+      cold out of a flask she had brought, ate a bun and some chocolate, and lay
+      down on her back against the hedge. She always avoided that group of her
+      fellow workers round the tea-cans which the farmer's wife brought out. To
+      avoid people, if she could, had become habitual to her now. They must know
+      about her, or would soon if she gave them the chance. She had never lost
+      consciousness of her ring-finger, expecting every eye to fall on it as a
+      matter of course. Lying on her face, she puffed her cigarette into the
+      grass, and watched a beetle, till one of the sheep-dogs, scouting for
+      scraps, came up, and she fed him with her second bun. Having finished the
+      bun, he tried to eat the beetle, and, when she rescued it, convinced that
+      she had nothing more to give him, sneezed at her, and went away. Pressing
+      the end of her cigarette out against the bank, she turned over. Already
+      the driver was perched on his tiny seat, and his companion, whose business
+      it was to free the falling corn, was getting up alongside. Swish-swish! It
+      had begun again. She rose, stretched herself, and went back to her place
+      in the row. The field would be finished to-night; she would have a lovely
+      rest-all Sunday I Towards seven o'clock a narrow strip, not twenty yards
+      broad, alone was left. This last half hour was what Noel dreaded. To-day
+      it was worse, for the farmer had no cartridges left, and the rabbits were
+      dealt with by hullabaloo and sticks and chasing dogs. Rabbits were vermin,
+      of course, and ate the crops, and must be killed; besides, they were good
+      food, and fetched two shillings apiece; all this she knew but to see the
+      poor frightened things stealing out, pounced on, turned, shouted at,
+      chased, rolled over by great swift dogs, fallen on by the boys and killed
+      and carried with their limp grey bodies upside down, so dead and soft and
+      helpless, always made her feel quite sick. She stood very still, trying
+      not to see or hear, and in the corn opposite to her a rabbit stole along,
+      crouched, and peeped. 'Oh!' she thought, 'come out here, bunny. I'll let
+      you away&mdash;can't you see I will? It's your only chance. Come out!' But
+      the rabbit crouched, and gazed, with its little cowed head poked forward,
+      and its ears laid flat; it seemed trying to understand whether this still
+      thing in front of it was the same as those others. With the thought, 'Of
+      course it won't while I look at it,' Noel turned her head away. Out of the
+      corner of her eye she could see a man standing a few yards off. The rabbit
+      bolted out. Now the man would shout and turn it. But he did not, and the
+      rabbit scuttled past him and away to the hedge. She heard a shout from the
+      end of the row, saw a dog galloping. Too late! Hurrah! And clasping her
+      hands, she looked at the man. It was Fort! With the queerest feeling&mdash;amazement,
+      pleasure, the thrill of conspiracy, she saw him coming up to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did want that rabbit to get off,&rdquo; she sighed out; &ldquo;I've
+      been watching it. Thank you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her. &ldquo;My goodness!&rdquo; was all he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel's hands flew up to her cheeks. &ldquo;Yes, I know; is my nose very
+      red?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; you're as lovely as Ruth, if she was lovely.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swish-swish! The cutter came by; Noel started forward to her place in the
+      row; but catching her arm, he said: &ldquo;No, let me do this little bit.
+      I haven't had a day in the fields since the war began. Talk to me while
+      I'm binding.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood watching him. He made a different, stronger twist from hers, and
+      took larger sheaves, so that she felt a sort of jealousy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know you knew about this sort of thing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lord, yes! I had a farm once out West. Nothing like field-work,
+      to make you feel good. I've been watching you; you bind jolly well.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel gave a sigh of pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where have you come from?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Straight from the station. I'm on my holiday.&rdquo; He looked up
+      at her, and they both fell silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swish-swish! The cutter was coming again. Noel went to the beginning of
+      her portion of the falling corn, he to the end of it. They worked towards
+      each other, and met before the cutter was on them a third time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come in to supper?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd love to.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let's go now, please. I don't want to see any more rabbits
+      killed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They spoke very little on the way to the bungalow, but she felt his eyes
+      on her all the time. She left him with George and Gratian who had just
+      come in, and went up for her bath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Supper had been laid out in the verandah, and it was nearly dark before
+      they had finished. In rhyme with the failing of the light Noel became more
+      and more silent. When they went in, she ran up to her baby. She did not go
+      down again, but as on the night before her father went away, stood at her
+      window, leaning out. A dark night, no moon; in the starlight she could
+      only just see the dim garden, where no goat was grazing. Now that her
+      first excitement had worn off, this sudden reappearance of Fort filled her
+      with nervous melancholy: She knew perfectly well what he had come for, she
+      had always known. She had no certain knowledge of her own mind; but she
+      knew that all these weeks she had been between his influence and her
+      father's, listening to them, as it were, pleading with her. And,
+      curiously, the pleading of each, instead of drawing her towards the
+      pleader, had seemed dragging her away from him, driving her into the arms
+      of the other. To the protection of one or the other she felt she must go;
+      and it humiliated her to think that in all the world there was no other
+      place for her. The wildness of that one night in the old Abbey seemed to
+      have power to govern all her life to come. Why should that one night, that
+      one act, have this uncanny power to drive her this way or that, to those
+      arms or these? Must she, because of it, always need protection? Standing
+      there in the dark it was almost as if they had come up behind her, with
+      their pleadings; and a shiver ran down her back. She longed to turn on
+      them, and cry out: &ldquo;Go away; oh; go away! I don't want either of
+      you; I just want to be left alone!&rdquo; Then something, a moth perhaps,
+      touched her neck. She gasped and shook herself. How silly!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard the back door round the corner of the house opening; a man's low
+      voice down in the dark said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's the young lady that comes out in the fields?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another voice&mdash;one of the maids&mdash;answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Missis's sister.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say she's got a baby.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never you mind what she's got.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noel heard the man's laugh. It seemed to her the most odious laugh she had
+      ever heard. She thought swiftly and absurdly: 'I'll get away from all
+      this.' The window was only a few feet up. She got out on to the ledge, let
+      herself down, and dropped. There was a flower-bed below, quite soft, with
+      a scent of geranium-leaves and earth. She brushed herself, and went
+      tiptoeing across the gravel and the little front lawn, to the gate. The
+      house was quite dark, quite silent. She walked on, down the road. 'Jolly!'
+      she thought. 'Night after night we sleep, and never see the nights: sleep
+      until we're called, and never see anything. If they want to catch me
+      they'll have to run.' And she began running down the road in her evening
+      frock and shoes, with nothing on her head. She stopped after going perhaps
+      three hundred yards, by the edge of the wood. It was splendidly dark in
+      there, and she groped her way from trunk to trunk, with a delicious,
+      half-scared sense of adventure and novelty. She stopped at last by a thin
+      trunk whose bark glimmered faintly. She felt it with her cheek, quite
+      smooth&mdash;a birch tree; and, with her arms round it, she stood
+      perfectly still. Wonderfully, magically silent, fresh and sweet-scented
+      and dark! The little tree trembled suddenly within her arms, and she heard
+      the low distant rumble, to which she had grown so accustomed&mdash;the
+      guns, always at work, killing&mdash;killing men and killing trees, little
+      trees perhaps like this within her arms, little trembling trees! Out
+      there, in this dark night, there would not be a single unscarred tree like
+      this smooth quivering thing, no fields of corn, not even a bush or a blade
+      of grass, no leaves to rustle and smell sweet, not a bird, no little
+      soft-footed night beasts, except the rats; and she shuddered, thinking of
+      the Belgian soldier-painter. Holding the tree tight, she squeezed its
+      smooth body against her. A rush of the same helpless, hopeless revolt and
+      sorrow overtook her, which had wrung from her that passionate little
+      outburst to her father, the night before he went away. Killed, torn, and
+      bruised; burned, and killed, like Cyril! All the young things, like this
+      little tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rumble! Rumble! Quiver! Quiver! And all else so still, so sweet and still,
+      and starry, up there through the leaves.... 'I can't bear it!' she
+      thought. She pressed her lips, which the sun had warmed all day, against
+      the satiny smooth bark. But the little tree stood within her arms
+      insentient, quivering only to the long rumbles. With each of those dull
+      mutterings, life and love were going out, like the flames of candles on a
+      Christmas-tree, blown, one by one. To her eyes, accustomed by now to the
+      darkness in there, the wood seemed slowly to be gathering a sort of life,
+      as though it were a great thing watching her; a great thing with hundreds
+      of limbs and eyes, and the power of breathing. The little tree, which had
+      seemed so individual and friendly, ceased to be a comfort and became a
+      part of the whole living wood, absorbed in itself, and coldly watching
+      her, this intruder of the mischievous breed, the fatal breed which loosed
+      those rumblings on the earth. Noel unlocked her arms, and recoiled. A
+      bough scraped her neck, some leaves flew against her eyes; she stepped
+      aside, tripped over a root, and fell. A bough had hit her too, and she lay
+      a little dazed, quivering at such dark unfriendliness. She held her hands
+      up to her face for the mere pleasure of seeing something a little less
+      dark; it was childish, and absurd, but she was frightened. The wood seemed
+      to have so many eyes, so many arms, and all unfriendly; it seemed waiting
+      to give her other blows, other falls, and to guard her within its darkness
+      until&mdash;! She got up, moved a few steps, and stood still, she had
+      forgotten from where she had come in. And afraid of moving deeper into the
+      unfriendly wood, she turned slowly round, trying to tell which way to go.
+      It was all just one dark watching thing, of limbs on the ground and in the
+      air. 'Any way,' she thought; 'any way of course will take me out!' And she
+      groped forward, keeping her hands up to guard her face. It was silly, but
+      she could not help the sinking, scattered feeling which comes to one
+      bushed, or lost in a fog. If the wood had not been so dark, so,&mdash;alive!
+      And for a second she had the senseless, terrifying thought of a child:
+      'What if I never get out!' Then she laughed at it, and stood still again,
+      listening. There was no sound to guide her, no sound at all except that
+      faint dull rumble, which seemed to come from every side, now. And the
+      trees watched her. 'Ugh!' she thought; 'I hate this wood!' She saw it now,
+      its snaky branches, its darkness, and great forms, as an abode of giants
+      and witches. She groped and scrambled on again, tripped once more, and
+      fell, hitting her forehead against a trunk. The blow dazed and sobered
+      her. 'It's idiotic,' she thought; 'I'm a baby! I'll Just walk very slowly
+      till I reach the edge. I know it isn't a large wood!' She turned
+      deliberately to face each direction; solemnly selected that from which the
+      muttering of the guns seemed to come, and started again, moving very
+      slowly with her hands stretched out. Something rustled in the undergrowth,
+      quite close; she saw a pair of green eyes shining. Her heart jumped into
+      her mouth. The thing sprang&mdash;there was a swish of ferns and twigs,
+      and silence. Noel clasped her breast. A poaching cat! And again she moved
+      forward. But she had lost direction. 'I'm going round and round,' she
+      thought. 'They always do.' And the sinking scattered feeling of the
+      &ldquo;bushed&rdquo; clutched at her again. 'Shall I call?' she thought.
+      'I must be near the road. But it's so babyish.' She moved on again. Her
+      foot struck something soft. A voice muttered a thick oath; a hand seized
+      her ankle. She leaped, and dragged and wrenched it free; and, utterly
+      unnerved, she screamed, and ran forward blindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0043" id="link2H_4_0043">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      No one could have so convinced a feeling as Jimmy Fort that he would be a
+      'bit of a makeshift' for Noel. He had spent the weeks after his interview
+      with her father obsessed by her image, often saying to himself &ldquo;It
+      won't do. It's playing it too low down to try and get that child, when I
+      know that, but for her trouble, I shouldn't have a chance.&rdquo; He had
+      never had much opinion of his looks, but now he seemed to himself absurdly
+      old and dried-up in this desert of a London. He loathed the Office job to
+      which they had put him, and the whole atmosphere of officialdom. Another
+      year of it, and he would shrivel like an old apple! He began to look at
+      himself anxiously, taking stock of his physical assets now that he had
+      this dream of young beauty. He would be forty next month, and she was
+      nineteen! But there would be times too when he would feel that, with her,
+      he could be as much of a &ldquo;three-year-old&rdquo; as the youngster she
+      had loved. Having little hope of winning her, he took her &ldquo;past&rdquo;
+      but lightly. Was it not that past which gave him what chance he had? On
+      two things he was determined: He would not trade on her past. And if by
+      any chance she took him, he would never show her that he remembered that
+      she had one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After writing to Gratian he had spent the week before his holiday began,
+      in an attempt to renew the youthfulness of his appearance, which made him
+      feel older, leaner, bonier and browner than ever. He got up early, rode in
+      the rain, took Turkish baths, and did all manner of exercises; neither
+      smoked nor drank, and went to bed early, exactly as if he had been going
+      to ride a steeplechase. On the afternoon, when at last he left on that
+      terrific pilgrimage, he gazed at his face with a sort of despair, it was
+      so lean, and leather-coloured, and he counted almost a dozen grey hairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he reached the bungalow, and was told that she was working in the
+      corn-fields, he had for the first time a feeling that Fate was on his
+      side. Such a meeting would be easier than any other! He had been watching
+      her for several minutes before she saw him, with his heart beating more
+      violently than it had ever beaten in the trenches; and that new feeling of
+      hope stayed with him&mdash;all through the greeting, throughout supper,
+      and even after she had left them and gone upstairs. Then, with the
+      suddenness of a blind drawn down, it vanished, and he sat on, trying to
+      talk, and slowly getting more and more silent and restless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nollie gets so tired, working,&rdquo; Gratian said: He knew she
+      meant it kindly but that she should say it at all was ominous. He got up
+      at last, having lost hope of seeing Noel again, conscious too that he had
+      answered the last three questions at random.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the porch George said: &ldquo;You'll come in to lunch tomorrow, won't
+      you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thanks, I'm afraid it'll bore you all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit. Nollie won't be so tired.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again&mdash;so well meant. They were very kind. He looked up from the
+      gate, trying to make out which her window might be; but all was dark. A
+      little way down the road he stopped to light a cigarette; and, leaning
+      against a gate, drew the smoke of it deep into his lungs, trying to
+      assuage the ache in his heart. So it was hopeless! She had taken the
+      first, the very first chance, to get away from him! She knew that he loved
+      her, could not help knowing, for he had never been able to keep it out of
+      his eyes and voice. If she had felt ever so little for him, she would not
+      have avoided him this first evening. 'I'll go back to that desert,' he
+      thought; 'I'm not going to whine and crawl. I'll go back, and bite on it;
+      one must have some pride. Oh, why the hell am I crocked-up like this? If
+      only I could get out to France again!' And then Noel's figure bent over
+      the falling corn formed before him. 'I'll have one more try,' he thought;
+      'one more&mdash;tomorrow somewhere, I'll get to know for certain. And if I
+      get what Leila's got I shall deserve it, I suppose. Poor Leila! Where is
+      she? Back at High Constantia?' What was that? A cry&mdash;of terror&mdash;in
+      that wood! Crossing to the edge, he called &ldquo;Coo-ee!&rdquo; and stood
+      peering into its darkness. He heard the sound of bushes being brushed
+      aside, and whistled. A figure came bursting out, almost into his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallo!&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;what's up?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A voice gasped: &ldquo;Oh! It's&mdash;it's nothing!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw Noel. She had swayed back, and stood about a yard away. He could
+      dimly see her covering her face with her arms. Feeling instinctively that
+      she wanted to hide her fright, he said quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What luck! I was just passing. It's awfully dark.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I got lost; and a man&mdash;caught my foot, in there!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moved beyond control by the little gulps and gasps of her breathing, he
+      stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders. He held her lightly,
+      without speaking, terrified lest he should wound her pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I-I got in there,&rdquo; she gasped, &ldquo;and the trees&mdash;and
+      I stumbled over a roan asleep, and he&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Yes, I know,&rdquo; he murmured, as if to a child. She had
+      dropped her arms now, and he could see her face, with eyes unnaturally
+      dilated, and lips quivering. Then moved again beyond control, he drew her
+      so close that he could feel the throbbing of her heart, and put his lips
+      to her forehead all wet with heat. She closed her eyes, gave a little
+      choke, and buried her face against his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, there, my darling!&rdquo; he kept on saying. &ldquo;There,
+      there, my darling!&rdquo; He could feel the snuggling of her cheek against
+      his shoulder. He had got her&mdash;had got her! He was somehow certain
+      that she would not draw back now. And in the wonder and ecstasy of that
+      thought, all the world above her head, the stars in their courses, the
+      wood which had frightened her, seemed miracles of beauty and fitness. By
+      such fortune as had never come to man, he had got her! And he murmured
+      over and over again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love you!&rdquo; She was resting perfectly quiet against him,
+      while her heart ceased gradually to beat so fast. He could feel her cheek
+      rubbing against his coat of Harris tweed. Suddenly she sniffed at it, and
+      whispered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It smells good.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0044" id="link2H_4_0044">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When summer sun has burned all Egypt, the white man looks eagerly each day
+      for evening, whose rose-coloured veil melts opalescent into the dun drift,
+      of the hills, and iridescent above, into the slowly deepening blue.
+      Pierson stood gazing at the mystery of the desert from under the little
+      group of palms and bougainvillea which formed the garden of the hospital.
+      Even-song was in full voice: From the far wing a gramophone was grinding
+      out a music-hall ditty; two aeroplanes, wheeling exactly like the buzzards
+      of the desert, were letting drip the faint whir of their flight; metallic
+      voices drifted from the Arab village; the wheels of the water-wells
+      creaked; and every now and then a dry rustle was stirred from the
+      palm-leaves by puffs of desert wind. On either hand an old road ran out,
+      whose line could be marked by the little old watch-towers of another age.
+      For how many hundred years had human life passed along it to East and
+      West; the brown men and their camels, threading that immemorial track over
+      the desert, which ever filled him with wonder, so still it was, so wide,
+      so desolate, and every evening so beautiful! He sometimes felt that he
+      could sit for ever looking at it; as though its cruel mysterious
+      loveliness were&mdash;home; and yet he never looked at it without a spasm
+      of homesickness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far his new work had brought him no nearer to the hearts of men. Or at
+      least he did not feel it had. Both at the regimental base, and now in this
+      hospital&mdash;an intermediate stage&mdash;waiting for the draft with
+      which he would be going into Palestine, all had been very nice to him,
+      friendly, and as it were indulgent; so might schoolboys have treated some
+      well-intentioned dreamy master, or business men a harmless idealistic
+      inventor who came visiting their offices. He had even the feeling that
+      they were glad to have him about, just as they were glad to have their
+      mascots and their regimental colours; but of heart-to-heart simple
+      comradeship&mdash;it seemed they neither wanted it of him nor expected him
+      to give it, so that he had a feeling that he would be forward and
+      impertinent to offer it. Moreover, he no longer knew how. He was very
+      lonely. 'When I come face to face with death,' he would think, 'it will be
+      different. Death makes us all brothers. I may be of real use to them
+      then.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They brought him a letter while he stood there listening to that
+      even-song, gazing at the old desert road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DARLING DAD,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do hope this will reach you before you move on to Palestine. You
+      said in your last&mdash;at the end of September, so I hope you'll just get
+      it. There is one great piece of news, which I'm afraid will hurt and
+      trouble you; Nollie is married to Jimmy Fort. They were married down here
+      this afternoon, and have just gone up to Town. They have to find a house
+      of course. She has been very restless, lonely, and unhappy ever since you
+      went, and I'm sure it is really for the best: She is quite another
+      creature, and simply devoted, headlong. It's just like Nollie. She says
+      she didn't know what she wanted, up to the last minute. But now she seems
+      as if she could never want anything else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dad dear, Nollie could never have made good by herself. It isn't
+      her nature, and it's much better like this, I feel sure, and so does
+      George. Of course it isn't ideal&mdash;and one wanted that for her; but
+      she did break her wing, and he is so awfully good and devoted to her,
+      though you didn't believe it, and perhaps won't, even now. The great thing
+      is to feel her happy again, and know she's safe. Nollie is capable of
+      great devotion; only she must be anchored. She was drifting all about; and
+      one doesn't know what she might have done, in one of her moods. I do hope
+      you won't grieve about it. She's dreadfully anxious about how you'll feel.
+      I know it will be wretched for you, so far off; but do try and believe
+      it's for the best.... She's out of danger; and she was really in a
+      horrible position. It's so good for the baby, too, and only fair to him. I
+      do think one must take things as they are, Dad dear. It was impossible to
+      mend Nollie's wing. If she were a fighter, and gloried in it, or if she
+      were the sort who would 'take the veil'&mdash;but she isn't either. So it
+      is all right, Dad. She's writing to you herself. I'm sure Leila didn't
+      want Jimmy Fort to be unhappy because he couldn't love her; or she would
+      never have gone away. George sends you his love; we are both very well.
+      And Nollie is looking splendid still, after her harvest work. All, all my
+      love, Dad dear. Is there anything we can get, and send you? Do take care
+      of your blessed self, and don't grieve about Nollie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;GRATIAN.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A half-sheet of paper fluttered down; he picked it up from among the
+      parched fibre of dead palm-leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DADDY DARLING,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've done it. Forgive me&mdash;I'm so happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your NOLLIE.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The desert shimmered, the palm-leaves rustled, and Pierson stood trying to
+      master the emotion roused in him by those two letters. He felt no anger,
+      not even vexation; he felt no sorrow, but a loneliness so utter and
+      complete that he did not know how to bear it. It seemed as if some last
+      link with life had' snapped. 'My girls are happy,' he thought. 'If I am
+      not&mdash;what does it matter? If my faith and my convictions mean nothing
+      to them&mdash;why should they follow? I must and will not feel lonely. I
+      ought to have the sense of God present, to feel His hand in mine. If I
+      cannot, what use am I&mdash;what use to the poor fellows in there, what
+      use in all the world?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An old native on a donkey went by, piping a Soudanese melody on a little
+      wooden Arab flute. Pierson turned back into the hospital humming it. A
+      nurse met him there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor boy at the end of A ward is sinking fast, sir; I expect
+      he'd like to see you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went into A ward, and walked down between the beds to the west window
+      end, where two screens had been put, to block off the cot. Another nurse,
+      who was sitting beside it, rose at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's quite conscious,&rdquo; she whispered; &ldquo;he can still
+      speak a little. He's such a dear.&rdquo; A tear rolled down her cheek, and
+      she passed out behind the screens. Pierson looked down at the boy; perhaps
+      he was twenty, but the unshaven down on his cheeks was soft and almost
+      colourless. His eyes were closed. He breathed regularly, and did not seem
+      in pain; but there was about him that which told he was going; something
+      resigned, already of the grave. The window was wide open, covered by
+      mosquito-netting, and a tiny line of sunlight, slanting through across the
+      foot of the cot, crept slowly backwards over the sheets and the boy's
+      body, shortening as it crept. In the grey whiteness of the walls; the bed,
+      the boy's face, just that pale yellow bar of sunlight, and one splash of
+      red and blue from a little flag on the wall glowed out. At this cooler
+      hour, the ward behind the screens was almost empty, and few sounds broke
+      the stillness; but from without came that intermittent rustle of dry
+      palm-leaves. Pierson waited in silence, watching the sun sink. If the boy
+      might pass like this, it would be God's mercy. Then he saw the boy's eyes
+      open, wonderfully clear eyes of the lighted grey which has dark rims; his
+      lips moved, and Pierson bent down to hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm goin' West, zurr.&rdquo; The whisper had a little soft burr;
+      the lips quivered; a pucker as of a child formed on his face, and passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through Pierson's mind there flashed the thought: 'O God! Let me be some
+      help to him!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To God, my dear son!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A flicker of humour, of ironic question, passed over the boy's lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Terribly moved, Pierson knelt down, and began softly, fervently praying.
+      His whispering mingled with the rustle of the palm-leaves, while the bar
+      of sunlight crept up the body. In the boy's smile had been the whole of
+      stoic doubt, of stoic acquiescence. It had met him with an unconscious
+      challenge; had seemed to know so much. Pierson took his hand, which lay
+      outside the sheet. The boy's lips moved, as though in thanks; he drew a
+      long feeble breath, as if to suck in the thread of sunlight; and his eyes
+      closed. Pierson bent over the hand. When he looked up the boy was dead. He
+      kissed his forehead and went quietly out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun had set, and he walked away from the hospital to a hillock beyond
+      the track on the desert's edge, and stood looking at the afterglow. The
+      sun and the boy&mdash;together they had gone West, into that wide glowing
+      nothingness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The muezzin call to sunset prayer in the Arab village came to him clear
+      and sharp, while he sat there, unutterably lonely. Why had that smile so
+      moved him? Other death smiles had been like this evening smile on the
+      desert hills&mdash;a glowing peace, a promise of heaven. But the boy's
+      smile had said: 'Waste no breath on me&mdash;you cannot help. Who knows&mdash;who
+      knows? I have no hope, no faith; but I am adventuring. Good-bye!' Poor
+      boy! He had braved all things, and moved out uncertain, yet undaunted! Was
+      that, then, the uttermost truth, was faith a smaller thing? But from that
+      strange notion he recoiled with horror. 'In faith I have lived, in faith I
+      will die!' he thought, 'God helping me!' And the breeze, ruffling the
+      desert sand, blew the grains against the palms of his hands, outstretched
+      above the warm earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
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diff --git a/old/25092004.2683.txt b/old/25092004.2683.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Saint's Progress
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: September 25, 2004 [EBook #2683]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAINT'S PROGRESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+SAINTS PROGRESS
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+I
+
+Such a day made glad the heart.  All the flags of July were waving; the
+sun and the poppies flaming; white butterflies spiring up and twining,
+and the bees busy on the snapdragons.  The lime-trees were coming into
+flower.  Tall white lilies in the garden beds already rivaled the
+delphiniums; the York and Lancaster roses were full-blown round their
+golden hearts.  There was a gentle breeze, and a swish and stir and hum
+rose and fell above the head of Edward Pierson, coming back from his
+lonely ramble over Tintern Abbey.  He had arrived at Kestrel, his brother
+Robert's home on the bank of the Wye only that morning, having stayed at
+Bath on the way down; and now he had got his face burnt in that
+parti-coloured way peculiar to the faces of those who have been too long
+in London.  As he came along the narrow, rather overgrown avenue, the
+sound of a waltz thrummed out on a piano fell on his ears, and he smiled,
+for music was the greatest passion he had.  His dark grizzled hair was
+pushed back off his hot brow, which he fanned with his straw hat.  Though
+not broad, that brow was the broadest part of a narrow oval face whose
+length was increased by a short, dark, pointed beard--a visage such as
+Vandyk might have painted, grave and gentle, but for its bright grey
+eyes, cinder-lashed and crow's-footed, and its strange look of not seeing
+what was before it.  He walked quickly, though he was tired and hot;
+tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit, on whose black
+kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled.
+
+Above his brother's house, whose sloping garden ran down to the railway
+line and river, a large room had been built out apart. Pierson stood
+where the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the waltz, and the cool
+whipping of the breeze in the sycamores and birches.  A man of fifty,
+with a sense of beauty, born and bred in the country, suffers fearfully
+from nostalgia during a long unbroken spell of London; so that his
+afternoon in the old Abbey had been almost holy.  He had let his senses
+sink into the sunlit greenery of the towering woods opposite; he had
+watched the spiders and the little shining beetles, the flycatchers, and
+sparrows in the ivy; touched the mosses and the lichens; looked the
+speedwells in the eye; dreamed of he knew not what.  A hawk had been
+wheeling up there above the woods, and he had been up there with it in
+the blue.  He had taken a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret
+of London off his soul.
+
+For a year he had been working his parish single-handed--no joke--for his
+curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real holiday since
+the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to his brother's
+home.  He looked down at the garden, and up at the trees of the avenue.
+Bob had found a perfect retreat after his quarter of a century in Ceylon.
+Dear old Bob!  And he smiled at the thought of his elder brother, whose
+burnt face and fierce grey whiskers somewhat recalled a Bengal tiger; the
+kindest fellow that ever breathed!  Yes, he had found a perfect home for
+Thirza and himself.  And Edward Pierson sighed.  He too had once had a
+perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose death, fifteen years
+ago, still bled a little in his heart.  Their two daughters, Gratian and
+Noel, had not "taken after" her; Gratian was like his own mother, and
+Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded him of his cousin
+Leila, who--poor thing!--had made that sad mess of her life, and now, he
+had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa.  Ah!  What a pretty
+girl she had been!
+
+Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the
+music-room.  A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet
+slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly in
+the arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
+circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
+have come in recently, for he did not recognise them.  At the piano sat
+his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face.  But it was at his
+young daughter that Edward Pierson looked.  Her eyes were half-closed,
+her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite short, curled into
+her slim round neck.  Quite cool she seemed, though the young man in
+whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery hot; a handsome boy, with
+blue eyes and a little golden down on the upper lip of his sunny
+red-cheeked face.  Edward Pierson thought: 'Nice couple!' And had a
+moment's vision of himself and Leila, dancing at that long-ago Cambridge
+May Week--on her seventeenth birthday, he remembered, so that she must
+have been a year younger than Nollie was now!  This would be the young
+man she had talked of in her letters during the last three weeks.  Were
+they never going to stop?
+
+He passed into view of those within, and said:
+
+"Aren't you very hot, Nollie?"
+
+She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and self-conscious,
+and Eve called out:
+
+"It's a bet, Uncle.  They've got to dance me down."
+
+Pierson said mildly:
+
+"A bet?  My dears!"
+
+Noel murmured over her shoulder:
+
+"It's all right, Daddy!"  And the young man gasped:
+
+"She's bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir!"
+
+Pierson sat down, a little hypnotized by the sleepy strumming, the slow
+giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-closed swimming eyes of his
+young daughter, looking at him over her shoulder as she went by.  He sat
+with a smile on his lips.  Nollie was growing up!  Now that Gratian was
+married, she had become a great responsibility. If only his dear wife had
+lived!  The smile faded from his lips; he looked suddenly very tired.
+The struggle, physical and spiritual, he had been through, these fifteen
+years, sometimes weighed him almost to the ground: Most men would have
+married again, but he had always felt it would be sacrilege.  Real unions
+were for ever, even though the Church permitted remarriage.
+
+He watched his young daughter with a mixture of aesthetic pleasure and
+perplexity.  Could this be good for her?  To go on dancing indefinitely
+with one young man could that possibly be good for her?  But they looked
+very happy; and there was so much in young creatures that he did not
+understand.  Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy, seemed sometimes
+possessed of a little devil.  Edward Pierson was naif; attributed those
+outbursts of demonic possession to the loss of her mother when she was
+such a mite; Gratian, but two years older, had never taken a mother's
+place.  That had been left to himself, and he was more or less conscious
+of failure.
+
+He sat there looking up at her with a sort of whimsical distress. And,
+suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn each word a
+little, she said:
+
+"I'm going to stop!" and, sitting down beside him, took up his hat to fan
+herself.
+
+Eve struck a triumphant chord.  "Hurrah I've won!"
+
+The young man muttered:
+
+"I say, Noel, we weren't half done!"
+
+"I know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren't you, dear?  This is Cyril
+Morland."
+
+Pierson shook the young man's hand.
+
+"Daddy, your nose is burnt!"
+
+"My dear; I know."
+
+"I can give you some white stuff for it.  You have to sleep with it on
+all night.  Uncle and Auntie both use it."
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"Well, Eve says so.  If you're going to bathe, Cyril, look out for that
+current!"
+
+The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration, muttered:
+
+"Rather!"  and went out.
+
+Noel's eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.
+
+"If you're going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you'd better hurry
+up."
+
+"All right.  Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?"
+
+"Lovely; like a great piece of music."
+
+"Daddy always puts everything into music.  You ought to see it by
+moonlight; it's gorgeous then.  All right, Eve; I'm coming."  But she did
+not get up, and when Eve was gone, cuddled her arm through her father's
+and murmured:
+
+"What d'you think of Cyril?"
+
+"My dear, how can I tell?  He seems a nice-looking young man."
+
+"All right, Daddy; don't strain yourself.  It's jolly down here, isn't
+it?"  She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away, looking
+like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round her head.
+
+Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a lovely
+thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following, went to the
+piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in E minor.  He
+had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion.  It was his
+way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which never quite
+failed him.
+
+At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a profession, but
+family tradition had destined him for Holy Orders, and an emotional
+Church revival of that day had caught him in its stream.  He had always
+had private means, and those early years before he married had passed
+happily in an East-End parish.  To have not only opportunity but power to
+help in the lives of the poor had been fascinating; simple himself, the
+simple folk of his parish had taken hold of his heart.  When, however, he
+married Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish of his own on the borders of
+East and West, where he had been ever since, even after her death had
+nearly killed him.  It was better to go on where work and all reminded
+him of one whom he had resolved never to forget in other ties.  But he
+knew that his work had not the zest it used to have in her day, or even
+before her day.  It may well be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy
+Orders twenty-six years, quite knew now what he believed.  Everything had
+become circumscribed, and fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to
+have taken fresh stock of his faith, to have gone deep into its roots,
+would have been like taking up the foundations of a still-standing house.
+Some men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible--for which one
+formula is much the same as another; though Edward Pierson, gently
+dogmatic, undoubtedly preferred his High-Church statement of the
+inexpressible to that of, say, the Zoroastrians.  The subtleties of
+change, the modifications by science, left little sense of inconsistency
+or treason on his soul.  Sensitive, charitable, and only combative deep
+down, he instinctively avoided discussion on matters where he might hurt
+others or they hurt him.  And, since explanation was the last thing which
+o could be expected of one who did not base himself on Reason, he had
+found but scant occasion ever to examine anything.  Just as in the old
+Abbey he had soared off into the infinite with the hawk, the beetles, and
+the grasses, so now, at the piano, by these sounds of his own making, he
+was caught away again into emotionalism, without realising that he was in
+one of his, most religious moods.
+
+"Aren't you coming to tea, Edward?"
+
+The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown, had one of those
+faces which remain innocent to the end of the chapter, in spite of the
+complete knowledge of life which appertains to mothers.  In days of
+suffering and anxiety, like these of the great war, Thirza Pierson was a
+valuable person.  Without ever expressing an opinion on cosmic matters,
+she reconfirmed certain cosmic truths, such as that though the whole
+world was at war, there was such a thing as peace; that though all the
+sons of mothers were being killed, there remained such a thing as
+motherhood; that while everybody was living for the future, the present
+still existed.  Her tranquil, tender, matter-of-fact busyness, and the
+dew in her eyes, had been proof against twenty-three years of life on a
+tea-plantation in the hot part of Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against
+the anxiety of having two sons at the front, and the confidences of
+nearly every one she came across.  Nothing disturbed her.  She was like a
+painting of "Goodness" by an Old Master, restored by Kate Greenaway.  She
+never went to meet life, but when it came, made the best of it.  This was
+her secret, and Pierson always felt rested in her presence.
+
+He rose, and moved by her side, over the lawn, towards the big tree at
+the bottom of the garden.
+
+"How d'you think Noel is looking, Edward?"
+
+"Very pretty.  That young man, Thirza?"
+
+"Yes; I'm afraid he's over head and ears in love with her."
+
+At the dismayed sound he uttered, she slipped her soft round arm within
+his.  "He's going to the front soon, poor boy!"
+
+"Have they talked to you?"
+
+"He has.  Nollie hasn't yet."
+
+"Nollie is a queer child, Thirza."
+
+"Nollie is a darling, but rather a desperate character, Edward."
+
+Pierson sighed.
+
+In a swing under the tree, where the tea-things were set out, the "rather
+desperate character" was swaying.  "What a picture she is!" he said, and
+sighed again.
+
+The voice of his brother came to them,--high and steamy, as though
+corrupted by the climate of Ceylon:
+
+"You incorrigible dreamy chap, Ted!  We've eaten all the raspberries.
+Eve, give him some jam; he must be dead!  Phew! the heat!  Come on, my
+dear, and pour out his tea.  Hallo, Cyril!  Had a good bathe?  By George,
+wish my head was wet!  Squattez-vous down over there, by Nollie; she'll
+swing, and keep the flies off you."
+
+"Give me a cigarette, Uncle Bob--"
+
+"What!  Your father doesn't--"
+
+"Just for the flies.  You don't mind, Daddy?"
+
+"Not if it's necessary, my dear."
+
+Noel smiled, showing her upper teeth, and her eyes seemed to swim under
+their long lashes.
+
+"It isn't necessary, but it's nice."
+
+"Ah, ha!" said Bob Pierson.  "Here you are, Nollie!"
+
+But Noel shook her head.  At that moment she struck her father as
+startlingly grown-up-so composed, swaying above that young man at her
+feet, whose sunny face was all adoration.  'No longer a child!' he
+thought.  'Dear Nollie!'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+1
+
+Awakened by that daily cruelty, the advent of hot water, Edward Pierson
+lay in his chintz-curtained room, fancying himself back in London.  A
+wild bee hunting honey from the bowl of flowers on the window-sill, and
+the scent of sweetbrier, shattered that illusion. He drew the curtain,
+and, kneeling on the window-seat thrust his head out into the morning.
+The air was intoxicatingly sweet.  Haze clung over the river and the
+woods beyond; the lawn sparkled with dew, and two wagtails strutted in
+the dewy sunshine.  'Thank God for loveliness!' he thought.  'Those poor
+boys at the front!'  And kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he began
+to say his prayers. The same feeling which made him beautify his church,
+use vestments, good music, and incense, filled him now.  God was in the
+loveliness of His world, as well as in His churches.  One could worship
+Him in a grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a high hill, by
+the banks of a bright river.  God was in the rustle of the leaves, and
+the hum of a bee, in the dew on the grass, and the scent of flowers; God
+was in everything!  And he added to his usual prayer this whisper: "I
+give Thee thanks for my senses, O Lord.  In all of us, keep them bright,
+and grateful for beauty."  Then he remained motionless, prey to a sort of
+happy yearning very near, to melancholy.  Great beauty ever had that
+effect on him.  One could capture so little of it--could never enjoy it
+enough!  Who was it had said not long ago: "Love of beauty is really only
+the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies."  Ah! yes,
+George--Gratian's husband.  George Laird!  And a little frown came
+between his brows, as though at some thorn in the flesh.  Poor George!
+But then, all doctors were materialists at heart--splendid fellows,
+though; a fine fellow, George, working himself to death out there in
+France.  One must not take them too seriously.  He plucked a bit of
+sweetbrier and put it to his nose, which still retained the shine of that
+bleaching ointment Noel had insisted on his using.  The sweet smell of
+those little rough leaves stirred up an acute aching.  He dropped them,
+and drew back.  No longings, no melancholy; one ought to be out, this
+beautiful morning!
+
+It was Sunday; but he had not to take three Services and preach at least
+one sermon; this day of rest was really to be his own, for once.  It was
+almost disconcerting; he had so long felt like the cab horse who could
+not be taken out of the shafts lest he should fall down.  He dressed with
+extraordinary deliberation, and had not quite finished when there came a
+knock on his door, and Noel's voice said: "Can I come in, Daddy?"
+
+In her flax-blue frock, with a Gloire de Dijon rose pinned where it met
+on her faintly browned neck, she seemed to her father a perfect vision of
+freshness.
+
+"Here's a letter from Gratian; George has been sent home ill, and he's
+gone to our house.  She's got leave from her hospital to come home and
+nurse him."
+
+Pierson read the letter.  "Poor George!"
+
+"When are you going to let me be a nurse, Daddy?"
+
+"We must wait till you're eighteen, Nollie."
+
+"I could easily say I was.  It's only a month; and I look much more."
+
+Pierson smiled.
+
+"Don't I?"
+
+"You might be anything from fifteen to twenty-five, my dear, according as
+you behave."
+
+"I want to go out as near the front as possible."
+
+Her head was poised so that the sunlight framed her face, which was
+rather broad--the brow rather too broad--under the waving light-brown
+hair, the nose short and indeterminate; cheeks still round from youth,
+almost waxen-pale, and faintly hollowed under the eyes.  It was her lips,
+dainty yet loving, and above all her grey eyes, big and dreamily alive,
+which made her a swan.  He could not imagine her in nurse's garb.
+
+"This is new, isn't it, Nollie?"
+
+"Cyril Morland's sisters are both out; and he'll be going soon. Everybody
+goes."
+
+"Gratian hasn't got out yet: It takes a long time to get trained."
+
+"I know; all the more reason to begin."
+
+She got up, looked at him, looked at her hands, seemed about to speak,
+but did not.  A little colour had come into her cheeks.  Then, obviously
+making conversation, she asked:
+
+"Are you going to church?  It's worth anything to hear Uncle Bob read the
+Lessons, especially when he loses his place.  No; you're not to put on
+your long coat till just before church time.  I won't have it!"
+
+Obediently Pierson resigned his long coat.
+
+"Now, you see, you can have my rose.  Your nose is better!"  She kissed
+his nose, and transferred her rose to the buttonhole of his short coat.
+"That's all.  Come along!"  And with her arm through his, they went down.
+But he knew she had come to say something which she had not said.
+
+
+
+2
+
+Bob Pierson, in virtue of greater wealth than the rest of the
+congregation, always read the Lessons, in his high steamy voice, his
+breathing never adjusted to the length of any period.  The congregation,
+accustomed, heard nothing peculiar; he was the necessary gentry with the
+necessary finger in the pie.  It was his own family whom he perturbed.
+In the second row, Noel, staring solemnly at the profile of her father in
+the front row, was thinking: 'Poor Daddy!  His eyes look as if they were
+coming out.  Oh, Daddy!  Smile! or it'll hurt you!'  Young Morland beside
+her, rigid in his tunic, was thinking: 'She isn't thinking of me!'  And
+just then her little finger crooked into his.  Edward Pierson was
+thinking: 'Oh!  My dear old Bob!  Oh!'  And, beside him, Thirza thought:
+'Poor dear Ted I how nice for him to be having a complete rest!  I must
+make him eat he's so thin!'  And Eve was thinking: 'Oh, Father!  Mercy!'
+But Bob Pierson was thinking: 'Cheer oh!  Only another three verses!'
+Noel's little finger unhooked itself, but her eyes stole round to young
+Morland's eyes, and there was a light in them which lingered through the
+singing and the prayers.  At last, in the reverential rustle of the
+settling congregation, a surpliced figure mounted the pulpit.
+
+"I come not to bring Peace, but a sword."
+
+Pierson looked up.  He felt deep restfulness.  There was a pleasant light
+in this church; the hum of a country bluebottle made all the difference
+to the quality of silence.  No critical thought stirred within him, nor
+any excitement.  He was thinking: 'Now I shall hear something for my
+good; a fine text; when did I preach from it last?' Turned a little away
+from the others, he saw nothing but the preacher's homely face up there
+above the carved oak; it was so long since he had been preached to, so
+long since he had had a rest!  The words came forth, dropped on his
+forehead, penetrated, met something which absorbed them, and disappeared.
+'A good plain sermon!' he thought.  'I suppose I'm stale; I don't seem--'
+"Let us not, dear brethren," droned the preacher's earnest voice, "think
+that our dear Lord, in saying that He brought a sword, referred to a
+physical sword.  It was the sword of the spirit to which He was
+undoubtedly referring, that bright sword of the spirit which in all ages
+has cleaved its way through the fetters imposed on men themselves by
+their own desires, imposed by men on other men in gratification of their
+ambitions, as we have had so striking an example in the invasion by our
+cruel enemies of a little neighbouring country which had done them no
+harm.  Dear brethren, we may all bring swords." Pierson's chin jerked; he
+raised his hand quickly and passed it over his face.  'All bring swords,'
+he thought, 'swords--I wasn't asleep--surely!'  "But let us be sure that
+our swords are bright; bright with hope, and bright with faith, that we
+may see them flashing among the carnal desires of this mortal life,
+carving a path for us towards that heavenly kingdom where alone is peace,
+perfect peace.  Let us pray."
+
+Pierson did not shut his eyes; he opened them as he fell on his knees.
+In the seat behind, Noel and young Morland had also fallen on their knees
+their faces covered each with a single hand; but her left hand and his
+right hung at their sides.  They prayed a little longer than any others
+and, on rising, sang the hymn a little louder.
+
+
+3
+
+No paper came on Sundays--not even the local paper, which had so long and
+so nobly done its bit with headlines to win the war.  No news whatever
+came, of men blown up, to enliven the hush of the hot July afternoon, or
+the sense of drugging--which followed Aunt Thirza's Sunday lunch.  Some
+slept, some thought they were awake; but Noel and young Morland walked
+upward through the woods towards a high common of heath and furze,
+crowned by what was known as Kestrel rocks. Between these two young
+people no actual word of love had yet been spoken.  Their lovering had
+advanced by glance and touch alone.
+
+Young Morland was a school and college friend of the two Pierson boys now
+at the front.  He had no home of his own, for his parents were dead; and
+this was not his first visit to Kestrel.  Arriving three weeks ago, for
+his final leave before he should go out, he had found a girl sitting in a
+little wagonette outside the station, and had known his fate at once.
+But who knows when Noel fell in love?  She was--one supposes--just ready
+for that sensation.  For the last two years she had been at one of those
+high-class finishing establishments where, in spite of the healthy
+curriculum, perhaps because of it, there is ever an undercurrent of
+interest in the opposing sex; and not even the gravest efforts to
+eliminate instinct are quite successful.  The disappearance of every
+young male thing into the maw of the military machine put a premium on
+instinct.  The thoughts of Noel and her school companions were turned,
+perforce, to that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they could
+afford to regard as of secondary interest.  Love and Marriage and
+Motherhood, fixed as the lot of women by the countless ages, were
+threatened for these young creatures.  They not unnaturally pursued what
+they felt to be receding.
+
+When young Morland showed, by following her about with his eyes, what was
+happening to him, Noel was pleased.  From being pleased, she became a
+little excited; from being excited she became dreamy.  Then, about a week
+before her father's arrival, she secretly began to follow the young man
+about with her eyes; became capricious too, and a little cruel.  If there
+had been another young man to favour--but there was not; and she favoured
+Uncle Bob's red setter.  Cyril Morland grew desperate.  During those
+three days the demon her father dreaded certainly possessed her.  And
+then, one evening, while they walked back together from the hay-fields,
+she gave him a sidelong glance; and he gasped out: "Oh!  Noel, what have
+I done?"  She caught his hand, and gave it a quick squeeze.  What a
+change!  What blissful alteration ever since!
+
+Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up to
+put things to the touch.  Noel too mounted silently, thinking: 'I will
+kiss him if he kisses me!'  Eagerness, and a sort of languor, were
+running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her shady hat.
+Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage; made the
+greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive; flashed on
+beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little
+runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the
+ferns; butterflies chased each other in that sunlight, and myriads of
+ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by a frenzy of life.  The whole
+wood seemed possessed, as if the sunshine were a happy Being which had
+come to dwell therein.  At a half-way spot, where the trees opened and
+they could see, far below them, the gleam of the river, she sat down on
+the bole of a beech-tree, and young Morland stood looking at her.  Why
+should one face and not an other, this voice and not that, make a heart
+beat; why should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and a touch from
+another awaken nothing?  He knelt down and pressed his lips to her foot.
+Her eyes grew very bright; but she got up and ran on--she had not
+expected him to kiss her foot.  She heard him hurrying after her, and
+stopped, leaning against a birch trunk.  He rushed to her, and, without a
+word spoken, his lips were on her lips.  The moment in life, which no
+words can render, had come for them.  They had found their enchanted
+spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their arms round each
+other, while the happy Being of the wood watched.  A marvellous
+speeder-up of Love is War.  What might have taken six months, was thus
+accomplished in three weeks.
+
+A short hour passed, then Noel said:
+
+"I must tell Daddy, Cyril.  I meant to tell him something this morning,
+only I thought I'd better wait, in case you didn't."
+
+Morland answered: "Oh, Noel!"  It was the staple of his conversation
+while they sat there.
+
+Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:
+
+"I shall go off my chump if we're not married before I go out."
+
+"How long does it take?"
+
+"No time, if we hurry up.  I've got six days before I rejoin, and perhaps
+the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him."
+
+"Poor Daddy!  Kiss me again; a long one."
+
+When the long one was over, she said:
+
+"Then I can come and be near you till you go out?  Oh, Cyril!"
+
+"Oh, Noel!"
+
+"Perhaps you won't go so soon.  Don't go if you can help it!"
+
+"Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan't be able."
+
+"No, of course not; I know."
+
+Young Morland clutched his hair.  "Everyone's in the same boat, but it
+can't last for ever; and now we're engaged we can be together all the
+time till I've got the licence or whatever it is.  And then--!"
+
+"Daddy won't like our not being married in a church; but I don't care!"
+
+Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on her cheeks,
+young Morland thought:
+
+'My God!  I'm in heaven!'
+
+Another short hour passed before she freed herself.
+
+"We must go, Cyril.  Kiss me once more!"
+
+It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down.
+4
+
+Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where he had read the
+Lessons, saw them in the distance, and compressed his lips. Their long
+absence had vexed him.  What ought he to do?  In the presence of Love's
+young dream, he felt strange and helpless.  That night, when he opened
+the door of his room, he saw Noel on the window-seat, in her
+dressing-gown, with the moonlight streaming in on her.
+
+"Don't light up, Daddy; I've got something to say."
+
+She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned it over.
+
+"I'm engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week."
+
+It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs; and at the
+sound he made she hurried on:
+
+"You see, we must be; he may be going out any day."
+
+In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind of reason in
+her words.  But he said:
+
+"My dear, you're only a child.  Marriage is the most serious thing in
+life; you've only known him three weeks."
+
+"I know all that, Daddy" her voice sounded so ridiculously calm; "but we
+can't afford to wait.  He might never come back, you see, and then I
+should have missed him."
+
+"But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only be much worse
+for you."
+
+She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it
+against her heart.  But still her voice was calm:
+
+"No; much better, Daddy; you think I don't know my own feelings, but I
+do,"'
+
+The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.
+
+"Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is
+wanted.  Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the same
+things."
+
+"Yes, I know; but we do."
+
+"You can't tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks."
+
+"But these aren't ordinary times, are they?  People have to do things in
+a hurry.  Oh, Daddy!  Be an angel!  Mother would have understood, and let
+me, I know!"
+
+Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his loss,
+from reminder of the poor substitute he was.
+
+"Look, Nollie!"  he said.  "After all these years since she left us, I'm
+as lonely as ever, because we were really one.  If you marry this young
+man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can in such a little
+time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it turn out, after all,
+nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if anything happens to him
+before you've had any real married life together, you'll have a much
+greater grief and sense of loss to put up with than if you simply stay
+engaged till after the war.  Besides, my child, you're much too young."
+
+She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm.  "But I must!"
+
+He bit his lips, and said sharply: "You can't, Nollie!"
+
+She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone.  With the closing of
+the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took its place.  Poor child!
+What to do with this wayward chicken just out of the egg, and wanting to
+be full-fledged at once?  The thought that she would be lying miserable,
+crying, perhaps, beset him so that he went out into the passage and
+tapped on her door.  Getting no answer, he went in. It was dark but for a
+streak of moonlight, and in that he saw her, lying on her bed, face down;
+and stealing up laid his hand on her head.  She did not move; and,
+stroking her hair, he said gently:
+
+"Nollie dear, I didn't mean to be harsh.  If I were your mother, I should
+know how to make you see, but I'm only an old bumble-daddy."
+
+She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on the bed. He
+could see her eyes shining.  But she did not speak; she seemed to know
+that in silence was her strength.
+
+He said with a sort of despair:
+
+"You must let me talk it over with your aunt.  She has a lot of good
+sense."
+
+"Yes."
+
+He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.
+
+"Good night, my dear; don't cry.  Promise me!"
+
+She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on his
+forehead, and went away a little comforted.
+
+But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the night, to
+the emptiness and silence; each minute so much lost of the little, little
+time left, that she might have been with him.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he had thought
+himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.
+
+After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him more forcibly
+than the needlessness of his words: "Don't cry, Nollie!" for he had
+realised with uneasiness that she had not been near crying.  No; there
+was in her some emotion very different from the tearful.  He kept seeing
+her cross-legged figure on the bed in that dim light; tense, enigmatic,
+almost Chinese; kept feeling the feverish touch of her lips.  A good
+girlish burst of tears would have done her good, and been a guarantee.
+He had the uncomfortable conviction that his refusal had passed her by,
+as if unspoken.  And, since he could not go and make music at that time
+of night, he had ended on his knees, in a long search for guidance, which
+was not vouchsafed him.
+
+The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told that for
+the last hour they had been sitting with their arms round each other,
+watching the river flow by, talking but little, through lips too busy.
+Pierson pursued his sister-in-law to the room where she did her flowers
+every morning.  He watched her for a minute dividing ramblers from
+pansies, cornflowers from sweet peas, before he said:
+
+"I'm very troubled, Thirza.  Nollie came to me last night.  Imagine!
+They want to get married--those two!"
+
+Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her cheeks grew a
+little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder.  She took up a sprig of
+mignonette, and said placidly:
+
+"Oh, my dear!"
+
+"Think of it, Thirza--that child!  Why, it's only a year or two since she
+used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with her hair."
+
+Thirza went on arranging her flowers.
+
+"Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her age.  And
+real married life wouldn't begin for them till after--if it ever began."
+
+Pierson experienced a sort of shock.  His sister-in-law's words seemed
+criminally light-hearted.
+
+"But--but--" he stammered; "the union, Thirza!  Who can tell what will
+happen before they come together again!"
+
+She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:
+
+"I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in these days, of
+what Noel might do.  I told you there's a streak of desperation in her."
+
+"Noel will obey me."
+
+"I wonder!  There are so many of these war marriages now."
+
+Pierson turned away.
+
+"I think they're dreadful.  What do they mean--Just a momentary
+gratification of passion.  They might just as well not be."
+
+"They mean pensions, as a rule," said Thirza calmly.
+
+"Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn't affect this case.  I can't
+bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a moment which may
+come to nothing, or may turn out the beginning of an unhappy marriage.
+Who is this boy--what is he?  I know nothing of him.  How can I give her
+to him--it's impossible!  If they had been engaged some time and I knew
+something of him--yes, perhaps; even at her age.  But this hasty
+passionateness--it isn't right, it isn't decent.  I don't understand, I
+really don't--how a child like that can want it.  The fact is, she
+doesn't know what she's asking, poor little Nollie.  She can't know the
+nature of marriage, and she can't realise its sacredness.  If only her
+mother were here!  Talk to her, Thirza; you can say things that I can't!"
+
+Thirza looked after the retreating figure.  In spite of his cloth,
+perhaps a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child who had
+come to show her his sore finger.  And, having finished the arrangement
+of her flowers, she went out to find her niece.  She had not far to go;
+for Noel was standing in the hall, quite evidently lying in wait.  They
+went out together to the avenue.
+
+The girl began at once:
+
+"It isn't any use talking to me, Auntie; Cyril is going to get a
+license."
+
+"Oh!  So you've made up your minds?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Do you think that's fair by me, Nollie?  Should I have asked him here if
+I'd thought this was going to happen?"
+
+Noel only smiled.
+
+"Have you the least idea what marriage means?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Of course.  Gratian is married.  Besides, at school--"
+
+"Your father is dead against it.  This is a sad thing for him.  He's a
+perfect saint, and you oughtn't to hurt him.  Can't you wait, at least
+till Cyril's next leave?"
+
+"He might never have one, you see."
+
+The heart of her whose boys were out there too, and might also never have
+another leave; could not but be responsive to those words.  She looked at
+her niece, and a dim appreciation of this revolt of life menaced by
+death, of youth threatened with extinction, stirred in her.  Noel's teeth
+were clenched, her lips drawn back, and she was staring in front of her.
+
+"Daddy oughtn't to mind.  Old people haven't to fight, and get killed;
+they oughtn't to mind us taking what we can.  They've had their good
+time."
+
+It was such a just little speech that Thirza answered:
+
+"Yes; perhaps he hasn't quite realised that."
+
+"I want to make sure of Cyril, Auntie; I want everything I can have with
+him while there's the chance.  I don't think it's much to ask, when
+perhaps I'll never have any more of him again."
+
+Thirza slipped her hand through the girl's arm.
+
+"I understand," she said.  "Only, Nollie, suppose, when all this is over,
+and we breathe and live naturally once more, you found you'd made a
+mistake?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "I haven't."
+
+"We all think that, my dear; but thousands of mistakes are made by people
+who no more dream they're making them than you do now; and then it's a
+very horrible business.  It would be especially horrible for you; your
+father believes heart and soul in marriage being for ever."
+
+"Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes, you
+know.  Besides, I'm not making a mistake, Auntie!  I love Cyril ever so."
+
+Thirza gave her waist a squeeze.
+
+"You mustn't make a mistake.  We love you too much, Nollie.  I wish we
+had Gratian here."
+
+"Gratian would back me up," said Noel; "she knows what the war is. And
+you ought to, Auntie.  If Rex or Harry wanted to be married, I'm sure
+you'd never oppose them.  And they're no older than Cyril.  You must
+understand what it means to me Auntie dear, to feel that we belong to
+each other properly before--before it all begins for him, and--and there
+may be no more.  Daddy doesn't realise.  I know he's awfully good,
+but--he's forgotten."
+
+"My dear, I think he remembers only too well.  He was desperately
+attached to your mother."
+
+Noel clenched her hands.
+
+"Was he?  Well, so am I to Cyril, and he to me.  We wouldn't be
+unreasonable if it wasn't--wasn't necessary.  Talk, to Cyril, Auntie;
+then you'll understand.  There he is; only, don't keep him long, because
+I want him.  Oh!  Auntie; I want him so badly!"
+
+She turned; and slipped back into the house; and Thirza, conscious of
+having been decoyed to this young man, who stood there with his arms
+folded, like Napoleon before a battle, smiled and said:
+
+"Well, Cyril, so you've betrayed me!"
+
+Even in speaking she was conscious of the really momentous change in this
+sunburnt, blue-eyed, lazily impudent youth since the day he arrived,
+three weeks ago, in their little wagonette.  He took her arm, just as
+Noel had, and made her sit down beside him on the rustic bench, where he
+had evidently been told to wait.
+
+"You see, Mrs.  Pierson," he said, "it's not as if Noel were an ordinary
+girl in an ordinary time, is it?  Noel is the sort of girl one would
+knock one's brains out for; and to send me out there knowing that I could
+have been married to her and wasn't, will take all the heart out of me.
+Of course I mean to come back, but chaps do get knocked over, and I think
+it's cruel that we can't take what we can while we can.  Besides, I've
+got money; and that would be hers anyway.  So, do be a darling, won't
+you?"  He put his arm round her waist, just as if he had been her son,
+and her heart, which wanted her own boys so badly, felt warmed within
+her.
+
+"You see, I don't know Mr. Pierson, but he seems awfully gentle and
+jolly, and if he could see into me he wouldn't mind, I know.  We don't
+mind risking our lives and all that, but we do think we ought to have the
+run of them while we're alive.  I'll give him my dying oath or anything,
+that I could never change towards Noel, and she'll do the same.  Oh!
+Mrs.  Pierson, do be a jolly brick, and put in a word for me, quick!
+We've got so few days!"
+
+"But, my dear boy," said Thirza feebly, "do you think it's fair to such a
+child as Noel?"
+
+"Yes, I do.  You don't understand; she's simply had to grow up.  She is
+grown-up--all in this week; she's quite as old as I am, really--and I'm
+twenty-two.  And you know it's going to be--it's got to be--a young
+world, from now on; people will begin doing things much earlier.  What's
+the use of pretending it's like what it was, and being cautious, and all
+that?  If I'm going to be killed, I think we've got a right to be married
+first; and if I'm not, then what does it matter?"
+
+"You've known each other twenty-one days, Cyril."
+
+"No; twenty-one years!  Every day's a year when   Oh!  Mrs.  Pierson,
+this isn't like you, is it?  You never go to meet trouble, do you?"
+
+At that shrewd remark, Thirza put her hand on the hand which still
+clasped her waist, and pressed it closer.
+
+"Well, my dear," she said softly, "we must see what can be done."
+
+Cyril Morland kissed her cheek.  "I will bless you for ever," he said.
+"I haven't got any people, you know, except my two sisters."
+
+And something like tears started up on Thirza's eyelashes.  They seemed
+to her like the babes in the wood--those two!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+In the dining-room of her father's house in that old London Square
+between East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor garb of a nurse, was
+writing a telegram: "Reverend Edward Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern,
+Monmouthshire.  George terribly ill.  Please come if you can. Gratian."
+Giving it to a maid, she took off her long coat and sat down for a
+moment.  She had been travelling all night, after a full day's work, and
+had only just arrived, to find her husband between life and death.  She
+was very different from Noel; not quite so tall, but of a stronger build;
+with dark chestnut-coloured hair, clear hazel eyes, and a broad brow.
+The expression of her face was earnest, with a sort of constant spiritual
+enquiry; and a singularly truthful look: She was just twenty; and of the
+year that she had been married, had only spent six weeks with her
+husband; they had not even a house of their own as yet.  After resting
+five minutes, she passed her hand vigorously over her face, threw back
+her head, and walked up stairs to the room where he lay.  He was not
+conscious, and there was nothing to be done but sit and watch him.
+
+'If he dies,' she thought, 'I shall hate God for His cruelty.  I have had
+six weeks with George; some people have sixty years.' She fixed her eyes
+on his face, short and broad, with bumps of "observation" on the brows.
+He had been sunburnt.  The dark lashes of his closed eyes lay on deathly
+yellow cheeks; his thick hair grew rather low on his broad forehead.  The
+lips were just open and showed strong white teeth.  He had a little
+clipped moustache, and hair had grown on his clean-cut jaw.  His pyjama
+jacket had fallen open.  Gratian drew it close.  It was curiously still,
+for a London day, though the window was wide open.  Anything to break
+this heavy stupor, which was not only George's, but her own, and the very
+world's!  The cruelty of it--when she might be going to lose him for
+ever, in a few hours or days!  She thought of their last parting.  It had
+not been very loving, had come too soon after one of those arguments they
+were inclined to have, in which they could not as yet disagree with
+suavity.  George had said there was no future life for the individual;
+she had maintained there was.  They had grown hot and impatient.  Even in
+the cab on the way to his train they had pursued the wretched discussion,
+and the last kiss had been from lips on lips yet warm from disagreement.
+
+Ever since, as if in compunction, she had been wavering towards his point
+of view; and now, when he was perhaps to solve the problem--find out for
+certain--she had come to feel that if he died, she would never see him
+after.  It was cruel that such a blight should have come on her belief at
+this, of all moments.
+
+She laid her hand on his.  It was warm, felt strong, although so
+motionless and helpless.  George was so vigorous, so alive, and
+strong-willed; it seemed impossible that life might be going to play him
+false.  She recalled the unflinching look of his steel-bright eyes, his
+deep, queerly vibrating voice, which had no trace of self-consciousness
+or pretence.  She slipped her hand on to his heart, and began very
+slowly, gently rubbing it.  He, as doctor, and she, as nurse, had both
+seen so much of death these last two years!  Yet it seemed suddenly as if
+she had never seen death, and that the young faces she had seen, empty
+and white, in the hospital wards, had just been a show.  Death would
+appear to her for the first time, if this face which she loved were to be
+drained for ever of light and colour and movement and meaning.
+
+A humblebee from the Square Garden boomed in and buzzed idly round the
+room.  She caught her breath in a little sob....
+
+
+2
+
+Pierson received that telegram at midday, returning from a lonely walk
+after his talk with Thirza.  Coming from Gratian so self-reliant--it
+meant the worst.  He prepared at once to catch the next train.  Noel was
+out, no one knew where: so with a sick feeling he wrote:
+"DEAREST CHILD,
+
+"I am going up to Gratian; poor George is desperately ill.  If it goes
+badly you should be with your sister.  I will wire to-morrow morning
+early.  I leave you in your aunt's hands, my dear.  Be reasonable and
+patient.  God bless you.
+
+"Your devoted
+"DADDY."
+
+He was alone in his third-class compartment, and, leaning forward,
+watched the ruined Abbey across the river till it was out of sight. Those
+old monks had lived in an age surely not so sad as this.  They must have
+had peaceful lives, remote down here, in days when the Church was great
+and lovely, and men laid down their lives for their belief in her, and
+built everlasting fanes to the glory of God!  What a change to this age
+of rush and hurry, of science, trade, material profit, and this terrible
+war!  He tried to read his paper, but it was full of horrors and hate.
+'When will it end?' he thought.  And the train with its rhythmic jolting
+seemed grinding out the answer: "Never--never!"
+
+At Chepstow a soldier got in, followed by a woman with a very flushed
+face and curious, swimmy eyes; her hair was in disorder, and her lip
+bleeding, as if she had bitten it through.  The soldier, too, looked
+strained and desperate.  They sat down, far apart, on the seat opposite.
+Pierson, feeling that he was in their way, tried to hide himself behind
+his paper; when he looked again, the soldier had taken off his tunic and
+cap and was leaning out of the window.  The woman, on the seat's edge,
+sniffing and wiping her face, met his glance with resentful eyes, then,
+getting up, she pulled the man's sleeve.
+
+"Sit dahn; don't 'ang out o' there."
+
+The soldier flung himself back on the seat and looked at Pierson.
+
+"The wife an' me's 'ad a bit of a row," he said companionably.  "Gits on
+me nerves; I'm not used to it.  She was in a raid, and 'er nerves are all
+gone funny; ain't they, old girl?  Makes me feel me 'ead. I've been
+wounded there, you know; can't stand much now.  I might do somethin' if
+she was to go on like this for long."
+
+Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resentfully. The
+soldier held out a packet of cigarettes.  "Take one," he said. Pierson
+took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted him to speak, murmured: "We
+all have these troubles with those we're fond of; the fonder we are of
+people, the more we feel them, don't we?  I had one with my daughter last
+night."
+
+"Ah!"  said the soldier; "that's right.  The wife and me'll make it up.
+'Ere, come orf it, old girl."
+
+From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds of
+reconciliation--reproaches because someone had been offered a drink,
+kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse.  When they got out at
+Bristol the soldier shook his hand warmly, but the woman still gave him
+her resentful stare, and he thought dreamily: 'The war!  How it affects
+everyone!'  His carriage was invaded by a swarm of soldiers, and the rest
+of the journey was passed in making himself small.  When at last he
+reached home, Gratian met him in the hall.
+
+"Just the same.  The doctor says we shall know in a few hours now. How
+sweet of you to come!  You must be tired, in this heat.  It was dreadful
+to spoil your holiday."
+
+"My dear!  As if   May I go up and see him?"
+
+George Laird was still lying in that stupor.  And Pierson stood gazing
+down at him compassionately.  Like most parsons, he had a wide
+acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellowship with
+death.  Death!  The commonest thing in the world, now--commoner than
+life!  This young doctor must have seen many die in these last two years,
+saved many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift a finger to
+save himself.  Pierson looked at his daughter; what a strong, promising
+young couple they were!  And putting his arm round her, he led her away
+to the sofa, whence they could see the sick man.
+
+"If he dies, Dad--" she whispered.
+
+"He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as ever our soldiers
+do."
+
+"I know; but that's no comfort.  I've been watching here all day; I've
+been thinking; men will be just as brutal afterwards--more brutal.  The
+world will go on the same."
+
+"We must hope not.  Shall we pray, Gracie?"
+
+Gratian shook her head.
+
+"If I could believe that the world--if I could believe anything!  I've
+lost the power, Dad; I don't even believe in a future life.  If George
+dies, we shall never meet again."
+
+Pierson stared at her without a word.
+
+Gratian went on: "The last time we talked, I was angry with George
+because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want belief, I feel
+that he was right."
+
+Pierson said tremulously:
+
+"No, no, my dear; it's only that you're overwrought.  God in His mercy
+will give you back belief."
+
+"There is no God, Dad"
+
+"My darling child, what are you saying?"
+
+"No God who can help us; I feel it.  If there were any God who could take
+part in our lives, alter anything without our will, knew or cared what we
+did--He wouldn't let the world go on as it does."
+
+"But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable.  We dare not say He should
+not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He is working."
+
+"Then He's no good to us.  It's the same as if He didn't exist.  Why
+should I pray for George's life to One whose ends are just His own?  I
+know George oughtn't to die.  If there's a God who can help, it will be a
+wicked shame if George dies; if there's a God who can help, it's a wicked
+shame when babies die, and all these millions of poor boys.  I would
+rather think there's no God than a helpless or a wicked God--"
+
+Her father had suddenly thrown up his hands to his ears.  She moved
+closer, and put her arm round him.
+
+"Dad dear, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to hurt you."
+
+Pierson pressed her face down to his shoulder; and said in a dull voice:
+
+"What do you think would have happened to me, Gracie, if I had lost
+belief when your mother died?  I have never lost belief.  Pray God I
+never shall!"
+
+Gratian murmured:
+
+"George would not wish me to pretend I believe--he would want me to be
+honest.  If I'm not honest, I shan't deserve that he should live. I don't
+believe, and I can't pray."
+
+"My darling, you're overtired."
+
+"No, Dad."  She raised her head from his shoulder and, clasping her hands
+round her knees, looked straight before her.  "We can only help
+ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel."
+
+Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could say would
+touch her just then.  The sick man's face was hardly visible now in the
+twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed.  She stood looking down at
+him a long time.
+
+"Go and rest, Dad; the doctor's coming again at eleven.  I'll call you if
+I want anything.  I shall lie down a little, beside him."
+
+Pierson kissed her, and went out.  To lie there beside him would be the
+greatest comfort she could get.  He went to the bare narrow little room
+he had occupied ever since his wife died; and, taking off his boots,
+walked up and down, with a feeling of almost crushing loneliness.  Both
+his daughters in such trouble, and he of no use to them!  It was as if
+Life were pushing him utterly aside!  He felt confused, helpless,
+bewildered.  Surely if Gratian loved George, she had not left God's side,
+whatever she might say.  Then, conscious of the profound heresy of this
+thought, he stood still at the open window.
+
+Earthly love--heavenly love; was there any analogy between them?
+
+From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves answered;
+and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly tale of murder.
+3
+
+George Laird passed the crisis of his illness that night, and in the
+morning was pronounced out of danger.  He had a splendid constitution,
+and--Scotsman on his father's side--a fighting character.  He came back
+to life very weak, but avid of recovery; and his first words were: "I've
+been hanging over the edge, Gracie!"
+
+A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch, the
+merest fraction of an inch more, and over he would have gone.  Deuced rum
+sensation!  But not so horrible as it would have been in real life.  With
+the slip of that last inch he felt he would have passed at once into
+oblivion, without the long horror of a fall.  So this was what it was for
+all the poor fellows he had seen slip in the past two years!  Mercifully,
+at the end, one was not alive enough to be conscious of what one was
+leaving, not alive enough even to care.  If he had been able to take in
+the presence of his young wife, able to realise that he was looking at
+her face, touching her for the last time--it would have been hell; if he
+had been up to realising sunlight, moonlight, the sound of the world's
+life outside, the softness of the bed he lay on--it would have meant the
+most poignant anguish of defraudment.  Life was a rare good thing, and to
+be squashed out of it with your powers at full, a wretched mistake in
+Nature's arrangements, a wretched villainy on the part of Man--for his
+own death, like all those other millions of premature deaths, would have
+been due to the idiocy and brutality of men!  He could smile now, with
+Gratian looking down at him, but the experience had heaped fuel on a fire
+which had always smouldered in his doctor's soul against that half
+emancipated breed of apes, the human race. Well, now he would get a few
+days off from his death-carnival!  And he lay, feasting his returning
+senses on his wife.  She made a pretty nurse, and his practised eye
+judged her a good one--firm and quiet.
+
+George Laird was thirty.  At the opening of the war he was in an East-End
+practice, and had volunteered at once for service with the Army.  For the
+first nine months he had been right up in the thick of it.  A poisoned
+arm; rather than the authorities, had sent him home. During that leave he
+married Gratian.  He had known the Piersons some time; and, made
+conscious of the instability of life, had resolved to marry her at the
+first chance he got.  For his father-in-law he had respect and liking,
+ever mixed with what was not quite contempt and not quite pity.  The
+blend of authority with humility, cleric with dreamer, monk with artist,
+mystic with man of action, in Pierson, excited in him an interested, but
+often irritated, wonder.  He saw things so differently himself, and had
+little of the humorous curiosity which enjoys what is strange simply
+because it is strange. They could never talk together without soon
+reaching a point when he wanted to say: "If we're not to trust our reason
+and our senses for what they're worth, sir--will you kindly tell me what
+we are to trust?  How can we exert them to the utmost in some matters,
+and in others suddenly turn our backs on them?"  Once, in one of their
+discussions, which often bordered on acrimony, he had expounded himself
+at length.
+
+"I grant," he had said, "that there's a great ultimate Mystery, that we
+shall never know anything for certain about the origin of life and the
+principle of the Universe; but why should we suddenly shut up our
+enquiring apparatus and deny all the evidence of our reason--say, about
+the story of Christ, or the question of a future life, or our moral code?
+If you want me to enter a temple of little mysteries, leaving my reason
+and senses behind--as a Mohammedan leaves his shoes--it won't do to say
+to me simply: 'There it is!  Enter!' You must show me the door; and you
+can't!  And I'll tell you why, sir. Because in your brain there's a
+little twist which is not in mine, or the lack of a little twist which is
+in mine.  Nothing more than that divides us into the two main species of
+mankind, one of whom worships, and one of whom doesn't.  Oh, yes!  I
+know; you won't admit that, because it makes your religions natural
+instead of what you call supernatural.  But I assure you there's nothing
+more to it. Your eyes look up or they look down--they never look straight
+before them.  Well, mine do just the opposite."
+
+That day Pierson had been feeling very tired, and though to meet this
+attack was vital, he had been unable to meet it.  His brain had
+stammered.  He had turned a little away, leaning his cheek on his hand,
+as if to cover that momentary break in his defences.  Some days later he
+had said:
+
+"I am able now to answer your questions, George.  I think I can make you
+understand."
+
+Laird had answered: "All right, sir; go ahead."
+
+"You begin by assuming that the human reason is the final test of all
+things.  What right have you to assume that?  Suppose you were an ant.
+You would take your ant's reason as the final test, wouldn't you?  Would
+that be the truth?"  And a smile had fixed itself on his lips above his
+little grave beard.
+
+George Laird also had smiled.
+
+"That seems a good point, sir," he said, "until you recognise that I
+don't take, the human reason as final test in any absolute sense.  I only
+say it's the highest test we can apply; and that, behind that test all is
+quite dark and unknowable."
+
+"Revelation, then, means nothing to you?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"I don't think we can usefully go on, George."
+
+"I don't think we can, sir.  In talking with you, I always feel like
+fighting a man with one hand tied behind his back."
+
+"And I, perhaps, feel that I am arguing with one who was blind from
+birth."
+
+For all that, they had often argued since; but never without those
+peculiar smiles coming on their faces.  Still, they respected each other,
+and Pierson had not opposed his daughter's marriage to this heretic, whom
+he knew to be an honest and trustworthy man.  It had taken place before
+Laird's arm was well, and the two had snatched a month's honeymoon before
+he went back to France, and she to her hospital in Manchester.  Since
+then, just one February fortnight by the sea had been all their time
+together....
+
+In the afternoon he had asked for beef tea, and, having drunk a cup,
+said:
+
+"I've got something to tell your father."
+
+But warned by the pallor of his smiling lips, Gratian answered:
+
+"Tell me first, George."
+
+"Our last talk, Gracie; well--there's nothing--on the other side.  I
+looked over; it's as black as your hat."
+
+Gratian shivered.
+
+"I know.  While you were lying here last night, I told father."
+
+He squeezed her hand, and said: "I also want to tell him."
+
+"Dad will say the motive for life is gone."
+
+"I say it leaps out all the more, Gracie.  What a mess we make of it--we
+angel-apes!  When shall we be men, I wonder?  You and I, Gracie, will
+fight for a decent life for everybody.  No hands-upping about that!  Bend
+down!  It's good to touch you again; everything's good. I'm going to have
+a sleep...."
+
+After the relief of the doctor's report in the early morning Pierson had
+gone through a hard struggle.  What should he wire to Noel?  He longed to
+get her back home, away from temptation to the burning indiscretion of
+this marriage.  But ought he to suppress reference to George's progress?
+Would that be honest?  At last he sent this telegram: "George out of
+danger but very weak.  Come up." By the afternoon post, however, he
+received a letter from Thirza:
+
+"I have had two long talks with Noel and Cyril.  It is impossible to
+budge them.  And I really think, dear Edward, that it will be a mistake
+to oppose it rigidly.  He may not go out as soon as we think. How would
+it be to consent to their having banns published?--that would mean
+another three weeks anyway, and in absence from each other they might be
+influenced to put it off.  I'm afraid this is the only chance, for if you
+simply forbid it, I feel they will run off and get married somewhere at a
+registrar's."
+
+Pierson took this letter out with him into the Square Garden, for painful
+cogitation.  No man can hold a position of spiritual authority for long
+years without developing the habit of judgment. He judged Noel's conduct
+to be headlong and undisciplined, and the vein of stubbornness in his
+character fortified the father and the priest within him.  Thirza
+disappointed him; she did not seem to see the irretrievable gravity of
+this hasty marriage.  She seemed to look on it as something much lighter
+than it was, to consider that it might be left to Chance, and that if
+Chance turned out unfavourable, there would still be a way out.  To him
+there would be no way out. He looked up at the sky, as if for
+inspiration.  It was such a beautiful day, and so bitter to hurt his
+child, even for her good!  What would her mother have advised?  Surely
+Agnes had felt at least as deeply as himself the utter solemnity of
+marriage!  And, sitting there in the sunlight, he painfully hardened his
+heart.  He must do what he thought right, no matter what the
+consequences.  So he went in and wrote that he could not agree, and
+wished Noel to come back home at once.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+But on the same afternoon, just about that hour, Noel was sitting on the
+river-bank with her arms folded tight across her chest, and by her side
+Cyril Morland, with despair in his face, was twisting a telegram "Rejoin
+tonight.  Regiment leaves to-morrow."
+
+What consolation that a million such telegrams had been read and sorrowed
+over these last two years!  What comfort that the sun was daily blotted
+dim for hundreds of bright eyes; the joy of life poured out and sopped up
+by the sands of desolation!
+
+"How long have we got, Cyril?"
+
+"I've engaged a car from the Inn, so I needn't leave till midnight. I've
+packed already, to have more time."
+
+"Let's have it to ourselves, then.  Let's go off somewhere.  I've got
+some chocolate."
+
+Morland answered miserably:
+
+"I can send the car up here for my things, and have it pick me up at the
+Inn, if you'll say goodbye to them for me, afterwards.  We'll walk down
+the line, then we shan't meet anyone."
+
+And in the bright sunlight they walked hand in hand on each side of a
+shining rail.  About six they reached the Abbey.
+
+"Let's get a boat," said Noel.  "We can come back here when it's
+moonlight.  I know a way of getting in, after the gate's shut."
+
+They hired a boat, rowed over to the far bank, and sat on the stern seat,
+side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep green by
+the high woods.  If they talked, it was but a word of love now and then,
+or to draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a dragon-fly.  What
+use making plans--for lovers the chief theme?  Longing paralysed their
+brains.  They could do nothing but press close to each other, their hands
+enlaced, their lips meeting now and then.  On Noel's face was a strange
+fixed stillness, as if she were waiting--expecting!  They ate their
+chocolates.  The sun set, dew began to fall; the river changed, and grew
+whiter; the sky paled to the colour of an amethyst; shadows lengthened,
+dissolved slowly.  It was past nine already; a water-rat came out, a
+white owl flew over the river, towards the Abbey.  The moon had come up,
+but shed no light as yet.  They saw no beauty in all this--too young, too
+passionate, too unhappy.
+
+Noel said: "When she's over those trees, Cyril, let's go.  It'll be half
+dark."
+
+They waited, watching the moon, which crept with infinite slowness up and
+up, brightening ever so little every minute.
+
+"Now!"  said Noel.  And Morland rowed across.
+
+They left the boat, and she led the way past an empty cottage, to a shed
+with a roof sloping up to the Abbey's low outer wall.
+
+"We can get over here," she whispered.
+
+They clambered up, and over, to a piece of grassy courtyard, and passed
+on to an inner court, under the black shadow of the high walls.
+
+"What's the time?"  said Noel.
+
+"Half-past ten."
+
+"Already!  Let's sit here in the dark, and watch for the moon."
+
+They sat down close together.  Noel's face still had on it that strange
+look of waiting; and Morland sat obedient, with his hand on her heart,
+and his own heart beating almost to suffocation.  They sat, still as
+mice, and the moon crept up.  It laid a first vague greyness on the high
+wall, which spread slowly down, and brightened till the lichen and the
+grasses up there were visible; then crept on, silvering the dark above
+their heads.  Noel pulled his sleeve, and whispered: "See!"  There came
+the white owl, soft as a snowflake, drifting across in that unearthly
+light, as if flying to the moon. And just then the top of the moon itself
+looked over the wall, a shaving of silvery gold.  It grew, became a
+bright spread fan, then balanced there, full and round, the colour of
+pale honey.
+
+"Ours!" Noel whispered.
+
+
+2
+
+From the side of the road Noel listened till the sound of the car was
+lost in the folds of the valley.  She did not cry, but passed her hands
+over her face, and began to walk home, keeping to the shadow of the
+trees.  How many years had been added to her age in those six hours since
+the telegram came!  Several times in that mile and a half she stepped
+into a patch of brighter moonlight, to take out and kiss a little
+photograph, then slip it back next her heart, heedless that so warm a
+place must destroy any effigy.  She felt not the faintest compunction for
+the recklessness of her love--it was her only comfort against the
+crushing loneliness of the night.  It kept her up, made her walk on with
+a sort of pride, as if she had got the best of Fate. He was hers for ever
+now, in spite of anything that could be done. She did not even think what
+she would say when she got in.  She came to the avenue, and passed up it
+still in a sort of dream.  Her uncle was standing before the porch; she
+could hear his mutterings.  She moved out of the shadow of the trees,
+went straight up to him, and, looking in his perturbed face, said calmly:
+
+"Cyril asked me to say good-bye to you all, Uncle.  Good night!"
+
+"But, I say, Nollie look here you!"
+
+She had passed on.  She went up to her room.  There, by the door, her
+aunt was standing, and would have kissed her.  She drew back:
+
+"No, Auntie.  Not to-night!"  And, slipping by, she locked her door.
+
+Bob and Thirza Pierson, meeting in their own room, looked at each other
+askance.  Relief at their niece's safe return was confused by other
+emotions.  Bob Pierson expressed his first:
+
+"Phew!  I was beginning to think we should w have to drag the river. What
+girls are coming to!"
+
+"It's the war, Bob."
+
+"I didn't like her face, old girl.  I don't know what it was, but I
+didn't like her face."
+
+Neither did Thirza, but she would not admit it, and encourage Bob to take
+it to heart.  He took things so hardly, and with such a noise!
+
+She only said: "Poor young things!  I suppose it will be a relief to
+Edward!"
+
+"I love Nollie!" said Bob Pierson suddenly.  "She's an affectionate
+creature.  D-nit, I'm sorry about this.  It's not so bad for young
+Morland; he's got the excitement--though I shouldn't like to be leaving
+Nollie, if I were young again.  Thank God, neither of our boys is
+engaged.  By George! when I think of them out there, and myself here, I
+feel as if the top of my head would come off.  And those politician chaps
+spouting away in every country--how they can have the cheek!"
+
+Thirza looked at him anxiously.
+
+"And no dinner!" he said suddenly.  "What d'you think they've been doing
+with themselves?"
+
+"Holding each other's hands, poor dears!  D'you know what time it is,
+Bob?  Nearly one o'clock."
+
+"Well, all I can say is, I've had a wretched evening.  Get to bed, old
+girl.  You'll be fit for nothing."
+
+He was soon asleep, but Thirza lay awake, not exactly worrying, for that
+was not her nature, but seeing Noel's face, pale, languid, passionate,
+possessed by memory.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+Noel reached her father's house next day late in the afternoon. There was
+a letter in the hall for her.  She tore it open, and read:
+"MY DARLING LOVE,
+
+"I got back all right, and am posting this at once to tell you we shall
+pass through London, and go from Charing Cross, I expect about nine
+o'clock to-night.  I shall look out for you, there, in case you are up in
+time.  Every minute I think of you, and of last night.  Oh!  Noel!
+
+"Your devoted lover, "C."
+
+She looked at the wrist-watch which, like every other little patriot, she
+possessed.  Past seven!  If she waited, Gratian or her father would seize
+on her.
+
+"Take my things up, Dinah.  I've got a headache from travelling; I'm
+going to walk it off.  Perhaps I shan't be in till past nine or so. Give
+my love to them all."
+
+"Oh, Miss Noel, you can't,--"
+
+But Noel was gone.  She walked towards Charing Cross; and, to kill time,
+went into a restaurant and had that simple repast, coffee and a bun,
+which those in love would always take if Society did not forcibly feed
+them on other things.  Food was ridiculous to her.  She sat there in the
+midst of a perfect hive of creatures eating hideously.  The place was
+shaped like a modern prison, having tiers of gallery round an open space,
+and in the air was the smell of viands and the clatter of plates and the
+music of a band.  Men in khaki everywhere, and Noel glanced from form to
+form to see if by chance one might be that which represented, for her,
+Life and the British Army.  At half-past eight she went out and made her
+way: through the crowd, still mechanically searching "khaki" for what she
+wanted; and it was perhaps fortunate that there was about her face and
+walk something which touched people.  At the station she went up to an
+old porter, and, putting a shilling into his astonished hand, asked him
+to find out for her whence Morland's regiment would start. He came back
+presently, and said:
+
+"Come with me, miss."
+
+Noel went.  He was rather lame, had grey whiskers, and a ghostly thin
+resemblance to her uncle Bob, which perhaps had been the reason why she
+had chosen him.  64
+
+"Brother goin' out, miss?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Ah!  It's a crool war.  I shan't be sorry when it's over.  Goin' out and
+comin' in, we see some sad sights 'ere.  Wonderful spirit they've got,
+too.  I never look at the clock now but what I think: 'There you go,
+slow-coach!  I'd like to set you on to the day the boys come back!'  When
+I puts a bag in: 'Another for 'ell' I thinks.  And so it is, miss, from
+all I can 'ear.  I've got a son out there meself. It's 'ere they'll come
+along.  You stand quiet and keep a lookout, and you'll get a few minutes
+with him when he's done with 'is men.  I wouldn't move, if I were you;
+he'll come to you, all right--can't miss you, there.'  And, looking at
+her face, he thought: 'Astonishin' what a lot o' brothers go.  Wot oh!
+Poor little missy!  A little lady, too.  Wonderful collected she is.
+It's 'ard!'"  And trying to find something consoling to say, he mumbled
+out: "You couldn't be in a better place for seen'im off.  Good night,
+miss; anything else I can do for you?"
+
+"No, thank you; you're very kind."
+
+He looked back once or twice at her blue-clad figure standing very still.
+He had left her against a little oasis of piled-up empty milk-cans, far
+down the platform where a few civilians in similar case were scattered.
+The trainway was empty as yet.  In the grey immensity of the station and
+the turmoil of its noise, she felt neither lonely nor conscious of others
+waiting; too absorbed in the one thought of seeing him and touching him
+again.  The empty train began backing in, stopped, and telescoped with a
+series of little clattering bangs, backed on again, and subsided to rest.
+Noel turned her eyes towards the station arch ways.  Already she felt
+tremulous, as though the regiment were sending before it the vibration of
+its march.
+
+She had not as yet seen a troop-train start, and vague images of brave
+array, of a flag fluttering, and the stir of drums, beset her. Suddenly
+she saw a brown swirling mass down there at the very edge, out of which a
+thin brown trickle emerged towards her; no sound of music, no waved flag.
+She had a longing to rush down to the barrier, but remembering the words
+of the porter, stayed where she was, with her hands tightly squeezed
+together.  The trickle became a stream, a flood, the head of which began
+to reach her.  With a turbulence of voices, sunburnt men, burdened up to
+the nose, passed, with rifles jutting at all angles; she strained her
+eyes, staring into that stream as one might into a walking wood, to
+isolate a single tree. Her head reeled with the strain of it, and the
+effort to catch his voice among the hubbub of all those cheery, common,
+happy-go-lucky sounds.  Some who saw her clucked their tongues, some went
+by silent, others seemed to scan her as though she might be what they
+were looking for.  And ever the stream and the hubbub melted into the
+train, and yet came pouring on.  And still she waited motionless, with an
+awful fear.  How could he ever find her, or she him?  Then she saw that
+others of those waiting had found their men.  And the longing to rush up
+and down the platform almost overcame her; but still she waited.  And
+suddenly she saw him with two other officer boys, close to the carriages,
+coming slowly down towards her.  She stood with her eyes fixed on his
+face; they passed, and she nearly cried out.  Then he turned, broke away
+from the other two, and came straight to her.  He had seen her before she
+had seen him.  He was very flushed, had a little fixed frown between his
+blue eyes and a set jaw.  They stood looking at each other, their hands
+hard gripped; all the emotion of last night welling up within them, so
+that to speak would have been to break down.  The milk-cans formed a kind
+of shelter, and they stood so close together that none could see their
+faces.  Noel was the first to master her power of speech; her words came
+out, dainty as ever, through trembling lips:
+
+"Write to me as much as ever you can, Cyril.  I'm going to be a nurse at
+once.  And the first leave you get, I shall come to you--don't forget."
+
+"Forget!  Move a little back, darling; they can't see us here.  Kiss me!"
+She moved back, thrust her face forward so that he need not stoop, and
+put her lips up to his.  Then, feeling that she might swoon and fall over
+among the cans, she withdrew her mouth, leaving her forehead against his
+lips.  He murmured:
+
+"Was it all right when you got in last night?"
+
+"Yes; I said good-bye for you."
+
+"Oh!  Noel--I've been afraid--I oughtn't--I oughtn't--"
+
+"Yes, yes; nothing can take you from me now."
+
+"You have got pluck.  More than!"
+
+Along whistle sounded.  Morland grasped her hands convulsively:
+
+"Good-bye, my little wife!  Don't fret.  Goodbye!  I must go.  God bless
+you, Noel!"
+
+"I love you."
+
+They looked at each other, just another moment, then she took her hands
+from his and stood back in the shadow of the milk-cans, rigid, following
+him with her eyes till he was lost in the train.
+
+Every carriage window was full of those brown figures and red-brown
+faces, hands were waving vaguely, voices calling vaguely, here and there
+one cheered; someone leaning far out started to sing: "If auld
+acquaintance--"  But Noel stood quite still in the shadow of the
+milk-cans, her lips drawn in, her hands hard clenched in front of her;
+and young Morland at his window gazed back at her.
+
+
+2
+
+How she came to be sitting in Trafalgar Square she did not know. Tears
+had formed a mist between her and all that seething, summer-evening
+crowd.  Her eyes mechanically followed the wandering search-lights, those
+new milky ways, quartering the heavens and leading nowhere.  All was
+wonderfully beautiful, the sky a deep dark blue, the moonlight whitening
+the spire of St. Martin's, and everywhere endowing the great blacked-out
+buildings with dream-life.  Even the lions had come to life, and stared
+out over this moonlit desert of little human figures too small to be
+worth the stretching out of a paw.  She sat there, aching dreadfully, as
+if the longing of every bereaved heart in all the town had settled in
+her.  She felt it tonight a thousand times worse; for last night she had
+been drugged on the new sensation of love triumphantly fulfilled.  Now
+she felt as if life had placed her in the corner of a huge silent room,
+blown out the flame of joy, and locked the door.  A little dry sob came
+from her.  The hay-fields and Cyril, with shirt unbuttoned at the neck,
+pitching hay and gazing at her while she dabbled her fork in the thin
+leavings.  The bright river, and their boat grounded on the shallows, and
+the swallows flitting over them.  And that long dance, with the feel of
+his hand between her shoulder-blades!  Memories so sweet and sharp that
+she almost cried out.  She saw again their dark grassy courtyard in the
+Abbey, and the white owl flying over them.  The white owl!  Flying there
+again to-night, with no lovers on the grass below!  She could only
+picture Cyril now as a brown atom in that swirling brown flood of men,
+flowing to a huge brown sea.  Those cruel minutes on the platform, when
+she had searched and searched the walking wood for her, one tree, seemed
+to have burned themselves into her eyes.  Cyril was lost, she could not
+single him out, all blurred among those thousand other shapes.  And
+suddenly she thought: 'And I--I'm lost to him; he's never seen me at
+home, never seen me in London; he won't be able to imagine me.  It's all
+in the past, only the past--for both of us.  Is there anybody so
+unhappy?'  And the town's voices-wheels, and passing feet, whistles,
+talk, laughter--seemed to answer callously: 'Not one.'  She looked at her
+wrist-watch; like his, it had luminous hands: 'Half-past ten' was
+greenishly imprinted there.  She got up in dismay.  They would think she
+was lost, or run over, or something silly!  She could not find an empty
+taxi, and began to walk, uncertain of her way at night.  At last she
+stopped a policeman, and said:
+
+"Which is the way towards Bloomsbury, please?  I can't find a taxi." The
+man looked at her, and took time to think it over; then he said:
+
+"They're linin' up for the theatres," and looked at her again. Something
+seemed to move in his mechanism:
+
+"I'm goin' that way, miss.  If you like, you can step along with me."
+Noel stepped along.
+
+"The streets aren't what they ought to be," the policeman said. "What
+with the darkness, and the war turning the girls heads--you'd be
+surprised the number of them that comes out.  It's the soldiers, of
+course."
+
+Noel felt her cheeks burning.
+
+"I daresay you wouldn't have noticed it," the policeman went on: "but
+this war's a funny thing.  The streets are gayer and more crowded at
+night than I've ever seen them; it's a fair picnic all the time. What
+we're goin' to settle down to when peace comes, I don't know.  I suppose
+you find it quiet enough up your way, miss?"
+
+"Yes," said Noel; "quite quiet."
+
+"No soldiers up in Bloomsbury.  You got anyone in the Army, miss?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Ah!  It's anxious times for ladies.  What with the Zeps, and their
+brothers and all in France, it's 'arassin'.  I've lost a brother meself,
+and I've got a boy out there in the Garden of Eden; his mother carries on
+dreadful about him.  What we shall think of it when it's all over, I
+can't tell.  These Huns are a wicked tough lot!"
+
+Noel looked at him; a tall man, regular and orderly, with one of those
+perfectly decent faces so often seen in the London police.
+
+"I'm sorry you've lost someone," she said.  "I haven't lost anyone very
+near, yet."
+
+"Well, let's 'ope you won't, miss.  These times make you feel for others,
+an' that's something.  I've noticed a great change in folks you'd never
+think would feel for anyone.  And yet I've seen some wicked things too;
+we do, in the police.  Some of these English wives of aliens, and
+'armless little German bakers, an' Austrians, and what-not: they get a
+crool time.  It's their misfortune, not their fault, that's what I think;
+and the way they get served--well, it makes you ashamed o' bein' English
+sometimes--it does straight: And the women are the worst.  I said to my
+wife only last night, I said: 'They call themselves Christians,' I said,
+'but for all the charity that's in 'em they might as well be Huns.' She
+couldn't see it-not she!'  Well, why do they drop bombs?' she says.
+'What!'  I said, 'those English wives and bakers drop bombs?  Don't be
+silly,' I said. 'They're as innocent as we.'  It's the innocent that gets
+punished for the guilty.  'But they're all spies,' she says.  'Oh!' I
+said, 'old lady!  Now really!  At your time of life!'  But there it is;
+you can't get a woman to see reason.  It's readin' the papers.  I often
+think they must be written by women--beggin' your pardon, miss--but
+reely, the 'ysterics and the 'atred--they're a fair knockout.  D'you find
+much hatred in your household, miss?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "No; my father's a clergyman, you see."
+
+"Ah!"  said the policeman.  And in the glance he bestowed on her could be
+seen an added respect.
+
+"Of course," he went on, "you're bound to have a sense of justice against
+these Huns; some of their ways of goin' on have been above the limit.
+But what I always think is--of course I don't say these things--no use to
+make yourself unpopular--but to meself I often think: Take 'em man for
+man, and you'd find 'em much the same as we are, I daresay.  It's the
+vicious way they're brought up, of actin' in the mass, that's made 'em
+such a crool lot.  I see a good bit of crowds in my profession, and I've
+a very low opinion of them.  Crowds are the most blunderin' blighted
+things that ever was.  They're like an angry woman with a bandage over
+her eyes, an' you can't have anything more dangerous than that.  These
+Germans, it seems, are always in a crowd.  They get a state o' mind read
+out to them by Bill Kaser and all that bloody-minded lot, an' they never
+stop to think for themselves."
+
+"I suppose they'd be shot if they did," said Noel.
+
+"Well, there is that," said the policeman reflectively.  "They've brought
+discipline to an 'igh pitch, no doubt.  An' if you ask me,"--he lowered
+his voice till it was almost lost in his chin-strap, "we'll be runnin'
+'em a good second 'ere, before long.  The things we 'ave to protect now
+are gettin' beyond a joke.  There's the City against lights, there's the
+streets against darkness, there's the aliens, there's the aliens' shops,
+there's the Belgians, there's the British wives, there's the soldiers
+against the women, there's the women against the soldiers, there's the
+Peace Party, there's 'orses against croolty, there's a Cabinet Minister
+every now an' then; and now we've got these Conchies.  And, mind you,
+they haven't raised our pay; no war wages in the police.  So far as I can
+see, there's only one good result of the war--the burglaries are off.
+But there again, you wait a bit and see if we don't have a prize crop of
+'m, or my name's not 'Arris."
+
+"You must have an awfully exciting life!"  said Noel.
+
+The policeman looked down at her sideways, without lowering his face, as
+only a policeman can, and said indulgently:
+
+"We're used to it, you see; there's no excitement in what you're used to.
+They find that in the trenches, I'm told.  Take our seamen--there's lots
+of 'em been blown up over and over again, and there they go and sign on
+again next day.  That's where the Germans make their mistake!  England in
+war-time!  I think a lot, you know, on my go; you can't 'elp it--the mind
+will work--an' the more I think, the more I see the fightin' spirit in
+the people.  We don't make a fuss about it like Bill Kaser.  But you
+watch a little shopman, one o' those fellows who's had his house bombed;
+you watch the way he looks at the mess--sort of disgusted.  You watch his
+face, and you see he's got his teeth into it.  You watch one of our
+Tommies on 'is crutches, with the sweat pourin' off his forehead an' 'is
+eyes all strainy, stumpin' along--that gives you an idea!  I pity these
+Peace fellows, reely I pity them; they don't know what they're up
+against.  I expect there's times when you wish you was a man, don't you,
+miss?  I'm sure there's times when I feel I'd like to go in the trenches.
+That's the worst o' my job; you can't be a human bein'--not in the full
+sense of the word.  You mustn't let your passions rise, you mustn't
+drink, you mustn't talk; it's a narrow walk o' life.  Well, here you are,
+miss; your Square's the next turnin' to the right.  Good night and thank
+you for your conversation."
+
+Noel held out her hand.  "Good night!"  she said.
+
+The policeman took her hand with a queer, flattered embarrassment.
+
+"Good night, miss," he said again.  "I see you've got a trouble; and I'm
+sure I hope it'll turn out for the best."
+
+Noel gave his huge hand a squeeze; her eyes had filled with tears, and
+she turned quickly up towards the Square, where a dark figure was coming
+towards her, in whom she recognised her father.  His face was worn and
+harassed; he walked irresolutely, like a man who has lost something.
+
+"Nollie!" he said.  "Thank God!"  In his voice was an infinite relief.
+"My child, where have you been?"
+
+"It's all right, Daddy.  Cyril has just gone to the front.  I've been
+seeing him off from Charing Cross."
+
+Pierson slipped his arm round her.  They entered the house without
+speaking....
+3
+
+By the rail of his transport, as far--about two feet--as he could get
+from anyone, Cyril Morland stood watching Calais, a dream city, brighten
+out of the heat and grow solid.  He could hear the guns already, the
+voice of his new life-talking in the distance.  It came with its strange
+excitement into a being held by soft and marvellous memories, by one long
+vision of Noel and the moonlit grass, under the dark Abbey wall.  This
+moment of passage from wonder to wonder was quite too much for a boy
+unused to introspection, and he stood staring stupidly at Calais, while
+the thunder of his new life came rolling in on that passionate moonlit
+dream.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+After the emotions of those last three days Pierson woke with the feeling
+a ship must have when it makes landfall.  Such reliefs are natural, and
+as a rule delusive; for events are as much the parents of the future as
+they were the children of the past.  To be at home with both his girls,
+and resting--for his holiday would not be over for ten days--was like old
+times.  Now George was going on so well Gratian would be herself again;
+now Cyril Morland was gone Noel would lose that sudden youthful love
+fever.  Perhaps in two or three days if George continued to progress, one
+might go off with Noel somewhere for one's last week.  In the meantime
+the old house, wherein was gathered so much remembrance of happiness and
+pain, was just as restful as anywhere else, and the companionship of his
+girls would be as sweet as on any of their past rambling holidays in
+Wales or Ireland.  And that first morning of perfect idleness--for no one
+knew he was back in London--pottering, and playing the piano in the
+homely drawing-room where nothing to speak of was changed since his
+wife's day, was very pleasant.  He had not yet seen the girls, for Noel
+did not come down to breakfast, and Gratian was with George.
+
+Discovery that there was still a barrier between him and them came but
+slowly in the next two days.  He would not acknowledge it, yet it was
+there, in their voices, in their movements--rather an absence of
+something old than the presence of something new.  It was as if each had
+said to him: "We love you, but you are not in our secrets--and you must
+not be, for you would try to destroy them."  They showed no fear of him,
+but seemed to be pushing him unconsciously away, lest he should restrain
+or alter what was very dear to them.  They were both fond of him, but
+their natures had set foot on definitely diverging paths.  The closer the
+affection, the more watchful they were against interference by that
+affection.  Noel had a look on her face, half dazed, half proud, which
+touched, yet vexed him.  What had he done to forfeit her
+confidence--surely she must see how natural and right his opposition had
+been!  He made one great effort to show the real sympathy he felt for
+her.  But she only said: "I can't talk of Cyril, Daddy; I simply can't!"
+And he, who easily shrank into his shell, could not but acquiesce in her
+reserve.
+
+With Gratian it was different.  He knew that an encounter was before him;
+a struggle between him and her husband--for characteristically he set the
+change in her, the defection of her faith, down to George, not to
+spontaneous thought and feeling in herself.  He dreaded and yet looked
+forward to this encounter.  It came on the third day, when Laird was up,
+lying on that very sofa where Pierson had sat listening to Gratian's
+confession of disbelief.  Except for putting in his head to say good
+morning, he had not yet seen his son-in-law: The young doctor could not
+look fragile, the build of his face, with that law and those heavy
+cheekbones was too much against it, but there was about him enough of the
+look of having come through a hard fight to give Pierson's heart a
+squeeze.
+
+"Well, George," he said, "you gave us a dreadful fright!  I thank God's
+mercy."  With that half-mechanical phrase he had flung an unconscious
+challenge.  Laird looked up whimsically.
+
+"So you really think God merciful, sir?"
+
+"Don't let us argue, George; you're not strong enough."
+
+"Oh!  I'm pining for something to bite on."
+
+Pierson looked at Gratian, and said softly:
+
+"God's mercy is infinite, and you know it is."
+
+Laird also looked at Gratian, before he answered:
+
+"God's mercy is surely the amount of mercy man has succeeded in arriving
+at.  How much that is, this war tells you, sir."
+
+Pierson flushed.  "I don't follow you," he said painfully.  "How can you
+say such things, when you yourself are only just   No; I refuse to argue,
+George; I refuse."
+
+Laird stretched out his hand to his wife, who came to him, and stood
+clasping it with her own. "Well, I'm going to argue," he said; "I'm
+simply bursting with it.  I challenge you, sir, to show me where there's
+any sign of altruistic pity, except in man.  Mother love doesn't
+count--mother and child are too much one."
+
+The curious smile had come already, on both their faces.
+
+"My dear George, is not man the highest work of God, and mercy the
+highest quality in man?"
+
+"Not a bit.  If geological time be taken as twenty-four hours, man's
+existence on earth so far equals just two seconds of it; after a few more
+seconds, when man has been frozen off the earth, geological time will
+stretch for as long again, before the earth bumps into something, and
+becomes nebula once more.  God's hands haven't been particularly full,
+sir, have they--two seconds out of twenty-four hours--if man is His pet
+concern?  And as to mercy being the highest quality in, man, that's only
+a modern fashion of talking.  Man's highest quality is the sense of
+proportion, for that's what keeps him alive; and mercy, logically
+pursued, would kill him off.  It's a sort of a luxury or by-product."
+
+"George!  You can have no music in your soul!  Science is such a little
+thing, if you could only see."
+
+"Show me a bigger, sir."
+
+"Faith."
+
+"In what?"
+
+"In what has been revealed to us."
+
+"Ah!  There it is again!  By whom--how?
+
+"By God Himself--through our Lord."
+
+A faint flush rose in Laird's yellow face, and his eyes brightened.
+
+"Christ," he said; "if He existed, which some people, as you know, doubt,
+was a very beautiful character; there have been others.  But to ask us to
+believe in His supernaturalness or divinity at this time of day is to ask
+us to walk through the world blindfold.  And that's what you do, don't
+you?"
+
+Again Pierson looked at his daughter's face.  She was standing quite
+still, with her eyes fixed on her husband.  Somehow he was aware that all
+these words of the sick man's were for her benefit.  Anger, and a sort of
+despair rose within him, and he said painfully:
+
+"I cannot explain.  There are things that I can't make clear, because you
+are wilfully blind to all that I believe in.  For what do you imagine we
+are fighting this great war, if it is not to reestablish the belief in
+love as the guiding principle of life?"
+
+Laird shook his head.  "We are fighting to redress a balance, which was
+in danger of being lost."
+
+"The balance of power?"
+
+"Heavens!--no!  The balance of philosophy."
+
+Pierson smiled.  "That sounds very clever, George; but again, I don't
+follow you."
+
+"The balance between the sayings: 'Might is Right,' and 'Right is Might.'
+They're both half-truth, but the first was beating the other out of the
+field.  All the rest of it is cant, you know.  And by the way, sir, your
+Church is solid for punishment of the evildoer. Where's mercy there?
+Either its God is not merciful, or else it doesn't believe in its God."
+
+"Just punishment does not preclude mercy, George."
+
+"It does in Nature."
+
+"Ah!  Nature, George--always Nature.  God transcends Nature."
+
+"Then why does He give it a free rein?  A man too fond of drink, or
+women--how much mercy does he get from Nature?  His overindulgence brings
+its exact equivalent of penalty; let him pray to God as much as he
+likes--unless he alters his ways he gets no mercy.  If he does alter his
+ways, he gets no mercy either; he just gets Nature's due reward.  We
+English who have neglected brain and education--how much mercy are we
+getting in this war?  Mercy's a man-made ornament, disease, or
+luxury--call it what you will.  Except that, I've nothing to say against
+it.  On the contrary, I am all for it."
+
+Once more Pierson looked at his daughter.  Something in her face hurt
+him--the silent intensity with which she was hanging on her husband's
+words, the eager search of her eyes.  And he turned to the door, saying:
+
+"This is bad for you, George."
+
+He saw Gratian put her hand on her husband's forehead, and
+thought--jealously: 'How can I save my poor girl from this infidelity?
+Are my twenty years of care to go for nothing, against this modern
+spirit?'
+
+Down in his study, the words went through his mind: "Holy, holy, holy,
+Merciful and Mighty!"  And going to the little piano in the corner, he
+opened it, and began playing the hymn.  He played it softly on the shabby
+keys of this thirty-year old friend, which had been with him since
+College days; and sang it softly in his worn voice.
+
+A sound made him look up.  Gratian had come in.  She put her hand on his
+shoulder, and said:
+
+"I know it hurts you, Dad.  But we've got to find out for ourselves,
+haven't we?  All the time you and George were talking, I felt that you
+didn't see that it's I who've changed.  It's not what he thinks, but what
+I've come to think of my own accord.  I wish you'd understand that I've
+got a mind of my own, Dad."
+
+Pierson looked up with amazement.
+
+"Of course you have a mind."
+
+Gratian shook her head.  "No, you thought my mind was yours; and now you
+think it's George's.  But it's my own.  When you were my age weren't you
+trying hard to find the truth yourself, and differing from your father?"
+
+Pierson did not answer.  He could not remember.  It was like stirring a
+stick amongst a drift of last year's leaves, to awaken but a dry
+rustling, a vague sense of unsubstantiality.  Searched?  No doubt he had
+searched, but the process had brought him nothing.  Knowledge was all
+smoke!  Emotional faith alone was truth--reality!
+
+"Ah, Gracie!"  he said, "search if you must, but where will you find
+bottom?  The well is too deep for us.  You will come back to God, my
+child, when you're tired out; the only rest is there."
+
+"I don't want to rest.  Some people search all their lives, and die
+searching.  Why shouldn't I.
+
+"You will be most unhappy, my child."
+
+"If I'm unhappy, Dad, it'll be because the world's unhappy.  I don't
+believe it ought to be; I think it only is, because it shuts its eyes."
+
+Pierson got up.  "You think I shut my eyes?"
+
+Gratian nodded.
+
+"If I do, it is because there is no other way to happiness."
+
+"Are you happy; Dad?"
+
+"As happy as my nature will let me be.  I miss your mother.  If I lose
+you and Noel--"
+
+"Oh, but we won't let you!"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "My dear," he said, "I think I have!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+1
+
+Some wag, with a bit of chalk, had written the word "Peace" on three
+successive doors of a little street opposite Buckingham Palace.
+
+It caught the eye of Jimmy Fort, limping home to his rooms from a very
+late discussion at his Club, and twisted his lean shaven lips into a sort
+of smile.  He was one of those rolling-stone Englishmen, whose early
+lives are spent in all parts of the world, and in all kinds of physical
+conflict--a man like a hickory stick, tall, thin, bolt-upright, knotty,
+hard as nails, with a curved fighting back to his head and a straight
+fighting front to his brown face.  His was the type which becomes, in a
+generation or so, typically Colonial or American; but no one could
+possibly have taken Jimmy Fort for anything but an Englishman.  Though he
+was nearly forty, there was still something of the boy in his face,
+something frank and curly-headed, gallant and full of steam, and his
+small steady grey eyes looked out on life with a sort of combative
+humour.  He was still in uniform, though they had given him up as a bad
+job after keeping him nine months trying to mend a wounded leg which
+would never be sound again; and he was now in the War Office in
+connection with horses, about which he knew.  He did not like it, having
+lived too long with all sorts and conditions of men who were neither
+English nor official, a combination which he found trying.  His life
+indeed, just now, bored him to distraction, and he would ten times rather
+have been back in France.  This was why he found the word "Peace" so
+exceptionally tantalising.
+
+Reaching his rooms, he threw off his tunic, to whose stiff regularity he
+still had a rooted aversion; and, pulling out a pipe, filled it and sat
+down at his window.
+
+Moonshine could not cool the hot town, and it seemed sleeping badly--the
+seven million sleepers in their million homes.  Sound lingered on, never
+quite ceased; the stale odours clung in the narrow street below, though a
+little wind was creeping about to sweeten the air. 'Curse the war!' he
+thought.  'What wouldn't I give to be sleeping out, instead of in this
+damned city!'  They who slept in the open, neglecting morality, would
+certainly have the best of it tonight, for no more dew was falling than
+fell into Jimmy Fort's heart to cool the fret of that ceaseless thought:
+'The war!  The cursed war!' In the unending rows of little grey houses,
+in huge caravanserais, and the mansions of the great, in villas, and high
+slum tenements; in the government offices, and factories, and railway
+stations where they worked all night; in the long hospitals where they
+lay in rows; in the camp prisons of the interned; in bar racks,
+work-houses, palaces--no head, sleeping or waking, would be free of that
+thought: 'The, cursed war!'  A spire caught his eye, rising ghostly over
+the roofs. Ah! churches alone, void of the human soul, would be
+unconscious!  But for the rest, even sleep would not free them!  Here a
+mother would be whispering the name of her boy; there a merchant would
+snore and dream he was drowning, weighted with gold; and a wife would be
+turning to stretch out her arms to-no one; and a wounded soldier wake out
+of a dream trench with sweat on his brow; and a newsvendor in his garret
+mutter hoarsely.  By thousands the bereaved would be tossing, stifling
+their moans; by thousands the ruined would be gazing into the dark
+future; and housewives struggling with sums; and soldiers sleeping like
+logs--for to morrow they died; and children dreaming of them; and
+prostitutes lying in stale wonder at the busyness of their lives; and
+journalists sleeping the sleep of the just.  And over them all, in the
+moonlight that thought 'The cursed war!' flapped its black wings, like an
+old crow!  "If Christ were real," he mused, "He'd reach that moon down,
+and go chalking 'Peace' with it on every door of every house, all over
+Europe.  But Christ's not real, and Hindenburg and Harmsworth are!"  As
+real they were as two great bulls he had once seen in South Africa,
+fighting.  He seemed to hear again the stamp and snort and crash of those
+thick skulls, to see the beasts recoiling and driving at each other, and
+the little red eyes of them.  And pulling a letter out of his pocket, he
+read it again by the light of the moon:
+
+"15, Camelot Mansions, "St.  John's Wood.
+
+"DEAR MR.  FORT, "I came across your Club address to-night, looking at
+some old letters.  Did you know that I was in London?  I left Steenbok
+when my husband died, five years ago.  I've had a simply terrific time
+since. While the German South West campaign was on I was nursing out
+there, but came back about a year ago to lend a hand here.  It would be
+awfully nice to meet you again, if by any chance you are in England. I'm
+working in a V. A. D.  hospital in these parts, but my evenings are
+usually free.  Do you remember that moonlit night at grape harvest?  The
+nights here aren't scented quite like that.  Listerine!  Oh!  This war!
+"With all good remembrances, "LEILA LYNCH."
+
+A terrific time!  If he did not mistake, Leila Lynch had always had a
+terrific time.  And he smiled, seeing again the stoep of an old Dutch
+house at High Constantia, and a woman sitting there under the white
+flowers of a sweet-scented creeper--a pretty woman, with eyes which could
+put a spell on you, a woman he would have got entangled with if he had
+not cut and run for it!  Ten years ago, and here she was again,
+refreshing him out of the past.  He sniffed the fragrance of the little
+letter.  How everybody always managed to work into a letter what they
+were doing in the war!  If he answered her he would be sure to say:
+"Since I got lamed, I've been at the War Office, working on remounts, and
+a dull job it is!"  Leila Lynch!  Women didn't get younger, and he
+suspected her of being older than himself. But he remembered agreeably
+her white shoulders and that turn of her neck when she looked at you with
+those big grey eyes of hers.  Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they
+had crowded much into it as one did in a strange land.  The episode had
+been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of
+bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set foot on which was to let you
+down up to the neck, at least.  Well, there was none of that danger now,
+for her husband was dead-poor chap!  It would be nice, in these dismal
+days, when nobody spent any time whatever except in the service of the
+country, to improve his powers of service by a few hours' recreation in
+her society.  'What humbugs we are!' he thought: 'To read the newspapers
+and the speeches you'd believe everybody thought of nothing but how to
+get killed for the sake of the future.  Drunk on verbiage!  What heads
+and mouths we shall all have when we wake up some fine morning with Peace
+shining in at the window!  Ah!  If only we could; and enjoy ourselves
+again!'  And he gazed at the moon.  She was dipping already, reeling away
+into the dawn.  Water carts and street sweepers had come out into the
+glimmer; sparrows twittered in the eaves.  The city was raising a strange
+unknown face to the grey light, shuttered and deserted as Babylon.  Jimmy
+Fort tapped out his pipe, sighed, and got into bed.
+
+
+2
+
+Coming off duty at that very moment, Leila Lynch decided to have her
+hour's walk before she went home.  She was in charge of two wards, and as
+a rule took the day watches; but some slight upset had given her this
+extra spell.  She was, therefore, at her worst, or perhaps at her best,
+after eighteen hours in hospital.  Her cheeks were pale, and about her
+eyes were little lines, normally in hiding.  There was in this face a
+puzzling blend of the soft and hard, for the eyes, the rather full lips,
+and pale cheeks, were naturally soft; but they were hardened by the
+self-containment which grows on women who have to face life for
+themselves, and, conscious of beauty, intend to keep it, in spite of age.
+Her figure was contradictory, also; its soft modelling a little too
+rigidified by stays.  In this desert of the dawn she let her long blue
+overcoat flap loose, and swung her hat on a finger, so that her
+light-brown, touched-up hair took the morning breeze with fluffy freedom.
+Though she could not see herself, she appreciated her appearance, swaying
+along like that, past lonely trees and houses.  A pity there was no one
+to see her in that round of Regent's Park, which took her the best part
+of an hour, walking in meditation, enjoying the colour coming back into
+the world, as if especially for her.
+
+There was character in Leila Lynch, and she had lived an interesting life
+from a certain point of view.  In her girlhood she had fluttered the
+hearts of many besides Cousin Edward Pierson, and at eighteen had made a
+passionate love match with a good-looking young Indian civilian, named
+Fane.  They had loved each other to a standstill in twelve months.  Then
+had begun five years of petulance, boredom, and growing cynicism, with
+increasing spells of Simla, and voyages home for her health which was
+really harmed by the heat.  All had culminated, of course, in another
+passion for a rifleman called Lynch.  Divorce had followed, remarriage,
+and then the Boer War, in which he had been badly wounded.  She had gone
+out and nursed him back to half his robust health, and, at twenty-eight,
+taken up life with him on an up-country farm in Cape Colony.  This middle
+period had lasted ten years, between the lonely farm and an old Dutch
+house at High Constantia.  Lynch was not a bad fellow, but, like most
+soldiers of the old Army, had been quite carefully divested of an
+aesthetic sense.  And it was Leila's misfortune to have moments when
+aesthetic sense seemed necessary.  She had struggled to overcome this
+weakness, and that other weakness of hers--a liking for men's admiration;
+but there had certainly been intervals when she had not properly
+succeeded.  Her acquaintance with Jimmy Fort had occurred during one of
+these intervals, and when he went back to England so abruptly, she had
+been feeling very tenderly towards him.  She still remembered him with a
+certain pleasure.  Before Lynch died, these "intervals" had been
+interrupted by a spell of returning warmth for the invalided man to whom
+she had joined her life under the romantic conditions of divorce.  He had
+failed, of course, as a farmer, and his death left her with nothing but
+her own settled income of a hundred and fifty pounds a year.  Faced by
+the prospect of having almost to make her living, at thirty-eight, she
+felt but momentary dismay--for she had real pluck.  Like many who have
+played with amateur theatricals, she fancied herself as an actress; but,
+after much effort, found that only her voice and the perfect preservation
+of her legs were appreciated by the discerning managers and public of
+South Africa; and for three chequered years she made face against fortune
+with the help of them, under an assumed name.  What she did--keeping a
+certain bloom of refinement, was far better than the achievements of many
+more respectable ladies in her shoes.  At least she never bemoaned her
+"reduced circumstances," and if her life was irregular and had at least
+three episodes, it was very human.  She bravely took the rough with the
+smooth, never lost the power of enjoying herself, and grew in sympathy
+with the hardships of others. But she became deadly tired.  When the war
+broke out, remembering that she was a good nurse, she took her real name
+again and a change of occupation.  For one who liked to please men, and
+to be pleased by them, there was a certain attraction about that life in
+war-time; and after two years of it she could still appreciate the way
+her Tommies turned their heads to look at her when she passed their beds.
+But in a hard school she had learned perfect self-control; and though the
+sour and puritanical perceived her attraction, they knew her to be
+forty-three.  Besides, the soldiers liked her; and there was little
+trouble in her wards.  The war moved her in simple ways; for she was
+patriotic in the direct fashion of her class.  Her father had been a
+sailor, her husbands an official and a soldier; the issue for her was
+uncomplicated by any abstract meditation.  The Country before everything!
+And though she had tended during those two years so many young wrecked
+bodies, she had taken it as all in the a day's work, lavishing her
+sympathy on the individual, without much general sense of pity and waste.
+Yes, she had worked really hard, had "done her bit"; but of late she had
+felt rising within her the old vague craving for "life," for pleasure,
+for something more than the mere negative admiration bestowed on her by
+her "Tommies."  Those old letters--to look them through them had been a
+sure sign of this vague craving--had sharpened to poignancy the feeling
+that life was slipping away from her while she was still comely.  She had
+been long out of England, and so hard-worked since she came back that
+there were not many threads she could pick up suddenly.  Two letters out
+of that little budget of the past, with a far cry between them, had
+awakened within her certain sentimental longings.
+"DEAR LADY OF THE STARRY FLOWERS,
+
+"Exiturus (sic) to saluto!  The tender carries you this message of
+good-bye.  Simply speaking, I hate leaving South Africa.  And of all my
+memories, the last will live the longest.  Grape harvest at Constantia,
+and you singing: 'If I could be the falling dew: If ever you and your
+husband come to England, do let me know, that I may try and repay a
+little the happiest five days I've spent out here.
+
+"Your very faithful servant,
+"TIMMY FORT."
+
+She remembered a very brown face, a tall slim figure, and something
+gallant about the whole of him.  What was he like after ten years?
+Grizzled, married, with a large family?  An odious thing--Time!  And
+Cousin Edward's little yellow letter.
+
+Good heavens!  Twenty-six years ago--before he was a parson, or married
+or anything!  Such a good partner, really musical; a queer, dear fellow,
+devoted, absentminded, easily shocked, yet with flame burning in him
+somewhere.
+'DEAR LEILA,
+
+"After our last dance I went straight off'--I couldn't go in.  I went
+down to the river, and walked along the bank; it was beautiful, all grey
+and hazy, and the trees whispered, and the cows looked holy; and I walked
+along and thought of you.  And a farmer took me for a lunatic, in my
+dress clothes.  Dear Leila, you were so pretty last night, and I did love
+our dances.  I hope you are not tired, and that I shall see you soon
+again:
+
+"Your affectionate cousin,
+"EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+And then he had gone and become a parson, and married, and been a widower
+fifteen years.  She remembered the death of his wife, just before she
+left for South Africa, at that period of disgrace when she had so shocked
+her family by her divorce.  Poor Edward--quite the nicest of her cousins!
+The only one she would care to see again.  He would be very old and
+terribly good and proper, by now.
+
+Her wheel of Regent's Park was coming full circle, and the sun was up
+behind the houses, but still no sound of traffic stirred.  She stopped
+before a flower-bed where was some heliotrope, and took a long, luxurious
+sniff: She could not resist plucking a sprig, too, and holding it to her
+nose.  A sudden want of love had run through every nerve and fibre of
+her; she shivered, standing there with her eyes half closed, above the
+pale violet blossom.  Then, noting by her wrist-watch that it was four
+o'clock, she hurried on, to get to her bed, for she would have to be on
+duty again at noon.  Oh! the war!  She was tired!  If only it were over,
+and one could live!...
+
+Somewhere by Twickenham the moon had floated down; somewhere up from
+Kentish Town the sun came soaring; wheels rolled again, and the seven
+million sleepers in their million houses woke from morning sleep to that
+same thought....
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Edward Pierson, dreaming over an egg at breakfast, opened a letter in a
+handwriting which he did not recognise.
+
+"V. A. D. Hospital,
+
+"Mulberry Road, St. John's Wood N. W.
+"DEAR COUSIN EDWARD,
+
+"Do you remember me, or have I gone too far into the shades of night?  I
+was Leila Pierson once upon a time, and I often think of you and wonder
+what you are like now, and what your girls are like.  I have been here
+nearly a year, working for our wounded, and for a year before that was
+nursing in South Africa.  My husband died five years ago out there.
+Though we haven't met for I dare not think how long, I should awfully
+like to see you again.  Would you care to come some day and look over my
+hospital?  I have two wards under me; our men are rather dears.
+
+"Your forgotten but still affectionate cousin
+"LEILA LYNCH."
+
+"P. S.  I came across a little letter you once wrote me; it brought back
+old days."
+
+No!  He had not forgotten.  There was a reminder in the house.  And he
+looked up at Noel sitting opposite.  How like the eyes were!  And he
+thought: 'I wonder what Leila has become.  One mustn't be uncharitable.
+That man is dead; she has been nursing two years.  She must be greatly
+changed; I should certainly like to see her.  I will go!'  Again he
+looked at Noel.  Only yesterday she had renewed her request to be allowed
+to begin her training as a nurse.
+
+"I'm going to see a hospital to-day, Nollie," he said; "if you like, I'll
+make enquiries.  I'm afraid it'll mean you have to begin by washing up."
+
+"I know; anything, so long as I do begin."
+
+"Very well; I'll see about it."  And he went back to his egg.
+
+Noel's voice roused him.  "Do you feel the war much, Daddy?  Does it hurt
+you here?"  She had put her hand on her heart.  "Perhaps it doesn't,
+because you live half in the next world, don't you?"
+
+The words: "God forbid," sprang to Pierson's lips; he did not speak them,
+but put his egg-spoon down, hurt and bewildered.  What did the child
+mean?  Not feel the war!  He smiled.
+
+"I hope I'm able to help people sometimes, Nollie," and was conscious
+that he had answered his own thoughts, not her words.  He finished his
+breakfast quickly, and very soon went out.  He crossed the Square, and
+passed East, down two crowded streets to his church.  In the traffic of
+those streets, all slipshod and confused, his black-clothed figure and
+grave face, with its Vandyk beard, had a curious remote appearance, like
+a moving remnant of a past civilisation.  He went in by the side door.
+Only five days he had been away, but they had been so full of emotion
+that the empty familiar building seemed almost strange to him.  He had
+come there unconsciously, groping for anchorage and guidance in this
+sudden change of relationship between him and his daughters.  He stood by
+the pale brazen eagle, staring into the chancel.  The choir were wanting
+new hymn-books--he must not forget to order them!  His eyes sought the
+stained-glass window he had put in to the memory of his wife.  The sun,
+too high to slant, was burnishing its base, till it glowed of a deep
+sherry colour.  "In the next world!"  What strange words of Noel's!  His
+eyes caught the glimmer of the organ-pipes; and, mounting to the loft, he
+began to play soft chords wandering into each other.  He finished, and
+stood gazing down.  This space within high walls, under high vaulted
+roof, where light was toned to a perpetual twilight, broken here and
+there by a little glow of colour from glass and flowers, metal, and dark
+wood, was his home, his charge, his refuge.  Nothing moved down there,
+and yet--was not emptiness mysteriously living, the closed-in air
+imprinted in strange sort, as though the drone of music and voices in
+prayer and praise clung there still?  Had not sanctity a presence?
+Outside, a barrel-organ drove its tune along; a wagon staggered on the
+paved street, and the driver shouted to his horses; some distant guns
+boomed out in practice, and the rolling of wheels on wheels formed a net
+of sound.  But those invading noises were transmuted to a mere murmuring
+in here; only the silence and the twilight were real to Pierson, standing
+there, a little black figure in a great empty space.
+
+When he left the church, it was still rather early to go to Leila's
+hospital; and, having ordered the new hymn-books, he called in at the
+house of a parishioner whose son had been killed in France.  He found her
+in her kitchen; an oldish woman who lived by charing.  She wiped a seat
+for the Vicar.
+
+"I was just makin' meself a cup o' tea, sir."
+
+"Ah!  What a comfort tea is, Mrs. Soles!"  And he sat down, so that she
+should feel "at home."
+
+"Yes; it gives me 'eart-burn; I take eight or ten cups a day, now.  I
+take 'em strong, too.  I don't seem able to get on without it.  I 'ope
+the young ladies are well, sir?"
+
+"Very well, thank you.  Miss Noel is going to begin nursing, too."
+
+"Deary-me!  She's very young; but all the young gells are doin' something
+these days.  I've got a niece in munitions-makin' a pretty penny she is.
+I've been meanin' to tell you--I don't come to church now; since my son
+was killed, I don't seem to 'ave the 'eart to go anywhere--'aven't been
+to a picture-palace these three months.  Any excitement starts me
+cryin'."
+
+"I know; but you'd find rest in church."
+
+Mrs. Soles shook her head, and the small twisted bob of her discoloured
+hair wobbled vaguely.
+
+"I can't take any recreation," she said.  "I'd rather sit 'ere, or be at
+work.  My son was a real son to me.  This tea's the only thing that does
+me any good.  I can make you a fresh cup in a minute."
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Soles, but I must be getting on.  We must all look
+forward to meeting our beloved again, in God's mercy.  And one of these
+days soon I shall be seeing you in church, shan't I."
+
+Mrs. Soles shifted her weight from one slippered foot to the other.
+
+"Well! let's 'ope so," she said.  "But I dunno when I shall 'ave the
+spirit.  Good day, sir, and thank you kindly for calling, I'm sure."
+
+Pierson walked away with a very faint smile.  Poor queer old soul!--she
+was no older than himself, but he thought of her as ancient--cut off from
+her son, like so many--so many; and how good and patient!  The melody of
+an anthem began running in his head.  His fingers moved on the air beside
+him, and he stood still, waiting for an omnibus to take him to St. John's
+Wood.  A thousand people went by while he was waiting, but he did not
+notice them, thinking of that anthem, of his daughters, and the mercy of
+God; and on the top of his 'bus, when it came along, he looked lonely and
+apart, though the man beside him was so fat that there was hardly any
+seat left to sit on. Getting down at Lord's Cricket-ground, he asked his
+way of a lady in a nurse's dress.
+
+"If you'll come with me," she said, "I'm just going there."
+
+"Oh!  Do you happen to know a Mrs. Lynch who nurses"
+
+"I am Mrs. Lynch.  Why, you're Edward Pierson!"
+
+He looked into her face, which he had not yet observed.
+
+"Leila!"  he said.
+
+"Yes, Leila!  How awfully nice of you to come, Edward!"
+
+They continued to stand, searching each for the other's youth, till she
+murmured:
+
+"In spite of your beard, I should have known you anywhere!"  But she
+thought: 'Poor Edward!  He is old, and monk-like!'
+
+And Pierson, in answer, murmured:
+
+"You're very little changed, Leila!  We haven't, seen each other since my
+youngest girl was born.  She's just a little like you."  But he thought:
+'My Nollie!  So much more dewy; poor Leila!'
+
+They walked on, talking of his daughters, till they reached the hospital.
+
+"If you'll wait here a minute, I'll take you over my wards."
+
+She had left him in a bare hall, holding his hat in one hand and touching
+his gold cross with the other; but she soon came hack, and a little
+warmth crept about his heart.  How works of mercy suited women!  She
+looked so different, so much softer, beneath the white coif, with a white
+apron over the bluish frock.
+
+At the change in his face, a little warmth crept about Leila, too, just
+where the bib of her apron stopped; and her eyes slid round at him while
+they went towards what had once been a billiard-room.
+
+"My men are dears," she said; "they love to be talked to."
+
+Under a skylight six beds jutted out from a green distempered wall,
+opposite to six beds jutting out from another green distempered wall, and
+from each bed a face was turned towards them young faces, with but little
+expression in them.  A nurse, at the far end, looked round, and went on
+with her work.  The sight of the ward was no more new to Pierson than to
+anyone else in these days.  It was so familiar, indeed, that it had
+practically no significance.  He stood by the first bed, and Leila stood
+alongside.  The man smiled up when she spoke, and did not smile when he
+spoke, and that again was familiar to him.  They passed from bed to bed,
+with exactly the same result, till she was called away, and he sat down
+by a young soldier with a long, very narrow head and face, and a heavily
+bandaged shoulder. Touching the bandage reverently, Pierson said:
+
+"Well, my dear fellow-still bad?"
+
+"Ah!" replied the soldier.  "Shrapnel wound: It's cut the flesh
+properly."
+
+"But not the spirit, I can see!"
+
+The young soldier gave him a quaint look, as much as to say: "Not 'arf
+bad!"  and a gramophone close to the last bed began to play: "God bless
+Daddy at the war!"
+
+"Are you fond of music?"
+
+"I like it well enough.  Passes the time."
+
+"I'm afraid the time hangs heavy in hospital."
+
+"Yes; it hangs a bit 'eavy; it's just 'orspital life.  I've been wounded
+before, you see.  It's better than bein' out there.  I expect I'll lose
+the proper use o' this arm.  I don't worry; I'll get my discharge."
+
+"You've got some good nurses here."
+
+"Yes; I like Mrs. Lynch; she's the lady I like."
+
+"My cousin."
+
+"I see you come in together.  I see everything 'ere.  I think a lot, too.
+Passes the time."
+
+"Do they let you smoke?"
+
+"Oh, yes!  They let us smoke."
+
+"Have one of mine?"
+
+The young soldier smiled for the first time.  "Thank you; I've got
+plenty."
+
+The nurse came by, and smiled at Pierson.
+
+"He's one of our blase ones; been in before, haven't you, Simson?"
+
+Pierson looked at the young man, whose long, narrow face; where one
+sandy-lashed eyelid drooped just a little, seemed armoured with a sort of
+limited omniscience.  The gramophone had whirred and grunted into "Sidi
+Brahim."  The nurse passed on.
+
+"'Seedy Abram,'" said the young soldier.  "The Frenchies sing it; they
+takes it up one after the other, ye know."
+
+"Ah!"  murmured Pierson; "it's pretty."  And his fingers drummed on the
+counterpane, for the tune was new to him.  Something seemed to move in
+the young man's face, as if a blind had been drawn up a little.
+
+"I don't mind France," he said abruptly; "I don't mind the shells and
+that; but I can't stick the mud.  There's a lot o' wounded die in the
+mud; can't get up--smothered."  His unwounded arm made a restless
+movement.  "I was nearly smothered myself.  Just managed to keep me nose
+up."
+
+Pierson shuddered.  "Thank God you did!"
+
+"Yes; I didn't like that.  I told Mrs. Lynch about that one day when I
+had the fever.  She's a nice lady; she's seen a lot of us boys: That
+mud's not right, you know."  And again his unwounded arm made that
+restless movement; while the gramophone struck up: "The boys in brown."
+The movement of the arm affected Pierson horribly; he rose and, touching
+the bandaged shoulder, said:
+
+"Good-bye; I hope you'll soon be quite recovered."
+
+The young soldier's lips twisted in the semblance of a smile; his drooped
+eyelid seemed to try and raise itself.
+
+"Good day, sir," he said; "and thank you."
+
+Pierson went back to the hall.  The sunlight fell in a pool just inside
+the open door, and an uncontrollable impulse made him move into it, so
+that it warmed him up to the waist.  The mud!  How ugly life was!  Life
+and Death!  Both ugly!  Poor boys!  Poor boys!
+
+A voice behind him said:
+
+"Oh!  There you are, Edward!  Would you like to see the other ward, or
+shall I show you our kitchen?"
+
+Pierson took her hand impulsively.  "You're doing a noble work, Leila.  I
+wanted to ask you: Could you arrange for Noel to come and get trained
+here?  She wants to begin at once.  The fact is, a boy she is attracted
+to has just gone out to the Front."
+
+"Ah!"  murmured Leila, and her eyes looked very soft.  "Poor child!  We
+shall be wanting an extra hand next week.  I'll see if she could come
+now.  I'll speak to our Matron, and let you know to-night."  She squeezed
+his hand hard.
+
+"Dear Edward, I'm so glad to see you again.  You're the first of our
+family I've seen for sixteen years.  I wonder if you'd bring Noel to have
+supper at my flat to-night--Just nothing to eat, you know!  It's a tiny
+place.  There's a Captain Fort coming; a nice man."
+
+Pierson accepted, and as he walked away he thought: 'Dear Leila!  I
+believe it was Providence.  She wants sympathy.  She wants to feel the
+past is the past.  How good women are!'
+
+And the sun, blazing suddenly out of a cloud, shone on his black figure
+and the little gold cross, in the middle of Portland Place.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Men, even if they are not artistic, who have been in strange places and
+known many nooks of the world, get the scenic habit, become open to
+pictorial sensation.  It was as a picture or series of pictures that
+Jimmy Fort ever afterwards remembered his first supper at Leila's.  He
+happened to have been all day in the open, motoring about to horse farms
+under a hot sun; and Leila's hock cup possessed a bland and subtle
+strength.  The scenic sense derived therefrom had a certain poignancy,
+the more so because the tall child whom he met there did not drink it,
+and her father seemed but to wet his lips, so that Leila and he had all
+the rest.  Rather a wonderful little scene it made in his mind, very
+warm, glowing, yet with a strange dark sharpness to it, which came
+perhaps from the black walls.
+
+The flat had belonged to an artist who was at the war.  It was but a
+pocket dwelling on the third floor.  The two windows of the little square
+sitting-room looked out on some trees and a church.  But Leila, who hated
+dining by daylight, had soon drawn curtains of a deep blue over them.
+The picture which Fort remembered was this: A little four-square table of
+dark wood, with a Chinese mat of vivid blue in the centre, whereon stood
+a silver lustre bowl of clove carnations; some greenish glasses with hock
+cup in them; on his left, Leila in a low lilac frock, her neck and
+shoulders very white, her face a little powdered, her eyes large, her
+lips smiling; opposite him a black-clothed padre with a little gold
+cross, over whose thin darkish face, with its grave pointed beard, passed
+little gentle smiles, but whose deep sunk grey eyes were burnt and
+bright; on his right, a girl in a high grey frock, almost white, just
+hollowed at the neck, with full sleeves to the elbow, so that her slim
+arms escaped; her short fair hair a little tumbled; her big grey eyes
+grave; her full lips shaping with a strange daintiness round every
+word--and they not many; brilliant red shades over golden lights dotting
+the black walls; a blue divan; a little black piano flush with the wall;
+a dark polished floor; four Japanese prints; a white ceiling.  He was
+conscious that his own khaki spoiled something as curious and rare as
+some old Chinese tea-chest.  He even remembered what they ate; lobster;
+cold pigeon pie; asparagus; St. Ivel cheese; raspberries and cream.  He
+did not remember half so well what they talked of, except that he himself
+told them stories of the Boer War, in which he had served in the
+Yeomanry, and while he was telling them, the girl, like a child listening
+to a fairy-tale, never moved her eyes from his face.  He remembered that
+after supper they all smoked cigarettes, even the tall child, after the
+padre had said to her mildly, "My dear!" and she had answered: "I simply
+must, Daddy, just one."  He remembered Leila brewing Turkish coffee--very
+good, and how beautiful her white arms looked, hovering about the cups.
+He remembered her making the padre sit down at the piano, and play to
+them.  And she and the girl on the divan together, side by side, a
+strange contrast; with just as strange a likeness to each other.  He
+always remembered how fine and rare that music sounded in the little
+room, flooding him with a dreamy beatitude.  Then--he remembered--Leila
+sang, the padre standing-by; and the tall child on the divan bending
+forward over her knees, with her chin on her hands.  He remembered rather
+vividly how Leila turned her neck and looked up, now at the padre, now at
+himself; and, all through, the delightful sense of colour and warmth, a
+sort of glamour over all the evening; and the lingering pressure of
+Leila's hand when he said good-bye and they went away, for they all went
+together.  He remembered talking a great deal to the padre in the cab,
+about the public school they had both been at, and thinking: 'It's a good
+padre--this!'  He remembered how their taxi took them to an old Square
+which he did not know, where the garden trees looked densely black in the
+starshine.  He remembered that a man outside the house had engaged the
+padre in earnest talk, while the tall child and himself stood in the open
+doorway, where the hall beyond was dark.  Very exactly he remembered the
+little conversation which then took place between them, while they waited
+for her father.
+
+"Is it very horrid in the trenches, Captain Fort?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Pierson; it is very horrid, as a rule."
+
+"Is it dangerous all the time?"
+
+"Pretty well."
+
+"Do officers run more risks than the men?"
+
+"Not unless there's an attack."
+
+"Are there attacks very often?"
+
+It had seemed to him so strangely primitive a little catechism, that he
+had smiled.  And, though it was so dark, she had seen that smile, for her
+face went proud and close all of a sudden.  He had cursed himself, and
+said gently:
+
+"Have you a brother out there?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"But someone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Someone!  He had heard that answer with a little shock.  This child--this
+fairy princess of a child already to have someone!  He wondered if she
+went about asking everyone these questions, with that someone in her
+thoughts.  Poor child!  And quickly he said:
+
+"After all, look at me!  I was out there a year, and here I am with only
+half a game leg; times were a lot worse, then, too.  I often wish I were
+back there.  Anything's better than London and the War Office."  But just
+then he saw the padre coming, and took her hand. "Good night, Miss
+Pierson.  Don't worry.  That does no good, and there isn't half the risk
+you think."
+
+Her hand stirred, squeezed his gratefully, as a child's would squeeze.
+
+"Good night," she murmured; "thank you awfully."
+
+And, in the dark cab again, he remembered thinking: 'Fancy that child!  A
+jolly lucky boy, out there!  Too bad!  Poor little fairy princess!'
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+I
+
+1
+
+To wash up is not an exciting operation.  To wash up in August became for
+Noel a process which taxed her strength and enthusiasm.  She combined it
+with other forms of instruction in the art of nursing, had very little
+leisure, and in the evenings at home would often fall asleep curled up in
+a large chintz-covered chair.
+
+George and Gratian had long gone back to their respective hospitals, and
+she and her father had the house to themselves.  She received many
+letters from Cyril which she carried about with her and read on her way
+to and from the hospital; and every other day she wrote to him.  He was
+not yet in the firing line; his letters were descriptive of his men, his
+food, or the natives, or reminiscent of Kestrel; hers descriptive of
+washing up, or reminiscent of Kestrel.  But in both there was always some
+little word of the longing within them.
+
+It was towards the end of August when she had the letter which said that
+he had been moved up.  From now on he would be in hourly danger!  That
+evening after dinner she did not go to sleep in the chair, but sat under
+the open window, clenching her hands, and reading "Pride and Prejudice"
+without understanding a word.  While she was so engaged her father came
+up and said:
+
+"Captain Fort, Nollie.  Will you give him some coffee?  I'm afraid I must
+go out."
+
+When he had gone, Noel looked at her visitor drinking his coffee.  He had
+been out there, too, and he was alive; with only a little limp. The
+visitor smiled and said:
+
+"What were you thinking about when we came in?"
+
+"Only the war."
+
+"Any news of him?"
+
+Noel frowned, she hated to show her feelings.
+
+"Yes! he's gone to the Front.  Won't you have a cigarette?"
+
+"Thanks.  Will you?"
+
+"I want one awfully.  I think sitting still and waiting is more dreadful
+than anything in the world."
+
+"Except, knowing that others are waiting.  When I was out there I used to
+worry horribly over my mother.  She was ill at the time.  The cruelest
+thing in war is the anxiety of people about each other--nothing touches
+that."
+
+The words exactly summed up Noel's hourly thought.  He said nice things,
+this man with the long legs and the thin brown bumpy face!
+
+"I wish I were a man," she said, "I think women have much the worst time
+in the war.  Is your mother old?"  But of course she was old why he was
+old himself!
+
+"She died last Christmas."
+
+"Oh!  I'm so sorry!"
+
+"You lost your mother when you were a babe, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes.  That's her portrait."  At the end of the room, hanging on a strip
+of black velvet was a pastel, very faint in colouring, as though faded,
+of a young woman, with an eager, sweet face, dark eyes, and bent a little
+forward, as if questioning her painter.  Fort went up to it.
+
+"It's not a bit like you.  But she must have been a very sweet woman."
+
+"It's a sort of presence in the room.  I wish I were like her!"
+
+Fort turned.  "No," he said; "no.  Better as you are.  It would only have
+spoiled a complete thing."
+
+"She was good."
+
+"And aren't you?"
+
+"Oh! no.  I get a devil."
+
+"You!  Why, you're out of a fairy-tale!"
+
+"It comes from Daddy--only he doesn't know, because he's a perfect saint;
+but I know he's had a devil somewhere, or he couldn't be the saint he
+is."
+
+"H'm!" said Fort.  "That's very deep: and I believe it's true--the saints
+did have devils."
+
+"Poor Daddy's devil has been dead ages.  It's been starved out of him, I
+think."
+
+"Does your devil ever get away with you?"
+
+Noel felt her cheeks growing red under his stare, and she turned to the
+window:
+
+"Yes.  It's a real devil."
+
+Vividly there had come before her the dark Abbey, and the moon balancing
+over the top of the crumbling wall, and the white owl flying across.
+And, speaking to the air, she said:
+
+"It makes you do things that you want to do."
+
+She wondered if he would laugh--it sounded so silly.  But he did not.
+
+"And damn the consequences?  I know.  It's rather a jolly thing to have."
+
+Noel shook her head.  "Here's Daddy coming back!"
+
+Fort held out his hand.
+
+"I won't stay.  Good night; and don't worry too much, will you?"
+
+He kept her hand rather a long time, and gave it a hard squeeze.
+
+Don't worry!  What advice!  Ah! if she could see Cyril just for a minute!
+
+
+2
+
+In September, 1916, Saturday still came before Sunday, in spite of the
+war.  For Edward Pierson this Saturday had been a strenuous day, and even
+now, at nearly midnight, he was still conning his just-completed sermon.
+
+A patriot of patriots, he had often a passionate longing to resign his
+parish, and go like his curate for a chaplain at the Front.  It seemed to
+him that people must think his life idle and sheltered and useless.  Even
+in times of peace he had been sensitive enough to feel the cold draughty
+blasts which the Church encounters in a material age.  He knew that nine
+people out of ten looked on him as something of a parasite, with no real
+work in the world.  And since he was nothing if not conscientious, he
+always worked himself to the bone.
+
+To-day he had risen at half-past six, and after his bath and exercises,
+had sat down to his sermon--for, even now, he wrote a new sermon once a
+month, though he had the fruits of twenty-six years to choose from.
+True, these new sermons were rather compiled than written, because,
+bereft of his curate, he had not time enough for fresh thought on old
+subjects.  At eight he had breakfasted with Noel, before she went off to
+her hospital, whence she would return at eight in the evening.  Nine to
+ten was his hour for seeing parishioners who had troubles, or wanted help
+or advice, and he had received three to-day who all wanted help, which he
+had given.  From ten to eleven he had gone back to his sermon, and had
+spent from eleven to one at his church, attending to small matters,
+writing notices, fixing hymns, holding the daily half-hour Service
+instituted during wartime, to which but few ever came.  He had hurried
+back to lunch, scamping it so that he might get to his piano for an hour
+of forgetfulness.  At three he had christened a very noisy baby, and been
+detained by its parents who wished for information on a variety of
+topics.  At half-past four he had snatched a cup of tea, reading the
+paper; and had spent from five to seven visiting two Parish Clubs, and
+those whose war-pension matters he had in hand, and filling up forms
+which would be kept in official places till such time as the system
+should be changed and a fresh set of forms issued. From seven to eight he
+was at home again, in case his flock wanted to see him; to-day four sheep
+had come, and gone away, he was afraid, but little the wiser.  From
+half-past eight to half-past nine he had spent in choir practice, because
+the organist was on his holiday. Slowly in the cool of the evening he had
+walked home, and fallen asleep in his chair on getting in.  At eleven he
+had woken with a start, and, hardening his heart, had gone back to his
+sermon.  And now, at nearly midnight, it was still less than twenty
+minutes long. He lighted one of his rare cigarettes, and let thought
+wander.  How beautiful those pale pink roses were in that old silver
+bowl-like a little strange poem, or a piece of Debussy music, or a
+Mathieu Maris picture-reminding him oddly of the word Leila.  Was he
+wrong in letting Noel see so much of Leila?  But then she was so
+improved--dear Leila!...  The pink roses were just going to fall!  And
+yet how beautiful!...  It was quiet to-night; he felt very drowsy....
+Did Nollie still think of that young man, or had it passed?  She had
+never confided in him since!  After the war, it would be nice to take her
+to Italy, to all the little towns.  They would see the Assisi of St.
+Francis.  The Little Flowers of St. Francis.  The Little Flowers!...  His
+hand dropped, the cigarette went out.  He slept with his face in shadow.
+Slowly into the silence of his sleep little sinister sounds intruded.
+Short concussions, dragging him back out of that deep slumber.  He
+started up.  Noel was standing at the door, in a long coat.  She said in
+her calm voice:
+
+"Zeps, Daddy!"
+
+"Yes, my dear.  Where are the maids?"
+
+An Irish voice answered from the hall: "Here, sir; trustin' in God; but
+'tis better on the ground floor."
+
+He saw a huddle of three figures, queerly costumed, against the stairs.
+
+"Yes, Yes, Bridgie; you're safe down here."  Then he noticed that Noel
+was gone.  He followed her out into the Square, alive with faces faintly
+luminous in the darkness, and found her against the garden railings.
+
+"You must come back in, Nollie."
+
+"Oh, no!  Cyril has this every day."
+
+He stood beside her; not loth, for excitement had begun to stir his
+blood.  They stayed there for some minutes, straining their eyes for
+sight of anything save the little zagged splashes of bursting shrapnel,
+while voices buzzed, and muttered: "Look!  There!  There!  There it is!"
+
+But the seers had eyes of greater faith than Pierson's, for he saw
+nothing: He took her arm at last, and led her in.  In the hall she broke
+from him.
+
+"Let's go up on the roof, Daddy!" and ran upstairs.
+
+Again he followed, mounting by a ladder, through a trapdoor on to the
+roof.
+
+"It's splendid up here!" she cried.
+
+He could see her eyes blazing, and thought: 'How my child does love
+excitement--it's almost terrible!'
+
+Over the wide, dark, star-strewn sky travelling searchlights, were
+lighting up the few little clouds; the domes and spires rose from among
+the spread-out roofs, all fine and ghostly.  The guns had ceased firing,
+as though puzzled.  One distant bang rumbled out.
+
+"A bomb!  Oh!  If we could only get one of the Zeps!"
+
+A furious outburst of firing followed, lasting perhaps a minute, then
+ceased as if by magic.  They saw two searchlights converge and meet right
+overhead.
+
+"It's above us!" murmured Noel.
+
+Pierson put his arm round her waist.  'She feels no fear!' he thought.
+The search-lights switched apart; and suddenly, from far away, came a
+confusion of weird sounds.
+
+"What is it?  They're cheering.  Oh!  Daddy, look!" There in the heavens,
+towards the east, hung a dull red thing, lengthening as they gazed.
+
+"They've got it.  It's on fire!  Hurrah!"
+
+Through the dark firmament that fiery orange shape began canting
+downward; and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy of sound.  And
+Pierson's arm tightened on her waist.
+
+"Thank God!" he muttered.
+
+The bright oblong seemed to break and spread, tilted down below the level
+of the roofs; and suddenly the heavens flared, as if some huge jug of
+crimson light had been flung out on them.  Something turned over in
+Pierson's heart; he flung up his hand to his eyes.
+
+"The poor men in it!"  he said.  "How terrible!"
+
+Noel's voice answered, hard and pitiless:
+
+"They needn't have come.  They're murderers!"
+
+Yes, they were murderers--but how terrible!  And he stood quivering, with
+his hands pressed to his face, till the cheering had died out into
+silence.
+
+"Let's pray, Nollie!"  he whispered.  "O God, Who in Thy great mercy hath
+delivered us from peril, take into Thy keeping the souls of these our
+enemies, consumed by Thy wrath before our eyes; give us the power to pity
+them--men like ourselves."
+
+But even while he prayed he could see Noel's face flame-white in the
+darkness; and, as that glow in the sky faded out, he felt once more the
+thrill of triumph.
+
+They went down to tell the maids, and for some time after sat up
+together, talking over what they had seen, eating biscuits and drinking
+milk, which they warmed on an etna.  It was nearly two o'clock before
+they went to bed.  Pierson fell asleep at once, and never turned till
+awakened at half-past six by his alarum.  He had Holy Communion to
+administer at eight, and he hurried to get early to his church and see
+that nothing untoward had happened to it.  There it stood in the
+sunlight; tall, grey, quiet, unharmed, with bell gently ringing.
+
+
+3
+
+And at that hour Cyril Morland, under the parapet of his trench,
+tightening his belt, was looking at his wrist-watch for the hundredth
+time, calculating exactly where he meant to put foot and hand for the
+going over: 'I absolutely mustn't let those chaps get in front of me,' he
+thought.  So many yards before the first line of trenches, so many yards
+to the second line, and there stop.  So his rehearsals had gone; it was
+the performance now!  Another minute before the terrific racket of the
+drum-fire should become the curtain-fire, which would advance before
+them.  He ran his eye down the trench.  The man next him was licking his
+two first fingers, as if he might be going to bowl at cricket.  Further
+down, a man was feeling his puttees.  A voice said: "Wot price the
+orchestra nah!"  He saw teeth gleam in faces burnt almost black.  Then he
+looked up; the sky was blue beyond the brownish film of dust raised by
+the striking shells.  Noel!  Noel!  Noel!...  He dug his fingers deep
+into the left side of his tunic till he could feel the outline of her
+photograph between his dispatch-case and his heart.  His heart fluttered
+just as it used when he was stretched out with hand touching the ground,
+before the start of the "hundred yards" at school.  Out of the corner of
+his eye he caught the flash of a man's "briquet" lighting a cigarette.
+All right for those chaps, but not for him; he wanted all his
+breath--this rifle, and kit were handicap enough!  Two days ago he had
+been reading in some paper how men felt just before an attack.  And now
+he knew.  He just felt nervous.  If only the moment would come, and get
+itself over!  For all the thought he gave to the enemy there might have
+been none--nothing but shells and bullets, with lives of their own.  He
+heard the whistle; his foot was on the spot he had marked down; his hand
+where he had seen it; he called out: "Now, boys!"  His head was over the
+top, his body over; he was conscious of someone falling, and two men neck
+and neck beside him.  Not to try and run, not to break out of a walk; to
+go steady, and yet keep ahead!  D--n these holes!  A bullet tore through
+his sleeve, grazing his arm--a red-hot sensation, like the touch of an
+iron.  A British shell from close over his head burst sixty yards ahead;
+he stumbled, fell flat, picked himself up.  Three ahead of him now!  He
+walked faster, and drew alongside.  Two of them fell.  'What luck!' he
+thought; and gripping his rifle harder, pitched headlong into a
+declivity.  Dead bodies lay there!  The first German trench line, and
+nothing alive in it, nothing to clean up, nothing of it left!  He
+stopped, getting his wind; watching the men panting and stumbling in.
+The roar of the guns was louder than ever again, barraging the second
+line.  So far, good!  And here was his captain!
+
+"Ready, boys?  On, then!"
+
+This time he moved more slowly still, over terrible going, all holes and
+hummocks.  Half consciously he took cover all he could.  The air was
+alive with the whistle from machine-gun fire storming across zigzag
+fashion-alive it was with bullets, dust, and smoke.  'How shall I tell
+her?' he thought.  There would be nothing to tell but just a sort of
+jagged brown sensation.  He kept his eyes steadily before him, not
+wanting to seethe men falling, not wanting anything to divert him from
+getting there.  He felt the faint fanning of the passing bullets.  The
+second line must be close now.  Why didn't that barrage lift?  Was this
+new dodge of firing till the last second going to do them in?  Another
+hundred yards and he would be bang into it.  He flung himself flat and
+waited; looking at his wrist-watch he noted that his arm was soaked with
+blood.  He thought: 'A wound!  Now I shall go home.  Thank God!  Oh,
+Noel!' The passing bullets whirled above him; he could hear them even
+through the screech and thunder of the shell-fire.  'The beastly things!'
+he thought: A voice beside him gasped out:
+
+"It's lifted, sir."
+
+He called: "Come on, boys!" and went forward, stooping.  A bullet struck
+his rifle.  The shock made him stagger and sent an electric shock
+spinning up his arm.  'Luck again!' he thought.  'Now for it!  I haven't
+seen a German yet!' He leaped forward, spun round, flung up his arms, and
+fell on his back, shot through and through....
+
+The position was consolidated, as they say, and in the darkness
+stretcher-bearers were out over the half-mile.  Like will-o'-the-wisps,
+with their shaded lanterns, they moved, hour after hour, slowly
+quartering the black honeycomb which lay behind the new British line.
+Now and then in the light of some star-shell their figures were
+disclosed, bending and raising the forms of the wounded, or wielding pick
+and shovel.
+
+"Officer."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Search."
+
+From the shaded lantern, lowered to just above the body, a yellowish
+glare fell on face and breast.  The hands of the searcher moved in that
+little pool of light.  The bearer who was taking notes bent down.
+
+"Another boy," he said.  "That all he has?"
+
+The searcher raised himself.
+
+"Just those, and a photo."
+
+"Dispatch-case; pound loose; cigarette-case; wristwatch; photo. Let's see
+it."
+
+The searcher placed the photo in the pool of light.  The tiny face of a
+girl stared up at them, unmoved, from its short hair.
+
+"Noel," said the searcher, reading.
+
+"H'm!  Take care of it.  Stick it in his case.  Come on!"
+
+The pool of light dissolved, and darkness for ever covered Cyril Morland.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+When those four took their seats in the Grand Circle at Queen's Hall the
+programme was already at the second number, which, in spite of all the
+efforts of patriotism, was of German origin--a Brandenburg concerto by
+Bach.  More curious still, it was encored.  Pierson did not applaud, he
+was too far gone in pleasure, and sat with a rapt smile on his face,
+oblivious of his surroundings.  He remained thus removed from mortal joys
+and sorrows till the last applause had died away, and Leila's voice said
+in his ear:
+
+"Isn't it a wonderful audience, Edward?  Look at all that khaki. Who'd
+have thought those young men cared for music--good music--German music,
+too?"
+
+Pierson looked down at the patient mass of standing figures in straw hats
+and military caps, with faces turned all one way, and sighed.
+
+"I wish I could get an audience like that in my church."
+
+A smile crept out at the corner of Leila's lips.  She was thinking: 'Ah!
+Your Church is out of date, my dear, and so are you!  Your Church, with
+its smell of mould and incense, its stained-glass, and narrowed length
+and droning organ.  Poor Edward, so out of the world!'  But she only
+pressed his arm, and whispered:
+
+"Look at Noel!"
+
+The girl was talking to Jimmy Fort.  Her cheeks were gushed, and she
+looked prettier than Pierson had seen her look for a long time now, ever
+since Kestrel, indeed.  He heard Leila sigh.
+
+"Does she get news of her boy?  Do you remember that May Week, Edward?
+We were very young then; even you were young.  That was such a pretty
+little letter you wrote me.  I can see you still-wandering in your dress
+clothes along the river, among the 'holy' cows."
+
+But her eyes slid round again, watching her other neighbour and the girl.
+A violinist had begun to play the Cesar Franck Sonata.  It was Pierson's
+favourite piece of music, bringing him, as it were, a view of heaven, of
+devotional blue air where devout stars were shining in a sunlit noon,
+above ecstatic trees and waters where ecstatic swans were swimming.
+
+"Queer world, Mr. Pierson!  Fancy those boys having to go back to barrack
+life after listening to that!  What's your feeling?  Are we moving back
+to the apes?  Did we touch top note with that Sonata?"
+
+Pierson turned and contemplated his questioner shrewdly.
+
+"No, Captain Fort, I do not think we are moving back to the apes; if we
+ever came from them.  Those boys have the souls of heroes!"
+
+"I know that, sir, perhaps better than you do."
+
+"Ah! yes," said Pierson humbly, "I forgot, of course."  But he still
+looked at his neighbour doubtfully.  This Captain Fort, who was a friend
+of Leila's, and who had twice been to see them, puzzled him. He had a
+frank face, a frank voice, but queer opinions, or so it seemed to,
+Pierson--little bits of Moslemism, little bits of the backwoods, and the
+veldt; queer unexpected cynicisms, all sorts of side views on England had
+lodged in him, and he did not hide them. They came from him like bullets,
+in that frank voice, and drilled little holes in the listener.  Those
+critical sayings flew so much more poignantly from one who had been
+through the same educational mill as himself, than if they had merely
+come from some rough diamond, some artist, some foreigner, even from a
+doctor like George. And they always made him uncomfortable, like the
+touch of a prickly leaf; they did not amuse him.  Certainly Edward
+Pierson shrank from the rough touches of a knock-about philosophy.  After
+all, it was but natural that he should.
+
+He and Noel left after the first part of the concert, parting from the
+other two at the door.  He slipped his hand through her arm; and,
+following out those thoughts of his in the concert-hall, asked:
+
+"Do you like Captain Fort, Nollie?"
+
+"Yes; he's a nice man."
+
+"He seems a nice man, certainly; he has a nice smile, but strange views,
+I'm afraid."
+
+"He thinks the Germans are not much worse than we are; he says that a
+good many of us are bullies too."
+
+"Yes, that is the sort of thing I mean."
+
+"But are we, Daddy?"
+
+"Surely not."
+
+"A policeman I talked to once said the same.  Captain Fort says that very
+few men can stand having power put into their hands without being
+spoiled.  He told me some dreadful stories.  He says we have no
+imagination, so that we often do things without seeing how brutal they
+are."
+
+"We're not perfect, Nollie; but on the whole I think we're a kind
+people."
+
+Noel was silent a moment, then said suddenly:
+
+"Kind people often think others are kind too, when they really aren't.
+Captain Fort doesn't make that mistake."
+
+"I think he's a little cynical, and a little dangerous."
+
+"Are all people dangerous who don't think like others, Daddy?"
+
+Pierson, incapable of mockery, was not incapable of seeing when he was
+being mocked.  He looked at his daughter with a smile.
+
+"Not quite so bad as that, Nollie; but Mr. Fort is certainly subversive.
+I think perhaps he has seen too many queer sides of life."
+
+"I like him the better for that."
+
+"Well, well," Pierson answered absently.  He had work to do in
+preparation for a Confirmation Class, and sought his study on getting in.
+
+Noel went to the dining-room to drink her hot milk.  The curtains were
+not drawn, and bright moonlight was coming in.  Without lighting up, she
+set the etna going, and stood looking at the moon-full for the second
+time since she and Cyril had waited for it in the Abbey. And pressing her
+hands to her breast, she shivered.  If only she could summon him from the
+moonlight out there; if only she were a witch-could see him, know where
+he was, what doing!  For a fortnight now she had received no letter.
+Every day since he had left she had read the casualty lists, with the
+superstitious feeling that to do so would keep him out of them.  She took
+up the Times.  There was just enough light, and she read the roll of
+honour--till the moon shone in on her, lying on the floor, with the
+dropped journal....
+
+But she was proud, and soon took grief to her room, as on that night
+after he left her, she had taken love.  No sign betrayed to the house her
+disaster; the journal on the floor, and the smell of the burnt milk which
+had boiled over, revealed nothing.  After all, she was but one of a
+thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony. Each night, year
+in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in pillows to smother that
+first awful sense of desolation, and grope for the secret spirit-place
+where bereaved souls go, to receive some feeble touch of healing from
+knowledge of each other's trouble....
+
+In the morning she got up from her sleepless bed, seemed to eat her
+breakfast, and went off to her hospital.  There she washed up plates and
+dishes, with a stony face, dark under the eyes.
+
+The news came to Pierson in a letter from Thirza, received at lunch-time.
+He read it with a dreadful aching.  Poor, poor little Nollie!  What an
+awful trouble for her!  And he, too, went about his work with the
+nightmare thought that he had to break the news to her that evening.
+Never had he felt more lonely, more dreadfully in want of the mother of
+his children.  She would have known how to soothe, how to comfort.  On
+her heart the child could have sobbed away grief. And all that hour, from
+seven to eight, when he was usually in readiness to fulfil the functions
+of God's substitute to his parishioners, he spent in prayer of his own,
+for guidance how to inflict and heal this blow.  When, at last, Noel
+came, he opened. the door to her himself, and, putting back the hair from
+her forehead, said: "Come in here a moment, my darling!"  Noel followed
+him into the study, and sat down.  "I know already, Daddy."  Pierson was
+more dismayed by this stoicism than he would have been by any natural out
+burst.  He stood, timidly stroking her hair, murmuring to her what he had
+said to Gratian, and to so many others in these days: "There is no death;
+look forward to seeing him again; God is merciful"  And he marvelled at
+the calmness of that pale face--so young.
+
+"You are very brave, my child!"  he said.
+
+"There's nothing else to be, is there?"
+
+"Isn't there anything I can do for you, Nollie?"
+
+"No, Daddy."
+
+"When did you see it?"
+
+"Last night."  She had already known for twenty-four hours without
+telling him!
+
+"Have you prayed, my darling?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Try, Nollie!"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah, try!"
+
+"It would be ridiculous, Daddy; you don't know."
+
+Grievously upset and bewildered, Pierson moved away from her, and said:
+
+"You look dreadfully tired.  Would you like a hot bath, and your dinner
+in bed?"
+
+"I'd like some tea; that's all."  And she went out.
+
+When he had seen that the tea had gone up to her, he too went out; and,
+moved by a longing for woman's help, took a cab to Leila's flat.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+On leaving the concert Leila and Jimmy Fort had secured a taxi; a vehicle
+which, at night, in wartime, has certain advantages for those who desire
+to become better acquainted.  Vibration, sufficient noise, darkness, are
+guaranteed; and all that is lacking for the furtherance of emotion is the
+scent of honeysuckle and roses, or even of the white flowering creeper
+which on the stoep at High Constantia had smelled so much sweeter than
+petrol.
+
+When Leila found herself with Fort in that loneliness to which she had
+been looking forward, she was overcome by an access of nervous silence.
+She had been passing through a strange time for weeks past. Every night
+she examined her sensations without quite understanding them as yet.
+When a woman comes to her age, the world-force is liable to take
+possession, saying:
+
+"You were young, you were beautiful, you still have beauty, you are not,
+cannot be, old.  Cling to youth, cling to beauty; take all you can get,
+before your face gets lines and your hair grey; it is impossible that you
+have been loved for the last time."
+
+To see Jimmy Fort at the concert, talking to Noel, had brought this
+emotion to a head.  She was not of a grudging nature, and could genuinely
+admire Noel, but the idea that Jimmy Fort might also admire disturbed her
+greatly.  He must not; it was not fair; he was too old--besides, the girl
+had her boy; and she had taken care that he should know it.  So, leaning
+towards him, while a bare-shouldered young lady sang, she had whispered:
+
+"Penny?"
+
+And he had whispered back:
+
+"Tell you afterwards."
+
+That had comforted her.  She would make him take her home.  It was time
+she showed her heart.
+
+And now, in the cab, resolved to make her feelings known, in sudden
+shyness she found it very difficult.  Love, to which for quite three
+years she had been a stranger, was come to life within her.  The
+knowledge was at once so sweet, and so disturbing, that she sat with face
+averted, unable to turn the precious minutes to account.  They arrived at
+the flat without having done more than agree that the streets were dark,
+and the moon bright.  She got out with a sense of bewilderment, and said
+rather desperately:
+
+"You must come up and have a cigarette.  It's quite early, still."
+
+He went up.
+
+"Wait just a minute," said Leila.
+
+Sitting there with his drink and his cigarette, he stared at some
+sunflowers in a bowl--Famille Rose--and waited just ten; smiling a
+little, recalling the nose of the fairy princess, and the dainty way her
+lips shaped the words she spoke.  If she had not had that lucky young
+devil of a soldier boy, one would have wanted to buckle her shoes, lay
+one's coat in the mud for her, or whatever they did in fairytales.  One
+would have wanted--ah! what would one not have wanted!  Hang that soldier
+boy!  Leila said he was twenty-two.  By George! how old it made a man
+feel who was rising forty, and tender on the off-fore!  No fairy
+princesses for him!  Then a whiff of perfume came to his nostrils; and,
+looking up, he saw Leila standing before him, in a long garment of dark
+silk, whence her white arms peeped out.
+
+"Another penny?  Do you remember these things, Jimmy?  The Malay women
+used to wear them in Cape Town.  You can't think what a relief it is to
+get out of my slave's dress.  Oh!  I'm so sick of nursing!  Jimmy, I want
+to live again a little!"
+
+The garment had taken fifteen years off her age, and a gardenia, just
+where the silk crossed on her breast, seemed no whiter than her skin. He
+wondered whimsically whether it had dropped to her out of the dark!
+
+"Live?"  he said.  "Why!  Don't you always?"
+
+She raised her hands so that the dark silk fell, back from the whole
+length of those white arms.
+
+"I haven't lived for two years.  Oh, Jimmy!  Help me to live a little!
+Life's so short, now."
+
+Her eyes disturbed him, strained and pathetic; the sight of her arms; the
+scent of the flower disturbed him; he felt his cheeks growing warm, and
+looked down.
+
+She slipped suddenly forward on to her knees at his feet, took his hand,
+pressed it with both of hers, and murmured:
+
+"Love me a little!  What else is there?  Oh!  Jimmy, what else is there?"
+
+And with the scent of the flower, crushed by their hands, stirring his
+senses, Fort thought: 'Ah, what else is there, in these forsaken days?'
+
+To Jimmy Fort, who had a sense of humour, and was in some sort a
+philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom failed to seem
+amusing.  But when he walked away from Leila's he was pensive. She was a
+good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an enchantress; but--she was
+decidedly mature.  And here he was--involved in helping her to "live";
+involved almost alarmingly, for there had been no mistaking the fact that
+she had really fallen in love with him.
+
+This was flattering and sweet.  Times were sad, and pleasure scarce,
+but--!  The roving instinct which had kept him, from his youth up,
+rolling about the world, shied instinctively at bonds, however pleasant,
+the strength and thickness of which he could not gauge; or, was it that
+perhaps for the first time in his life he had been peeping into fairyland
+of late, and this affair with Leila was by no means fairyland?  He had
+another reason, more unconscious, for uneasiness.  His heart, for all his
+wanderings, was soft, he had always found it difficult to hurt anyone,
+especially anyone who did him the honour to love him.  A sort of
+presentiment weighed on him while he walked the moonlit streets at this
+most empty hour, when even the late taxis had ceased to run.  Would she
+want him to marry her?  Would it be his duty, if she did?  And then he
+found himself thinking of the concert, and that girl's face, listening to
+the tales he was telling her.  'Deuced queer world,' he thought, 'the way
+things go!  I wonder what she would think of us, if she knew--and that
+good padre!  Phew!'
+
+He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in his leg, and
+having to spend the night on a door-step, that he had plenty of time for
+rumination; but since it brought him no confidence whatever, he began at
+last to feel: 'Well; it might be a lot worse.  Take the goods the gods
+send you and don't fuss!'  And suddenly he remembered with extreme
+vividness that night on the stoep at High Constantia, and thought with
+dismay: 'I could have plunged in over head and ears then; and now--I
+can't!  That's life all over!  Poor Leila!  Me miserum, too, perhaps--who
+knows!'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+When Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were smiling, and
+her lips were soft.  She seemed to smile and be soft all over, and she
+took both his hands.  Everything was a pleasure to her that day, even the
+sight of this sad face.  She was in love and was loved again; had a
+present and a future once more, not only her own full past; and she must
+finish with Edward in half an hour, for Jimmy was coming.  She sat down
+on the divan, took his hand in a sisterly way, and said:
+
+"Tell me, Edward; I can see you're in trouble.  What is it?"
+
+"Noel.  The boy she was fond of has been killed."
+
+She dropped his hand.
+
+"Oh, no!  Poor child!  It's too cruel!"  Tears started up in her grey
+eyes, and she touched them with a tiny handkerchief.  "Poor, poor little
+Noel!  Was she very fond of him?"
+
+"A very sudden, short engagement; but I'm afraid she takes it desperately
+to heart.  I don't know how to comfort her; only a woman could.  I came
+to ask you: Do you think she ought to go on with her work?  What do you
+think, Leila?  I feel lost!"
+
+Leila, gazing at him, thought: 'Lost?  Yes, you look lost, my poor
+Edward!'
+
+"I should let her go on," she said: "it helps; it's the only thing that
+does help.  I'll see if I can get them to let her come into the wards.
+She ought to be in touch with suffering and the men; that kitchen work
+will try her awfully just now: Was he very young?"
+
+"Yes.  They wanted to get married.  I was opposed to it."
+
+Leila's lip curled ever so little.  'You would be!' she thought.
+
+"I couldn't bear to think of Nollie giving herself hastily, like that;
+they had only known each other three weeks.  It was very hard for me,
+Leila.  And then suddenly he was sent to the front."
+
+Resentment welled up in Leila.  The kill-Joys!  As if life didn't kill
+joy fast enough!  Her cousin's face at that moment was almost abhorrent
+to her, its gentle perplexed goodness darkened and warped by that monkish
+look.  She turned away, glanced at the clock over the hearth, and
+thought: 'Yes, and he would stop Jimmy and me!  He would say: "Oh, no!
+dear Leila--you mustn't love--it's sin!"  How I hate that word!'
+
+"I think the most dreadful thing in life," she said abruptly, "is the way
+people suppress their natural instincts; what they suppress in themselves
+they make other people suppress too, if they can; and that's the cause of
+half the misery in this world."
+
+Then at the surprise on his face at this little outburst, whose cause he
+could not know, she added hastily: "I hope Noel will get over it quickly,
+and find someone else."
+
+"Yes.  If they had been married--how much worse it would have been. Thank
+God, they weren't!"
+
+"I don't know.  They would have had an hour of bliss.  Even an hour of
+bliss is worth something in these days."
+
+"To those who only believe in this 'life--perhaps."
+
+'Ten minutes more!' she thought: 'Oh, why doesn't he go?' But at that
+very moment he got up, and instantly her heart went out to him again.
+
+"I'm so sorry, Edward.  If I can help in any way--I'll try my best with
+Noel to-morrow; and do come to me whenever you feel inclined."
+
+She took his hand in hers; afraid that he would sit down again, she yet
+could not help a soft glance into his eyes, and a little rush of pitying
+warmth in the pressure of her hand.
+
+Pierson smiled; the smile which always made her sorry for him.
+
+"Good-bye, Leila; you're very good and kind to me.  Good-bye."
+
+Her bosom swelled with relief and compassion; and--she let him out.
+
+Running upstairs again she thought: 'I've just time.  What shall I put
+on?  Poor Edward, poor Noel!  What colour does Jimmy like?  Oh!  Why
+didn't I keep him those ten years ago--what utter waste!'  And,
+feverishly adorning herself, she came back to the window, and stood there
+in the dark to watch, while some jasmine which grew below sent up its
+scent to her.  'Would I marry him?' she thought, 'if he asked me?  But he
+won't ask me--why should he now?  Besides, I couldn't bear him to feel I
+wanted position or money from him.  I only want love--love--love!'  The
+silent repetition of that word gave her a wonderful sense of solidity and
+comfort.  So long as she only wanted love, surely he would give it.
+
+A tall figure turned down past the church, coming towards her.  It was
+he!  And suddenly she bethought herself.  She went to the little black
+piano, sat down, and began to sing the song she had sung to him ten years
+ago: "If I could be the falling dew and fall on thee all day!"  She did
+not even look round when he came in, but continued to croon out the
+words, conscious of him just behind her shoulder in the dark.  But when
+she had finished, she got up and threw her arms round him, strained him
+to her, and burst into tears on his shoulder; thinking of Noel and that
+dead boy, thinking of the millions of other boys, thinking of her own
+happiness, thinking of those ten years wasted, of how short was life, and
+love; thinking--hardly knowing what she thought!  And Jimmy Fort, very
+moved by this emotion which he only half understood, pressed her tightly
+in his arms, and kissed her wet cheeks and her neck, pale and warm in the
+darkness.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+Noel went on with her work for a month, and then, one morning, fainted
+over a pile of dishes.  The noise attracted attention, and Mrs. Lynch was
+summoned.
+
+The sight of her lying there so deadly white taxed Leila's nerves
+severely.  But the girl revived quickly, and a cab was sent for. Leila
+went with her, and told the driver to stop at Camelot Mansions. Why take
+her home in this state, why not save the jolting, and let her recover
+properly?  They went upstairs arm in arm.  Leila made her lie down on the
+divan, and put a hot-water bottle to her feet.  Noel was still so passive
+and pale that even to speak to her seemed a cruelty.  And, going to her
+little sideboard, Leila stealthily extracted a pint bottle of some
+champagne which Jimmy Fort had sent in, and took it with  two glasses and
+a corkscrew into her bedroom. She drank a little herself, and came out
+bearing a glass to the girl. Noel shook her head, and her eyes seemed to
+say: "Do you really think I'm so easily mended?"  But Leila had been
+through too much in her time to despise earthly remedies, and she held it
+to the girl's lips until she drank.  It was excellent champagne, and,
+since Noel had never yet touched alcohol, had an instantaneous effect.
+Her eyes brightened; little red spots came up in her cheeks.  And
+suddenly she rolled over and buried her face deep in a cushion.  With her
+short hair, she looked so like a child lying there, that Leila knelt
+down, stroking her head, and saying: "There, there; my love!  There,
+there!"
+
+At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, masklike despair of
+the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and her face had a wild
+look.  She withdrew herself from Leila's touch, and, crossing her arms
+tightly across her chest, said:
+
+"I can't bear it; I can't sleep.  I want him back; I hate life--I hate
+the world.  We hadn't done anything--only just loved each other.  God
+likes punishing; just because we loved each other; we had only one day to
+love each other--only one day--only one!"
+
+Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms straining
+and swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch it. The voice,
+uncannily dainty for all the wildness of the words and face, went on:
+
+"I won't--I don't want to live.  If there's another life, I shall go to
+him.  And if there isn't--it's just sleep."
+
+Leila put out her hand to ward of these wild wanderings.  Like most women
+who live simply the life of their senses and emotions, she was orthodox;
+or rather never speculated on such things.
+
+"Tell me about yourself and him," she said.
+
+Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin.  "We loved each other; and
+children are born, aren't they, after you've loved?  But mine won't be!"
+From the look on her face rather than from her words, the full reality of
+her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again. Nonsense!  But--what an
+awful thing, if true!  That which had always seemed to her such an
+exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of life--why! now, it was a
+tragedy!  Instinctively she raised herself and put her arms round the
+girl.
+
+"My poor dear!" she said; "you're fancying things!"
+
+The colour had faded out of Noel's face, and, with her head thrown back
+and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young ghost.
+
+"If it is--I shan't live.  I don't mean to--it's easy to die. I don't
+mean Daddy to know."
+
+"Oh! my dear, my dear!"  was all Leila could stammer.
+
+"Was it wrong, Leila?"
+
+"Wrong?  I don't know--wrong?  If it really is so--it was--unfortunate.
+But surely, surely--you're mistaken?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "I did it so that we should belong to each other.
+Nothing could have taken him from me."
+
+Leila caught at the girl's words.
+
+"Then, my dear--he hasn't quite gone from you, you see?"
+
+Noel's lips formed a "No" which was inaudible.  "But Daddy!"  she
+whispered.
+
+Edward's face came before Leila so vividly that she could hardly see the
+girl for the tortured shape of it.  Then the hedonist in her revolted
+against that ascetic vision.  Her worldly judgment condemned and deplored
+this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding that hour of life
+and love, snatched out of the jaws of death.  "Need he ever know?" she
+said.
+
+"I could never lie to Daddy.  But it doesn't matter.  Why should one go
+on living, when life is rotten?"
+
+Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late October. Leila
+got up from her knees.  She stood at the window thinking hard.
+
+"My dear," she said at last, "you mustn't get morbid.  Look at me!  I've
+had two husbands, and--and--well, a pretty stormy up and down time of it;
+and I daresay I've got lots of trouble before me.  But I'm not going to
+cave in.  Nor must you.  The Piersons have plenty of pluck; you mustn't
+be a traitor to your blood.  That's the last thing.  Your boy would have
+told you to stick it.  These are your 'trenches,' and you're not going to
+be downed, are you?"
+
+After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel said:
+
+"Give me a cigarette, Leila."
+
+Leila produced the little flat case she carried.
+
+"That's brave," she said.  "Nothing's incurable at your age.  Only one
+thing's incurable--getting old."
+
+Noel laughed.  "That's curable too, isn't it?"
+
+"Not without surrender."
+
+Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two cigarettes
+fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling.  Then Noel got up from the
+divan, and went over to the piano.  She was still in her hospital dress
+of lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the keys,
+playing a chord now, and then, Leila's heart felt hollow from compassion;
+she was so happy herself just now, and this child so very wretched!
+
+"Play to me," she said; "no--don't; I'll play to you."  And sitting down,
+she began to play and sing a little French song, whose first line ran:
+"Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous."  It was soft, gay, charming.  If the
+girl cried, so much the better.  But Noel did not cry.  She seemed
+suddenly to have recovered all her self-possession. She spoke calmly,
+answered Leila's questions without emotion, and said she would go home.
+Leila went out with her, and walked some way in the direction of her
+home; distressed, but frankly at a loss.  At the bottom of Portland Place
+Noel stopped and said: "I'm quite all right now, Leila; thank you
+awfully.  I shall just go home and lie down.  And I shall come to-morrow,
+the same as usual.  Goodbye!" Leila could only grasp the girl's hand, and
+say: "My dear, that's splendid.  There's many a slip--besides, it's
+war-time."
+
+With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the girl moving
+slowly away; and turned back herself towards her hospital, with a
+disturbed and compassionate heart.
+
+
+2
+
+But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street.  She had
+received a certain measure of comfort, been steadied by her experienced
+cousin's vitality, and the new thoughts suggested by those words: "He
+hasn't quite gone from you, has he?"  "Besides, it's war-time."  Leila
+had spoken freely, too, and the physical ignorance in which the girl had
+been groping these last weeks was now removed. Like most proud natures,
+she did not naturally think much about the opinion of other people;
+besides, she knew nothing of the world, its feelings and judgments.  Her
+nightmare was the thought of her father's horror and grief.  She tried to
+lessen that nightmare by remembering his opposition to her marriage, and
+the resentment she had felt.  He had never realised, never understood,
+how she and Cyril loved.  Now, if she were really going to have a child,
+it would be Cyril's--Cyril's son--Cyril over again.  The instinct
+stronger than reason, refinement, tradition, upbringing, which had pushed
+her on in such haste to make sure of union--the irrepressible pulse of
+life faced with annihilation--seemed to revive within her, and make her
+terrible secret almost precious.  She had read about "War babies" in the
+papers, read with a dull curiosity; but now the atmosphere, as it were,
+of those writings was illumined for her.  These babies were wrong, were a
+"problem," and yet, behind all that, she seemed now to know that people
+were glad of them; they made up, they filled the gaps.  Perhaps, when she
+had one, she would be proud, secretly proud, in spite of everyone, in
+spite of her father!  They had tried to kill Cyril--God and everyone; but
+they hadn't been able, he was alive within her!  A glow came into her
+face, walking among the busy shopping crowd, and people turned to look at
+her; she had that appearance of seeing no one, nothing, which is strange
+and attractive to those who have a moment to spare from contemplation of
+their own affairs.  Fully two hours she wandered thus, before going in,
+and only lost that exalted feeling when, in her own little room, she had
+taken up his photograph, and was sitting on her bed gazing at it. She had
+a bad breakdown then.  Locked in there, she lay on her bed, crying,
+dreadfully lonely, till she fell asleep exhausted, with the tear-stained
+photograph clutched in her twitching fingers.  She woke with a start.  It
+was dark, and someone was knocking on her door.
+
+"Miss Noel!"
+
+Childish perversity kept her silent.  Why couldn't they leave her alone?
+They would leave her alone if they knew.  Then she heard another kind of
+knocking, and her father's voice:
+
+"Nollie!  Nollie!"
+
+She scrambled up, and opened.  He looked scared, and her heart smote her.
+
+"It's all right, Daddy; I was asleep."
+
+"My dear, I'm sorry, but dinner's ready."
+
+"I don't want any dinner; I think I'll go to bed."
+
+The frown between his brows deepened.
+
+"You shouldn't lock your door, Nollie: I was quite frightened.  I went
+round to the hospital to bring you home, and they told me about your
+fainting.  I want you to see a doctor."
+
+Noel shook her head vigorously.  "Oh, no!  It's nothing!"
+
+"Nothing?  To faint like that?  Come, my child.  To please me."  He took
+her face in his hands.  Noel shrank away.
+
+"No, Daddy.  I won't see a doctor.  Extravagance in wartime!  I won't.
+It's no good trying to make me.  I'll come down if you like; I shall be
+all right to-morrow."
+
+With this Pierson had to be content; but, often that evening, she saw him
+looking at her anxiously.  And when she went up, he came out of his
+study, followed to her room, and insisted on lighting her fire. Kissing
+her at the door, he said very quietly:
+
+"I wish I could be a mother to you, my child!"
+
+For a moment it flashed through Noel: 'He knows!' then, by the puzzled
+look on his face, she knew that he did not.  If only he did know; what a
+weight it would be off her mind!  But she answered quietly too; "Good
+night, Daddy dear!" kissed him, and shut the door.
+
+She sat down before the little new fire, and spread her hands out to it;
+all was so cold and wintry in her heart.  And the firelight flickered on
+her face, where shadows lay thick under her eyes, for all the roundness
+of her cheeks, and on her slim pale hands, and the supple grace of her
+young body.  And out in the night, clouds raced over the moon, which had
+come full once more.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+Pierson went back to his study, and wrote to Gratian.
+
+"If you can get leave for a few days, my dear, I want you at home.  I am
+troubled about Nollie.  Ever since that disaster happened to her she has
+been getting paler; and to-day she fainted.  She won't see a doctor, but
+perhaps you could get her to see George.  If you come up, he will surely
+be able to run up to us for a day or two.  If not, you must take her down
+to him at the sea.  I have just seen the news of your second cousin
+Charlie Pierson's death; he was killed in one of the last attacks on the
+Somme; he was nephew of my cousin Leila whom, as you know, Noel sees
+every day at her hospital.  Bertram has the D. S. O.  I have been less
+hard-pressed lately; Lauder has been home on leave and has taken some
+Services for me.  And now the colder weather has come, I am feeling much
+fresher.  Try your best to come. I am seriously concerned for our beloved
+child. "Your affectionate father "EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+Gratian answered that she could get week-end leave, and would come on
+Friday.  He met her at the station, and they drove thence straight to the
+hospital, to pick up Noel.  Leila came to them in the waiting-room, and
+Pierson, thinking they would talk more freely about Noel's health if he
+left them alone, went into the recreation room, and stood watching a game
+of bagatelle between two convalescents.  When he returned to the little
+sitting-room they were still standing by the hearth, talking in low
+voices.  Gratian must surely have been stooping over the fire, for her
+face was red, almost swollen, and her eyes looked as if she had scorched
+them.
+
+Leila said lightly:
+
+"Well, Edward, aren't the men delightful?  When are we going to another
+concert together?"
+
+She, too, was flushed and looking almost young.
+
+"Ah!  If we could do the things we want to.
+
+"That's very pretty, Edward; but you should, you know--for a tonic." He
+shook his head and smiled.
+
+"You're a temptress, Leila.  Will you let Nollie know, please, that we
+can take her back with us?  Can you let her off to-morrow?"
+
+"For as long as you like; she wants a rest.  I've been talking to
+Gratian.  We oughtn't to have let her go on after a shock like that--my
+fault, I'm afraid.  I thought that work might be best."
+
+Pierson was conscious of Gratian walking past him out of the room. He
+held out his hand to Leila, and followed.  A small noise occurred behind
+him such as a woman makes when she has put a foot through her own skirt,
+or has other powerful cause for dismay.  Then he saw Noel in the hall,
+and was vaguely aware of being the centre of a triangle of women whose
+eyes were playing catch-glance.  His daughters kissed each other; and he
+became seated between them in the taxi.  The most unobservant of men, he
+parted from them in the hall without having perceived anything except
+that they were rather silent; and, going to his study, he took up a Life
+of Sir Thomas More.  There was a passage therein which he itched to show
+George Laird, who was coming up that evening.
+
+Gratian and Noel had mounted the stairs with lips tight set, and eyes
+averted; both were very pale.  When they reached the door of Gratian's
+room the room which had been their mother's--Noel was for passing on, but
+Gratian caught her by the arm, and said: "Come in." The fire was burning
+brightly in there, and the two sisters stood in front of it, one on each
+side, their hands clutching the mantel-shelf, staring at the flames.  At
+last Noel put one hand in front of her eyes, and said:
+
+"I asked her to tell you."
+
+Gratian made the movement of one who is gripped by two strong emotions,
+and longs to surrender to one or to the other.
+
+"It's too horrible," was all she said.
+
+Noel turned towards the door.
+
+"Stop, Nollie!"
+
+Noel stopped with her hand on the door knob.  "I don't want to be
+forgiven and sympathised with.  I just want to be let alone."
+
+"How can you be let alone?"
+
+The tide of misery surged up in Noel, and she cried out passionately:
+
+"I hate sympathy from people who can't understand.  I don't want
+anyone's.  I can always go away, and lose myself."
+
+The words "can't understand" gave Gratian a shock.
+
+"I can understand," she said.
+
+"You can't; you never saw him.  You never saw--" her lips quivered so
+that she had to stop and bite them, to keep back a rush of tears.
+
+"Besides you would never have done it yourself."
+
+Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the bed.  It was
+true.  She would never have done it herself; it was just that which, for
+all her longing to help her sister, iced her love and sympathy.  How
+terrible, wretched, humiliating!  Her own sister, her only sister, in the
+position of all those poor, badly brought up girls, who forgot
+themselves!  And her father--their father!  Till that moment she had
+hardly thought of him, too preoccupied by the shock to her own pride.
+The word: "Dad!" was forced from her.
+
+Noel shuddered.
+
+"That boy!" said Gratian suddenly; "I can't forgive him.  If you didn't
+know--he did.  It was--it was--" She stopped at the sight of Noel's face.
+
+"I did know," she said.  "It was I.  He was my husband, as much as yours
+is.  If you say a word against him, I'll never speak to you again: I'm
+glad, and you would be, if you were going to have one. What's the
+difference, except that you've had luck, and I--haven't." Her lips
+quivered again, and she was silent.
+
+Gratian stared up at her.  She had a longing for George--to know what he
+thought and felt.
+
+"Do you mind if I tell George?"  she said.
+
+Noel shook her head.  "No! not now.  Tell anybody."  And suddenly the
+misery behind the mask of her face went straight to Gratian's heart. She
+got up and put her arms round her sister.
+
+"Nollie dear, don't look like that!"
+
+Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was over, went to
+her own room.
+
+Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious.  Her pride was
+deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry with herself.  Why couldn't
+she have been more sympathetic?  And yet, now that Noel was no longer
+there, she again condemned the dead.  What he had done was unpardonable.
+Nollie was such--a child!  He had committed sacrilege. If only George
+would come, and she could talk it all out with him!  She, who had married
+for love and known passion, had insight enough to feel that Noel's love
+had been deep--so far as anything, of course, could be deep in such a
+child.  Gratian was at the mature age of twenty.  But to have forgotten
+herself like that!  And this boy!  If she had known him, that feeling
+might have been mitigated by the personal element, so important to all
+human judgment; but never having seen him, she thought of his conduct as
+"caddish."  And she knew that this was, and would be, the trouble between
+her and her sister.  However she might disguise it, Noel would feel that
+judgment underneath.
+
+She stripped off her nurse's garb, put on an evening frock, and fidgeted
+about the room.  Anything rather than go down and see her father again
+before she must.  This, which had happened, was beyond words terrible for
+him; she dreaded the talk with him about Noel's health which would have
+to come.  She could say nothing, of course, until Noel wished; and, very
+truthful by nature, the idea, of having to act a lie distressed her.
+
+She went down at last, and found them both in the drawing-room already;
+Noel in a frilly evening frock, sitting by the fire with her chin on her
+hand, while her father was reading out the war news from the evening
+paper.  At sight of that cool, dainty, girlish figure brooding over the
+fire, and of her father's worn face, the tragedy of this business thrust
+itself on her with redoubled force.  Poor Dad!  Poor Nollie!  Awful!
+Then Noel turned, and gave a little shake of her head, and her eyes said,
+almost as plainly as lips could have said it: 'Silence!' Gratian nodded,
+and came forward to the fire. And so began one of those calm, domestic
+evenings, which cover sometimes such depths of heartache.
+
+
+2
+
+Noel stayed up until her father went to bed, then went upstairs at once.
+She had evidently determined that they should not talk about her.
+Gratian sat on alone, waiting for her husband!  It was nearly midnight
+when he came, and she did not tell him the family news till next morning.
+He received it with a curious little grunt.  Gratian saw his eyes
+contract, as they might have, perhaps, looking at some bad and
+complicated wound, and then stare steadily at the ceiling. Though they
+had been married over a year, she did not yet know what he thought about
+many things, and she waited with a queer sinking at her heart.  This
+skeleton in the family cupboard was a test of his affection for herself,
+a test of the quality of the man she had married.  He did not speak for a
+little, and her anxiety grew.  Then his hand sought hers, and gave it a
+hard squeeze.
+
+"Poor little Nollie!  This is a case for Mark Tapleyism.  But cheer up,
+Gracie!  We'll get her through somehow."
+
+"But father!  It's impossible to keep it from him, and impossible to tell
+him!  Oh George!  I never knew what family pride was till now. It's
+incredible.  That wretched boy!"
+
+"'De mortuis.' Come, Gracie!  In the midst of death we are in life!
+Nollie was a plumb little idiot.  But it's the war--the war!  Your father
+must get used to it; it's a rare chance for his Christianity."
+
+"Dad will be as sweet as anything--that's what makes it so horrible!"
+
+George Laird redoubled his squeeze.  "Quite right!  The old-fashioned
+father could let himself go.  But need he know?  We can get her away from
+London, and later on, we must manage somehow.  If he does hear, we must
+make him feel that Nollie was 'doing her bit.'"
+
+Gratian withdrew her hand.  "Don't!" she said in a muffled voice.
+
+George Laird turned and looked at her.  He was greatly upset himself,
+realising perhaps more truly than his young wife the violence of this
+disaster; he was quite capable, too, of feeling how deeply she was
+stirred and hurt; but, a born pragmatist, confronting life always in the
+experimental spirit, he was impatient of the: "How awful!" attitude.  And
+this streak of her father's ascetic traditionalism in Gratian always
+roused in him a wish to break it up.  If she had not been his wife he
+would have admitted at once that he might just as well try and alter the
+bone-formation of her head, as break down such a fundamental trait of
+character, but, being his wife, he naturally considered alteration as
+possible as putting a new staircase in a house, or throwing two rooms
+into one.  And, taking her in his arms, he said: "I know; but it'll all
+come right, if we put a good face on it.  Shall I talk to Nollie?"
+
+Gratian assented, from the desire to be able to say to her father:
+"George is seeing her!"  and so stay the need for a discussion.  But the
+whole thing seemed to her more and more a calamity which nothing could
+lessen or smooth away.
+
+George Laird had plenty of cool courage, invaluable in men who have to
+inflict as well as to alleviate pain, but he did not like his mission "a
+little bit" as he would have said; and he proposed a walk because he
+dreaded a scene.  Noel accepted for the same reason.  She liked George,
+and with the disinterested detachment of a sister-in-law, and the
+shrewdness of extreme youth, knew him perhaps better than did his wife.
+She was sure, at all events, of being neither condemned nor sympathised
+with.
+
+They might have gone, of course, in any direction, but chose to make for
+the City.  Such deep decisions are subconscious.  They sought, no doubt,
+a dry, unemotional region; or perhaps one where George, who was in
+uniform, might rest his arm from the automatic-toy game which the
+military play.  They had reached Cheapside before he was conscious to the
+full of the bizarre nature of this walk with his pretty young
+sister-in-law among all the bustling, black-coated mob of money-makers.
+'I wish the devil we hadn't come out!' he thought; 'it would have been
+easier indoors, after all.'
+
+He cleared his throat, however, and squeezing her arm gently, began:
+"Gratian's told me, Nollie.  The great thing is to keep your spirit up,
+and not worry."
+
+"I suppose you couldn't cure me."
+
+The words, in that delicate spurning voice, absolutely staggered George;
+but he said quickly:
+
+"Out of the question, Nollie; impossible!  What are you thinking of?"
+
+"Daddy."
+
+The words: "D--n Daddy!"  rose to his teeth; he bit them off, and said:
+"Bless him!  We shall have to see to all that.  Do you really want to
+keep it from him?  It must be one way or the other; no use concealing it,
+if it's to come out later."
+
+"No."
+
+He stole a look at her.  She was gazing straight before her.  How
+damnably young she was, how pretty!  A lump came up in his throat.
+
+"I shouldn't do anything yet," he said; "too early.  Later on, if you'd
+like me to tell him.  But that's entirely up to you, my dear; he need
+never know."
+
+"No."
+
+He could not follow her thought.  Then she said:
+
+"Gratian condemns Cyril.  Don't let her.  I won't have him badly thought
+of.  It was my doing.  I wanted to make sure of him."
+
+George answered stoutly:
+
+"Gracie's upset, of course, but she'll soon be all right.  You mustn't
+let it come between you.  The thing you've got to keep steadily before
+you is that life's a huge wide adaptable thing.  Look at all these
+people!  There's hardly one of them who hasn't got now, or hasn't had,
+some personal difficulty or trouble before them as big as yours almost;
+bigger perhaps.  And here they are as lively as fleas.  That's what makes
+the fascination of life--the jolly irony of it all.  It would do you good
+to have a turn in France, and see yourself in proportion to the whole."
+He felt her fingers suddenly slip under his arm, and went on with greater
+confidence:
+
+"Life's going to be the important thing in the future, Nollie; not
+comfort and cloistered virtue and security; but living, and pressure to
+the square inch.  Do you twig?  All the old hard-and-fast traditions and
+drags on life are in the melting-pot.  Death's boiling their bones, and
+they'll make excellent stock for the new soup.  When you prune and dock
+things, the sap flows quicker.  Regrets and repinings and repressions are
+going out of fashion; we shall have no time or use for them in the
+future.  You're going to make life--well, that's something to be thankful
+for, anyway.  You've kept Cyril Morland alive.  And--well, you know,
+we've all been born; some of us properly, and some improperly, and there
+isn't a ha'porth of difference in the value of the article, or the
+trouble of bringing it into the world.  The cheerier you are the better
+your child will be, and that's all you've got to think about.  You
+needn't begin to trouble at all for another couple of months, at least;
+after that, just let us know where you'd like to go, and I'll arrange it
+somehow."
+
+She looked round at him, and under that young, clear, brooding gaze he
+had the sudden uncomfortable feeling of having spoken like a charlatan.
+Had he really touched the heart of the matter?  What good were his
+generalities to this young, fastidiously nurtured girl, brought up to
+tell the truth, by a father so old-fashioned and devoted, whom she loved?
+It was George's nature, too, to despise words; and the conditions of his
+life these last two years had given him a sort of horror of those who act
+by talking.  He felt inclined to say: 'Don't pay the slightest attention
+to me; it's all humbug; what will be will be, and there's an end of it:
+
+Then she said quietly:
+
+"Shall I tell Daddy or not?"
+
+He wanted to say: "No," but somehow couldn't.  After all, the
+straightforward course was probably the best.  For this would have to be
+a lifelong concealment.  It was impossible to conceal a thing for ever;
+sooner or later he would find out.  But the doctor rose up in him, and he
+said:
+
+"Don't go to meet trouble, Nollie; it'll be time enough in two months.
+Then tell him, or let me."
+
+She shook her head.  "No; I will, if it is to be done."
+
+He put his hand on hers, within his arm, and gave it a squeeze.
+
+"What shall I do till then?"  she asked.
+
+"Take a week's complete rest, and then go on where you are."
+
+Noel was silent a minute, then said: "Yes; I will."
+
+They spoke no more on the subject, and George exerted himself to talk
+about hospital experiences, and that phenomenon, the British soldier. But
+just before they reached home he said:
+
+"Look here, Nollie!  If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will be
+ashamed of you.  If you put ashes on your own head, your fellow-beings
+will, assist you; for of such is their charity."
+
+And, receiving another of those clear, brooding looks, he left her with
+the thought: 'A lonely child!'
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Noel went back to her hospital after a week's rest.  George had done more
+for her than he suspected, for his saying: "Life's a huge wide adaptable
+thing!" had stuck in her mind.  Did it matter what happened to her?  And
+she used to look into the faces of the people she met, and wonder what
+was absorbing them.  What secret griefs and joys were they carrying about
+with them?  The loneliness of her own life now forced her to this
+speculation concerning others, for she was extraordinarily lonely;
+Gratian and George were back at work, her father must be kept at bay;
+with Leila she felt ill at ease, for the confession had hurt her pride;
+and family friends and acquaintances of all sorts she shunned like the
+plague.  The only person she did not succeed in avoiding was Jimmy Fort,
+who came in one evening after dinner, bringing her a large bunch of
+hothouse violets.  But then, he did not seem to matter--too new an
+acquaintance, too detached. Something he said made her aware that he had
+heard of her loss, and that the violets were a token of sympathy.  He
+seemed awfully kind that evening, telling her "tales of Araby," and
+saying nothing which would shock her father.  It was wonderful to be a
+man and roll about the world as he had, and see all life, and queer
+places, and people--Chinamen, and Gauchos, and Boers, and Mexicans.  It
+gave her a kind of thirst.  And she liked to watch his brown, humorous
+face; which seemed made of dried leather.  It gave her the feeling that
+life and experience were all that mattered, doing and seeing things; it
+made her own trouble seem smaller; less important.  She squeezed his hand
+when she said good night: "Thank you for my violets and for coming; it
+was awfully kind of you!  I wish I could have adventures!"  And he
+answered: "You will, my dear fairy princess!" He said it queerly and very
+kindly.
+
+Fairy Princess!  What a funny thing to call her!  If he had only known!
+
+There were not many adventures to be had in those regions where she
+washed up.  Not much "wide and adaptable life" to take her thoughts off
+herself.  But on her journeys to and from the hospital she had more than
+one odd little experience.  One morning she noticed a poorly dressed
+woman with a red and swollen face, flapping along Regent Street like a
+wounded bird, and biting strangely at her hand. Hearing her groan, Noel
+asked her what the matter was.  The woman held out the hand.  "Oh!" she
+moaned, "I was scrubbin' the floor and I got this great needle stuck
+through my 'and, and it's broke off, and I can't get it out.  Oh!  Oh!"
+She bit at the needle-end, not quite visible, but almost within reach of
+teeth, and suddenly went very white.  In dismay, Noel put an arm round
+her, and turned her into a fine chemist's shop.  Several ladies were in
+there, buying perfumes, and they looked with acerbity at this disordered
+dirty female entering among them.  Noel went up to a man behind the
+counter.  "Please give me something quick, for this poor woman, I think
+she's going to faint.  She's run a needle through her hand, and can't get
+it out."  The man gave her "something quick," and Noel pushed past two of
+the dames back to where the woman was sitting. She was still obstinately
+biting at her hand, and suddenly her chin flew up, and there, between her
+teeth, was the needle.  She took it from them with her other hand, stuck
+it proudly in the front of her dress, and out tumbled the words: "Oh!
+there--I've got it!"
+
+When she had swallowed the draught, she looked round her, bewildered, and
+said:
+
+"Thank you kindly, miss!" and shuffled out.  Noel paid for the draught,
+and followed; and, behind her, the shining shop seemed to exhale a
+perfumed breath of relief.
+
+"You can't go back to work," she said to the woman.  "Where do you live?"
+
+"'Ornsey, miss."
+
+"You must take a 'bus and go straight home, and put your hand at once
+into weak Condy's fluid and water.  It's swelling.  Here's five
+shillings."
+
+"Yes, miss; thank you, miss, I'm sure.  It's very kind of you.  It does
+ache cruel."
+
+"If it's not better this afternoon, you must go to a doctor. Promise!"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes.  'Ere's my 'bus.  Thank you kindly, miss."
+
+Noel saw her borne away, still sucking at her dirty swollen hand. She
+walked on in a glow of love for the poor woman, and hate for the ladies
+in the chemist's shop, and forgot her own trouble till she had almost
+reached the hospital.
+
+Another November day, a Saturday, leaving early, she walked to Hyde Park.
+The plane-trees were just at the height of their spotted beauty.
+Few--very few-yellow leaves still hung; and the slender pretty trees
+seemed rejoicing in their freedom from summer foliage. All their delicate
+boughs and twigs were shaking and dancing in the wind; and their
+rain-washed leopard-like bodies had a lithe un-English gaiety.  Noel
+passed down their line, and seated herself on a bench.  Close by, an
+artist was painting.  His easel was only some three yards away from her,
+and she could see the picture; a vista of the Park Lane houses through,
+the gay plane-tree screen.  He was a tall man, about forty, evidently
+foreign, with a thin, long, oval, beardless face, high brow, large grey
+eyes which looked as if he suffered from headaches and lived much within
+himself.  He cast many glances at her, and, pursuant of her new interest
+in "life" she watched him discreetly; a little startled however, when,
+taking off his broad-brimmed squash hat, he said in a broken accent:
+
+"Forgive me the liberty I take, mademoiselle, but would you so very
+kindly allow me to make a sketch of you sitting there?  I work very
+quick.  I beg you will let me.  I am Belgian, and have no manners, you
+see."  And he smiled.
+
+"If you like," said Noel.
+
+"I thank you very much:"
+
+He shifted his easel, and began to draw.  She felt flattered, and a
+little fluttered.  He was so pale, and had a curious, half-fed look,
+which moved her.
+
+"Have you been long in England?"  she said presently.
+
+"Ever since the first months of the war."
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"I was very homesick at first.  But I live in my pictures; there are
+wonderful things in London."
+
+"Why did you want to sketch me?"
+
+The painter smiled again.  "Mademoiselle, youth is so mysterious. Those
+young trees I have been painting mean so much more than the old big
+trees.  Your eyes are seeing things that have not yet happened. There is
+Fate in them, and a look of defending us others from seeing it.  We have
+not such faces in my country; we are simpler; we do not defend our
+expressions.  The English are very mysterious.  We are like children to
+them.  Yet in some ways you are like children to us. You are not people
+of the world at all.  You English have been good to us, but you do not
+like us."
+
+"And I suppose you do not like us, either?"
+
+He smiled again, and she noticed how white his teeth were.
+
+"Well, not very much.  The English do things from duty, but their hearts
+they keep to themselves.  And their Art--well, that is really amusing!"
+
+"I don't know much about Art," Noel murmured.
+
+"It is the world to me," said the painter, and was silent, drawing with
+increased pace and passion.
+
+"It is so difficult to get subjects," he remarked abruptly.  "I cannot
+afford to pay models, and they are not fond of me painting out of doors.
+If I had always a subject like you!  You--you have a grief, have you
+not?"
+
+At that startling little question, Noel looked up, frowning.
+
+"Everybody has, now."
+
+The painter grasped his chin; his eyes had suddenly become tragical.
+
+"Yes," he said, "everybody.  Tragedy is daily bread.  I have lost my
+family; they are in Belgium.  How they live I do not know."
+
+"I'm sorry; very sorry, too, if we aren't nice to you, here.  We ought to
+be."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "What would you have?  We are different. That
+is unpardonable.  An artist is always lonely, too; he has a skin fewer
+than other people, and he sees things that they do not.  People do not
+like you to be different.  If ever in your life you act differently from
+others, you will find it so, mademoiselle."
+
+Noel felt herself flushing.  Was he reading her secret?  His eyes had
+such a peculiar, secondsighted look.
+
+"Have you nearly finished?"  she asked.
+
+"No, mademoiselle; I could go on for hours; but I do not wish to keep
+you.  It is cold for you, sitting there."
+
+Noel got up.  "May I look?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+She did not quite recognise herself--who does?--but she saw a face which
+affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something which was, and yet was
+not, in front of her.
+
+"My name is Lavendie," the painter said; "my wife and I live here," and
+he gave her a card.
+
+Noel could not help answering: "My name is Noel Pierson; I live with my
+father; here's the address"--she found her case, and fished out a card.
+"My father is a clergyman; would you care to come and see him?  He loves
+music and painting."
+
+"It would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be allowed to paint
+you.  Alas!  I have no studio."
+
+Noel drew back.  "I'm afraid that I work in a hospital all day, and--and
+I don't want to be painted, thank you.  But, Daddy would like to meet
+you, I'm sure."
+
+The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.
+
+"Of course I can see that you're a very fine painter," she said quickly;
+"only--only--I don't want to, you see.  Perhaps you'd like to paint
+Daddy; he's got a most interesting face."
+
+The painter smiled.  "He is your father, mademoiselle.  May I ask you one
+question?  Why do you not want to be painted?"
+
+"Because--because I don't, I'm afraid."  She held out her hand.  The
+painter bowed over it.  "Au revoir, mademoiselle."
+
+"Thank you," said Noel; "it was awfully interesting."  And she walked
+away.  The sky had become full of clouds round the westerly sun; and the
+foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree branches against that
+French-grey, golden-edged mass, was very lovely.  Beauty, and the
+troubles of others, soothed her.  She felt sorry for the painter, but his
+eyes saw too much!  And his words: "If ever you act differently from
+others," made her feel him uncanny.  Was it true that people always
+disliked and condemned those who acted differently?  If her old
+school-fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat her?
+In her father's study hung a little reproduction of a tiny picture in the
+Louvre, a "Rape of Europa," by an unknown painter--a humorous delicate
+thing, of an enraptured; fair-haired girl mounted on a prancing white
+bull, crossing a shallow stream, while on the bank all her white
+girl-companions were gathered, turning half-sour, half-envious faces away
+from that too-fearful spectacle, while one of them tried with timid
+desperation to mount astride of a sitting cow, and follow.  The face of
+the girl on the bull had once been compared by someone with her own.  She
+thought of this picture now, and saw her school fellows-a throng of
+shocked and wondering girls.  Suppose one of them had been in her
+position!  'Should I have been turning my face away, like the rest?  I
+wouldn't no, I wouldn't,' she thought; 'I should have understood!'  But
+she knew there was a kind of false emphasis in her thought.
+Instinctively she felt the painter right. One who acted differently from
+others, was lost.
+
+She told her father of the encounter, adding:
+
+"I expect he'll come, Daddy."
+
+Pierson answered dreamily: "Poor fellow, I shall be glad to see him if he
+does."
+
+"And you'll sit to him, won't you?"
+
+"My dear--I?"
+
+"He's lonely, you know, and people aren't nice to him.  Isn't it hateful
+that people should hurt others, because they're foreign or different?"
+
+She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on: "I know you think
+people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren't, of course."
+
+"That's not exactly charitable, Nollie."
+
+"You know they're not.  I think sin often just means doing things
+differently.  It's not real sin when it only hurts yourself; but that
+doesn't prevent people condemning you, does it?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Nollie."
+
+Noel bit her lips, and murmured: "Are you sure we're really Christians,
+Daddy?"
+
+The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson took
+refuge in an attempt at wit.  "I should like notice of that question,
+Nollie, as they say in Parliament."
+
+"That means you don't."
+
+Pierson flushed.  "We're fallible enough; but, don't get such ideas into
+your head, my child.  There's a lot of rebellious talk and writing in
+these days...."
+
+Noel clasped her hands behind her head.  "I think," she said, looking
+straight before her, and speaking to the air, "that Christianity is what
+you do, not what you think or say.  And I don't believe people can be
+Christians when they act like others--I mean, when they join together to
+judge and hurt people."
+
+Pierson rose and paced the room.  "You have not seen enough of life to
+talk like that," he said.  But Noel went on:
+
+"One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of
+conscientious objectors--it was horrible.  Why do they treat them like
+that, just because they disagree?  Captain Fort says it's fear which
+makes people bullies.  But how can it be fear when they're hundreds to
+one?  He says man has domesticated his animals but has never succeeded in
+domesticating himself.  Man must be a wild beast, you know, or the world
+couldn't be so awfully brutal.  I don't see much difference between being
+brutal for good reasons, and being brutal for bad ones."
+
+Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile.  There was something
+fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom he had watched
+grow up from a tiny thing.  Out of the mouths of babes and
+sucklings--sometimes!  But then the young generation was always something
+of a sealed book to him; his sensitive shyness, and, still more, his
+cloth, placed a sort of invisible barrier between him and the hearts of
+others, especially the young.  There were so many things of which he was
+compelled to disapprove, or which at least he couldn't discuss.  And they
+knew it too well.  Until these last few months he had never realised that
+his own daughters had remained as undiscovered by him as the interior of
+Brazil.  And now that he perceived this, he was bewildered, yet could not
+imagine how to get on terms with them.
+
+And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting nothing of
+the hard fact which was altering her--vaguely jealous, anxious, pained.
+And when she had gone up to bed, he roamed up and down the room a long
+time, thinking.  He longed for a friend to confide in, and consult; but
+he knew no one.  He shrank from them all, as too downright, bluff, and
+active; too worldly and unaesthetic; or too stiff and narrow.  Amongst
+the younger men in his profession he was often aware of faces which
+attracted him, but one could not confide deep personal questions to men
+half one's age.  But of his own generation, or his elders, he knew not
+one to whom he could have gone.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Leila was deep in her new draught of life.  When she fell in love it had
+always been over head and ears, and so far her passion had always burnt
+itself out before that of her partner.  This had been, of course, a great
+advantage to her.  Not that Leila had ever expected her passions to burn
+themselves out.  When she fell in love she had always thought it was for
+always.  This time she was sure it was, surer than she had ever been.
+Jimmy Fort seemed to her the man she had been looking for all her life.
+He was not so good-looking as either Farie or Lynch, but beside him these
+others seemed to her now almost ridiculous.  Indeed they did not figure
+at all, they shrank, they withered, they were husks, together with the
+others for whom she had known passing weaknesses.  There was only one man
+in the world for her now, and would be for evermore.  She did not
+idealise him either, it was more serious than that; she was thrilled by
+his voice, and his touch, she dreamed of him, longed for him when he was
+not with her.  She worried, too, for she was perfectly aware that he was
+not half as fond of her as she was of him.  Such a new experience puzzled
+her, kept her instincts painfully on the alert.  It was perhaps just this
+uncertainty about his affection which made him seem more precious than
+any of the others.  But there was ever the other reason,
+too-consciousness that Time was after her, and this her last grand
+passion.  She watched him as a mother-cat watches her kitten, without
+seeming to, of course, for she had much experience.  She had begun to
+have a curious secret jealousy of Noel though why she could not have
+said.  It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or sprang from that
+vague resemblance between her and one who outrivalled even what she had
+been as a girl; or from the occasional allusions Fort made to what he
+called "that little fairy princess." Something intangible, instinctive,
+gave her that jealousy.  Until the death of her young cousin's lover she
+had felt safe, for she knew that Jimmy Fort would not hanker after
+another man's property; had he not proved that in old days, with herself,
+by running away from her?  And she had often regretted having told him of
+Cyril Morland's death. One day she determined to repair that error.  It
+was at the Zoo, where they often went on Sunday afternoons.  They were
+standing before a creature called the meercat, which reminded them both
+of old days on the veldt.  Without turning her head she said, as if to
+the little animal: "Do you know that your fairy princess, as you call
+her, is going to have what is known as a war-baby?"
+
+The sound of his "What!" gave her quite a stab.  It was so utterly
+horrified.
+
+She said stubbornly: "She came and told me all about it.  The boy is
+dead, as you know.  Yes, terrible, isn't it?"  And she looked at him. His
+face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity.
+
+"That lovely child!  But it's impossible!"
+
+"The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy."
+
+"I refuse to believe it."
+
+"I tell you it is so," she said angrily.
+
+"What a ghastly shame!"
+
+"It was her own doing; she said so, herself."
+
+"And her father--the padre!  My God!"
+
+Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt.  She had thought it
+would disgust him, cure him of any little tendency to romanticise that
+child; and now she perceived that it was rousing in him, instead, a
+dangerous compassion.  She could have bitten her tongue out for having
+spoken.  When he got on the high horse of some championship, he was not
+to be trusted, she had found that out; was even finding it out bitterly
+in her own relations with him, constantly aware that half her hold on
+him, at least, lay in his sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her
+lurking dread of being flung on the beach, by age.  Only ten minutes ago
+he had uttered a tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed unhappy.
+And now she had roused that dangerous side of him in favour of Noel.
+What an idiot she had been!
+
+"Don't look like that, Jimmy.  I'm sorry I told you."
+
+His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he muttered:
+
+"Well, I do think that's the limit.  What's to be done for her?"
+
+Leila answered softly: "Nothing, I'm afraid.  Do you love me?"  And she
+pressed his hand hard.
+
+"Of course."
+
+But Leila thought: 'If I were that meercat he'd have taken more notice of
+my paw!'  Her heart began suddenly to ache, and she walked on to the next
+cage with head up, and her mouth hard set.
+
+Jimmy Fort walked away from Camelot Mansions that evening in extreme
+discomfort of mind.  Leila had been so queer that he had taken leave
+immediately after supper.  She had refused to talk about Noel; had even
+seemed angry when he had tried to.  How extraordinary some women were!
+Did they think that a man could hear of a thing like that about such a
+dainty young creature without being upset!  It was the most perfectly
+damnable news!  What on earth would she do--poor little fairy princess!
+Down had come her house of cards with a vengeance!  The whole of her
+life--the whole of her life!  With her bringing-up and her father and
+all--it seemed inconceivable that she could ever survive it.  And Leila
+had been almost callous about the monstrous business.  Women were hard to
+each other!  Bad enough, these things, when it was a simple working girl,
+but this dainty, sheltered, beautiful child!  No, it was altogether too
+strong--too painful!  And following an impulse which he could not resist,
+he made his way to the old Square.  But having reached the house, he
+nearly went away again.  While he stood hesitating with his hand on the
+bell, a girl and a soldier passed, appearing as if by magic out of the
+moonlit November mist, blurred and solid shapes embraced, then vanished
+into it again, leaving the sound of footsteps.  Fort jerked the bell.  He
+was shown into what seemed, to one coming out of that mist, to be a
+brilliant, crowded room, though in truth there were but two lamps and
+five people in it.  They were sitting round the fire, talking, and paused
+when he came in.  When he had shaken hands with Pierson and been
+introduced to "my daughter Gratian" and a man in khaki "my son-in-law
+George Laird," to a tall thin-faced, foreign-looking man in a black stock
+and seemingly no collar, he went up to Noel, who had risen from a chair
+before the fire.  'No!' he thought, 'I've dreamed it, or Leila has lied!'
+She was so perfectly the self-possessed, dainty maiden he remembered.
+Even the feel of her hand was the same-warm and confident; and sinking
+into a chair, he said: "Please go on, and let me chip in."
+
+"We were quarrelling about the Universe, Captain Fort," said the man in
+khaki; "delighted to have your help.  I was just saying that this
+particular world has no particular importance, no more than a
+newspaper-seller would accord to it if it were completely destroyed
+tomorrow--''Orrible catastrophe, total destruction of the world--six
+o'clock edition-pyper!'  I say that it will become again the nebula out
+of which it was formed, and by friction with other nebula re-form into a
+fresh shape and so on ad infinitum--but I can't explain why. My wife
+wonders if it exists at all except in the human mind--but she can't
+explain what the human mind is.  My father-in-law thinks that it is God's
+hobby--but he can't explain who or what God is.  Nollie is silent.  And
+Monsieur Lavendie hasn't yet told us what he thinks. What do you think,
+monsieur?"  The thin-faced, big-eyed man put up his hand to his high,
+veined brow as if he had a headache, reddened, and began to speak in
+French, which Fort followed with difficulty.
+
+"For me the Universe is a limitless artist, monsieur, who from all time
+and to all time is ever expressing himself in differing forms--always
+trying to make a masterpiece, and generally failing.  For me this world,
+and all the worlds, are like ourselves, and the flowers and trees--little
+separate works of art, more or less perfect, whose little lives run their
+course, and are spilled or powdered back into this Creative Artist,
+whence issue ever fresh attempts at art.  I agree with Monsieur Laird, if
+I understand him right; but I agree also with Madame Laird, if I
+understand her.  You see, I think mind and matter are one, or perhaps
+there is no such thing as either mind or matter, only growth and decay
+and growth again, for ever and ever; but always conscious growth--an
+artist expressing himself in millions of ever-changing forms; decay and
+death as we call them, being but rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide,
+which must ever come between two rising tides, or the night which comes
+between two days.  But the next day is never the same as the day before,
+nor the tide as the last tide; so the little shapes of the world and of
+ourselves, these works of art by the Eternal Artist, are never renewed in
+the same form, are never twice alike, but always fresh-fresh worlds,
+fresh individuals, fresh flowers, fresh everything.  I do not see
+anything depressing in that.  To me it would be depressing to think that
+I would go on living after death, or live again in a new body, myself yet
+not myself.  How stale that would be!  When I finish a picture it is
+inconceivable to me that this picture should ever become another picture,
+or that one can divide the expression from the mind-stuff it has
+expressed.  The Great Artist who is the whole of Everything, is ever in
+fresh effort to achieve new things.  He is as a fountain who throws up
+new drops, no two ever alike, which fall back into the water, flow into
+the pipe, and so are thrown up again in fresh-shaped drops.  But I cannot
+explain why there should be this Eternal Energy, ever expressing itself
+in fresh individual shapes, this Eternal Working Artist, instead of
+nothing at all--just empty dark for always; except indeed that it must be
+one thing or the other, either all or nothing; and it happens to be this
+and not that, the all and not the nothing."
+
+He stopped speaking, and his big eyes, which had fixed themselves on
+Fort's face, seemed to the latter not to be seeing him at all, but to
+rest on something beyond.  The man in khaki, who had risen and was
+standing with his hand on his wife's shoulder, said:
+
+"Bravo, monsieur; Jolly well put from the artist's point of view. The
+idea is pretty, anyway; but is there any need for an idea at all?  Things
+are; and we have just to take them."  Fort had the impression of
+something dark and writhing; the thin black form of his host, who had
+risen and come close to the fire.
+
+"I cannot admit," he was saying, "the identity of the Creator with the
+created.  God exists outside ourselves.  Nor can I admit that there is no
+defnite purpose and fulfilment.  All is shaped to His great ends.  I
+think we are too given to spiritual pride.  The world has lost reverence;
+I regret it, I bitterly regret it."
+
+"I rejoice at it," said the man in khaki.  "Now, Captain Fort, your turn
+to bat!"
+
+Fort, who had been looking at Noel, gave himself a shake, and said: "I
+think what monsieur calls expression, I call fighting.  I suspect the
+Universe of being simply a long fight, a sum of conquests and defeats.
+Conquests leading to defeats, defeats to conquests.  I want to win while
+I'm alive, and because I want to win, I want to live on after death.
+Death is a defeat.  I don't want to admit it.  While I have that
+instinct, I don't think I shall really die; when I lose it, I think I
+shall."  He was conscious of Noel's face turning towards him, but had the
+feeling that she wasn't really listening. "I suspect that what we call
+spirit is just the fighting instinct; that what we call matter is the
+mood of lying down.  Whether, as Mr. Pierson says, God is outside us, or,
+as monsieur thinks, we are all part of God, I don't know, I'm sure."
+
+"Ah!  There we are!" said the man in khaki.  "We all speak after our
+temperaments, and none of us know.  The religions of the world are just
+the poetic expressions of certain strongly marked temperaments. Monsieur
+was a poet just now, and his is the only temperament which has never yet
+been rammed down the world's throat in the form of religion.  Go out and
+proclaim your views from the housetops, monsieur, and see what happens."
+
+The painter shook his head with a smile which seemed to Fort very bright
+on the surface, and very sad underneath.
+
+"Non, monsieur," he said; "the artist does not wish to impose his
+temperament.  Difference of temperament is the very essence of his joy,
+and his belief in life.  Without difference there would be no life for
+him.  'Tout casse, tout lasse,' but change goes on for ever: We artists
+reverence change, monsieur; we reverence the newness of each morning, of
+each night, of each person, of each expression of energy.  Nothing is
+final for us; we are eager for all and always for more.  We are in love,
+you see, even with-death."
+
+There was a silence; then Fort heard Pierson murmur:
+
+"That is beautiful, monsieur; but oh! how wrong!"  "And what do you
+think, Nollie?" said the man in khaki suddenly.  The girl had been
+sitting very still in her low chair, with her hands crossed in her lap,
+her eyes on the fire, and the lamplight shining down on her fair hair;
+she looked up, startled, and her eyes met Fort's.
+
+"I don't know; I wasn't listening."  Something moved in him, a kind of
+burning pity, a rage of protection.  He said quickly:
+
+"These are times of action.  Philosophy seems to mean nothing nowadays.
+The one thing is to hate tyranny and cruelty, and protect everything
+that's weak and lonely.  It's all that's left to make life worth living,
+when all the packs of all the world are out for blood."
+
+Noel was listening now, and he went on fervently: "Why!  Even we who
+started out to fight this Prussian pack, have caught the pack feeling--so
+that it's hunting all over the country, on every sort of scent. It's a
+most infectious thing."
+
+"I cannot see that we are being infected, Captain Fort."
+
+"I'm afraid we are, Mr.  Pierson.  The great majority of people are
+always inclined to run with the hounds; the pressure's great just now;
+the pack spirit's in the air."
+
+Pierson shook his head.  "No, I cannot see it," he repeated; "it seems to
+me that we are all more brotherly, and more tolerant."
+
+"Ah! monsieur le cure," Fort heard the painter say very gently, "it is
+difficult for a good man to see the evil round him.  There are those whom
+the world's march leaves apart, and reality cannot touch. They walk with
+God, and the bestialities of us animals are fantastic to them.  The
+spirit of the pack, as monsieur says, is in the air.  I see all human
+nature now, running with gaping mouths and red tongues lolling out, their
+breath and their cries spouting thick before them. On whom they will fall
+next--one never knows; the innocent with the guilty.  Perhaps if you were
+to see some one dear to you devoured before your eyes, monsieur le cure,
+you would feel it too; and yet I do not know."
+
+Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expression at that
+moment was very strange, searching, half frightened.  No!  Leila had not
+lied, and he had not dreamed!  That thing was true!
+
+When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the Square, he
+could see nothing but her face and form before him in the moonlight: its
+soft outline, fair colouring, slender delicacy, and the brooding of the
+big grey eyes.  He had already crossed New Oxford Street and was some way
+down towards the Strand, when a voice behind him murmured: "Ah! c'est
+vous, monsieur!"  and the painter loomed up at his elbow.
+
+"Are you going my way?"  said Fort.  "I go slowly, I'm afraid."
+
+"The slower the better, monsieur.  London is so beautiful in the dark.
+It is the despair of the painter--these moonlit nights.  There are
+moments when one feels that reality does not exist.  All is in
+dreams--like the face of that young lady."
+
+Fort stared sharply round at him.  "Oh!  She strikes you like that, does
+she?"
+
+"Ah!  What a charming figure!  What an atmosphere of the past and future
+round her!  And she will not let me paint her!  Well, perhaps only
+Mathieu Maris."  He raised his broad Bohemian hat, and ran his fingers
+through his hair.
+
+"Yes," said Fort, "she'd make a wonderful picture.  I'm not a judge of
+Art, but I can see that."
+
+The painter smiled, and went on in his rapid French:
+
+"She has youth and age all at once--that is rare.  Her father is an
+interesting man, too; I am trying to paint him; he is very difficult. He
+sits lost in some kind of vacancy of his own; a man whose soul has gone
+before him somewhere, like that of his Church, escaped from this age of
+machines, leaving its body behind--is it not?  He is so kind; a saint, I
+think.  The other clergymen I see passing in the street are not at all
+like him; they look buttoned-up and busy, with faces of men who might be
+schoolmasters or lawyers, or even soldiers--men of this world.  Do you
+know this, monsieur--it is ironical, but it is true, I think a man cannot
+be a successful priest unless he is a man of this world.  I do not see
+any with that look of Monsieur Pierson, a little tortured within, and not
+quite present.  He is half an artist, really a lover of music, that man.
+I am painting him at the piano; when he is playing his face is alive, but
+even then, so far away.  To me, monsieur, he is exactly like a beautiful
+church which knows it is being deserted.  I find him pathetic.  Je suis
+socialiste, but I have always an aesthetic admiration for that old
+Church, which held its children by simple emotion.  The times have
+changed; it can no longer hold them so; it stands in the dusk, with its
+spire to a heaven which exists no more, its bells, still beautiful but
+out of tune with the music of the streets.  It is something of that which
+I wish to get into my picture of Monsieur Pierson; and sapristi! it is
+difficult!"  Fort grunted assent.  So far as he could make out the
+painter's words, it seemed to him a large order.
+
+"To do it, you see," went on the painter, "one should have the proper
+background--these currents of modern life and modern types, passing him
+and leaving him untouched.  There is no illusion, and no dreaming, in
+modern life.  Look at this street.  La, la!"
+
+In the darkened Strand, hundreds of khaki-clad figures and girls were
+streaming by, and all their voices had a hard, half-jovial vulgarity. The
+motor-cabs and buses pushed along remorselessly; newspaper-sellers
+muttered their ceaseless invitations.  Again the painter made his gesture
+of despair: "How am I to get into my picture this modern life, which
+washes round him as round that church, there, standing in the middle of
+the street?  See how the currents sweep round it, as if to wash it away;
+yet it stands, seeming not to see them.  If I were a phantasist, it would
+be easy enough: but to be a phantasist is too simple for me--those
+romantic gentlemen bring what they like from anywhere, to serve their
+ends.  Moi, je suis realiste.  And so, monsieur, I have invented an idea.
+I am painting over his head while he sits there at the piano a picture
+hanging on the wall--of one of these young town girls who have no
+mysteriousness at all, no youth; nothing but a cheap knowledge and
+defiance, and good humour.  He is looking up at it, but he does not see
+it.  I will make the face of that girl the face of modern life, and he
+shall sit staring at it, seeing nothing.  What do you think of my idea?"
+
+But Fort had begun to feel something of the revolt which the man of
+action so soon experiences when he listens to an artist talking.
+
+"It sounds all right," he said abruptly; "all the same, monsieur, all my
+sympathy is with modern life.  Take these young girls, and these Tommies.
+For all their feather-pated vulgarity and they are damned vulgar, I must
+say--they're marvellous people; they do take the rough with the smooth;
+they're all 'doing their bit,' you know, and facing this particularly
+beastly world.  Aesthetically, I daresay, they're deplorable, but can you
+say that on the whole their philosophy isn't an advance on anything we've
+had up till now?  They worship nothing, it's true; but they keep their
+ends up marvellously."
+
+The painter, who seemed to feel the wind blowing cold on his ideas,
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I am not concerned with that, monsieur; I set down what I see; better or
+worse, I do not know.  But look at this!"  And he pointed down the
+darkened and moonlit street.  It was all jewelled and enamelled with
+little spots and splashes of subdued red and green-blue light, and the
+downward orange glow of the high lamps--like an enchanted dream-street
+peopled by countless moving shapes, which only came to earth-reality when
+seen close to.  The painter drew his breath in with a hiss.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "what beauty!  And they don't see it--not one in a
+thousand!  Pity, isn't it?  Beauty is the holy thing!"
+
+Fort, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders.  "Every man to his vision!"
+he said.  "My leg's beginning to bother me; I'm afraid I must take a cab.
+Here's my address; any time you like to come.  I'm often in about seven.
+I can't take you anywhere, I suppose?"
+
+"A thousand thanks, monsieur; but I go north.  I loved your words about
+the pack.  I often wake at night and hear the howling of all the packs of
+the world.  Those who are by nature gentle nowadays feel they are
+strangers in a far land.  Good night, monsieur!"
+
+He took off his queer hat, bowed low, and crossed out into the Strand,
+like one who had come in a dream, and faded out with the waking.  Fort
+hailed a cab, and went home, still seeing Noel's face. There was one, if
+you liked, waiting to be thrown to the wolves, waiting for the world's
+pack to begin howling round her--that lovely child; and the first, the
+loudest of all the pack, perhaps, must be her own father, the lean, dark
+figure with the gentle face, and the burnt bright eyes.  What a ghastly
+business!  His dreams that night were not such as Leila would have
+approved.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+When in the cupboard there is a real and very bony skeleton, carefully
+kept from the sight of a single member of the family, the position of
+that member is liable to become lonely.  But Pierson, who had been lonely
+fifteen years, did not feel it so much, perhaps, as most men would have.
+In his dreamy nature there was a curious self-sufficiency, which only
+violent shocks disturbed, and he went on with his routine of duty, which
+had become for him as set as the pavements he trod on his way to and from
+it.  It was not exactly true, as the painter had said, that this routine
+did not bring him into touch with life.  After all he saw people when
+they were born, when they married, when they died.  He helped them when
+they wanted money, and when they were ill; he told their children Bible
+stories on Sunday afternoons; he served those who were in need with soup
+and bread from his soup kitchen.  He never spared himself in any way, and
+his ears were always at the service of their woes.  And yet he did not
+understand them, and they knew that.  It was as though he, or they, were
+colour-blind.  The values were all different.  He was seeing one set of
+objects, they another.
+
+One street of his parish touched a main line of thoroughfare, and formed
+a little part of the new hunting-grounds of women, who, chased forth from
+their usual haunts by the Authorities under pressure of the country's
+danger, now pursued their calling in the dark.  This particular evil had
+always been a sort of nightmare to Pierson.  The starvation which ruled
+his own existence inclined him to a particularly severe view and severity
+was not his strong point.  In consequence there was ever within him a
+sort of very personal and poignant struggle going on beneath that seeming
+attitude of rigid disapproval.  He joined the hunters, as it were,
+because he was afraid-not, of course, of his own instincts, for he was
+fastidious, a gentleman, and a priest, but of being lenient to a sin, to
+something which God abhorred: He was, as it were, bound to take a
+professional view of this particular offence.  When in his walks abroad
+he passed one of these women, he would unconsciously purse his lips, and
+frown. The darkness of the streets seemed to lend them such power, such
+unholy sovereignty over the night.  They were such a danger to the
+soldiers, too; and in turn, the soldiers were such a danger to the lambs
+of his flock.  Domestic disasters in his parish came to his ears from
+time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were turned by soldiers,
+so that they were about to become mothers.  They seemed to him pitiful
+indeed; but he could not forgive them for their giddiness, for putting
+temptation in the way of brave young men, fighting, or about to fight.
+The glamour which surrounded soldiers was not excuse enough.  When the
+babies were born, and came to his notice, he consulted a Committee he had
+formed, of three married and two maiden ladies, who visited the mothers,
+and if necessary took the babies into a creche; for those babies had a
+new value to the country, and were not--poor little things!--to be held
+responsible for their mothers' faults.  He himself saw little of the
+young mothers; shy of them, secretly afraid, perhaps, of not being
+censorious enough.  But once in a way Life set him face to face with one.
+
+On New Year's Eve he was sitting in his study after tea, at that hour
+which he tried to keep for his parishioners, when a Mrs. Mitchett was
+announced, a small bookseller's wife, whom he knew for an occasional
+Communicant.  She came in, accompanied by a young dark-eyed girl in a
+loose mouse-coloured coat.  At his invitation they sat down in front of
+the long bookcase on the two green leather chairs which had grown worn in
+the service of the parish; and, screwed round in his chair at the bureau,
+with his long musician's fingers pressed together, he looked at them and
+waited.  The woman had taken out her handkerchief, and was wiping her
+eyes; but the girl sat quiet, as the mouse she somewhat resembled in that
+coat.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Mitchett?"  He said gently, at last.
+
+The woman put away her handkerchief, sniffed resolutely, and began:
+
+"It's 'Ilda, sir.  Such a thing Mitchett and me never could 'ave
+expected, comin' on us so sudden.  I thought it best to bring 'er round,
+poor girl.  Of course, it's all the war.  I've warned 'er a dozen times;
+but there it is, comin' next month, and the man in France."  Pierson
+instinctively averted his gaze from the girl, who had not moved her eyes
+from his face, which she scanned with a seeming absence of interest, as
+if she had long given up thinking over her lot, and left it now to
+others.
+
+"That is sad," he said; "very, very sad."
+
+"Yes," murmured Mrs. Mitchett; "that's what I tell 'Ilda."
+
+The girl's glance, lowered for a second, resumed its impersonal scrutiny
+of Pierson's face.
+
+"What is the man's name and regiment?  Perhaps we can get leave for him
+to come home and marry Hilda at once."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett sniffed.  "She won't give it, sir.  Now, 'Ilda, give it to
+Mr.  Pierson."  And her voice had a real note of entreaty.  The girl
+shook her head.  Mrs. Mitchett murmured dolefully: "That's 'ow she is,
+sir; not a word will she say.  And as I tell her, we can only think there
+must 'ave been more than one.  And that does put us to shame so!"
+
+But still the girl made no sign.
+
+"You speak to her, sir; I'm really at my wit's end."
+
+"Why won't you tell us?" said Pierson.  "The man will want to do the
+right thing, 'I'm sure."
+
+The girl shook her head, and spoke for the first time.
+
+"I don't know his name."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett's face twitched.
+
+"Oh, dear!" she said: "Think of that!  She's never said as much to us."
+
+"Not know his name?"  Pierson murmured.  "But how--how could you--" he
+stopped, but his face had darkened.  "Surely you would never have done
+such a thing without affection?  Come, tell me!"
+
+"I don't know it," the girl repeated.
+
+"It's these Parks," said Mrs.  Mitchett, from behind her handkerchief.
+"And to think that this'll be our first grandchild and all!  'Ilda is
+difficult; as quiet, as quiet; but that stubborn--"
+
+Pierson looked at the girl, who seemed, if anything, less interested than
+ever.  This impenetrability and something mulish in her attitude annoyed
+him.  "I can't think," he said, "how you could so have forgotten
+yourself.  It's truly grievous."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett murmured: "Yes, sir; the girls gets it into their heads
+that there's going to be no young men for them."
+
+"That's right," said the girl sullenly.
+
+Pierson's lips grew tighter.  "Well, what can I do for you, Mrs.
+Mitchett?"  he said.  "Does your daughter come to church?"
+
+Mrs.  Mitchett shook her head mournfully.  "Never since she had her
+byke."
+
+Pierson rose from his chair.  The old story!  Control and discipline
+undermined, and these bitter apples the result!
+
+"Well," he said, "if you need our creche, you have only to come to me,"
+and he turned to the girl.  "And you--won't you let this dreadful
+experience move your heart?  My dear girl, we must all master ourselves,
+our passions, and our foolish wilfulness, especially in these times when
+our country needs us strong, and self-disciplined, not thinking of
+ourselves.  I'm sure you're a good girl at heart."
+
+The girl's dark eyes, unmoved from his face, roused in him a spasm of
+nervous irritation.  "Your soul is in great danger, and you're very
+unhappy, I can see.  Turn to God for help, and in His mercy everything
+will be made so different for you--so very different!  Come!"
+
+The girl said with a sort of surprising quietness: "I don't want the
+baby!"
+
+The remark staggered him, almost as if she had uttered a hideous oath.
+
+"'Ilda was in munitions," said her mother in an explanatory voice:
+"earnin' a matter of four pound a week.  Oh! dear, it is a waste an'
+all!"  A queer, rather terrible little smile curled Pierson's lips.
+
+"A judgment!" he said.  "Good evening, Mrs. Mitchett.  Good evening,
+Hilda.  If you want me when the time comes, send for me."
+
+They stood up; he shook hands with them; and was suddenly aware that the
+door was open, and Noel standing there.  He had heard no sound; and how
+long she had been there he could not tell.  There was a singular fixity
+in her face and attitude.  She was staring at the girl, who, as she
+passed, lifted her face, so that the dark eyes and the grey eyes met.
+The door was shut, and Noel stood there alone with him.
+
+"Aren't you early, my child?"  said Pierson.  "You came in very quietly."
+
+"Yes; I heard."
+
+A slight shock went through him at the tone of her voice; her face had
+that possessed look which he always dreaded.  "What did you hear?"  he
+said.
+
+"I heard you say: 'A judgment!'  You'll say the same to me, won't you?
+Only, I do want my baby."
+
+She was standing with her back to the door, over which a dark curtain
+hung; her face looked young and small against its stuff, her eyes very
+large.  With one hand she plucked at her blouse, just over her heart.
+
+Pierson stared at her, and gripped the back of the chair he had been
+sitting in.  A lifetime of repression served him in the half-realised
+horror of that moment.  He stammered out the single word--
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"It's quite true," she said, turned round, and went out.
+
+Pierson had a sort of vertigo; if he had moved, he must have fallen down.
+Nollie!  He slid round and sank into his chair, and by some horrible
+cruel fiction of his nerves, he seemed to feel Noel on his knee, as, when
+a little girl, she had been wont to sit, with her fair hair fluffing
+against his cheek.  He seemed to feel that hair tickling his skin; it
+used to be the greatest comfort he had known since her mother died.  At
+that moment his pride shrivelled like a flower held to a flame; all that
+abundant secret pride of a father who loves and admires, who worships
+still a dead wife in the children she has left him; who, humble by
+nature, yet never knows how proud he is till the bitter thing happens;
+all the long pride of the priest who, by dint of exhortation and
+remonstrance has coated himself in a superiority he hardly suspects--all
+this pride shrivelled in him. Then something writhed and cried within, as
+a tortured beast cries, at loss to know why it is being tortured.  How
+many times has not a man used those words: "My God!  My God!  Why hast
+Thou forsaken me!" He sprang up and tried to pace his way out of this
+cage of confusion: His thoughts and feelings made the strangest medley,
+spiritual and worldly--Social ostracism--her soul in peril--a trial sent
+by God!  The future!  Imagination failed him.  He went to his little
+piano, opened it, closed it again; took his hat, and stole out.  He
+walked fast, without knowing where.  It was very cold--a clear, bitter
+evening.  Silent rapid motion in the frosty air was some relief.  As Noel
+had fled from him, having uttered her news, so did he fly from her.  The
+afflicted walk fast.  He was soon down by the river, and turned West
+along its wall.  The moon was up, bright and nearly full, and the
+steel-like shimmer of its light burnished the ebbing water. A cruel
+night!  He came to the Obelisk, and leaned against it, overcome by a
+spasm of realisation.  He seemed to see his dead wife's face staring at
+him out of the past, like an accusation.  "How have you cared for Nollie,
+that she should have come to this?"  It became the face of the moonlit
+sphinx, staring straight at him, the broad dark face with wide nostrils,
+cruel lips, full eyes blank of pupils, all livened and whitened by the
+moonlight--an embodiment of the marvellous unseeing energy of Life,
+twisting and turning hearts without mercy.  He gazed into those eyes with
+a sort of scared defiance.  The great clawed paws of the beast, the
+strength and remorseless serenity of that crouching creature with human
+head, made living by his imagination and the moonlight, seemed to him
+like a temptation to deny God, like a refutation of human virtue.
+
+Then, the sense of beauty stirred in him; he moved where he could see its
+flanks coated in silver by the moonlight, the ribs and the great muscles,
+and the tail with tip coiled over the haunch, like the head of a serpent.
+It was weirdly living; fine and cruel, that great man-made thing.  It
+expressed something in the soul of man, pitiless and remote from love--or
+rather, the remorselessness which man had seen, lurking within man's
+fate.  Pierson recoiled from it, and resumed his march along the
+Embankment, almost deserted in the bitter cold.  He came to where, in the
+opening of the Underground railway, he could see the little forms of
+people moving, little orange and red lights glowing.  The sight arrested
+him by its warmth and motion.  Was it not all a dream?  That woman and
+her daughter, had they really come?  Had not Noel been but an apparition,
+her words a trick which his nerves had played him?  Then, too vividly
+again, he saw her face against the dark stuff of the curtain, the curve
+of her hand plucking at her blouse, heard the sound of his own horrified:
+"Nollie!"  No illusion, no deception!  The edifice of his life was in the
+dust. And a queer and ghastly company of faces came about him; faces he
+had thought friendly, of good men and women whom he knew, yet at that
+moment did not know, all gathered round Noel, with fingers pointing at
+her.  He staggered back from that vision, could not bear it, could not
+recognise this calamity.  With a sort of comfort, yet an aching sense of
+unreality, his mind flew to all those summer holidays spent in Scotland,
+Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, by mountain and lake, with his two girls; what
+sunsets, and turning leaves, birds, beasts, and insects they had watched
+together!  From their youthful companionship, their eagerness, their
+confidence in him, he had known so much warmth and pleasure.  If all
+those memories were true, surely this could not be true.  He felt
+suddenly that he must hurry back, go straight to Noel, tell her that she
+had been cruel to him, or assure himself that, for the moment, she had
+been insane: His temper rose suddenly, took fire.  He felt anger against
+her, against every one he knew, against life itself.  Thrusting his hands
+deep into the pockets of his thin black overcoat, he plunged into that
+narrow glowing tunnel of the station booking-office, which led back to
+the crowded streets.  But by the time he reached home his anger had
+evaporated; he felt nothing but utter lassitude.  It was nine o'clock,
+and the maids had cleared the dining table.  In despair Noel had gone up
+to her room.  He had no courage left, and sat down supperless at his
+little piano, letting his fingers find soft painful harmonies, so that
+Noel perhaps heard the faint far thrumming of that music through uneasy
+dreams.  And there he stayed, till it became time for him to go forth to
+the Old Year's Midnight Service.
+
+When he returned, Pierson wrapped himself in a rug and lay down on the
+old sofa in his study.  The maid, coming in next morning to "do" the
+grate, found him still asleep.  She stood contemplating him in awe; a
+broad-faced, kindly, fresh-coloured girl.  He lay with his face resting
+on his hand, his dark, just grizzling hair unruffled, as if he had not
+stirred all night; his other hand clutched the rug to his chest, and his
+booted feet protruded beyond it.  To her young eyes he looked rather
+appallingly neglected.  She gazed with interest at the hollows in his
+cheeks, and the furrows in his brow, and the lips, dark-moustached and
+bearded, so tightly compressed, even in. sleep.  Being holy didn't make a
+man happy, it seemed!  What fascinated her were the cindery eyelashes
+resting on the cheeks, the faint movement of face and body as he
+breathed, the gentle hiss of breath escaping through the twitching
+nostrils.  She moved nearer, bending down over him, with the childlike
+notion of counting those lashes.  Her lips parted in readiness to say:
+"Oh!" if he waked. Something in his face, and the little twitches which
+passed over it, made her feel "that sorry" for him.  He was a gentleman,
+had money, preached to her every Sunday, and was not so very old--what
+more could a man want?  And yet--he looked so tired, with those cheeks.
+
+She pitied him; helpless and lonely he seemed to her, asleep there
+instead of going to bed properly.  And sighing, she tiptoed towards the
+door.
+
+"Is that you, Bessie?"
+
+The girl turned: "Yes, sir.  I'm sorry I woke you, sir.  'Appy New Year,
+sir!"
+
+"Ah, yes.  A Happy New Year, Bessie."
+
+She saw his usual smile, saw it die, and a fixed look come on his face;
+it scared her, and she hurried away.  Pierson had remembered. For full
+five minutes he lay there staring at nothing.  Then he rose, folded the
+rug mechanically, and looked at the clock.  Eight!  He went upstairs,
+knocked on Noel's door, and entered.
+
+The blinds were drawn up, but she was still in bed.  He stood looking
+down at her.  "A Happy New Year, my child!"  he said; and he trembled all
+over, shivering visibly.  She looked so young and innocent, so
+round-faced and fresh, after her night's sleep, that the thought sprang
+up in him again: 'It must have been a dream!'  She did not move, but a
+slow flush came up in her cheeks.  No dream--dream!  He said tremulously:
+"I can't realise.  I--I hoped I had heard wrong. Didn't I, Nollie?
+Didn't I?"
+
+She just shook her head.
+
+"Tell me--everything," he said; "for God's sake!"
+
+He saw her lips moving, and caught the murmur: "There 's nothing more.
+Gratian and George know, and Leila.  It can't be undone, Daddy. Perhaps I
+wouldn't have wanted to make sure, if you hadn't tried to stop Cyril and
+me--and I'm glad sometimes, because I shall have something of his--"  She
+looked up at him.  "After all, it's the same, really; only, there's no
+ring.  It's no good talking to me now, as if I hadn't been thinking of
+this for ages.  I'm used to anything you can say; I've said it to myself,
+you see.  There's nothing but to make the best of it."
+
+Her hot hand came out from under the bedclothes, and clutched his very
+tight.  Her flush had deepened, and her eyes seemed to him to glitter.
+
+"Oh, Daddy!  You do look tired!  Haven't you been to bed?  Poor Daddy!"
+
+That hot clutch, and the words: "Poor Daddy!"  brought tears into his
+eyes.  They rolled slowly down to his beard, and he covered his face with
+the other hand.  Her grip tightened convulsively; suddenly she dragged it
+to her lips, kissed it, and let it drop.
+
+"Don't!"  she said, and turned away her face.
+
+Pierson effaced his emotion, and said quite calmly:
+
+"Shall you wish to be at home, my dear, or to go elsewhere?"
+
+Noel had begun to toss her head on her pillow, like a feverish child
+whose hair gets in its eyes and mouth.
+
+"Oh!  I don't know; what does it matter?"
+
+"Kestrel; would you like to go there?  Your aunt--I could write to her."
+Noel stared at him a moment; a struggle seemed going on within her.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I would.  Only, not Uncle Bob."
+
+"Perhaps your uncle would come up here, and keep me company."
+
+She turned her face away, and that tossing movement of the limbs beneath
+the clothes began again.  "I don't care," she said; "anywhere--it doesn't
+matter."
+
+Pierson put his chilly hand on her forehead.  "Gently!"  he said, and
+knelt down by the bed.  "Merciful Father," he murmured, "give us strength
+to bear this dreadful trial.  Keep my beloved child safe, and bring her
+peace; and give me to understand how I have done wrong, how I have failed
+towards Thee, and her.  In all things chasten and strengthen her, my
+child, and me."
+
+His thoughts moved on in the confused, inarticulate suspense of prayer,
+till he heard her say: "You haven't failed; why do you talk of
+failing--it isn't true; and don't pray for me, Daddy."
+
+Pierson raised himself, and moved back from the bed.  Her words
+confounded him, yet he was afraid to answer.  She pushed her head deep
+into the pillow, and lay looking up at the ceiling.
+
+"I shall have a son; Cyril won't quite have died.  And I don't want to be
+forgiven."
+
+He dimly perceived what long dumb processes of thought and feeling had
+gone on in her to produce this hardened state of mind, which to him
+seemed almost blasphemous.  And in the very midst of this turmoil in his
+heart, he could not help thinking how lovely her face looked, lying back
+so that the curve of her throat was bared, with the short tendrils of
+hair coiling about it.  That flung-back head, moving restlessly from side
+to side in the heat of the soft pillow, had such a passion of protesting
+life in it!  And he kept silence.
+
+"I want you to know it was all me.  But I can't pretend.  Of course I'll
+try and not let it hurt you more than I possibly can.  I'm sorry for you,
+poor Daddy; oh!  I'm sorry for you!"  With a movement incredibly lithe
+and swift, she turned and pressed her face down in the pillow, so that
+all he could see was her tumbled hair and the bedclothes trembling above
+her shoulders.  He tried to stroke that hair, but she shook her head
+free, and he stole out.
+
+She did not come to breakfast; and when his own wretched meal was over,
+the mechanism of his professional life caught him again at once.  New
+Year's Day!  He had much to do.  He had, before all, to be of a cheerful
+countenance before his flock, to greet all and any with an air of hope
+and courage.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+1
+
+Thirza Pierson, seeing her brother-in-law's handwriting, naturally said:
+"Here's a letter from Ted."
+
+Bob Pierson, with a mouth full of sausage, as naturally responded:
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+In reading on, she found that to answer that question was one of the most
+difficult tasks ever set her.  Its news moved and disturbed her deeply.
+Under her wing this disaster had happened!  Down here had been wrought
+this most deplorable miracle, fraught with such dislocation of lives!
+Noel's face, absorbed and passionate, outside the door of her room on the
+night when Cyril Morland went away--her instinct had been right!
+
+"He wants you to go up and stay with him, Bob."
+
+"Why not both of us?"
+
+"He wants Nollie to come down to me; she's not well."
+
+"Not well?  What's the matter?"
+
+To tell him seemed disloyalty to her sex; not to tell him, disloyalty to
+her husband.  A simple consideration of fact and not of principle,
+decided her.  He would certainly say in a moment: 'Here!  Pitch it over!'
+and she would have to.  She said tranquilly:
+
+"You remember that night when Cyril Morland went away, and Noel behaved
+so strangely.  Well, my dear; she is going to have a child at the
+beginning of April.  The poor boy is dead, Bob; he died for the Country."
+
+She saw the red tide flow up into his face.
+
+"What!"
+
+"Poor Edward is dreadfully upset.  We must do what we can.  I blame
+myself."  By instinct she used those words.
+
+"Blame yourself?  Stuff!  That young--!"  He stopped.
+
+Thirza said quietly: "No, Bob; of the two, I'm sure it was Noel; she was
+desperate that day.  Don't you remember her face?  Oh! this war!  It's
+turned the whole world upside down.  That's the only comfort; nothing's
+normal"
+
+Bob Pierson possessed beyond most men the secret of happiness, for he was
+always absorbed in the moment, to the point of unself-consciousness.
+Eating an egg, cutting down a tree, sitting on a Tribunal, making up his
+accounts, planting potatoes, looking at the moon, riding his cob, reading
+the Lessons--no part of him stood aside to see how he was doing it, or
+wonder why he was doing it, or not doing it better.  He grew like a
+cork-tree, and acted like a sturdy and well-natured dog.  His griefs,
+angers, and enjoyments were simple as a child's, or as his somewhat noisy
+slumbers.  They were notably well-suited, for Thirza had the same secret
+of happiness, though her, absorption in the moment did not--as became a
+woman--prevent her being conscious of others; indeed, such formed the
+chief subject of her absorptions.  One might say that they neither of
+them had philosophy yet were as philosophic a couple as one could meet on
+this earth of the self-conscious.  Daily life to these two was still of
+simple savour.  To be absorbed in life--the queer endless tissue of
+moments and things felt and done and said and made, the odd inspiriting
+conjunctions of countless people--was natural to them; but they never
+thought whether they were absorbed or not, or had any particular attitude
+to Life or Death--a great blessing at the epoch in which they were
+living.
+
+Bob Pierson, then, paced the room, so absorbed in his dismay and concern,
+that he was almost happy.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, "what a ghastly thing!
+
+"Nollie, of all people!  I feel perfectly wretched, Thirza; wretched
+beyond words."  But with each repetition his voice grew cheerier, and
+Thirza felt that he was already over the worst.
+
+"Your coffee's getting cold!"  she said.
+
+"What do you advise?  Shall I go up, heh?"
+
+"I think you'll be a godsend to poor Ted; you'll keep his spirits up. Eve
+won't get any leave till Easter; and I can be quite alone, and see to
+Nollie here.  The servants can have a holiday--, Nurse and I will run the
+house together.  I shall enjoy it."
+
+"You're a good woman, Thirza!"  Taking his wife's hand, he put it to his
+lips.  "There isn't another woman like you in the world."
+
+Thirza's eyes smiled.  "Pass me your cup; I'll give you some fresh
+coffee."
+
+It was decided to put the plan into operation at mid-month, and she bent
+all her wits to instilling into her husband the thought that a baby more
+or less was no great matter in a world which already contained twelve
+hundred million people.  With a man's keener sense of family propriety,
+he could not see that this baby would be the same as any other baby.  "By
+heaven!"  he would say, "I simply can't get used to it; in our family!
+And Ted a parson!  What the devil shall we do with it?"
+
+"If Nollie will let us, why shouldn't we adopt it?  It'll be something to
+take my thoughts off the boys."
+
+"That's an idea!  But Ted's a funny fellow.  He'll have some doctrine of
+atonement, or other in his bonnet."
+
+"Oh, bother!" said Thirza with asperity.
+
+The thought of sojourning in town for a spell was not unpleasant to Bob
+Pierson.  His Tribunal work was over, his early, potatoes in, and he had
+visions of working for the Country, of being a special constable, and
+dining at his Club.  The nearer he was to the front, and the more he
+could talk about the war, the greater the service he felt he would be
+doing.  He would ask for a job where his brains would be of use.  He
+regretted keenly that Thirza wouldn't be with him; a long separation like
+this would be a great trial.  And he would sigh and run his fingers
+through his whiskers.  Still for the Country, and for Nollie, one must
+put up with it!
+
+When Thirza finally saw him into the train, tears stood in the eyes of
+both, for they were honestly attached, and knew well enough that this
+job, once taken in hand, would have to be seen through; a three months'
+separation at least.
+
+"I shall write every day."
+
+"So shall I, Bob."
+
+"You won't fret, old girl?"
+
+"Only if you do."
+
+"I shall be up at 5.5, and she'll be down at 4.50.  Give us a kiss--damn
+the porters.  God bless you!  I suppose she'd mind if--I--were to come
+down now and then?"
+
+"I'm afraid she would.  It's--it's--well, you know."
+
+"Yes, Yes; I do."  And he really did; for underneath, he had true
+delicacy.
+
+Her last words: "You're very sweet, Bob," remained in his ears all the
+way to Severn Junction.
+
+She went back to the house, emptied of her husband, daughter, boys, and
+maids; only the dogs left and the old nurse whom she had taken into
+confidence.  Even in that sheltered, wooded valley it was very cold this
+winter.  The birds hid themselves, not one flower bloomed, and the
+red-brown river was full and swift.  The sound of trees being felled for
+trench props, in the wood above the house resounded all day long in the
+frosty air.  She meant to do the cooking herself; and for the rest of the
+morning and early afternoon she concocted nice things, and thought out
+how she herself would feel if she were Noel and Noel she, so as to smooth
+out of the way anything which would hurt the girl.  In the afternoon she
+went down to the station in the village car, the same which had borne
+Cyril Morland away that July night, for their coachman had been taken for
+the army, and the horses were turned out.
+
+Noel looked tired and white, but calm--too calm.  Her face seemed to
+Thirza to have fined down, and with those brooding eyes, to be more
+beautiful.  In the car she possessed herself of the girl's hand, and
+squeezed it hard; their only allusion to the situation, except Noel's
+formal:
+
+"Thank you so much, Auntie, for having me; it's most awfully sweet of you
+and Uncle Bob."
+
+"There's no one in the house, my dear, except old Nurse.  It'll be very
+dull for you; but I thought I'd teach you to cook; it's rather useful."
+
+The smile which slipped on to Noel's face gave Thirza quite a turn.
+
+She had assigned the girl a different room, and had made it
+extraordinarily cheerful with a log fire, chrysanthemums, bright copper
+candlesticks, warming-pans, and such like.
+
+She went up with her at bedtime, and standing before the fire, said:
+
+"You know, Nollie, I absolutely refuse to regard this as any sort of
+tragedy.  To bring life into the worlds in these days, no matter how,
+ought to make anyone happy.  I only wish I could do it again, then I
+should feel some use.  Good night dear; and if you want anything, knock
+on the wall.  I'm next door.  Bless you!"  She saw that the girl was
+greatly moved, underneath her pale mask; and went out astonished at her
+niece's powers of self-control.
+
+But she did not sleep at all well; for in imagination, she kept on seeing
+Noel turning from side to side in the big bed, and those great eyes of
+hers staring at the dark.
+
+
+2
+
+The meeting of the brothers Pierson took place at the dinner-hour, and
+was characterised by a truly English lack of display.  They were so
+extremely different, and had been together so little since early days in
+their old Buckinghamshire home, that they were practically strangers,
+with just the potent link of far-distant memories in common.  It was of
+these they talked, and about the war.  On this subject they agreed in the
+large, and differed in the narrow.  For instance, both thought they knew
+about Germany and other countries, and neither of course had any real
+knowledge of any country outside their own; for, though both had passed
+through considerable tracts of foreign ground at one time or another,
+they had never remarked anything except its surface,--its churches, and
+its sunsets.  Again, both assumed that they were democrats, but neither
+knew the meaning of the word, nor felt that the working man could be
+really trusted; and both revered Church and, King: Both disliked
+conscription, but considered it necessary.  Both favoured Home Rule for
+Ireland, but neither thought it possible to grant it.  Both wished for
+the war to end, but were for prosecuting it to Victory, and neither knew
+what they meant by that word.  So much for the large.  On the narrower
+issues, such as strategy, and the personality of their country's leaders,
+they were opposed.  Edward was a Westerner, Robert an Easterner, as was
+natural in one who had lived twenty-five years in Ceylon.  Edward
+favoured the fallen government, Robert the risen. Neither had any
+particular reasons for their partisanship except what he had read in the
+journals.  After all--what other reasons could they have had?  Edward
+disliked the Harmsworth Press; Robert thought it was doing good.  Robert
+was explosive, and rather vague; Edward dreamy, and a little didactic.
+Robert thought poor Ted looking like a ghost; Edward thought poor Bob
+looking like the setting sun.  Their faces were indeed as curiously
+contrasted as their views and voices; the pale-dark, hollowed, narrow
+face of Edward, with its short, pointed beard, and the red-skinned,
+broad, full, whiskered face of Robert.  They parted for the night with an
+affectionate hand-clasp. So began a queer partnership which consisted, as
+the days went on, of half an hour's companionship at breakfast, each
+reading the paper; and of dinner together perhaps three times a week.
+Each thought his brother very odd, but continued to hold the highest
+opinion of him. And, behind it all, the deep tribal sense that they stood
+together in trouble, grew.  But of that trouble they never spoke, though
+not seldom Robert would lower his journal, and above the glasses perched
+on his well-shaped nose, contemplate his brother, and a little frown of
+sympathy would ridge his forehead between his bushy eyebrows.  And once
+in a way he would catch Edward's eyes coming off duty from his journal,
+to look, not at his brother, but at--the skeleton; when that happened,
+Robert would adjust his glasses hastily, damn the newspaper type, and
+apologise to Edward for swearing.  And he would think: 'Poor Ted!  He
+ought to drink port, and--and enjoy himself, and forget it.  What a pity
+he's a parson!'
+
+In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward's asceticism.  "He eats
+nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable cigarette once in a
+blue moon.  He's as lonely as a coot; it's a thousand pities he ever lost
+his wife.  I expect to see his wings sprout any day; but--dash it all
+I--I don't believe he's got the flesh to grow them on. Send him up some
+clotted cream; I'll see if I can get him to eat it." When the cream came,
+he got Edward to eat some the first morning, and at tea time found that
+he had finished it himself.  "We never talk about Nollie," he wrote, "I'm
+always meaning to have it out with him and tell him to buck up, but when
+it comes to the point I dry up; because, after all, I feel it too; it
+sticks in my gizzard horribly. We Piersons are pretty old, and we've
+always been respectable, ever since St. Bartholomew, when that Huguenot
+chap came over and founded us.  The only black sheep I ever heard of is
+Cousin Leila.  By the way, I saw her the other day; she came round here
+to see Ted.  I remember going to stay with her and her first husband;
+young Fane, at Simla, when I was coming home, just before we were
+married.  Phew!  That was a queer menage; all the young chaps fluttering
+round her, and young Fane looking like a cynical ghost.  Even now she
+can't help setting her cap a little at Ted, and he swallows her whole;
+thinks her a devoted creature reformed to the nines with her hospital and
+all that.  Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap that ever was."
+
+"We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end," he wrote a
+little later; "I don't like her so well as Nollie; too serious and
+downright for me.  Her husband seems a sensible fellow, though; but the
+devil of a free-thinker.  He and poor Ted are like cat and dog. We had
+Leila in to dinner again on Saturday, and a man called Fort came too.
+She's sweet on him, I could see with half an eye, but poor old Ted can't.
+The doctor and Ted talked up hill and down dale.  The doctor said a thing
+which struck me.  'What divides us from the beasts?  Will power: nothing
+else.  What's this war, really, but a death carnival of proof that man's
+will is invincible?'  I stuck it down to tell you, when I got upstairs.
+He's a clever fellow.  I believe in God, as you know, but I must say when
+it comes to an argument, poor old Ted does seem a bit weak, with his:
+'We're told this,' and 'We're told that: Nobody mentioned Nollie.  I must
+have the whole thing out with Ted; we must know how to act when it's all
+over."
+
+But not till the middle of March, when the brothers had been sitting
+opposite each other at meals for two months, was the subject broached
+between them, and then not by Robert.  Edward, standing by the hearth
+after dinner, in his familiar attitude, one foot on the fender, one hand
+grasping the mantel-shelf, and his eyes fixed on the flames, said: "I've
+never asked your forgiveness, Bob."
+
+Robert, lingering at the table over his glass of port, started, looked at
+Edward's back in its parson's coat, and answered:
+
+"My dear old chap!"
+
+"It has been very difficult to speak of this."
+
+"Of course, of course!"  And there was a silence, while Robert's eyes
+travelled round the walls for inspiration.  They encountered only the
+effigies of past Piersons very oily works, and fell back on the
+dining-table.  Edward went on speaking to the fire:
+
+"It still seems to me incredible.  Day and night I think of what it's my
+duty to do."
+
+"Nothing!" ejaculated Robert.  "Leave the baby with Thirza; we'll take
+care of it, and when Nollie's fit, let her go back to work in a hospital
+again.  She'll soon get over it."  He saw his brother shake his head, and
+thought: 'Ah! yes; now there's going to be some d--d conscientious
+complication.'
+
+Edward turned round on him: "That is very sweet of you both, but it would
+be wrong and cowardly for me to allow it."
+
+The resentment which springs up in fathers when other fathers dispose of
+young lives, rose in Robert.
+
+"Dash it all, my dear Ted, that's for Nollie to say.  She's a woman now,
+remember."
+
+A smile went straying about in the shadows of his brother's face.  "A
+woman?  Little Nollie!  Bob, I've made a terrible mess of it with my
+girls."  He hid his lips with his hand, and turned again to the flames.
+Robert felt a lump in his throat.  "Oh!  Hang it, old boy, I don't think
+that.  What else could you have done?  You take too much on yourself.
+After all, they're fine girls.  I'm sure Nollie's a darling.  It's these
+modern notions, and this war.  Cheer up!  It'll all dry straight."  He
+went up to his brother and put a hand on his shoulder.  Edward seemed to
+stiffen under that touch.
+
+"Nothing comes straight," he said, "unless it's faced; you know that,
+Bob."
+
+Robert's face was a study at that moment.  His cheeks filled and
+collapsed again like a dog's when it has been rebuked.  His colour
+deepened, and he rattled some money in a trouser pocket.
+
+"Something in that, of course," he said gruffly.  "All the same, the
+decision's with Nollie.  We'll see what Thirza says.  Anyway, there's no
+hurry.  It's a thousand pities you're a parson; the trouble's enough
+without that:"
+
+Edward shook his head.  "My position is nothing; it's the thought of my
+child, my wife's child.  It's sheer pride; and I can't subdue it. I can't
+fight it down.  God forgive me, I rebel."
+
+And Robert thought: 'By George, he does take it to heart!  Well, so
+should I!  I do, as it is!'  He took out his pipe, and filled it, pushing
+the tobacco down and down.
+
+"I'm not a man of the world," he heard his brother say; "I'm out of touch
+with many things.  It's almost unbearable to me to feel that I'm joining
+with the world to condemn my own daughter; not for their reasons,
+perhaps--I don't know; I hope not, but still, I'm against her."
+
+Robert lit his pipe.
+
+"Steady, old man!"  he said.  "It's a misfortune.  But if I were you I
+should feel: 'She's done a wild, silly thing, but, hang it, if anybody
+says a word against her, I'll wring his neck.'  And what's more, you'll
+feel much the same, when it comes to the point."  He emitted a huge puff
+of smoke, which obscured his brother's face, and the blood, buzzing in
+his temples, seemed to thicken the sound of Edward's voice.
+
+"I don't know; I've tried to see clearly.  I have prayed to be shown what
+her duty is, and mine.  It seems to me there can be no peace for her
+until she has atoned, by open suffering; that the world's judgment is her
+cross, and she must bear it; especially in these days, when all the world
+is facing suffering so nobly.  And then it seems so hard-so bitter; my
+poor little Nollie!"
+
+There was a silence, broken only by the gurgling of Robert's pipe, till
+he said abruptly:
+
+"I don't follow you, Ted; no, I don't.  I think a man should screen his
+children all he can.  Talk to her as you like, but don't let the world do
+it.  Dash it, the world's a rotten gabbling place.  I call myself a man
+of the world, but when it comes to private matters--well, then I draw the
+line.  It seems to me it seems to me inhuman. What does George Laird
+think about it?  He's a knowing chap.  I suppose you've--no, I suppose
+you haven't--"  For a peculiar smile had come on Edward's face.
+
+"No," he said, "I should hardly ask George Laird's opinion."
+
+And Robert realised suddenly the stubborn loneliness of that thin black
+figure, whose fingers were playing with a little gold cross. 'By Jove!'
+he thought, 'I believe old Ted's like one of those Eastern chaps who go
+into lonely places.  He's got himself surrounded by visions of things
+that aren't there.  He lives in unreality--something we can't understand.
+I shouldn't be surprised if he heard voices, like--'who was it?  Tt, tt!
+What a pity!'  Ted was deceptive. He was gentle and--all that, a
+gentleman of course, and that disguised him; but underneath; what was
+there--a regular ascetic, a fakir!  And a sense of bewilderment, of
+dealing with something which he could not grasp, beset Bob Pierson, so
+that he went back to the table, and sat down again beside his port.
+
+"It seems to me," he said rather gruffly, "that the chicken had better be
+hatched before we count it."  And then, sorry for his brusqueness,
+emptied his glass.  As the fluid passed over his palate, he thought:
+'Poor old Ted!  He doesn't even drink--hasn't a pleasure in life, so far
+as I can see, except doing his duty, and doesn't even seem to know what
+that is.  There aren't many like him--luckily!  And yet I love
+him--pathetic chap!'
+
+The "pathetic chap" was still staring at the flames.
+3
+
+And at this very hour, when the brothers were talking--for thought and
+feeling do pass mysteriously over the invisible wires of space Cyril
+Morland's son was being born of Noel, a little before his time.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+I
+
+Down by the River Wye, among plum-trees in blossom, Noel had laid her
+baby in a hammock, and stood reading a letter:
+
+"MY DEAREST NOLLIE, "Now that you are strong again, I feel that I must
+put before you my feeling as to your duty in this crisis of your life.
+Your aunt and uncle have made the most kind and generous offer to adopt
+your little boy.  I have known that this was in their minds for some
+time, and have thought it over day and night for weeks.  In the worldly
+sense it would be the best thing, no doubt.  But this is a spiritual
+matter.  The future of our souls depends on how we meet the consequences
+of our conduct.  And painful, dreadful, indeed, as they must be, I am
+driven to feel that you can only reach true peace by facing them in a
+spirit of brave humility.  I want you to think and think--till you arrive
+at a certainty which satisfies your conscience.  If you decide, as I
+trust you will, to come back to me here with your boy, I shall do all in
+my power to make you happy while we face the future together.  To do as
+your aunt and uncle in their kindness wish, would, I am sore afraid, end
+in depriving you of the inner strength and happiness which God only gives
+to those who do their duty and try courageously to repair their errors.
+I have confidence in you, my dear child. "Ever your most loving father,
+"EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+She read it through a second time, and looked at her baby.  Daddy seemed
+to think that she might be willing to part from this wonderful creature!
+Sunlight fell through the plum blossom, in an extra patchwork quilt over
+the bundle lying there, touched the baby's nose and mouth, so that he
+sneezed.  Noel laughed, and put her lips close to his face.  'Give you
+up!' she thought: 'Oh, no!  And I'm going to be happy too.  They shan't
+stop me:
+
+In answer to the letter she said simply that she was coming up; and a
+week later she went, to the dismay of her uncle and aunt.  The old nurse
+went too.  Everything had hitherto been so carefully watched and guarded
+against by Thirza, that Noel did not really come face to face with her
+position till she reached home.
+
+Gratian, who had managed to get transferred to a London Hospital, was now
+living at home.  She had provided the house with new maids against her
+sister's return; and though Noel was relieved not to meet her old
+familiars, she encountered with difficulty the stolid curiosity of new
+faces.  That morning before she left Kestrel, her aunt had come into her
+room while she was dressing, taken her left hand and slipped a little
+gold band on to its third finger. "To please me, Nollie, now that you're
+going, just for the foolish, who know nothing about you."
+
+Noel had suffered it with the thought: 'It's all very silly!'  But now,
+when the new maid was pouring out her hot water, she was suddenly aware
+of the girl's round blue eyes wandering, as it were, mechanically to her
+hand.  This little hoop of gold, then, had an awful power!  A rush of
+disgust came over her.  All life seemed suddenly a thing of forms and
+sham.  Everybody then would look at that little ring; and she was a
+coward, saving herself from them!  When she was alone again, she slipped
+it off, and laid it on the washstand, where the sunlight fell.  Only this
+little shining band of metal, this little yellow ring, stood between her
+and the world's hostile scorn!  Her lips trembled.  She took up the ring,
+and went to the open window; to throw it out.  But she did not, uncertain
+and unhappy--half realising the cruelty of life.  A knock at the door
+sent her flying back to the washstand.  The visitor was Gratian.
+
+"I've been looking at him," she said softly; "he's like you, Nollie,
+except for his nose."
+
+"He's hardly got one yet.  But aren't his eyes intelligent?  I think
+they're wonderful."  She held up the ring: "What shall I do about this,
+Gratian?"
+
+Gratian flushed.  "Wear it.  I don't see why outsiders should know. For
+the sake of Dad I think you ought.  There's the parish."
+
+Noel slipped the ring back on to her finger.  "Would you?"
+
+"I can't tell.  I think I would."
+
+Noel laughed suddenly.  "I'm going to get cynical; I can feel it in my
+bones.  How is Daddy looking?"
+
+"Very thin; Mr. Lauder is back again from the Front for a bit, and taking
+some of the work now."
+
+"Do I hurt him very much still?"
+
+"He's awfully pleased that you've come.  He's as sweet as he can be about
+you."
+
+"Yes," murmured Noel, "that's what's dreadful.  I'm glad he wasn't in
+when I came.  Has he told anyone?"
+
+Gratian shook her head.  "I don't think anybody knows; unless--perhaps
+Captain Fort.  He came in again the other night; and somehow--"
+
+Noel flushed.  "Leila!"  she said enigmatically.  "Have you seen her?"
+
+"I went to her flat last week with Dad--he likes her."
+
+"Delilah is her real name, you know.  All men like her.  And Captain Fort
+is her lover."
+
+Gratian gasped.  Noel would say things sometimes which made her feel the
+younger of the two.
+
+"Of course he is," went on Noel in a hard voice.  "She has no men
+friends; her sort never have, only lovers.  Why do you think he knows
+about me?"
+
+"When he asked after you he looked--"
+
+"Yes; I've seen him look like that when he's sorry for anything.  I don't
+care.  Has Monsieur Lavendie been in lately?"
+
+"Yes; he looks awfully unhappy."
+
+"His wife drugs."
+
+"Oh, Nollie!  How do you know?"
+
+"I saw her once; I'm sure she does; there was a smell; and she's got
+wandering eyes that go all glassy.  He can paint me now, if he likes. I
+wouldn't let him before.  Does he know?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"He knows there was something; he's got second sight, I think.  But I
+mind him less than anybody.  Is his picture of Daddy good?"
+
+"Powerful, but it hurts, somehow."
+
+"Let's go down and see it."
+
+The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its intense modernity made
+that old-fashioned room seem lifeless and strange.  The black figure,
+with long pale fingers touching the paler piano keys, had a frightening
+actuality.  The face, three-quarters full, was raised as if for
+inspiration, and the eyes rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the face of a
+girl painted and hung on a background of wall above the piano.
+
+"It's the face of that girl," said Gratian, when they had looked at the
+picture for some time in silence:
+
+"No," said Noel, "it's the look in his eyes."
+
+"But why did he choose such a horrid, common girl?  Isn't she fearfully
+alive, though?  She looks as if she were saying: 'Cheerio!'"
+
+"She is; it's awfully pathetic, I think.  Poor Daddy!"
+
+"It's a libel," said Gratian stubbornly.
+
+"No.  That's what hurts.  He isn't quite--quite all there.  Will he be
+coming in soon?"
+
+Gratian took her arm, and pressed it hard.  "Would you like me at dinner
+or not; I can easily be out?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "It's no good to funk it.  He wanted me, and now
+he's got me.  Oh! why did he?  It'll be awful for him."
+
+Gratian sighed.  "I've tried my best, but he always said: 'I've thought
+so long about it all that I can't think any longer.  I can only feel the
+braver course is the best.  When things are bravely and humbly met, there
+will be charity and forgiveness.'"
+
+"There won't," said Noel, "Daddy's a saint, and he doesn't see."
+
+"Yes, he is a saint.  But one must think for oneself--one simply must.  I
+can't believe as he does, any more; can you, Nollie?"
+
+"I don't know.  When I was going through it, I prayed; but I don't know
+whether I really believed.  I don't think I mind much about that, one way
+or the other."
+
+"I mind terribly," said Gratian, "I want the truth."
+
+"I don't know what I want," said Noel slowly, "except that sometimes I
+want--life; awfully."
+
+And the two sisters were silent, looking at each other with a sort of
+wonder.
+
+Noel had a fancy to put on a bright-coloured blue frock that evening, and
+at her neck she hung a Breton cross of old paste, which had belonged to
+her mother.  When she had finished dressing she went into the nursery and
+stood by the baby's cot.  The old nurse who was sitting there beside him,
+got up at once and said:
+
+"He's sleeping beautiful--the lamb.  I'll go down and get a cup o' tea,
+and come up, ma'am, when the gong goes."  In the way peculiar to those
+who have never to initiate, but only to support positions in which they
+are placed by others, she had adopted for herself the theory that Noel
+was a real war-widow.  She knew the truth perfectly; for she had watched
+that hurried little romance at Kestrel, but by dint of charity and
+blurred meditations it was easy for her to imagine the marriage ceremony
+which would and should have taken place; and she was zealous that other
+people should imagine it too. It was so much more regular and natural
+like that, and "her" baby invested with his proper dignity.  She went
+downstairs to get a "cup o' tea," thinking: 'A picture they make--that
+they do, bless his little heart; and his pretty little mother--no more
+than a child, all said and done.'
+
+Noel had been standing there some minutes in the failing light, absorbed
+in the face of the sleeping baby, when, raising her eyes, she saw in a
+mirror the refection of her father's dark figure by the door.  She could
+hear him breathing as if the ascent of the stairs had tired him; and
+moving to the head of the cot, she rested her hand on it, and turned her
+face towards him.  He came up and stood beside her, looking silently down
+at the baby.  She saw him make the sign of the Cross above it, and the
+movement of his lips in prayer.  Love for her father, and rebellion
+against this intercession for her perfect baby fought so hard in the
+girl's heart that she felt suffocated, and glad of the dark, so that he
+could not see her eyes. Then he took her hand and put it to his lips, but
+still without a word; and for the life of her she could not speak either.
+In silence, he kissed her forehead; and there mounted in Noel a sudden
+passion of longing to show him her pride and love for her baby.  She put
+her finger down and touched one of his hands.  The tiny sleeping fingers
+uncurled and, like some little sea anemone, clutched round it.  She heard
+her father draw his breath in; saw him turn away quickly, silently, and
+go out.  And she stayed, hardly breathing, with the hand of her baby
+squeezing her finger.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+1
+
+When Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit nursery,
+he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees beside his bed,
+absorbed in the vision he had seen.  That young figure in Madonna blue,
+with the halo of bright hair; the sleeping babe in the fine dusk; the
+silence, the adoration in that white room!  He saw, too; a vision of the
+past, when Noel herself had been the sleeping babe within her mother's
+arm, and he had stood beside them, wondering and giving praise.  It
+passed with its other-worldliness and the fine holiness which belongs to
+beauty, passed and left the tormenting realism of life.  Ah! to live with
+only the inner meaning, spiritual and beautifed, in a rare wonderment
+such as he had experienced just now!
+
+His alarum clock, while he knelt in his narrow, monkish little
+room--ticked the evening hour away into darkness.  And still he knelt,
+dreading to come back into it all, to face the world's eyes, and the
+sound of the world's tongue, and the touch of the rough, the gross, the
+unseemly.  How could he guard his child?  How preserve that vision in her
+life, in her spirit, about to enter such cold, rough waters?  But the
+gong sounded; he got up, and went downstairs.
+
+But this first family moment, which all had dreaded, was relieved, as
+dreaded moments so often are, by the unexpected appearance of the Belgian
+painter.  He had a general invitation, of which he often availed himself;
+but he was so silent, and his thin, beardless face, which seemed all eyes
+and brow, so mournful, that all three felt in the presence of a sorrow
+deeper even than their own family grief. During the meal he gazed
+silently at Noel.  Once he said: "You will let me paint you now,
+mademoiselle, I hope?" and his face brightened a little when she nodded.
+There was never much talk when he came, for any depth of discussion, even
+of art, brought out at once too wide a difference.  And Pierson could
+never avoid a vague irritation with one who clearly had spirituality, but
+of a sort which he could not understand.  After dinner he excused
+himself, and went off to his study.  Monsieur would be happier alone with
+the two girls!  Gratian, too, got up.  She had remembered Noel's words:
+"I mind him less than anybody."  It was a chance for Nollie to break the
+ice.
+
+
+2
+
+"I have not seen you for a long time, mademoiselle," said the painter,
+when they were alone.
+
+Noel was sitting in front of the empty drawing-room hearth, with her arms
+stretched out as if there had been a fire there.
+
+"I've been away.  How are you going to paint me, monsieur?"
+
+"In that dress, mademoiselle; Just as you are now, warming yourself at
+the fire of life."
+
+"But it isn't there."
+
+"Yes, fires soon go out.  Mademoiselle, will you come and see my wife?
+She is ill."
+
+"Now?" asked Noel, startled.
+
+"Yes, now.  She is really ill, and I have no one there.  That is what I
+came to ask of your sister; but--now you are here, it's even better.  She
+likes you."
+
+Noel got up.  "Wait one minute!" she said, and ran upstairs.  Her baby
+was asleep, and the old nurse dozing.  Putting on a cloak and cap of grey
+rabbit's fur, she ran down again to the hall where the painter was
+waiting; and they went out together.
+
+"I do not know if I am to blame," he said, "my wife has been no real wife
+to me since she knew I had a mistress and was no real husband to her."
+
+Noel stared round at his face lighted by a queer, smile.
+
+"Yes," he went on, "from that has come her tragedy.  But she should have
+known before I married her.  Nothing was concealed.  Bon Dieu! she should
+have known!  Why cannot a woman see things as they are?  My mistress,
+mademoiselle, is not a thing of flesh.  It is my art. It has always been
+first with me, and always will.  She has never accepted that, she is
+incapable of accepting it.  I am sorry for her. But what would you?  I
+was a fool to marry her.  Chere mademoiselle, no troubles are anything
+beside the trouble which goes on day and night, meal after meal, year,
+after year, between two people who should never have married, because one
+loves too much and requires all, and the other loves not at all--no, not
+at all, now, it is long dead--and can give but little."
+
+"Can't you separate?"  asked Noel, wondering.
+
+"It is hard to separate from one who craves for you as she craves her
+drugs--yes, she takes drugs now, mademoiselle.  It is impossible for one
+who has any compassion in his soul.  Besides, what would she do?  We live
+from hand to mouth, in a strange land.  She has no friends here, not one.
+How could I leave her while this war lasts?  As well could two persons on
+a desert island separate.  She is killing herself, too, with these drugs,
+and I cannot stop her."
+
+"Poor madame!"  murmured Noel.  "Poor monsieur!"
+
+The painter drew his hand across his eyes.
+
+"I cannot change my nature," he said in a stifled voice, "nor she hers.
+So we go on.  But life will stop suddenly some day for one of us.  After
+all, it is much worse for her than for me.  Enter, mademoiselle.  Do not
+tell her I am going to paint you; she likes you, because you refused to
+let me."
+
+Noel went up the stairs, shuddering; she had been there once before, and
+remembered that sickly scent of drugs.  On the third floor they entered a
+small sitting-room whose walls were covered with paintings and drawings;
+from one corner a triangular stack of canvases jutted out.  There was
+little furniture save an old red sofa, and on this was seated a stoutish
+man in the garb of a Belgian soldier, with his elbows on his knees and
+his bearded cheeks resting on his doubled fists.  Beside him on the sofa,
+nursing a doll, was a little girl, who looked up at Noel.  She had a most
+strange, attractive, pale little face, with pointed chin and large eyes,
+which never moved from this apparition in grey rabbits' skins.
+
+"Ah, Barra!  You here!"  said the painter:
+
+"Mademoiselle, this is Monsieur Barra, a friend of ours from the front;
+and this is our landlady's little girl.  A little refugee, too, aren't
+you, Chica?"
+
+The child gave him a sudden brilliant smile and resumed her grave
+scrutiny of the visitor.  The soldier, who had risen heavily, offered
+Noel one of his podgy hands, with a sad and heavy giggle.
+
+"Sit down, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, placing a chair for her: "I will
+bring my wife in," and he went out through some double doors.
+
+Noel sat down.  The soldier had resumed his old attitude, and the little
+girl her nursing of the doll, though her big eyes still watched the
+visitor.  Overcome by strangeness, Noel made no attempt to talk.  And
+presently through the double doors the painter and his wife came in.  She
+was a thin woman in a red wrapper, with hollow cheeks, high cheek-bones,
+and hungry eyes; her dark hair hung loose, and one hand played restlessly
+with a fold of her gown.  She took Noel's hand; and her uplifted eyes
+seemed to dig into the girl's face, to let go suddenly, and flutter.
+
+"How do you do?"  she said in English.  "So Pierre brought you, to see me
+again.  I remember you so well.  You would not let him paint you.  Ah!
+que c'est drole!  You are so pretty, too.  Hein, Monsieur Barra, is not
+mademoiselle pretty?"
+
+The soldier gave his heavy giggle, and resumed his scrutiny of the floor.
+
+"Henriette," said Lavendie, "sit down beside Chica--you must not stand.
+Sit down, mademoiselle, I beg."
+
+"I'm so sorry you're not well," said Noel, and sat down again.
+
+The painter stood leaning against the wall, and his wife looked up at his
+tall, thin figure, with eyes which had in them anger, and a sort of
+cunning.
+
+"A great painter, my husband, is he not?"  she said to Noel.  "You would
+not imagine what that man can do.  And how he paints--all day long; and
+all night in his head.  And so you would not let him paint you, after
+all?"
+
+Lavendie said impatiently: "Voyons, Henriette, causez d'autre chose."
+
+His wife plucked nervously at a fold in her red gown, and gave him the
+look of a dog that has been rebuked.
+
+"I am a prisoner here, mademoiselle, I never leave the house.  Here I
+live day after day--my husband is always painting.  Who would go out
+alone under this grey sky of yours, and the hatreds of the war in every
+face?  I prefer to keep my room.  My husband goes painting; every face he
+sees interests him, except that which he sees every day.  But I am a
+prisoner.  Monsieur Barra is our first visitor for a long time."
+
+The soldier raised his face from his fists.  "Prisonnier, madame!  What
+would you say if you were out there?"  And he gave his thick giggle.  "We
+are the prisoners, we others.  What would you say to imprisonment by
+explosion day and night; never a minute free.  Bom!  Bom!  Bom!  Ah! les
+tranchees!  It's not so free as all that, there."
+
+"Every one has his own prison," said Lavendie bitterly. "Mademoiselle
+even, has her prison--and little Chica, and her doll. Every one has his
+prison, Barra.  Monsieur Barra is also a painter, mademoiselle."
+
+"Moi!"  said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand.  "I paint puddles,
+star-bombs, horses' ribs--I paint holes and holes and holes, wire and
+wire and wire, and water--long white ugly water.  I paint splinters, and
+men's souls naked, and men's bodies dead, and nightmare--nightmare--all
+day and all night--I paint them in my head."  He suddenly ceased speaking
+and relapsed into contemplation of the carpet, with his bearded cheeks
+resting on his fists.  "And their souls as white as snow, les camarades,"
+he added suddenly and loudly, "millions of Belgians, English, French,
+even the Boches, with white souls.  I paint those souls!"
+
+A little shiver ran through Noel, and she looked appealingly at Lavendie.
+
+"Barra," he said, as if the soldier were not there, "is a great painter,
+but the Front has turned his head a little.  What he says is true,
+though.  There is no hatred out there.  It is here that we are prisoners
+of hatred, mademoiselle; avoid hatreds--they are poison!"
+
+His wife put out her hand and touched the child's shoulder.
+
+"Why should we not hate?"  she said.  "Who killed Chica's father, and
+blew her home to-rags?  Who threw her out into this horrible
+England--pardon, mademoiselle, but it is horrible.  Ah! les Boches!  If
+my hatred could destroy them there would not be one left.  Even my
+husband was not so mad about his painting when we lived at home.  But
+here--!"  Her eyes darted at his face again, and then sank as if rebuked.
+Noel saw the painter's lips move.  The sick woman's whole figure writhed.
+
+"It is mania, your painting!"  She looked at Noel with a smile. "Will you
+have some tea, mademoiselle?  Monsieur Barra, some tea?"
+
+The soldier said thickly: "No, madame; in the trenches we have tea
+enough.  It consoles us.  But when we get away--give us wine, le bon vin;
+le bon petit vin!"
+
+"Get some wine, Pierre!"
+
+Noel saw from the painter's face that there was no wine, and perhaps no
+money to get any; but he went quickly out.  She rose and said:
+
+"I must be going, madame."
+
+Madame Lavendie leaned forward and clutched her wrist.  "Wait a little,
+mademoiselle.  We shall have some wine, and Pierre shall take you back
+presently.  You cannot go home alone--you are too pretty. Is she not,
+Monsieur Barra?"
+
+The soldier looked up: "What would you say," he said, "to bottles of wine
+bursting in the air, bursting red and bursting white, all day long, all
+night long?  Great steel bottles, large as Chica: bits of bottles,
+carrying off men's heads?  Bsum, garra-a-a, and a house comes down, and
+little bits of people ever so small, ever so small, tiny bits in the air
+and all over the ground.  Great souls out there, madame.  But I will tell
+you a secret," and again he gave his heavy giggle, "all a little, little
+mad; nothing to speak of--just a little bit mad; like a watch, you know,
+that you can wind for ever.  That is the discovery of this war,
+mademoiselle," he said, addressing Noel for the first time, "you cannot
+gain a great soul till you are a little mad."  And lowering his piggy
+grey eyes at once, he resumed his former attitude.  "It is that madness I
+shall paint some day," he announced to the carpet; "lurking in one tiny
+corner of each soul of all those millions, as it creeps, as it peeps,
+ever so sudden, ever so little when we all think it has been put to bed,
+here--there, now--then, when you least think; in and out like a mouse
+with bright eyes.  Millions of men with white souls, all a little mad.  A
+great subject, I think," he added heavily.  Involuntarily Noel put her
+hand to her heart, which was beating fast.  She felt quite sick.
+
+"How long have you been at the Front, monsieur?"
+
+"Two years, mademoiselle.  Time to go home and paint, is it not?  But
+art--!" he shrugged his heavy round shoulders, his whole bear-like body.
+"A little mad," he muttered once more.  "I will tell you a story.  Once
+in winter after I had rested a fortnight, I go back to the trenches at
+night, and I want some earth to fill up a hole in the ground where I was
+sleeping; when one has slept in a bed one becomes particular.  Well, I
+scratch it from my parapet, and I come to something funny.  I strike my
+briquet, and there is a Boche's face all frozen and earthy and dead and
+greeny-white in the flame from my briquet."
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Oh! but yes, mademoiselle; true as I sit here.  Very useful in the
+parapet--dead Boche.  Once a man like me.  But in the morning I could not
+stand him; we dug him out and buried him, and filled the hole up with
+other things.  But there I stood in the night, and my face as close to
+his as this"--and he held his thick hand a foot before his face.  "We
+talked of our homes; he had a soul, that man.  'Il me disait des choses',
+how he had suffered; and I, too, told him my sufferings.  Dear God, we
+know all; we shall never know more than we know out there, we others, for
+we are mad--nothing to speak of, but just a little, little mad.  When you
+see us, mademoiselle, walking the streets, remember that."  And he
+dropped his face on to his fists again.
+
+A silence had fallen in the room-very queer and complete.  The little
+girl nursed her doll, the soldier gazed at the floor, the woman's mouth
+moved stealthily, and in Noel the thought rushed continually to the verge
+of action: 'Couldn't I get up and run downstairs?' But she sat on,
+hypnotised by that silence, till Lavendie reappeared with a bottle and
+four glasses.
+
+"To drink our health, and wish us luck, mademoiselle," he said.
+
+Noel raised the glass he had given her.  "I wish you all happiness."
+
+"And you, mademoiselle," the two men murmured.
+
+She drank a little, and rose.
+
+"And now, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, "if you must go, I will see you
+home."
+
+Noel took Madame Lavendie's hand; it was cold, and returned no pressure;
+her eyes had the glazed look that she remembered.  The soldier had put
+his empty glass down on the floor, and was regarding it unconscious of
+her.  Noel turned quickly to the door; the last thing she saw was the
+little girl nursing her doll.
+
+In the street the painter began at once in his rapid French:
+
+'I ought not to have asked you to come, mademoiselle; I did not know our
+friend Barra was there.  Besides, my wife is not fit to receive a lady;
+vous voyez qu'il y a de la manie dans cette pauvre tote.  I should not
+have asked you; but I was so miserable."
+
+"Oh!"  murmured Noel, "I know."
+
+"In our home over there she had interests.  In this great town she can
+only nurse her grief against me.  Ah! this war!  It seems to me we are
+all in the stomach of a great coiling serpent.  We lie there, being
+digested.  In a way it is better out there in the trenches; they are
+beyond hate, they have attained a height that we have not. It is
+wonderful how they still can be for going on till they have beaten the
+Boche; that is curious and it is very great.  Did Barra tell you how,
+when they come back--all these fighters--they are going to rule, and
+manage the future of the world?  But it will not be so. They will mix in
+with life, separate--be scattered, and they will be ruled as they were
+before.  The tongue and the pen will rule them: those who have not seen
+the war will rule them."
+
+"Oh!"' cried Noel, "surely they will be the bravest and strongest in the
+future."
+
+The painter smiled.
+
+"War makes men simple," he said, "elemental; life in peace is neither
+simple nor elemental, it is subtle, full of changing environments, to
+which man must adapt himself; the cunning, the astute, the adaptable,
+will ever rule in times of peace.  It is pathetic, the belief of those
+brave soldiers that the-future is theirs."
+
+"He said, a strange thing," murmured Noel; "that they were all a little
+mad."
+
+"He is a man of queer genius--Barra; you should see some of his earlier
+pictures.  Mad is not quite the word, but something is loosened, is
+rattling round in them, they have lost proportion, they are being forced
+in one direction.  I tell you, mademoiselle, this war is one great
+forcing-house; every living plant is being made to grow too fast, each
+quality, each passion; hate and love, intolerance and lust and avarice,
+courage and energy; yes, and self-sacrifice--all are being forced and
+forced beyond their strength, beyond the natural flow of the sap, forced
+till there has come a great wild luxuriant crop, and then--Psum!  Presto!
+The change comes, and these plants will wither and rot and stink.  But we
+who see Life in forms of Art are the only ones who feel that; and we are
+so few.  The natural shape of things is lost.  There is a mist of blood
+before all eyes.  Men are afraid of being fair.  See how we all hate not
+only our enemies, but those who differ from us.  Look at the streets
+too--see how men and women rush together, how Venus reigns in this
+forcing-house.  Is it not natural that Youth about to die should yearn
+for pleasure, for love, for union, before death?"
+
+Noel stared up at him.  'Now!' she thought: I will.'
+
+"Yes," she said, "I know that's true, because I rushed, myself.  I'd like
+you to know.  We couldn't be married--there wasn't time.  And--he was
+killed.  But his son is alive.  That's why I've been away so long.  I
+want every one to know."  She spoke very calmly, but her cheeks felt
+burning hot.
+
+The painter had made an upward movement of his hands, as if they had been
+jerked by an electric current, then he said quite quietly:
+
+"My profound respect, mademoiselle, and my great sympathy.  And your
+father?"
+
+"It's awful for him."
+
+The painter said gently: "Ah! mademoiselle, I am not so sure. Perhaps he
+does not suffer so greatly.  Perhaps not even your trouble can hurt him
+very much.  He lives in a world apart.  That, I think, is his true
+tragedy to be alive, and yet not living enough to feel reality.  Do you
+know Anatole France's description of an old woman: 'Elle vivait, mais si
+peu.'  Would that not be well said of the Church in these days: 'Elle
+vivait, mais si peu.'  I see him always like a rather beautiful dark
+spire in the night-time when you cannot see how it is attached to the
+earth.  He does not know, he never will know, Life."
+
+Noel looked round at him.  "What do you mean by Life, monsieur?  I'm
+always reading about Life, and people talk of seeing Life!  What is
+it--where is it?  I never see anything that you could call Life."
+
+The painter smiled.
+
+"To 'see life'!"  he said.  "Ah! that is different.  To enjoy yourself!
+Well, it is my experience that when people are 'seeing life' as they call
+it, they are not enjoying themselves.  You know when one is very thirsty
+one drinks and drinks, but the thirst remains all the same.  There are
+places where one can see life as it is called, but the only persons you
+will see enjoying themselves at such places are a few humdrums like
+myself, who go there for a talk over a cup of coffee.  Perhaps at your
+age, though, it is different."
+
+Noel clasped her hands, and her eyes seemed to shine in the gloom. "I
+want music and dancing and light, and beautiful things and faces; but I
+never get them."
+
+"No, there does not exist in this town, or in any other, a place which
+will give you that.  Fox-trots and ragtime and paint and powder and glare
+and half-drunken young men, and women with red lips you can get them in
+plenty.  But rhythm and beauty and charm never.  In Brussels when I was
+younger I saw much 'life' as they call it, but not one lovely thing
+unspoiled; it was all as ashes in the mouth. Ah! you may smile, but I
+know what I am talking of.  Happiness never comes when you are looking
+for it, mademoiselle; beauty is in Nature and in real art, never in these
+false silly make believes.  There is a place just here where we Belgians
+go; would you like to see how true my words are?
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"Tres-bien!  Let us go in?"
+
+They passed into a revolving doorway with little glass compartments which
+shot them out into a shining corridor.  At the end of this the painter
+looked at Noel and seemed to hesitate, then he turned off from the room
+they were about to enter into a room on the right.  It was large, full of
+gilt and plush and marble tables, where couples were seated; young men in
+khaki and older men in plain clothes, together or with young women.  At
+these last Noel looked, face after face, while they were passing down a
+long way to an empty table.  She saw that some were pretty, and some only
+trying to be, that nearly all were powdered and had their eyes darkened
+and their lips reddened, till she felt her own face to be dreadfully
+ungarnished: Up in a gallery a small band was playing an attractive
+jingling hollow little tune; and the buzz of talk and laughter was almost
+deafening.
+
+"What will you have, mademoiselle?"  said the painter.  "It is just nine
+o'clock; we must order quickly."
+
+"May I have one of those green things?"
+
+"Deux cremes de menthe," said Lavendie to the waiter.
+
+Noel was too absorbed to see the queer, bitter little smile hovering
+about his face.  She was busy looking at the faces of women whose eyes,
+furtively cold and enquiring, were fixed on her; and at the faces of men
+with eyes that were furtively warm and wondering.
+
+"I wonder if Daddy was ever in a place like this?"  she said, putting the
+glass of green stuff to her lips.  "Is it nice?  It smells of
+peppermint."
+
+"A beautiful colour.  Good luck, mademoiselle!"  and he chinked his glass
+with hers.
+
+Noel sipped, held it away, and sipped again.
+
+"It's nice; but awfully sticky.  May I have a cigarette?"
+
+"Des cigarettes," said Lavendie to the waiter, "Et deux cafes noirs. Now,
+mademoiselle," he murmured when they were brought, "if we imagine that we
+have drunk a bottle of wine each, we shall have exhausted all the
+preliminaries of what is called Vice.  Amusing, isn't it?"  He shrugged
+his shoulders.
+
+His face struck Noel suddenly as tarnished and almost sullen.
+
+"Don't be angry, monsieur, it's all new to me, you see."
+
+The painter smiled, his bright, skin-deep smile.
+
+"Pardon!  I forget myself.  Only, it hurts me to see beauty in a place
+like this.  It does not go well with that tune, and these voices, and
+these faces.  Enjoy yourself, mademoiselle; drink it all in!  See the way
+these people look at each other; what love shines in their eyes!  A pity,
+too, we cannot hear what they are saying. Believe me, their talk is most
+subtle, tres-spirituel.  These young women are 'doing their bit,' as you
+call it; bringing le plaisir to all these who are serving their country.
+Eat, drink, love, for tomorrow we die.  Who cares for the world simple or
+the world beautiful, in days like these?  The house of the spirit is
+empty."
+
+He was looking at her sidelong as if he would enter her very soul.
+
+Noel got up.  "I'm ready to go, monsieur."
+
+He put her cloak on her shoulders, paid the bill, and they went out,
+threading again through the little tables, through the buzz of talk and
+laughter and the fumes of tobacco, while another hollow little tune
+jingled away behind them.
+
+"Through there," said the painter, pointing to another door, "they dance.
+So it goes.  London in war-time!  Well, after all, it is never very
+different; no great town is.  Did you enjoy your sight of 'life,'
+mademoiselle?"
+
+"I think one must dance, to be happy.  Is that where your friends go?"
+
+"Oh, no!  To a room much rougher, and play dominoes, and drink coffee and
+beer, and talk.  They have no money to throw away."
+
+"Why didn't you show me?"
+
+"Mademoiselle, in that room you might see someone perhaps whom one day
+you would meet again; in the place we visited you were safe enough at
+least I hope so."
+
+Noel shrugged.  "I suppose it doesn't matter now, what I do."
+
+And a rush of emotion caught at her throat--a wave from the past--the
+moonlit night, the dark old Abbey, the woods and the river.  Two tears
+rolled down her cheeks.
+
+"I was thinking of--something," she said in a muffled voice.  "It's all
+right."
+
+"Chere mademoiselle!"  Lavendie murmured; and all the way home he was
+timid and distressed.  Shaking his hand at the door, she murmured:
+
+"I'm sorry I was such a fool; and thank you awfully, monsieur.  Good
+night."
+
+"Good night; and better dreams.  There is a good time coming--Peace and
+Happiness once more in the world.  It will not always be this
+Forcing-House.  Good night, chere mademoiselle!"
+
+Noel went up to the nursery, and stole in.  A night-light was burning,
+Nurse and baby were fast asleep.  She tiptoed through into her own room.
+Once there, she felt suddenly so tired that she could hardly undress; and
+yet curiously rested, as if with that rush of emotion, Cyril and the past
+had slipped from her for ever.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Noel's first encounter with Opinion took place the following day. The
+baby had just come in from its airing; she had seen it comfortably
+snoozing, and was on her way downstairs, when a voice from the hall said:
+
+"How do you do?"  and she saw the khaki-clad figure of Adrian Lauder, her
+father's curate!  Hesitating just a moment, she finished her descent, and
+put her fingers in his.  He was a rather heavy, dough-coloured young man
+of nearly thirty, unsuited by khaki, with a round white collar buttoned
+behind; but his aspiring eyes redeemed him, proclaiming the best
+intentions in the world, and an inclination towards sentiment in the
+presence of beauty.
+
+"I haven't seen you for ages," he said rather fatuously, following her
+into her father's study.
+
+"No," said Noel.  "How--do you like being at the Front?"
+
+"Ah!" he said, "they're wonderful!"  And his eyes shone.  "It's so nice
+to see you again."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+He seemed puzzled by that answer; stammered, and said:
+
+"I didn't know your sister had a baby.  A jolly baby."
+
+"She hasn't."
+
+Lauder's mouth opened.  'A silly mouth,' she thought.
+
+"Oh!" he said.  "Is it a protegee--Belgian or something?"
+
+"No, it's mine; my own."  And, turning round, she slipped the little ring
+off her finger.  When she turned back to him, his face had not recovered
+from her words.  It had a hapless look, as of one to whom such a thing
+ought not to have happened.
+
+"Don't look like that," said Noel.  "Didn't you understand?  It's
+mine-mine."  She put out her left hand.  "Look!  There's no ring."
+
+He stammered: "I say, you oughtn't to--you oughtn't to--!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Joke about--about such things; ought you?"
+
+"One doesn't joke if one's had a baby without being married, you know."
+
+Lauder went suddenly slack.  A shell might have burst a few paces from
+him.  And then, just as one would in such a case, he made an effort,
+braced himself, and said in a curious voice, both stiff and heavy: "I
+can't--one doesn't--it's not--"
+
+"It is," said Noel.  "If you don't believe me, ask Daddy."
+
+He put his hand up to his round collar; and with the wild thought that he
+was going to tear it off, she cried: "Don't!"
+
+"You!" he said.  "You!  But--"
+
+Noel turned away from him to the window: She stood looking out, but saw
+nothing whatever.
+
+"I don't want it hidden," she said without turning round, "I want every
+one to know.  It's stupid as it is--stupid!" and she stamped her foot.
+"Can't you see how stupid it is--everybody's mouth falling open!"
+
+He uttered a little sound which had pain in it, and she felt a real pang
+of compunction.  He had gripped the back of a chair; his face had lost
+its heaviness.  A dull flush coloured his cheeks.  Noel had a feeling, as
+if she had been convicted of treachery.  It was his silence, the curious
+look of an impersonal pain beyond power of words; she felt in him
+something much deeper than mere disapproval--something which echoed
+within herself.  She walked quickly past him and escaped.  She ran
+upstairs and threw herself on her bed.  He was nothing: it was not that!
+It was in herself, the awful feeling, for the first time developed and
+poignant, that she had betrayed her caste, forfeited the right to be
+thought a lady, betrayed her secret reserve and refinement, repaid with
+black ingratitude the love lavished on her up bringing, by behaving like
+any uncared-for common girl.  She had never felt this before--not even
+when Gratian first heard of it, and they had stood one at each end of the
+hearth, unable to speak.  Then she still had her passion, and her grief
+for the dead.  That was gone now as if it had never been; and she had no
+defence, nothing between her and this crushing humiliation and chagrin.
+She had been mad!  She must have been mad!  The Belgian Barra was right:
+"All a little mad" in this "forcing-house" of a war!  She buried her face
+deep in the pillow, till it almost stopped her power of breathing; her
+head and cheeks and ears seemed to be on fire.  If only he had shown
+disgust, done something which roused her temper, her sense of justice,
+her feeling that Fate had been too cruel to her; but he had just stood
+there, bewilderment incarnate, like a creature with some very deep
+illusion shattered.  It was horrible!  Then, feeling that she could not
+stay still, must walk, run, get away somehow from this feeling of
+treachery and betrayal, she sprang up.  All was quiet below, and she
+slipped downstairs and out, speeding along with no knowledge of
+direction, taking the way she had taken day after day to her hospital.
+It was the last of April, trees and shrubs were luscious with blossom and
+leaf; the dogs ran gaily; people had almost happy faces in the sunshine.
+'If I could get away from myself, I wouldn't care,' she thought.  Easy to
+get away from people, from London, even from England perhaps; but from
+oneself--impossible!  She passed her hospital; and looked at it dully, at
+the Red Cross flag against its stucco wall, and a soldier in his blue
+slops and red tie, coming out.  She had spent many miserable hours there,
+but none quite so miserable as this.  She passed the church opposite to
+the flats where Leila lived, and running suddenly into a tall man coming
+round the corner, saw Fort. She bent her head, and tried to hurry past.
+But his hand was held out, she could not help putting hers into it; and
+looking up hardily, she said:
+
+"You know about me, don't you?"
+
+His face, naturally so frank, seemed to clench up, as if he were riding
+at a fence.  'He'll tell a lie,' she thought bitterly.  But he did not.
+
+"Yes, Leila told me."
+
+And she thought: 'I suppose he'll try and pretend that I've not been a
+beast!'
+
+"I admire your pluck," he said.
+
+"I haven't any."
+
+"We never know ourselves, do we?  I suppose you wouldn't walk my pace a
+minute or two, would you?  I'm going the same way."
+
+"I don't know which way I'm going."
+
+"That is my case, too."
+
+They walked on in silence.
+
+"I wish to God I were back in France," said Fort abruptly.  "One doesn't
+feel clean here."
+
+Noel's heart applauded.
+
+Ah! to get away--away from oneself!  But at the thought of her baby, her
+heart fell again.  "Is your leg quite hopeless?"  she said.
+
+"Quite."
+
+"That must be horrid."
+
+"Hundreds of thousands would look on it as splendid luck; and so it is if
+you count it better to be alive than dead, which I do, in spite of the
+blues."
+
+"How is Cousin Leila?"
+
+"Very well.  She goes on pegging away at the hospital; she's a brick."
+But he did not look at her, and again there was silence, till he stopped
+by Lord's Cricket-ground.
+
+"I mustn't keep you crawling along at this pace."
+
+"Oh, I don't mind!"
+
+"I only wanted to say that if I can be of any service to you at any time
+in any way whatever, please command me."
+
+He gave her hand a squeeze, took his hat off; and Noel walked slowly on.
+The little interview, with its suppressions, and its implications, had
+but exasperated her restlessness, and yet, in a way, it had soothed the
+soreness of her heart.  Captain Fort at all events did not despise her;
+and he was in trouble like herself.  She felt that somehow by the look of
+his face, and the tone of his voice when he spoke of Leila.  She
+quickened her pace.  George's words came back to her: "If you're not
+ashamed of yourself, no one will be of you!"  How easy to say!  The old
+days, her school, the little half grown-up dances she used to go to, when
+everything was happy.  Gone!  All gone!
+
+But her meetings with Opinion were not over for the day, for turning
+again at last into the home Square, tired out by her three hours' ramble,
+she met an old lady whom she and Gratian had known from babyhood--a
+handsome dame, the widow of an official, who spent her days, which showed
+no symptom of declining, in admirable works.  Her daughter, the widow of
+an officer killed at the Marne, was with her, and the two greeted Noel
+with a shower of cordial questions: So she was back from the country, and
+was she quite well again?  And working at her hospital?  And how was her
+dear father?  They had thought him looking very thin and worn.  But now
+Gratian was at home--How dreadfully the war kept husbands and wives
+apart!  And whose was the dear little baby they had in the house?
+
+"Mine," said Noel, walking straight past them with her head up.  In every
+fibre of her being she could feel the hurt, startled, utterly bewildered
+looks of those firm friendly persons left there on the pavement behind
+her; could feel the way they would gather themselves together, and walk
+on, perhaps without a word, and then round the corner begin: "What has
+come to Noel?  What did she mean?"  And taking the little gold hoop out
+of her pocket, she flung it with all her might into the Square Garden.
+The action saved her from a breakdown; and she went in calmly.  Lunch was
+long over, but her father had not gone out, for he met her in the hall
+and drew her into the dining-room.
+
+"You must eat, my child," he said.  And while she was swallowing down
+what he had caused to be kept back for her, he stood by the hearth in
+that favourite attitude of his, one foot on the fender, and one hand
+gripping the mantel-shelf.
+
+"You've got your wish, Daddy," she said dully: "Everybody knows now. I've
+told Mr. Lauder, and Monsieur, and the Dinnafords."
+
+She saw his fingers uncrisp, then grip the shelf again.  "I'm glad," he
+said.
+
+"Aunt Thirza gave me a ring to wear, but I've thrown it away."
+
+"My dearest child," he began, but could not go on, for the quivering of
+his lips.
+
+"I wanted to say once more, Daddy, that I'm fearfully sorry about you.
+And I am ashamed of myself; I thought I wasn't, but I am--only, I think
+it was cruel, and I'm not penitent to God; and it's no good trying to
+make me."
+
+Pierson turned and looked at her.  For a long time after, she could not
+get that look out of her memory.
+
+Jimmy Fort had turned away from Noel feeling particularly wretched. Ever
+since the day when Leila had told him of the girl's misfortune he had
+been aware that his liaison had no decent foundation, save a sort of
+pity.  One day, in a queer access of compunction, he had made Leila an
+offer of marriage.  She had refused; and he had respected her the more,
+realising by the quiver in her voice and the look in her eyes that she
+refused him, not because she did not love him well enough, but because
+she was afraid of losing any of his affection. She was a woman of great
+experience.
+
+To-day he had taken advantage of the luncheon interval to bring her some
+flowers, with a note to say that he could not come that evening. Letting
+himself in with his latchkey, he had carefully put those Japanese azaleas
+in the bowl "Famille Rose," taking water from her bedroom.  Then he had
+sat down on the divan with his head in his hands.
+
+Though he had rolled so much about the world, he had never had much to do
+with women.  And there was nothing in him of the Frenchman, who takes
+what life puts in his way as so much enjoyment on the credit side, and
+accepts the ends of such affairs as they naturally and rather rapidly
+arrive.  It had been a pleasure, and was no longer a pleasure; but this
+apparently did not dissolve it, or absolve him. He felt himself bound by
+an obscure but deep instinct to go on pretending that he was not tired of
+her, so long as she was not tired of him.  And he sat there trying to
+remember any sign, however small, of such a consummation, quite without
+success.  On the contrary, he had even the wretched feeling that if only
+he had loved her, she would have been much more likely to have tired of
+him by now.  For her he was still the unconquered, in spite of his loyal
+endeavour to seem conquered.  He had made a fatal mistake, that evening
+after the concert at Queen's Hall, to let himself go, on a mixed tide of
+desire and pity!
+
+His folly came to him with increased poignancy after he had parted from
+Noel.  How could he have been such a base fool, as to have committed
+himself to Leila on an evening when he had actually been in the company
+of that child?  Was it the vague, unseizable likeness between them which
+had pushed him over the edge?  'I've been an ass,' he thought; 'a
+horrible ass.'  I would always have given every hour I've ever spent with
+Leila, for one real smile from that girl.'
+
+This sudden sight of Noel after months during which he had tried loyally
+to forget her existence, and not succeeded at all, made him realise as he
+never had yet that he was in love with her; so very much in love with her
+that the thought of Leila was become nauseating.  And yet the instincts
+of a gentleman seemed to forbid him to betray that secret to either of
+them.  It was an accursed coil!  He hailed a cab, for he was late; and
+all the way back to the War Office he continued to see the girl's figure
+and her face with its short hair.  And a fearful temptation rose within
+him.  Was it not she who was now the real object for chivalry and pity?
+Had he not the right to consecrate himself to championship of one in such
+a deplorable position?  Leila had lived her life; but this child's
+life--pretty well wrecked--was all before her.  And then he grinned from
+sheer disgust.  For he knew that this was Jesuitry.  Not chivalry was
+moving him, but love!  Love!  Love of the unattainable!  And with a heavy
+heart, indeed, he entered the great building, where, in a small room,
+companioned by the telephone, and surrounded by sheets of paper covered
+with figures, he passed his days.  The war made everything seem dreary,
+hopeless.  No wonder he had caught at any distraction which came
+along--caught at it, till it had caught him!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+To find out the worst is, for human nature, only a question of time. But
+where the "worst" is attached to a family haloed, as it were, by the
+authority and reputation of an institution like the Church, the process
+of discovery has to break through many a little hedge.  Sheer
+unlikelihood, genuine respect, the defensive instinct in those identified
+with an institution, who will themselves feel weaker if its strength be
+diminished, the feeling that the scandal is too good to be true--all
+these little hedges, and more, had to be broken through.  To the
+Dinnafords, the unholy importance of what Noel had said to them would
+have continued to keep them dumb, out of self-protection; but its
+monstrosity had given them the feeling that there must be some mistake,
+that the girl had been overtaken by a wild desire to "pull their legs" as
+dear Charlie would say.  With the hope of getting this view confirmed,
+they lay in wait for the old nurse who took the baby out, and obtained
+the information, shortly imparted: "Oh, yes; Miss Noel's.  Her 'usband
+was killed--poor lamb!" And they felt rewarded.  They had been sure there
+was some mistake. The relief of hearing that word "'usband" was intense.
+One of these hasty war marriages, of which the dear Vicar had not
+approved, and so it had been kept dark.  Quite intelligible, but so sad!
+Enough misgiving however remained in their minds, to prevent their going
+to condole with the dear Vicar; but not enough to prevent their roundly
+contradicting the rumours and gossip already coming to their ears. And
+then one day, when their friend Mrs. Curtis had said too positively:
+"Well, she doesn't wear a wedding-ring, that I'll swear, because I took
+very good care to look!" they determined to ask Mr. Lauder.  He
+would--indeed must--know; and, of course, would not tell a story.  When
+they asked him it was so manifest that he did know, that they almost
+withdrew the question.  The poor young man had gone the colour of a
+tomato.
+
+"I prefer not to answer," he said.  The rest of a very short interview
+was passed in exquisite discomfort.  Indeed discomfort, exquisite and
+otherwise, within a few weeks of Noel's return, had begun to pervade all
+the habitual congregation of Pierson's church. It was noticed that
+neither of the two sisters attended Service now. Certain people who went
+in the sincere hope of seeing Noel, only fell off again when she did not
+appear.  After all, she would not have the face!  And Gratian was too
+ashamed, no doubt.  It was constantly remarked that the Vicar looked very
+grave and thin, even for him.  As the rumours hardened into certainty,
+the feeling towards him became a curious medley of sympathy and
+condemnation.  There was about the whole business that which English
+people especially resent.  By the very fact of his presence before them
+every Sunday, and his public ministrations, he was exhibiting to them, as
+it were, the seamed and blushing face of his daughter's private life,
+besides affording one long and glaring demonstration of the failure of
+the Church to guide its flock: If a man could not keep his own daughter
+in the straight path--whom could he?  Resign!  The word began to be
+thought about, but not yet spoken.  He had been there so long; he had
+spent so much money on the church and the parish; his gentle dreamy
+manner was greatly liked.  He was a gentleman; and had helped many
+people; and, though his love of music and vestments had always caused
+heart-burnings, yet it had given a certain cachet to the church.  The
+women, at any rate, were always glad to know that the church they went to
+was capable of drawing their fellow women away from other churches.
+Besides, it was war-time, and moral delinquency which in time of peace
+would have bulked too large to neglect, was now less insistently dwelt
+on, by minds preoccupied by food and air-raids. Things, of course, could
+not go on as they were; but as yet they did go on.
+
+The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk; and nothing
+concrete or tangible came Pierson's way.  He went about his usual routine
+without seeming change.  And yet there was a change, secret and creeping.
+Wounded almost to death himself, he felt as though surrounded by one
+great wound in others; but it was some weeks before anything occurred to
+rouse within him the weapon of anger or the protective impulse.
+
+And then one day a little swift brutality shook him to the very soul. He
+was coming home from a long parish round, and had turned into the Square,
+when a low voice behind him said:
+
+"Wot price the little barstard?"
+
+A cold, sick feeling stifled his very breathing; he gasped, and spun
+round, to see two big loutish boys walking fast away.  With swift and
+stealthy passion he sprang after them, and putting his hands on their two
+neighbouring shoulders, wrenched them round so that they faced him, with
+mouths fallen open in alarm.  Shaking them with all his force, he said:
+
+"How dare you--how dare you use that word?"  His face and voice must have
+been rather terrible, for the scare in their faces brought him to sudden
+consciousness of his own violence, and he dropped his hands.  In two
+seconds they were at the corner.  They stopped there for a second; one of
+them shouted "Gran'pa"; then they vanished.  He was left with lips and
+hands quivering, and a feeling that he had not known for years--the weak
+white empty feeling one has after yielding utterly to sudden murderous
+rage.  He crossed over, and stood leaning against the Garden railings,
+with the thought: 'God forgive me!  I could have killed them--I could
+have killed them!'  There had been a devil in him.  If he had had
+something in his hand, he might now have been a murderer: How awful!
+Only one had spoken;  but he could have killed them both!  And the word
+was true, and was in all mouths--all low common mouths, day after day, of
+his own daughter's child!  The ghastliness of this thought, brought home
+so utterly, made him writhe, and grasp the railings as if he would have
+bent them.
+
+From that day on, a creeping sensation of being rejected of men, never
+left him; the sense of identification with Noel and her tiny outcast
+became ever more poignant, more real; the desire to protect them ever
+more passionate; and the feeling that round about there were whispering
+voices, pointing fingers, and a growing malevolence was ever more
+sickening.  He was beginning too to realise the deep and hidden truth:
+How easily the breath of scandal destroys the influence and sanctity of
+those endowed therewith by vocation; how invaluable it is to feel
+untarnished, and how difficult to feel that when others think you
+tarnished.
+
+He tried to be with Noel as much as possible; and in the evenings they
+sometimes went walks together, without ever talking of what was always in
+their minds.  Between six and eight the girl was giving sittings to
+Lavendie in the drawing-room, and sometimes Pierson would come there and
+play to them.  He was always possessed now by a sense of the danger Noel
+ran from companionship with any man.  On three occasions, Jimmy Fort made
+his appearance after dinner.  He had so little to say that it was
+difficult to understand why he came; but, sharpened by this new dread for
+his daughter, Pierson noticed his eyes always following her.  'He admires
+her,' he thought; and often he would try his utmost to grasp the
+character of this man, who had lived such a roving life.  'Is he--can he
+be the sort of man I would trust Nollie to?' he would think.  'Oh, that I
+should have to hope like this that some good man would marry her--my
+little Nollie, a child only the other day!'
+
+In these sad, painful, lonely weeks he found a spot of something like
+refuge in Leila's sitting-room, and would go there often for half an hour
+when she was back from her hospital.  That little black-walled room with
+its Japanese prints and its flowers, soothed him.  And Leila soothed him,
+innocent as he was of any knowledge of her latest aberration, and perhaps
+conscious that she herself was not too happy. To watch her arranging
+flowers, singing her little French songs, or to find her beside him,
+listening to his confidences, was the only real pleasure he knew in these
+days.  And Leila, in turn, would watch him and think: 'Poor Edward!  He
+has never lived; and never will; now!'  But sometimes the thought would
+shoot through her: 'Perhaps he's to be envied.  He doesn't feel what I
+feel, anyway.  Why did I fall in love again?'
+
+They did not speak of Noel as a rule, but one evening she expressed her
+views roundly.
+
+"It was a great mistake to make Noel come back.  Edward.  It was
+Quixotic.  You'll be lucky if real mischief doesn't come of it. She's not
+a patient character; one day she'll do something rash. And, mind you,
+she'll be much more likely to break out if she sees the world treating
+you badly than if it happens to herself.  I should send her back to the
+country, before she makes bad worse."
+
+"I can't do that, Leila.  We must live it down together."
+
+"Wrong, Edward.  You should take things as they are."
+
+With a heavy sigh Pierson answered:
+
+"I wish I could see her future.  She's so attractive.  And her defences
+are gone.  She's lost faith, and belief in all that a good woman should
+be.  The day after she came back she told me she was ashamed of herself.
+But since--she's not given a sign.  She's so proud--my poor little
+Nollie.  I see how men admire her, too.  Our Belgian friend is painting
+her.  He's a good man; but he finds her beautiful, and who can wonder.
+And your friend Captain Fort. Fathers are supposed to be blind, but they
+see very clear sometimes."
+
+Leila rose and drew down a blind.
+
+"This sun," she said.  "Does Jimmy Fort come to you--often?"
+
+"Oh! no; very seldom.  But still--I can see."
+
+'You bat--you blunderer!' thought Leila: 'See!  You can't even see this
+beside you!'
+
+"I expect he's sorry for her," she said in a queer voice.
+
+"Why should he be sorry?  He doesn't know:"
+
+"Oh, yes!  He knows; I told him."
+
+"You told him!"
+
+"Yes," Leila repeated stubbornly; "and he's sorry for her."
+
+And even then "this monk" beside her did not see, and went blundering on.
+
+"No, no; it's not merely that he's sorry.  By the way he looks at her, I
+know I'm not mistaken.  I've wondered--what do you think, Leila.  He's
+too old for her; but he seems an honourable, kind man."
+
+"Oh! a most honourable, kind man."  But only by pressing her hand against
+her lips had she smothered a burst of bitter laughter.  He, who saw
+nothing, could yet notice Fort's eyes when he looked at Noel, and be
+positive that he was in love with her!  How plainly those eyes must
+speak!  Her control gave way.
+
+"All this is very interesting," she said, spurning her words like Noel,
+"considering that he's more than my friend, Edward."  It gave her a sort
+of pleasure to see him wince.  'These blind bats!' she thought, terribly
+stung that he should so clearly assume her out of the running.  Then she
+was sorry, his face had become so still and wistful.  And turning away,
+she said:
+
+"Oh!  I shan't break my heart; I'm a good loser.  And I'm a good fighter,
+too; perhaps I shan't lose."  And snapping off a sprig of geranium, she
+pressed it to her lips.
+
+"Forgive me," said Pierson slowly; "I didn't know.  I'm stupid.  I
+thought your love for your poor soldiers had left no room for other
+feelings."
+
+Leila uttered a shrill laugh.  "What have they to do with each other?
+Did you never hear of passion, Edward?  Oh!  Don't look at me like that.
+Do you think a woman can't feel passion at my age?  As much as ever, more
+than ever, because it's all slipping away."
+
+She took her hand from her lips, but a geranium petal was left clinging
+there, like a bloodstain.  "What has your life been all these years," she
+went on vehemently--"suppression of passion, nothing else!  You monks
+twist Nature up with holy words, and try to disguise what the eeriest
+simpleton can see.  Well, I haven't suppressed passion, Edward.  That's
+all."
+
+"And are you happier for that?"
+
+"I was; and I shall be again."
+
+A little smile curled Pierson's lips.  "Shall be?" he said.  "I hope so.
+It's just two ways of looking at things, Leila."
+
+"Oh, Edward!  Don't be so gentle!  I suppose you don't think a person
+like me can ever really love?"
+
+He was standing before her with his head down, and a sense that, naive
+and bat-like as he was, there was something in him she could not reach or
+understand, made her cry out:
+
+"I've not been nice to you.  Forgive me, Edward!  I'm so unhappy."
+
+"There was a Greek who used to say: 'God is the helping of man by man.'
+It isn't true, but it's beautiful.  Good-bye, dear Leila, and don't be
+sorrowful"
+
+She squeezed his hand, and turned to the window.
+
+She stood there watching his black figure cross the road in the sunshine,
+and pass round the corner by the railings of the church. He walked
+quickly, very upright; there was something unseeing even about that back
+view of him; or was it that he saw-another world?  She had never lost the
+mental habits of her orthodox girlhood, and in spite of all impatience,
+recognised his sanctity.  When he had disappeared she went into her
+bedroom.  What he had said, indeed, was no discovery.  She had known.
+Oh!  She had known.  'Why didn't I accept Jimmy's offer?  Why didn't I
+marry him?  Is it too late?' she thought.  'Could I?  Would he--even
+now?' But then she started away from her own thought.  Marry him! knowing
+his heart was with this girl?
+
+She looked long at her face in the mirror, studying with a fearful
+interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light
+coating of powder.  She examined the cunning touches of colouring matter
+here and there in her front hair.  Were they cunning enough?  Did they
+deceive?  They seemed to her suddenly to stare out.  She fingered and
+smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin below her chin.
+She stretched herself, and passed her hands down over her whole form,
+searching as it were for slackness, or thickness.  And she had the bitter
+thought: 'I'm all out.  I'm doing all I can.' The lines of a little poem
+Fort had showed her went thrumming through her head:
+
+         "Time, you old gipsy man
+            Will you not stay
+          Put up your caravan
+            Just for a day?"
+
+What more could she do?  He did not like to see her lips reddened. She
+had marked his disapprovals, watched him wipe his mouth after a kiss,
+when he thought she couldn't see him.  'I need'nt!' she thought.  'Noel's
+lips are no redder, really.  What has she better than I?  Youth--dew on
+the grass!'  That didn't last long!  But long enough to "do her in" as
+her soldier-men would say.  And, suddenly she revolted against herself,
+against Fort, against this chilled and foggy country; felt a fierce
+nostalgia for African sun, and the African flowers; the happy-go-lucky,
+hand-to-mouth existence of those five years before the war began.  High
+Constantia at grape harvest!  How many years ago--ten years, eleven
+years!  Ah!  To have before her those ten years, with him!  Ten years in
+the sun!  He would have loved her then, and gone on loving her!  And she
+would not have tired of him, as she had tired of those others.  'In half
+an hour,' she thought, 'he'll be here, sit opposite me; I shall see him
+struggling forcing himself to seem affectionate!  It's too humbling!  But
+I don't care; I want him!'
+
+She searched her wardrobe, for some garment or touch of colour, novelty
+of any sort, to help her.  But she had tried them all--those little
+tricks--was bankrupt.  And such a discouraged, heavy mood came on her,
+that she did not even "change," but went back in her nurse's dress and
+lay down on the divan, pretending to sleep, while the maid set out the
+supper.  She lay there moody and motionless, trying to summon courage,
+feeling that if she showed herself beaten she was beaten; knowing that
+she only held him by pity.  But when she heard his footstep on the stairs
+she swiftly passed her hands over her cheeks, as if to press the blood
+out of them, and lay absolutely still.  She hoped that she was white, and
+indeed she was, with finger-marks under the eyes, for she had suffered
+greatly this last hour.  Through her lashes she saw him halt, and look at
+her in surprise.  Asleep, or-ill, which?  She did not move.  She wanted
+to watch him.  He tiptoed across the room and stood looking down at her.
+There was a furrow between his eyes.  'Ah!' she thought, 'it would suit
+you, if I were dead, my kind friend.'  He bent a little towards her; and
+she wondered suddenly whether she looked graceful lying there, sorry now
+that she had not changed her dress.  She saw him shrug his shoulders ever
+so faintly with a puzzled little movement. He had not seen that she was
+shamming.  How nice his face was--not mean, secret, callous!  She opened
+her eyes, which against her will had in them the despair she was feeling.
+He went on his knees, and lifting her hand to his lips, hid them with it.
+
+"Jimmy," she said gently, "I'm an awful bore to you.  Poor Jimmy!  No!
+Don't pretend!  I know what I know!"  'Oh, God!  What am I saying?' she
+thought.  'It's fatal-fatal.  I ought never!'  And drawing his head to
+her, she put it to her heart.  Then, instinctively aware that this moment
+had been pressed to its uttermost, she scrambled up, kissed his forehead,
+stretched herself, and laughed.
+
+"I was asleep, dreaming; dreaming you loved me.  Wasn't it funny?  Come
+along.  There are oysters, for the last time this season."
+
+All that evening, as if both knew they had been looking over a precipice,
+they seemed to be treading warily, desperately anxious not to rouse
+emotion in each other, or touch on things which must bring a scene.  And
+Leila talked incessantly of Africa.
+
+"Don't you long for the sun, Jimmy?  Couldn't we--couldn't you go?  Oh!
+why doesn't this wretched war end?  All that we've got here at home every
+scrap of wealth, and comfort, and age, and art, and music, I'd give it
+all for the light and the sun out there.  Wouldn't you?"
+
+And Fort said he would, knowing well of one thing which he would not
+give.  And she knew that, as well as he.
+
+They were both gayer than they had been for a long time; so that when he
+had gone, she fell back once more on to the divan, and burying her face
+in a cushion, wept bitterly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+It was not quite disillusionment that Pierson felt while he walked away.
+Perhaps he had not really believed in Leila's regeneration. It was more
+an acute discomfort, an increasing loneliness.  A soft and restful spot
+was now denied him; a certain warmth and allurement had gone out of his
+life.  He had not even the feeling that it was his duty to try and save
+Leila by persuading her to marry Fort.  He had always been too sensitive,
+too much as it were of a gentleman, for the robuster sorts of evangelism.
+Such delicacy had been a stumbling-block to him all through professional
+life.  In the eight years when his wife was with him, all had been more
+certain, more direct and simple, with the help of her sympathy, judgment;
+and companionship.  At her death a sort of mist had gathered in his soul.
+No one had ever spoken plainly to him.  To a clergyman, who does?  No one
+had told him in so many words that he should have married again--that to
+stay unmarried was bad for him, physically and spiritually, fogging and
+perverting life; not driving him, indeed, as it drove many, to
+intolerance and cruelty, but to that half-living dreaminess, and the
+vague unhappy yearnings which so constantly beset him.  All these
+celibate years he had really only been happy in his music, or in far-away
+country places, taking strong exercise, and losing himself in the
+beauties of Nature; and since the war began he had only once, for those
+three days at Kestrel, been out of London.
+
+He walked home, going over in his mind very anxiously all the evidence he
+had of Fort's feeling for Noel.  How many times had he been to them since
+she came back?  Only three times--three evening visits!  And he had not
+been alone with her a single minute!  Before this calamity befell his
+daughter, he would never have observed anything in Fort's demeanour; but,
+in his new watchfulness, he had seen the almost reverential way he looked
+at her, noticed the extra softness of his voice when he spoke to her, and
+once a look of sudden pain, a sort of dulling of his whole self, when
+Noel had got up and gone out of the room.  And the girl herself?  Twice
+he had surprised her gazing at Fort when he was not looking, with a sort
+of brooding interest.  He remembered how, as a little girl, she would
+watch a grown-up, and then suddenly one day attach herself to him, and be
+quite devoted.  Yes, he must warn her, before she could possibly become
+entangled.  In his fastidious chastity, the opinion he had held of Fort
+was suddenly lowered.  He, already a free-thinker, was now revealed as a
+free-liver.  Poor little Nollie!  Endangered again already!  Every man a
+kind of wolf waiting to pounce on her!
+
+He found Lavendie and Noel in the drawing-room, standing before the
+portrait which was nearing completion.  He looked at it for a long
+minute, and turned away:
+
+"Don't you think it's like me, Daddy?"
+
+"It's like you; but it hurts me.  I can't tell why."
+
+He saw the smile of a painter whose picture is being criticised come on
+Lavendie's face.
+
+"It is perhaps the colouring which does not please you, monsieur?"
+
+"No, no; deeper.  The expression; what is she waiting for?"
+
+The defensive smile died on Lavendie's lips.
+
+"It is as I see her, monsieur le cure."
+
+Pierson turned again to the picture, and suddenly covered his eyes. "She
+looks 'fey,"' he said, and went out of the room.
+
+Lavendie and Noel remained staring at the picture.  "Fey?  What does that
+mean, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Possessed, or something."
+
+And they continued to stare at the picture, till Lavendie said:
+
+"I think there is still a little too much light on that ear."
+
+The same evening, at bedtime, Pierson called Noel back.
+
+"Nollie, I want you to know something.  In all but the name, Captain Fort
+is a married man."
+
+He saw her flush, and felt his own face darkening with colour.
+
+She said calmly: "I know; to Leila."
+
+"Do you mean she has told you?"
+
+Noel shook her head.
+
+"Then how?"
+
+"I guessed.  Daddy, don't treat me as a child any more.  What's the use,
+now?"
+
+He sat down in the chair before the hearth, and covered his face with his
+hands.  By the quivering of those hands, and the movement of his
+shoulders, she could tell that he was stifling emotion, perhaps even
+crying; and sinking down on his knees she pressed his hands and face to
+her, murmuring: "Oh, Daddy dear!  Oh, Daddy dear!"
+
+He put his arms round her, and they sat a long time with their cheeks
+pressed together, not speaking a word.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+The day after that silent outburst of emotion in the drawing-room was a
+Sunday.  And, obeying the longing awakened overnight to be as good as she
+could to her father; Noel said to him:
+
+"Would you like me to come to Church?"
+
+"Of course, Nollie."
+
+How could he have answered otherwise?  To him Church was the home of
+comfort and absolution, where people must bring their sins and
+troubles--a haven of sinners, the fount of charity, of forgiveness, and
+love.  Not to have believed that, after all these years, would have been
+to deny all his usefulness in life, and to cast a slur on the House of
+God.
+
+And so Noel walked there with him, for Gratian had gone down to George,
+for the week-end.  She slipped quietly up the side aisle to their empty
+pew, under the pulpit.  Never turning her eyes from the chancel, she
+remained unconscious of the stir her presence made, during that hour and
+twenty minutes.  Behind her, the dumb currents of wonder, disapproval,
+and resentment ran a stealthy course.  On her all eyes were fixed sooner
+or later, and every mind became the play ground of judgments.  From every
+soul, kneeling, standing, or sitting, while the voice of the Service
+droned, sang, or spoke, a kind of glare radiated on to that one small
+devoted head, which seemed so ludicrously devout.  She disturbed their
+devotions, this girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class.
+She ought to repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there
+was something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she
+was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's authority, too
+visible a rent in the raiment of their priest.  Her figure focused all
+the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks. Mothers
+quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could see her; wives
+with the idea that their husbands were seeing her.  Men experienced
+sensations varying from condemnation to a sort of covetousness.  Young
+folk wondered, and felt inclined to giggle.  Old maids could hardly bear
+to look.  Here and there a man or woman who had seen life face to face,
+was simply sorry!  The consciousness of all who knew her personally was
+at stretch how to behave if they came within reach of her in going out.
+For, though only half a dozen would actually rub shoulders with her, all
+knew that they might be, and many felt it their duty to be, of that
+half-dozen, so as to establish their attitude once for all.  It was, in
+fact, too severe a test for human nature and the feelings which Church
+ought to arouse. The stillness of that young figure, the impossibility of
+seeing her face and judging of her state of mind thereby; finally, a
+faint lurking shame that they should be so intrigued and disturbed by
+something which had to do with sex, in this House of Worship--all
+combined to produce in every mind that herd-feeling of defence, which so
+soon becomes, offensive.  And, half unconscious, half aware of it all,
+Noel stood, and sat, and knelt.  Once or twice she saw her father's eyes
+fixed on her; and, still in the glow of last night's pity and remorse,
+felt a kind of worship for his thin grave face. But for the most part,
+her own wore the expression Lavendie had translated to his canvas--the
+look of one ever waiting for the extreme moments of life, for those few
+and fleeting poignancies which existence holds for the human heart.  A
+look neither hungry nor dissatisfied, but dreamy and expectant, which
+might blaze into warmth and depth at any moment, and then go back to its
+dream.
+
+When the last notes of the organ died away she continued to sit very
+still, without looking round.
+
+There was no second Service, and the congregation melted out behind her,
+and had dispersed into the streets and squares long before she came
+forth.  After hesitating whether or no to go to the vestry door, she
+turned away and walked home alone.
+
+It was this deliberate evasion of all contact which probably clinched the
+business.  The absence of vent, of any escape-pipe for the feelings, is
+always dangerous.  They felt cheated.  If Noel had come out amongst all
+those whose devotions her presence had disturbed, if in that exit, some
+had shown and others had witnessed one knows not what of a manifested
+ostracism, the outraged sense of social decency might have been appeased
+and sleeping dogs allowed to lie, for we soon get used to things; and,
+after all, the war took precedence in every mind even over social
+decency.  But none of this had occurred, and a sense that Sunday after
+Sunday the same little outrage would happen to them, moved more than a
+dozen quite unrelated persons, and caused the posting that evening of as
+many letters, signed and unsigned, to a certain quarter.  London is no
+place for parish conspiracy, and a situation which in the country would
+have provoked meetings more or less public, and possibly a resolution,
+could perhaps only thus be dealt with.  Besides, in certain folk there is
+ever a mysterious itch to write an unsigned letter--such missives satisfy
+some obscure sense of justice, some uncontrollable longing to get even
+with those who have hurt or disturbed them, without affording the
+offenders chance for further hurt or disturbance.
+
+Letters which are posted often reach their destination.
+
+On Wednesday morning Pierson was sitting in his study at the hour devoted
+to the calls of his parishioners, when the maid announced, "Canon
+Rushbourne, sir," and he saw before him an old College friend whom he had
+met but seldom in recent years.  His visitor was a short, grey-haired man
+of rather portly figure, whose round, rosy, good-humoured face had a look
+of sober goodness, and whose light-blue eyes shone a little.  He grasped
+Pierson's hand, and said in a voice to whose natural heavy resonance
+professional duty had added a certain unction:
+
+"My dear Edward, how many years it is since we met!  Do you remember dear
+old Blakeway?  I saw him only yesterday.  He's just the same. I'm
+delighted to see you again," and he laughed a little soft nervous laugh.
+Then for a few moments he talked of the war and old College days, and
+Pierson looked at him and thought: 'What has he come for?'
+
+"You've something to say to me, Alec," he said, at last.
+
+Canon Rushbourne leaned forward in his chair, and answered with evident
+effort: "Yes; I wanted to have a little talk with you, Edward.  I hope
+you won't mind.  I do hope you won't."
+
+"Why should I mind?"
+
+Canon Rushbourne's eyes shone more than ever, there was real friendliness
+in his face.
+
+"I know you've every right to say to me: 'Mind your own business.' But I
+made up my mind to come as a friend, hoping to save you from--er" he
+stammered, and began again: "I think you ought to know of the feeling in
+your parish that--er--that--er--your position is very delicate.  Without
+breach of confidence I may tell you that letters have been sent to
+headquarters; you can imagine perhaps what I mean. Do believe, my dear
+friend, that I'm actuated by my old affection for you; nothing else, I do
+assure you."
+
+In the silence, his breathing could be heard, as of a man a little
+touched with asthma, while he continually smoothed his thick black knees,
+his whole face radiating an anxious kindliness.  The sun shone brightly
+on those two black figures, so very different, and drew out of their
+well-worn garments the faint latent green mossiness which. underlies the
+clothes of clergymen.
+
+At last Pierson said: "Thank you, Alec; I understand."
+
+The Canon uttered a resounding sigh.  "You didn't realise how very easily
+people misinterpret her being here with you; it seems to them a kind--a
+kind of challenge.  They were bound, I think, to feel that; and I'm
+afraid, in consequence--" He stopped, moved by the fact that Pierson had
+closed his eyes.
+
+"I am to choose, you mean, between my daughter and my parish?"
+
+The Canon seemed, with a stammer of words, to try and blunt the edge of
+that clear question.
+
+"My visit is quite informal, my dear fellow; I can't say at all.  But
+there is evidently much feeling; that is what I wanted you to know. You
+haven't quite seen, I think, that--"
+
+Pierson raised his hand.  "I can't talk of this."
+
+The Canon rose.  "Believe me, Edward, I sympathise deeply.  I felt I had
+to warn you."  He held out his hand.  "Good-bye, my dear friend, do
+forgive me"; and he went out.  In the hall an adventure befell him so
+plump, and awkward, that he could barely recite it to Mrs. Rushbourne
+that night.
+
+"Coming out from my poor friend," he said, "I ran into a baby's
+perambulator and that young mother, whom I remember as a little
+thing"--he held his hand at the level of his thigh--"arranging it for
+going out.  It startled me; and I fear I asked quite foolishly: 'Is it a
+boy?'  The poor young thing looked up at me.  She has very large eyes,
+quite beautiful, strange eyes.  'Have you been speaking to Daddy about
+me?'  'My dear young lady,' I said, 'I'm such an old friend, you see.
+You must forgive me.'  And then she said: 'Are they going to ask him to
+resign?'  'That depends on you,' I said.  Why do I say these things,
+Charlotte?  I ought simply to have held my tongue.  Poor young thing; so
+very young!  And the little baby!" "She has brought it on herself, Alec,"
+Mrs, Rushbourne replied.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+1
+
+The moment his visitor had vanished, Pierson paced up and down the study,
+with anger rising in his, heart.  His daughter or his parish!  The old
+saw, "An Englishman's house is his castle!"  was being attacked within
+him.  Must he not then harbour his own daughter, and help her by candid
+atonement to regain her inward strength and peace?  Was he not thereby
+acting as a true Christian, in by far the hardest course he and she could
+pursue?  To go back on that decision and imperil his daughter's spirit,
+or else resign his parish--the alternatives were brutal!  This was the
+centre of his world, the only spot where so lonely a man could hope to
+feel even the semblance of home; a thousand little threads tethered him
+to his church, his parishioners, and this house--for, to live on here if
+he gave up his church was out of the question.  But his chief feeling was
+a bewildered anger that for doing what seemed to him his duty, he should
+be attacked by his parishioners.
+
+A passion of desire to know what they really thought and felt--these
+parishioners of his, whom he had befriended, and for whom he had worked
+so long--beset him now, and he went out.  But the absurdity of his quest
+struck him before he had gone the length of the Square. One could not go
+to people and say: "Stand and deliver me your inmost judgments."  And
+suddenly he was aware of how far away he really was from them.  Through
+all his ministrations had he ever come to know their hearts?  And now, in
+this dire necessity for knowledge, there seemed no way of getting it.  He
+went at random into a stationer's shop; the shopman sang bass in his
+choir.  They had met Sunday after Sunday for the last seven years.  But
+when, with this itch for intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man behind
+the counter, it was as if he were looking on him for the first time.  The
+Russian proverb, "The heart of another is a dark forest," gashed into his
+mind, while he said:
+
+"Well, Hodson, what news of your son?"
+
+"Nothing more, Mr.  Pierson, thank you, sir, nothing more at present."
+
+And it seemed to Pierson, gazing at the man's face clothed in a short,
+grizzling beard cut rather like his own, that he must be thinking: 'Ah!
+sir, but what news of your daughter?' No one would ever tell him to his
+face what he was thinking.  And buying two pencils, he went out.  On the
+other side of the road was a bird-fancier's shop, kept by a woman whose
+husband had been taken for the Army.  She was not friendly towards him,
+for it was known to her that he had expostulated with her husband for
+keeping larks, and other wild birds.  And quite deliberately he crossed
+the road, and stood looking in at the window, with the morbid hope that
+from this unfriendly one he might hear truth.  She was in her shop, and
+came to the door.
+
+"Have you any news of your husband, Mrs.  Cherry?"
+
+"No, Mr.  Pierson, I 'ave not; not this week."
+
+"He hasn't gone out yet?"
+
+"No, Mr.  Pierson; 'e 'as not."
+
+There was no expression on her face, perfectly blank it was--Pierson had
+a mad longing to say 'For God's sake, woman, speak out what's in your
+mind; tell me what you think of me and my daughter.  Never mind my
+cloth!'  But he could no more say it than the woman could tell him what
+was in her mind.  And with a "Good morning" he passed on.  No man or
+woman would tell him anything, unless, perhaps, they were drunk.  He came
+to a public house, and for a moment even hesitated before it, but the
+thought of insult aimed at Noel stopped him, and he passed that too.  And
+then reality made itself known to him. Though he had come out to hear
+what they were thinking, he did not really want to hear it, could not
+endure it if he did.  He had been too long immune from criticism, too
+long in the position of one who may tell others what he thinks of them.
+And standing there in the crowded street, he was attacked by that longing
+for the country which had always come on him when he was hard pressed.
+He looked at his memoranda.  By stupendous luck it was almost a blank
+day.  An omnibus passed close by which would take him far out.  He
+climbed on to it, and travelled as far as Hendon; then getting down, set
+forth on foot. It was bright and hot, and the May blossom in full foam.
+He walked fast along the perfectly straight road till he came to the top
+of Elstree Hill.  There for a few moments he stood gazing at the school
+chapel, the cricket-field, the wide land beyond.  All was very quiet, for
+it was lunch-time.  A horse was tethered there, and a strolling cat, as
+though struck by the tall black incongruity of his figure, paused in her
+progress, then, slithering under the wicket gate, arched her back and
+rubbed herself against his leg, crinkling and waving the tip of her tail.
+Pierson bent down and stroked the creature's head; but uttering a faint
+miaou, the cat stepped daintily across the road, Pierson too stepped on,
+past the village, and down over the stile, into a field path.  At the
+edge of the young clover, under a bank of hawthorn, he lay down on his
+back, with his hat beside him and his arms crossed over his chest, like
+the effigy of some crusader one may see carved on an old tomb.  Though he
+lay quiet as that old knight, his eyes were not closed, but fixed on the
+blue, where a lark was singing.  Its song refreshed his spirit; its
+passionate light-heartedness stirred all the love of beauty in him, awoke
+revolt against a world so murderous and uncharitable.  Oh! to pass up
+with that song into a land of bright spirits, where was nothing ugly,
+hard, merciless, and the gentle face of the Saviour radiated everlasting
+love!  The scent of the mayflowers, borne down by the sun shine, drenched
+his senses; he closed his eyes, and, at once, as if resenting that
+momentary escape, his mind resumed debate with startling intensity.  This
+matter went to the very well-springs, had a terrible and secret
+significance.  If to act as conscience bade him rendered him unfit to
+keep his parish, all was built on sand, had no deep reality, was but
+rooted in convention.  Charity, and the forgiveness of sins honestly
+atoned for--what became of them?  Either he was wrong to have espoused
+straightforward confession and atonement for her, or they were wrong in
+chasing him from that espousal.  There could be no making those extremes
+to meet.  But if he were wrong, having done the hardest thing
+already--where could he turn?  His Church stood bankrupt of ideals.  He
+felt as if pushed over the edge of the world, with feet on space, and
+head in some blinding cloud.  'I cannot have been wrong,' he thought;
+'any other course was so much easier.  I sacrificed my pride, and my poor
+girl's pride; I would have loved to let her run away.  If for this we are
+to be stoned and cast forth, what living force is there in the religion I
+have loved; what does it all come to?  Have I served a sham?  I cannot
+and will not believe it.  Something is wrong with me, something is
+wrong--but where--what?'  He rolled over, lay on his face, and prayed.
+He prayed for guidance and deliverance from the gusts of anger which kept
+sweeping over him; even more for relief from the feeling of personal
+outrage, and the unfairness of this thing.  He had striven to be loyal to
+what he thought the right, had sacrificed all his sensitiveness, all his
+secret fastidious pride in his child and himself.  For that he was to be
+thrown out!  Whether through prayer, or in the scent and feel of the
+clover, he found presently a certain rest.  Away in the distance he could
+see the spire of Harrow Church.
+
+The Church!  No!  She was not, could not be, at fault.  The fault was in
+himself.  'I am unpractical,' he thought.  'It is so, I know. Agnes used
+to say so, Bob and Thirza think so.  They all think me unpractical and
+dreamy.  Is it a sin--I wonder?'  There were lambs in the next field; he
+watched their gambollings and his heart relaxed; brushing the clover dust
+off his black clothes, he began to retrace his steps.  The boys were
+playing cricket now, and he stood a few minutes watching them.  He had
+not seen cricket played since the war began; it seemed almost
+otherworldly, with the click of the bats, and the shrill young 'voices,
+under the distant drone of that sky-hornet threshing along to Hendon.  A
+boy made a good leg hit.  "Well played!" he called.  Then, suddenly
+conscious of his own incongruity and strangeness in that green spot, he
+turned away on the road back to London.  To resign; to await events; to
+send Noel away--of those three courses, the last alone seemed impossible.
+'Am I really so far from them,' he thought, 'that they can wish me to go,
+for this?  If so, I had better go.  It will be just another failure.  But
+I won't believe it yet; I can't believe it.'
+
+The heat was sweltering, and he became very tired before at last he
+reached his omnibus, and could sit with the breeze cooling his hot face.
+He did not reach home till six, having eaten nothing since breakfast.
+Intending to have a bath and lie down till dinner, he went upstairs.
+
+Unwonted silence reigned.  He tapped on the nursery door.  It was
+deserted; he passed through to Noel's room; but that too was empty. The
+wardrobe stood open as if it had been hastily ransacked, and her
+dressing-table was bare.  In alarm he went to the bell and pulled it
+sharply.  The old-fashioned ring of it jingled out far below.  The
+parlour-maid came up.
+
+"Where are Miss Noel and Nurse, Susan?"
+
+"I didn't know you were in, sir.  Miss Noel left me this note to give
+you.  They--I--"
+
+Pierson stopped her with his hand.  "Thank you, Susan; get me some tea,
+please."  With the note unopened in his hand, he waited till she was
+gone.  His head was going round, and he sat down on the side of Noel's
+bed to read:
+"DARLING DADDY,
+
+"The man who came this morning told me of what is going to happen.  I
+simply won't have it.  I'm sending Nurse and baby down to Kestrel at
+once, and going to Leila's for the night, until I've made up my mind what
+to do.  I knew it was a mistake my coming back.  I don't care what
+happens to me, but I won't have you hurt.  I think it's hateful of people
+to try and injure you for my fault.  I've had to borrow money from
+Susan--six pounds.  Oh!  Daddy dear, forgive me.
+
+"Your loving
+"NOLLIE."
+
+He read it with unutterable relief; at all events he knew where she
+was--poor, wilful, rushing, loving-hearted child; knew where she was, and
+could get at her.  After his bath and some tea, he would go to Leila's
+and bring her back.  Poor little Nollie, thinking that by just leaving
+his house she could settle this deep matter!  He did not hurry, feeling
+decidedly exhausted, and it was nearly eight before he set out, leaving a
+message for Gratian, who did not as a rule come in from her hospital till
+past nine.
+
+The day was still glowing, and now, in the cool of evening, his refreshed
+senses soaked up its beauty.  'God has so made this world,' he thought,
+'that, no matter what our struggles and sufferings, it's ever a joy to
+live when the sun shines, or the moon is bright, or the night starry.
+Even we can't spoil it.'  In Regent's Park the lilacs and laburnums were
+still in bloom though June had come, and he gazed at them in passing, as
+a lover might at his lady.  His conscience pricked him suddenly.  Mrs.
+Mitchett and the dark-eyed girl she had brought to him on New Year's Eve,
+the very night he had learned of his own daughter's tragedy--had he ever
+thought of them since?  How had that poor girl fared?  He had been too
+impatient of her impenetrable mood.  What did he know of the hearts of
+others, when he did not even know his own, could not rule his feelings of
+anger and revolt, had not guided his own daughter into the waters of
+safety!  And Leila!  Had he not been too censorious in thought?  How
+powerful, how strange was this instinct of sex, which hovered and swooped
+on lives, seized them, bore them away, then dropped them exhausted and
+defenceless!  Some munition-wagons, painted a dull grey, lumbered past,
+driven by sunburned youths in drab.  Life-force, Death-force--was it all
+one; the great unknowable momentum from which there was but the one
+escape, in the arms of their Heavenly Father?  Blake's little old stanzas
+came into his mind:
+
+    "And we are put on earth a little space,
+     That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
+     And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
+     Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
+
+    "For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
+     The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
+     Saying: Come out from the grove, my love and care,
+     And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!"
+
+Learned the heat to bear!  Those lambs he had watched in a field that
+afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their funny quivering
+wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts--what little miracles
+of careless joy among the meadow flowers!  Lambs, and flowers, and
+sunlight!  Famine, lust, and the great grey guns!  A maze, a wilderness;
+and but for faith, what issue, what path for man to take which did not
+keep him wandering hopeless, in its thicket? 'God preserve our faith in
+love, in charity, and the life to come!' he thought.  And a blind man
+with a dog, to whose neck was tied a little deep dish for pennies, ground
+a hurdy-gurdy as he passed. Pierson put a shilling in the dish.  The man
+stopped playing, his whitish eyes looked up.  "Thank you kindly, sir;
+I'll go home now. Come on, Dick!"  He tapped his way round the corner,
+with his dog straining in front.  A blackbird hidden among the blossoms
+of an acacia, burst into evening song, and another great grey
+munition-wagon rumbled out through the Park gate.
+2
+
+The Church-clock was striking nine when he reached Leila's flat, went up,
+and knocked.  Sounds from-a piano ceased; the door was opened by Noel.
+She recoiled when she saw who it was, and said:
+
+"Why did you come, Daddy?  It was much better not."
+
+"Are you alone here?"
+
+"Yes; Leila gave me her key.  She has to be at the hospital till ten
+to-night"
+
+"You must come home with me, my dear."
+
+Noel closed the piano, and sat down on the divan.  Her face had the same
+expression as when he had told her that she could not marry Cyril
+Morland.
+
+"Come, Nollie," he said; "don't be unreasonable.  We must see this
+through together."
+
+"No."
+
+"My dear, that's childish.  Do you think the mere accident of your being
+or not being at home can affect my decision as to what my duty is?"
+
+"Yes; it's my being there that matters.  Those people don't care, so long
+as it isn't an open scandal"
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"But it is so, Daddy.  Of course it's so, and you know it.  If I'm away
+they'll just pity you for having a bad daughter.  And quite right too.  I
+am a bad daughter."
+
+Pierson smiled.  "Just like when you were a tiny."
+
+"I wish I were a tiny again, or ten years older.  It's this half age--But
+I'm not coming back with you, Daddy; so it's no good."
+
+Pierson sat down beside her.
+
+"I've been thinking this over all day," he said quietly.  "Perhaps in my
+pride I made a mistake when I first knew of your trouble.  Perhaps I
+ought to have accepted the consequences of my failure, then, and have
+given up, and taken you away at once.  After all, if a man is not fit to
+have the care of souls, he should have the grace to know it."
+
+"But you are fit," cried Noel passionately; "Daddy, you are fit!"
+
+"I'm afraid not.  There is something wanting in me, I don't know exactly
+what; but something very wanting."
+
+"There isn't.  It's only that you're too good--that's why!"
+
+Pierson shook his head.  "Don't, Nollie!"
+
+"I will," cried Noel.  "You're too gentle, and you're too good. You're
+charitable, and you're simple, and you believe in another world; that's
+what's the matter with you, Daddy.  Do you think they do, those people
+who want to chase us out?  They don't even begin to believe, whatever
+they say or think.  I hate them, and sometimes I hate the Church; either
+it's hard and narrow, or else it's worldly." She stopped at the
+expression on her father's face, the most strange look of pain, and
+horror, as if an unspoken treachery of his own had been dragged forth for
+his inspection.
+
+"You're talking wildly," he said, but his lips were trembling.  "You
+mustn't say things like that; they're blasphemous and wicked."
+
+Noel bit her lips, sitting very stiff and still, against a high blue
+cushion.  Then she burst out again:
+
+"You've slaved for those people years and years, and you've had no
+pleasure and you've had no love; and they wouldn't care that if you broke
+your heart.  They don't care for anything, so long as it all seems
+proper.  Daddy, if you let them hurt you, I won't forgive you!"
+
+"And what if you hurt me now, Nollie?"
+
+Noel pressed his hand against her warm cheek.
+
+"Oh, no!  Oh, no!  I don't--I won't.  Not again.  I've done that
+already."
+
+"Very well, my dear! then come home with me, and we'll see what's best to
+be done.  It can't be settled by running away."
+
+Noel dropped his hand.  "No.  Twice I've done what you wanted, and it's
+been a mistake.  If I hadn't gone to Church on Sunday to please you,
+perhaps it would never have come to this.  You don't see things, Daddy.
+I could tell, though I was sitting right in front.  I knew what their
+faces were like, and what they were thinking."
+
+"One must do right, Nollie, and not mind."
+
+"Yes; but what is right?  It's not right for me to hurt you, and I'm not
+going to."
+
+Pierson understood all at once that it was useless to try and move her.
+
+"What are you going to do, then?"
+
+"I suppose I shall go to Kestrel to-morrow.  Auntie will have me, I know;
+I shall talk to Leila."
+
+"Whatever you do, promise to let me know."
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Daddy, you--look awfully, awfully tired.  I'm going to give you some
+medicine."  She went to a little three-cornered cupboard, and bent down.
+Medicine!  The medicine he wanted was not for the body; knowledge of what
+his duty was--that alone could heal him!
+
+The loud popping of a cork roused him.  "What are you doing, Nollie?"
+
+Noel rose with a flushed face, holding in one hand a glass of champagne,
+in the other a biscuit.
+
+"You're to take this; and I'm going to have some myself."
+
+"My dear," said Pierson bewildered; "it's not yours."
+
+"Drink it; Daddy!  Don't you know that Leila would never forgive me if I
+let you go home looking like that.  Besides, she told me I was to eat.
+Drink it.  You can send her a nice present.  Drink it!"  And she stamped
+her foot.
+
+Pierson took the glass, and sat there nibbling and sipping.  It was nice,
+very!  He had not quite realised how much he needed food and drink.  Noel
+returned from the cupboard a second time; she too had a glass and a
+biscuit.
+
+"There, you look better already.  Now you're to go home at once, in a cab
+if you can get one; and tell Gratian to make you feed up, or you won't
+have a body at all; you can't do your duty if you haven't one, you know."
+
+Pierson smiled, and finished the champagne.
+
+Noel took the glass from him.  "You're my child to-night, and I'm going
+to send you to bed.  Don't worry, Daddy; it'll all come right." And,
+taking his arm, she went downstairs with him, and blew him a kiss from
+the doorway.
+
+He walked away in a sort of dream.  Daylight was not quite gone, but the
+moon was up, just past its full, and the search-lights had begun their
+nightly wanderings.  It was a sky of ghosts and shadows, fitting to the
+thought which came to him.  The finger of Providence was in all this,
+perhaps!  Why should he not go out to France!  At last; why not?  Some
+better man, who understood men's hearts, who knew the world, would take
+his place; and he could go where death made all things simple, and he
+could not fail.  He walked faster and faster, full of an intoxicating
+relief.  Thirza and Gratian would take care of Nollie far better than he.
+Yes, surely it was ordained!  Moonlight had the town now; and all was
+steel blue, the very air steel-blue; a dream-city of marvellous beauty,
+through which he passed, exalted.  Soon he would be where that poor boy,
+and a million others, had given their lives; with the mud and the shells
+and the scarred grey ground, and the jagged trees, where Christ was daily
+crucified--there where he had so often longed to be these three years
+past.  It was ordained!
+
+And two women whom he met looked at each other when he had gone by, and
+those words 'the blighted crow' which they had been about to speak, died
+on their lips.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Noel felt light-hearted too, as if she had won a victory.  She found some
+potted meat, spread it on another biscuit, ate it greedily, and finished
+the pint bottle of champagne.  Then she hunted for the cigarettes, and
+sat down at the piano.  She played old tunes--"There is a Tavern in the
+Town," "Once I Loved a Maiden Fair," "Mowing the Barley," "Clementine,"
+"Lowlands," and sang to them such words as she remembered.  There was a
+delicious running in her veins, and once she got up and danced.  She was
+kneeling at the window, looking out, when she heard the door open, and
+without getting up, cried out:
+
+"Isn't it a gorgeous night!  I've had Daddy here.  I gave him some of
+your champagne, and drank the rest--" then was conscious of a figure far
+too tall for Leila, and a man's voice saying:
+
+"I'm awfully sorry.  It's only I, Jimmy Fort."
+
+Noel scrambled up.  "Leila isn't in; but she will be directly--it's past
+ten."
+
+He was standing stock-still in the middle of the room.
+
+"Won't you sit down?  Oh! and won't you have a cigarette?"
+
+"Thanks."
+
+By the flash of his briquette she saw his face clearly; the look on it
+filled her with a sort of malicious glee.
+
+"I'm going now," she said.  "Would you mind telling Leila that I found I
+couldn't stop?"  She made towards the divan to get her hat. When she had
+put it on, she found him standing just in front of her.
+
+"Noel-if you don't mind me calling you that?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Don't go; I'm going myself."
+
+"Oh, no!  Not for worlds."  She tried to slip past, but he took hold of
+her wrist.
+
+"Please; just one minute!"
+
+Noel stayed motionless, looking at him, while his hand still held her
+wrist.  He said quietly:
+
+"Do you mind telling me why you came here?"
+
+"Oh, just to see Leila."
+
+"Things have come to a head at home, haven't they?"
+
+Noel shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"You came for refuge, didn't you?"
+
+"From whom?"
+
+"Don't be angry; from the need of hurting your father."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I knew it would come to that.  What are you going to do?"
+
+"Enjoy myself."  She was saying something fatuous, yet she meant it.
+
+"That's absurd.  Don't be angry!  You're quite right.  Only, you must
+begin at the right end, mustn't you?  Sit down!"
+
+Noel tried to free her wrist.
+
+"No; sit down, please."
+
+Noel sat down; but as he loosed her wrist, she laughed.  This was where
+he sat with Leila, where they would sit when she was gone. "It's awfully
+funny, isn't it?" she said.
+
+"Funny?"  he muttered savagely.  "Most things are, in this funny world."
+
+The sound of a taxi stopping not far off had come to her ears, and she
+gathered her feet under her, planting them firmly.  If she sprang up,
+could she slip by him before he caught her arm again, and get that taxi?
+
+"If I go now," he said, "will you promise me to stop till you've seen
+Leila?"
+
+"No."
+
+"That's foolish.  Come, promise!"
+
+Noel shook her head.  She felt a perverse pleasure at his embarrassment.
+
+"Leila's lucky, isn't she?  No children, no husband, no father, no
+anything.  Lovely!"
+
+She saw his arm go up as if to ward off a blow.  "Poor Leila!" he said.
+
+"Why are you sorry for her?  She has freedom!  And she has you!"
+
+She knew it would hurt; but she wanted to hurt him.
+
+"You needn't envy her for that."
+
+He had just spoken, when Noel saw a figure over by the door.
+
+She jumped up, and said breathlessly:
+
+"Oh, here you are, Leila!  Father's been here, and we've had some of your
+champagne!"
+
+"Capital!  You are in the dark!"
+
+Noel felt the blood rush into her cheeks.  The light leaped up, and Leila
+came forward.  She looked extremely pale, calm, and self-contained, in
+her nurse's dress; her full lips were tightly pressed together, but Noel
+could see her breast heaving violently.  A turmoil of shame and wounded
+pride began raging in the girl.  Why had she not flown long ago?  Why had
+she let herself be trapped like this?  Leila would think she had been
+making up to him!  Horrible!  Disgusting!  Why didn't he--why didn't some
+one, speak?  Then Leila said:
+
+"I didn't expect you, Jimmy; I'm glad you haven't been dull.  Noel is
+staying here to-night.  Give me a cigarette.  Sit down, both of you. I'm
+awfully tired!"
+
+She sank into a chair, leaning back, with her knees crossed; and at that
+moment Noel admired her.  She had said it beautifully; she looked so
+calm.  Fort was lighting her cigarette; his hand was shaking, his face
+all sorry and mortified.
+
+"Give Noel one, too, and draw the curtains, Jimmy.  Quick!  Not that it
+makes any difference; it's as light as day.  Sit down, dear."
+
+But Noel remained standing.
+
+"What have you been talking of?  Love and Chinese lanterns, or only me?"
+
+At those words Fort, who was drawing the last curtain, turned round; his
+tall figure was poised awkwardly against the wall, his face, unsuited to
+diplomacy, had a look as of flesh being beaten.  If weals had started up
+across it, Noel would not have been surprised.
+
+He said with painful slowness:
+
+"I don't exactly know; we had hardly begun, had we?"
+
+"The night is young," said Leila.  "Go on while I just take off my
+things."
+
+She rose with the cigarette between her lips, and went into the inner
+room.  In passing, she gave Noel a look.  What there was in that look,
+the girl could never make clear even to herself.  Perhaps a creature shot
+would gaze like that, with a sort of profound and distant questioning,
+reproach, and anger, with a sort of pride, and the quiver of death.  As
+the door closed, Fort came right across the room.
+
+"Go to her;" cried Noel; "she wants you.  Can't you see, she wants you?"
+
+And before he could move, she was at the door.  She flew downstairs, and
+out into the moonlight.  The taxi, a little way off, was just beginning
+to move away; she ran towards it, calling out:
+
+"Anywhere!  Piccadilly!" and jumping in, blotted herself against the
+cushions in the far corner.
+
+She did not come to herself, as it were, for several minutes, and then
+feeling she 'could no longer bear the cab, stopped it, and got out.
+Where was she?  Bond Street!  She began, idly, wandering down its narrow
+length; the fullest street by day, the emptiest by night. Oh! it had been
+horrible!  Nothing said by any of them--nothing, and yet everything
+dragged out--of him, of Leila, of herself!  She seemed to have no pride
+or decency left, as if she had been caught stealing. All her happy
+exhilaration was gone, leaving a miserable recklessness.  Nothing she did
+was right, nothing turned out well, so what did it all matter?  The
+moonlight flooding down between the tall houses gave her a peculiar heady
+feeling.  "Fey" her father had called her.  She laughed.  'But I'm not
+going home,' she thought. Bored with the street's length; she turned off,
+and was suddenly in Hanover Square.  There was the Church, grey-white,
+where she had been bridesmaid to a second cousin, when she was fifteen.
+She seemed to see it all again--her frock, the lilies in her hand, the
+surplices of the choir, the bride's dress, all moonlight-coloured, and
+unreal. 'I wonder what's become of her!' she thought.  'He's dead, I
+expect, like Cyril!'  She saw her father's face as he was marrying them,
+heard his voice: "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
+sickness and in health, till death do you part."  And the moonlight on
+the Church seemed to shift and quiver-some pigeons perhaps had been
+disturbed up there.  Then instead of that wedding vision, she saw
+Monsieur Barra, sitting on his chair, gazing at the floor, and Chica
+nursing her doll.  "All mad, mademoiselle, a little mad. Millions of men
+with white souls, but all a little tiny bit mad, you know."  Then Leila's
+face came before her, with that look in her eyes.  She felt again the hot
+clasp of Fort's fingers on her wrist, and walked on, rubbing it with the
+other hand.  She turned into Regent Street.  The wide curve of the
+Quadrant swept into a sky of unreal blue, and the orange-shaded lamps
+merely added to the unreality.  'Love and Chinese lanterns!  I should
+like some coffee,' she thought suddenly.  She was quite close to the
+place where Lavendie had taken her.  Should she go in there?  Why not?
+She must go somewhere.  She turned into the revolving cage of glass.  But
+no sooner was she imprisoned there than in a flash Lavendie's face of
+disgust; and the red-lipped women, the green stuff that smelled of
+peppermint came back, filling her with a rush of dismay.  She made the
+full circle in the revolving cage; and came out into the street again
+with a laugh.  A tall young man in khaki stood there: "Hallo!" he said.
+"Come in and dance!"  She started, recoiled from him and began to walk
+away as fast as ever she could.  She passed a woman whose eyes seemed to
+scorch her.  A woman like a swift vision of ruin with those eyes, and
+thickly powdered cheeks, and loose red mouth. Noel shuddered and fled
+along, feeling that her only safety lay in speed.  But she could not walk
+about all night.  There would be no train for Kestrel till the
+morning--and did she really want to go there, and eat her heart out?
+Suddenly she thought of George.  Why should she not go down to him?  He
+would know what was best for her to do.  At the foot of the steps below
+the Waterloo Column she stood still.  All was quiet there and empty, the
+great buildings whitened, the trees blurred and blue; and sweeter air was
+coming across their flowering tops.  The queer "fey" moony sensation was
+still with her; so that she felt small and light, as if she could have
+floated through a ring.  Faint rims of light showed round the windows of
+the Admiralty.  The war!  However lovely the night, however sweet the
+lilac smelt-that never stopped!  She turned away and passed out under the
+arch, making for the station.  The train of the wounded had just come in,
+and she stood in the cheering crowd watching the ambulances run out.
+Tears of excited emotion filled her eyes, and trickled down.  Steady,
+smooth, grey, one after the other they came gliding, with a little burst
+of cheers greeting each one.  All were gone now, and she could pass in.
+She went to the buffet and got a large cup of coffee, and a bun.  Then,
+having noted the time of her early morning train, she sought the ladies'
+waiting-room, and sitting down in a corner, took out her purse and
+counted her money.  Two pounds fifteen-enough to go to the hotel, if she
+liked.  But, without luggage--it was so conspicuous, and she could sleep
+in this corner all right, if she wanted.  What did girls do who had no
+money, and no friends to go to?  Tucked away in the corner of that empty,
+heavy, varnished room, she seemed to see the cruelty and hardness of life
+as she had never before seen it, not even when facing her confinement.
+How lucky she had been, and was!  Everyone was good to her.  She had no
+real want or dangers, to face.  But, for women--yes, and men too--who had
+no one to fall back on, nothing but their own hands and health and luck,
+it must be awful.  That girl whose eyes had scorched her--perhaps she had
+no one--nothing.  And people who were born ill, and the millions of poor
+women, like those whom she had gone visiting with Gratian sometimes in
+the poorer streets of her father's parish--for the first time she seemed
+to really know and feel the sort of lives they led.  And then, Leila's
+face came back to her once more--Leila whom she had robbed.  And the
+worst of it was, that, alongside her remorseful sympathy, she felt a sort
+of satisfaction.  She could not help his not loving Leila, she could not
+help it if he loved herself!  And he did--she knew it!  To feel that
+anyone loved her was so comforting.  But it was all awful!  And she--the
+cause of it!  And yet--she had never done or said anything to attract
+him.  No!  She could not have helped it.
+
+She had begun to feel drowsy, and closed her eyes.  And gradually there
+came on her a cosey sensation, as if she were leaning up against someone
+with her head tucked in against his shoulder, as she had so often leaned
+as a child against her father, coming back from some long darkening drive
+in Wales or Scotland.  She seemed even to feel the wet soft Westerly air
+on her face and eyelids, and to sniff the scent of a frieze coat; to hear
+the jog of hoofs and the rolling of the wheels; to feel the closing in of
+the darkness.  Then, so dimly and drowsily, she seemed to know that it
+was not her father, but someone--someone--then no more, no more at all.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+She was awakened by the scream of an engine, and looked around her
+amazed.  Her neck had fallen sideways while she slept, and felt horridly
+stiff; her head ached, and she was shivering.  She saw by the clock that
+it was past five.  'If only I could get some tea!' she thought.  'Anyway
+I won't stay here any longer!'  When she had washed, and rubbed some of
+the stiffness out of her neck, the tea renewed her sense of adventure
+wonderfully.  Her train did not start for an hour; she had time for a
+walk, to warm herself, and went down to the river.  There was an early
+haze, and all looked a little mysterious; but people were already passing
+on their way to work. She walked along, looking at the water flowing up
+under the bright mist to which the gulls gave a sort of hovering life.
+She went as far as Blackfriars Bridge, and turning back, sat down on a
+bench under a plane-tree, just as the sun broke through.  A little pasty
+woman with a pinched yellowish face was already sitting there, so still,
+and seeming to see so little, that Noel wondered of what she could be
+thinking.  While she watched, the woman's face began puckering, and tears
+rolled slowly, down, trickling from pucker to pucker, till, summoning up
+her courage, Noel sidled nearer, and said:
+
+"Oh!  What's the matter?"
+
+The tears seemed to stop from sheer surprise; little grey eyes gazed
+round, patient little eyes from above an almost bridgeless nose.
+
+"I'ad a baby.  It's dead....  its father's dead in France....  I was
+goin' in the water, but I didn't like the look of it, and now I never
+will."
+
+That "Now I never will," moved Noel terribly.  She slid her arm along the
+back of the bench and clasped the skinniest of shoulders.
+
+"Don't cry!"
+
+"It was my first.  I'm thirty-eight.  I'll never 'ave another.  Oh!  Why
+didn't I go in the water?"
+
+The face puckered again, and the squeezed-out tears ran down.  'Of course
+she must cry,' thought Noel; 'cry and cry till it feels better.' And she
+stroked the shoulder of the little woman, whose emotion was disengaging
+the scent of old clothes.
+
+"The father of my baby was killed in France, too," she said at last. The
+little sad grey eyes looked curiously round.
+
+"Was 'e?  'Ave you got your baby still?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!"
+
+"I'm glad of that.  It 'urts so bad, it does.  I'd rather lose me 'usband
+than me baby, any day."  The sun was shining now on a cheek of that
+terribly patient face; its brightness seemed cruel perching there.
+
+"Can I do anything to help you?"  Noel murmured.
+
+"No, thank you, miss.  I'm goin' 'ome now.  I don't live far.  Thank you
+kindly."  And raising her eyes for one more of those half-bewildered
+looks, she moved away along the Embankment wall.  When she was out of
+sight, Noel walked back to the station.  The train was in, and she took
+her seat.  She had three fellow passengers, all in khaki; very silent and
+moody, as men are when they have to get up early.  One was tall, dark,
+and perhaps thirty-five; the second small, and about fifty, with cropped,
+scanty grey hair; the third was of medium height and quite sixty-five,
+with a long row of little coloured patches on his tunic, and a bald,
+narrow, well-shaped head, grey hair brushed back at the sides, and the
+thin, collected features and drooping moustache of the old school.  It
+was at him that Noel looked.  When he glanced out of the window, or
+otherwise retired within himself, she liked his face; but when he turned
+to the ticket-collector or spoke to the others, she did not like it half
+so much. It was as if the old fellow had two selves, one of which he used
+when alone, the other in which he dressed every morning to meet the
+world. They had begun to talk about some Tribunal on which they had to
+sit. Noel did not listen, but a word or two carried to her now and then.
+
+"How many to-day?"  she heard the old fellow ask, and the little cropped
+man answering: "Hundred and fourteen."
+
+Fresh from the sight of the poor little shabby woman and her grief, she
+could not help a sort of shrinking from that trim old soldier, with his
+thin, regular face, who held the fate of a "Hundred and fourteen" in his
+firm, narrow grasp, perhaps every day.  Would he understand their
+troubles or wants?  Of course he wouldn't!  Then, she saw him looking at
+her critically with his keen eyes.  If he had known her secret, he would
+be thinking: 'A lady and act like that!  Oh, no!  Quite-quite out of the
+question!'  And she felt as if she could, sink under the seat with shame.
+But no doubt he was only thinking: 'Very young to be travelling by
+herself at this hour of the morning.  Pretty too!'  If he knew the real
+truth of her--how he would stare!  But why should this utter stranger,
+this old disciplinarian, by a casual glance, by the mere form of his
+face, make her feel more guilty and ashamed than she had yet felt?  That
+puzzled her.  He was, must be, a narrow, conventional old man; but he had
+this power to make her feel ashamed, because she felt that he had faith
+in his gods, and was true to them; because she knew he would die sooner
+than depart from his creed of conduct.  She turned to the window, biting
+her lips-angry and despairing.  She would never--never get used to her
+position; it was no good!  And again she had the longing of her dream, to
+tuck her face away into that coat, smell the scent of the frieze, snuggle
+in, be protected, and forget.  'If I had been that poor lonely little
+woman,' she thought, 'and had lost everything, I should have gone into
+the water.  I should have rushed and jumped.  It's only luck that I'm
+alive.  I won't look at that old man again: then I shan't feel so bad.'
+
+She had bought some chocolate at the station, and nibbled it, gazing
+steadily at the fields covered with daisies and the first of the
+buttercups and cowslips.  The three soldiers were talking now in
+carefully lowered voices.  The words: "women," "under control," "perfect
+plague," came to her, making her ears burn.  In the hypersensitive mood
+caused by the strain of yesterday, her broken night, and the emotional
+meeting with the little woman, she felt as if they were including her
+among those "women."  'If we stop, I'll get out,' she thought.  But when
+the train did stop it was they who got out.  She felt the old General's
+keen veiled glance sum her up for the last time, and looked full at him
+just for a moment.  He touched his cap, and said: "Will you have the
+window up or down?" and lingered to draw it half-way up.' His
+punctiliousness made her feel worse than ever.  When the train had
+started again she roamed up and down her empty carriage; there was no
+more a way out of her position than out of this rolling cushioned
+carriage!  And then she seemed to hear Fort's voice saying: 'Sit down,
+please!' and to feel his fingers clasp her wrist, Oh! he was nice and
+comforting; he would never reproach or remind her!  And now, probably,
+she would never see him again.
+
+The train drew up at last.  She did not know where George lodged, and
+would have to go to his hospital.  She planned to get there at half past
+nine, and having eaten a sort of breakfast at the station, went forth
+into the town.  The seaside was still wrapped in the early glamour which
+haunts chalk of a bright morning.  But the streets were very much alive.
+Here was real business of the war.  She passed houses which had been
+wrecked.  Trucks clanged and shunted, great lorries rumbled smoothly by.
+Sea--and Air-planes were moving like great birds far up in the bright
+haze, and khaki was everywhere.  But it was the sea Noel wanted.  She
+made her way westward to a little beach; and, sitting down on a stone,
+opened her arms to catch the sun on her face and chest.  The tide was
+nearly up, with the wavelets of a blue bright sea.  The great fact, the
+greatest fact in the world, except the sun; vast and free, making
+everything human seem small and transitory!  It did her good, like a
+tranquillising friend.  The sea might be cruel and terrible, awful things
+it could do, and awful things were being done on it; but its wide level
+line, its never-ending song, its sane savour, were the best medicine she
+could possibly have taken.  She rubbed the Shelly sand between her
+fingers in absurd ecstasy; took off her shoes and stockings, paddled, and
+sat drying her legs in the sun.
+
+When she left the little beach, she felt as if someone had said to her:
+
+'Your troubles are very little.  There's the sun, the sea, the air; enjoy
+them.  They can't take those from you.'
+
+At the hospital she had to wait half an hour in a little bare room before
+George came.
+
+"Nollie!  Splendid.  I've got an hour.  Let's get out of this cemetery.
+We'll have time for a good stretch on the tops.  Jolly of you to have
+come to me.  Tell us all about it."
+
+When she had finished, he squeezed her arm.  348
+
+"I knew it wouldn't do.  Your Dad forgot that he's a public figure, and
+must expect to be damned accordingly.  But though you've cut and run,
+he'll resign all the same, Nollie."
+
+"Oh, no!"  cried Noel.
+
+George shook his head.
+
+"Yes, he'll resign, you'll see, he's got no worldly sense; not a grain."
+
+"Then I shall have spoiled his life, just as if--oh, no!"
+
+"Let's sit down here.  I must be back at eleven."
+
+They sat down on a bench, where the green cliff stretched out before
+them, over a sea quite clear of haze, far down and very blue.
+
+"Why should he resign," cried Noel again, "now that I've gone?  He'll be
+lost without it all."
+
+George smiled.
+
+"Found, my dear.  He'll be where he ought to be, Nollie, where the Church
+is, and the Churchmen are not--in the air!"
+
+"Don't!"  cried Noel passionately.
+
+"No, no, I'm not chaffing.  There's no room on earth for saints in
+authority.  There's use for a saintly symbol, even if one doesn't hold
+with it, but there's no mortal use for those who try to have things both
+ways--to be saints and seers of visions, and yet to come the practical
+and worldly and rule ordinary men's lives.  Saintly example yes; but not
+saintly governance.  You've been his deliverance, Nollie."
+
+"But Daddy loves his Church."
+
+George frowned.  "Of course, it'll be a wrench.  A man's bound to have a
+cosey feeling about a place where he's been boss so long; and there is
+something about a Church--the drone, the scent, the half darkness;
+there's beauty in it, it's a pleasant drug.  But he's not being asked to
+give up the drug habit; only to stop administering drugs to others.
+Don't worry, Nollie; I don't believe that's ever suited him, it wants a
+thicker skin than he's got."
+
+"But all the people he helps?"
+
+"No reason he shouldn't go on helping people, is there?"
+
+"But to go on living there, without--Mother died there, you know!"
+
+George grunted.  "Dreams, Nollie, all round him; of the past and the
+future, of what people are and what he can do with them.  I never see him
+without a skirmish, as you know, and yet I'm fond of him.  But I should
+be twice as fond, and half as likely to skirmish, if he'd drop the habits
+of authority.  Then I believe he'd have some real influence over me;
+there's something beautiful about him, I know that quite well."
+
+"Yes," murmured Noel fervently.
+
+"He's such a queer mixture," mused George.  "Clean out of his age; chalks
+above most of the parsons in a spiritual sense and chalks below most of
+them in the worldly.  And yet I believe he's in the right of it.  The
+Church ought to be a forlorn hope, Nollie; then we should believe in it.
+Instead of that, it's a sort of business that no one can take too
+seriously.  You see, the Church spiritual can't make good in this
+age--has no chance of making good, and so in the main it's given it up
+for vested interests and social influence. Your father is a symbol of
+what the Church is not.  But what about you, my dear?  There's a room at
+my boarding-house, and only one old lady besides myself, who knits all
+the time.  If Grace can get shifted we'll find a house, and you can have
+the baby.  They'll send your luggage on from Paddington if you write; and
+in the meantime Gracie's got some things here that you can have."
+
+"I'll have to send a wire to Daddy."
+
+"I'll do that.  You come to my diggings at half past one, and I'll settle
+you in.  Until then, you'd better stay up here."
+
+When he had gone she roamed a little farther, and lay down on the short
+grass, where the chalk broke through in patches.  She could hear a
+distant rumbling, very low, travelling in that grass, the long mutter of
+the Flanders guns.  'I wonder if it's as beautiful a day there,' she
+thought.  'How dreadful to see no green, no butterflies, no flowers-not
+even sky-for the dust of the shells.  Oh! won't it ever, ever end?'  And
+a sort of passion for the earth welled up in her, the warm grassy earth
+along which she lay, pressed so close that she could feel it with every
+inch of her body, and the soft spikes of the grass against her nose and
+lips.  An aching sweetness tortured her, she wanted the earth to close
+its arms about her, she wanted the answer to her embrace of it.  She was
+alive, and wanted love.  Not death--not loneliness--not death!  And out
+there, where the guns muttered, millions of men would be thinking that
+same thought!
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Pierson had passed nearly the whole night with the relics of his past,
+the records of his stewardship, the tokens of his short married life.
+The idea which had possessed him walking home in the moonlight sustained
+him in that melancholy task of docketing and destruction. There was not
+nearly so much to do as one would have supposed, for, with all his
+dreaminess, he had been oddly neat and businesslike in all parish
+matters.  But a hundred times that night he stopped, overcome by
+memories.  Every corner, drawer, photograph, paper was a thread in the
+long-spun web of his life in this house.  Some phase of his work, some
+vision of his wife or daughters started forth from each bit of furniture,
+picture, doorway.  Noiseless, in his slippers, he stole up and down
+between the study, diningroom, drawing-room, and anyone seeing him at his
+work in the dim light which visited the staircase from above the front
+door and the upper-passage window, would have thought: 'A ghost, a ghost
+gone into mourning for the condition of the world.'  He had to make this
+reckoning to-night, while the exaltation of his new idea was on him; had
+to rummage out the very depths of old association, so that once for all
+he might know whether he had strength to close the door on the past.
+Five o'clock struck before he had finished, and, almost dropping from
+fatigue, sat down at his little piano in bright daylight.  The last
+memory to beset him was the first of all; his honeymoon, before they came
+back to live in this house, already chosen, furnished, and waiting for
+them.  They had spent it in Germany--the first days in Baden-baden, and
+each morning had been awakened by a Chorale played down in the gardens of
+the Kurhaus, a gentle, beautiful tune, to remind them that they were in
+heaven.  And softly, so softly that the tunes seemed to be but dreams he
+began playing those old Chorales, one after another, so that the stilly
+sounds floated out, through the opened window, puzzling the early birds
+and cats and those few humans who were abroad as yet.....
+
+He received the telegram from Noel in the afternoon of the same day, just
+as he was about to set out for Leila's to get news of her; and close on
+the top of it came Lavendie.  He found the painter standing disconsolate
+in front of his picture.
+
+"Mademoiselle has deserted me?"
+
+"I'm afraid we shall all desert you soon, monsieur."
+
+"You are going?"
+
+"Yes, I am leaving here.  I hope to go to France."
+
+"And mademoiselle?"
+
+"She is at the sea with my son-in-law."
+
+The painter ran his hands through his hair, but stopped them half-way, as
+if aware that he was being guilty of ill-breeding.
+
+"Mon dieu!"  he said: "Is this not a calamity for you, monsieur le cure?"
+But his sense of the calamity was so patently limited to his unfinished
+picture that Pierson could not help a smile.
+
+"Ah, monsieur!"  said the painter, on whom nothing was lost.  "Comme je
+suis egoiste!  I show my feelings; it is deplorable.  My disappointment
+must seem a bagatelle to you, who will be so distressed at leaving your
+old home.  This must be a time of great trouble.  Believe me; I
+understand.  But to sympathise with a grief which is not shown would be
+an impertinence, would it not?  You English gentlefolk do not let us
+share your griefs; you keep them to yourselves."
+
+Pierson stared.  "True," he said.  "Quite true!"
+
+"I am no judge of Christianity, monsieur, but for us artists the doors of
+the human heart stand open, our own and others.  I suppose we have no
+pride--c'est tres-indelicat.  Tell me, monsieur, you would not think it
+worthy of you to speak to me of your troubles, would you, as I have
+spoken of mine?"
+
+Pierson bowed his head, abashed.
+
+"You preach of universal charity and love," went on Lavendie; "but how
+can there be that when you teach also secretly the keeping of your
+troubles to yourselves?  Man responds to example, not to teaching; you
+set the example of the stranger, not the brother.  You expect from others
+what you do not give.  Frankly, monsieur, do you not feel that with every
+revelation of your soul and feelings, virtue goes out of you?  And I will
+tell you why, if you will not think it an offence.  In opening your
+hearts you feel that you lose authority. You are officers, and must never
+forget that.  Is it not so?"
+
+Pierson grew red.  "I hope there is another feeling too.  I think we feel
+that to speak of our sufferings or, deeper feelings is to obtrude
+oneself, to make a fuss, to be self-concerned, when we might be concerned
+with others."
+
+"Monsieur, au fond we are all concerned with self.  To seem selfless is
+but your particular way of cultivating the perfection of self. You admit
+that not to obtrude self is the way to perfect yourself. Eh bien!  What
+is that but a deeper concern with self?  To be free of this, there is no
+way but to forget all about oneself in what one is doing, as I forget
+everything when I am painting.  But," he added, with a sudden smile, "you
+would not wish to forget the perfecting of self--it would not be right in
+your profession.  So I must take away this picture, must I not?  It is
+one of my best works: I regret much not to have finished it."
+
+"Some day, perhaps--"
+
+"Some day!  The picture will stand still, but mademoiselle will not. She
+will rush at something, and behold! this face will be gone.  No; I prefer
+to keep it as it is.  It has truth now."  And lifting down the canvas, he
+stood it against the wall and folded up the easel. "Bon soir, monsieur,
+you have been very good to me."  He wrung Pierson's hand; and his face
+for a moment seemed all eyes and spirit. "Adieu!"
+
+"Good-bye," Pierson murmured.  "God bless you!"
+
+"I don't know if I have great confidence in Him," replied Lavendie, "but
+I shall ever remember that so good a man as you has wished it. To
+mademoiselle my distinguished salutations, if you please.  If you will
+permit me, I will come back for my other things to-morrow."  And carrying
+easel and canvas, he departed.
+
+Pierson stayed in the old drawing-room, waiting for Gratian to come in,
+and thinking over the painter's words.  Had his education and position
+really made it impossible for him to be brotherly?  Was this the secret
+of the impotence which he sometimes felt; the reason why charity and love
+were not more alive in the hearts of his congregation?  'God knows I've
+no consciousness of having felt myself superior,' he thought; 'and yet I
+would be truly ashamed to tell people of my troubles and of my struggles.
+Can it be that Christ, if he were on earth, would count us Pharisees,
+believing ourselves not as other men?  But surely it is not as Christians
+but rather as gentlemen that we keep ourselves to ourselves.  Officers,
+he called us.  I fear--I fear it is true.'  Ah, well!  There would not be
+many more days now.  He would learn out there how to open the hearts of
+others, and his own.  Suffering and death levelled all barriers, made all
+men brothers.  He was still sitting there when Gratian came in; and
+taking her hand, he said:
+
+"Noel has gone down to George, and I want you to get transferred and go
+to them, Gracie.  I'm giving up the parish and asking for a chaplaincy."
+
+"Giving up?  After all this time?  Is it because of Nollie?"
+
+"No, I think not; I think the time has come.  I feel my work here is
+barren."
+
+"Oh, no!  And even if it is, it's only because--"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "Because of what, Gracie?"
+
+"Dad, it's what I've felt in myself.  We want to think and decide things
+for ourselves, we want to own our consciences, we can't take things at
+second-hand any longer."
+
+Pierson's face darkened.  "Ah!" he said, "to have lost faith is a
+grievous thing."
+
+"We're gaining charity," cried Gratian.
+
+"The two things are not opposed, my dear."
+
+"Not in theory; but in practice I think they often are.  Oh, Dad! you
+look so tired.  Have you really made up your mind?  Won't you feel lost?"
+
+"For a little.  I shall find myself, out there."
+
+But the look on his face was too much for Gratian's composure, and she
+turned away.
+
+Pierson went down to his study to write his letter of resignation.
+Sitting before that blank sheet of paper, he realised to the full how
+strongly he had resented the public condemnation passed on his own flesh
+and blood, how much his action was the expression of a purely mundane
+championship of his daughter; of a mundane mortification. 'Pride,' he
+thought.  'Ought I to stay and conquer it?'  Twice he set his pen down,
+twice took it up again.  He could not conquer it.  To stay where he was
+not wanted, on a sort of sufferance--never!  And while he sat before that
+empty sheet of paper he tried to do the hardest thing a man can do--to
+see himself as others see him; and met with such success as one might
+expect--harking at once to the verdicts, not of others at all, but of his
+own conscience; and coming soon to that perpetual gnawing sense which had
+possessed him ever since the war began, that it was his duty to be dead.
+This feeling that to be alive was unworthy of him when so many of his
+flock had made the last sacrifice, was reinforced by his domestic tragedy
+and the bitter disillusionment it had brought.  A sense of having lost
+caste weighed on him, while he sat there with his past receding from him,
+dusty and unreal.  He had the queerest feeling of his old life falling
+from him, dropping round his feet like the outworn scales of a serpent,
+rung after rung of tasks and duties performed day after day, year after
+year.  Had they ever been quite real?  Well, he had shed them now, and
+was to move out into life illumined by the great reality-death!  And
+taking up his pen, he wrote his resignation.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+1
+
+The last Sunday, sunny and bright!  Though he did not ask her to go,
+Gratian went to every Service that day.  And the sight of her, after this
+long interval, in their old pew, where once he had been wont to see his
+wife's face, and draw refreshment therefrom, affected Pierson more than
+anything else.  He had told no one of his coming departure, shrinking
+from the falsity and suppression which must underlie every allusion and
+expression of regret.  In the last minute of his last sermon he would
+tell them!  He went through the day in a sort of dream.  Truly proud and
+sensitive, under this social blight, he shrank from all alike, made no
+attempt to single out supporters or adherents from those who had fallen
+away.  He knew there would be some, perhaps many, seriously grieved that
+he was going; but to try and realise who they were, to weigh them in the
+scales against the rest and so forth, was quite against his nature.  It
+was all or nothing.  But when for the last time of all those hundreds, he
+mounted the steps of his dark pulpit, he showed no trace of finality, did
+not perhaps even feel it yet.  For so beautiful a summer evening the
+congregation was large.  In spite of all reticence, rumour was busy and
+curiosity still rife.  The writers of the letters, anonymous and
+otherwise, had spent a week, not indeed in proclaiming what they had
+done, but in justifying to themselves the secret fact that they had done
+it.  And this was best achieved by speaking to their neighbours of the
+serious and awkward situation of the poor Vicar. The result was visible
+in a better attendance than had been seen since summer-time began.
+
+Pierson had never been a great preacher, his voice lacked resonance and
+pliancy, his thought breadth and buoyancy, and he was not free from, the
+sing-song which mars the utterance of many who have to speak
+professionally.  But he always made an impression of goodness and
+sincerity.  On this last Sunday evening he preached again the first
+sermon he had ever preached from that pulpit, fresh from the honeymoon
+with his young wife.  "Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one
+of these."  It lacked now the happy fervour of that most happy of all his
+days, yet gained poignancy, coming from so worn a face and voice.
+Gratian, who knew that he was going to end with his farewell, was in a
+choke of emotion long before he came to it. She sat winking away her
+tears, and not till he paused, for so long that she thought his strength
+had failed, did she look up.  He was leaning a little forward, seeming to
+see nothing; but his hands, grasping the pulpit's edge, were quivering.
+There was deep silence in the Church, for the look of his face and figure
+was strange, even to Gratian.  When his lips parted again to speak, a
+mist covered her eyes, and she lost sight of him.
+
+"Friends, I am leaving you; these are the last words I shall ever speak
+in this place.  I go to other work.  You have been very good to me.  God
+has been very good to me.  I pray with my whole heart that He may bless
+you all.  Amen!  Amen!"
+
+The mist cleared into tears, and she could see him again gazing down at
+her.  Was it at her?  He was surely seeing something--some vision sweeter
+than reality, something he loved more dearly.  She fell on her knees, and
+buried her face in her hand.  All through the hymn she knelt, and through
+his clear slow Benediction: "The peace of God, which passeth all
+understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of
+God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of God
+Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you and
+remain with you always."  And still she knelt on; till she was alone in
+the Church.  Then she rose and stole home.  He did not come in; she did
+not expect him.  'It's over,' she kept thinking; 'all over.  My beloved
+Daddy!  Now he has no home; Nollie and I have pulled him down.  And yet I
+couldn't help it, and perhaps she couldn't.  Poor Nollie!...'
+
+
+2
+
+Pierson had stayed in the vestry, talking with his choir and wardens;
+there was no hitch, for his resignation had been accepted, and he had
+arranged with a friend to carry on till the new Vicar was appointed. When
+they were gone he went back into the empty Church, and mounted to the
+organ-loft.  A little window up there was open, and he stood leaning
+against the stone, looking out, resting his whole being. Only now that it
+was over did he know what stress he had been through.  Sparrows were
+chirping, but sound of traffic had almost ceased, in that quiet Sunday
+hour of the evening meal.  Finished!  Incredible that he would never come
+up here again, never see those roof-lines, that corner of Square Garden,
+and hear this familiar chirping of the sparrows.  He sat down at the
+organ and began to play.  The last time the sound would roll out and echo
+'round the emptied House of God.  For a long time he played, while the
+building darkened slowly down there below him.  Of all that he would
+leave, he would miss this most--the right to come and play here in the
+darkening Church, to release emotional sound in this dim empty space
+growing ever more beautiful.  From chord to chord he let himself go
+deeper and deeper into the surge and swell of those sound waves, losing
+all sense of actuality, till the music and the whole dark building were
+fused in one rapturous solemnity.  Away down there the darkness crept
+over the Church, till the pews, the altar-all was invisible, save the
+columns; and the walls.  He began playing his favourite slow movement
+from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony--kept to the end, for the visions it
+ever brought him.  And a cat, which had been stalking the sparrows, crept
+in through the little window, and crouched, startled, staring at him with
+her green eyes.  He closed the organ, went quickly down, and locked up
+his Church for the last time.  It was warmer outside than in, and
+lighter, for daylight was not quite gone.  He moved away a few yards, and
+stood looking up. Walls, buttresses, and spire were clothed in milky
+shadowy grey.  The top of the spire seemed to touch a star.  'Goodbye, my
+Church!' he thought.  'Good-bye, good-bye!' He felt his face quiver;
+clenched his teeth, and turned away.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+When Noel fled, Fort had started forward to stop her; then, realising
+that with his lameness he could never catch her, he went back and entered
+Leila's bedroom.
+
+She had taken off her dress, and was standing in front of her glass, with
+the cigarette still in her mouth; and the only movement was the curling
+of its blue smoke.  He could see her face reflected, pale, with a little
+spot of red in each cheek, and burning red ears.  She had not seemed to
+hear him coming in, but he saw her eyes change when they caught his
+reflection in the mirror.  From lost and blank, they became alive and
+smouldering.
+
+"Noel's gone!"  he said.
+
+She answered, as if to his reflection in the glass
+
+"And you haven't gone too?  Ah, no!  Of course--your leg!  She fled, I
+suppose?  It was rather a jar, my coming in, I'm afraid."
+
+"No; it was my coming in that was the jar."
+
+Leila turned round.  "Jimmy!  I wonder you could discuss me.  The rest--"
+She shrugged her shoulders--"But that!"
+
+"I was not discussing you.  I merely said you were not to be envied for
+having me.  Are you?"
+
+The moment he had spoken, he was sorry.  The anger in her eyes changed
+instantly, first to searching, then to misery.  She cried out:
+
+"I was to be envied.  Oh!  Jimmy; I was!" and flung herself face down on
+the bed.
+
+Through Fort's mind went the thought: 'Atrocious!'  How could he
+soothe--make her feel that he loved her, when he didn't--that he wanted
+her, when he wanted Noel.  He went up to the bedside and touched her
+timidly:
+
+"Leila, what is it?  You're overtired.  What's the matter?  I couldn't
+help the child's being here.  Why do you let it upset you?  She's gone.
+It's all right.  Things are just as they were."
+
+"Yes!" came the strangled echo; "just!"
+
+He knelt down and stroked her arm.  It shivered under the touch, seemed
+to stop shivering and wait for the next touch, as if hoping it might be
+warmer; shivered again.
+
+"Look at me!" he said.  "What is it you want?  I'm ready to do anything."
+
+She turned and drew herself up on the bed, screwing herself back against
+the pillow as if for support, with her knees drawn under her. He was
+astonished at the strength of her face and figure, thus entrenched.
+
+"My dear Jimmy!" she said, "I want you to do nothing but get me another
+cigarette.  At my age one expects no more than one gets!"  She held out
+her thumb and finger: "Do you mind?"
+
+Fort turned away to get the cigarette.  With what bitter restraint and
+curious little smile she had said that!  But no sooner was he out of the
+room and hunting blindly for the cigarettes, than his mind was filled
+with an aching concern for Noel, fleeing like that, reckless and hurt,
+with nowhere to go.  He found the polished birch-wood box which held the
+cigarettes, and made a desperate effort to dismiss the image of the girl
+before he again reached Leila.  She was still sitting there, with her
+arms crossed, in the stillness of one whose every nerve and fibre was
+stretched taut.
+
+"Have one yourself," she said.  "The pipe of peace."
+
+Fort lit the cigarettes, and sat down on the edge of the bed; and his
+mind at once went back to Noel.
+
+"Yes," she said suddenly; "I wonder where she's gone.  Can you see her?
+She might do something reckless a second time.  Poor Jimmy!  It would be
+a pity.  And so that monk's been here, and drunk champagne. Good idea!
+Get me some, Jimmy!"
+
+Again Fort went, and with him the image of the girl.  When he came back
+the second time; she had put on that dark silk garment in which she had
+appeared suddenly radiant the fatal night after the Queen's Hall concert.
+She took the wineglass, and passed him, going into the sitting-room.
+
+"Come and sit down," she said.  "Is your leg hurting you?"
+
+"Not more than usual," and he sat down beside her.
+
+"Won't you have some?  'In vino veritas;' my friend."
+
+He shook his head, and said humbly: "I admire you, Leila."
+
+"That's lucky.  I don't know anyone else who, would."  And she drank her
+champagne at a draught.
+
+"Don't you wish," she said suddenly, "that I had been one of those
+wonderful New Women, all brain and good works.  How I should have talked
+the Universe up and down, and the war, and Causes, drinking tea, and
+never boring you to try and love me.  What a pity!"
+
+But to Fort there had come Noel's words: "It's awfully funny, isn't it?"
+
+"Leila," he said suddenly, "something's got to be done.  So long as you
+don't wish me to, I'll promise never to see that child again."
+
+"My dear boy, she's not a child.  She's ripe for love; and--I'm too ripe
+for love.  That's what's the matter, and I've got to lump it." She
+wrenched her hand out of his and, dropping the empty glass, covered her
+face.  The awful sensation which visits the true Englishman when a scene
+stares him in the face spun in Fort's brain. Should he seize her hands,
+drag them down, and kiss her?  Should he get up and leave her alone?
+Speak, or keep silent; try to console; try to pretend?  And he did
+absolutely nothing.  So far as a man can understand that moment in a
+woman's life when she accepts the defeat of Youth and Beauty, he
+understood perhaps; but it was only a glimmering.  He understood much
+better how she was recognising once for all that she loved where she was
+not loved.
+
+'And I can't help that,' he thought dumbly; 'simply can't help that!'
+Nothing he could say or do would alter it.  No words can convince a woman
+when kisses have lost reality.  Then, to his infinite relief, she took
+her hands from her face, and said:
+
+"This is very dull.  I think you'd better go, Jimmy."
+
+He made an effort to speak, but was too afraid of falsity in his voice.
+
+"Very nearly a scene!" said Leila.  "My God!
+
+"How men hate them!  So do I.  I've had too many in my time; nothing
+comes of them but a headache next morning.  I've spared you that, Jimmy.
+Give me a kiss for it."
+
+He bent down and put his lips to hers.  With all his heart he tried to
+answer the passion in her kiss.  She pushed him away suddenly, and said
+faintly:
+
+"Thank you; you did try!"
+
+Fort dashed his hand across his eyes.  The sight of her face just then
+moved him horribly.  What a brute he felt!  He took her limp hand, put it
+to his lips, and murmured:
+
+"I shall come in to-morrow.  We'll go to the theatre, shall we?  Good
+night, Leila!"
+
+But, in opening the door, he caught sight of her face, staring at him,
+evidently waiting for him to turn; the eyes had a frightened look.  They
+went suddenly soft, so soft as to give his heart a squeeze.
+
+She lifted her hand, blew him a kiss, and he saw her smiling. Without
+knowing what his own lips answered, he went out.  He could not make up
+his mind to go away, but, crossing to the railings, stood leaning against
+them, looking up at her windows.  She had been very good to him.  He felt
+like a man who has won at cards, and sneaked away without giving the
+loser his revenge.  If only she hadn't loved him; and it had been a
+soulless companionship, a quite sordid business.  Anything rather than
+this!  English to the backbone, he could not divest himself of a sense of
+guilt.  To see no way of making up to her, of straightening it out, made
+him feel intensely mean.  'Shall I go up again?' he thought.  The
+window-curtain moved. Then the shreds of light up there vanished.  'She's
+gone to bed,' he thought.  'I should only upset her worse.  Where is
+Noel, now, I wonder?  I shall never see her again, I suppose.  Altogether
+a bad business.  My God, yes!  A bad-bad business!'
+
+And, painfully, for his leg was hurting him, he walked away.
+
+Leila was only too well aware of a truth that feelings are no less real,
+poignant, and important to those outside morality's ring fence than to
+those within.  Her feelings were, indeed, probably even more real and
+poignant, just as a wild fruit's flavour is sharper than that of the tame
+product.  Opinion--she knew--would say, that having wilfully chosen a
+position outside morality she had not half the case for brokenheartedness
+she would have had if Fort had been her husband: Opinion--she knew--would
+say she had no claim on him, and the sooner an illegal tie was broken,
+the better!  But she felt fully as wretched as if she had been married.
+She had not wanted to be outside morality; never in her life wanted to be
+that.  She was like those who by confession shed their sins and start
+again with a clear conscience.  She never meant to sin, only to love, and
+when she was in love, nothing else mattered for the moment.  But, though
+a gambler, she had always so far paid up.  Only, this time the stakes
+were the heaviest a woman can put down.  It was her last throw; and she
+knew it.  So long as a woman believed in her attraction, there was hope,
+even when the curtain fell on a love-affair!  But for Leila the lamp of
+belief had suddenly gone out, and when this next curtain dropped she felt
+that she must sit in the dark until old age made her indifferent.  And
+between forty-four and real old age a gulf is fixed.  This was the first
+time a man had tired of her.  Why! he had been tired before he began, or
+so she felt.  In one swift moment as of a drowning person, she saw again
+all the passages of their companionship, knew with certainty that it had
+never been a genuine flame.  Shame ran, consuming, in her veins.  She
+buried her face in the cushions.  This girl had possessed his real heart
+all the time. With a laugh she thought: 'I put my money on the wrong
+horse; I ought to have backed Edward.  I could have turned that poor
+monk's head. If only I had never seen Jimmy again; if I had torn his
+letter up, I could have made poor Edward love me!'  Ifs!  What folly!
+Things happened as they must!
+
+And, starting up, she began to roam the little room.  Without Jimmy she
+would be wretched, with him she would be wretched too!  'I can't bear to
+see his face,' she thought; 'and I can't live here without him!  It's
+really funny!'  The thought of her hospital filled her with loathing.  To
+go there day after day with this despair eating at her heart--she simply
+could not.  She went over her resources.  She had more money than she
+thought; Jimmy had given her a Christmas present of five hundred pounds.
+She had wanted to tear up the cheque, or force him to take it back; but
+the realities of the previous five years had prevailed with her, and she
+had banked it. She was glad now.  She had not to consider money.  Her
+mind sought to escape in the past.  She thought of her first husband,
+Ronny Fane; of their mosquito-curtained rooms in that ghastly Madras
+heat.  Poor Ronny!  What a pale, cynical young ghost started up under
+that name. She thought of Lynch, his horsey, matter-of-fact solidity.
+She had loved them both--for a time.  She thought of the veldt, of
+Constantia, and the loom of Table Mountain under the stars; and the first
+sight of Jimmy, his straight look, the curve of his crisp head, the kind,
+fighting-schoolboy frankness of his face.  Even now, after all those
+months of their companionship, that long-ago evening at grape harvest,
+when she sang to him under the scented creepers, was the memory of him
+most charged with real feeling.  That one evening at any rate he had
+longed for her, eleven: years ago, when she was in her prime.  She could
+have held her own then; Noel would have come in vain.  To think that this
+girl had still fifteen years before she would be even in her prime.
+Fifteen years of witchery; and then another ten before she was on the
+shelf.  Why! if Noel married Jimmy, he would be an old man doting on her
+still, by the time she had reached this fatal age of forty-four: She felt
+as if she must scream, and; stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth,
+turned out the light. Darkness cooled her, a little.  She pulled aside
+the curtains, and let in the moon light.  Jimmy and that girl were out in
+it some where, seeking each other, if not in body, then in thought.  And
+soon, somehow, somewhere, they would come together--come together because
+Fate meant them to!  Fate which had given her young cousin a likeness to
+herself; placed her, too, in just such a hopeless position as appealed to
+Jimmy, and gave him a chance against younger men.  She saw it with bitter
+surety.  Good gamblers cut their losses!  Yes, and proud women did not
+keep unwilling lovers!  If she had even an outside chance, she would
+trail her pride, drag it through the mud, through thorns!  But she had
+not.  And she clenched her fist, and struck out at the night, as though
+at the face of that Fate which one could never reach--impalpable,
+remorseless, surrounding Fate with its faint mocking smile, devoid of all
+human warmth.  Nothing could set back the clock, and give her what this
+girl had.  Time had "done her in," as it "did in" every woman, one by
+one.  And she saw herself going down the years, powdering a little more,
+painting a little more, touching up her hair, till it was all artifice,
+holding on by every little device--and all, to what end?  To see his face
+get colder and colder, hear his voice more and more constrained to
+gentleness; and know that underneath, aversion was growing with the
+thought 'You are keeping me from life, and love!'  till one evening, in
+sheer nerve-break, she would say or do some fearful thing, and he would
+come no more.  'No, Jimmy!' she thought; 'find her, and stay with her.
+You're not worth all that!'  And puffing to the curtains, as though with
+that gesture she could shut out her creeping fate, she turned up the
+light and sat down at her writing table.  She stayed some minutes
+motionless, her chin resting on her hands, the dark silk fallen down from
+her arms.  A little mirror, framed in curiously carved ivory, picked up
+by her in an Indian bazaar twenty-five years ago, hung on a level with
+her face and gave that face back to her. 'I'm not ugly,' she thought
+passionately, 'I'm not.  I still have some looks left.  If only that girl
+hadn't come.  And it was all my doing.  Oh, what made me write to both of
+them, Edward and Jimmy?' She turned the mirror aside, and took up a pen.
+
+"MY DEAR JIMMY," she wrote: "It will be better for us both if you take a
+holiday from here.  Don't come again till I write for you. I'm sorry I
+made you so much disturbance to-night.  Have a good time, and a good
+rest; and don't worry. "Your--"
+
+So far she had written when a tear dropped on the page, and she had to
+tear it up and begin again.  This time she wrote to the end--"Your
+Leila."  'I must post it now,' she thought, 'or he may not get it before
+to-morrow evening.  I couldn't go through with this again.' She hurried
+out with it and slipped it in a pillar box.  The night smelled of
+flowers; and, hastening back, she lay down, and stayed awake for hours,
+tossing, and staring at the dark.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+1
+
+Leila had pluck, but little patience.  Her one thought was to get away
+and she at once began settling up her affairs and getting a permit to
+return to South Africa.  The excitements of purchase and preparation were
+as good an anodyne as she could have taken.  The perils of the sea were
+at full just then, and the prospect of danger gave her a sort of
+pleasure.  'If I go down,' she thought, 'all the better; brisk, instead
+of long and dreary.'  But when she had the permit and her cabin was
+booked, the irrevocability of her step came to her with full force.
+Should she see him again or no?  Her boat started in three days, and she
+must decide.  If in compunction he were to be affectionate, she knew she
+would never keep to her decision, and then the horror would begin again,
+till again she was forced to this same action.  She let the hours go and
+go till the very day before, when the ache to see him and the dread of it
+had become so unbearable that she could not keep quiet.  Late that
+afternoon--everything, to the last label, ready--she went out, still
+undecided.  An itch to turn the dagger in her wound, to know what had
+become of Noel, took her to Edward's house.  Almost unconsciously she had
+put on her prettiest frock, and spent an hour before the glass. A
+feverishness of soul, more than of body, which had hung about her ever
+since that night, gave her colour.  She looked her prettiest; and she
+bought a gardenia at a shop in Baker Street and fastened it in her dress.
+Reaching the old Square, she was astonished to see a board up with the
+words: "To let," though the house still looked inhabited.  She rang, and
+was shown into the drawing-room.  She had only twice been in this house
+before; and for some reason, perhaps because of her own unhappiness, the
+old, rather shabby room struck her as pathetic, as if inhabited by the
+past.  'I wonder what his wife was like,' she thought: And then she saw,
+hanging against a strip of black velvet on the wall, that faded colour
+sketch of the slender young woman leaning forward, with her hands crossed
+in her lap.  The colouring was lavender and old ivory, with faint touches
+of rose.  The eyes, so living, were a little like Gratian's; the whole
+face delicate, eager, good.  'Yes,' she thought, 'he must have loved you
+very much.  To say good-bye must have been hard.' She was still standing
+before it when Pierson came in.
+
+"That's a dear face, Edward.  I've come to say good-bye.  I'm leaving for
+South Africa to-morrow."  And, as her hand touched his, she thought: 'I
+must have been mad to think I could ever have made him love me.'
+
+"Are you--are you leaving him?"
+
+Leila nodded:
+
+"That's very brave, and wonderful."
+
+"Oh! no.  Needs must when the devil drives--that's all.  I don't give up
+happiness of my own accord.  That's not within a hundred miles of the
+truth.  What I shall become, I don't know, but nothing better, you may be
+sure.  I give up because I can't keep, and you know why. Where is Noel?"
+
+"Down at the sea, with George and Gratian."
+
+He was looking at her in wonder; and the pained, puzzled expression on
+his face angered her.
+
+"I see the house is to let.  Who'd have thought a child like that could
+root up two fossils like us?  Never mind, Edward, there's the same blood
+in us.  We'll keep our ends up in our own ways.  Where are you going?"
+
+"They'll give me a chaplaincy in the East, I think."
+
+For a wild moment Leila thought: 'Shall I offer to go with him--the two
+lost dogs together?'
+
+"What would have happened, Edward, if you had proposed to me that May
+week, when we were--a little bit in love?  Which would it have been,
+worst for, you or me?"
+
+"You wouldn't have taken me, Leila."
+
+"Oh, one never knows.  But you'd never have been a priest then, and you'd
+never have become a saint."
+
+"Don't use that silly word.  If you knew--"
+
+"I do; I can see that you've been half burned alive; half burned and half
+buried!  Well, you have your reward, whatever it is, and I mine.
+Good-bye, Edward!"  She took his hand.  "You might give me your blessing;
+I want it."
+
+Pierson put his other hand on her shoulder and, bending forward, kissed
+her forehead.
+
+The tears rushed up in Leila's eyes.  "Ah me!" she said, "it's a sad
+world!"  And wiping the quivering off her lips with the back of her
+gloved hand, she went quickly past him to the door.  She looked back from
+there.  He had not stirred, but his lips were moving.  'He's praying for
+me!' she thought.  'How funny!'
+
+
+2
+
+The moment she was outside, she forgot him; the dreadful ache for Fort
+seemed to have been whipped up within her, as if that figure of lifelong
+repression had infuriated the love of life and pleasure in her.  She must
+and would see Jimmy again, if she had to wait and seek for him all night!
+It was nearly seven, he would surely have finished at the War Office; he
+might be at his Club or at his rooms. She made for the latter.
+
+The little street near Buckingham Gate, where no wag had chalked "Peace"
+on the doors for nearly a year now, had an arid look after a hot day's
+sun.  The hair-dresser's shop below his rooms was still open, and the
+private door ajar: 'I won't ring,' she thought; 'I'll go straight up.'
+While she was mounting the two flights of stairs, she stopped twice,
+breathless, from a pain in her side.  She often had that pain now, as if
+the longing in her heart strained it physically.  On the modest landing
+at the top, outside his rooms, she waited, leaning against the wall,
+which was covered with a red paper. A window at the back was open and the
+confused sound of singing came in--a chorus "Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la
+ve.  Vive la compagnie."  So it came to her.  'O God!' she thought: 'Let
+him be in, let him be nice to me.  It's the last time.'  And, sick from
+anxiety, she opened the door.  He was in--lying on a wicker-couch against
+the wall in the far corner, with his arms crossed behind his head, and a
+pipe in his mouth; his eyes were closed, and he neither moved, nor opened
+them, perhaps supposing her to be the servant.  Noiseless as a cat, Leila
+crossed the room till she stood above him.  And waiting for him to come
+out of that defiant lethargy, she took her fill of his thin, bony face,
+healthy and hollow at the same time.  With teeth clenched on the pipe it
+had a look of hard resistance, as of a man with his head back, his arms
+pinioned to his sides, stiffened against some creature, clinging and
+climbing and trying to drag him down.  The pipe was alive, and dribbled
+smoke; and his leg, the injured one, wriggled restlessly, as if worrying
+him; but the rest of him was as utterly and obstinately still as though
+he were asleep.  His hair grew thick and crisp, not a thread of grey in
+it, the teeth which held the pipe glinted white and strong.  His face was
+young; so much younger than hers.  Why did she love it--the face of a man
+who couldn't love her?  For a second she felt as if she could seize the
+cushion which had slipped down off the couch, and smother him as he lay
+there, refusing, so it seemed to her, to come to consciousness. Love
+despised!  Humiliation!  She nearly turned and stole away.  Then through
+the door, left open, behind her, the sound of that chorus: "Vive-la,
+vive-la, vive-la ve!" came in and jolted her nerves unbearably.  Tearing
+the gardenia from her breast, she flung it on to his upturned face.
+
+"Jimmy!"
+
+Fort struggled up, and stared at her.  His face was comic from
+bewilderment, and she broke into a little nervous laugh.
+
+"You weren't dreaming of me, dear Jimmy, that's certain.  In what garden
+were you wandering?"
+
+"Leila!  You!  How--how jolly!"
+
+"How--how jolly!  I wanted to see you, so I came.  And I have seen you,
+as you are, when you aren't with me.  I shall remember it; it was good
+for me--awfully good for me."
+
+"I didn't hear you."
+
+"Far, far away, my dear.  Put my gardenia in, your buttonhole.  Stop,
+I'll pin it in.  Have you had a good rest all this week?  Do you like my
+dress?  It's new.  You wouldn't have noticed it, would you?"
+
+"I should have noticed.  I think it's charming.
+
+"Jimmy, I believe that nothing--nothing will ever shake your chivalry."
+
+"Chivalry?  I have none."
+
+"I am going to shut the door, do you mind?"  But he went to the door
+himself, shut it, and came back to her.  Leila looked up at him.
+
+"Jimmy, if ever you loved me a little bit, be nice to me today.  And if I
+say things--if I'm bitter--don't mind; don't notice it. Promise!"
+
+"I promise."
+
+She took off her hat and sat leaning against him on the couch, so that
+she could not see his face.  And with his arm round her, she let herself
+go, deep into the waters of illusion; down-down, trying to forget there
+was a surface to which she must return; like a little girl she played
+that game of make-believe.  'He loves me-he loves me--he loves me!'  To
+lose herself like that for, just an hour, only an hour; she felt that she
+would give the rest of the time vouchsafed to her; give it all and
+willingly.  Her hand clasped his against her heart, she turned her face
+backward, up to his, closing her eyes so as still not to see his face;
+the scent of the gardenia in his coat hurt her, so sweet and strong it
+was.
+
+
+3
+
+When with her hat on she stood ready to go, it was getting dark.  She had
+come out of her dream now, was playing at make-believe no more. And she
+stood with a stony smile, in the half-dark, looking between her lashes at
+the mortified expression on his unconscious face.
+
+"Poor Jimmy!" she said; "I'm not going to keep you from dinner any
+longer.  No, don't come with me.  I'm going alone; and don't light up,
+for heaven's sake."
+
+She put her hand on the lapel of his coat.  "That flower's gone brown at
+the edges.  Throw it away; I can't bear faded flowers.  Nor can you.  Get
+yourself a fresh one tomorrow."
+
+She pulled the flower from his buttonhole and, crushing it in her hand,
+held her face up.
+
+"Well, kiss me once more; it won't hurt you."
+
+For one moment her lips clung to his with all their might.  She wrenched
+them away, felt for the handle blindly, opened the door, and, shutting it
+in his face, went slowly, swaying a little, down the stairs.  She trailed
+a gloved hand along the wall, as if its solidity could help her.  At the
+last half-landing, where a curtain hung, dividing off back premises, she
+stopped and listened.  There wasn't a sound.  'If I stand here behind
+this curtain,' she thought, 'I shall see him again.' She slipped behind
+the curtain, close drawn but for a little chink.  It was so dark there
+that she could not see her own hand.  She heard the door open, and his
+slow footsteps coming down the stairs.  His feet, knees, whole figure
+came into sight, his face just a dim blur.  He passed, smoking a
+cigarette.  She crammed her hand against her mouth to stop herself from
+speaking and the crushed gardenia filled her nostrils with its cold,
+fragrant velvet.  He was gone, the door below was shut.  A wild,
+half-stupid longing came on her to go up again, wait till he came in,
+throw herself upon him, tell him she was going, beg him to keep her with
+him.  Ah! and he would!  He would look at her with that haggard pity she
+could not bear, and say, "Of course, Leila, of course."  No!  By God, no!
+"I am going quietly home," she muttered; "just quietly home!  Come along,
+be brave; don't be a fool!  Come along!"  And she went down into the
+street: At the entrance to the Park she saw him, fifty yards in front,
+dawdling along.  And, as if she had been his shadow lengthened out to
+that far distance, she moved behind him.  Slowly, always at that
+distance, she followed him under the plane-trees, along the Park
+railings, past St. James's Palace, into Pall Mall.  He went up some
+steps, and vanished into his Club.  It was the end.  She looked up at the
+building; a monstrous granite tomb, all dark.  An emptied cab was just
+moving from the door.  She got in.  "Camelot Mansions, St. John's Wood."
+And braced against the cushions, panting, and clenching her hands, she
+thought: 'Well, I've seen him again.  Hard crust's better than no bread.
+Oh, God!  All finished--not a crumb, not a crumb!  Vive-la, vive-la,
+vive-la ve.  Vive-la compagnie!'
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Fort had been lying there about an hour, sleeping and awake, before that
+visit: He had dreamed a curious and wonderfully emotionalising dream.  A
+long grey line, in a dim light, neither of night nor morning, the whole
+length of the battle-front in France, charging in short drives, which
+carried the line a little forward, with just a tiny pause and suck-back;
+then on again irresistibly, on and on; and at each rush, every voice, his
+own among them, shouted "Hooray! the English!  Hooray! the English!"  The
+sensation of that advancing tide of dim figures in grey light, the throb
+and roar, the wonderful, rhythmic steady drive of it, no more to be
+stopped than the waves of an incoming tide, was gloriously fascinating;
+life was nothing, death nothing.  "Hooray, the English!"  In that dream,
+he was his country, he was every one of that long charging line, driving
+forward in. those great heaving pulsations, irresistible, on and on.  Out
+of the very centre of this intoxicating dream he had been dragged by some
+street noise, and had closed his eyes again, in the vain hope that he
+might dream it on to its end.  But it came no more; and lighting his
+pipe, he lay there wondering at its fervid, fantastic realism.  Death was
+nothing, if his country lived and won.  In waking hours he never had
+quite that single-hearted knowledge of himself.  And what marvellously
+real touches got mixed into the fantastic stuff of dreams, as if
+something were at work to convince the dreamer in spite of
+himself--"Hooray!" not "Hurrah!"  Just common "Hooray!"  And "the
+English," not the literary "British."  And then the soft flower had
+struck his forehead, and Leila's voice cried: "Jimmy!"
+
+When she left him, his thought was just a tired: 'Well, so it's begun
+again!' What did it matter, since common loyalty and compassion cut him
+off from what his heart desired; and that desire was absurd, as little
+likely of attainment as the moon.  What did it matter?  If it gave her
+any pleasure to love him, let it go on!  Yet, all the time that he was
+walking across under the plane trees, Noel seemed to walk in front of
+him, just out of reach, so that he ached with the thought that he would
+never catch her up, and walk beside her.
+
+Two days later, on reaching his rooms in the evening, he found this
+letter on ship's note-paper, with the Plymouth postmark--
+
+    "Fare thee well, and if for ever,
+     Then for ever fare thee well"
+                         "Leila"
+
+He read it with a really horrible feeling, for all the world as if he had
+been accused of a crime and did not know whether he had committed it or
+not.  And, trying to collect his thoughts, he took a cab and drove to her
+fiat.  It was closed, but her address was given him; a bank in Cape Town.
+He had received his release.  In his remorse and relief, so confusing and
+so poignant, he heard the driver of the cab asking where he wanted to go
+now.  "Oh, back again!"  But before they had gone a mile he corrected the
+address, in an impulse of which next moment he felt thoroughly ashamed.
+What he was doing indeed, was as indecent as if he were driving from the
+funeral of his wife to the boudoir of another woman.  When he reached the
+old Square, and the words "To let" stared him in the face, he felt a
+curious relief, though it meant that he would not see her whom to see for
+ten minutes he felt he would give a year of life.  Dismissing his cab, he
+stood debating whether to ring the bell.  The sight of a maid's face at
+the window decided him.  Mr. Pierson was out, and the young ladies were
+away.  He asked for Mrs. Laird's address, and turned away, almost into
+the arms of Pierson himself.  The greeting was stiff and strange.  'Does
+he know that Leila's gone?' he thought.  'If so, he must think me the
+most awful skunk.  And am I?  Am I?' When he reached home, he sat down to
+write to Leila.  But having stared at the paper for an hour and written
+these three lines--
+
+"MY DEAR LEILA, "I cannot express to you the feelings with which I
+received your letter--"
+
+he tore it up.  Nothing would be adequate, nothing would be decent. Let
+the dead past bury its dead--the dead past which in his heart had never
+been alive!  Why pretend?  He had done his best to keep his end up.  Why
+pretend?
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+I
+
+In the boarding-house, whence the Lairds had not yet removed, the old
+lady who knitted, sat by the fireplace, and light from the setting sun
+threw her shadow on the wall, moving spidery and grey, over the yellowish
+distemper, in time to the tune of her needles.  She was a very old
+lady--the oldest lady in the world, Noel thought--and she knitted without
+stopping, without breathing, so that the girl felt inclined to scream.
+In the evening when George and Gratian were not in, Noel would often sit
+watching the needles, brooding over her as yet undecided future.  And now
+and again the old lady would look up above her spectacles; move the
+corners of her lips ever so slightly, and drop her gaze again.  She had
+pitted herself against Fate; so long as she knitted, the war could not
+stop--such was the conclusion Noel had come to.  This old lady knitted
+the epic of acquiescence to the tune of her needles; it was she who kept
+the war going such a thin old lady!  'If I were to hold her elbows from
+behind,' the girl used to think, 'I believe she'd die.  I expect I ought
+to; then the war would stop.  And if the war stopped, there'd be love and
+life again.'  Then the little silvery tune would click itself once more
+into her brain, and stop her thinking.  In her lap this evening lay a
+letter from her father.
+"MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
+
+"I am glad to say I have my chaplaincy, and am to start for Egypt very
+soon.  I should have wished to go to France, but must take what I can
+get, in view of my age, for they really don't want us who are getting on,
+I fear.  It is a great comfort to me to think that Gratian is with you,
+and no doubt you will all soon be in a house where my little grandson can
+join you.  I have excellent accounts of him in a letter from your aunt,
+just received: My child, you must never again think that my resignation
+has been due to you.  It is not so.  You know, or perhaps you don't, that
+ever since the war broke out, I have chafed over staying at home, my
+heart has been with our boys out there, and sooner or later it must have
+come to this, apart from anything else.  Monsieur Lavendie has been round
+in the evening, twice; he is a nice man, I like him very much, in spite
+of our differences of view.  He wanted to give me the sketch he made of
+you in the Park, but what can I do with it now?  And to tell you the
+truth, I like it no better than the oil painting.  It is not a likeness,
+as I know you.  I hope I didn't hurt his feelings, the feelings of an
+artist are so very easily wounded.  There is one thing I must tell you.
+Leila has gone back to South Africa; she came round one evening about ten
+days ago, to say goodbye.  She was very brave, for I fear it means a
+great wrench for her.  I hope and pray she may find comfort and
+tranquillity out there.  And now, my dear, I want you to promise me not
+to see Captain Fort.  I know that he admires you.  But, apart from the
+question of his conduct in regard to Leila, he made the saddest
+impression on me by coming to our house the very day after her departure.
+There is something about that which makes me feel he cannot be the sort
+of man in whom I could feel any confidence.  I don't suppose for a moment
+that he is in your thoughts, and yet before going so far from you, I feel
+I must warn you.  I should rejoice to see you married to a good man; but,
+though I don't wish to think hardly of anyone, I cannot believe Captain
+Fort is that.
+
+"I shall come down to you before I start, which may be in quite a short
+time now.  My dear love to you and Gracie, and best wishes to George.
+
+"Your ever loving father, "EDWARD PIERSON
+
+Across this letter lying on her knees, Noel gazed at the spidery movement
+on the wall.  Was it acquiescence that the old lady knitted, or was it
+resistance--a challenge to death itself, a challenge dancing to the tune
+of the needles like the grey ghost of human resistance to Fate!  She
+wouldn't give in, this oldest lady in the world, she meant to knit till
+she fell into the grave.  And so Leila had gone!  It hurt her to know
+that; and yet it pleased her. Acquiescence--resistance!  Why did Daddy
+always want to choose the way she should go?  So gentle he was, yet he
+always wanted to!  And why did he always make her feel that she must go
+the other way?  The sunlight ceased to stream in, the old lady's shadow
+faded off the wall, but the needles still sang their little tune.  And
+the girl said:
+
+"Do you enjoy knitting, Mrs. Adam?"
+
+The old lady looked at her above the spectacles.
+
+"Enjoy, my dear?  It passes the time."
+
+"But do you want the time to pass?"
+
+There was no answer for a moment, and Noel thought: 'How dreadful of me
+to have said that!'
+
+"Eh?"  said the old lady.
+
+"I said: Isn't it very tiring?"
+
+"Not when I don't think about it, my dear."
+
+"What do you think about?"
+
+The old lady cackled gently.
+
+"Oh--well!"  she said.
+
+And Noel thought: 'It must be dreadful to grow old, and pass the time!'
+
+She took up her father's letter, and bent it meditatively against her
+chin.  He wanted her to pass the time--not to live, not to enjoy!  To
+pass the time.  What else had he been doing himself, all these years,
+ever since she could remember, ever since her mother died, but just
+passing the time?  Passing the time because he did not believe in this
+life; not living at all, just preparing for the life he did believe in.
+Denying himself everything that was exciting and nice, so that when he
+died he might pass pure and saintly to his other world.  He could not
+believe Captain Fort a good man, because he had not passed the time, and
+resisted Leila; and Leila was gone!  And now it was a sin for him to love
+someone else; he must pass the time again.  'Daddy doesn't believe in
+life,' she thought; 'it's monsieur's picture.  Daddy's a saint; but I
+don't want to be a saint, and pass the time.  He doesn't mind making
+people unhappy, because the more they're repressed, the saintlier they'll
+be.  But I can't bear to be unhappy, or to see others unhappy.  I wonder
+if I could bear to be unhappy to save someone else--as Leila is?  I
+admire her!  Oh!  I admire her!  She's not doing it because she thinks it
+good for her soul; only because she can't bear making him unhappy.  She
+must love him very much.  Poor Leila!  And she's done it all by herself,
+of her own accord.'  It was like what George said of the soldiers; they
+didn't know why they were heroes, it was not because they'd been told to
+be, or because they believed in a future life.  They just had to be, from
+inside somewhere, to save others.  'And they love life as much as I do,'
+she thought.  'What a beast it makes one feel!'  Those needles!
+Resistance--acquiescence?  Both perhaps.  The oldest lady in the world,
+with her lips moving at the corners, keeping things in, had lived her
+life, and knew it.  How dreadful to live on when you were of no more
+interest to anyone, but must just "pass the time" and die.  But how much
+more dreadful to "pass the time" when you were strong, and life and love
+were yours for the taking!  'I shan't answer Daddy,' she thought.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The maid, who one Saturday in July opened the door to Jimmy Fort, had
+never heard the name of Laird, for she was but a unit in the ceaseless
+procession which pass through the boarding-houses of places subject to
+air-raids.  Placing him in a sitting-room, she said she would find Miss
+'Allow.  There he waited, turning the leaves of an illustrated Journal,
+wherein Society beauties; starving Servians, actresses with pretty legs,
+prize dogs, sinking ships, Royalties, shells bursting, and padres reading
+funeral services, testified to the catholicity of the public taste, but
+did not assuage his nerves. What if their address were not known here?
+Why, in his fear of putting things to the test, had he let this month go
+by?  An old lady was sitting by the hearth, knitting, the click of whose
+needles blended with the buzzing of a large bee on the window-pane.  'She
+may know,' he thought, 'she looks as if she'd been here for ever.' And
+approaching her, he said:
+
+"I can assure you those socks are very much appreciated, ma'am."
+
+The old lady bridled over her spectacles.
+
+"It passes the time," she said.
+
+"Oh, more than that; it helps to win the war, ma'am."
+
+The old lady's lips moved at the corners; she did not answer. 'Deaf!' he
+thought.
+
+"May I ask if you knew my friends, Doctor and Mrs. Laird, and Miss
+Pierson?"
+
+The old lady cackled gently.
+
+"Oh, yes!  A pretty young girl; as pretty as life.  She used to sit with
+me.  Quite a pleasure to watch her; such large eyes she had."
+
+"Where have they gone?  Can you tell me?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know at all."
+
+It was a little cold douche on his heart.  He longed to say: 'Stop
+knitting a minute, please.  It's my life, to know.'  But the tune of the
+needles answered: 'It's my life to knit.'  And he turned away to the
+window.
+
+"She used to sit just there; quite still; quite still."
+
+Fort looked down at the window-seat.  So, she used to sit just here,
+quite still.
+
+"What a dreadful war this is!" said the old lady.  "Have you been at the
+front?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To think of the poor young girls who'll never have husbands!  I'm sure I
+think it's dreadful."
+
+"Yes," said Fort; "it's dreadful--"  And then a voice from the doorway
+said:
+
+"Did you want Doctor and Mrs. Laird, sir?  East Bungalow their address
+is; it's a little way out on the North Road.  Anyone will tell you."
+
+With a sigh of relief Fort looked gratefully at the old lady who had
+called Noel as pretty as life.  "Good afternoon, ma'am."
+
+"Good afternoon."  The needles clicked, and little movements occurred at
+the corners of her mouth.  Fort went out.  He could not find a vehicle,
+and was a long time walking.  The Bungalow was ugly, of yellow brick
+pointed with red.  It lay about two-thirds up between the main road and
+cliffs, and had a rock-garden and a glaring, brand-new look, in the
+afternoon sunlight.  He opened the gate, uttering one of those prayers
+which come so glibly from unbelievers when they want anything.  A baby's
+crying answered it, and he thought with ecstasy: 'Heaven, she is here!'
+Passing the rock-garden he could see a lawn at the back of the house and
+a perambulator out there under a holm-oak tree, and Noel--surely Noel
+herself!  Hardening his heart, he went forward.  In a lilac sunbonnet she
+was bending over the perambulator.  He trod softly on the grass, and was
+quite close before she heard him.  He had prepared no words, but just
+held out his hand.  The baby, interested in the shadow failing across its
+pram, ceased crying.  Noel took his hand.  Under the sunbonnet, which hid
+her hair, she seemed older and paler, as if she felt the heat. He had no
+feeling that she was glad to see him.
+
+"How do you do?  Have you seen Gratian; she ought to be in."
+
+"I didn't come to see her; I came to see you."
+
+Noel turned to the baby.
+
+"Here he is."
+
+Fort stood at the end of the perambulator, and looked at that other
+fellow's baby.  In the shade of the hood, with the frilly clothes, it
+seemed to him lying with its head downhill.  It had scratched its snub
+nose and bumpy forehead, and it stared up at its mother with blue eyes,
+which seemed to have no underlids so fat were its cheeks.
+
+"I wonder what they think about," he said.
+
+Noel put her finger into the baby's fist.
+
+"They only think when they want some thing."
+
+"That's a deep saying: but his eyes are awfully interested in you."
+
+Noel smiled; and very slowly the baby's curly mouth unclosed, and
+discovered his toothlessness.
+
+"He's a darling," she said in a whisper.
+
+'And so are you,' he thought, 'if only I dared say it!'
+
+"Daddy is here," she said suddenly, without looking up.  "He's sailing
+for Egypt the day after to-morrow.  He doesn't like you."
+
+Fort's heart gave a jump.  Why did she tell him that, unless--unless she
+was just a little on his side?
+
+"I expected that," he said.  "I'm a sinner, as you know."
+
+Noel looked up at him.  "Sin!" she said, and bent again over her baby.
+The word, the tone in which she said it, crouching over her baby, gave
+him the thought: 'If it weren't for that little creature, I shouldn't
+have a dog's chance.'  He said, "I'll go and see your father.  Is he in?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"May I come to-morrow?"
+
+"It's Sunday; and Daddy's last day."
+
+"Ah!  Of course."  He did not dare look back, to see if her gaze was
+following him, but he thought: 'Chance or no chance, I'm going to fight
+for her tooth and nail.'
+
+In a room darkened against the evening sun Pierson was sitting on a sofa
+reading.  The sight of that figure in khaki disconcerted Fort, who had
+not realised that there would be this metamorphosis.  The narrow face,
+clean-shaven now, with its deep-set eyes and compressed lips, looked more
+priestly than ever, in spite of this brown garb. He felt his hope
+suddenly to be very forlorn indeed.  And rushing at the fence, he began
+abruptly:
+
+"I've come to ask you, sir, for your permission to marry Noel, if she
+will have me."
+
+He had thought Pierson's face gentle; it was not gentle now.  "Did you
+know I was here, then, Captain Fort?"
+
+"I saw Noel in the garden.  I've said nothing to her, of course.  But she
+told me you were starting to-morrow for Egypt, so I shall have no other
+chance."
+
+"I am sorry you have come.  It is not for me to judge, but I don't think
+you will make Noel happy."
+
+"May I ask you why, sir?"
+
+"Captain Fort, the world's judgment of these things is not mine; but
+since you ask me.  I will tell you frankly.  My cousin Leila has a claim
+on you.  It is her you should ask to marry you."
+
+"I did ask her; she refused."
+
+"I know.  She would not refuse you again if you went out to her."
+
+"I am not free to go out to her; besides, she would refuse.  She knows I
+don't love her, and never have."
+
+"Never have?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Because I'm a man, I suppose, and a fool"
+
+"If it was simply, 'because you are a man' as you call it, it is clear
+that no principle or faith governs you.  And yet you ask me to give you
+Noel; my poor Noel, who wants the love and protection not of a 'man' but
+of a good man.  No, Captain Fort, no!"
+
+Fort bit his lips.  "I'm clearly not a good man in your sense of the
+word; but I love her terribly, and I would protect her.  I don't in the
+least know whether she'll have me.  I don't expect her to, naturally.
+But I warn you that I mean to ask her, and to wait for her.  I'm so much
+in love that I can do nothing else."
+
+"The man who is truly in love does what is best for the one he loves."
+Fort bent his head; he felt as if he were at school again, confronting
+his head-master.  "That's true," he said.  "And I shall never trade on
+her position.  If she can't feel anything for me now or in the future, I
+shan't trouble her, you may be sure of that.  But if by some wonderful
+chance she should, I know I can make her happy, sir."
+
+"She is a child."
+
+"No, she's not a child," said Fort stubbornly.
+
+Pierson touched the lapel of his new tunic.  "Captain Fort, I am going
+far away from her, and leaving her without protection.  I trust to your
+chivalry not to ask her, till I come back."
+
+Fort threw back his head.  "No, no, I won't accept that position. With or
+without your presence the facts will be the same.  Either she can love
+me, or she can't.  If she can, she'll be happier with me. If she can't,
+there's an end of it."
+
+Pierson came slowly up to him.  "In my view," he said, "you are as bound
+to Leila as if you were married to her."
+
+"You can't, expect me to take the priest's view, sir."
+
+Pierson's lips trembled.
+
+"You call it a priest's view; I think it is only the view of a man of
+honour."
+
+Fort reddened.  "That's for my conscience," he said stubbornly. "I can't
+tell you, and I'm not going to, how things began.  I was a fool.  But I
+did my best, and I know that Leila doesn't think I'm bound.  If she had,
+she would never have gone.  When there's no feeling--there never was real
+feeling on my side--and when there's this terribly real feeling for Noel,
+which I never sought, which I tried to keep down, which I ran away
+from--"
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Yes.  To go on with the other was foul.  I should have thought you might
+have seen that, sir; but I did go on with it.  It was Leila who made an
+end."
+
+"Leila behaved nobly, I think."
+
+"She was splendid; but that doesn't make me a brute.".
+
+Pierson turned away to the window, whence he must see Noel.
+
+"It is repugnant to me," he said.  "Is there never to be any purity in
+her life?"
+
+"Is there never to be any life for her?  At your rate, sir, there will be
+none.  I'm no worse than other men, and I love her more than they could."
+
+For fully a minute Pierson stood silent, before he said: "Forgive me if
+I've spoken harshly.  I didn't mean to.  I love her intensely; I wish for
+nothing but her good.  But all my life I have believed that for a man
+there is only one woman--for a woman only one man."
+
+"Then, Sir," Fort burst out, "you wish her--"
+
+Pierson had put his hand up, as if to ward off a blow; and, angry though
+he was, Fort stopped.
+
+"We are all made of flesh and blood," he continued coldly, "and it seems
+to me that you think we aren't."
+
+"We have spirits too, Captain Fort."  The voice was suddenly so gentle
+that Fort's anger evaporated.
+
+"I have a great respect for you, sir; but a greater love for Noel, and
+nothing in this world will prevent me trying to give my life to her."
+
+A smile quivered over Pierson's face.  "If you try, then I can but pray
+that you will fail."
+
+Fort did not answer, and went out.
+
+He walked slowly away from the bungalow, with his head down, sore, angry,
+and yet-relieved.  He knew where he stood; nor did he feel that he had
+been worsted--those strictures had not touched him. Convicted of
+immorality, he remained conscious of private justifications, in a way
+that human beings have.  Only one little corner of memory, unseen and
+uncriticised by his opponent, troubled him.  He pardoned himself the
+rest; the one thing he did not pardon was the fact that he had known Noel
+before his liaison with Leila commenced; had even let Leila sweep him
+away on, an evening when he had been in Noel's company.  For that he felt
+a real disgust with himself.  And all the way back to the station he kept
+thinking: 'How could I?  I deserve to lose her!  Still, I shall try; but
+not now--not yet!'  And, wearily enough, he took the train back to town.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Both girls rose early that last day, and went with their father to
+Communion.  As Gratian had said to George: "It's nothing to me now, but
+it will mean a lot to him out there, as a memory of us.  So I must go."
+And he had answered: "Quite right, my dear.  Let him have all he can get
+of you both to-day.  I'll keep out of the way, and be back the last thing
+at night."  Their father's smile when he saw them waiting for him went
+straight to both their hearts.  It was a delicious day, and the early
+freshness had not yet dried out of the air, when they were walking home
+to breakfast.  Each girl had slipped a hand under his arm.  'It's like
+Moses or was it Aaron?' Noel thought absurdly Memory had complete hold of
+her.  All the old days!  Nursery hours on Sundays after tea, stories out
+of the huge Bible bound in mother-o'pearl, with photogravures of the Holy
+Land--palms, and hills, and goats, and little Eastern figures, and funny
+boats on the Sea of Galilee, and camels--always camels.  The book would
+be on his knee, and they one on each arm of his chair, waiting eagerly
+for the pages to be turned so that a new picture came.  And there would
+be the feel of his cheek, prickly against theirs; and the old names with
+the old glamour--to Gratian, Joshua, Daniel, Mordecai, Peter; to Noel
+Absalom because of his hair, and Haman because she liked the sound, and
+Ruth because she was pretty and John because he leaned on Jesus' breast.
+Neither of them cared for Job or David, and Elijah and Elisha they
+detested because they hated the name Eliza.  And later days by firelight
+in the drawing-room, roasting chestnuts just before evening church, and
+telling ghost stories, and trying to make Daddy eat his share.  And hours
+beside him at the piano, each eager for her special hymns--for Gratian,
+"Onward, Christian Soldiers," "Lead, Kindly Light," and "O God Our Help";
+for Noel, "Nearer, My God, to Thee," the one with "The Hosts of Midian"
+in it, and "For Those in Peril on the Sea."  And carols!  Ah!  And
+Choristers!  Noel had loved one deeply--the word "chorister" was so
+enchanting; and because of his whiteness, and hair which had no grease on
+it, but stood up all bright; she had never spoken to him--a far worship,
+like that for a star.  And always, always Daddy had been gentle;
+sometimes angry, but always gentle; and they sometimes not at all!  And
+mixed up with it all, the dogs they had had, and the cats they had had,
+and the cockatoo, and the governesses, and their red cloaks, and the
+curates, and the pantomimes, and "Peter Pan," and "Alice in
+Wonderland"--Daddy sitting between them, so that one could snuggle up.
+And later, the school-days, the hockey, the prizes, the holidays, the
+rush into his arms; and the great and wonderful yearly exodus to far
+places, fishing and bathing; walks and drives; rides and climbs, always
+with him.  And concerts and Shakespeare plays in the Christmas and Easter
+holidays; and the walk home through the streets--all lighted in those
+days--one on each side of him.  And this was the end!  They waited on him
+at breakfast: they kept stealing glances at him, photographing him in
+their minds.  Gratian got her camera and did actually photograph him in
+the morning sunlight with Noel, without Noel, with the baby; against all
+regulations for the defence of the realm.  It was Noel who suggested:
+"Daddy, let's take lunch out and go for all day on the cliffs, us three,
+and forget there's a war."
+
+So easy to say, so difficult to do, with the boom of the guns travelling
+to their ears along the grass, mingled with the buzz of insects.  Yet
+that hum of summer, the innumerable voices of tiny lives, gossamer things
+all as alive as they, and as important to their frail selves; and the
+white clouds, few and so slow-moving, and the remote strange purity which
+clings to the chalky downs, all this white and green and blue of land and
+sea had its peace, which crept into the spirits of those three alone with
+Nature, this once more, the last time for--who could say how long?  They
+talked, by tacit agreement, of nothing but what had happened before the
+war began, while the flock of the blown dandelions drifted past.  Pierson
+sat cross-legged on the grass, without his cap, suffering a little still
+from the stiffness of his unwonted garments.  And the girls lay one on
+each side of him, half critical, and half admiring.  Noel could not bear
+his collar.
+
+"If you had a soft collar you'd be lovely, Daddy.  Perhaps out there
+they'll let you take it off.  It must be fearfully hot in Egypt.  Oh!  I
+wish I were going.  I wish I were going everywhere in the world. Some
+day!"  Presently he read to them, Murray's "Hippolytus" of Euripides.
+And now and then Gratian and he discussed a passage.  But Noel lay
+silent, looking at the sky.  Whenever his voice ceased, there was the
+song of the larks, and very faint, the distant mutter of the guns.
+
+They stayed up there till past six, and it was time to go and have tea
+before Evening Service.  Those hours in the baking sun had drawn virtue
+out of them; they were silent and melancholy all the evening. Noel was
+the first to go up to her bedroom.  She went without saying good
+night--she knew her father would come to her room that last evening.
+George had not yet come in; and Gratian was left alone with Pierson in
+the drawing-room, round whose single lamp, in spite of close-drawn
+curtains, moths were circling: She moved over to him on the sofa.
+
+"Dad, promise me not to worry about Nollie; we'll take care of her."
+
+"She can only take care of herself, Gracie, and will she?  Did you know
+that Captain Fort was here yesterday?"
+
+"She told me."
+
+"What is her feeling about him?"
+
+"I don't think she knows.  Nollie dreams along, and then suddenly
+rushes."
+
+"I wish she were safe from that man."
+
+"But, Dad, why?  George likes him and so do I."
+
+A big grey moth was fluttering against the lamp.  Pierson got up and
+caught it in the curve of his palm.  "Poor thing!  You're like my Nollie;
+so soft, and dreamy, so feckless, so reckless."  And going to the
+curtains, he thrust his hand through, and released the moth.
+
+"Dad!"  said Gratian suddenly, "we can only find out for ourselves, even
+if we do singe our wings in doing it.  We've been reading James's
+'Pragmatism.'  George says the only chapter that's important is
+missing--the one on ethics, to show that what we do is not wrong till
+it's proved wrong by the result.  I suppose he was afraid to deliver that
+lecture."
+
+Pierson's face wore the smile which always came on it when he had to deal
+with George, the smile which said: "Ah, George, that's very clever; but I
+know."
+
+"My dear," he said, "that doctrine is the most dangerous in the world.  I
+am surprised at George."
+
+"I don't think George is in danger, Dad."
+
+"George is a man of wide experience and strong judgment and character;
+but think how fatal it would be for Nollie, my poor Nollie, whom a little
+gust can blow into the candle."
+
+"All the same," said Gratian stubbornly, "I don't think anyone can be
+good or worth anything unless they judge for themselves and take risks."
+
+Pierson went close to her; his face was quivering.
+
+"Don't let us differ on this last night; I must go up to Nollie for a
+minute, and then to bed.  I shan't see you to-morrow; you mustn't get up;
+I can bear parting better like this.  And my train goes at eight. God
+bless you, Gracie; give George my love.  I know, I have always known that
+he's a good man, though we do fight so.  Good-bye, my darling."
+
+He went out with his cheeks wet from Gratian's tears, and stood in the
+porch a minute to recover his composure.  The shadow of the house
+stretched velvet and blunt over the rock-garden.  A night-jar was
+spinning; the churring sound affected him oddly.  The last English
+night-bird he would hear.  England!  What a night-to say good-bye! 'My
+country!' he thought; 'my beautiful country!' The dew was lying thick and
+silvery already on the little patch of grass-the last dew, the last scent
+of an English night.  The call of a bugle floated out. "England!"  he
+prayed; "God be about you!"  A little sound answered from across the
+grass, like an old man's cough, and the scrape and rattle of a chain.  A
+face emerged at the edge of the house's shadow; bearded and horned like
+that of Pan, it seemed to stare at him.  And he saw the dim grey form of
+the garden goat, heard it scuttle round the stake to which it was
+tethered, as though alarmed at this visitor to its' domain.
+
+He went up the half-flight of stairs to Noel's narrow little room, next
+the nursery.  No voice answered his tap.  It was dark, but he could see
+her at the window, leaning far out, with her chin on her hands.
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+She answered without turning: "Such a lovely night, Daddy.  Come and
+look!  I'd like to set the goat free, only he'd eat the rock plants. But
+it is his night, isn't it?  He ought to be running and skipping in it:
+it's such a shame to tie things up.  Did you never, feel wild in your
+heart, Daddy?"
+
+"Always, I think, Nollie; too wild.  It's been hard to tame oneself."
+
+Noel slipped her hand through his arm.  "Let's go and take the goat and
+skip together on the hills.  If only we had a penny whistle!  Did you
+hear the bugle?  The bugle and the goat!"
+
+Pierson pressed the hand against him.
+
+"Nollie, be good while I'm away.  You know what I don't want.  I told you
+in my letter."  He looked at her cheek, and dared say no more. Her face
+had its "fey" look again.
+
+"Don't you feel," she said suddenly, "on a night like this, all the
+things, all the things--the stars have lives, Daddy, and the moon has a
+big life, and the shadows have, and the moths and the birds and the goats
+and the trees, and the flowers, and all of us--escaped?  Oh!  Daddy, why
+is there a war?  And why are people so bound and so unhappy?  Don't tell
+me it's God--don't!"
+
+Pierson could not answer, for there came into his mind the Greek song he
+had been reading aloud that afternoon--
+
+    "O for a deep and dewy Spring,
+     With runlets cold to draw and drink,
+     And a great meadow blossoming,
+     Long-grassed, and poplars in a ring,
+     To rest me by the brink.
+     O take me to the mountain, O,
+     Past the great pines and through the wood,
+     Up where the lean hounds softly go,
+     A-whine for wild things' blood,
+     And madly flies the dappled roe,
+     O God, to shout and speed them there;
+     An arrow by my chestnut hair
+     Drawn tight and one keen glimmering spear
+     Ah! if I could!"
+
+All that in life had been to him unknown, of venture and wild savour; all
+the emotion he had stifled; the swift Pan he had denied; the sharp
+fruits, the burning suns, the dark pools, the unearthly moonlight, which
+were not of God--all came with the breath of that old song, and the look
+on the girl's face.  And he covered his eyes.
+
+Noel's hand tugged at his arm.  "Isn't beauty terribly alive," she
+murmured, "like a lovely person? it makes you ache to kiss it."
+
+His lips felt parched.  "There is a beauty beyond all that," he said
+stubbornly.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Holiness, duty, faith.  O Nollie, my love!"  But Noel's hand tightened
+on his arm.
+
+"Shall I tell you what I should like?"  she whispered.  "To take God's
+hand and show Him things.  I'm certain He's not seen everything."
+
+A shudder went through Pierson, one of those queer sudden shivers, which
+come from a strange note in a voice, or a new sharp scent or sight.
+
+"My dear, what things you say!"
+
+"But He hasn't, and it's time He did.  We'd creep, and peep, and see it
+all for once, as He can't in His churches.  Daddy, oh!  Daddy!  I can't
+bear it any more; to think of them being killed on a night like this;
+killed and killed so that they never see it all again--never see
+it--never see it!"  She sank down, and covered her face with her arms.
+
+"I can't, I can't!  Oh! take it all away, the cruelty!  Why does it
+come--why the stars and the flowers, if God doesn't care any more than
+that?"
+
+Horribly affected he stood bending over her, stroking her head.  Then the
+habit of a hundred death-beds helped him.  "Come, Nollie!  This life is
+but a minute.  We must all die."
+
+"But not they--not so young!"  She clung to his knees, and looked up.
+"Daddy, I don't want you to go; promise me to come back!"
+
+The childishness of those words brought back his balance.
+
+"My dear sweetheart, of course!  Come, Nollie, get up.  The sun's been
+too much for you."
+
+Noel got up, and put her hands on her father's shoulders.  "Forgive me
+for all my badness, and all my badness to come, especially all my badness
+to come!"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "I shall always forgive you, Nollie; but there won't
+be--there mustn't be any badness to come.  I pray God to keep you, and
+make you like your mother."
+
+"Mother never had a devil, like you and me."
+
+He was silent from surprise.  How did this child know the devil of wild
+feeling he had fought against year after year; until with the many years
+he had felt it weakening within him!  She whispered on: "I don't hate my
+devil.
+
+"Why should I?--it's part of me.  Every day when the sun sets, I'll think
+of you, Daddy; and you might do the same--that'll keep me good. I shan't
+come to the station tomorrow, I should only cry.  And I shan't say
+good-bye now.  It's unlucky."
+
+She flung her arms round him; and half smothered by that fervent embrace,
+he kissed her cheeks and hair.  Freed of each other at last, he stood for
+a moment looking at her by the moonlight.
+
+"There never was anyone more loving than you; Nollie!"  he said quietly.
+"Remember my letter.  And good night, my love!"  Then, afraid to stay
+another second, he went quickly out of the dark little room....
+
+George Laird, returning half an hour later, heard a voice saying softly:
+"George, George!"
+
+Looking up, he saw a little white blur at the window, and Noel's face
+just visible.
+
+"George, let the goat loose, just for to-night, to please me."
+
+Something in that voice, and in the gesture of her stretched-out arm
+moved George in a queer way, although, as Pierson had once said, he had
+no music in his soul.  He loosed the goat.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+In the weeks which succeeded Pierson's departure, Gratian and George
+often discussed Noel's conduct and position by the light of the Pragmatic
+theory.  George held a suitably scientific view.  Just as he would point
+out to his wife--in the physical world, creatures who diverged from the
+normal had to justify their divergence in competition with their
+environments, or else go under, so in the ethical world it was all a
+question of whether Nollie could make good her vagary.  If she could, and
+grew in strength of character thereby, it was ipso facto all right, her
+vagary would be proved an advantage, and the world enriched.  If not, the
+world by her failure to make good would be impoverished, and her vagary
+proved wrong.  The orthodox and academies--he insisted--were always
+forgetting the adaptability of living organisms; how every action which
+was out of the ordinary, unconsciously modified all the other actions
+together with the outlook, and philosophy of the doer.  "Of course Nollie
+was crazy," he said, "but when she did what she did, she at once began to
+think differently about life and morals.  The deepest instinct we all
+have is the instinct that we must do what we must, and think that what
+we've done is really all right; in fact the--instinct of
+self-preservation.  We're all fighting animals; and we feel in our bones
+that if we admit we're beaten--we are beaten; but that every fight we
+win, especially against odds, hardens those bones.  But personally I
+don't think she can make good on her own."
+
+Gratian, whose Pragmatism was not yet fully baked, responded doubtfully:
+
+"No, I don't think she can.  And if she could I'm not sure.  But isn't
+Pragmatism a perfectly beastly word, George?  It has no sense of humour
+in it at all."
+
+"It is a bit thick, and in the hands of the young, deuced likely to
+become Prigmatism; but not with Nollie."
+
+They watched the victim of their discussions with real anxiety.  The
+knowledge that she would never be more sheltered than she was with them,
+at all events until she married, gravely impeded the formation of any
+judgment as to whether or no she could make good.  Now and again there
+would come to Gratian who after all knew her sister better than
+George--the disquieting thought that whatever conclusion Noel led them to
+form, she would almost certainly force them to abandon sooner or later.
+
+Three days after her father's departure Noel had declared that she wanted
+to work on the land.  This George had promptly vetoed.
+
+"You aren't strong enough yet, my dear: Wait till the harvest begins.
+Then you can go and help on the farm here.  If you can stand that without
+damage, we'll think about it."
+
+But the weather was wet and harvest late, and Noel had nothing much to do
+but attend to her baby, already well attended to by Nurse, and dream and
+brood, and now and then cook an omelette or do some housework for the
+sake of a gnawing conscience.  Since Gratian and George were away in
+hospital all day, she was very much alone. Several times in the evenings
+Gratian tried to come at the core of her thoughts, Twice she flew the
+kite of Leila.  The first time Noel only answered: "Yes, she's a brick."
+The second time, she said: "I don't want to think about her."
+
+But, hardening her heart, Gratian went on: "Don't you think it's queer
+we've never heard from Captain Fort since he came down?"
+
+In her calmest voice Noel answered: "Why should we, after being told that
+he wasn't liked?"
+
+"Who told him that?"
+
+"I told him, that Daddy didn't; but I expect Daddy said much worse
+things."  She gave a little laugh, then softly added: "Daddy's wonderful,
+isn't he?"
+
+"How?"
+
+"The way he drives one to do the other thing.  If he hadn't opposed my
+marriage to Cyril, you know, that wouldn't have happened, it just made
+all the difference.  It stirred me up so fearfully."  Gratian stared at
+her, astonished that she could see herself so clearly. Towards the end of
+August she had a letter from Fort.
+
+"DEAR MRS.  LAIRD, "You know all about things, of course, except the one
+thing which to me is all important.  I can't go on without knowing
+whether I have a chance with your sister.  It is against your father's
+expressed wish that she should have anything to do with me, but I told
+him that I could not and would not promise not to ask her.  I get my
+holiday at the end of this month, and am coming down to put it to the
+touch.  It means more to me than you can possibly imagine. "I am, dear
+Mrs. Laird, "Your very faithful servant, "JAMES FORT."
+
+She discussed the letter with George, whose advice was: "Answer it
+politely, but say nothing; and nothing to Nollie.  I think it would be a
+very good thing.  Of course it's a bit of a make-shift--twice her age;
+but he's a genuine man, if not exactly brilliant."
+
+Gratian answered almost sullenly: "I've always wanted the very best for
+Nollie."
+
+George screwed up his steel-coloured eyes, as he might have looked at one
+on whom he had to operate.  "Quite so," he said.  "But you must remember,
+Gracie, that out of the swan she was, Nollie has made herself into a lame
+duck.  Fifty per cent at least is off her value, socially.  We must look
+at things as they are."
+
+"Father is dead against it."
+
+George smiled, on the point of saying: 'That makes me feel it must be a
+good thing!'  But he subdued the impulse.
+
+"I agree that we're bound by his absence not to further it actively.
+Still Nollie knows his wishes, and it's up to her and no one else. After
+all, she's no longer a child."
+
+His advice was followed.  But to write that polite letter, which said
+nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or three hours'
+penmanship.  She was very conscientious.  Knowledge of this impending
+visit increased the anxiety with which she watched her sister, but the
+only inkling she obtained of Noel's state of mind was when the girl
+showed her a letter she had received from Thirza, asking her to come back
+to Kestrel.  A postscript, in Uncle Bob's handwriting, added these words:
+
+"We're getting quite fossilised down here; Eve's gone and left us again.
+We miss you and the youngster awfully.  Come along down, Nollie there's a
+dear!"
+
+"They're darlings," Noel said, "but I shan't go.  I'm too restless, ever
+since Daddy went; you don't know how restless.  This rain simply makes me
+want to die."
+
+
+2
+
+The weather improved next day, and at the end of that week harvest began.
+By what seemed to Noel a stroke of luck the farmer's binder was broken;
+he could not get it repaired, and wanted all the human binders he could
+get.  That first day in the fields blistered her hands, burnt her face
+and neck, made every nerve and bone in her body ache; but was the
+happiest day she had spent for weeks, the happiest perhaps since Cyril
+Morland left her, over a year ago.  She had a bath and went to bed the
+moment she got in.
+
+Lying there nibbling chocolate and smoking a cigarette, she luxuriated in
+the weariness which had stilled her dreadful restlessness.  Watching the
+smoke of her cigarette curl up against the sunset glow which filled her
+window, she mused: If only she could be tired out like this every day!
+She would be all right then, would lose the feeling of not knowing what
+she wanted, of being in a sort o of large box, with the lid slammed down,
+roaming round it like a dazed and homesick bee in an overturned tumbler;
+the feeling of being only half alive, of having a wing maimed so that she
+could only fly a little way, and must then drop.
+
+She slept like a top that night.  But the next day's work was real
+torture, and the third not much better.  By the end of the week, however,
+she was no longer stiff.
+
+Saturday was cloudless; a perfect day.  The field she was working in lay
+on a slope.  It was the last field to be cut, and the best wheat yet,
+with a glorious burnt shade in its gold and the ears blunt and full.  She
+had got used now to the feel of the great sheaves in her arms, and the
+binding wisps drawn through her hand till she held them level, below the
+ears, ready for the twist.  There was no new sensation in it now; just
+steady, rather dreamy work, to keep her place in the row, to the
+swish-swish of the cutter and the call of the driver to his horses at the
+turns; with continual little pauses, to straighten and rest her back a
+moment, and shake her head free from the flies, or suck her finger, sore
+from the constant pushing of the straw ends under.  So the hours went on,
+rather hot and wearisome, yet with a feeling of something good being
+done, of a job getting surely to its end.  And gradually the centre patch
+narrowed, and the sun slowly slanted down.
+
+When they stopped for tea, instead of running home as usual, she drank it
+cold out of a flask she had brought, ate a bun and some chocolate, and
+lay down on her back against the hedge.  She always avoided that group of
+her fellow workers round the tea-cans which the farmer's wife brought
+out.  To avoid people, if she could, had become habitual to her now.
+They must know about her, or would soon if she gave them the chance.  She
+had never lost consciousness of her ring-finger, expecting every eye to
+fall on it as a matter of course. Lying on her face, she puffed her
+cigarette into the grass, and watched a beetle, till one of the
+sheep-dogs, scouting for scraps, came up, and she fed him with her second
+bun.  Having finished the bun, he tried to eat the beetle, and, when she
+rescued it, convinced that she had nothing more to give him, sneezed at
+her, and went away. Pressing the end of her cigarette out against the
+bank, she turned over.  Already the driver was perched on his tiny seat,
+and his companion, whose business it was to free the falling corn, was
+getting up alongside.  Swish-swish!  It had begun again.  She rose,
+stretched herself, and went back to her place in the row.  The field
+would be finished to-night; she would have a lovely rest-all Sunday I
+Towards seven o'clock a narrow strip, not twenty yards broad, alone was
+left.  This last half hour was what Noel dreaded.  To-day it was worse,
+for the farmer had no cartridges left, and the rabbits were dealt with by
+hullabaloo and sticks and chasing dogs.  Rabbits were vermin, of course,
+and ate the crops, and must be killed; besides, they were good food, and
+fetched two shillings apiece; all this she knew but to see the poor
+frightened things stealing out, pounced on, turned, shouted at, chased,
+rolled over by great swift dogs, fallen on by the boys and killed and
+carried with their limp grey bodies upside down, so dead and soft and
+helpless, always made her feel quite sick.  She stood very still, trying
+not to see or hear, and in the corn opposite to her a rabbit stole along,
+crouched, and peeped. 'Oh!' she thought, 'come out here, bunny.  I'll let
+you away--can't you see I will?  It's your only chance.  Come out!'  But
+the rabbit crouched, and gazed, with its little cowed head poked forward,
+and its ears laid flat; it seemed trying to understand whether this still
+thing in front of it was the same as those others.  With the thought, 'Of
+course it won't while I look at it,' Noel turned her head away. Out of
+the corner of her eye she could see a man standing a few yards off.  The
+rabbit bolted out.  Now the man would shout and turn it. But he did not,
+and the rabbit scuttled past him and away to the hedge.  She heard a
+shout from the end of the row, saw a dog galloping.  Too late!  Hurrah!
+And clasping her hands, she looked at the man.  It was Fort!  With the
+queerest feeling--amazement, pleasure, the thrill of conspiracy, she saw
+him coming up to her.
+
+"I did want that rabbit to get off," she sighed out; "I've been watching
+it.  Thank you!"
+
+He looked at her.  "My goodness!"  was all he said.
+
+Noel's hands flew up to her cheeks.  "Yes, I know; is my nose very red?"
+
+"No; you're as lovely as Ruth, if she was lovely."
+
+Swish-swish!  The cutter came by; Noel started forward to her place in
+the row; but catching her arm, he said: "No, let me do this little bit.
+I haven't had a day in the fields since the war began.  Talk to me while
+I'm binding."
+
+She stood watching him.  He made a different, stronger twist from hers,
+and took larger sheaves, so that she felt a sort of jealousy.
+
+"I didn't know you knew about this sort of thing."
+
+"Oh, Lord, yes!  I had a farm once out West.  Nothing like field-work, to
+make you feel good.  I've been watching you; you bind jolly well."
+
+Noel gave a sigh of pleasure.
+
+"Where have you come from?"  she asked.
+
+"Straight from the station.  I'm on my holiday."  He looked up at her,
+and they both fell silent.
+
+Swish-swish!  The cutter was coming again.  Noel went to the beginning of
+her portion of the falling corn, he to the end of it. They worked towards
+each other, and met before the cutter was on them a third time.
+
+"Will you come in to supper?"
+
+"I'd love to."
+
+"Then let's go now, please.  I don't want to see any more rabbits
+killed."
+
+They spoke very little on the way to the bungalow, but she felt his eyes
+on her all the time.  She left him with George and Gratian who had just
+come in, and went up for her bath.
+
+Supper had been laid out in the verandah, and it was nearly dark before
+they had finished.  In rhyme with the failing of the light Noel became
+more and more silent.  When they went in, she ran up to her baby.  She
+did not go down again, but as on the night before her father went away,
+stood at her window, leaning out.  A dark night, no moon; in the
+starlight she could only just see the dim garden, where no goat was
+grazing.  Now that her first excitement had worn off, this sudden
+reappearance of Fort filled her with nervous melancholy: She knew
+perfectly well what he had come for, she had always known. She had no
+certain knowledge of her own mind; but she knew that all these weeks she
+had been between his influence and her father's, listening to them, as it
+were, pleading with her.  And, curiously, the pleading of each, instead
+of drawing her towards the pleader, had seemed dragging her away from
+him, driving her into the arms of the other.  To the protection of one or
+the other she felt she must go; and it humiliated her to think that in
+all the world there was no other place for her.  The wildness of that one
+night in the old Abbey seemed to have power to govern all her life to
+come.  Why should that one night, that one act, have this uncanny power
+to drive her this way or that, to those arms or these?  Must she, because
+of it, always need protection?  Standing there in the dark it was almost
+as if they had come up behind her, with their pleadings; and a shiver ran
+down her back.  She longed to turn on them, and cry out: "Go away; oh; go
+away!  I don't want either of you; I just want to be left alone!" Then
+something, a moth perhaps, touched her neck.  She gasped and shook
+herself.  How silly!
+
+She heard the back door round the corner of the house opening; a man's
+low voice down in the dark said:
+
+"Who's the young lady that comes out in the fields?"
+
+Another voice--one of the maids--answered:
+
+"The Missis's sister."
+
+"They say she's got a baby."
+
+"Never you mind what she's got."
+
+Noel heard the man's laugh.  It seemed to her the most odious laugh she
+had ever heard.  She thought swiftly and absurdly: 'I'll get away from
+all this.'  The window was only a few feet up.  She got out on to the
+ledge, let herself down, and dropped.  There was a flower-bed below,
+quite soft, with a scent of geranium-leaves and earth.  She brushed
+herself, and went tiptoeing across the gravel and the little front lawn,
+to the gate.  The house was quite dark, quite silent. She walked on, down
+the road.  'Jolly!' she thought.  'Night after night we sleep, and never
+see the nights: sleep until we're called, and never see anything.  If
+they want to catch me they'll have to run.'  And she began running down
+the road in her evening frock and shoes, with nothing on her head.  She
+stopped after going perhaps three hundred yards, by the edge of the wood.
+It was splendidly dark in there, and she groped her way from trunk to
+trunk, with a delicious, half-scared sense of adventure and novelty.  She
+stopped at last by a thin trunk whose bark glimmered faintly.  She felt
+it with her cheek, quite smooth--a birch tree; and, with her arms round
+it, she stood perfectly still.  Wonderfully, magically silent, fresh and
+sweet-scented and dark!  The little tree trembled suddenly within her
+arms, and she heard the low distant rumble, to which she had grown so
+accustomed--the guns, always at work, killing--killing men and killing
+trees, little trees perhaps like this within her arms, little trembling
+trees!  Out there, in this dark night, there would not be a single
+unscarred tree like this smooth quivering thing, no fields of corn, not
+even a bush or a blade of grass, no leaves to rustle and smell sweet, not
+a bird, no little soft-footed night beasts, except the rats; and she
+shuddered, thinking of the Belgian soldier-painter.  Holding the tree
+tight, she squeezed its smooth body against her.  A rush of the same
+helpless, hopeless revolt and sorrow overtook her, which had wrung from
+her that passionate little outburst to her father, the night before he
+went away.  Killed, torn, and bruised; burned, and killed, like Cyril!
+All the young things, like this little tree.
+
+Rumble!  Rumble!  Quiver!  Quiver!  And all else so still, so sweet and
+still, and starry, up there through the leaves....  'I can't bear it!'
+she thought.  She pressed her lips, which the sun had warmed all day,
+against the satiny smooth bark.  But the little tree stood within her
+arms insentient, quivering only to the long rumbles.  With each of those
+dull mutterings, life and love were going out, like the flames of candles
+on a Christmas-tree, blown, one by one.  To her eyes, accustomed by now
+to the darkness in there, the wood seemed slowly to be gathering a sort
+of life, as though it were a great thing watching her; a great thing with
+hundreds of limbs and eyes, and the power of breathing.  The little tree,
+which had seemed so individual and friendly, ceased to be a comfort and
+became a part of the whole living wood, absorbed in itself, and coldly
+watching her, this intruder of the mischievous breed, the fatal breed
+which loosed those rumblings on the earth.  Noel unlocked her arms, and
+recoiled. A bough scraped her neck, some leaves flew against her eyes;
+she stepped aside, tripped over a root, and fell.  A bough had hit her
+too, and she lay a little dazed, quivering at such dark unfriendliness.
+She held her hands up to her face for the mere pleasure of seeing
+something a little less dark; it was childish, and absurd, but she was
+frightened.  The wood seemed to have so many eyes, so many arms, and all
+unfriendly; it seemed waiting to give her other blows, other falls, and
+to guard her within its darkness until--!  She got up, moved a few steps,
+and stood still, she had forgotten from where she had come in.  And
+afraid of moving deeper into the unfriendly wood, she turned slowly
+round, trying to tell which way to go.  It was all just one dark watching
+thing, of limbs on the ground and in the air.  'Any way,' she thought;
+'any way of course will take me out!' And she groped forward, keeping her
+hands up to guard her face.  It was silly, but she could not help the
+sinking, scattered feeling which comes to one bushed, or lost in a fog.
+If the wood had not been so dark, so,--alive!  And for a second she had
+the senseless, terrifying thought of a child: 'What if I never get out!'
+Then she laughed at it, and stood still again, listening.  There was no
+sound to guide her, no sound at all except that faint dull rumble, which
+seemed to come from every side, now. And the trees watched her.  'Ugh!'
+she thought; 'I hate this wood!' She saw it now, its snaky branches, its
+darkness, and great forms, as an abode of giants and witches.  She groped
+and scrambled on again, tripped once more, and fell, hitting her forehead
+against a trunk. The blow dazed and sobered her.  'It's idiotic,' she
+thought; 'I'm a baby!  I'll Just walk very slowly till I reach the edge.
+I know it isn't a large wood!'  She turned deliberately to face each
+direction; solemnly selected that from which the muttering of the guns
+seemed to come, and started again, moving very slowly with her hands
+stretched out.  Something rustled in the undergrowth, quite close; she
+saw a pair of green eyes shining.  Her heart jumped into her mouth.  The
+thing sprang--there was a swish of ferns and twigs, and silence. Noel
+clasped her breast.  A poaching cat!  And again she moved forward.  But
+she had lost direction.  'I'm going round and round,' she thought.  'They
+always do.' And the sinking scattered feeling of the "bushed" clutched at
+her again.  'Shall I call?' she thought. 'I must be near the road.  But
+it's so babyish.' She moved on again. Her foot struck something soft.  A
+voice muttered a thick oath; a hand seized her ankle.  She leaped, and
+dragged and wrenched it free; and, utterly unnerved, she screamed, and
+ran forward blindly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+No one could have so convinced a feeling as Jimmy Fort that he would be a
+'bit of a makeshift' for Noel.  He had spent the weeks after his
+interview with her father obsessed by her image, often saying to himself
+"It won't do.  It's playing it too low down to try and get that child,
+when I know that, but for her trouble, I shouldn't have a chance."  He
+had never had much opinion of his looks, but now he seemed to himself
+absurdly old and dried-up in this desert of a London.  He loathed the
+Office job to which they had put him, and the whole atmosphere of
+officialdom.  Another year of it, and he would shrivel like an old apple!
+He began to look at himself anxiously, taking stock of his physical
+assets now that he had this dream of young beauty.  He would be forty
+next month, and she was nineteen!  But there would be times too when he
+would feel that, with her, he could be as much of a "three-year-old" as
+the youngster she had loved.  Having little hope of winning her, he took
+her "past" but lightly.  Was it not that past which gave him what chance
+he had?  On two things he was determined: He would not trade on her past.
+And if by any chance she took him, he would never show her that he
+remembered that she had one.
+
+After writing to Gratian he had spent the week before his holiday began,
+in an attempt to renew the youthfulness of his appearance, which made him
+feel older, leaner, bonier and browner than ever.  He got up early, rode
+in the rain, took Turkish baths, and did all manner of exercises; neither
+smoked nor drank, and went to bed early, exactly as if he had been going
+to ride a steeplechase.  On the afternoon, when at last he left on that
+terrific pilgrimage, he gazed at his face with a sort of despair, it was
+so lean, and leather-coloured, and he counted almost a dozen grey hairs.
+
+When he reached the bungalow, and was told that she was working in the
+corn-fields, he had for the first time a feeling that Fate was on his
+side.  Such a meeting would be easier than any other!  He had been
+watching her for several minutes before she saw him, with his heart
+beating more violently than it had ever beaten in the trenches; and that
+new feeling of hope stayed with him--all through the greeting, throughout
+supper, and even after she had left them and gone upstairs.  Then, with
+the suddenness of a blind drawn down, it vanished, and he sat on, trying
+to talk, and slowly getting more and more silent and restless.
+
+"Nollie gets so tired, working," Gratian said: He knew she meant it
+kindly but that she should say it at all was ominous.  He got up at last,
+having lost hope of seeing Noel again, conscious too that he had answered
+the last three questions at random.
+
+In the porch George said: "You'll come in to lunch tomorrow, won't you?"
+
+"Oh, thanks, I'm afraid it'll bore you all."
+
+"Not a bit.  Nollie won't be so tired."
+
+Again--so well meant.  They were very kind.  He looked up from the gate,
+trying to make out which her window might be; but all was dark. A little
+way down the road he stopped to light a cigarette; and, leaning against a
+gate, drew the smoke of it deep into his lungs, trying to assuage the
+ache in his heart.  So it was hopeless!  She had taken the first, the
+very first chance, to get away from him!  She knew that he loved her,
+could not help knowing, for he had never been able to keep it out of his
+eyes and voice.  If she had felt ever so little for him, she would not
+have avoided him this first evening. 'I'll go back to that desert,' he
+thought; 'I'm not going to whine and crawl.  I'll go back, and bite on
+it; one must have some pride. Oh, why the hell am I crocked-up like this?
+If only I could get out to France again!' And then Noel's figure bent
+over the falling corn formed before him.  'I'll have one more try,' he
+thought; 'one more--tomorrow somewhere, I'll get to know for certain.
+And if I get what Leila's got I shall deserve it, I suppose.  Poor Leila!
+Where is she?  Back at High Constantia?'  What was that?  A cry--of
+terror--in that wood!  Crossing to the edge, he called "Coo-ee!" and
+stood peering into its darkness.  He heard the sound of bushes being
+brushed aside, and whistled.  A figure came bursting out, almost into his
+arms.
+
+"Hallo!"  he said; "what's up?"
+
+A voice gasped: "Oh!  It's--it's nothing!"
+
+He saw Noel.  She had swayed back, and stood about a yard away.  He could
+dimly see her covering her face with her arms.  Feeling instinctively
+that she wanted to hide her fright, he said quietly:
+
+"What luck!  I was just passing.  It's awfully dark."
+
+"I--I got lost; and a man--caught my foot, in there!"
+
+Moved beyond control by the little gulps and gasps of her breathing, he
+stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders.  He held her lightly,
+without speaking, terrified lest he should wound her pride.
+
+"I-I got in there," she gasped, "and the trees--and I stumbled over a
+roan asleep, and he--"
+
+"Yes, Yes, I know," he murmured, as if to a child.  She had dropped her
+arms now, and he could see her face, with eyes unnaturally dilated, and
+lips quivering.  Then moved again beyond control, he drew her so close
+that he could feel the throbbing of her heart, and put his lips to her
+forehead all wet with heat.  She closed her eyes, gave a little choke,
+and buried her face against his coat.
+
+"There, there, my darling!" he kept on saying.  "There, there, my
+darling!"  He could feel the snuggling of her cheek against his shoulder.
+He had got her--had got her!  He was somehow certain that she would not
+draw back now.  And in the wonder and ecstasy of that thought, all the
+world above her head, the stars in their courses, the wood which had
+frightened her, seemed miracles of beauty and fitness.  By such fortune
+as had never come to man, he had got her!  And he murmured over and over
+again:
+
+"I love you!"  She was resting perfectly quiet against him, while her
+heart ceased gradually to beat so fast.  He could feel her cheek rubbing
+against his coat of Harris tweed.  Suddenly she sniffed at it, and
+whispered:
+
+"It smells good."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+When summer sun has burned all Egypt, the white man looks eagerly each
+day for evening, whose rose-coloured veil melts opalescent into the dun
+drift, of the hills, and iridescent above, into the slowly deepening
+blue.  Pierson stood gazing at the mystery of the desert from under the
+little group of palms and bougainvillea which formed the garden of the
+hospital.  Even-song was in full voice: From the far wing a gramophone
+was grinding out a music-hall ditty; two aeroplanes, wheeling exactly
+like the buzzards of the desert, were letting drip the faint whir of
+their flight; metallic voices drifted from the Arab village; the wheels
+of the water-wells creaked; and every now and then a dry rustle was
+stirred from the palm-leaves by puffs of desert wind.  On either hand an
+old road ran out, whose line could be marked by the little old
+watch-towers of another age.  For how many hundred years had human life
+passed along it to East and West; the brown men and their camels,
+threading that immemorial track over the desert, which ever filled him
+with wonder, so still it was, so wide, so desolate, and every evening so
+beautiful!  He sometimes felt that he could sit for ever looking at it;
+as though its cruel mysterious loveliness were--home; and yet he never
+looked at it without a spasm of homesickness.
+
+So far his new work had brought him no nearer to the hearts of men. Or at
+least he did not feel it had.  Both at the regimental base, and now in
+this hospital--an intermediate stage--waiting for the draft with which he
+would be going into Palestine, all had been very nice to him, friendly,
+and as it were indulgent; so might schoolboys have treated some
+well-intentioned dreamy master, or business men a harmless idealistic
+inventor who came visiting their offices.  He had even the feeling that
+they were glad to have him about, just as they were glad to have their
+mascots and their regimental colours; but of heart-to-heart simple
+comradeship--it seemed they neither wanted it of him nor expected him to
+give it, so that he had a feeling that he would be forward and
+impertinent to offer it.  Moreover, he no longer knew how.  He was very
+lonely.  'When I come face to face with death,' he would think, 'it will
+be different.  Death makes us all brothers.  I may be of real use to them
+then.'
+
+They brought him a letter while he stood there listening to that
+even-song, gazing at the old desert road.
+"DARLING DAD,
+
+"I do hope this will reach you before you move on to Palestine.  You said
+in your last--at the end of September, so I hope you'll just get it.
+There is one great piece of news, which I'm afraid will hurt and trouble
+you; Nollie is married to Jimmy Fort.  They were married down here this
+afternoon, and have just gone up to Town.  They have to find a house of
+course.  She has been very restless, lonely, and unhappy ever since you
+went, and I'm sure it is really for the best: She is quite another
+creature, and simply devoted, headlong.  It's just like Nollie.  She says
+she didn't know what she wanted, up to the last minute.  But now she
+seems as if she could never want anything else.
+
+"Dad dear, Nollie could never have made good by herself.  It isn't her
+nature, and it's much better like this, I feel sure, and so does George.
+Of course it isn't ideal--and one wanted that for her; but she did break
+her wing, and he is so awfully good and devoted to her, though you didn't
+believe it, and perhaps won't, even now.  The great thing is to feel her
+happy again, and know she's safe.  Nollie is capable of great devotion;
+only she must be anchored.  She was drifting all about; and one doesn't
+know what she might have done, in one of her moods.  I do hope you won't
+grieve about it.  She's dreadfully anxious about how you'll feel.  I know
+it will be wretched for you, so far off; but do try and believe it's for
+the best.... She's out of danger; and she was really in a horrible
+position.  It's so good for the baby, too, and only fair to him.  I do
+think one must take things as they are, Dad dear.  It was impossible to
+mend Nollie's wing.  If she were a fighter, and gloried in it, or if she
+were the sort who would 'take the veil'--but she isn't either.  So it is
+all right, Dad.  She's writing to you herself.  I'm sure Leila didn't
+want Jimmy Fort to be unhappy because he couldn't love her; or she would
+never have gone away.  George sends you his love; we are both very well.
+And Nollie is looking splendid still, after her harvest work.  All, all
+my love, Dad dear.  Is there anything we can get, and send you?  Do take
+care of your blessed self, and don't grieve about Nollie.
+"GRATIAN."
+
+A half-sheet of paper fluttered down; he picked it up from among the
+parched fibre of dead palm-leaves.
+"DADDY DARLING,
+
+"I've done it.  Forgive me-I'm so happy.
+
+"Your NOLLIE."
+
+The desert shimmered, the palm-leaves rustled, and Pierson stood trying
+to master the emotion roused in him by those two letters.  He felt no
+anger, not even vexation; he felt no sorrow, but a loneliness so utter
+and complete that he did not know how to bear it.  It seemed as if some
+last link with life had' snapped.  'My girls are happy,' he thought.  'If
+I am not--what does it matter?  If my faith and my convictions mean
+nothing to them--why should they follow?  I must and will not feel
+lonely.  I ought to have the sense of God present, to feel His hand in
+mine.  If I cannot, what use am I--what use to the poor fellows in there,
+what use in all the world?'
+
+An old native on a donkey went by, piping a Soudanese melody on a little
+wooden Arab flute.  Pierson turned back into the hospital humming it.  A
+nurse met him there.
+
+"The poor boy at the end of A ward is sinking fast, sir; I expect he'd
+like to see you,"
+
+He went into A ward, and walked down between the beds to the west window
+end, where two screens had been put, to block off the cot. Another nurse,
+who was sitting beside it, rose at once.
+
+"He's quite conscious," she whispered; "he can still speak a little. He's
+such a dear."  A tear rolled down her cheek, and she passed out behind
+the screens.  Pierson looked down at the boy; perhaps he was twenty, but
+the unshaven down on his cheeks was soft and almost colourless.  His eyes
+were closed.  He breathed regularly, and did not seem in pain; but there
+was about him that which told he was going; something resigned, already
+of the grave.  The window was wide open, covered by mosquito-netting, and
+a tiny line of sunlight, slanting through across the foot of the cot,
+crept slowly backwards over the sheets and the boy's body, shortening as
+it crept.  In the grey whiteness of the walls; the bed, the boy's face,
+just that pale yellow bar of sunlight, and one splash of red and blue
+from a little flag on the wall glowed out.  At this cooler hour, the ward
+behind the screens was almost empty, and few sounds broke the stillness;
+but from without came that intermittent rustle of dry palm-leaves.
+Pierson waited in silence, watching the sun sink.  If the boy might pass
+like this, it would be God's mercy.  Then he saw the boy's eyes open,
+wonderfully clear eyes of the lighted grey which has dark rims; his lips
+moved, and Pierson bent down to hear.
+
+"I'm goin' West, zurr."  The whisper had a little soft burr; the lips
+quivered; a pucker as of a child formed on his face, and passed.
+
+Through Pierson's mind there flashed the thought: 'O God!  Let me be some
+help to him!'
+
+"To God, my dear son!"  he said.
+
+A flicker of humour, of ironic question, passed over the boy's lips.
+
+Terribly moved, Pierson knelt down, and began softly, fervently praying.
+His whispering mingled with the rustle of the palm-leaves, while the bar
+of sunlight crept up the body.  In the boy's smile had been the whole of
+stoic doubt, of stoic acquiescence.  It had met him with an unconscious
+challenge; had seemed to know so much.  Pierson took his hand, which lay
+outside the sheet.  The boy's lips moved, as though in thanks; he drew a
+long feeble breath, as if to suck in the thread of sunlight; and his eyes
+closed.  Pierson bent over the hand. When he looked up the boy was dead.
+He kissed his forehead and went quietly out.
+
+The sun had set, and he walked away from the hospital to a hillock beyond
+the track on the desert's edge, and stood looking at the afterglow.  The
+sun and the boy--together they had gone West, into that wide glowing
+nothingness.
+
+The muezzin call to sunset prayer in the Arab village came to him clear
+and sharp, while he sat there, unutterably lonely.  Why had that smile so
+moved him?  Other death smiles had been like this evening smile on the
+desert hills--a glowing peace, a promise of heaven.  But the boy's smile
+had said: 'Waste no breath on me--you cannot help.  Who knows--who knows?
+I have no hope, no faith; but I am adventuring.  Good-bye!'  Poor boy!
+He had braved all things, and moved out uncertain, yet undaunted!  Was
+that, then, the uttermost truth, was faith a smaller thing?  But from
+that strange notion he. recoiled with horror.  'In faith I have lived, in
+faith I will die!' he thought, 'God helping me!'  And the breeze,
+ruffling the desert sand, blew the grains against the palms of his hands,
+outstretched above the warm earth.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
+#8 in our series by John Galsworthy
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+Title:  Saint's Progress
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+Author:  by John Galsworthy
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+
+SAINTS PROGRESS
+
+by JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+I
+
+Such a day made glad the heart.  All the flags of July were waving;
+the sun and the poppies flaming; white butterflies spiring up and
+twining, and the bees busy on the snapdragons.  The lime-trees were
+coming into flower.  Tall white lilies in the garden beds already
+rivaled the delphiniums; the York and Lancaster roses were full-blown
+round their golden hearts.  There was a gentle breeze, and a swish
+and stir and hum rose and fell above the head of Edward Pierson,
+coming back from his lonely ramble over Tintern Abbey.  He had
+arrived at Kestrel, his brother Robert's home on the bank of the Wye
+only that morning, having stayed at Bath on the way down; and now he
+had got his face burnt in that parti-coloured way peculiar to the
+faces of those who have been too long in London.  As he came along
+the narrow, rather overgrown avenue, the sound of a waltz thrummed
+out on a piano fell on his ears, and he smiled, for music was the
+greatest passion he had.  His dark grizzled hair was pushed back off
+his hot brow, which he fanned with his straw hat.  Though not broad,
+that brow was the broadest part of a narrow oval face whose length
+was increased by a short, dark, pointed beard--a visage such as
+Vandyk might have painted, grave and gentle, but for its bright grey
+eyes, cinder-lashed.  and crow's-footed, and its strange look of not
+seeing what was before it.  He walked quickly, though he was tired
+and hot; tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit, on whose
+black kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled.
+
+Above his brother's house, whose sloping garden ran down to the
+railway line and river, a large room had been built out apart.
+Pierson stood where the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the
+waltz, and the cool whipping of the breeze in the sycamores and
+birches.  A man of fifty, with a sense of beauty, born and bred in
+the country, suffers fearfully from nostalgia during a long unbroken
+spell of London; so that his afternoon in the old Abbey had been
+almost holy.  He had let his senses sink into the sunlit greenery of
+the towering woods opposite; he had watched the spiders and the
+little shining beetles, the flycatchers, and sparrows in the ivy;
+touched the mosses and the lichens; looked the speedwells in the eye;
+dreamed of he knew not what.  A hawk had been wheeling up there above
+the woods, and he had been up there with it in the blue.  He had
+taken a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret of London off
+his soul.
+
+For a year he had been working his parish single-handed--no joke--
+for his curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real
+holiday since the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to
+his brother's home.  He looked down at the garden, and up at the
+trees of the avenue.  Bob had found a perfect retreat after his
+quarter of a century in Ceylon.  Dear old Bob!  And he smiled at the
+thought of his elder brother, whose burnt face and fierce grey
+whiskers somewhat recalled a Bengal tiger; the kindest fellow that
+ever breathed!  Yes, he had found a perfect home for Thirza and
+himself.  And Edward Pierson sighed.  He too had once had a perfect
+home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose death, fifteen years ago,
+still bled a little in his heart.  Their two daughters, Gratian and
+Noel, had not "taken after" her; Gratian was like his own mother, and
+Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded him of his cousin
+Leila, who--poor thing!--had made that sad mess of her life, and now,
+he had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa.  Ah!  What a
+pretty girl she had been
+
+Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the music-
+room.  A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet slipping
+on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly in the
+arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
+circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
+have come in recently, for he did not recognise them.  At the piano
+sat his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face.  But it was
+at his young daughter that Edward Pierson looked.  Her eyes were
+half-closed, her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite
+short, curled into her slim round neck.  Quite cool she seemed,
+though the young man in whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery
+hot; a handsome boy, with blue eyes and a little golden down on the
+upper lip of his sunny red-cheeked face.  Edward Pierson thought:
+'Nice couple!' And had a moment's vision of himself and Leila,
+dancing at that long-ago Cambridge May Week--on her seventeenth
+birthday, he remembered, so that she must have been a year younger
+than Nollie was now!  This would be the young man she had talked of
+in her letters during the last three weeks.  Were they never going to
+stop?
+
+He passed into view of those within, and said:
+
+"Aren't you very hot, Nollie?"
+
+She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and self-
+conscious, and Eve called out:
+
+"It's a bet, Uncle.  They've got to dance me down."
+
+Pierson said mildly:
+
+"A bet?  My dears!"
+
+Noel murmured over her shoulder:
+
+"It's all right, Daddy!"  And the young man gasped:
+
+"She's bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir!"
+
+Pierson sat down, a little hypnotized by the sleepy strumming, the
+slow giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-closed swimming
+eyes of his young daughter, looking at him over her shoulder as she
+went by.  He sat with a smile on his lips.  Nollie was growing up!
+Now that Gratian was married, she had become a great responsibility.
+If only his dear wife had lived!  The smile faded from his lips; he
+looked suddenly very tired.  The struggle, physical and spiritual, he
+had been through, these fifteen years, sometimes weighed him almost
+to the ground: Most men would have married again, but he had always
+felt it would be sacrilege.  Real unions were for ever, even though
+the Church permitted remarriage.
+
+He watched his young daughter with a mixture of aesthetic pleasure
+and perplexity.  Could this be good for her?  To go on dancing
+indefinitely with one young man could that possibly be good for her?
+But they looked very happy; and there was so much in young creatures
+that he did not understand.  Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy,
+seemed sometimes possessed of a little devil.  Edward Pierson was
+naif; attributed those outbursts of demonic possession to the loss of
+her mother when she was such a mite; Gratian, but two years older,
+had never taken a mother's place.  That had been left to himself, and
+he was more or less conscious of failure.
+
+He sat there looking up at her with a sort of whimsical distress.
+And, suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn
+each word a little, she said:
+
+"I'm going to stop!" and, sitting down beside him, took up his hat to
+fan herself.
+
+Eve struck a triumphant chord.  "Hurrah I've won!"
+
+The young man muttered:
+
+"I say, Noel, we weren't half done!"
+
+"I know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren't you, dear?  This is
+Cyril Morland."
+
+Pierson shook the young man's hand.
+
+"Daddy, your nose is burnt!"
+
+"My dear; I know."
+
+"I can give you some white stuff for it.  You have to sleep with it
+on all night.  Uncle and Auntie both use it."
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"Well, Eve says so.  If you're going to bathe, Cyril, look out for
+that current!"
+
+The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration, muttered:
+
+"Rather!"  and went out.
+
+Noel's eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.
+
+"If you're going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you'd better
+hurry up."
+
+"All right.  Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?"
+
+"Lovely; like a great piece of music."
+
+"Daddy always puts everything into music.  You ought to see it by
+moonlight; it's gorgeous then.  All right, Eve; I'm coming."  But she
+did not get up, and when Eve was gone, cuddled her arm through her
+father's and murmured:
+
+"What d'you think of Cyril?"
+
+"My dear, how can I tell?  He seems a nice-looking young man."
+
+"All right, Daddy; don't strain yourself.  It's jolly down here,
+isn't it?"  She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away,
+looking like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round
+her head.
+
+Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a
+lovely thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following,
+went to the piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue
+in E minor.  He had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy
+passion.  It was his way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings;
+a way which never quite failed him.
+
+At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a profession, but
+family tradition had destined him for Holy Orders, and an emotional
+Church revival of that day had caught him in its stream.  He had
+always had private means, and those early years before he married had
+passed happily in an East-End parish.  To have not only opportunity
+but power to help in the lives of the poor had been fascinating;
+simple himself, the simple folk of his parish had taken hold of his
+heart.  When, however, he married Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish
+of his own on the borders of East and West, where he had been ever
+since, even after her death had nearly killed him.  It was better to
+go on where work and all reminded him of one whom he had resolved
+never to forget in other ties.  But he knew that his work had not the
+zest it used to have in her day, or even before her day.  It may well
+be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy Orders twenty-six years,
+quite knew now what he believed.  Everything had become
+circumscribed, and fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to have
+taken fresh stock of his faith, to have gone deep into its roots,
+would have been like taking up the foundations of a still-standing
+house.  Some men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible--for
+which one formula is much the same as another; though Edward Pierson,
+gently dogmatic, undoubtedly preferred his High-Church statement of
+the inexpressible to that of, say, the Zoroastrians.  The subtleties
+of change, the modifications by science, left little sense of
+inconsistency or treason on his soul.  Sensitive, charitable, and
+only combative deep down, he instinctively avoided discussion on
+matters where he might hurt others or they hurt him.  And, since
+explanation was the last thing which o could be expected of one who
+did not base himself on Reason, he had found but scant occasion ever
+to examine anything.  Just as in the old Abbey he had soared off into
+the infinite with the hawk, the beetles, and the grasses, so now, at
+the piano, by these sounds of his own making, he was caught away
+again into emotionalism, without realising that he was in one of his,
+most religious moods.
+
+"Aren't you coming to tea, Edward?"
+
+The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown, had one of
+those faces which remain innocent to the end of the chapter, in spite
+of the complete knowledge of life which appertains to mothers.  In
+days of suffering and anxiety, like these of the great war, Thirza
+Pierson was a valuable person.  Without ever expressing an opinion on
+cosmic matters, she reconfirmed certain cosmic truths, such as that
+though the whole world was at war, there was such a thing as peace;
+that though all the sons of mothers were being killed, there remained
+such a thing as motherhood; that while everybody was living for the
+future, the present still existed.  Her tranquil, tender, matter-of-
+fact busyness, and the dew in her eyes, had been proof against
+twenty-three years of life on a tea-plantation in the hot part of
+Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against the anxiety of having two sons
+at the front, and the confidences of nearly every one she came
+across.  Nothing disturbed her.  She was like a painting of
+"Goodness" by an Old Master, restored by Kate Greenaway.  She never
+went to meet life, but when it came, made the best of it.  This was
+her secret, and Pierson always felt rested in her presence.
+
+He rose, and moved by her side, over the lawn, towards the big tree
+at the bottom of the garden.
+
+"How d'you think Noel is looking, Edward?"
+
+"Very pretty.  That young man, Thirza?"
+
+"Yes; I'm afraid he's over head and ears in love with her."
+
+At the dismayed sound he uttered, she slipped her soft round arm
+within his.  "He's going to the front soon, poor boy!"
+
+"Have they talked to you?"
+
+"He has.  Nollie hasn't yet."
+
+"Nollie is a queer child, Thirza."
+
+"Nollie is a darling, but rather a desperate character, Edward."
+
+Pierson sighed.
+
+In a swing under the tree, where the tea-things were set out, the
+"rather desperate character" was swaying.  "What a picture she is!"
+he said, and sighed again.
+
+The voice of his brother came to them,--high and steamy, as though
+corrupted by the climate of Ceylon:
+
+"You incorrigible dreamy chap, Ted!  We've eaten all the raspberries.
+Eve, give him some jam; he must be dead!  Phew! the heat!  Come on,
+my dear, and pour out his tea.  Hallo, Cyril!  Had a good bathe?  By
+George, wish my head was wet!  Squattez-vous down over there, by
+Nollie; she'll swing, and keep the flies off you."
+
+"Give me a cigarette, Uncle Bob--"
+
+"What!  Your father doesn't--"
+
+"Just for the flies.  You don't mind, Daddy?"
+
+"Not if it's necessary, my dear."
+
+Noel smiled, showing her upper teeth, and her eyes seemed to swim
+under their long lashes.
+
+"It isn't necessary, but it's nice."
+
+"Ah, ha!" said Bob Pierson.  "Here you are, Nollie!"
+
+But Noel shook her head.  At that moment she struck her father as
+startlingly grown-up-so composed, swaying above that young man at her
+feet, whose sunny face was all adoration.  'No longer a child!' he
+thought.  'Dear Nollie!'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+1
+
+Awakened by that daily cruelty, the advent of hot water, Edward
+Pierson lay in his chintz-curtained room, fancying himself back in
+London.  A wild bee hunting honey from the bowl of flowers on the
+window-sill, and the scent of sweetbrier, shattered that illusion.
+He drew the curtain, and, kneeling on the window-seat thrust his head
+out into the morning.  The air was intoxicatingly sweet.  Haze clung
+over the river and the woods beyond; the lawn sparkled with dew, and
+two wagtails strutted in the dewy sunshine.  'Thank God for
+loveliness!' he thought.  'Those poor boys at the front!'  And
+kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he began to say his prayers.
+The same feeling which made him beautify his church, use vestments,
+good music, and incense, filled him now.  God was in the loveliness
+of His world, as well as in His churches.  One could worship Him in a
+grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a high hill, by the
+banks of a bright river.  God was in the rustle of the leaves, and
+the hum of a bee, in the dew on the grass, and the scent of flowers;
+God was in everything!  And he added to his usual prayer this
+whisper: "I give Thee thanks for my senses, O Lord.  In all of us,
+keep them bright, and grateful for beauty."  Then he remained
+motionless, prey to a sort of happy yearning very near, to
+melancholy.  Great beauty ever had that effect on him.  One could
+capture so little of it--could never enjoy it enough!  Who was it had
+said not long ago: "Love of beauty is really only the sex instinct,
+which nothing but complete union satisfies."  Ah!  yes, George--
+Gratian's husband.  George Laird!  And a little frown came between
+his brows, as though at some thorn in the flesh.  Poor George!  But
+then, all doctors were materialists at heart--splendid fellows,
+though; a fine fellow, George, working himself to death out there in
+France.  One must not take them too seriously.  He plucked a bit of
+sweetbrier and put it to his nose, which still retained the shine of
+that bleaching ointment Noel had insisted on his using.  The sweet
+smell of those little rough leaves stirred up an acute aching.  He
+dropped them, and drew back.  No longings, no melancholy; one ought
+to be out, this beautiful morning!
+
+It was Sunday; but he had not to take three Services and preach at
+least one sermon; this day of rest was really to be his own, for
+once.  It was almost disconcerting; he had so long felt like the cab
+horse who could not be taken out of the shafts lest he should fall
+down.  He dressed with extraordinary deliberation, and had not quite
+finished when there came a knock on his door, and Noel's voice said:
+"Can I come in, Daddy?"
+
+In her flax-blue frock, with a Gloire de Dijon rose pinned where it
+met on her faintly browned neck, she seemed to her father a perfect
+vision of freshness.
+
+"Here's a letter from Gratian; George has been sent home ill, and
+he's gone to our house.  She's got leave from her hospital to come
+home and nurse him."
+
+Pierson read the letter.  "Poor George!"
+
+"When are you going to let me be a nurse, Daddy?"
+
+"We must wait till you're eighteen, Nollie."
+
+"I could easily say I was.  It's only a month; and I look much more."
+
+Pierson smiled.
+
+"Don't I?"
+
+"You might be anything from fifteen to twenty-five, my dear,
+according as you behave."
+
+"I want to go out as near the front as possible."
+
+Her head was poised so that the sunlight framed her face, which was
+rather broad--the brow rather too broad--under the waving light-brown
+hair, the nose short and indeterminate; cheeks still round from
+youth, almost waxen-pale, and faintly hollowed under the eyes.  It
+was her lips, dainty yet loving, and above all her grey eyes, big and
+dreamily alive, which made her a swan.  He could not imagine her in
+nurse's garb.
+
+"This is new, isn't it, Nollie?"
+
+"Cyril Morland's sisters are both out; and he'll be going soon.
+Everybody goes."
+
+"Gratian hasn't got out yet: It takes a long time to get trained."
+
+"I know; all the more reason to begin."
+
+She got up, looked at him, looked at her hands, seemed about to
+speak, but did not.  A little colour had come into her cheeks.  Then,
+obviously making conversation, she asked:
+
+"Are you going to church?  It's worth anything to hear Uncle Bob read
+the Lessons, especially when he loses his place.  No; you're not to
+put on your long coat till just before church time.  I won't have
+it!"
+
+Obediently Pierson resigned his long coat.
+
+"Now, you see, you can have my rose.  Your nose is better!"  She
+kissed his nose, and transferred her rose to the buttonhole of his
+short coat.  "That's all.  Come along!"  And with her arm through
+his, they went down.  But he knew she had come to say something which
+she had not said.
+
+
+
+2
+
+Bob Pierson, in virtue of greater wealth than the rest of the
+congregation, always read the Lessons, in his high steamy voice, his
+breathing never adjusted to the length of any period.  The
+congregation, accustomed, heard nothing peculiar; he was the
+necessary gentry with the necessary finger in the pie.  It was his
+own family whom he perturbed.  In the second row, Noel, staring
+solemnly at the profile of her father in the front row, was thinking:
+'Poor Daddy!  His eyes look as if they were coming out.  Oh, Daddy!
+Smile! or it'll hurt you!'  Young Morland beside her, rigid in his
+tunic, was thinking: 'She isn't thinking of me!'  And just then her
+little finger crooked into his.  Edward Pierson was thinking: 'Oh! My
+dear old Bob! Oh!'  And, beside him, Thirza thought: 'Poor dear Ted I
+how nice for him to be having a complete rest!  I must make him eat
+he's so thin!'  And Eve was thinking: 'Oh, Father! Mercy!'  But Bob
+Pierson was thinking: 'Cheer oh!  Only another three verses!'  Noel's
+little finger unhooked itself, but her eyes stole round to young
+Morland's eyes, and there was a light in them which lingered through
+the singing and the prayers.  At last, in the reverential rustle of
+the settling congregation, a surpliced figure mounted the pulpit.
+
+"I come not to bring Peace, but a sword."
+
+Pierson looked up.  He felt deep restfulness.  There was a pleasant
+light in this church; the hum of a country bluebottle made all the
+difference to the quality of silence.  No critical thought stirred
+within him, nor any excitement.  He was thinking: 'Now I shall hear
+something for my good; a fine text; when did I preach from it last?'
+Turned a little away from the others, he saw nothing but the
+preacher's homely face up there above the carved oak; it was so long
+since he had been preached to, so long since he had had a rest!  The
+words came forth, dropped on his forehead, penetrated, met something
+which absorbed them, and disappeared.  'A good plain sermon!' he
+thought.  'I suppose I'm stale; I don't seem--'  "Let us not, dear
+brethren," droned the preacher's earnest voice, "think that our dear
+Lord, in saying that He brought a sword, referred to a physical
+sword.  It was the sword of the spirit to which He was undoubtedly
+referring, that bright sword of the spirit which in all ages has
+cleaved its way through the fetters imposed on men themselves by
+their own desires, imposed by men on other men in gratification of
+their ambitions, as we have had so striking an example in the
+invasion by our cruel enemies of a little neighbouring country which
+had done them no harm.  Dear brethren, we may all bring swords."
+Pierson's chin jerked; he raised his hand quickly and passed it over
+his face.  'All bring swords,' he thought, 'swords--I wasn't asleep--
+surely!'  "But let us be sure that our swords are bright; bright with
+hope, and bright with faith, that we may see them flashing among the
+carnal desires of this mortal life, carving a path for us towards
+that heavenly kingdom where alone is peace, perfect peace.  Let us
+pray."
+
+Pierson did not shut his eyes; he opened them as he fell on his
+knees.  In the seat behind, Noel and young Morland had also fallen on
+their knees their faces covered each with a single hand; but her left
+hand and his right hung at their sides.  They prayed a little longer
+than any others and, on rising, sang the hymn a little louder.
+
+
+
+3
+
+No paper came on Sundays--not even the local paper, which had so long
+and so nobly done its bit with headlines to win the war.  No news
+whatever came, of men blown up, to enliven the hush of the hot July
+afternoon, or the sense of drugging--which followed Aunt Thirza's
+Sunday lunch.  Some slept, some thought they were awake; but Noel and
+young Morland walked upward through the woods towards a high common
+of heath and furze, crowned by what was known as Kestrel rocks.
+Between these two young people no actual word of love had yet been
+spoken.  Their lovering had advanced by glance and touch alone.
+
+Young Morland was a school and college friend of the two Pierson boys
+now at the front.  He had no home of his own, for his parents were
+dead; and this was not his first visit to Kestrel.  Arriving three
+weeks ago, for his final leave before he should go out, he had found
+a girl sitting in a little wagonette outside the station, and had
+known his fate at once.  But who knows when Noel fell in love?  She
+was--one supposes--just ready for that sensation.  For the last two
+years she had been at one of those high-class finishing
+establishments where, in spite of the healthy curriculum, perhaps
+because of it, there is ever an undercurrent of interest in the
+opposing sex; and not even the gravest efforts to eliminate instinct
+are quite successful.  The disappearance of every young male thing
+into the maw of the military machine put a premium on instinct.  The
+thoughts of Noel and her school companions were turned, perforce, to
+that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they could afford to
+regard as of secondary interest.  Love and Marriage and Motherhood,
+fixed as the lot of women by the countless ages, were threatened for
+these young creatures.  They not unnaturally pursued what they felt
+to be receding.
+
+When young Morland showed, by following her about with his eyes, what
+was happening to him, Noel was pleased.  From being pleased, she
+became a little excited; from being excited she became dreamy.  Then,
+about a week before her father's arrival, she secretly began to
+follow the young man about with her eyes; became capricious too, and
+a little cruel.  If there had been another young man to favour--but
+there was not; and she favoured Uncle Bob's red setter.  Cyril
+Morland grew desperate.  During those three days the demon her father
+dreaded certainly possessed her.  And then, one evening, while they
+walked back together from the hay-fields, she gave him a sidelong
+glance; and he gasped out: "Oh! Noel, what have I done?"  She caught
+his hand, and gave it a quick squeeze.  What a change!  What blissful
+alteration ever since!
+
+Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up
+to put things to the touch.  Noel too mounted silently, thinking: 'I
+will kiss him if he kisses me!'  Eagerness, and a sort of languor,
+were running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her
+shady hat.  Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage;
+made the greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive;
+flashed on beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground
+in little runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the
+beech mast, the ferns; butterflies chased each other in that
+sunlight, and myriads of ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by
+a frenzy of life.  The whole wood seemed possessed, as if the
+sunshine were a happy Being which had come to dwell therein.  At a
+half-way spot, where the trees opened and they could see, far below
+them, the gleam of the river, she sat down on the bole of a beech-
+tree, and young Morland stood looking at her.  Why should one face
+and not an other, this voice and not that, make a heart beat; why
+should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and a touch from another
+awaken nothing?  He knelt down and pressed his lips to her foot.  Her
+eyes grew very bright; but she got up and ran on--she had not
+expected him to kiss her foot.  She heard him hurrying after her, and
+stopped, leaning against a birch trunk.  He rushed to her, and,
+without a word spoken, his lips were on her lips.  The moment in
+life, which no words can render, had come for them.  They had found
+their enchanted spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their
+arms round each other, while the happy Being of the wood watched.  A
+marvellous speeder-up of Love is War.  What might have taken six
+months, was thus accomplished in three weeks.
+
+A short hour passed, then Noel said:
+
+"I must tell Daddy, Cyril.  I meant to tell him something this
+morning, only I thought I'd better wait, in case you didn't."
+
+Morland answered: "Oh, Noel!"  It was the staple of his conversation
+while they sat there.
+
+Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:
+
+"I shall go off my chump if we're not married before I go out."
+
+"How long does it take?"
+
+"No time, if we hurry up.  I've got six days before I rejoin, and
+perhaps the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him."
+
+"Poor Daddy!  Kiss me again; a long one."
+
+When the long one was over, she said:
+
+"Then I can come and be near you till you go out?  Oh, Cyril!"
+
+"Oh, Noel!"
+
+"Perhaps you won't go so soon.  Don't go if you can help it!"
+
+"Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan't be able."
+
+"No, of ,course not; I know."
+
+Young Morland clutched his hair.  "Everyone's in the same boat, but
+it can't last for ever; and now we're engaged we can be together all
+the time till I've got the licence or whatever it is.  And then--!"
+
+"Daddy won't like our not being married in a church; but I don't
+care!"
+
+Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on her
+cheeks, young Morland thought:
+
+'My God! I'm in heaven!'
+
+Another short hour passed before she freed herself.
+
+"We must go, Cyril.  Kiss me once more!"
+
+It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down.
+
+
+
+4
+
+Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where he had read
+the Lessons, saw them in the distance, and compressed his lips.
+Their long absence had vexed him.  What ought he to do?  In the
+presence of Love's young dream, he felt strange and helpless.  That
+night, when he opened the door of his room, he saw Noel on the
+window-seat, in her dressing-gown, with the moonlight streaming in on
+her.
+
+"Don't light up, Daddy; I've got something to say."
+
+She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned it
+over.
+
+"I'm engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week."
+
+It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs; and at the
+sound he made she hurried on:
+
+"You see, we must be; he may be going out any day."
+
+In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind of
+reason in her words.  But he said:
+
+"My dear, you're only a child.  Marriage is the most serious thing in
+life; you've only known him three weeks."
+
+"I know all that, Daddy" her voice sounded so ridiculously calm; "but
+we can't afford to wait.  He might never come back, you see, and then
+I should have missed him."
+
+"But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only be much
+worse for you."
+
+She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it
+against her heart.  But still her voice was calm:
+
+"No; much better, Daddy; you think I don't know my own feelings, but
+I do,"'
+
+The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.
+
+"Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is
+wanted.  Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the
+same things."
+
+"Yes, I know; but we do."
+
+"You can't tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks."
+
+"But these aren't ordinary times, are they?  People have to do things
+in a hurry.  Oh, Daddy!  Be an angel!  Mother would have understood,
+and let me, I know!"
+
+Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his
+loss, from reminder of the poor substitute he was.
+
+"Look, Nollie!"  he said.  "After all these years since she left us,
+I'm as lonely as ever, because we were really one.  If you marry this
+young man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can in
+such a little time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it
+turn out, after all, nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if
+anything happens to him before you've had any real married life
+together, you'll have a much greater grief and sense of loss to put
+up with than if you simply stay engaged till after the war.  Besides,
+my child, you're much too young."
+
+She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm.  "But I must!"
+
+He bit his lips, and said sharply: "You can't, Nollie!"
+
+She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone.  With the closing
+of the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took its place.  Poor
+child!  What to do with this wayward chicken just out of the egg, and
+wanting to be full-fledged at once?  The thought that she would be
+lying miserable, crying, perhaps, beset him so that he went out into
+the passage and tapped on her door.  Getting no answer, he went in.
+It was dark but for a streak of moonlight, and in that he saw her,
+lying on her bed, face down; and stealing up laid his hand on her
+head.  She did not move; and, stroking her hair, he said gently:
+
+"Nollie dear, I didn't mean to be harsh.  If I were your mother, I
+should know how to make you see, but I'm only an old bumble-daddy."
+
+She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on the bed.
+He could see her eyes shining.  But she did not speak; she seemed to
+know that in silence was her strength.
+
+He said with a sort of despair:
+
+"You must let me talk it over with your aunt.  She has a lot of good
+sense."
+
+"Yes."
+
+He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.
+
+"Good night, my dear; don't cry.  Promise me!"
+
+She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on his
+forehead, and went away a little comforted.
+
+But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the night,
+to the emptiness and silence; each minute so much lost of the little,
+little time left, that she might have been with him.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he had
+thought himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.
+
+After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him more
+forcibly than the needlessness of his words: "Don't cry, Nollie!"
+for he had realised with uneasiness that she had not been near
+crying.  No; there was in her some emotion very different from the
+tearful.  He kept seeing her cross-legged figure on the bed in that
+dim light; tense, enigmatic, almost Chinese; kept feeling the
+feverish touch of her lips.  A good girlish burst of tears would have
+done her good, and been a guarantee.  He had the uncomfortable
+conviction that his refusal had passed her by, as if unspoken.  And,
+since he could not go and make music at that time of night, he had
+ended on his knees, in a long search for guidance, which was not
+vouchsafed him.
+
+The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told that
+for the last hour they had been sitting with their arms round each
+other, watching the river flow by, talking but little, through lips
+too busy.  Pierson pursued his sister-in-law to the room where she
+did her flowers every morning.  He watched her for a minute dividing
+ramblers from pansies, cornflowers from sweet peas, before he said:
+
+"I'm very troubled, Thirza.  Nollie came to me last night.  Imagine!
+They want to get married--those two!"
+
+Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her cheeks
+grew a little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder.  She took up a
+sprig of mignonette, and said placidly:
+
+"Oh, my dear!"
+
+"Think of it, Thirza--that child!  Why, it's only a year or two since
+she used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with her hair."
+
+Thirza went on arranging her flowers.
+
+"Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her age.  And
+real married life wouldn't begin for them till after--if it ever
+began."
+
+Pierson experienced a sort of shock.  His sister-in-law's words
+seemed criminally light-hearted.
+
+"But--but--" he stammered; "the union, Thirza!  Who can tell what
+will happen before they come together again!"
+
+She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:
+
+"I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in these
+days, of what Noel might do.  I told you there's a streak of
+desperation in her."
+
+"Noel will obey me."
+
+"I wonder!  There are so many of these war marriages now."
+
+Pierson turned away.
+
+"I think they're dreadful.  What do they mean--Just a momentary
+gratification of passion.  They might just as well not be."
+
+"They mean pensions, as a rule," said Thirza calmly.
+
+"Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn't affect this case.  I
+can't bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a moment
+which may come to nothing, or may turn out the beginning of an
+unhappy marriage.  Who is this boy--what is he?  I know nothing of
+him.  How can I give her to him--it's impossible!  If they had been
+engaged some time and I knew something of him--yes, perhaps; even at
+her age.  But this hasty passionateness--it isn't right, it isn't
+decent.  I don't understand, I really don't--how a child like that
+can want it.  The fact is, she doesn't know what she's asking, poor
+little Nollie.  She can't know the nature of marriage, and she can't
+realise its sacredness.  If only her mother were here!  Talk to her,
+Thirza; you can say things that I can't!"
+
+Thirza looked after the retreating figure.  In spite of his cloth,
+perhaps a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child who had
+come to show her his sore finger.  And, having finished the
+arrangement of her flowers, she went out to find her niece.  She had
+not far to go; for Noel was standing in the hall, quite evidently
+lying in wait.  They went out together to the avenue.
+
+The girl began at once:
+
+"It isn't any use talking to me, Auntie; Cyril is going to get a
+license."
+
+"Oh!  So you've made up your minds?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Do you think that's fair by me, Nollie?  Should I have asked him
+here if I'd thought this was going to happen?"
+
+Noel only smiled.
+
+"Have you the least idea what marriage means?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Of course.  Gratian is married.  Besides, at school--"
+
+"Your father is dead against it.  This is a sad thing for him.  He's
+a perfect saint, and you oughtn't to hurt him.  Can't you wait, at
+least till Cyril's next leave?"
+
+"He might never have one, you see."
+
+The heart of her whose boys were out there too, and might also never
+have another leave; could not but be responsive to those words.  She
+looked at her niece, and a dim appreciation of this revolt of life
+menaced by death, of youth threatened with extinction, stirred in
+her.  Noel's teeth were clenched, her lips drawn back, and she was
+staring in front of her.
+
+"Daddy oughtn't to mind.  Old people haven't to fight, and get
+killed; they oughtn't to mind us taking what we can.  They've had
+their good time."
+
+It was such a just little speech that Thirza answered:
+
+"Yes; perhaps he hasn't quite realised that."
+
+"I want to make sure of Cyril, Auntie; I want everything I can have
+with him while there's the chance.  I don't think it's much to ask,
+when perhaps I'll never have any more of him again."
+
+Thirza slipped her hand through the girl's arm.
+
+"I understand," she said.  "Only, Nollie, suppose, when all this is
+over, and we breathe and live naturally once more, you found you'd
+made a mistake?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "I haven't."
+
+"We all think that, my dear; but thousands of mistakes are made by
+people who no more dream they're making them than you do now; and
+then it's a very horrible business.  It would be especially horrible
+for you; your father believes heart and soul in marriage being for
+ever."
+
+"Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes, you
+know.  Besides, I'm not making a mistake, Auntie! I love Cyril ever
+so."
+
+Thirza gave her waist a squeeze.
+
+"You mustn't make a mistake.  We love you too much, Nollie.  I wish
+we had Gratian here."
+
+"Gratian would back me up," said Noel; "she knows what the war is.
+And you ought to, Auntie.  If Rex or Harry wanted to be married, I'm
+sure you'd never oppose them.  And they're no older than Cyril.  You
+must understand what it means to me Auntie dear, to feel that we
+belong to each other properly before--before it all begins for him,
+and--and there may be no more.  Daddy doesn't realise.  I know he's
+awfully good, but--he's forgotten."
+
+"My dear, I think he remembers only too well.  He was desperately
+attached to your mother."
+
+Noel clenched her hands.
+
+"Was he?  Well, so am I to Cyril, and he to me.  We wouldn't be
+unreasonable if it wasn't--wasn't necessary.  Talk, to Cyril, Auntie;
+then you'll understand.  There he is; only, don't keep him long,
+because I want him.  Oh! Auntie; I want him so badly!"
+
+She turned; and slipped back into the house; and Thirza, conscious of
+having been decoyed to this young man, who stood there with his arms
+folded, like Napoleon before a battle, smiled and said:
+
+"Well, Cyril, so you've betrayed me!"
+
+Even in speaking she was conscious of the really momentous change in
+this sunburnt, blue-eyed, lazily impudent youth since the day he
+arrived, three weeks ago, in their little wagonette.  He took her
+arm, just as Noel had, and made her sit down beside him on the rustic
+bench, where he had evidently been told to wait.
+
+"You see, Mrs.  Pierson," he said, "it's not as if Noel were an
+ordinary girl in an ordinary time, is it?  Noel is the sort of girl
+one would knock one's brains out for; and to send me out there
+knowing that I could have been married to her and wasn't, will take
+all the heart out of me.  Of course I mean to come back, but chaps do
+get knocked over, and I think it's cruel that we can't take what we
+can while we can.  Besides, I've got money; and that would be hers
+anyway.  So, do be a darling, won't you?"  He put his arm round her
+waist, just as if he had been her son, and her heart, which wanted
+her own boys so badly, felt warmed within her.
+
+"You see, I don't know Mr. Pierson, but he seems awfully gentle and
+jolly, and if he could see into me he wouldn't mind, I know.  We
+don't mind risking our lives and all that, but we do think we ought
+to have the run of them while we're alive.  I'll give him my dying
+oath or anything, that I could never change towards Noel, and she'll
+do the same.  Oh!  Mrs.  Pierson, do be a jolly brick, and put in a
+word for me, quick!  We've got so few days!"
+
+"But, my dear boy," said Thirza feebly, "do you think it's fair to
+such a child as Noel?"
+
+"Yes, I do.  You don't understand; she's simply had to grow up.  She
+is grown-up--all in this week; she's quite as old as I am, really--
+and I'm twenty-two.  And you know it's going to be--it's got to be
+--a young world, from now on; people will begin doing things much
+earlier.  What's the use of pretending it's like what it was, and
+being cautious, and all that?  If I'm going to be killed, I think
+we've got a right to be married first; and if I'm not, then what does
+it matter?"
+
+"You've known each other twenty-one days, Cyril."
+
+"No; twenty-one years!  Every day's a year when   Oh!  Mrs.  Pierson,
+this isn't like you, is it?  You never go to meet trouble, do you?"
+
+At that shrewd remark, Thirza put her hand on the hand which still
+clasped her waist, and pressed it closer.
+
+"Well, my dear," she said softly, "we must see what can be done."
+
+Cyril Morland kissed her cheek.  "I will bless you for ever," he
+said.  "I haven't got any people, you know, except my two sisters."
+
+And something like tears started up on Thirza's eyelashes.  They
+seemed to her like the babes in the wood--those two!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+In the dining-room of her father's house in that old London Square
+between East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor garb of a nurse,
+was writing a telegram: "Reverend Edward Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern,
+Monmouthshire.  George terribly ill.  Please come if you can.
+Gratian."  Giving it to a maid, she took off her long coat and sat
+down for a moment.  She had been travelling all night, after a full
+day's work, and had only just arrived, to find her husband between
+life and death.  She was very different from Noel; not quite so tall,
+but of a stronger build; with dark chestnut-coloured hair, clear
+hazel eyes, and a broad brow.  The expression of her face was
+earnest, with a sort of constant spiritual enquiry; and a singularly
+truthful look: She was just twenty; and of the year that she had been
+married, had only spent six weeks with her husband; they had not even
+a house of their own as yet.  After resting five minutes, she passed
+her hand vigorously over her face, threw back her head, and walked up
+stairs to the room where he lay.  He was not conscious, and there was
+nothing to be done but sit and watch him.
+
+'If he dies,' she thought, 'I shall hate God for His cruelty.  I have
+had six weeks with George; some people have sixty years.' She fixed
+her eyes on his face, short and broad, with bumps of "observation" on
+the brows.  He had been sunburnt.  The dark lashes of his closed eyes
+lay on deathly yellow cheeks; his thick hair grew rather low on his
+broad forehead.  The lips were just open and showed strong white
+teeth.  He had a little clipped moustache, and hair had grown on his
+clean-cut jaw.  His pyjama jacket had fallen open.  Gratian drew it
+close.  It was curiously still, for a London day, though the window
+was wide open.  Anything to break this heavy stupor, which was not
+only George's, but her own, and the very world's!  The cruelty of it
+--when she might be going to lose him for ever, in a few hours or
+days!  She thought of their last parting.  It had not been very
+loving, had come too soon after one of those arguments they were
+inclined to have, in which they could not as yet disagree with
+suavity.  George had said there was no future life for the
+individual; she had maintained there was.  They had grown hot and
+impatient.  Even in the cab on the way to his train they had pursued
+the wretched discussion, and the last kiss had been from lips on lips
+yet warm from disagreement.
+
+Ever since, as if in compunction, she had been wavering towards his
+point of view; and now, when he was perhaps to solve the problem--
+find out for certain--she had come to feel that if he died, she would
+never see him after.  It was cruel that such a blight should have
+come on her belief at this, of all moments.
+
+She laid her hand on his.  It was warm, felt strong, although so
+motionless and helpless.  George was so vigorous, so alive, and
+strong-willed; it seemed impossible that life might be going to play
+him false.  She recalled the unflinching look of his steel-bright
+eyes, his deep, queerly vibrating voice, which had no trace of self-
+consciousness or pretence.  She slipped her hand on to his heart, and
+began very slowly, gently rubbing it.  He, as doctor, and she, as
+nurse, had both seen so much of death these last two years!  Yet it
+seemed suddenly as if she had never seen death, and that the young
+faces she had seen, empty and white, in the hospital wards, had just
+been a show.  Death would appear to her for the first time, if this
+face which she loved were to be drained for ever of light and colour
+and movement and meaning.
+
+A humblebee from the Square Garden boomed in and buzzed idly round
+the room.  She caught her breath in a little sob....
+
+
+
+2
+
+Pierson received that telegram at midday, returning from a lonely
+walk after his talk with Thirza.  Coming from Gratian so self-
+reliant--it meant the worst.  He prepared at once to catch the next
+train.  Noel was out, no one knew where: so with a sick feeling he
+wrote:
+
+"DEAREST CHILD,
+
+"I am going up to Gratian; poor George is desperately ill.  If it
+goes badly you should be with your sister.  I will wire to-morrow
+morning early.  I leave you in your aunt's hands, my dear.  Be
+reasonable and patient.  God bless you.
+
+"Your devoted
+
+'DADDY."
+
+
+He was alone in his third-class compartment, and, leaning forward,
+watched the ruined Abbey across the river till it was out of sight.
+Those old monks had lived in an age surely not so sad as this.  They
+must have had peaceful lives, remote down here, in days when the
+Church was great and lovely, and men laid down their lives for their
+belief in her, and built everlasting fanes to the glory of God!  What
+a change to this age of rush and hurry, of science, trade, material
+profit, and this terrible war!  He tried to read his paper, but it
+was full of horrors and hate.  'When will it end?' he thought.  And
+the train with its rhythmic jolting seemed grinding out the answer:
+"Never--never!"
+
+At Chepstow a soldier got in, followed by a woman with a very flushed
+face and curious, swimmy eyes; her hair was in disorder, and her lip
+bleeding, as if she had bitten it through.  The soldier, too, looked
+strained and desperate.  They sat down, far apart, on the seat
+opposite.  Pierson, feeling that he was in their way, tried to hide
+himself behind his paper; when he looked again, the soldier had taken
+off his tunic and cap and was leaning out of the window.  The woman,
+on the seat's edge, sniffing and wiping her face, met his glance with
+resentful eyes, then, getting up, she pulled the man's sleeve.
+
+"Sit dahn; don't 'ang out o' there."
+
+The soldier flung himself back on the seat and looked at Pierson.
+
+"The wife an' me's 'ad a bit of a row," he said companionably.  "Gits
+on me nerves; I'm not used to it.  She was in a raid, and 'er nerves
+are all gone funny; ain't they, old girl?  Makes me feel me 'ead.
+I've been wounded there, you know; can't stand much now.  I might do
+somethin' if she was to go on like this for long."
+
+Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resentfully.
+The soldier held out a packet of cigarettes.  "Take one," he said.
+Pierson took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted him to speak,
+murmured: "We all have these troubles with those we're fond of; the
+fonder we are of people, the more we feel them, don't we?  I had one
+with my daughter last night."
+
+"Ah!"  said the soldier; "that's right.  The wife and me'll make it
+up.  'Ere, come orf it, old girl."
+
+>From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds of
+reconciliation--reproaches because someone had been offered a drink,
+kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse.  When they got out at
+Bristol the soldier shook his hand warmly, but the woman still gave
+him her resentful stare, and he thought dreamily: 'The war!  How it
+affects everyone!'  His carriage was invaded by a swarm of soldiers,
+and the rest of the journey was passed in making himself small.  When
+at last he reached home, Gratian met him in the hall.
+
+"Just the same.  The doctor says we shall know in a few hours now.
+How sweet of you to come!  You must be tired, in this heat.  It was
+dreadful to spoil your holiday."
+
+"My dear!  As if   May I go up and see him?"
+
+George Laird was still lying in that stupor.  And Pierson stood
+gazing down at him compassionately.  Like most parsons, he had a wide
+acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellowship
+with death.  Death!  The commonest thing in the world, now--commoner
+than life!  This young doctor must have seen many die in these last
+two years, saved many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift
+a finger to save himself.  Pierson looked at his daughter; what a
+strong, promising young couple they were!  And putting his arm round
+her, he led her away to the sofa, whence they could see the sick man.
+
+"If he dies, Dad--" she whispered.
+
+"He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as ever our
+soldiers do."
+
+"I know; but that's no comfort.  I've been watching here all day;
+I've been thinking; men will be just as brutal afterwards--more
+brutal.  The world will go on the same."
+
+"We must hope not.  Shall we pray, Gracie?"
+
+Gratian shook her head.
+
+"If I could believe that the world--if I could believe anything!
+I've lost the power, Dad; I don't even believe in a future life.  If
+George dies, we shall never meet again."
+
+Pierson stared at her without a word.
+
+Gratian went on: "The last time we talked, I was angry with George
+because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want belief, I
+feel that he was right."
+
+Pierson said tremulously:
+
+"No, no, my dear; it's only that you're overwrought.  God in His
+mercy will give you back belief."
+
+"There is no God, Dad"
+
+"My darling child, what are you saying?"
+
+"No God who can help us; I feel it.  If there were any God who could
+take part in our lives, alter anything without our will, knew or
+cared what we did--He wouldn't let the world go on as it does."
+
+"But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable.  We dare not say He
+should not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He is
+working."
+
+"Then He's no good to us.  It's the same as if He didn't exist.  Why
+should I pray for George's life to One whose ends are just His own?
+I know George oughtn't to die.  If there's a God who can help, it
+will be a wicked shame if George dies; if there's a God who can help,
+it's a wicked shame when babies die, and all these millions of poor
+boys.  I would rather think there's no God than a helpless or a
+wicked God--"
+
+Her father had suddenly thrown up his hands to his ears.  She moved
+closer, and put her arm round him.
+
+"Dad dear, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to hurt you.
+
+Pierson pressed her face down to his shoulder; and said in a dull
+voice:
+
+"What do you think would have happened to me, Gracie, if I had lost
+belief when your mother died?  I have never lost belief.  Pray God I
+never shall!"
+
+Gratian murmured:
+
+"George would not wish me to pretend I believe--he would want me to
+be honest.  If I'm not honest, I shan't deserve that he should live.
+I don't believe, and I can't pray."
+
+"My darling, you're overtired."
+
+"No, Dad."  She raised her head from his shoulder and, clasping her
+hands round her knees, looked straight before her.  "We can only help
+ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel."
+
+Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could say
+would touch her just then.  The sick man's face was hardly visible
+now in the twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed.  She stood
+looking down at him a long time.
+
+"Go and rest, Dad; the doctor's coming again at eleven.  I'll call
+you if I want anything.  I shall lie down a little, beside him."
+
+Pierson kissed her, and went out.  To lie there beside him would be
+the greatest comfort she could get.  He went to the bare narrow
+little room he had occupied ever since his wife died; and, taking off
+his boots, walked up and down, with a feeling of almost crushing
+loneliness.  Both his daughters in such trouble, and he of no use to
+them!  It was as if Life were pushing him utterly aside!  He felt
+confused, helpless, bewildered.  Surely if Gratian loved George, she
+had not left God's side, whatever she might say.  Then, conscious of
+the profound heresy of this thought, he stood still at the open
+window.
+
+Earthly love--heavenly love; was there any analogy between them?
+
+>From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves
+answered; and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly tale
+of murder.
+
+
+
+3
+
+George Laird passed the crisis of his illness that night, and in the
+morning was pronounced out of danger.  He had a splendid
+constitution, and--Scotsman on his father's side--a fighting
+character.  He came back to life very weak, but avid of recovery; and
+his first words were: "I've been hanging over the edge, Gracie!"
+
+A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch, the
+merest fraction of an inch more, and over he would have gone.  Deuced
+rum sensation!  But not so horrible as it would have been in real
+life.  With the slip of that last inch he felt he would have passed
+at once into oblivion, without the long horror of a fall.  So this
+was what it was for all the poor fellows he had seen slip in the past
+two years!  Mercifully, at the end, one was not alive enough to be
+conscious of what one was leaving, not alive enough even to care.  If
+he had been able to take in the presence of his young wife, able to
+realise that he was looking at her face, touching her for the last
+time--it would have been hell; if he had been up to realising
+sunlight, moonlight, the sound of the world's life outside, the
+softness of the bed he lay on--it would have meant the most poignant
+anguish of defraudment.  Life was a rare good thing, and to be
+squashed out of it with your powers at full, a wretched mistake in
+Nature's arrangements, a wretched villainy on the part of Man--for
+his own death, like all those other millions of premature deaths,
+would have been due to the idiocy and brutality of men!  He could
+smile now, with Gratian looking down at him, but the experience had
+heaped fuel on a fire which had always smouldered in his doctor's
+soul against that half emancipated breed of apes, the human race.
+Well, now he would get a few days off from his death-carnival!  And
+he lay, feasting his returning senses on his wife.  She made a pretty
+nurse, and his practised eye judged her a good one--firm and quiet.
+
+George Laird was thirty.  At the opening of the war he was in an
+East-End practice, and had volunteered at once for service with the
+Army.  For the first nine months he had been right up in the thick of
+it.  A poisoned arm; rather than the authorities, had sent him home.
+During that leave he married Gratian.  He had known the Piersons some
+time; and, made conscious of the instability of life, had resolved to
+marry her at the first chance he got.  For his father-in-law he had
+respect and liking, ever mixed with what was not quite contempt and
+not quite pity.  The blend of authority with humility, cleric with
+dreamer, monk with artist, mystic with man of action, in Pierson,
+excited in him an interested, but often irritated, wonder.  He saw
+things so differently himself, and had little of the humorous
+curiosity which enjoys what is strange simply because it is strange.
+They could never talk together without soon reaching a point when he
+wanted to say: "If we're not to trust our reason and our senses for
+what they're worth, sir--will you kindly tell me what we are to
+trust?  How can we exert them to the utmost in some matters, and in
+others suddenly turn our backs on them?"  Once, in one of their
+discussions, which often bordered on acrimony, he had expounded
+himself at length.
+
+"I grant," he had said, "that there's a great ultimate Mystery, that
+we shall never know anything for certain about the origin of life and
+the principle of the Universe; but why should we suddenly shut up our
+enquiring apparatus and deny all the evidence of our reason--say,
+about the story of Christ, or the question of a future life, or our
+moral code?  If you want me to enter a temple of little mysteries,
+leaving my reason and senses behind--as a Mohammedan leaves his
+shoes--it won't do to say to me simply: 'There it is! Enter!' You
+must show me the door; and you can't!  And I'll tell you why, sir.
+Because in your brain there's a little twist which is not in mine, or
+the lack of a little twist which is in mine.  Nothing more than that
+divides us into the two main species of mankind, one of whom
+worships, and one of whom doesn't.  Oh, yes! I know; you won't admit
+that, because it makes your religions natural instead of what you
+call supernatural.  But I assure you there's nothing more to it.
+Your eyes look up or they look down--they never look straight before
+them.  Well, mine do just the opposite."
+
+That day Pierson had been feeling very tired, and though to meet this
+attack was vital, he had been unable to meet it.  His brain had
+stammered.  He had turned a little away, leaning his cheek on his
+hand, as if to cover that momentary break in his defences.  Some days
+later he had said:
+
+"I am able now to answer your questions, George.  I think I can make
+you understand."
+
+Laird had answered: "All right, sir; go ahead."
+
+"You begin by assuming that the human reason is the final test of all
+things.  What right have you to assume that?  Suppose you were an
+ant.  You would take your ant's reason as the final test, wouldn't
+you?  Would that be the truth?"  And a smile had fixed itself on his
+lips above his little grave beard.
+
+George Laird also had smiled.
+
+"That seems a good point, sir," he said, "until you recognise that I
+don't take, the human reason as final test in any absolute sense.  I
+only say it's the highest test we can apply; and that, behind that
+test all is quite dark and unknowable."
+
+"Revelation, then, means nothing to you?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"I don't think we can usefully go on, George."
+
+"I don't think we can, sir.  In talking with you, I always feel like
+fighting a man with one hand tied behind his back."
+
+"And I, perhaps, feel that I am arguing with one who was blind from
+birth."
+
+For all that, they had often argued since; but never without those
+peculiar smiles coming on their faces.  Still, they respected each
+other, and Pierson had not opposed his daughter's marriage to this
+heretic, whom he knew to be an honest and trustworthy man.  It had
+taken place before Laird's arm was well, and the two had snatched a
+month's honeymoon before he went back to France, and she to her
+hospital in Manchester.  Since then, just one February fortnight by
+the sea had been all their time together....
+
+In the afternoon he had asked for beef tea, and, having drunk a cup,
+said:
+
+"I've got something to tell your father."
+
+But warned by the pallor of his smiling lips, Gratian answered:
+
+"Tell me first, George."
+
+"Our last talk, Gracie; well--there's nothing--on the other side.  I
+looked over; it's as black as your hat."
+
+Gratian shivered.
+
+"I know.  While you were lying here last night, I told father."
+
+He squeezed her hand, and said: "I also want to tell him."
+
+"Dad will say the motive for life is gone."
+
+"I say it leaps out all the more, Gracie.  What a mess we make of it
+--we angel-apes!  When shall we be men, I wonder?  You and I, Gracie,
+will fight for a decent life for everybody.  No hands-upping about
+that!  Bend down!  It's good to touch you again; everything's good.
+I'm going to have a sleep...."
+
+After the relief of the doctor's report in the early morning Pierson
+had gone through a hard struggle.  What should he wire to Noel?  He
+longed to get her back home, away from temptation to the burning
+indiscretion of this marriage.  But ought he to suppress reference to
+George's progress?  Would that be honest?  At last he sent this
+telegram: "George out of danger but very weak.  Come up."
+By the afternoon post, however, he received a letter from Thirza:
+
+"I have had two long talks with Noel and Cyril.  It is impossible to
+budge them.  And I really think, dear Edward, that it will be a
+mistake to oppose it rigidly.  He may not go out as soon as we think.
+How would it be to consent to their having banns published?--that
+would mean another three weeks anyway, and in absence from each other
+they might be influenced to put it off.  I'm afraid this is the only
+chance, for if you simply forbid it, I feel they will run off and get
+married somewhere at a registrar's."
+
+Pierson took this letter out with him into the Square Garden, for
+painful cogitation.  No man can hold a position of spiritual
+authority for long years without developing the habit of judgment.
+He judged Noel's conduct to be headlong and undisciplined, and the
+vein of stubbornness in his character fortified the father and the
+priest within him.  Thirza disappointed him; she did not seem to see
+the irretrievable gravity of this hasty marriage.  She seemed to look
+on it as something much lighter than it was, to consider that it
+might be left to Chance, and that if Chance turned out unfavourable,
+there would still be a way out.  To him there would be no way out.
+He looked up at the sky, as if for inspiration.  It was such a
+beautiful day, and so bitter to hurt his child, even for her good!
+What would her mother have advised?  Surely Agnes had felt at least
+as deeply as himself the utter solemnity of marriage!  And, sitting
+there in the sunlight, he painfully hardened his heart.  He must do
+what he thought right, no matter what the consequences.  So he went
+in and wrote that he could not agree, and wished Noel to come back
+home at once.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+But on the same afternoon, just about that hour, Noel was sitting on
+the river-bank with her arms folded tight across her chest, and by
+her side Cyril Morland, with despair in his face, was twisting a
+telegram "Rejoin tonight.  Regiment leaves to-morrow."
+
+What consolation that a million such telegrams had been read and
+sorrowed over these last two years!  What comfort that the sun was
+daily blotted dim for hundreds of bright eyes; the joy of life poured
+out and sopped up by the sands of desolation!
+
+"How long have we got, Cyril?"
+
+"I've engaged a car from the Inn, so I needn't leave till midnight.
+I've packed already, to have more time."
+
+"Let's have it to ourselves, then.  Let's go off somewhere.  I've got
+some chocolate."
+
+Morland answered miserably:
+
+"I can send the car up here for my things, and have it pick me up at
+the Inn, if you'll say goodbye to them for me, afterwards.  We'll
+walk down the line, then we shan't meet anyone."
+
+And in the bright sunlight they walked hand in hand on each side of a
+shining rail.  About six they reached the Abbey.
+
+"Let's get a boat," said Noel.  "We can come back here when it's
+moonlight.  I know a way of getting in, after the gate's shut."
+
+They hired a boat, rowed over to the far bank, and sat on the stern
+seat, side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep
+green by the high woods.  If they talked, it was but a word of love
+now and then, or to draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a
+dragon-fly.  What use making plans--for lovers the chief theme?
+Longing paralysed their brains.  They could do nothing but press
+close to each other, their hands enlaced, their lips meeting now and
+then.  On Noel's face was a strange fixed stillness, as if she were
+waiting--expecting!  They ate their chocolates.  The sun set, dew
+began to fall; the river changed, and grew whiter; the sky paled to
+the colour of an amethyst; shadows lengthened, dissolved slowly.  It
+was past nine already; a water-rat came out, a white owl flew over
+the river, towards the Abbey.  The moon had come up, but shed no
+light as yet.  They saw no beauty in all this--too young, too
+passionate, too unhappy.
+
+Noel said: "When she's over those trees, Cyril, let's go.  It'll be
+half dark."
+
+They waited, watching the moon, which crept with infinite slowness up
+and up, brightening ever so little every minute.
+
+"Now!"  said Noel.  And Morland rowed across.
+
+They left the boat, and she led the way past an empty cottage, to a
+shed with a roof sloping up to the Abbey's low outer wall.
+
+"We can get over here," she whispered.
+
+They clambered up, and over, to a piece of grassy courtyard, and
+passed on to an inner court, under the black shadow of the high
+walls.
+
+"What's the time?"  said Noel.
+
+"Half-past ten."
+
+"Already!  Let's sit here in the dark, and watch for the moon."
+
+They sat down close together.  Noel's face still had on it that
+strange look of waiting; and Morland sat obedient, with his hand on
+her heart, and his own heart beating almost to suffocation.  They
+sat, still as mice, and the moon crept up.  It laid a first vague
+greyness on the high wall, which spread slowly down, and brightened
+till the lichen and the grasses up there were visible; then crept on,
+silvering the dark above their heads.  Noel pulled his sleeve, and
+whispered: "See!"  There came the white owl, soft as a snowflake,
+drifting across in that unearthly light, as if flying to the moon.
+And just then the top of the moon itself looked over the wall, a
+shaving of silvery gold.  It grew, became a bright spread fan, then
+balanced there, full and round, the colour of pale honey.
+
+"Ours!" Noel whispered.
+
+
+
+2
+
+>From the side of the road Noel listened till the sound of the car was
+lost in the folds of the valley.  She did not cry, but passed her
+hands over her face, and began to walk home, keeping to the shadow of
+the trees.  How many years had been added to her age in those six
+hours since the telegram came!  Several times in that mile and a half
+she stepped into a patch of brighter moonlight, to take out and kiss
+a little photograph, then slip it back next her heart, heedless that
+so warm a place must destroy any effigy.  She felt not the faintest
+compunction for the recklessness of her love--it was her only comfort
+against the crushing loneliness of the night.  It kept her up, made
+her walk on with a sort of pride, as if she had got the best of Fate.
+He was hers for ever now, in spite of anything that could be done.
+She did not even think what she would say when she got in.  She came
+to the avenue, and passed up it still in a sort of dream.  Her uncle
+was standing before the porch; she could hear his mutterings.  She
+moved out of the shadow of the trees, went straight up to him, and,
+looking in his perturbed face, said calmly:
+
+"Cyril asked me to say good-bye to you all, Uncle.  Good night!"
+
+"But, I say, Nollie look here you !"
+
+She had passed on.  She went up to her room.  There, by the door, her
+aunt was standing, and would have kissed her.  She drew back:
+
+"No, Auntie.  Not to-night!"  And, slipping by, she locked her door.
+
+Bob and Thirza Pierson, meeting in their own room, looked at each
+other askance.  Relief at their niece's safe return was confused by
+other emotions.  Bob Pierson expressed his first:
+
+"Phew!  I was beginning to think we should w have to drag the river.
+What girls are coming to!"
+
+"It's the war, Bob."
+
+"I didn't like her face, old girl.  I don't know what it was, but I
+didn't like her face."
+
+Neither did Thirza, but she would not admit it, and encourage Bob to
+take it to heart.  He took things so hardly, and with such a noise!
+
+She only said: "Poor young things!  I suppose it will be a relief to
+Edward!"
+
+"I love Nollie!" said Bob Pierson suddenly.  "She's an affectionate
+creature.  D-nit, I'm sorry about this.  It's not so bad for young
+Morland; he's got the excitement--though I shouldn't like to be
+leaving Nollie, if I were young again.  Thank God, neither of our
+boys is engaged.  By George! when I think of them out there, and
+myself here, I feel as if the top of my head would come off.  And
+those politician chaps spouting away in every country--how they can
+have the cheek!"
+
+Thirza looked at him anxiously.
+
+"And no dinner!" he said suddenly.  "What d'you think they've been
+doing with themselves ?"
+
+"Holding each other's hands, poor dears!  D'you know what time it is,
+Bob?  Nearly one o'clock."
+
+"Well, all I can say is, I've had a wretched evening.  Get to bed,
+old girl.  You'll be fit for nothing."
+
+He was soon asleep, but Thirza lay awake, not exactly worrying, for
+that was not her nature, but seeing Noel's face, pale, languid,
+passionate, possessed by memory.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+Noel reached her father's house next day late in the afternoon.
+There was a letter in the hall for her.  She tore it open, and read:
+
+"MY DARLING LOVE,
+
+"I got back all right, and am posting this at once to tell you we
+shall pass through London, and go from Charing Cross, I expect about
+nine o'clock to-night.  I shall look out for you, there, in case you
+are up in time.  Every minute I think of you, and of last night.  Oh!
+Noel!
+
+"Your devoted lover,
+"C."
+
+
+She looked at the wrist-watch which, like every other little patriot,
+she possessed.  Past seven!  If she waited, Gratian or her father
+would seize on her.
+
+"Take my things up, Dinah.  I've got a headache from travelling; I'm
+going to walk it off.  Perhaps I shan't be in till past nine or so.
+Give my love to them all."
+
+"Oh, Miss Noel, you can't,--"
+
+But Noel was gone.  She walked towards Charing Cross; and, to kill
+time, went into a restaurant and had that simple repast, coffee and a
+bun, which those in love would always take if Society did not
+forcibly feed them on other things.  Food was ridiculous to her.  She
+sat there in the midst of a perfect hive of creatures eating
+hideously.  The place was shaped like a modern prison, having tiers
+of gallery round an open space, and in the air was the smell of
+viands and the clatter of plates and the music of a band.  Men in
+khaki everywhere, and Noel glanced from form to form to see if by
+chance one might be that which represented, for her, Life and the
+British Army.  At half-past eight she went out and made her way:
+through the crowd, still mechanically searching "khaki" for what she
+wanted; and it was perhaps fortunate that there was about her face
+and walk something which touched people.  At the station she went up
+to an old porter, and, putting a shilling into his astonished hand,
+asked him to find out for her whence Morland's regiment would start.
+He came back presently, and said:
+
+"Come with me, miss."
+
+Noel went.  He was rather lame, had grey whiskers, and a ghostly thin
+resemblance to her uncle Bob, which perhaps had been the reason why
+she had chosen him.  64
+
+"Brother goin' out, miss?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Ah!  It's a crool war.  I shan't be sorry when it's over.  Goin' out
+and comin' in, we see some sad sights 'ere.  Wonderful spirit they've
+got, too.  I never look at the clock now but what I think: 'There you
+go, slow-coach!  I'd like to set you on to the day the boys come
+back!'  When I puts a bag in: 'Another for 'ell" I thinks.  And so it
+is, miss, from all I can 'ear.  I've got a son out there meself.
+It's 'ere they'll come along.  You stand quiet and keep a lookout,
+and you'll get a few minutes with him when he's done with 'is men.  I
+wouldn't move, if I were you; he'll come to you, all right--can't
+miss you, there."  And, looking at her face, he thought: 'Astonishin'
+what a lot o' brothers go.  Wot oh!  Poor little missy!  A little
+lady, too.  Wonderful collected she is.  It's 'ard!'  And trying to
+find something consoling to say, he mumbled out: "You couldn't be in
+a better place for seen'im off.  Good night, miss; anything else I
+can do for you?"
+
+"No, thank you; you're very kind."
+
+He looked back once or twice at her blue-clad figure standing very
+still.  He had left her against a little oasis of piled-up empty
+milk-cans, far down the platform where a few civilians in similar
+case were scattered.  The trainway was empty as yet.  In the grey
+immensity of the station and the turmoil of its noise, she felt
+neither lonely nor conscious of others waiting; too absorbed in the
+one thought of seeing him and touching him again.  The empty train
+began backing in, stopped, and telescoped with a series of little
+clattering bangs, backed on again, and subsided to rest.  Noel turned
+her eyes towards the station arch ways.  Already she felt tremulous,
+as though the regiment were sending before it the vibration of its
+march.
+
+She had not as yet seen a troop-train start, and vague images of
+brave array, of a flag fluttering, and the stir of drums, beset her.
+Suddenly she saw a brown swirling mass down there at the very edge,
+out of which a thin brown trickle emerged towards her; no sound of
+music, no waved flag.  She had a longing to rush down to the barrier,
+but remembering the words of the porter, stayed where she was, with
+her hands tightly squeezed together.  The trickle became a stream, a
+flood, the head of which began to reach her.  With a turbulence of
+voices, sunburnt men, burdened up to the nose, passed, with rifles
+jutting at all angles; she strained her eyes, staring into that
+stream as one might into a walking wood, to isolate a single tree.
+Her head reeled with the strain of it, and the effort to catch his
+voice among the hubbub of all those cheery, common, happy-go-lucky
+sounds.  Some who saw her clucked their tongues, some went by silent,
+others seemed to scan her as though she might be what they were
+looking for.  And ever the stream and the hubbub melted into the
+train, and yet came pouring on.  And still she waited motionless,
+with an awful fear.  How could he ever find her, or she him?  Then
+she saw that others of those waiting had found their men.  And the
+longing to rush up and down the platform almost overcame her; but
+still she waited.  And suddenly she saw him with two other officer
+boys, close to the carriages, coming slowly down towards her.  She
+stood with her eyes fixed on his face; they passed, and she nearly
+cried out.  Then he turned, broke away from the other two, and came
+straight to her.  He had seen her before she had seen him.  He was
+very flushed, had a little fixed frown between his blue eyes and a
+set jaw.  They stood looking at each other, their hands hard gripped;
+all the emotion of last night welling up within them, so that to
+speak would have been to break down.  The milk-cans formed a kind of
+shelter, and they stood so close together that none could see their
+faces.  Noel was the first to master her power of speech; her words
+came out, dainty as ever, through trembling lips:
+
+"Write to me as much as ever you can, Cyril.  I'm going to be a nurse
+at once.  And the first leave you get, I shall come to you--don't
+forget."
+
+"Forget!  Move a little back, darling; they can't see us here.  Kiss
+me!"  She moved back, thrust her face forward so that he need not
+stoop, and put her lips up to his.  Then, feeling that she might
+swoon and fall over among the cans, she withdrew her mouth, leaving
+her forehead against his lips.  He murmured:
+
+"Was it all right when you got in last night?"
+
+"Yes; I said good-bye for you."
+
+"Oh!  Noel--I've been afraid--I oughtn't--I oughtn't--"
+
+"Yes, yes; nothing can take you from me now."
+
+"You have got pluck.  More than!"
+
+Along whistle sounded.  Morland grasped her hands convulsively:
+
+"Good-bye, my little wife!  Don't fret.  Goodbye!  I must go.  God
+bless you, Noel!"
+
+"I love you."
+
+They looked at each other, just another moment, then she took her
+hands from his and stood back in the shadow of the milk-cans, rigid,
+following him with her eyes till he was lost in the train.
+
+Every carriage window was full of those brown figures and red-brown
+faces, hands were waving vaguely, voices calling vaguely, here and
+there one cheered; someone leaning far out started to sing: "If auld
+acquaintance--"  But Noel stood quite still in the shadow of the
+milk-cans, her lips drawn in, her hands hard clenched in front of
+her; and young Morland at his window gazed back at her.
+
+
+
+2
+
+How she came to be sitting in Trafalgar Square she did not know.
+Tears had formed a mist between her and all that seething, summer-
+evening crowd.  Her eyes mechanically followed the wandering search-
+lights, those new milky ways, quartering the heavens and leading
+nowhere.  All was wonderfully beautiful, the sky a deep dark blue,
+the moonlight whitening the spire of St. Martin's, and everywhere
+endowing the great blacked-out buildings with dream-life.  Even the
+lions had come to life, and stared out over this moonlit desert of
+little human figures too small to be worth the stretching out of a
+paw.  She sat there, aching dreadfully, as if the longing of every
+bereaved heart in all the town had settled in her.  She felt it
+tonight a thousand times worse; for last night she had been drugged
+on the new sensation of love triumphantly fulfilled.  Now she felt as
+if life had placed her in the corner of a huge silent room, blown out
+the flame of joy, and locked the door.  A little dry sob came from
+her.  The hay-fields and Cyril, with shirt unbuttoned at the neck,
+pitching hay and gazing at her while she dabbled her fork in the thin
+leavings.  The bright river, and their boat grounded on the shallows,
+and the swallows flitting over them.  And that long dance, with the
+feel of his hand between her shoulder-blades!  Memories so sweet and
+sharp that she almost cried out.  She saw again their dark grassy
+courtyard in the Abbey, and the white owl flying over them.  The
+white owl!  Flying there again to-night, with no lovers on the grass
+below!  She could only picture Cyril now as a brown atom in that
+swirling brown flood of men, flowing to a huge brown sea.  Those
+cruel minutes on the platform, when she had searched and searched the
+walking wood for her, one tree, seemed to have burned themselves into
+her eyes.  Cyril was lost, she could not single him out, all blurred
+among those thousand other shapes.  And suddenly she thought: 'And I
+--I'm lost to him; he's never seen me at home, never seen me in
+London; he won't be able to imagine me.  It's all in the past, only
+the past--for both of us.  Is there anybody so unhappy?'  And the
+town's voices-wheels, and passing feet, whistles, talk, laughter-
+seemed to answer callously: 'Not one.'  She looked at her wrist-
+watch; like his, it had luminous hands: 'Half-past ten' was
+greenishly imprinted there.  She got up in dismay.  They would think
+she was lost, or run over, or something silly!  She could not find an
+empty taxi, and began to walk, uncertain of her way at night.  At
+last she stopped a policeman, and said:
+
+"Which is the way towards Bloomsbury, please?  I can't find a taxi."
+The man looked at her, and took time to think it over; then he said:
+
+"They're linin' up for the theatres," and looked at her again.
+Something seemed to move in his mechanism:
+
+"I'm goin' that way, miss.  If you like, you can step along with me."
+Noel stepped along.
+
+"The streets aren't what they ought to be," the policeman said.
+"What with the darkness, and the war turning the girls heads--you'd
+be surprised the number of them that comes out.  It's the soldiers,
+of course."
+
+Noel felt her cheeks burning.
+
+"I daresay you wouldn't have noticed it," the policeman went on: "but
+this war's a funny thing.  The streets are gayer and more crowded at
+night than I've ever seen them; it's a fair picnic all the time.
+What we're goin' to settle down to when peace comes, I don't know.  I
+suppose you find it quiet enough up your way, miss?"
+
+"Yes," said Noel; "quite quiet."
+
+"No soldiers up in Bloomsbury.  You got anyone in the Army, miss?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Ah!  It's anxious times for ladies.  What with the Zeps, and their
+brothers and all in France, it's 'arassin'.  I've lost a brother
+meself, and I've got a boy out there in the Garden of Eden; his
+mother carries on dreadful about him.  What we shall think of it when
+it's all over, I can't tell.  These Huns are a wicked tough lot!"
+
+Noel looked at him; a tall man, regular and orderly, with one of
+those perfectly decent faces so often seen in the London police.
+
+"I'm sorry you've lost someone," she said.  "I haven't lost anyone
+very near, yet."
+
+"Well, let's 'ope you won't, miss.  These times make you feel for
+others, an' that's something.  I've noticed a great change in folks
+you'd never think would feel for anyone.  And yet I've seen some
+wicked things too; we do, in the police.  Some of these English wives
+of aliens, and 'armless little German bakers, an' Austrians, and
+what-not: they get a crool time.  It's their misfortune, not their
+fault, that's what I think; and the way they get served--well, it
+makes you ashamed o' bein' English sometimes--it does straight: And
+the women are the worst.  I said to my wife only last night, I said:
+'They call themselves Christians,' I said, 'but for all the charity
+that's in 'em they might as well be Huns.' She couldn't see it-not
+she!'  Well, why do they drop bombs?' she says.  'What!'  I said,
+'those English wives and bakers drop bombs?  Don't be silly,' I said.
+'They're as innocent as we.'  It's the innocent that gets punished
+for the guilty.  'But they're all spies,' she says.  'Oh!' I said,
+'old lady!  Now really!  At your time of life!'  But there it is; you
+can't get a woman to see reason.  It's readin' the papers.  I often
+think they must be written by women--beggin' your pardon, miss--but
+reely, the 'ysterics and the 'atred--they're a fair knockout.  D'you
+find much hatred in your household, miss?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "No; my father's a clergyman, you see."
+
+"Ah!"  said the policeman.  And in the glance he bestowed on her
+could be seen an added respect.
+
+"Of course," he went on, "you're bound to have a sense of justice
+against these Huns; some of their ways of goin' on have been above
+the limit.  But what I always think is--of course I don't say these
+things--no use to make yourself unpopular--but to meself I often
+think: Take 'em man for man, and you'd find 'em much the same as we
+are, I daresay.  It's the vicious way they're brought up, of actin'
+in the mass, that's made 'em such a crool lot.  I see a good bit of
+crowds in my profession, and I've a very low opinion of them.  Crowds
+are the most blunderin' blighted things that ever was.  They're like
+an angry woman with a bandage over her eyes, an' you can't have
+anything more dangerous than that.  These Germans, it seems, are
+always in a crowd.  They get a state o' mind read out to them by Bill
+Kaser and all that bloody-minded lot, an' they never stop to think
+for themselves."
+
+"I suppose they'd be shot if they did," said Noel.
+
+"Well, there is that," said the policeman reflectively.  "They've
+brought discipline to an 'igh pitch, no doubt.  An' if you ask me,"--
+he lowered his voice till it was almost lost in his chin-strap,
+"we'll be runnin' 'em a good second 'ere, before long.  The things we
+'ave to protect now are gettin' beyond a joke.  There's the City
+against lights, there's the streets against darkness, there's the
+aliens, there's the aliens' shops, there's the Belgians, there's the
+British wives, there's the soldiers against the women, there's the
+women against the soldiers, there's the Peace Party, there's 'orses
+against croolty, there's a Cabinet Minister every now an' then; and
+now we've got these Conchies.  And, mind you, they haven't raised our
+pay; no war wages in the police.  So far as I can see, there's only
+one good result of the war--the burglaries are off.  But there again,
+you wait a bit and see if we don't have a prize crop of 'm, or my
+name's not 'Arris."
+
+"You must have an awfully exciting life!"  said Noel.
+
+The policeman looked down at her sideways, without lowering his face,
+as only a policeman can, and said indulgently:
+
+"We're used to it, you see; there's no excitement in what you're used
+to.  They find that in the trenches, I'm told.  Take our seamen--
+there's lots of 'em been blown up over and over again, and there they
+go and sign on again next day.  That's where the Germans make their
+mistake!  England in war-time!  I think a lot, you know, on my go;
+you can't 'elp it--the mind will work--an' the more I think, the more
+I see the fightin' spirit in the people.  We don't make a fuss about
+it like Bill Kaser.  But you watch a little shopman, one o' those
+fellows who's had his house bombed; you watch the way he looks at the
+mess--sort of disgusted.  You watch his face, and you see he's got
+his teeth into it.  You watch one of our Tommies on 'is crutches,
+with the sweat pourin' off his forehead an' 'is eyes all strainy,
+stumpin' along--that gives you an idea!  I pity these Peace fellows,
+reely I pity them; they don't know what they're up against.  I expect
+there's times when you wish you was a man, don't you, miss?  I'm sure
+there's times when I feel I'd like to go in the trenches.  That's the
+worst o' my job; you can't be a human bein'--not in the full sense of
+the word.  You mustn't let your passions rise, you mustn't drink, you
+mustn't talk; it's a narrow walk o' life.  Well, here you are, miss;
+your Square's the next turnin' to the right.  Good night and thank
+you for your conversation."
+
+Noel held out her hand.  "Good night!"  she said.
+
+The policeman took her hand with a queer, flattered embarrassment.
+
+"Good night, miss," he said again.  "I see you've got a trouble; and
+I'm sure I hope it'll turn out for the best."
+
+Noel gave his huge hand a squeeze; her eyes had filled with tears,
+and she turned quickly up towards the Square, where a dark figure was
+coming towards her, in whom she recognised her father.  His face was
+worn and harassed; he walked irresolutely, like a man who has lost
+something.
+
+"Nollie!" he said.  "Thank God!"  In his voice was an infinite
+relief.  "My child, where have you been?"
+
+"It's all right, Daddy.  Cyril has just gone to the front.  I've been
+seeing him off from Charing Cross."
+
+Pierson slipped his arm round her.  They entered the house without
+speaking....
+
+
+
+3
+
+By the rail of his transport, as far--about two feet--as he could get
+from anyone, Cyril Morland stood watching Calais, a dream city,
+brighten out of the heat and grow solid.  He could hear the guns
+already, the voice of his new life-talking in the distance.  It came
+with its strange excitement into a being held by soft and marvellous
+memories, by one long vision of Noel and the moonlit grass, under the
+dark Abbey wall.  This moment of passage from wonder to wonder was
+quite too much for a boy unused to introspection, and he stood
+staring stupidly at Calais, while the thunder of his new life came
+rolling in on that passionate moonlit dream.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+After the emotions of those last three days Pierson woke with the
+feeling a ship must have when it makes landfall.  Such reliefs are
+natural, and as a rule delusive; for events are as much the parents
+of the future as they were the children of the past.  To be at home
+with both his girls, and resting--for his holiday would not be over
+for ten days--was like old times.  Now George was going on so well
+Gratian would be herself again; now Cyril Morland was gone Noel would
+lose that sudden youthful love fever.  Perhaps in two or three days
+if George continued to progress, one might go off with Noel somewhere
+for one's last week.  In the meantime the old house, wherein was
+gathered so much remembrance of happiness and pain, was just as
+restful as anywhere else, and the companionship of his girls would be
+as sweet as on any of their past rambling holidays in Wales or
+Ireland.  And that first morning of perfect idleness--for no one knew
+he was back in London--pottering, and playing the piano in the homely
+drawing-room where nothing to speak of was changed since his wife's
+day, was very pleasant.  He had not yet seen the girls, for Noel did
+not come down to breakfast, and Gratian was with George.
+
+Discovery that there was still a ,barrier between him and them came
+but slowly in the next two days.  He would not acknowledge it, yet it
+was there, in their voices, in their movements--rather an absence of
+something old than the presence of something new.  It was as if each
+had said to him: "We love you, but you are not in our secrets--and
+you must not be, for you would try to destroy them."  They showed no
+fear of him, but seemed to be pushing him unconsciously away, lest he
+should restrain or alter what was very dear to them.  They were both
+fond of him, but their natures had set foot on definitely diverging
+paths.  The closer the affection, the more watchful they were against
+interference by that affection.  Noel had a look on her face, half
+dazed, half proud, which touched, yet vexed him.  What had he done to
+forfeit her confidence--surely she must see how natural and right his
+opposition had been!  He made one great effort to show the real
+sympathy he felt for her.  But she only said: "I can't talk of Cyril,
+Daddy; I simply can't!"  And he, who easily shrank into his shell,
+could not but acquiesce in her reserve.
+
+With Gratian it was different.  He knew that an encounter was before
+him; a struggle between him and her husband--for characteristically
+he set the change in her, the defection of her faith, down to George,
+not to spontaneous thought and feeling in herself.  He dreaded and
+yet looked forward to this encounter.  It came on the third day, when
+Laird was up, lying on that very sofa where Pierson had sat listening
+to Gratian's confession of disbelief.  Except for putting in his head
+to say good morning, he had not yet seen his son-in-law: The young
+doctor could not look fragile, the build of his face, with that law
+and those heavy cheekbones was too much against it, but there was
+about him enough of the look of having come through a hard fight to
+give Pierson's heart a squeeze.
+
+"Well, George," he said, "you gave us a dreadful fright!  I thank
+God's mercy."  With that half-mechanical phrase he had flung an
+unconscious challenge.  Laird looked up whimsically.
+
+"So you really think God merciful, sir?"
+
+"Don't let us argue, George; you're not strong enough."
+
+"Oh!  I'm pining for something to bite on."
+
+Pierson looked at Gratian, and said softly:
+
+"God's mercy is infinite, and you know it is."
+
+Laird also looked at Gratian, before he answered:
+
+"God's mercy is surely the amount of mercy man has succeeded in
+arriving at.  How much that is, this war tells you, sir."
+
+Pierson flushed.  "I don't follow you," he said painfully.  "How can
+you say such things, when you yourself are only just   No; I refuse
+to argue, George; I refuse."
+
+Laird stretched out his hand to his wife, who came to him, and stood
+clasping it with her own. "Well, I'm going to argue," he said; "I'm
+simply bursting with it.  I challenge you, sir, to show me where
+there's any sign of altruistic pity, except in man.  Mother love
+doesn't count--mother and child are too much one."
+
+The curious smile had come already, on both their faces.
+
+"My dear George, is not man the highest work of God, and mercy the
+highest quality in man?"
+
+"Not a bit.  If geological time be taken as twenty-four hours, man's
+existence on earth so far equals just two seconds of it; after a few
+more seconds, when man has been frozen off the earth, geological time
+will stretch for as long again, before the earth bumps into
+something, and be comes nebula once more.  God's hands haven't been
+particularly full, sir, have they--two seconds out of twenty-four
+hours--if man is His pet concern?  And as to mercy being the highest
+quality in, man, that's only a modern fashion of talking.  Man's
+highest quality is the sense of proportion, for that's what keeps him
+alive; and mercy, logically pursued, would kill him off.  It's a sort
+of a luxury or by-product."
+
+"George!  You can have no music in your soul!  Science is such a
+little thing, if you could only see."
+
+"Show me a bigger, sir."
+
+"Faith."
+
+"In what?"
+
+"In what has been revealed to us."
+
+"Ah!  There it is again!  By whom--how?
+
+"By God Himself--through our Lord."
+
+A faint flush rose in Laird's yellow face, and his eyes brightened.
+
+"Christ," he said; "if He existed, which some people, as you know,
+doubt, was a very beautiful character; there have been others.  But
+to ask us to believe in His supernaturalness or divinity at this time
+of day is to ask us to walk through the world blindfold.  And that's
+what you do, don't you?"
+
+Again Pierson looked at his daughter's face.  She was standing quite
+still, with her eyes fixed on her husband.  Somehow he was aware that
+all these words of the sick man's were for her benefit.  Anger, and a
+sort of despair rose within him, and he said painfully:
+
+"I cannot explain.  There are things that I can't make clear, because
+you are wilfully blind to all that I believe in.  For what do you
+imagine we are fighting this great war, if it is not to reestablish
+the belief in love as the guiding principle of life?"
+
+Laird shook his head.  "We are fighting to redress a balance, which
+was in danger of being lost."
+
+"The balance of power?"
+
+"Heavens!--no!  The balance of philosophy."
+
+Pierson smiled.  "That sounds very clever, George; but again, I don't
+follow you."
+
+"The balance between the sayings: 'Might is Right,' and 'Right is
+Might.'  They're both half-truth, but the first was beating the other
+out of the field.  All the rest of it is cant, you know.  And by the
+way, sir, your Church is solid for punishment of the evildoer.
+Where's mercy there?  Either its God is not merciful, or else it
+doesn't believe in its God."
+
+"Just punishment does not preclude mercy, George."
+
+"It does in Nature."
+
+"Ah!  Nature, George--always Nature.  God transcends Nature."
+
+"Then why does He give it a free rein?  A man too fond of drink, or
+women--how much mercy does he get from Nature?  His overindulgence
+brings its exact equivalent of penalty; let him pray to God as much
+as he likes--unless he alters his ways he gets no mercy.  If he does
+alter his ways, he gets no mercy either; he just gets Nature's due
+reward.  We English who have neglected brain and education--how much
+mercy are we getting in this war?  Mercy's a man-made ornament,
+disease, or luxury--call it what you will.  Except that, I've nothing
+to say against it.  On the contrary, I am all for it."
+
+Once more Pierson looked at his daughter.  Something in her face hurt
+him--the silent intensity with which she was hanging on her husband's
+words, the eager search of her eyes.  And he turned to the door,
+saying:
+
+"This is bad for you, George."
+
+He saw Gratian put her hand on her husband's forehead, and thought--
+jealously: 'How can I save my poor girl from this infidelity?  Are my
+twenty years of care to go for nothing, against this modern spirit?'
+
+Down in his study, the words went through his mind: "Holy, holy,
+holy, Merciful and Mighty!"  And going to the little piano in the
+corner, he opened it, and began playing the hymn.  He played it
+softly on the shabby keys of this thirty-year old friend, which had
+been with him since College days; and sang it softly in his worn
+voice.
+
+A sound made him look up.  Gratian had come in.  She put her hand on
+his shoulder, and said:
+
+"I know it hurts you, Dad.  But we've got to find out for ourselves,.
+haven't we?  All the time you and George were talking, I felt that
+you didn't see that it's I who've changed.  It's not what he thinks,
+but what I've come to think of my own accord.  I wish you'd
+understand that I've got a mind of my own, Dad."
+
+Pierson looked up with amazement.
+
+"Of course you have a mind."
+
+Gratian shook her head.  "No, you thought my mind was yours; and now
+you think it's George's.  But it's my own.  When you were my age
+weren't you trying hard to find the truth yourself, and differing
+from your father?"
+
+Pierson did not answer.  He could not remember.  It was like stirring
+a stick amongst a drift of last year's leaves, to awaken but a dry
+rustling, a vague sense of unsubstantiality.  Searched?  No doubt he
+had searched, but the process had brought him nothing.  Knowledge was
+all smoke!  Emotional faith alone was truth--reality
+
+"Ah, Gracie!"  he said, "search if you must, but where will you find
+bottom?  The well is too deep for us.  You will come back to God, my
+child, when you're tired out; the only rest is there."
+
+"I don't want to rest.  Some people search all their lives, and die
+searching.  Why shouldn't I.
+
+"You will be most unhappy, my child."
+
+"If I'm unhappy, Dad, it'll be because the world's unhappy.  I don't
+believe it ought to be; I think it only is, because it shuts its
+eyes."
+
+Pierson got up.  "You think I shut my eyes?"
+
+Gratian nodded.
+
+"If I do, it is because there is no other way to happiness."
+
+"Are you happy; Dad?"
+
+"As happy as my nature will let me be.  I miss your mother.  If I
+lose you and Noel--"
+
+"Oh, but we won't let you!"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "My dear," he said, "I think I have!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+1
+
+Some wag, with a bit of chalk, had written the word "Peace" on three
+successive doors of a little street opposite Buckingham Palace.
+
+It caught the eye of Jimmy Fort, limping home to his rooms from a
+very late discussion at his Club, and twisted his lean shaven lips
+into a sort of smile.  He was one of those rolling-stone Englishmen,
+whose early lives are spent in all parts of the world, and in all
+kinds of physical conflict--a man like a hickory stick, tall, thin,
+bolt-upright, knotty, hard as nails, with a curved fighting back to
+his head and a straight fighting front to his brown face.  His was
+the type which becomes, in a generation or so, typically Colonial or
+American; but no one could possibly have taken Jimmy Fort for
+anything but an Englishman.  Though he was nearly forty, there was
+still something of the boy in his face, something frank and curly-
+headed, gallant and full of steam, and his small steady grey eyes
+looked out on life with a sort of combative humour.  He was still in
+uniform, though they had given him up as a bad job after keeping him
+nine months trying to mend a wounded leg which would never be sound
+again; and he was now in the War Office in connection with horses,
+about which he knew.  He did not like it, having lived too long with
+all sorts and conditions of men who were neither English nor
+official, a combination which he found trying.  His life indeed, just
+now, bored him to distraction, and he would ten times rather have
+been back in France.  This was why he found the word "Peace" so
+exceptionally tantalising.
+
+Reaching his rooms, he threw off his tunic, to whose stiff regularity
+he still had a rooted aversion; and, pulling out a pipe, filled it
+and sat down at his window.
+
+Moonshine could not cool the hot town, and it seemed sleeping badly
+--the seven million sleepers in their million homes.  Sound lingered
+on, never quite ceased; the stale odours clung in the narrow street
+below, though a little wind was creeping about to sweeten the air.
+'Curse the war!' he thought.  'What wouldn't I give to be sleeping
+out, instead of in this damned city!'  They who slept in the open,
+neglecting morality, would certainly have the best of it tonight, for
+no more dew was falling than fell into Jimmy Fort's heart to cool the
+fret of that ceaseless thought: 'The war! The cursed war!' In the
+unending rows of little grey houses, in huge caravanserais, and the
+mansions of the great, in villas, and high slum tenements; in the
+government offices, and factories, and railway stations where they
+worked all night; in the long hospitals where they lay in rows; in
+the camp prisons of the interned; in bar racks, work-houses, palaces
+--no head, sleeping or waking, would be free of that thought: 'The,
+cursed war!'  A spire caught his eye, rising ghostly over the roofs.
+Ah! churches alone, void of the human soul, would be unconscious!
+But for the rest, even sleep would not free them!  Here a mother
+would be whispering the name of her boy; there a merchant would snore
+and dream he was drowning, weighted with gold; and a wife would be
+turning to stretch out her arms to-no one; and a wounded soldier wake
+out of a dream trench with sweat on his brow; and a newsvendor in his
+garret mutter hoarsely.  By thousands the bereaved would be tossing,
+stifling their moans; by thousands the ruined would be gazing into
+the dark future; and housewives struggling with sums; and soldiers
+sleeping like logs--for to morrow they died; and children dreaming of
+them; and prostitutes lying in stale wonder at the busyness of their
+lives; and journalists sleeping the sleep of the just.  And over them
+all, in the moonlight that thought 'The cursed war!' flapped its
+black wings, like an old crow!  "If Christ were real," he mused,
+"He'd reach that moon down, and go chalking 'Peace' with it on every
+door of every house, all over Europe.  But Christ's not real, and
+Hindenburg and Harmsworth are!"  As real they were as two great bulls
+he had once seen in South Africa, fighting.  He seemed to hear again
+the stamp and snort and crash of those thick skulls, to see the
+beasts recoiling and driving at each other, and the little red eyes
+of them.  And pulling a letter out of his pocket, he read it again by
+the light of the moon:
+
+"15, Camelot Mansions,
+"St.  John's Wood.
+
+"DEAR MR.  FORT,
+"I came across your Club address to-night, looking at some old
+letters.  Did you know that I was in London?  I left Steenbok when my
+husband died, five years ago.  I've had a simply terrific time since.
+While the German South West campaign was on I was nursing out there,
+but came back about a year ago to lend a hand here.  It would be
+awfully nice to meet you again, if by any chance you are in England.
+I'm working in a V. A. D.  hospital in these parts, but my evenings
+are usually free.  Do you remember that moonlit night at grape
+harvest?  The nights here aren't scented quite like that.  Listerine!
+Oh!  This war!
+"With all good remembrances,
+"LEILA LYNCH."
+
+
+A terrific time!  If he did not mistake, Leila Lynch had always had a
+terrific time.  And he smiled, seeing again the stoep of an old Dutch
+house at High Constantia, and a woman sitting there under the white
+flowers of a sweet-scented creeper--a pretty woman, with eyes which
+could put a spell on you, a woman he would have got entangled with if
+he had not cut and run for it!  Ten years ago, and here she was
+again, refreshing him out of the past.  He sniffed the fragrance of
+the little letter.  How everybody always managed to work into a
+letter what they were doing in the war!  If he answered her he would
+be sure to say: "Since I got lamed, I've been at the War Office,
+working on remounts, and a dull job it is!"  Leila Lynch!  Women
+didn't get younger, and he suspected her of being older than himself.
+But he remembered agreeably her white shoulders and that turn of her
+neck when she looked at you with those big grey eyes of hers.  Only a
+five-day acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one
+did in a strange land.  The episode had been a green and dangerous
+spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-
+shooting, to set foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at
+least.  Well, there was none of that danger now, for her husband was
+dead-poor chap!  It would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody
+spent any time whatever except in the service of the country, to
+improve his powers of service by a few hours' recreation in her
+society.  'What humbugs we are!' he thought: 'To read the newspapers
+and the speeches you'd believe everybody thought of nothing but how
+to get killed for the sake of the future.  Drunk on verbiage!  What
+heads and mouths we shall all have when we wake up some fine morning
+with Peace shining in at the window!  Ah!  If only we could; and
+enjoy ourselves again!'  And he gazed at the moon.  She was dipping
+already, reeling away into the dawn.  Water carts and street sweepers
+had come out into the glimmer; sparrows twittered in the eaves.  The
+city was raising a strange unknown face to the grey light, shuttered
+and deserted as Babylon.  Jimmy Fort tapped out his pipe, sighed, and
+got into bed.
+
+
+
+2
+
+Coming off duty at that very moment, Leila Lynch decided to have her
+hour's walk before she went home.  She was in charge of two wards,
+and as a rule took the day watches; but some slight upset had given
+her this extra spell.  She was, therefore, at her worst, or perhaps
+at her best, after eighteen hours in hospital.  Her cheeks were pale,
+and about her eyes were little lines, normally in hiding.  There was
+in this face a puzzling blend of the soft and hard, for the eyes, the
+rather full lips, and pale cheeks, were naturally soft; but they were
+hardened by the self-containment which grows on women who have to
+face life for themselves, and, conscious of beauty, intend to keep
+it, in spite of age.  Her figure was contradictory, also; its soft
+modelling a little too rigidified by stays.  In this desert of the
+dawn she let her long blue overcoat flap loose, and swung her hat on
+a finger, so that her light-brown, touched-up hair took the morning
+breeze with fluffy freedom.  Though she could not see herself, she
+appreciated her appearance, swaying along like that, past lonely
+trees and houses.  A pity there was no one to see her in that round
+of Regent's Park, which took her the best part of an hour, walking in
+meditation, enjoying the colour coming back into the world, as if
+especially for her.
+
+There was character in Leila Lynch, and she had lived an interesting
+life from a certain point of view.  In her girlhood she had fluttered
+the hearts of many besides Cousin Edward Pierson, and at eighteen had
+made a passionate love match with a good-looking young Indian
+civilian, named Fane.  They had loved each other to a standstill in
+twelve months.  Then had begun five years of petulance, boredom, and
+growing cynicism, with increasing spells of Simla, and voyages home
+for her health which was really harmed by the heat.  All had
+culminated, of course, in another passion for a rifleman called
+Lynch.  Divorce had followed, remarriage, and then the Boer War, in
+which he had been badly wounded.  She had gone out and nursed him
+back to half his robust health, and, at twenty-eight, taken up life
+with him on an up-country farm in Cape Colony.  This middle period
+had lasted ten years, between the lonely farm and an old Dutch house
+at High Constantia.  Lynch was not a bad fellow, but, like most
+soldiers of the old Army, had been quite carefully divested of an
+aesthetic sense.  And it was Leila's misfortune to have moments when
+aesthetic sense seemed necessary.  She had struggled to overcome this
+weakness, and that other weakness of hers--a liking for men's
+admiration; but there had certainly been intervals when she had not
+properly succeeded.  Her acquaintance with Jimmy Fort had occurred
+during one of these intervals, and when he went back to England so
+abruptly, she had been feeling very tenderly towards him.  She still
+remembered him with a certain pleasure.  Before Lynch died, these
+"intervals" had been interrupted by a spell of returning warmth for
+the invalided man to whom she had joined her life under the romantic
+conditions of divorce.  He had failed, of course, as a farmer, and
+his death left her with nothing but her own settled income of a
+hundred and fifty pounds a year.  Faced by the prospect of having
+almost to make her living, at thirty-eight, she felt but momentary
+dismay--for she had real pluck.  Like many who have played with
+amateur theatricals, she fancied herself as an actress; but, after
+much effort, found that only her voice and the perfect preservation
+of her legs were appreciated by the discerning managers and public of
+South Africa; and for three chequered years she made face against
+fortune with the help of them, under an assumed name.  What she did
+--keeping a certain bloom of refinement, was far better than the
+achievements of many more respectable ladies in her shoes.  At least
+she never bemoaned her "reduced circumstances," and if her life was
+irregular and had at least three episodes, it was very human.  She
+bravely took the rough with the smooth, never lost the power of
+enjoying herself, and grew in sympathy with the hardships of others.
+But she became deadly tired.  When the war broke out, remembering
+that she was a good nurse, she took her real name again and a change
+of occupation.  For one who liked to please men, and to be pleased by
+them, there was a certain attraction about that life in war-time; and
+after two years of it she could still appreciate the way her Tommies
+turned their heads to look at her when she passed their beds.  But in
+a hard school she had learned perfect self-control; and though the
+sour and puritanical perceived her attraction, they knew her to be
+forty-three.  Besides, the soldiers liked her; and there was little
+trouble in her wards.  The war moved her in simple ways; for she was
+patriotic in the direct fashion of her class.  Her father had been a
+sailor, her husbands an official and a soldier; the issue for her was
+uncomplicated by any abstract meditation.  The Country before
+everything!  And though she had tended during those two years so many
+young wrecked bodies, she had taken it as all in the a day's work,
+lavishing her sympathy on the individual, without much general sense
+of pity and waste.  Yes, she had worked really hard, had "done her
+bit"; but of late she had felt rising within her the old vague
+craving for "life," for pleasure, for something more than the mere
+negative admiration bestowed on her by her "Tommies."  Those old
+letters--to look them through them had been a sure sign of this vague
+craving--had sharpened to poignancy the feeling that life was
+slipping away from her while she was still comely.  She had been long
+out of England, and so hard-worked since she came back that there
+were not many threads she could pick up suddenly.  Two letters out of
+that little budget of the past, with a far cry between them, had
+awakened within her certain sentimental longings.
+
+"DEAR LADY OF THE STARRY FLOWERS,
+
+"Exiturus (sic) to saluto!  The tender carries you this message of
+good-bye.  Simply speaking, I hate leaving South Africa.  And of all
+my memories, the last will live the longest.  Grape harvest at
+Constantia, and you singing: 'If I could be the falling dew: If ever
+you and your husband come to England, do let me know, that I may try
+and repay a little the happiest five days I've spent out here.
+
+"Your very faithful servant,
+
+"TIMMY FORT."
+
+
+She remembered a very brown face, a tall slim figure, and something
+gallant about the whole of him.  What was he like after ten years?
+Grizzled, married, with a large family?  An odious thing--Time!  And
+Cousin Edward's little yellow letter.
+
+Good heavens!  Twenty-six years ago--before he was a parson, or
+married or anything!  Such a good partner, really musical; a queer,
+dear fellow, devoted, absentminded, easily shocked, yet with flame
+burning in him somewhere.
+
+'DEAR LEILA,
+
+"After our last dance I went straight off'--I couldn't go in.  I went
+down to the river, and walked along the bank; it was beautiful, all
+grey and hazy, and the trees whispered, and the cows looked holy; and
+I walked along and thought of you.  And a farmer took me for a
+lunatic, in my dress clothes.  Dear Leila, you were so pretty last
+night, and I did love our dances.  I hope you are not tired, and that
+I shall see you soon again:
+
+"Your affectionate cousin,
+
+"EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+
+And then he had gone and become a parson, and married, and been a
+widower fifteen years.  She remembered the death of his wife, just
+before she left for South Africa, at that period of disgrace when she
+had so shocked her family by her divorce.  Poor Edward--quite the
+nicest of her cousins!  The only one she would care to see again.  He
+would be very old and terribly good and proper, by now
+
+Her wheel of Regent's Park was coming full circle, and the sun was up
+behind the houses, but still no sound of traffic stirred.  She
+stopped before a flower-bed where was some heliotrope, and took a
+long, luxurious sniff: She could not resist plucking a sprig, too,
+and holding it to her nose.  A sudden want of love had run through
+every nerve and fibre of her; she shivered, standing there with her
+eyes half closed, above the pale violet blossom.  Then, noting by her
+wrist-watch that it was four o'clock, she hurried on, to get to her
+bed, for she would have to be on duty again at noon.  Oh!  the war!
+She was tired!  If only it were over, and one could live!...
+
+Somewhere by Twickenham the moon had floated down; somewhere up from
+Kentish Town the sun came soaring; wheels rolled again, and the seven
+million sleepers in their million houses woke from morning sleep to
+that same thought....
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Edward Pierson, dreaming over an egg at breakfast, opened a letter in
+a handwriting which he did not recognise.
+
+"V. A. D. Hospital,
+
+"Mulberry Road, St. John's Wood N. W.
+
+"DEAR COUSIN EDWARD,
+
+"Do you remember me, or have I gone too far into the shades of night?
+I was Leila Pierson once upon a time, and I often think of you and
+wonder what you are like now, and what your girls are like.  I have
+been here nearly a year, working for our wounded, and for a year
+before that was nursing in South Africa.  My husband died five years
+ago out there.  Though we haven't met for I dare not think how long,
+I should awfully like to see you again.  Would you care to come some
+day and look over my hospital?  I have two wards under me; our men
+are rather dears.
+
+"Your forgotten but still affectionate cousin
+
+"LEILA LYNCH."
+
+"P. S.  I came across a little letter you once wrote me; it brought
+back old days."
+
+
+No!  He had not forgotten.  There was a reminder in the house.  And
+he looked up at Noel sitting opposite.  How like the eyes were!  And
+he thought: 'I wonder what Leila has become.  One mustn't be
+uncharitable.  That man is dead; she has been nursing two years.  She
+must be greatly changed; I should certainly like to see her.  I will
+go!'  Again he looked at Noel.  Only yesterday she had renewed her
+request to be allowed to begin her training as a nurse.
+
+"I'm going to see a hospital to-day, Nollie," he said; "if you like,
+I'll make enquiries.  I'm afraid it'll mean you have to begin by
+washing up."
+
+"I know; anything, so long as I do begin."
+
+"Very well; I'll see about it."  And he went back to his egg.
+
+Noel's voice roused him.  "Do you feel the war much, Daddy?  Does it
+hurt you here?"  She had put her hand on her heart.  "Perhaps it
+doesn't, because you live half in the next world, don't you?"
+
+The words: "God forbid," sprang to Pierson's lips; he did not speak
+them, but put his egg-spoon down, hurt and bewildered.  What did the
+child mean?  Not feel the war!  He smiled.
+
+"I hope I'm able to help people sometimes, Nollie," and was conscious
+that he had answered his own thoughts, not her words.  He finished
+his breakfast quickly, and very soon went out.  He crossed the
+Square, and passed East, down two crowded streets to his church.  In
+the traffic of those streets, all slipshod and confused, his black-
+clothed figure and grave face, with its Vandyk beard, had a curious
+remote appearance, like a moving remnant of a past civilisation.  He
+went in by the side door.  Only five days he had been away, but they
+had been so full of emotion that the empty familiar building seemed
+almost strange to him.  He had come there unconsciously, groping for
+anchorage and guidance in this sudden change of relationship between
+him and his daughters.  He stood by the pale brazen eagle, staring
+into the chancel.  The choir were wanting new hymn-books--he must not
+forget to order them!  His eyes sought the stained-glass window he
+had put in to the memory of his wife.  The sun, too high to slant,
+was burnishing its base, till it glowed of a deep sherry colour.  "In
+the next world!"  What strange words of Noel's!  His eyes caught the
+glimmer of the organ-pipes; and, mounting to the loft, he began to
+play soft chords wandering into each other.  He finished, and stood
+gazing down.  This space within high walls, under high vaulted roof,
+where light was toned to a perpetual twilight, broken here and there
+by a little glow of colour from glass and flowers, metal, and dark
+wood, was his home, his charge, his refuge.  Nothing moved down
+there, and yet--was not emptiness mysteriously living, the closed-in
+air imprinted in strange sort, as though the drone of music and
+voices in prayer and praise clung there still?  Had not sanctity a
+presence?  Outside, a barrel-organ drove its tune along; a wagon
+staggered on the paved street, and the driver shouted to his horses;
+some distant guns boomed out in practice, and the rolling of wheels
+on wheels formed a net of sound.  But those invading noises were
+transmuted to a mere murmuring in here; only the silence and the
+twilight were real to Pierson, standing there, a little black figure
+in a great empty space.
+
+When he left the church, it was still rather early to go to Leila's
+hospital; and, having ordered the new hymn-books, he called in at the
+house of a parishioner whose son had been killed in France.  He found
+her in her kitchen; an oldish woman who lived by charing.  She wiped
+a seat for the Vicar.
+
+"I was just makin' meself a cup o' tea, sir."
+
+"Ah!  What a comfort tea is, Mrs. Soles!"  And he sat down, so that
+she should feel "at home."
+
+"Yes; it gives me 'eart-burn; I take eight or ten cups a day, now.  I
+take 'em strong, too.  I don't seem able to get on without it.  I
+'ope the young ladies are well, sir?"
+
+"Very well, thank you.  Miss Noel is going to begin nursing, too."
+
+"Deary-me!  She's very young; but all the young gells are doin'
+something these days.  I've got a niece in munitions-makin' a pretty
+penny she is.  I've been meanin' to tell you--I don't come to church
+now; since my son was killed, I don't seem to 'ave the 'eart to go
+anywhere--'aven't been to a picture-palace these three months.  Any
+excitement starts me cryin'."
+
+"I know; but you'd find rest in church."
+
+Mrs. Soles shook her head, and the small twisted bob of her
+discoloured hair wobbled vaguely.
+
+"I can't take any recreation," she said.  "I'd rather sit 'ere, or be
+at work.  My son was a real son to me.  This tea's the only thing
+that does me any good.  I can make you a fresh cup in a minute."
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Soles, but I must be getting on.  We must all look
+forward to meeting our beloved again, in God's mercy.  And one of
+these days soon I shall be seeing you in church, shan't I.
+
+Mrs. Soles shifted her weight from one slippered foot to the other.
+
+"Well! let's 'ope so," she said.  "But I dunno when I shall 'ave the
+spirit.  Good day, sir, and thank you kindly for calling, I'm sure."
+
+Pierson walked away with a very faint smile.  Poor queer old soul!
+--she was no older than himself, but he thought of her as ancient
+--cut off from her son, like so many--so many; and how good and
+patient!  The melody of an anthem began running in his head.  His
+fingers moved on the air beside him, and he stood still, waiting for
+an omnibus to take him to St. John's Wood.  A thousand people went by
+while he was waiting, but he did not notice them, thinking of that
+anthem, of his daughters, and the mercy of God; and on the top of his
+'bus, when it came along, he looked lonely and apart, though the man
+beside him was so fat that there was hardly any seat left to sit on.
+Getting down at Lord's Cricket-ground, he asked his way of a lady in
+a nurse's dress.
+
+"If you'll come with me," she said, "I'm just going there."
+
+"Oh!  Do you happen to know a Mrs. Lynch who nurses"
+
+"I am Mrs. Lynch.  Why, you're Edward Pierson!"
+
+He looked into her face, which he had not yet observed.
+
+"Leila!"  he said.
+
+"Yes, Leila!  How awfully nice of you to come, Edward!"
+
+They continued to stand, searching each for the other's youth, till
+she murmured:
+
+"In spite of your beard, I should have known you anywhere!"  But she
+thought: 'Poor Edward!  He is old, and monk-like!'
+
+And Pierson, in answer, murmured:
+
+"You're very little changed, Leila!  We haven't, seen each other
+since my youngest girl was born.  She's just a little like you."  But
+he thought: 'My Nollie!  So much more dewy; poor Leila!'
+
+They walked on, talking of his daughters, till they reached the
+hospital.
+
+"If you'll wait here a minute, I'll take you over my wards."
+
+She had left him in a bare hall, holding his hat in one hand and
+touching his gold cross with the other; but she soon came hack, and a
+little warmth crept about his heart.  How works of mercy suited
+women!  She looked so different, so much softer, beneath the white
+coif, with a white apron over the bluish frock.
+
+At the change in his face, a little warmth crept about Leila, too,
+just where the bib of her apron stopped; and her eyes slid round at
+him while they went towards what had once been a billiard-room.
+
+"My men are dears," she said; "they love to be talked to."
+
+Under a skylight six beds jutted out from a green distempered wall,
+opposite to six beds jutting out from another green distempered wall,
+and from each bed a face was turned towards them young faces, with
+but little expression in them.  A nurse, at the far end, looked
+round, and went on with her work.  The sight of the ward was no more
+new to Pierson than to anyone else in these days.  It was so
+familiar, indeed, that it had practically no significance.  He stood
+by the first bed, and Leila stood alongside.  The man smiled up when
+she spoke, and did not smile when he spoke, and that again was
+familiar to him.  They passed from bed to bed, with exactly the same
+result, till she was called away, and he sat down by a young soldier
+with a long, very narrow head and face, and a heavily bandaged
+shoulder. Touching the bandage reverently, Pierson said:
+
+"Well, my dear fellow-still bad?"
+
+"Ah!" replied the soldier.  "Shrapnel wound: It's cut the flesh
+properly."
+
+"But not the spirit, I can see!"
+
+The young soldier gave him a quaint look, as much as to say: "Not
+'arf bad!"  and a gramophone close to the last bed began to play:
+"God bless Daddy at the war!"
+
+"Are you fond of music?"
+
+"I like it well enough.  Passes the time."
+
+"I'm afraid the time hangs heavy in hospital."
+
+"Yes; it hangs a bit 'eavy; it's just 'orspital life.  I've been
+wounded before, you see.  It's better than bein' out there.  I expect
+I'll lose the proper use o' this arm.  I don't worry; I'll get my
+discharge."
+
+"You've got some good nurses here."
+
+"Yes; I like Mrs. Lynch; she's the lady I like."
+
+"My cousin."
+
+"I see you come in together.  I see everything 'ere.  I think a lot,
+too.  Passes the time."
+
+"Do they let you smoke?"
+
+"Oh, yes!  They let us smoke."
+
+"Have one of mine?"
+
+The young soldier smiled for the first time.  "Thank you; I've got
+plenty."
+
+The nurse came by, and smiled at Pierson.
+
+"He's one of our blase ones; been in before, haven't you, Simson?"
+
+Pierson looked at the young man, whose long, narrow face; where one
+sandy-lashed eyelid drooped just a little, seemed armoured with a
+sort of limited omniscience.  The gramophone had whirred and grunted
+into "Sidi Brahim."  The nurse passed on.
+
+"'Seedy Abram,'" said the young soldier.  "The Frenchies sing it;
+they takes it up one after the other, ye know."
+
+"Ah!"  murmured Pierson; "it's pretty."  And his fingers drummed on
+the counterpane, for the tune was new to him.  Something seemed to
+move in the young man's face, as if a blind had been drawn up a
+little.
+
+"I don't mind France," he said abruptly; "I don't mind the shells and
+that; but I can't stick the mud.  There's a lot o' wounded die in the
+mud; can't get up--smothered."  His unwounded arm made a restless
+movement.  "I was nearly smothered myself.  Just managed to keep me
+nose up."
+
+Pierson shuddered.  "Thank God you did!"
+
+"Yes; I didn't like that.  I told Mrs. Lynch about that one day when
+I had the fever.  She's a nice lady; she's seen a lot of us boys:
+That mud's not right, you know."  And again his unwounded arm made
+that restless movement; while the gramophone struck up: "The boys in
+brown."  The movement of the arm affected Pierson horribly; he rose
+and, touching the bandaged shoulder, said:
+
+"Good-bye; I hope you'll soon be quite recovered."
+
+The young soldier's lips twisted in the semblance of a smile; his
+drooped eyelid seemed to try and raise itself.
+
+"Good day, sir," he said; "and thank you."
+
+Pierson went back to the hall.  The sunlight fell in a pool just
+inside the open door, and an uncontrollable impulse made him move
+into it, so that it warmed him up to the waist.  The mud!  How ugly
+life was!  Life and Death!  Both ugly!  Poor boys!  Poor boys!
+
+A voice behind him said:
+
+"Oh!  There you are, Edward!  Would you like to see the other ward,
+or shall I show you our kitchen?"
+
+Pierson took her hand impulsively.  "You're doing a noble work,
+Leila.  I wanted to ask you: Could you arrange for Noel to come and
+get trained here?  She wants to begin at once.  The fact is, a boy
+she is attracted to has just gone out to the Front."
+
+"Ah!"  murmured Leila, and her eyes looked very soft.  "Poor child!
+We shall be wanting an extra hand next week.  I'll see if she could
+come now.  I'll speak to our Matron, and let you know to-night."  She
+squeezed his hand hard.
+
+"Dear Edward, I'm so glad to see you again.  You're the first of our
+family I've seen for sixteen years.  I wonder if you'd bring Noel to
+have supper at my flat to-night--Just nothing to eat, you know!  It's
+a tiny place.  There's a Captain Fort coming; a nice man."
+
+Pierson accepted, and as he walked away he thought: 'Dear Leila!
+I believe it was Providence.  She wants sympathy.  She wants to feel
+the past is the past.  How good women are!'
+
+And the sun, blazing suddenly out of a cloud, shone on his black
+figure and the little gold cross, in the middle of Portland Place.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Men, even if they are not artistic, who have been in strange places
+and known many nooks of the world, get the scenic habit, become open
+to pictorial sensation.  It was as a picture or series of pictures
+that Jimmy Fort ever afterwards remembered his first supper at
+Leila's.  He happened to have been all day in the open, motoring
+about to horse farms under a hot sun; and Leila's hock cup possessed
+a bland and subtle strength.  The scenic sense derived therefrom had
+a certain poignancy, the more so because the tall child whom he met
+there did not drink it, and her father seemed but to wet his lips, so
+that Leila and he had all the rest.  Rather a wonderful little scene
+it made in his mind, very warm, glowing, yet with a strange dark
+sharpness to it, which came perhaps from the black walls.
+
+The flat had belonged to an artist who was at the war.  It was but a
+pocket dwelling on the third floor.  The two windows of the little
+square sitting-room looked out on some trees and a church.  But
+Leila, who hated dining by daylight, had soon drawn curtains of a
+deep blue over them.  The picture which Fort remembered was this: A
+little four-square table of dark wood, with a Chinese mat of vivid
+blue in the centre, whereon stood a silver lustre bowl of clove
+carnations; some greenish glasses with hock cup in them; on his left,
+Leila in a low lilac frock, her neck and shoulders very white, her
+face a little powdered, her eyes large, her lips smiling; opposite
+him a black-clothed padre with a little gold cross, over whose thin
+darkish face, with its grave pointed beard, passed little gentle
+smiles, but whose deep sunk grey eyes were burnt and bright; on his
+right, a girl in a high grey frock, almost white, just hollowed at
+the neck, with full sleeves to the elbow, so that her slim arms
+escaped; her short fair hair a little tumbled; her big grey eyes
+grave; her full lips shaping with a strange daintiness round every
+word--and they not many; brilliant red shades over golden lights
+dotting the black walls; a blue divan; a little black piano flush
+with the wall; a dark polished floor; four Japanese prints; a white
+ceiling.  He was conscious that his own khaki spoiled something as
+curious and rare as some old Chinese tea-chest.  He even remembered
+what they ate; lobster; cold pigeon pie; asparagus; St. Ivel cheese;
+raspberries and cream.  He did not remember half so well what they
+talked of, except that he himself told them stories of the Boer War,
+in which he had served in the Yeomanry, and while he was telling
+them, the girl, like a child listening to a fairy-tale, never moved
+her eyes from his face.  He remembered that after supper they all
+smoked cigarettes, even the tall child, after the padre had said to
+her mildly, "My dear!" and she had answered: "I simply must, Daddy,
+just one."  He remembered Leila brewing Turkish coffee--very good,
+and how beautiful her white arms looked, hovering about the cups.  He
+remembered her making the padre sit down at the piano, and play to
+them.  And she and the girl on the divan together, side by side, a
+strange contrast; with just as strange a likeness to each other.  He
+always remembered how fine and rare that music sounded in the little
+room, flooding him with a dreamy beatitude.  Then--he remembered--
+Leila sang, the padre standing-by; and the tall child on the divan
+bending forward over her knees, with her chin on her hands.  He
+remembered rather vividly how Leila turned her neck and looked up,
+now at the padre, now at himself; and, all through, the delightful
+sense of colour and warmth, a sort of glamour over all the evening;
+and the lingering pressure of Leila's hand when he said good-bye and
+they went away, for they all went together.  He remembered talking a
+great deal to the padre in the cab, about the public school they had
+both been at, and thinking: 'It's a good padre--this!'  He remembered
+how their taxi took them to an old Square which he did not know,
+where the garden trees looked densely black in the starshine.  He
+remembered that a man outside the house had engaged the padre in
+earnest talk, while the tall child and himself stood in the open
+doorway, where the hall beyond was dark.  Very exactly he remembered
+the little conversation which then took place between them, while
+they waited for her father.
+
+"Is it very horrid in the trenches, Captain Fort?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Pierson; it is very horrid, as a rule."
+
+"Is it dangerous all the time?"
+
+"Pretty well."
+
+"Do officers run more risks than the men?"
+
+"Not unless there's an attack."
+
+"Are there attacks very often?"
+
+It had seemed to him so strangely primitive a little catechism, that
+he had smiled.  And, though it was so dark, she had seen that smile,
+for her face went proud and close all of a sudden.  He had cursed
+himself, and said gently:
+
+"Have you a brother out there?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"But someone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Someone!  He had heard that answer with a little shock.  This child--
+this fairy princess of a child already to have someone!  He wondered
+if she went about asking everyone these questions, with that someone
+in her thoughts.  Poor child!  And quickly he said:
+
+"After all, look at me!  I was out there a year, and here I am with
+only half a game leg; times were a lot worse, then, too.  I often
+wish I were back there.  Anything's better than London and the War
+Office."  But just then he saw the padre coming, and took her hand.
+"Good night, Miss Pierson.  Don't worry.  That does no good, and
+there isn't half the risk you think."
+
+Her hand stirred, squeezed his gratefully, as a child's would
+squeeze.
+
+"Good night," she murmured; "thank you awfully."
+
+And, in the dark cab again, he remembered thinking: 'Fancy that
+child!  A jolly lucky boy, out there!  Too bad!  Poor little fairy
+princess!'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+I
+
+1
+
+To wash up is not an exciting operation.  To wash up in August became
+for Noel a process which taxed her strength and enthusiasm.  She
+combined it with other forms of instruction in the art of nursing,
+had very little leisure, and in the evenings at home would often fall
+asleep curled up in a large chintz-covered chair.
+
+George and Gratian had long gone back to their respective hospitals,
+and she and her father had the house to themselves.  She received
+many letters from Cyril which she carried about with her and read on
+her way to and from the hospital; and every other day she wrote to
+him.  He was not yet in the firing line; his letters were descriptive
+of his men, his food, or the natives, or reminiscent of Kestrel; hers
+descriptive of washing up, or reminiscent of Kestrel.  But in both
+there was always some little word of the longing within them.
+
+It was towards the end of August when she had the letter which said
+that he had been moved up.  From now on he would be in hourly danger!
+That evening after dinner she did not go to sleep in the chair, but
+sat under the open window, clenching her hands, and reading "Pride
+and Prejudice" without understanding a word.  While she was so
+engaged her father came up and said:
+
+"Captain Fort, Nollie.  Will you give him some coffee?  I'm afraid I
+must go out."
+
+When he had gone, Noel looked at her visitor drinking his coffee.  He
+had been out there, too, and he was alive; with only a little limp.
+The visitor smiled and said:
+
+"What were you thinking about when we came in?"
+
+"Only the war."
+
+"Any news of him?"
+
+Noel frowned, she hated to show her feelings.
+
+"Yes!  he's gone to the Front.  Won't you have a cigarette?"
+
+"Thanks.  Will you?"
+
+"I want one awfully.  I think sitting still and waiting is more
+dreadful than anything in the world."
+
+"Except, knowing that others are waiting.  When I was out there I
+used to worry horribly over my mother.  She was ill at the time.  The
+cruelest thing in war is the anxiety of people about each other--
+nothing touches that."
+
+The words exactly summed up Noel's hourly thought.  He said nice
+things, this man with the long legs and the thin brown bumpy face!
+
+"I wish I were a man," she said, "I think women have much the worst
+time in the war.  Is your mother old?"  But of course she was old why
+he was old himself!
+
+"She died last Christmas."
+
+"Oh!  I'm so sorry!"
+
+"You lost your mother when you were a babe, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes.  That's her portrait."  At the end of the room, hanging on a
+strip of black velvet was a pastel, very faint in colouring, as
+though faded, of a young woman, with an eager, sweet face, dark eyes,
+and bent a little forward, as if questioning her painter.  Fort went
+up to it.
+
+"It's not a bit like you.  But she must have been a very sweet
+woman."
+
+"It's a sort of presence in the room.  I wish I were like her!"
+
+Fort turned.  "No," he said; "no.  Better as you are.  It would only
+have spoiled a complete thing."
+
+"She was good."
+
+"And aren't you?"
+
+"Oh! no.  I get a devil."
+
+"You!  Why, you're out of a fairy-tale!"
+
+"It comes from Daddy--only he doesn't know, because he's a perfect
+saint; but I know he's had a devil somewhere, or he couldn't be the
+saint he is."
+
+"H'm!" said Fort.  "That's very deep: and I believe it's true--the
+saints did have devils."
+
+"Poor Daddy's devil has been dead ages.  It's been starved out of
+him, I think."
+
+"Does your devil ever get away with you?"
+
+Noel felt her cheeks growing red under his stare, and she turned to
+the window:
+
+"Yes.  It's a real devil."
+
+Vividly there had come before her the dark Abbey, and the moon
+balancing over the top of the crumbling wall, and the white owl
+flying across.  And, speaking to the air, she said:
+
+"It makes you do things that you want to do."
+
+She wondered if he would laugh--it sounded so silly.  But he did not.
+
+"And damn the consequences?  I know.  It's rather a jolly thing to
+have."
+
+Noel shook her head.  "Here's Daddy coming back!"
+
+Fort held out his hand.
+
+"I won't stay.  Good night; and don't worry too much, will you?"
+
+He kept her hand rather a long time, and gave it a hard squeeze.
+
+Don't worry!  What advice!  Ah!  if she could see Cyril just for a
+minute!
+
+
+
+2
+
+In September, 1916, Saturday still came before Sunday, in spite of
+the war.  For Edward Pierson this Saturday had been a strenuous day,
+and even now, at nearly midnight, he was still conning his just-
+completed sermon.
+
+A patriot of patriots, he had often a passionate longing to resign
+his parish, and go like his curate for a chaplain at the Front.  It
+seemed to him that people must think his life idle and sheltered and
+useless.  Even in times of peace he had been sensitive enough to feel
+the cold draughty blasts which the Church encounters in a material
+age.  He knew that nine people out of ten looked on him as something
+of a parasite, with no real work in the world.  And since he was
+nothing if not conscientious, he always worked himself to the bone.
+
+To-day he had risen at half-past six, and after his bath and
+exercises, had sat down to his sermon--for, even now, he wrote a new
+sermon once a month, though he had the fruits of twenty-six years to
+choose from.  True, these new sermons were rather compiled than
+written, because, bereft of his curate, he had not time enough for
+fresh thought on old subjects.  At eight he had breakfasted with
+Noel, before she went off to her hospital, whence she would return at
+eight in the evening.  Nine to ten was his hour for seeing
+parishioners who had troubles, or wanted help or advice, and he had
+received three to-day who all wanted help, which he had given.  From
+ten to eleven he had gone back to his sermon, and had spent from
+eleven to one at his church, attending to small matters, writing
+notices, fixing hymns, holding the daily half-hour Service instituted
+during wartime, to which but few ever came.  He had hurried back to
+lunch, scamping it so that he might get to his piano for an hour of
+forgetfulness.  At three he had christened a very noisy baby, and
+been detained by its parents who wished for information on a variety
+of topics.  At half-past four he had snatched a cup of tea, reading
+the paper; and had spent from five to seven visiting two Parish
+Clubs, and those whose war-pension matters he had in hand, and
+filling up forms which would be kept in official places till such
+time as the system should be changed and a fresh set of forms issued.
+>From seven to eight he was at home again, in case his flock wanted to
+see him; to-day four sheep had come, and gone away, he was afraid,
+but little the wiser.  From half-past eight to half-past nine he had
+spent in choir practice, because the organist was on his holiday.
+Slowly in the cool of the evening he had walked home, and fallen
+asleep in his chair on getting in.  At eleven he had woken with a
+start, and, hardening his heart, had gone back to his sermon.  And
+now, at nearly midnight, it was still less than twenty minutes long.
+He lighted one of his rare cigarettes, and let thought wander.  How
+beautiful those pale pink roses were in that old silver bowl-like a
+little strange poem, or a piece of Debussy music, or a Mathieu Maris
+picture-reminding him oddly of the word Leila.  Was he wrong in
+letting Noel see so much of Leila?  But then she was so improved--
+dear Leila!...  The pink roses were just going to fall!  And yet how
+beautiful!...  It was quiet to-night; he felt very drowsy....  Did
+Nollie still think of that young man, or had it passed?  She had
+never confided in him since!  After the war, it would be nice to take
+her to Italy, to all the little towns.  They would see the Assisi of
+St. Francis.  The Little Flowers of St. Francis.  The Little
+Flowers!...  His hand dropped, the cigarette went out.  He slept with
+his face in shadow.  Slowly into the silence of his sleep little
+sinister sounds intruded.  Short concussions, dragging him back out
+of that deep slumber.  He started up.  Noel was standing at the door,
+in a long coat.  She said in her calm voice:
+
+"Zeps, Daddy!"
+
+"Yes, my dear.  Where are the maids?"
+
+An Irish voice answered from the hall: "Here, sir; trustin' in God;
+but 'tis better on the ground floor."
+
+He saw a huddle of three figures, queerly costumed, against the
+stairs.
+
+"Yes, Yes, Bridgie; you're safe down here."  Then he noticed that
+Noel was gone.  He followed her out into the Square, alive with faces
+faintly luminous in the darkness, and found her against the garden
+railings.
+
+"You must come back in, Nollie."
+
+"Oh, no!  Cyril has this every day."
+
+He stood beside her; not loth, for excitement had begun to stir his
+blood.  They stayed there for some minutes, straining their eyes for
+sight of anything save the little zagged splashes of bursting
+shrapnel, while voices buzzed, and muttered: "Look!  There!  There!
+There it is!"
+
+But the seers had eyes of greater faith than Pierson's, for he saw
+nothing: He took her arm at last, and led her in.  In the hall she
+broke from him.
+
+"Let's go up on the roof, Daddy!" and ran upstairs.
+
+Again he followed, mounting by a ladder, through a trapdoor on to the
+roof.
+
+"It's splendid up here!" she cried.
+
+He could see her eyes blazing, and thought: 'How my child does love
+excitement--it's almost terrible!'
+
+Over the wide, dark, star-strewn sky travelling searchlights, were
+lighting up the few little clouds; the domes and spires rose from
+among the spread-out roofs, all fine and ghostly.  The guns had
+ceased firing, as though puzzled.  One distant bang rumbled out.
+
+"A bomb!  Oh!  If we could only get one of the Zeps!"
+
+A furious outburst of firing followed, lasting perhaps a minute, then
+ceased as if by magic.  They saw two searchlights converge and meet
+right overhead.
+
+"It's above us!" murmured Noel.
+
+Pierson put his arm round her waist.  'She feels no fear!' he
+thought.  The search-lights switched apart; and suddenly, from far
+away, came a confusion of weird sounds.
+
+"What is it?  They're cheering.  Oh! Daddy, look!" There in the
+heavens, towards the east, hung a dull red thing, lengthening as they
+gazed.
+
+"They've got it.  It's on fire!  Hurrah!"
+
+Through the dark firmament that fiery orange shape began canting
+downward; and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy of sound.  And
+Pierson's arm tightened on her waist.
+
+"Thank God!" he muttered.
+
+The bright oblong seemed to break and spread, tilted down below the
+level of the roofs; and suddenly the heavens flared, as if some huge
+jug of crimson light had been flung out on them.  Something turned
+over in Pierson's heart; he flung up his hand to his eyes.
+
+"The poor men in it!"  he said.  "How terrible!"
+
+Noel's voice answered, hard and pitiless:
+
+"They needn't have come.  They're murderers!"
+
+Yes, they were murderers--but how terrible!  And he stood quivering,
+with his hands pressed to his face, till the cheering had died out
+into silence.
+
+"Let's pray, Nollie!"  he whispered.  "O God, Who in Thy great mercy
+hath delivered us from peril, take into Thy keeping the souls of
+these our enemies, consumed by Thy wrath before our eyes; give us the
+power to pity them--men like ourselves."
+
+But even while he prayed he could see Noel's face flame-white in the
+darkness; and, as that glow in the sky faded out, he felt once more
+the thrill of triumph.
+
+They went down to tell the maids, and for some time after sat up
+together, talking over what they had seen, eating biscuits and
+drinking milk, which they warmed on an etna.  It was nearly two
+o'clock before they went to bed.  Pierson fell asleep at once, and
+never turned till awakened at half-past six by his alarum.  He had
+Holy Communion to administer at eight, and he hurried to get early to
+his church and see that nothing untoward had happened to it.  There
+it stood in the sunlight; tall, grey, quiet, unharmed, with bell
+gently ringing.
+
+
+
+3
+
+And at that hour Cyril Morland, under the parapet of his trench,
+tightening his belt, was looking at his wrist-watch for the hundredth
+time, calculating exactly where he meant to put foot and hand for the
+going over: 'I absolutely mustn't let those chaps get in front of
+me,' he thought.  So many yards before the first line of trenches, so
+many yards to the second line, and there stop.  So his rehearsals had
+gone; it was the performance now!  Another minute before the terrific
+racket of the drum-fire should become the curtain-fire, which would
+advance before them.  He ran his eye down the trench.  The man next
+him was licking his two first fingers, as if he might be going to
+bowl at cricket.  Further down, a man was feeling his puttees.  A
+voice said: "Wot price the orchestra nah!"  He saw teeth gleam in
+faces burnt almost black.  Then he looked up; the sky was blue beyond
+the brownish film of dust raised by the striking shells.  Noel!
+Noel!  Noel!...  He dug his fingers deep into the left side of his
+tunic till he could feel the outline of her photograph between his
+dispatch-case and his heart.  His heart fluttered just as it used
+when he was stretched out with hand touching the ground, before the
+start of the "hundred yards" at school.  Out of the corner of his eye
+he caught the flash of a man's "briquet" lighting a cigarette.  All
+right for those chaps, but not for him; he wanted all his breath--
+this rifle, and kit were handicap enough!  Two days ago he had been
+reading in some paper how men felt just before an attack.  And now he
+knew.  He just felt nervous.  If only the moment would come, and get
+itself over!  For all the thought he gave to the enemy there might
+have been none--nothing but shells and bullets, with lives of their
+own.  He heard the whistle; his foot was on the spot he had marked
+down; his hand where he had seen it; he called out: "Now, boys!"  His
+head was over the top, his body over; he was conscious of someone
+falling, and two men neck and neck beside him.  Not to try and run,
+not to break out of a walk; to go steady, and yet keep ahead!  D--n
+these holes!  A bullet tore through his sleeve, grazing his arm--a
+red-hot sensation, like the touch of an iron.  A British shell from
+close over his head burst sixty yards ahead; he stumbled, fell flat,
+picked himself up.  Three ahead of him now!  He walked faster, and
+drew alongside.  Two of them fell.  'What luck!' he thought; and
+gripping his rifle harder, pitched headlong into a declivity.  Dead
+bodies lay there!  The first German trench line, and nothing alive in
+it, nothing to clean up, nothing of it left!  He stopped, getting his
+wind; watching the men panting and stumbling in.  The roar of the
+guns was louder than ever again, barraging the second line.  So far,
+good!  And here was his captain!
+
+"Ready, boys?  On, then!"
+
+This time he moved more slowly still, over terrible going, all holes
+and hummocks.  Half consciously he took cover all he could.  The air
+was alive with the whistle from machine-gun fire storming across
+zigzag fashion-alive it was with bullets, dust, and smoke.  'How
+shall I tell her?' he thought.  There would be nothing to tell but
+just a sort of jagged brown sensation.  He kept his eyes steadily
+before him, not wanting to seethe men falling, not wanting anything
+to divert him from getting there.  He felt the faint fanning of the
+passing bullets.  The second line must be close now.  Why didn't that
+barrage lift?  Was this new dodge of firing till the last second
+going to do them in?  Another hundred yards and he would be bang into
+it.  He flung himself flat and waited; looking at his wrist-watch he
+noted that his arm was soaked with blood.  He thought: 'A wound!  Now
+I shall go home.  Thank God!  Oh, Noel!' The passing bullets whirled
+above him; he could hear them even through the screech and thunder of
+the shell-fire.  'The beastly things!' he thought: A voice beside him
+gasped out:
+
+"It's lifted, sir."
+
+He called: "Come on, boys!" and went forward, stooping.  A bullet
+struck his rifle.  The shock made him stagger and sent an electric
+shock spinning up his arm.  'Luck again!' he thought.  'Now for it!
+I haven't seen a German yet!' He leaped forward, spun round, flung up
+his arms, and fell on his back, shot through and through....
+
+The position was consolidated, as they say, and in the darkness
+stretcher-bearers were out over the half-mile.  Like will-o'-the-
+wisps, with their shaded lanterns, they moved, hour after hour,
+slowly quartering the black honeycomb which lay behind the new
+British line.  Now and then in the light of some star-shell their
+figures were disclosed, bending and raising the forms of the wounded,
+or wielding pick and shovel.
+
+"Officer."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Search."
+
+>From the shaded lantern, lowered to just above the body, a yellowish
+glare fell on face and breast.  The hands of the searcher moved in
+that little pool of light.  The bearer who was taking notes bent
+down.
+
+"Another boy," he said.  "That all he has?"
+
+The searcher raised himself.
+
+"Just those, and a photo."
+
+"Dispatch-case; pound loose; cigarette-case; wristwatch; photo.
+Let's see it."
+
+The searcher placed the photo in the pool of light.  The tiny face of
+a girl stared up at them, unmoved, from its short hair.
+
+"Noel," said the searcher, reading.
+
+"H'm!  Take care of it.  Stick it in his case.  Come on!"
+
+The pool of light dissolved, and darkness for ever covered Cyril
+Morland.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+When those four took their seats in the Grand Circle at Queen's Hall
+the programme was already at the second number, which, in spite of
+all the efforts of patriotism, was of German origin--a Brandenburg
+concerto by Bach.  More curious still, it was encored.  Pierson did
+not applaud, he was too far gone in pleasure, and sat with a rapt
+smile on his face, oblivious of his surroundings.  He remained thus
+removed from mortal joys and sorrows till the last applause had died
+away, and Leila's voice said in his ear:
+
+"Isn't it a wonderful audience, Edward?  Look at all that khaki.
+Who'd have thought those young men cared for music--good music--
+German music, too?"
+
+Pierson looked down at the patient mass of standing figures in straw
+hats and military caps, with faces turned all one way, and sighed.
+
+"I wish I could get an audience like that in my church."
+
+A smile crept out at the corner of Leila's lips.  She was thinking:
+'Ah!  Your Church is out of date, my dear, and so are you! Your
+Church, with its smell of mould and incense, its stained-glass, and
+narrowed length and droning organ.  Poor Edward, so out of the
+world!'  But she only pressed his arm, and whispered:
+
+"Look at Noel!"
+
+The girl was talking to Jimmy Fort.  Her cheeks were gushed, and she
+looked prettier than Pierson had seen her look for a long time now,
+ever since Kestrel, indeed.  He heard Leila sigh.
+
+"Does she get news of her boy?  Do you remember that May Week,
+Edward?  We were very young then; even you were young.  That was such
+a pretty little letter you wrote me.  I can see you still-wandering
+in your dress clothes along the river, among the 'holy' cows."
+
+But her eyes slid round again, watching her other neighbour and the
+girl.  A violinist had begun to play the Cesar Franck Sonata.  It was
+Pierson's favourite piece of music, bringing him, as it were, a view
+of heaven, of devotional blue air where devout stars were shining in
+a sunlit noon, above ecstatic trees and waters where ecstatic swans
+were swimming.
+
+"Queer world, Mr. Pierson!  Fancy those boys having to go back to
+barrack life after listening to that!, What's your feeling?  Are we
+moving back to the apes?  Did we touch top note with that Sonata?"
+
+Pierson turned and contemplated his questioner shrewdly.
+
+"No, Captain Fort, I do not think we are moving back to the apes; if
+we ever came from them.  Those boys have the souls of heroes!"
+
+"I know that, sir, perhaps better than you do."
+
+"Ah!  yes," said Pierson humbly, "I forgot, of course."  But he still
+looked at his neighbour doubtfully.  This Captain Fort, who was a
+friend of Leila's, and who had twice been to see them, puzzled him.
+He had a frank face, a frank voice, but queer opinions, or so it
+seemed to, Pierson- little bits of Moslemism, little bits of the
+backwoods, and the veldt; queer unexpected cynicisms, all sorts of
+side views on England had lodged in him, and he did not hide them.
+They came from him like bullets, in that frank voice, and drilled
+little holes in the listener.  Those critical sayings flew so much
+more poignantly from one who had been through the same educational
+mill as himself, than if they had merely come from some rough
+diamond, some artist, some foreigner, even from a doctor like George.
+And they always made him uncomfortable, like the touch of a prickly
+leaf; they did not amuse him.  Certainly Edward Pierson shrank from
+the rough touches of a knock-about philosophy.  After all, it was but
+natural that he should.
+
+He and Noel left after the first part of the concert, parting from
+the other two at the door.  He slipped his hand through her arm; and,
+following out those thoughts of his in the concert-hall, asked:
+
+"Do you like Captain Fort, Nollie?"
+
+"Yes; he's a nice man."
+
+"He seems a nice man, certainly; he has a nice smile, but strange
+views, I'm afraid."
+
+"He thinks the Germans are not much worse than we are; he says that a
+good many of us are bullies too."
+
+"Yes, that is the sort of thing I mean."
+
+"But are we, Daddy?"
+
+"Surely not."
+
+"A policeman I talked to once said the same.  Captain Fort says that
+very few men can stand having power put into their hands without
+being spoiled.  He told me some dreadful stories.  He says we have no
+imagination, so that we often do things without seeing how brutal
+they are."
+
+"We're not perfect, Nollie; but on the whole I think we're a kind
+people."
+
+Noel was silent a moment, then said suddenly:
+
+"Kind people often think others are kind too, when they really
+aren't.  Captain Fort doesn't make that mistake."
+
+"I think he's a little cynical, and a little dangerous."
+
+"Are all people dangerous who don't think like others, Daddy?"
+
+Pierson, incapable of mockery, was not incapable of seeing when he
+was being mocked.  He looked at his daughter with a smile.
+
+"Not quite so bad as that, Nollie; but Mr. Fort is certainly
+subversive.  I think perhaps he has seen too many queer sides of
+life."
+
+"I like him the better for that."
+
+"Well, well," Pierson answered absently.  He had work to do in
+preparation for a Confirmation Class, and sought his study on getting
+in.
+
+Noel went to the dining-room to drink her hot milk.  The curtains
+were not drawn, and bright moonlight was coming in.  Without lighting
+up, she set the etna going, and stood looking at the moon-full for
+the second time since she and Cyril had waited for it in the Abbey.
+And pressing her hands to her breast, she shivered.  If only she
+could summon him from the moonlight out there; if only she were a
+witch-could see him, know where he was, what doing!  For a fortnight
+now she had received no letter.  Every day since he had left she had
+read the casualty lists, with the superstitious feeling that to do so
+would keep him out of them.  She took up the Times.  There was just
+enough light, and she read the roll of honour--till the moon shone in
+on her, lying on the floor, with the dropped journal....
+
+But she was proud, and soon took grief to her room, as on that night
+after he left her, she had taken love.  No sign betrayed to the house
+her disaster; the journal on the floor, and the smell of the burnt
+milk which had boiled over, revealed nothing.  After all, she was but
+one of a thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony.
+Each night, year in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in
+pillows to smother that first awful sense of desolation, and grope
+for the secret spirit-place where bereaved souls go, to receive some
+feeble touch of healing from knowledge of each other's trouble....
+
+In the morning she got up from her sleepless bed, seemed to eat her
+breakfast, and went off to her hospital.  There she washed up plates
+and dishes, with a stony face, dark under the eyes.
+
+The news came to Pierson in a letter from Thirza, received at lunch-
+time.  He read it with a dreadful aching.  Poor, poor little Nollie!
+What an awful trouble for her!  And he, too, went about his work with
+the nightmare thought that he had to break the news to her that
+evening.  Never had he felt more lonely, more dreadfully in want of
+the mother of his children.  She would have known how to soothe, how
+to comfort.  On her heart the child could have sobbed away grief.
+And all that hour, from seven to eight, when he was usually in
+readiness to fulfil the functions of God's substitute to his
+parishioners, he spent in prayer of his own, for guidance how to
+inflict and heal this blow.  When, at last, Noel came, he opened.
+the door to her himself, and, putting back the hair from her
+forehead, said: "Come in here a moment, my darling!"  Noel followed
+him into the study, and sat down.  "I know already, Daddy."  Pierson
+was more dismayed by this stoicism than he would have been by any
+natural out burst.  He stood, timidly stroking her hair, murmuring to
+her what he had said to Gratian, and to so many others in these days:
+"There is no death; look forward to seeing him again; God is
+merciful"  And he marvelled at the calmness of that pale face--so
+young.
+
+"You are very brave, my child!"  he said.
+
+"There's nothing else to be, is there?"
+
+"Isn't there anything I can do for you, Nollie?"
+
+"No, Daddy."
+
+"When did you see it?"
+
+"Last night."  She had already known for twenty-four hours without
+telling him!
+
+"Have you prayed, my darling?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Try, Nollie!"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah, try!"
+
+"It would be ridiculous, Daddy; you don't know."
+
+Grievously upset and bewildered, Pierson moved away from her, and
+said:
+
+"You look dreadfully tired.  Would you like a hot bath, and your
+dinner in bed?"
+
+"I'd like some tea; that's all."  And she went out.
+
+When he had seen that the tea had gone up to her, he too went out;
+and, moved by a longing for woman's help, took a cab to Leila's flat.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+1
+
+
+On leaving the concert Leila and Jimmy Fort had secured a taxi; a
+vehicle which, at night, in wartime, has certain advantages for those
+who desire to become better acquainted.  Vibration, sufficient noise,
+darkness, are guaranteed; and all that is lacking for the furtherance
+of emotion is the scent of honeysuckle and roses, or even of the
+white flowering creeper which on the stoep at High Constantia had
+smelled so much sweeter than petrol.
+
+When Leila found herself with Fort in that loneliness to which she
+had been looking forward, she was overcome by an access of nervous
+silence.  She had been passing through a strange time for weeks past.
+Every night she examined her sensations without quite understanding
+them as yet.  When a woman comes to her age, the world-force is
+liable to take possession, saying:
+
+"You were young, you were beautiful, you still have beauty, you are
+not, cannot be, old.  Cling to youth, cling to beauty; take all you
+can get, before your face gets lines and your hair grey; it is
+impossible that you have been loved for the last time."
+
+To see Jimmy Fort at the concert, talking to Noel, had brought this
+emotion to a head.  She was not of a grudging nature, and could
+genuinely admire Noel, but the idea that Jimmy Fort might also admire
+disturbed her greatly.  He must not; it was not fair; he was too old-
+-besides, the girl had her boy; and she had taken care that he should
+know it.  So, leaning towards him, while a bare-shouldered young lady
+sang, she had whispered:
+
+"Penny?"
+
+And he had whispered back:
+
+"Tell you afterwards."
+
+That had comforted her.  She would make him take her home.  It was
+time she showed her heart.
+
+And now, in the cab, resolved to make her feelings known, in sudden
+shyness she found it very difficult.  Love, to which for quite three
+years she had been a stranger, was come to life within her.  The
+knowledge was at once so sweet, and so disturbing, that she sat with
+face averted, unable to turn the precious minutes to account.  They
+arrived at the flat without having done more than agree that the
+streets were dark, and the moon bright.  She got out with a sense of
+bewilderment, and said rather desperately:
+
+"You must come up and have a cigarette.  It's quite early, still."
+
+He went up.
+
+"Wait just a minute," said Leila.
+
+Sitting there with his drink and his cigarette, he stared at some
+sunflowers in a bowl--Famille Rose--and waited just ten; smiling a
+little, recalling the nose of the fairy princess, and the dainty way
+her lips shaped the words she spoke.  If she had not had that lucky
+young devil of a soldier boy, one would have wanted to buckle her
+shoes, lay one's coat in the mud for her, or whatever they did in
+fairytales.  One would have wanted--ah! what would one not have
+wanted!  Hang that soldier boy!  Leila said he was twenty-two.  By
+George!  how old it made a man feel who was rising forty, and tender
+on the off-fore!  No fairy princesses for him!  Then a whiff of
+perfume came to his nostrils; and, looking up, he saw Leila standing
+before him, in a long garment of dark silk, whence her white arms
+peeped out.
+
+"Another penny?  Do you remember these things, Jimmy?  The Malay
+women used to wear them in Cape Town.  You can't think what a relief
+it is to get out of my slave's dress.  Oh!  I'm so sick of nursing!
+Jimmy, I want to live again a little!"
+
+The garment had taken fifteen years off her age, and a gardenia, just
+where the silk crossed on her breast, seemed no whiter than her skin.
+He wondered whimsically whether it had dropped to her out of the
+dark!
+
+"Live?"  he said.  "Why!  Don't you always?"
+
+She raised her hands so that the dark silk fell, back from the whole
+length of those white arms.
+
+"I haven't lived for two years.  Oh, Jimmy!  Help me to live a
+little!  Life's so short, now."
+
+Her eyes disturbed him, strained and pathetic; the sight of her arms;
+the scent of the flower disturbed him; he felt his cheeks growing
+warm, and looked down.
+
+She slipped suddenly forward on to her knees at his feet, took his
+hand, pressed it with both of hers, and murmured:
+
+"Love me a little!  What else is there?  Oh! Jimmy, what else is
+there?"
+
+And with the scent of the flower, crushed by their hands, stirring
+his senses, Fort thought: 'Ah, what else is there, in these forsaken
+days?'
+
+To Jimmy Fort, who had a sense of humour, and was in some sort a
+philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom failed to
+seem amusing.  But when he walked away from Leila's he was pensive.
+She was a good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an
+enchantress; but--she was decidedly mature.  And here he was--
+involved in helping her to "live"; involved almost alarmingly, for
+there had been no mistaking the fact that she had really fallen in
+love with him.
+
+This was flattering and sweet.  Times were sad, and pleasure scarce,
+but--!  The roving instinct which had kept him, from his youth up,
+rolling about the world, shied instinctively at bonds, however
+pleasant, the strength and thickness of which he could not gauge; or,
+was it that perhaps for the first time in his life he had been
+peeping into fairyland of late, and this affair with Leila was by no
+means fairyland?  He had another reason, more unconscious, for
+uneasiness.  His heart, for all his wanderings, was soft, he had
+always found it difficult to hurt anyone, especially anyone who did
+him the honour to love him.  A sort of presentiment weighed on him
+while he walked the moonlit streets at this most empty hour, when
+even the late taxis had ceased to run.  Would she want him to marry
+her?  Would it be his duty, if she did?  And then he found himself
+thinking of the concert, and that girl's face, listening to the tales
+he was telling her.  'Deuced queer world,' he thought, 'the way
+things go!  I wonder what she would think of us, if she knew--and
+that good padre!  Phew!'
+
+He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in his leg,
+and having to spend the night on a door-step, that he had plenty of
+time for rumination; but since it brought him no confidence whatever,
+he began at last to feel: 'Well; it might be a lot worse.  Take the
+goods the gods send you and don't fuss!'  And suddenly he remembered
+with extreme vividness that night on the stoep at High Constantia,
+and thought with dismay: 'I could have plunged in over head and ears
+then; and now--I can't!  That's life all over!  Poor Leila!  Me
+miserum, too, perhaps--who knows!'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+When Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were smiling,
+and her lips were soft.  She seemed to smile and be soft all over,
+and she took both his hands.  Everything was a pleasure to her that
+day, even the sight of this sad face.  She was in love and was loved
+again; had a present and a future once more, not only her own full
+past; and she must finish with Edward in half an hour, for Jimmy was
+coming.  She sat down on the divan, took his hand in a sisterly way,
+and said:
+
+"Tell me, Edward; I can see you're in trouble.  What is it?"
+
+"Noel.  The boy she was fond of has been killed."
+
+She dropped his hand.
+
+"Oh, no!  Poor child!  It's too cruel!"  Tears started up in her grey
+eyes, and she touched them with a tiny handkerchief.  "Poor, poor
+little Noel!  Was she very fond of him?"
+
+"A very sudden, short engagement; but I'm afraid she takes it
+desperately to heart.  I don't know how to comfort her; only a woman
+could.  I came to ask you: Do you think she ought to go on with her
+work?  What do you think, Leila?  I feel lost!"
+
+Leila, gazing at him, thought: 'Lost?  Yes, you look lost, my poor
+Edward!'
+
+"I should let her go on," she said: "it helps; it's the only thing
+that does help.  I'll see if I can get them to let her come into the
+wards.  She ought to be in touch with suffering and the men; that
+kitchen work will try her awfully just now: Was he very young?"
+
+"Yes.  They wanted to get married.  I was opposed to it."
+
+Leila's lip curled ever so little.  'You would be!' she thought.
+
+"I couldn't bear to think of Nollie giving herself hastily, like
+that; they had only known each other three weeks.  It was very hard
+for me, Leila.  And then suddenly he was sent to the front."
+
+Resentment welled up in Leila.  The kill-Joys!  As if life didn't
+kill joy fast enough!  Her cousin's face at that moment was almost
+abhorrent to her, its gentle perplexed goodness darkened and warped
+by that monkish look.  She turned away, glanced at the clock over the
+hearth, and thought: 'Yes, and he would stop Jimmy and me!  He would
+say: "Oh, no! dear Leila--you mustn't love--it's sin!"  How I hate
+that word!'
+
+"I think the most dreadful thing in life," she said abruptly, "is the
+way people suppress their natural instincts; what they suppress in
+themselves they make other people suppress too, if they can; and
+that's the cause of half the misery in this world."
+
+Then at the surprise on his face at this little outburst, whose cause
+he could not know, she added hastily: "I hope Noel will get over it
+quickly, and find someone else."
+
+"Yes.  If they had been married--how much worse it would have been.
+Thank God, they weren't!"
+
+"I don't know.  They would have had an hour of bliss.  Even an hour
+of bliss is worth something in these days."
+
+"To those who only believe in this 'life--perhaps."
+
+'Ten minutes more!' she thought: 'Oh, why doesn't he go?' But at that
+very moment he got up, and instantly her heart went out to him again.
+
+"I'm so sorry, Edward.  If I can help in any way--I'll try my best
+with Noel to-morrow; and do come to me whenever you feel inclined."
+
+She took his hand in hers; afraid that he would sit down again, she
+yet could not help a soft glance into his eyes, and a little rush of
+pitying warmth in the pressure of her hand.
+
+Pierson smiled; the smile which always made her sorry for him.
+
+"Good-bye, Leila; you're very good and kind to me.  Good-bye."
+
+Her bosom swelled with relief and compassion; and--she let him out.
+
+Running upstairs again she thought: 'I've just time.  What shall I
+put on?  Poor Edward, poor Noel!  What colour does Jimmy like?  Oh!
+Why didn't I keep him those ten years ago--what utter waste!'  And,
+feverishly adorning herself, she came back to the window, and stood
+there in the dark to watch, while some jasmine which grew below sent
+up its scent to her.  'Would I marry him?' she thought, 'if he asked
+me?  But he won't ask me--why should he now?  Besides, I couldn't
+bear him to feel I wanted position or money from him.  I only want
+love--love--love!'  The silent repetition of that word gave her a
+wonderful sense of solidity and comfort.  So long as she only wanted
+love, surely he would give it.
+
+A tall figure turned down past the church, coming towards her.  It
+was he!  And suddenly she bethought herself.  She went to the little
+black piano, sat down, and began to sing the song she had sung to him
+ten years ago: "If I could be the falling dew and fall on thee all
+day!"  She did not even look round when he came in, but continued to
+croon out the words, conscious of him just behind her shoulder in the
+dark.  But when she had finished, she got up and threw her arms round
+him, strained him to her, and burst into tears on his shoulder;
+thinking of Noel and that dead boy, thinking of the millions of other
+boys, thinking of her own happiness, thinking of those ten years
+wasted, of how short was life, and love; thinking--hardly knowing
+what she thought!  And Jimmy Fort, very moved by this emotion which
+he only half understood, pressed her tightly in his arms, and kissed
+her wet cheeks and her neck, pale and warm in the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+Noel went on with her work for a month, and then, one morning,
+fainted over a pile of dishes.  The noise attracted attention, and
+Mrs. Lynch was summoned.
+
+The sight of her lying there so deadly white taxed Leila's nerves
+severely.  But the girl revived quickly, and a cab was sent for.
+Leila went with her, and told the driver to stop at Camelot Mansions.
+Why take her home in this state, why not save the jolting, and let
+her recover properly?  They went upstairs arm in arm.  Leila made her
+lie down on the divan, and put a hot-water bottle to her feet.  Noel
+was still so passive and pale that even to speak to her seemed a
+cruelty.  And, going to her little sideboard, Leila stealthily
+extracted a pint bottle of some champagne which Jimmy Fort had sent
+in, and took it with  two glasses and a corkscrew into her bedroom.
+She drank a little herself, and came out bearing a glass to the girl.
+Noel shook her head, and her eyes seemed to say: "Do you really think
+I'm so easily mended?"  But Leila had been through too much in her
+time to despise earthly remedies, and she held it to the girl's lips
+until she drank.  It was excellent champagne, and, since Noel had
+never yet touched alcohol, had an instantaneous effect.  Her eyes
+brightened; little red spots came up in her cheeks.  And suddenly she
+rolled over and buried her face deep in a cushion.  With her short
+hair, she looked so like a child lying there, that Leila knelt down,
+stroking her head, and saying: "There, there; my love!  There,
+there!"
+
+At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, masklike
+despair of the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and her
+face had a wild look.  She , withdrew herself from Leila's touch,
+and, crossing her arms tightly across her chest, said:
+
+"I can't bear it; I can't sleep.  I want him back; I hate life--
+I hate the world.  We hadn't done anything--only just loved each
+other.  God likes punishing; just because we loved each other; we had
+only one day to love each other--only one day--only one!"
+
+Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms
+straining and swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch it.
+The voice, uncannily dainty for all the wildness of the words and
+face, went on:
+
+"I won't--I don't want to live.  If there's another life, I shall go
+to him.  And if there isn't--it's just sleep."
+
+Leila put out her hand to ward of these wild wanderings.  Like most
+women who live simply the life of their senses and emotions, she was
+orthodox; or rather never speculated on such things.
+
+"Tell me about yourself and him," she said.
+
+Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin.  "We loved each other;
+and children are born, aren't they, after you've loved?  But mine
+won't be!"  From the look on her face rather than from her words, the
+full reality of her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again.
+Nonsense!  But--what an awful thing, if true!  That which had always
+seemed to her such an exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of
+life--why! now, it was a tragedy!  Instinctively she raised herself
+and put her arms round the girl.
+
+"My poor dear!" she said; "you're fancying things!"
+
+The colour had faded out of Noel's face, and, with her head thrown
+back and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young
+ghost.
+
+"If it is--I shan't live.  I don't mean to--it's easy to die.
+I don't mean Daddy to know."
+
+"Oh! my dear, my dear!"  was all Leila could stammer.
+
+"Was it wrong, Leila?"
+
+"Wrong?  I don't know--wrong?  If it really is so--it was--
+unfortunate.  But surely, surely--you're mistaken?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "I did it so that we should belong to each
+other.  Nothing could have taken him from me."
+
+Leila caught at the girl's words.
+
+"Then, my dear--he hasn't quite gone from you, you see?"
+
+Noel's lips formed a "No" which was inaudible.  "But Daddy!"  she
+whispered.
+
+Edward's face came before Leila so vividly that she could hardly see
+the girl for the tortured shape of it.  Then the hedonist in her
+revolted against that ascetic vision.  Her worldly judgment condemned
+and deplored this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding
+that hour of life and love, snatched out of the jaws of death.  "Need
+he ever know?" she said.
+
+"I could never lie to Daddy.  But it doesn't matter.  Why should one
+go on living, when life is rotten?"
+
+Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late October.
+Leila got up from her knees.  She stood at the window thinking hard.
+
+"My dear," she said at last, "you mustn't get morbid.  Look at me!
+I've had two husbands, and--and--well, a pretty stormy up and down
+time of it; and I daresay I've got lots of trouble before me.  But
+I'm not going to cave in.  Nor must you.  The Piersons have plenty of
+pluck; you mustn't be a traitor to your blood.  That's the last
+thing.  Your boy would have told you to stick it.  These are your
+'trenches,' and you're not going to be downed, are you?"
+
+After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel said:
+
+"Give me a cigarette, Leila."
+
+Leila produced the little flat case she carried.
+
+"That's brave," she said.  "Nothing's incurable at your age.  Only
+one thing's incurable--getting old."
+
+Noel laughed.  "That's curable too, isn't it?"
+
+"Not without surrender."
+
+Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two cigarettes
+fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling.  Then Noel got up from the
+divan, and went over to the piano.  She was still in her hospital
+dress of lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the
+keys, playing a chord now, and then, Leila's heart felt hollow from
+compassion; she was so happy herself just now, and this child so very
+wretched!
+
+"Play to me," she said; "no--don't; I'll play to you."  And sitting
+down, she began to play and sing a little French song, whose first
+line ran: "Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous."  It was soft, gay,
+charming.  If the girl cried, so much the better.  But Noel did not
+cry.  She seemed suddenly to have recovered all her self-possession.
+She spoke calmly, answered Leila's questions without emotion, and
+said she would go home.  Leila went out with her, and walked some way
+in the direction of her home; distressed, but frankly at a loss.  At
+the bottom of Portland Place Noel stopped and said: "I'm quite all
+right now, Leila; thank you awfully.  I shall just go home and lie
+down.  And I shall come to-morrow, the same as usual.  Goodbye!"
+Leila could only grasp the girl's hand, and say: "My dear, that's
+splendid.  There's many a slip--besides, it's war-time."
+
+With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the girl
+moving slowly away; and turned back herself towards her hospital,
+with a disturbed and compassionate heart.
+
+
+
+2
+
+But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street.  She had
+received a certain measure of comfort, been steadied by her
+experienced cousin's vitality, and the new thoughts suggested by
+those words: "He hasn't quite gone from you, has he?"  "Besides, it's
+war-time."  Leila had spoken freely, too, and the physical ignorance
+in which the girl had been groping these last weeks was now removed.
+Like most proud natures, she did not naturally think much about the
+opinion of other people; besides, she knew nothing of the world, its
+feelings and judgments.  Her nightmare was the thought of her
+father's horror and grief.  She tried to lessen that nightmare by
+remembering his opposition to her marriage, and the resentment she
+had felt.  He had never realised, never understood, how she and Cyril
+loved.  Now, if she were really going to have a child, it would be
+Cyril's--Cyril's son--Cyril over again.  The instinct stronger than
+reason, refinement, tradition, upbringing, which had pushed her on in
+such haste to make sure of union--the irrepressible pulse of life
+faced with annihilation--seemed to revive within her, and make her
+terrible secret almost precious.  She had read about "War babies" in
+the papers, read with a dull curiosity; but now the atmosphere, as it
+were, of those writings was illumined for her.  These babies were
+wrong, were a "problem," and yet, behind all that, she seemed now to
+know that people were glad of them; they made up, they filled the
+gaps.  Perhaps, when she had one, she would be proud, secretly proud,
+in spite of everyone, in spite of her father!  They had tried to kill
+Cyril--God and everyone; but they hadn't been able, he was alive
+within her!  A glow came into her face, walking among the busy
+shopping crowd, and people turned to look at her; she had that
+appearance of seeing no one, nothing, which is strange and attractive
+to those who have a moment to spare from contemplation of their own
+affairs.  Fully two hours she wandered thus, before going in, and
+only lost that exalted feeling when, in her own little room, she had
+taken up his photograph, and was sitting on her bed gazing at it.
+She had a bad breakdown then.  Locked in there, she lay on her bed,
+crying, dreadfully lonely, till she fell asleep exhausted, with the
+tear-stained photograph clutched in her twitching fingers.  She woke
+with a start.  It was dark, and someone was knocking on her door.
+
+"Miss Noel!"
+
+Childish perversity kept her silent.  Why couldn't they leave her
+alone?  They would leave her alone if they knew.  Then she heard
+another kind of knocking, and her father's voice:
+
+"Nollie!  Nollie !"
+
+She scrambled up, and opened.  He looked scared, and her heart smote
+her.
+
+"It's all right, Daddy; I was asleep."
+
+"My dear, I'm sorry, but dinner's ready."
+
+"I don't want any dinner; I think I'll go to bed."
+
+The frown between his brows deepened.
+
+"You shouldn't lock your door, Nollie: I was quite frightened.  I
+went round to the hospital to bring you home, and they told me about
+your fainting.  I want you to see a doctor."
+
+Noel shook her head vigorously.  "Oh, no!  It's nothing!"
+
+"Nothing?  To faint like that?  Come, my child.  To please me."  He
+took her face in his hands.  Noel shrank away.
+
+"No, Daddy.  I won't see a doctor.  Extravagance in wartime!  I
+won't.  It's no good trying to make me.  I'll come down if you like;
+I shall be all right to-morrow."
+
+With this Pierson had to be content; but, often that evening, she saw
+him looking at her anxiously.  And when she went up, he came out of
+his study, followed to her room, and insisted on lighting her fire.
+Kissing her at the door, he said very quietly:
+
+"I wish I could be a mother to you, my child!"
+
+For a moment it flashed through Noel: 'He knows!' then, by the
+puzzled look on his face, she knew that he did not.  If only he did
+know; what a weight it would be off her mind!  But she answered
+quietly too; "Good night, Daddy dear!" kissed him, and shut the door.
+
+She sat down before the little new fire, and spread her hands out to
+it; all was so cold and wintry in her heart.  And the firelight
+flickered on her face, where shadows lay thick under her eyes, for
+all the roundness of her cheeks, and on her slim pale hands, and the
+supple grace of her young body.  And out in the night, clouds raced
+over the moon, which had come full once more.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+Pierson went back to his study, and wrote to Gratian.
+
+"If you can get leave for a few days, my dear, I want you at home.  I
+am troubled about Nollie.  Ever since that disaster happened to her
+she has been getting paler; and to-day she fainted.  She won't see a
+doctor, but perhaps you could get her to see George.  If you come up,
+he will surely be able to run up to us for a day or two.  If not, you
+must take her down to him at the sea.  I have just seen the news of
+your second cousin Charlie Pierson's death; he was killed in one of
+the last attacks on the Somme; he was nephew of my cousin Leila whom,
+as you know, Noel sees every day at her hospital.  Bertram has the
+D. S. O.  I have been less hard-pressed lately; Lauder has been home
+on leave and has taken some Services for me.  And now the colder
+weather has come, I am feeling much fresher.  Try your best to come.
+I am seriously concerned for our beloved child.
+"Your affectionate father
+"EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+Gratian answered that she could get week-end leave, and would come on
+Friday.  He met her at the station, and they drove thence straight to
+the hospital, to pick up Noel.  Leila came to them in the waiting-
+room, and Pierson, thinking they would talk more freely about Noel's
+health if he left them , alone, went into the recreation room, and
+stood watching a game of bagatelle between two convalescents.  When
+he returned to the little sitting-room they were still standing by
+the hearth, talking in low voices.  Gratian must surely have been
+stooping over the fire, for her face was red, almost swollen, and her
+eyes looked as if she had scorched them.
+
+Leila said lightly:
+
+"Well, Edward, aren't the men delightful?  When are we going to
+another concert together?"
+
+She, too, was flushed and looking almost young.
+
+"Ah!  If we could do the things we want to.
+
+"That's very pretty, Edward; but you should, you know--for a tonic."
+He shook his head and smiled.
+
+"You're a temptress, Leila.  Will you let Nollie know, please, that
+we can take her back with us?  Can you let her off to-morrow?"
+
+"For as long as you like; she wants a rest.  I've been talking to
+Gratian.  We oughtn't to have let her go on after a shock like that
+--my fault, I'm afraid.  I thought that work might be best."
+
+Pierson was conscious of Gratian walking past him out of the room.
+He held out his hand to Leila, and followed.  A small noise occurred
+behind him such as a woman makes when she has put a foot through her
+own skirt, or has other powerful cause for dismay.  Then he saw Noel
+in the hall, and was vaguely aware of being the centre of a triangle
+of women whose eyes were playing catch-glance.  His daughters kissed
+each other; and he became seated between them in the taxi.  The most
+unobservant of men, he parted from them in the hall without having
+perceived anything except that they were rather silent; and, going to
+his study, he took up a Life of Sir Thomas More.  There was a passage
+therein which he itched to show George Laird, who was coming up that
+evening.
+
+Gratian and Noel had mounted the stairs with lips tight set, and eyes
+averted; both were very pale.  When they reached the door of
+Gratian's room the room which had been their mother's--Noel was for
+passing on, but Gratian caught her by the arm, and said: "Come in."
+The fire was burning brightly in there, and the two sisters stood in
+front of it, one on each side, their hands clutching the mantel-
+shelf, staring at the flames.  At last Noel put one hand in front of
+her eyes, and said:
+
+"I asked her to tell you."
+
+Gratian made the movement of one who is gripped by two strong
+emotions, and longs to surrender to one or to the other.
+
+"It's too horrible," was all she said.
+
+Noel turned towards the door.
+
+"Stop, Nollie!"
+
+Noel stopped with her hand on the door knob.  "I don't want to be
+forgiven and sympathised with.  I just want to be let alone."
+
+"How can you be let alone?"
+
+The tide of misery surged up in Noel, and she cried out passionately:
+
+"I hate sympathy from people who can't understand.  I don't want
+anyone's.  I can always go away, and lose myself."
+
+The words "can't understand" gave Gratian a shock.
+
+"I can understand," she said.
+
+"You can't; you never saw him.  You never saw--" her lips quivered so
+that she had to stop and bite them, to keep back a rush of tears.
+
+"Besides you would never have done it yourself."
+
+Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the bed.  It
+was true.  She would never have done it herself; it was just that
+which, for all her longing to help her sister, iced her love and
+sympathy.  How terrible, wretched, humiliating!  Her own sister, her
+only sister, in the position of all those poor, badly brought up
+girls, who forgot themselves!  And her father--their father!  Till
+that moment she had hardly thought of him, too preoccupied by the
+shock to her own pride.  The word: "Dad!" was forced from her.
+
+Noel shuddered.
+
+"That boy!" said Gratian suddenly; "I can't forgive him.  If you
+didn't know--he did.  It was--it was--" She stopped at the sight of
+Noel's face.
+
+"I did know," she said.  "It was I.  He was my husband, as much as
+yours is.  If you say a word against him, I'll never speak to you
+again: I'm glad, and you would be, if you were going to have one.
+What's the difference, except that you've had luck, and I--haven't."
+Her lips quivered again, and she was silent.
+
+Gratian stared up at her.  She had a longing for George--to know what
+he thought and felt.
+
+"Do you mind if I tell George?"  she said.
+
+Noel shook her head., "No! not now.  Tell anybody."  And suddenly the
+misery behind the mask of her face went straight to Gratian's heart.
+She got up and put her arms round her sister.
+
+"Nollie dear, don't look like that!"
+
+Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was over,
+went to her own room.
+
+Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious.  Her pride
+was deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry with herself.  Why
+couldn't she have been more sympathetic?  And yet, now that Noel was
+no longer there, she again condemned the dead.  What he had done was
+unpardonable.  Nollie was such--a child!  He had committed sacrilege.
+If only George would come, and she could talk it all out with him!
+She, who had married for love and known passion, had insight enough
+to feel that Noel's love had been deep--so far as anything, of
+course, could be deep in such a child.  Gratian was at the mature age
+of twenty.  But to have forgotten herself like that!  And this boy!
+If she had known him, that feeling might have been mitigated by the
+personal element, so important to all human judgment; but never
+having seen him, she thought of his conduct as "caddish."  And she
+knew that this was, and would be, the trouble between her and her
+sister.  However she might disguise it, Noel would feel that judgment
+underneath.
+
+She stripped off her nurse's garb, put on an evening frock, and
+fidgeted about the room.  Anything rather than go down and see her
+father again before she must.  This, which had happened, was beyond
+words terrible for him; she dreaded the talk with him about Noel's
+health which would have to come.  She could say nothing, of course,
+until Noel wished; and, very truthful by nature, the idea, of having
+to act a lie distressed her.
+
+She went down at last, and found them both in the drawing-room
+already; Noel in a frilly evening frock, sitting by the fire with her
+chin on her hand, while her father was reading out the war news from
+the evening paper.  At sight of that cool, dainty, girlish figure
+brooding over the fire, and of her father's worn face, the tragedy of
+this business thrust itself on her with redoubled force.  Poor Dad!
+Poor Nollie!  Awful!  Then Noel turned, and gave a little shake of
+her head, and her eyes said, almost as plainly as lips could have
+said it: 'Silence!' Gratian nodded, and came forward to the fire.
+And so began one of those calm, domestic evenings, which cover
+sometimes such depths of heartache.
+
+
+
+2
+
+Noel stayed up until her father went to bed, then went upstairs at
+once.  She had evidently determined that they should not talk about
+her.  Gratian sat on alone, waiting for her husband!  It was nearly
+midnight when he came, and she did not tell him the family news till
+next morning.  He received it with a curious little grunt.  Gratian
+saw his eyes contract, as they might have, perhaps, looking at some
+bad and complicated wound, and then stare steadily at the ceiling.
+Though they had been married over a year, she did not yet know what
+he thought about many things, and she waited with a queer sinking at
+her heart.  This skeleton in the family cupboard was a test of his
+affection for herself, a test of the quality of the man she had
+married.  He did not speak for a little, and her anxiety grew.  Then
+his hand sought hers, and gave it a hard squeeze.
+
+"Poor little Nollie!  This is a case for Mark Tapleyism.  But cheer
+up, Gracie!  We'll get her through somehow."
+
+"But father!  It's impossible to keep it from him, and impossible to
+tell him!  Oh George!  I never knew what family pride was till now.
+It's incredible.  That wretched boy!"
+
+"'De mortuis.' Come, Gracie!  In the midst of death we are in life!
+Nollie was a plumb little idiot.  But it's the war--the war!  Your
+father must get used to it; it's a rare chance for his Christianity."
+
+"Dad will be as sweet as anything--that's what makes it so horrible!"
+
+George Laird redoubled his squeeze.  "Quite right!  The old-fashioned
+father could let himself go.  But need he know?  We can get her away
+from London, and later on, we must manage somehow.  If he does hear,
+we must make him feel that Nollie was 'doing her bit.'"
+
+Gratian withdrew her hand.  "Don't!" she said in a muffled voice.
+
+George Laird turned and looked at her.  He was greatly upset himself,
+realising perhaps more truly than his young wife the violence of this
+disaster; he was quite capable, too, of feeling how deeply she was
+stirred and hurt; but, a born pragmatist, confronting life always in
+the experimental spirit, he was impatient of the: "How awful!"
+attitude.  And this streak of her father's ascetic traditionalism in
+Gratian always roused in him a wish to break it up.  If she had not
+been his wife he would have admitted at once that he might just as
+well try and alter the bone-formation of her head, as break down such
+a fundamental trait of character, but, being his wife, he naturally
+considered alteration as possible as putting a new staircase in a
+house, or throwing two rooms into one.  And, taking her in his arms,
+he said: "I know; but it'll all come right, if we put a good face on
+it.  Shall I talk to Nollie?"
+
+Gratian assented, from the desire to be able to say to her father:
+"George is seeing her!"  and so stay the need for a discussion.  But
+the whole thing seemed to her more and more a calamity which nothing
+could lessen or smooth away.
+
+George Laird had plenty of cool courage, invaluable in men who have
+to inflict as well as to alleviate pain, but he did not like his
+mission "a little bit" as he would have said; and he proposed a walk
+because he dreaded a scene.  Noel accepted for the same reason.  She
+liked George, and with the disinterested detachment of a sister-in-
+law, and the shrewdness of extreme youth, knew him perhaps better
+than did his wife.  She was sure, at all events, of being neither
+condemned nor sympathised with.
+
+They might have gone, of course, in any direction, but chose to make
+for the City.  Such deep decisions are subconscious.  They sought, no
+doubt, a dry, unemotional region; or perhaps one where George, who
+was in uniform, might rest his arm from the automatic-toy game which
+the military play.  They had reached Cheapside before he was
+conscious to the full of the bizarre nature of this walk with his
+pretty young sister-in-law among all the bustling, black-coated mob
+of money-makers.  'I wish the devil we hadn't come out!' he thought;
+'it would have been easier indoors, after all.'
+
+He cleared his throat, however, and squeezing her arm gently, began:
+"Gratian's told me, Nollie.  The great thing is to keep your spirit
+up, and not worry."
+
+"I suppose you couldn't cure me."
+
+The words, in that delicate spurning voice, absolutely staggered
+George; but he said quickly:
+
+"Out of the question, Nollie; impossible!  What are you thinking of?"
+
+"Daddy."
+
+The words: "D--n Daddy!"  rose to his teeth; he bit them off, and
+said: "Bless him!  We shall have to see to all that.  Do you really
+want to keep it from him?  It must be one way or the other; no use
+concealing it, if it's to come out later."
+
+"No."
+
+He stole a look at her.  She was gazing straight before her.  How
+damnably young she was, how pretty!  A lump came up in his throat.
+
+"I shouldn't do anything yet," he said; "too early.  Later on, if
+you'd like me to tell him.  But that's entirely up to you, my dear;
+he need never know."
+
+"No."
+
+He could not follow her thought.  Then she said:
+
+"Gratian condemns Cyril.  Don't let her.  I won't have him badly
+thought of.  It was my doing.  I wanted to make sure of him."
+
+George answered stoutly:
+
+"Gracie's upset, of course, but she'll soon be all right.  You
+mustn't let it come between you.  The thing you've got to keep
+steadily before you is that life's a huge wide adaptable thing.  Look
+at all these people!  There's hardly one of them who hasn't got now,
+or hasn't had, some personal difficulty or trouble before them as big
+as yours almost; bigger perhaps.  And here they are as lively as
+fleas.  That's what makes the fascination of life--the jolly irony of
+it all.  It would do you good to have a turn in France, and see
+yourself in proportion to the whole."  He felt her fingers suddenly
+slip under his arm, and went on with greater confidence:
+
+"Life's going to be the important thing in the future, Nollie; not
+comfort and cloistered virtue and security; but living, and pressure
+to the square inch.  Do you twig?  All the old hard-and-fast
+traditions and drags on life are in the melting-pot.  Death's boiling
+their bones, and they'll make excellent stock for the new soup.  When
+you prune and dock things, the sap flows quicker.  Regrets and
+repinings and repressions are going out of fashion; we shall have no
+time or use for them in the future.  You're going to make life--well,
+that's something to be thankful for, anyway.  You've kept Cyril
+Morland alive.  And--well, you know, we've all been born; some of us
+properly, and some improperly, and there isn't a ha'porth of
+difference in the value of the article, or the trouble of bringing it
+into the world.  The cheerier you are the better your child will be,
+and that's all you've got to think about.  You needn't begin to
+trouble at all for another couple of months, at least; after that,
+just let us know where you'd like to go, and I'll arrange it
+somehow."
+
+She looked round at him, and under that young, clear, brooding gaze
+he had the sudden uncomfortable feeling of having spoken like a
+charlatan.  Had he really touched the heart of the matter?  What good
+were his generalities to this young, fastidiously nurtured girl,
+brought up to tell the truth, by a father so old-fashioned and
+devoted, whom she loved?  It was George's nature, too, to despise
+words; and the conditions of his life these last two years had given
+him a sort of horror of those who act by talking.  He felt inclined
+to say: 'Don't pay the slightest attention to me; it's all humbug;
+what will be will be, and there's an end of it:
+
+Then she said quietly:
+
+"Shall I tell Daddy or not?"
+
+He wanted to say: "No," but somehow couldn't.  After all, the
+straightforward course was probably the best.  For this would have to
+be a lifelong concealment.  It was impossible to conceal a thing for
+ever; sooner or later he would find out.  But the doctor rose up in
+him, and he said:
+
+"Don't go to meet trouble, Nollie; it'll be time enough in two
+months.  Then tell him, or let me."
+
+She shook her head.  "No; I will, if it is to be done."
+
+He put his hand on hers, within his arm, and gave it a squeeze.
+
+"What shall I do till then?"  she asked.
+
+"Take a week's complete rest, and then go on where you are."
+
+Noel was silent a minute, then said: "Yes; I will."
+
+They spoke no more on the subject, and George exerted himself to talk
+about hospital experiences, and that phenomenon, the British soldier.
+But just before they reached home he said:
+
+"Look here, Nollie!  If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will
+be ashamed of you.  If you put ashes on your own head, your fellow-
+beings will, assist you; for of such is their charity."
+
+And, receiving another of those clear, brooding looks, he left her
+with the thought: 'A lonely child!'
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Noel went back to her hospital after a week's rest.  George had done
+more for her than he suspected, for his saying: "Life's a huge wide
+adaptable thing!" had stuck in her mind.  Did it matter what happened
+to her?  And she used to look into the faces of the people she met,
+and wonder what was absorbing them.  What secret griefs and joys were
+they carrying about with them?  The loneliness of her own life now
+forced her to this speculation concerning others, for she was
+extraordinarily lonely; Gratian and George were back at work, her
+father must be kept at bay; with Leila she felt ill at ease, for the
+confession had hurt her pride; and family friends and acquaintances
+of all sorts she shunned like the plague.  The only person she did
+not succeed in avoiding was Jimmy Fort, who came in one evening after
+dinner, bringing her a large bunch of hothouse violets.  But then, he
+did not seem to matter--too new an acquaintance, too detached.
+Something he said made her aware that he had heard of her loss, and
+that the violets were a token of sympathy.  He seemed awfully kind
+that evening, telling her "tales of Araby," and saying nothing which
+would shock her father.  It was wonderful to be a man and roll about
+the world as he had, and see all life, and queer places, and people
+--Chinamen, and Gauchos, and Boers, and Mexicans.  It gave her a kind
+of thirst.  And she liked to watch his brown, humorous face; which
+seemed made of dried leather.  It gave her the feeling that life and
+experience were all that mattered, doing and seeing things; it made
+her own trouble seem smaller; less important.  She squeezed his hand
+when she said good night: "Thank you for my violets and for coming;
+it was awfully kind of you!  I wish I could have adventures!"  And he
+answered: "You will, my dear fairy princess!" He said it queerly and
+very kindly.
+
+Fairy Princess!  What a funny thing to call her!  If he had only
+known!
+
+There were not many adventures to be had in those regions where she
+washed up.  Not much "wide and adaptable life" to take her thoughts
+off herself.  But on her journeys to and from the hospital she had
+more than one odd little experience.  One morning she noticed a
+poorly dressed woman with a red and swollen face, flapping along
+Regent Street like a wounded bird, and biting strangely at her hand.
+Hearing her groan, Noel asked her what the matter was.  The woman
+held out the hand.  "Oh!" she moaned, "I was scrubbin' the floor and
+I got this great needle stuck through my 'and, and it's broke off,
+and I can't get it out.  Oh!  Oh!"  She bit at the needle-end, not
+quite visible, but almost within reach of teeth, and suddenly went
+very white.  In dismay, Noel put an arm round her, and turned her
+into a fine chemist's shop.  Several ladies were in there, buying
+perfumes, and they looked with acerbity at this disordered dirty
+female entering among them.  Noel went up to a man behind the
+counter.  "Please give me something quick, for this poor woman, I
+think she's going to faint.  She's run a needle through her hand, and
+can't get it out."  The man gave her "something quick," and Noel
+pushed past two of the dames back to where the woman was sitting.
+She was still obstinately biting at her hand, and suddenly her chin
+flew up, and there, between her teeth, was the needle.  She took it
+from them with her other hand, stuck it proudly in the front of her
+dress, and out tumbled the words: "Oh! there--I've got it!"
+
+When she had swallowed the draught, she looked round her, bewildered,
+and said:
+
+"Thank you kindly, miss!" and shuffled out.  Noel paid for the
+draught, and followed; and, behind her, the shining shop seemed to
+exhale a perfumed breath of relief.
+
+"You can't go back to work," she said to the woman.  "Where do you
+live?"
+
+"'Ornsey, miss."
+
+"You must take a 'bus and go straight home, and put your hand at once
+into weak Condy's fluid and water.  It's swelling.  Here's five
+shillings."
+
+"Yes, miss; thank you, miss, I'm sure.  It's very kind of you.  It
+does ache cruel."
+
+"If it's not better this afternoon, you must go to a doctor.
+Promise!"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes.  'Ere's my 'bus.  Thank you kindly, miss."
+
+Noel saw her borne away, still sucking at her dirty swollen hand.
+She walked on in a glow of love for the poor woman, and hate for the
+ladies in the chemist's shop, and forgot her own trouble till she had
+almost reached the hospital.
+
+Another November day, a Saturday, leaving early, she walked to Hyde
+Park.  The plane-trees were just at the height of their spotted
+beauty.  Few--very few-yellow leaves still hung; and the slender
+pretty trees seemed rejoicing in their freedom from summer foliage.
+All their delicate boughs and twigs were shaking and dancing in the
+wind; and their rain-washed leopard-like bodies had a lithe
+un-English gaiety.  Noel passed down their line, and seated herself
+on a bench.  Close by, an artist was painting.  His easel was only
+some three yards away from her, and she could see the picture; a
+vista of the Park Lane houses through, the gay plane-tree screen.  He
+was a tall man, about forty, evidently foreign, with a thin, long,
+oval, beardless face, high brow, large grey eyes which looked as if
+he suffered from headaches and lived much within himself.  He cast
+many glances at her, and, pursuant of her new interest in "life" she
+watched him discreetly; a little startled however, when, taking off
+his broad-brimmed squash hat, he said in a broken accent:
+
+"Forgive me the liberty I take, mademoiselle, but would you so very
+kindly allow me to make a sketch of you sitting there?  I work very
+quick.  I beg you will let me.  I am Belgian, and have no manners,
+you see."  And he smiled.
+
+"If you like," said Noel.
+
+"I thank you very much:"
+
+He shifted his easel, and began to draw.  She felt flattered, and a
+little fluttered.  He was so pale, and had a curious, half-fed look,
+which moved her.
+
+"Have you been long in England?"  she said presently.
+
+"Ever since the first months of the war."
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"I was very homesick at first.  But I live in my pictures; there are
+wonderful things in London."
+
+"Why did you want to sketch me?"
+
+The painter smiled again.  "Mademoiselle, youth is so mysterious.
+Those young trees I have been painting mean so much more than the old
+big trees.  Your eyes are seeing things that have not yet happened.
+There is Fate in them, and a look of defending us others from seeing
+it.  We have not such faces in my country; we are simpler; we do not
+defend our expressions.  The English are very mysterious.  We are
+like children to them.  Yet in some ways you are like children to us.
+You are not people of the world at all.  You English have been good
+to us, but you do not like us."
+
+"And I suppose you do not like us, either?"
+
+He smiled again, and she noticed how white his teeth were.
+
+"Well, not very much.  The English do things from duty, but their
+hearts they keep to themselves.  And their Art--well, that is really
+amusing!"
+
+"I don't know much about Art," Noel murmured.
+
+"It is the world to me," said the painter, and was silent, drawing
+with increased pace and passion.
+
+"It is so difficult to get subjects," he remarked abruptly.  "I
+cannot afford to pay models, and they are not fond of me painting out
+of doors.  If I had always a subject like you!  You--you have a
+grief, have you not?"
+
+At that startling little question, Noel looked up, frowning.
+
+"Everybody has, now."
+
+The painter grasped his chin; his eyes had suddenly become tragical.
+
+"Yes," he said, "everybody.  Tragedy is daily bread.  I have lost my
+family; they are in Belgium.  How they live I do not know."
+
+"I'm sorry; very sorry, too, if we aren't nice to you, here.  We
+ought to be."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "What would you have?  We are different.
+That is unpardonable.  An artist is always lonely, too; he has a skin
+fewer than other people, and he sees things that they do not.  People
+do not like you to be different.  If ever in your life you act
+differently from others, you will find it so, mademoiselle."
+
+Noel felt herself flushing.  Was he reading her secret?  His eyes had
+such a peculiar, secondsighted look.
+
+"Have you nearly finished?"  she asked.
+
+"No, mademoiselle; I could go on for hours; but I do not wish to keep
+you.  It is cold for you, sitting there."
+
+Noel got up.  "May I look?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+She did not quite recognise herself--who does? --but she saw a face
+which affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something which was,
+and yet was not, in front of her.
+
+"My name is Lavendie," the painter said; "my wife and I live here,"
+and he gave her a card.
+
+Noel could not help answering: "My name is Noel Pierson; I live with
+my father; here's the address"--she found her case, and fished out a
+card.  "My father is a clergyman; would you care to come and see him?
+He loves music and painting."
+
+"It would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be allowed to
+paint you.  Alas! I have no studio."
+
+Noel drew back.  "I'm afraid that I work in a hospital all day, and--
+and I don't want to be painted, thank you.  But, Daddy would like to
+meet you, I'm sure."
+
+The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.
+
+"Of course I can see that you're a very fine painter," she said
+quickly; "only--only--I don't want to, you see.  Perhaps you'd like
+to paint Daddy; he's got a most interesting face."
+
+The painter smiled.  "He is your father, mademoiselle.  May I ask you
+one question?  Why do you not want to be painted?"
+
+"Because--because I don't, I'm afraid."  She held out her hand.  The
+painter bowed over it.  "Au revoir, mademoiselle."
+
+"Thank you," said Noel; "it was awfully interesting."  And she walked
+away.  The sky had become full of clouds round the westerly sun; and
+the foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree branches against that
+French-grey, golden-edged mass, was very lovely.  Beauty, and the
+troubles of others, soothed her.  She felt sorry for the painter, but
+his eyes saw too much!  And his words: "If ever you act differently
+from others," made her feel him uncanny.  Was it true that people
+always disliked and condemned those who acted differently?  If her
+old school-fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat
+her?  In her father's study hung a little reproduction of a tiny
+picture in the Louvre, a "Rape of Europa," by an unknown painter--
+a humorous delicate thing, of an enraptured; fair-haired girl mounted
+on a prancing white bull, crossing a shallow stream, while on the
+bank all her white girl-companions were gathered, turning half-sour,
+half-envious faces away from that too-fearful spectacle, while one of
+them tried with timid desperation to mount astride of a sitting cow,
+and follow.  The face of the girl on the bull had once been compared
+by someone with her own.  She thought of this picture now, and saw
+her school fellows-a throng of shocked and wondering girls.  Suppose
+one of them had been in her position!  'Should I have been turning my
+face away, like the rest?  I wouldn't no, I wouldn't,' she thought;
+'I should have understood!'  But she knew there was a kind of false
+emphasis in her thought.  Instinctively she felt the painter right.
+One who acted differently from others, was lost.
+
+She told her father of the encounter, adding:
+
+"I expect he'll come, Daddy."
+
+Pierson answered dreamily: "Poor fellow, I shall be glad to see him
+if he does."
+
+"And you'll sit to him, won't you?"
+
+"My dear--I?"
+
+"He's lonely, you know, and people aren't nice to him.  Isn't it
+hateful that people should hurt others, because they're foreign or
+different?"
+
+She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on: "I know you
+think people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren't, of course."
+
+"That's not exactly charitable, Nollie."
+
+"You know they're not.  I think sin often just means doing things
+differently.  It's not real sin when it only hurts yourself; but that
+doesn't prevent people condemning you, does it?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Nollie."
+
+Noel bit her lips, and murmured: "Are you sure we're really
+Christians, Daddy?"
+
+The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson
+took refuge in an attempt at wit.  "I should like notice of that
+question, Nollie, as they say in Parliament."
+
+"That means you don't."
+
+Pierson flushed.  "We're fallible enough; but, don't get such ideas
+into your head, my child.  There's a lot of rebellious talk and
+writing in these days...."
+
+Noel clasped her hands behind her head.  "I think," she said, looking
+straight before her, and speaking to the air, "that Christianity is
+what you do, not what you think or say.  And I don't believe people
+can be Christians when they act like others--I mean, when they join
+together to judge and hurt people."
+
+Pierson rose and paced the room.  "You have not seen enough of life
+to talk like that," he said.  But Noel went on:
+
+"One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of
+conscientious objectors--it was horrible.  Why do they treat them
+like that, just because they disagree?  Captain Fort says it's fear
+which makes people bullies.  But how can it be fear when they're
+hundreds to one?  He says man has domesticated his animals but has
+never succeeded in domesticating himself.  Man must be a wild beast,
+you know, or the world couldn't be so awfully brutal.  I don't see
+much difference between being brutal for good reasons, and being
+brutal for bad ones."
+
+Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile.  There was
+something fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom
+he had watched grow up from a tiny thing.  Out of the mouths of babes
+and sucklings--sometimes!  But then the young generation was always
+something of a sealed book to him; his sensitive shyness, and, still
+more, his cloth, placed a sort of invisible barrier between him and
+the hearts of others, especially the young.  There were so many
+things of which he was compelled to disapprove, or which at least he
+couldn't discuss.  And they knew it too well.  Until these last few
+months he had never realised that his own daughters had remained as
+undiscovered by him as the interior of Brazil.  And now that he
+perceived this, he was bewildered, yet could not imagine how to get
+on terms with them.
+
+And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting nothing
+of the hard fact which was altering her--vaguely jealous, anxious,
+pained.  And when she had gone up to bed, he roamed up and down the
+room a long time, thinking.  He longed for a friend to confide in,
+and consult; but he knew no one.  He shrank from them all, as too
+downright, bluff, and active; too worldly and unaesthetic; or too
+stiff and narrow.  Amongst the younger men in his profession he was
+often aware of faces which attracted him, but one could not confide
+deep personal questions to men half one's age.  But of his own
+generation, or his elders, he knew not one to whom he could have
+gone.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+1
+
+Leila was deep in her new draught of life.  When she fell in love it
+had always been over head and ears, and so far her passion had always
+burnt itself out before that of her partner.  This had been, of
+course, a great advantage to her.  Not that Leila had ever expected
+her passions to burn themselves out.  When she fell in love she had
+always thought it was for always.  This time she was sure it was,
+surer than she had ever been.  Jimmy Fort seemed to her the man she
+had been looking for all her life.  He was not so good-looking as
+either Farie or Lynch, but beside him these others seemed to her now
+almost ridiculous.  Indeed they did not figure at all, they shrank,
+they withered, they were husks, together with the others for whom she
+had known passing weaknesses.  There was only one man in the world
+for her now, and would be for evermore.  She did not idealise him
+either, it was more serious than that; she was thrilled by his voice,
+and his touch, she dreamed of him, longed for him when he was not
+with her.  She worried, too, for she was perfectly aware that he was
+not half as fond of her as she was of him.  Such a new experience
+puzzled her, kept her instincts painfully on the alert.  It was
+perhaps just this uncertainty about his affection which made him seem
+more precious than any of the others.  But there was ever the other
+reason, too-consciousness that Time was after her, and this her last
+grand passion.  She watched him as a mother-cat watches her kitten,
+without seeming to, of course, for she had much experience.  She had
+begun to have a curious secret jealousy of Noel though why she could
+not have said.  It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or
+sprang from that vague resemblance between her and one who
+outrivalled even what she had been as a girl; or from the occasional
+allusions Fort made to what he called "that little fairy princess."
+Something intangible, instinctive, gave her that jealousy.  Until the
+death of her young cousin's lover she had felt safe, for she knew
+that Jimmy Fort would not hanker after another man's property; had he
+not proved that in old days, with herself, by running away from her?
+And she had often regretted having told him of Cyril Morland's death.
+One day she determined to repair that error.  It was at the Zoo,
+where they often went on Sunday afternoons.  They were standing
+before a creature called the meercat, which reminded them both of old
+days on the veldt.  Without turning her head she said, as if to the
+little animal: "Do you know that your fairy princess, as you call
+her, is going to have what is known as a war-baby?"
+
+The sound of his "What!" gave her quite a stab.  It was so utterly
+horrified.
+
+She said stubbornly: "She came and told me all about it.  The boy is
+dead, as you know.  Yes, terrible, isn't it?"  And she looked at him.
+His face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity.
+
+"That lovely child!  But it's impossible!"
+
+"The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy."
+
+"I refuse to believe it."
+
+"I tell you it is so," she said angrily.
+
+"What a ghastly shame!"
+
+"It was her own doing; she said so, herself."
+
+"And her father--the padre!  My God!"
+
+Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt.  She had thought it
+would disgust him, cure him of any little tendency to romanticise
+that child; and now she perceived that it was rousing in him,
+instead, a dangerous compassion.  She could have bitten her tongue
+out for having spoken.  When he got on the high horse of some
+championship, he was not to be trusted, she had found that out; was
+even finding it out bitterly in her own relations with him,
+constantly aware that half her hold on him, at least, lay in his
+sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her lurking dread of being
+flung on the beach, by age.  Only ten minutes ago he had uttered a
+tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed unhappy.  And now she
+had roused that dangerous side of him in favour of Noel.  What an
+idiot she had been!
+
+"Don't look like that, Jimmy.  I'm sorry I told you."
+
+His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he muttered:
+
+"Well, I do think that's the limit.  What's to be done for her?"
+
+Leila answered softly: "Nothing, I'm afraid.  Do you love me?"  And
+she pressed his hand hard.
+
+"Of course."
+
+But Leila thought: 'If I were that meercat he'd have taken more
+notice of my paw!'  Her heart began suddenly to ache, and she walked
+on to the next cage with head up, and her mouth hard set.
+
+Jimmy Fort walked away from Camelot Mansions that evening in extreme
+discomfort of mind.  Leila had been so queer that he had taken leave
+immediately after supper.  She had refused to talk about Noel; had
+even seemed angry when he had tried to.  How extraordinary some women
+were!  Did they think that a man could hear of a thing like that
+about such a dainty young creature without being upset!  It was the
+most perfectly damnable news!  What on earth would she do--poor
+little fairy princess!  Down had come her house of cards with a
+vengeance!  The whole of her life--the whole of her life!  With her
+bringing-up and her father and all--it seemed inconceivable that she
+could ever survive it.  And Leila had been almost callous about the
+monstrous business.  Women were hard to each other!  Bad enough,
+these things, when it was a simple working girl, but this dainty,
+sheltered, beautiful child!  No, it was altogether too strong--too
+painful!  And following an impulse which he could not resist, he made
+his way to the old Square.  But having reached the house, he nearly
+went away again.  While he stood hesitating with his hand on the
+bell, a girl and a soldier passed, appearing as if by magic out of
+the moonlit November mist, blurred and solid shapes embraced, then
+vanished into it again, leaving the sound of footsteps.  Fort jerked
+the bell.  He was shown into what seemed, to one coming out of that
+mist, to be a brilliant, crowded room, though in truth there were but
+two lamps and five people in it.  They were sitting round the fire,
+talking, and paused when he came in.  When he had shaken hands with
+Pierson and been introduced to "my daughter Gratian" and a man in
+khaki "my son-in-law George Laird," to a tall thin-faced, foreign- .
+looking man in a black stock and seemingly no collar, he went up to
+Noel, who had risen from a chair before the fire.  'No!' he thought,
+'I've dreamed it, or Leila has lied!'  She was so perfectly the self-
+possessed, dainty maiden he remembered.  Even the feel of her hand
+was the same-warm and confident; and sinking into a chair, he said:
+"Please go on, and let me chip in."
+
+"We were quarrelling about the Universe, Captain Fort," said the man
+in khaki; "delighted to have your help.  I was just saying that this
+particular world has no particular importance, no more than a
+newspaper-seller would accord to it if it were completely destroyed
+tomorrow--''Orrible catastrophe, total destruction of the world--six
+o'clock edition-pyper!'  I say that it will become again the nebula
+out of which it was formed, and by friction with other nebula re-form
+into a fresh shape and so on ad infinitum--but I can't explain why.
+My wife wonders if it exists at all except in the human mind--but she
+can't explain what the human mind is.  My father-in-law thinks that
+it is God's hobby--but he can't explain who or what God is.  Nollie
+is silent.  And Monsieur Lavendie hasn't yet told us what he thinks.
+What do you think, monsieur?"  The thin-faced, big-eyed man put up
+his hand to his high, veined brow as if he had a headache, reddened,
+and began to speak in French, which Fort followed with difficulty.
+
+"For me the Universe is a limitless artist, monsieur, who from all
+time and to all time is ever expressing himself in differing forms--
+always trying to make a masterpiece, and generally failing.  For me
+this world, and all the worlds, are like ourselves, and the flowers
+and trees--little separate works of art, more or less perfect, whose
+little lives run their course, and are spilled or powdered back into
+this Creative Artist, whence issue ever fresh attempts at art.  I
+agree with Monsieur Laird, if I understand him right; but I agree
+also with Madame Laird, if I understand her.  You see, I think mind
+and matter are one, or perhaps there is no such thing as either mind
+or matter, only growth and decay and growth again, for ever and ever;
+but always conscious growth--an artist expressing himself in millions
+of ever-changing forms; decay and death as we call them, being but
+rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide, which must ever come between
+two rising tides, or the night which comes between two days.  But the
+next day is never the same as the day before, nor the tide as the
+last tide; so the little shapes of the world and of ourselves, these
+works of art by the Eternal Artist, are never renewed in the same
+form, are never twice alike, but always fresh-fresh worlds, fresh
+individuals, fresh flowers, fresh everything.  I do not see anything
+depressing in that.  To me it would be depressing to think that I
+would go on living after death, or live again in a new body, myself
+yet not myself.  How stale that would be!  When I finish a picture it
+is inconceivable to me that this picture should ever become another
+picture, or that one can divide the expression from the mind-stuff it
+has expressed.  The Great Artist who is the whole of Everything, is
+ever in fresh effort to achieve new things.  He is as a fountain who
+throws up new drops, no two ever alike, which fall back into the
+water, flow into the pipe, and so are thrown up again in fresh-shaped
+drops.  But I cannot explain why there should be this Eternal Energy,
+ever expressing itself in fresh individual shapes, this Eternal
+Working Artist, instead of nothing at all--just empty dark for
+always; except indeed that it must be one thing or the other, either
+all or nothing; and it happens to be this and not that, the all and
+not the nothing."
+
+He stopped speaking, and his big eyes, which had fixed themselves on
+Fort's face, seemed to the latter not to be seeing him at all, but to
+rest on something beyond.  The man in khaki, who had risen and was
+standing with his hand on his wife's shoulder, said:
+
+"Bravo, monsieur; Jolly well put from the artist's point of view.
+The idea is pretty, anyway; but is there any need for an idea at all?
+Things are; and we have just to take them."  Fort had the impression
+of something dark and writhing; the thin black form of his host, who
+had risen and come close to the fire.
+
+"I cannot admit," he was saying, "the identity of the Creator with
+the created.  God exists outside ourselves.  Nor can I admit that
+there is no defnite purpose and fulfilment.  All is shaped to His
+great ends.  I think we are too given to spiritual pride.  The world
+has lost reverence; I regret it, I bitterly regret it."
+
+"I rejoice at it," said the man in khaki.  "Now, Captain Fort, your
+turn to bat!"
+
+Fort, who had been looking at Noel, gave himself a shake, and said:
+"I think what monsieur calls expression, I call fighting.  I suspect
+the Universe of being simply a long fight, a sum of conquests and
+defeats.  Conquests leading to defeats, defeats to conquests.  I want
+to win while I'm alive, and because I want to win, I want to live on
+after death.  Death is a defeat.  I don't want to admit it.  While I
+have that instinct, I don't think I shall really die; when I lose it,
+I think I shall."  He was conscious of Noel's face turning towards
+him, but had the feeling that she wasn't really listening.
+"I suspect that what we call spirit is just the fighting instinct;
+that what we call matter is the mood of lying down.  Whether, as Mr.
+Pierson says, God is outside us, or, as monsieur thinks, we are all
+part of God, I don't know, I'm sure."
+
+"Ah! There we are!" said the man in khaki.  "We all speak after our
+temperaments, and none of us know.  The religions of the world are
+just the poetic expressions of certain strongly marked temperaments.
+Monsieur was a poet just now, and his is the only temperament which
+has never yet been rammed down the world's throat in the form of
+religion.  Go out and proclaim your views from the housetops,
+monsieur, and see what happens."
+
+The painter shook his head with a smile which seemed to Fort very
+bright on the surface, and very sad underneath.
+
+"Non, monsieur," he said; "the artist does not wish to impose his
+temperament.  Difference of temperament is the very essence of his
+joy, and his belief in life.  Without difference there would be no
+life for him.  'Tout casse, tout lasse,' but change goes on for ever:
+We artists reverence change, monsieur; we reverence the newness of
+each morning, of each night, of each person, of each expression of
+energy.  Nothing is final for us; we are eager for all and always for
+more.  We are in love, you see, even with-death."
+
+There was a silence; then Fort heard Pierson murmur:
+
+"That is beautiful, monsieur; but oh! how wrong!"  "And what do you
+think, Nollie?" said the man in khaki suddenly.  The girl had been
+sitting very still in her low chair, with her hands crossed in her
+lap, her eyes on the fire, and the lamplight shining down on her fair
+hair; she looked up, startled, and her eyes met Fort's.
+
+"I don't know; I wasn't listening."  Something moved in him, a kind
+of burning pity, a rage of protection.  He said quickly:
+
+"These are times of action.  Philosophy seems to mean nothing
+nowadays.  The one thing is to hate tyranny and cruelty, and protect
+everything that's weak and lonely.  It's all that's left to make life
+worth living, when all the packs of all the world are out for blood."
+
+Noel was listening now, and he went on fervently: "Why!  Even we who
+started out to fight this Prussian pack, have caught the pack feeling
+--so that it's hunting all over the country, on every sort of scent.
+It's a most infectious thing."
+
+"I cannot see that we are being infected, Captain Fort."
+
+"I'm afraid we are, Mr.  Pierson.  The great majority of people are
+always inclined to run with the hounds; the pressure's great just
+now; the pack spirit's in the air."
+
+Pierson shook his head.  "No, I cannot see it," he repeated; "it
+seems to me that we are all more brotherly, and more tolerant."
+
+"Ah!  monsieur le cure," Fort heard the painter say very gently, "it
+is difficult for a good man to see the evil round him.  There are
+those whom the world's march leaves apart, and reality cannot touch.
+They walk with God, and the bestialities of us animals are fantastic
+to them.  The spirit of the pack, as monsieur says, is in the air.  I
+see all human nature now, running with gaping mouths and red tongues
+lolling out, their breath and their cries spouting thick before them.
+On whom they will fall next--one never knows; the innocent with the
+guilty.  Perhaps if you were to see some one dear to you devoured
+before your eyes, monsieur le cure, you would feel it too; and yet I
+do not know."
+
+Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expression at
+that moment was very strange, searching, half frightened.  No!  Leila
+had not lied, and he had not dreamed!  That thing was true!
+
+When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the Square, he
+could see nothing but her face and form before him in the moonlight:
+its soft outline, fair colouring, slender delicacy, and the brooding
+of the big grey eyes.  He had already crossed New Oxford Street and
+was some way down towards the Strand, when a voice behind him
+murmured: "Ah! c'est vous, monsieur!"  and the painter loomed up at
+his elbow.
+
+"Are you going my way?"  said Fort.  "I go slowly, I'm afraid."
+
+"The slower the better, monsieur.  London is so beautiful in the
+dark.  It is the despair of the painter--these moonlit nights.  There
+are moments when one feels that reality does not exist.  All is in
+dreams--like the face of that young lady."
+
+Fort stared sharply round at him.  "Oh! She strikes you like that,
+does she?"
+
+"Ah! What a charming figure!  What an atmosphere of the past and
+future round her!  And she will not let me paint her!  Well, perhaps
+only Mathieu Maris "  He raised his broad Bohemian hat, and ran his
+fingers through his hair.
+
+"Yes," said Fort, "she'd make a wonderful picture.  I'm not a judge
+of Art, but I can see that."
+
+The painter smiled, and went on in his rapid French:
+
+"She has youth and age all at once--that is rare.  Her father is an
+interesting man, too; I am trying to paint him; he is very difficult.
+He sits lost in some kind of vacancy of his own; a man whose soul has
+gone before him somewhere, like that of his Church, escaped from this
+age of machines, leaving its body behind--is it not?  He is so kind;
+a saint, I think.  The other clergymen I see passing in the street
+are not at all like him; they look buttoned-up and busy, with faces
+of men who might be schoolmasters or lawyers, or even soldiers--men
+of this world.  Do you know this, monsieur--it is ironical, but it is
+true, I think a man cannot be a successful priest unless he is a man
+of this world.  I do not see any with that look of Monsieur Pierson,
+a little tortured within, and not quite present.  He is half an
+artist, really a lover of music, that man.  I am painting him at the
+piano; when he is playing his face is alive, but even then, so far
+away.  To me, monsieur, he is exactly like a beautiful church which
+knows it is being deserted.  I find him pathetic.  Je suis
+socialiste, but I have always an aesthetic admiration for that old
+Church, which held its children by simple emotion.  The times have
+changed; it can no longer hold them so; it stands in the dusk, with
+its spire to a heaven which exists no more, its bells, still
+beautiful but out of tune with the music of the streets.  It is
+something of that which I wish to get into my picture of Monsieur
+Pierson; and sapristi!  it is difficult!"  Fort grunted assent.  So
+far as he could make out the painter's words, it seemed to him a
+large order.
+
+"To do it, you see," went on the painter, "one should have the proper
+background--these currents of modern life and modern types, passing
+him and leaving him untouched.  There is no illusion, and no
+dreaming, in modern life.  Look at this street.  La, la!"
+
+In the darkened Strand, hundreds of khaki-clad figures and girls were
+streaming by, and all their voices had a hard, half-jovial vulgarity.
+The motor-cabs and buses pushed along remorselessly; newspaper-
+sellers muttered their ceaseless invitations.  Again the painter made
+his gesture of despair: "How am I to get into my picture this modern
+life, which washes round him as round that church, there, standing in
+the middle of the street?  See how the currents sweep round it, as if
+to wash it away; yet it stands, seeming not to see them.  If I were a
+phantasist, it would be easy enough: but to be a phantasist is too
+simple for me--those romantic gentlemen bring what they like from
+anywhere, to serve their ends.  Moi, je suis realiste.  And so,
+monsieur, I have invented an idea.  I am painting over his head while
+he sits there at the piano a picture hanging on the wall--of one of
+these young town girls who have no mysteriousness at all, no youth;
+nothing but a cheap knowledge and defiance, and good humour.  He is
+looking up at it, but he does not see it.  I will make the face of
+that girl the face of modern life, and he shall sit staring at it,
+seeing nothing.  What do you think of my idea?"
+
+But Fort had begun to feel something of the revolt which the man of
+action so soon experiences when he listens to an artist talking.
+
+"It sounds all right," he said abruptly; "all the same, monsieur, all
+my sympathy is with modern life.  Take these young girls, and these
+Tommies.  For all their feather-pated vulgarity and they are damned
+vulgar, I must say--they're marvellous people; they do take the rough
+with the smooth; they're all 'doing their bit,' you know, and facing
+this particularly beastly world.  Aesthetically, I daresay, they're
+deplorable, but can you say that on the whole their philosophy isn't
+an advance on anything we've had up till now?  They worship nothing,
+it's true; but they keep their ends up marvellously."
+
+The painter, who seemed to feel the wind blowing cold on his ideas,
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I am not concerned with that, monsieur; I set down what I see;
+better or worse, I do not know.  But look at this!"  And he pointed
+down the darkened and moonlit street.  It was all jewelled and
+enamelled with little spots and splashes of subdued red and green-
+blue light, and the downward orange glow of the high lamps--like an
+enchanted dream-street peopled by countless moving shapes, which only
+came to earth-reality when seen close to.  The painter drew his
+breath in with a hiss.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "what beauty!  And they don't see it--not one in a
+thousand!  Pity, isn't it?  Beauty is the holy thing!"
+
+Fort, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders.  "Every man to his
+vision!"  he said.  "My leg's beginning to bother me; I'm afraid I
+must take a cab.  Here's my address; any time you like to come.  I'm
+often in about seven.  I can't take you anywhere, I suppose?"
+
+"A thousand thanks, monsieur; but I go north.  I loved your words
+about the pack.  I often wake at night and hear the howling of all
+the packs of the world.  Those who are by nature gentle nowadays feel
+they are strangers in a far land.  Good night, monsieur!"
+
+He took off his queer hat, bowed low, and crossed out into the
+Strand, like one who had come in a dream, and faded out with the
+waking.  Fort hailed a cab, and went home, still seeing Noel's face.
+There was one, if you liked, waiting to be thrown to the wolves,
+waiting for the world's pack to begin howling round her--that lovely
+child; and the first, the loudest of all the pack, perhaps, must be
+her own father, the lean, dark figure with the gentle face, and the
+burnt bright eyes.  What a ghastly business!  His dreams that night
+were not such as Leila would have approved.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+When in the cupboard there is a real and very bony skeleton,
+carefully kept from the sight of a single member of the family, the
+position of that member is liable to become lonely.  But Pierson, who
+had been lonely fifteen years, did not feel it so much, perhaps, as
+most men would have.  In his dreamy nature there was a curious self-
+sufficiency, which only violent shocks disturbed, and he went on with
+his routine of duty, which had become for him as set as the pavements
+he trod on his way to and from it.  It was not exactly true, as the
+painter had said, that this routine did not bring him into touch with
+life.  After all he saw people when they were born, when they
+married, when they died.  He helped them when they wanted money, and
+when they were ill; he told their children Bible stories on Sunday
+afternoons; he served those who were in need with soup and bread from
+his soup kitchen.  He never spared himself in any way, and his ears
+were always at the service of their woes.  And yet he did not
+understand them, and they knew that.  It was as though he, or they,
+were colour-blind.  The values were all different.  He was seeing one
+set of objects, they another.
+
+One street of his parish touched a main line of thoroughfare, and
+formed a little part of the new hunting-grounds of women, who, chased
+forth from their usual haunts by the Authorities under pressure of
+the country's danger, now pursued their calling in the dark.  This
+particular evil had always been a sort of nightmare to Pierson.  The
+starvation which ruled his own existence inclined him to a
+particularly severe view and severity was not his strong point.  In
+consequence there was ever within him a sort of very personal and
+poignant struggle going on beneath that seeming attitude of rigid
+disapproval.  He joined the hunters, as it were, because he was
+afraid-not, of course, of his own instincts, for he was fastidious, a
+gentleman, and a priest, but of being lenient to a sin, to something
+which God abhorred: He was, as it were, bound to take a professional
+view of this particular offence.  When in his walks abroad he passed
+one of these women, he would unconsciously purse his lips, and frown.
+The darkness of the streets seemed to lend them such power, such
+unholy sovereignty over the night.  They were such a danger to the
+soldiers, too; and in turn, the soldiers were such a danger to the
+lambs of his flock.  Domestic disasters in his parish came to his
+ears from time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were turned
+by soldiers, so that they were about to become mothers.  They seemed
+to him pitiful indeed; but he could not forgive them for their
+giddiness, for putting temptation in the way of brave young men,
+fighting, or about to fight.  The glamour which surrounded soldiers
+was not excuse enough.  When the babies were born, and came to his
+notice, he consulted a Committee he had formed, of three married and
+two maiden ladies, who visited the mothers, and if necessary took the
+babies into a creche; for those babies had a new value to the
+country, and were not--poor little things!--to be held responsible
+for their mothers' faults.  He himself saw little of the young
+mothers; shy of them, secretly afraid, perhaps, of not being
+censorious enough.  But once in a way Life set him face to face with
+one.
+
+On New Year's Eve he was sitting in his study after tea, at that hour
+which he tried to keep for his parishioners, when a Mrs. Mitchett was
+announced, a small bookseller's wife, whom he knew for an occasional
+Communicant.  She came in, accompanied by a young dark-eyed girl in a
+loose mouse-coloured coat.  At his invitation they sat down in front
+of the long bookcase on the two green leather chairs which had grown
+worn in the service of the parish; and, screwed round in his chair at
+the bureau, with his long musician's fingers pressed together, he
+looked at them and waited.  The woman had taken out her handkerchief,
+and was wiping her eyes; but the girl sat quiet, as the mouse she
+somewhat resembled in that coat.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Mitchett?"  He said gently, at last.
+
+The woman put away her handkerchief, sniffed resolutely, and began:
+
+"It's 'Ilda, sir.  Such a thing Mitchett and me never could 'ave
+expected, comin' on us so sudden.  I thought it best to bring ,'er
+round, poor girl.  Of course, it's all the war.  I've warned 'er a
+dozen times; but there it is, comin' next month, and the man in
+France."  Pierson instinctively averted his gaze from the girl, who
+had not moved her eyes from his face, which she scanned with a
+seeming absence of interest, as if she had long given up thinking
+over her lot, and left it now to others.
+
+"That is sad," he said; "very, very sad."
+
+"Yes," murmured Mrs. Mitchett; "that's what I tell 'Ilda."
+
+The girl's glance, lowered for a second, resumed its impersonal
+scrutiny of Pierson's face.
+
+"What is the man's name and regiment?  Perhaps we can get leave for
+him to come home and marry Hilda at once."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett sniffed.  "She won't give it, sir.  Now, 'Ilda, give it
+to Mr.  Pierson."  And her voice had a real note of entreaty.  The
+girl shook her head.  Mrs. Mitchett murmured dolefully: "That's 'ow
+she is, sir; not a word will she say.  And as I tell her, we can only
+think there must 'ave been more than one.  And that does put us to
+shame so!"
+
+But still the girl made no sign.
+
+"You speak to her, sir; I'm really at my wit's end."
+
+"Why won't you tell us?" said Pierson.  "The man will want to do the
+right thing, 'I'm sure."
+
+The girl shook her head, and spoke for the first time.
+
+"I don't know his name."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett's face twitched.
+
+"Oh, dear!" she said: "Think of that!  She's never said as much to
+us."
+
+"Not know his name?"  Pierson murmured.  "But how--how could you--"
+he stopped, but his face had darkened.  "Surely you would never have
+done such a thing without affection?  Come, tell me!"
+
+"I don't know it," the girl repeated.
+
+"It's these Parks," said Mrs.  Mitchett, from behind her
+handkerchief.  "And to think that this'll be our first grandchild and
+all!  'Ilda is difficult; as quiet, as quiet; but that stubborn--"
+
+Pierson looked at the girl, who seemed, if anything, less interested
+than ever.  This impenetrability and something mulish in her attitude
+annoyed him.  "I can't think," he said, "how you could so have
+forgotten yourself.  It's truly grievous."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett murmured: "Yes, sir; the girls gets it into their heads
+that there's going to be no young men for them."
+
+"That's right," said the girl sullenly.
+
+Pierson's lips grew tighter.  "Well, what can I do for you, Mrs.
+Mitchett?"  he said.  "Does your daughter come to church?"
+
+Mrs.  Mitchett shook her head mournfully.  "Never since she had her
+byke."
+
+Pierson rose from his chair.  The old story! Control and discipline
+undermined, and these bitter apples the result!
+
+"Well," he said, "if you need our creche, you have only to come to
+me," and he turned to the girl.  "And you--won't you let this
+dreadful experience move your heart?  My dear girl, we must all
+master ourselves, our passions, and our foolish wilfulness,
+especially in these times when our country needs us strong, and self-
+disciplined, not thinking of ourselves.  I'm sure you're a good girl
+at heart."
+
+The girl's dark eyes, unmoved from his face, roused in him a spasm of
+nervous irritation.  "Your soul is in great danger, and you're very
+unhappy, I can see.  Turn to God for help, and in His mercy
+everything will be made so different for you--so very different!
+Come!"
+
+The girl said with a sort of surprising quietness: "I don't want the
+baby!"
+
+The remark staggered him, almost as if she had uttered a hideous
+oath.
+
+'Ilda was in munitions," said her mother in an explanatory voice:
+"earnin' a matter of four pound a week.  Oh! dear, it is a waste an'
+all!"  A queer, rather terrible little smile curled Pierson's lips.
+
+"A judgment!" he said.  "Good evening, Mrs. Mitchett.  Good evening,
+Hilda.  If you want me when the time comes, send for me."
+
+They stood up; he shook hands with them; and was suddenly aware that
+the door was open, and Noel standing there.  He had heard no sound;
+and how long she had been there he could not tell.  There was a
+singular fixity in her face and attitude.  She was staring at the
+girl, who, as she passed, lifted her face, so that the dark eyes and
+the grey eyes met.  The door was shut, and Noel stood there alone
+with him.
+
+"Aren't you early, my child?"  said Pierson.  "You came in very
+quietly."
+
+"Yes; I heard."
+
+A slight shock went through him at the tone of her voice; her face
+had that possessed look which he always dreaded.  "What did you
+hear?"  he said.
+
+"I heard you say: 'A judgment!'  You'll say the same to me, won't
+you?  Only, I do want my baby."
+
+She was standing with her back to the door, over which a dark curtain
+hung; her face looked young and small against its stuff, her eyes
+very large.  With one hand she plucked at her blouse, just over her
+heart.
+
+Pierson stared at her, and gripped the back of the chair he had been
+sitting in.  A lifetime of repression served him in the half-realised
+horror of that moment.  He stammered out the single word
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"It's quite true," she said, turned round, and went out.
+
+Pierson had a sort of vertigo; if he had moved, he must have fallen
+down.  Nollie!  He slid round and sank into his chair, and by some
+horrible cruel fiction of his nerves, he seemed to feel Noel on his
+knee, as, when a little girl, she had been wont to sit, with her fair
+hair fluffing against his cheek.  He seemed to feel that hair
+tickling his skin; it used to be the greatest comfort he had known
+since her mother died.  At that moment his pride shrivelled like a
+flower held to a flame; all that abundant secret pride of a father
+who loves and admires, who worships still a dead wife in the children
+she has left him; who, humble by nature, yet never knows how proud he
+is till the bitter thing happens; all the long pride of the priest
+who, by dint of exhortation and remonstrance has coated himself in a
+superiority he hardly suspects--all this pride shrivelled in him.
+Then something writhed and cried within, as a tortured beast cries,
+at loss to know why it is being tortured.  How many times has not a
+man used those words: "My God!  My God!  Why hast Thou forsaken me!"
+He sprang up and tried to pace his way out of this cage of confusion:
+His thoughts and feelings made the strangest medley, spiritual and
+worldly--Social ostracism--her soul in peril--a trial sent by God!
+The future!  Imagination failed him.  He went to his little piano,
+opened it, closed it again; took his hat, and stole out.  He walked
+fast, without knowing where.  It was very cold--a clear, bitter
+evening.  Silent rapid motion in the frosty air was some relief.  As
+Noel had fled from him, having uttered her news, so did he fly from
+her.  The afflicted walk fast.  He was soon down by the river, and
+turned West along its wall.  The moon was up, bright and nearly full,
+and the steel-like shimmer of its light burnished the ebbing water.
+A cruel night!  He came to the Obelisk, and leaned against it,
+overcome by a spasm of realisation.  He seemed to see his dead wife's
+face staring at him out of the past, like an accusation.  "How have
+you cared for Nollie, that she should have come to this?"  It became
+the face of the moonlit sphinx, staring straight at him, the broad
+dark face with wide nostrils, cruel lips, full eyes blank of pupils,
+all livened and whitened by the moonlight--an embodiment of the
+marvellous unseeing energy of Life, twisting and turning hearts
+without mercy.  He gazed into those eyes with a sort of scared
+defiance.  The great clawed paws of the beast, the strength and
+remorseless serenity of that crouching creature with human head, made
+living by his imagination and the moonlight, seemed to him like a
+temptation to deny God, like a refutation of human virtue.
+
+Then, the sense of beauty stirred in him; he moved where he could see
+its flanks coated in silver by the moonlight, the ribs and the great
+muscles, and the tail with tip coiled over the haunch, like the head
+of a serpent.  It was weirdly living; fine and cruel, that great man-
+made thing.  It expressed something in the soul of man, pitiless and
+remote from love--or rather, the remorselessness which man had seen,
+lurking within man's fate.  Pierson recoiled from it, and resumed his
+march along the Embankment, almost deserted in the bitter cold.  He
+came to where, in the opening of the Underground railway, he could
+see the little forms of people moving, little orange and red lights
+glowing.  The sight arrested him by its warmth and motion.  Was it
+not all a dream?  That woman and her daughter, had they really come?
+Had not Noel been but an apparition, her words a trick which his
+nerves had played him?  Then, too vividly again, he saw her face
+against the dark stuff of the curtain, the curve of her hand plucking
+at her blouse, heard the sound of his own horrified: "Nollie!"  No
+illusion, no deception!  The edifice of his life was in the dust.
+And a queer and ghastly company of faces came about him; faces he had
+thought friendly, of good men and women whom he knew, yet at that
+moment did not know, all gathered round Noel, with fingers pointing
+at her.  He staggered back from that vision, could not bear it, could
+not recognise this calamity.  With a sort of comfort, yet an aching
+sense of unreality, his mind flew to all those summer holidays spent
+in Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, by mountain and lake, with his
+two girls; what sunsets, and turning leaves, birds, beasts, and
+insects they had watched together!  From their youthful
+companionship, their eagerness, their confidence in him, he had known
+so much warmth and pleasure.  If all those memories were true, surely
+this could not be true.  He felt suddenly that he must hurry back, go
+straight to Noel, tell her that she had been cruel to him, or assure
+himself that, for the moment, she had been insane: His temper rose
+suddenly, took fire.  He felt anger against her, against every one he
+knew, against life itself.  Thrusting his hands deep into the pockets
+of his thin black overcoat, he plunged into that narrow glowing
+tunnel of the station booking-office, which led back to the crowded
+streets.  But by the time he reached home his anger had evaporated;
+he felt nothing but utter lassitude.  It was nine o'clock, and the
+maids had cleared the dining table.  In despair Noel had gone up to
+her room.  He had no courage left, and sat down supperless at his
+little piano, letting his fingers find soft painful harmonies, so
+that Noel perhaps heard the faint far thrumming of that music through
+uneasy dreams.  And there he stayed, till it became time for him to
+go forth to the Old Year's Midnight Service.
+
+When he returned, Pierson wrapped himself in a rug and lay down on
+the old sofa in his study.  The maid, coming in next morning to "do"
+the grate, found him still asleep.  She stood contemplating him in
+awe; a broad-faced, kindly, fresh-coloured girl.  He lay with his
+face resting on his hand, his dark, just grizzling hair unruffled, as
+if he had not stirred all night; his other hand clutched the rug to
+his chest, and his booted feet protruded beyond it.  To her young
+eyes he looked rather appallingly neglected.  She gazed with interest
+at the hollows in his cheeks, and the furrows in his brow, and the
+lips, dark-moustached and bearded, so tightly compressed, even in.
+sleep.  Being holy didn't make a man happy, it seemed!  What
+fascinated her were the cindery eyelashes resting on the cheeks, the
+faint movement of face and body as he breathed, the gentle hiss of
+breath escaping through the twitching nostrils.  She moved nearer,
+bending down over him, with the childlike notion of counting those
+lashes.  Her lips parted in readiness to say: "Oh!" if he waked.
+Something in his face, and the little twitches which passed over it,
+made her feel "that sorry" for him.  He was a gentleman, had money,
+preached to her every Sunday, and was not so very old--what more
+could a man want?  And yet--he looked so tired, with those cheeks.
+
+She pitied him; helpless and lonely he seemed to her, asleep there
+instead of going to bed properly.  And sighing, she tiptoed towards
+the door.
+
+"Is that you, Bessie?"
+
+The girl turned: "Yes, sir.  I'm sorry I woke you, sir.  'Appy New
+Year, sir!"
+
+"Ah, yes.  A Happy New Year, Bessie."
+
+She saw his usual smile, saw it die, and a fixed look come on his
+face; it scared her, and she hurried away.  Pierson had remembered.
+For full five minutes he lay there staring at nothing.  Then he rose,
+folded the rug mechanically, and looked at the clock.  Eight!  He
+went upstairs, knocked on Noel's door, and entered.
+
+The blinds were drawn up, but she was still in bed.  He stood looking
+down at her.  "A Happy New Year, my child!"  he said; and he trembled
+all over, shivering visibly.  She looked so young and innocent, so
+round-faced and fresh, after her night's sleep, that the thought
+sprang up in him again: 'It must have been a dream!'  She did not
+move, but a slow flush came up in her cheeks.  No dream--dream!  He
+said tremulously: "I can't realise.  I--I hoped I had heard wrong.
+Didn't I, Nollie?  Didn't I?"
+
+She just shook her head.
+
+"Tell me--everything," he said; "for God's sake!"
+
+He saw her lips moving, and caught the murmur: There s nothing more.
+Gratian and George know, and Leila.  It can't be undone, Daddy.
+Perhaps I wouldn't have wanted to make sure, if you hadn't tried to
+stop Cyril and me--and I'm glad sometimes, because I shall have
+something of his--"  She looked up at him.  "After all, it's the
+same, really; only, there's no ring.  It's no good talking to me now,
+as if I hadn't been thinking of this for ages.  I'm used to anything
+you can say; I've said it to myself, you see.  There's nothing but to
+make the best of it."
+
+Her hot hand came out from under the bedclothes, and clutched his
+very tight.  Her flush had deepened, and her eyes seemed to him to
+glitter.
+
+"Oh, Daddy!  You do look tired!  Haven't you been to bed?  Poor
+Daddy!"
+
+That hot clutch, and the words: "Poor Daddy!"  brought tears into his
+eyes.  They rolled slowly down to his beard, and he covered his face
+with the other hand.  Her grip tightened convulsively; suddenly she
+dragged it to her lips, kissed it, and let it drop.
+
+"Don't!"  she said, and turned away her face.
+
+Pierson effaced his emotion, and said quite calmly:
+
+"Shall you wish to be at home, my dear, or to go elsewhere?"
+
+Noel had begun to toss her head on her pillow, like a feverish child
+whose hair gets in its eyes and mouth.
+
+"Oh!  I don't know; what does it matter?"
+
+"Kestrel; would you like to go there?  Your aunt--I could write to
+her."  Noel stared at him a moment; a struggle seemed going on within
+her.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I would.  Only, not Uncle Bob."
+
+"Perhaps your uncle would come up here, and keep me company."
+
+She turned her face away, and that tossing movement of the limbs
+beneath the clothes began again.  "I don't care," she said;
+"anywhere--it doesn't matter."
+
+Pierson put his chilly hand on her forehead.  "Gently!"  he said, and
+knelt down by the bed.  "Merciful Father," he murmured, "give us
+strength to bear this dreadful trial.  Keep my beloved child safe,
+and bring her peace; and give me to understand how I have done wrong,
+how I have failed towards Thee, and her.  In all things chasten and
+strengthen her, my child, and me."
+
+His thoughts moved on in the confused, inarticulate suspense of
+prayer, till he heard her say: "You haven't failed; why do you talk
+of failing--it isn't true; and don't pray for me, Daddy."
+
+Pierson raised himself, and moved back from the bed.  Her words
+confounded him, yet he was afraid to answer.  She pushed her head
+deep into the pillow, and lay looking up at the ceiling.
+
+"I shall have a son; Cyril won't quite have died.  And I don't want
+to be forgiven."
+
+He dimly perceived what long dumb processes of thought and feeling
+had gone on in her to produce this hardened state of mind, which to
+him seemed almost blasphemous.  And in the very midst of this turmoil
+in his heart, he could not help thinking how lovely her face looked,
+lying back so that the curve of her throat was bared, with the short
+tendrils of hair coiling about it.  That flung-back head, moving
+restlessly from side to side in the heat of the soft pillow, had such
+a passion of protesting life in it!  And he kept silence.
+
+"I want you to know it was all me.  But I can't pretend.  Of course
+I'll try and not let it hurt you more than I possibly can.  I'm sorry
+for you, poor Daddy; oh!  I'm sorry for you!"  With a movement
+incredibly lithe and swift, she turned and pressed her face down in
+the pillow, so that all he could see was her tumbled hair and the
+bedclothes trembling above her shoulders.  He tried to stroke that
+hair, but she shook her head free, and he stole out.
+
+She did not come to breakfast; and when his own wretched meal was
+over, the mechanism of his professional life caught him again at
+once.  New Year's Day!  He had much to do.  He had, before all, to be
+of a cheerful countenance before his flock, to greet all and any with
+an air of hope and courage.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+1
+
+Thirza Pierson, seeing her brother-in-law's handwriting, naturally
+said: "Here's a letter from Ted."
+
+Bob Pierson, with a mouth full of sausage, as naturally responded:
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+In reading on, she found that to answer that question was one of the
+most difficult tasks ever set her.  Its news moved and disturbed her
+deeply.  Under her wing this disaster had happened!  Down here had
+been wrought this most deplorable miracle, fraught with such
+dislocation of lives!  Noel's face, absorbed and passionate, outside
+the door of her room on the night when Cyril Morland went away--her
+instinct had been right!
+
+"He wants you to go up and stay with him, Bob."
+
+"Why not both of us?"
+
+"He wants Nollie to come down to me; she's not well."
+
+"Not well?  What's the matter?"
+
+To tell him seemed disloyalty to her sex; not to tell him, disloyalty
+to her husband.  A simple consideration of fact and not of principle,
+decided her.  He would certainly say in a moment: 'Here!  Pitch it
+over!' and she would have to.  She said tranquilly:
+
+"You remember that night when Cyril Morland went away, and Noel
+behaved so strangely.  Well, my dear; she is going to have a child at
+the beginning of April.  The poor boy is dead, Bob; he died for the
+Country."
+
+She saw the red tide flow up into his face.
+
+"What!"
+
+"Poor Edward is dreadfully upset.  We must do what we can.  I blame
+myself."  By instinct she used those words.
+
+"Blame yourself?  Stuff!  That young--!"  He stopped.
+
+Thirza said quietly: "No, Bob; of the two, I'm sure it was Noel; she
+was desperate that day.  Don't you remember her face?  Oh!  this war!
+It's turned the whole world upside down.  That's the only comfort;
+nothing's normal"
+
+Bob Pierson possessed beyond most men the secret of happiness, for he
+was always absorbed in the moment, to the point of unself-
+consciousness.  Eating an egg, cutting down a tree, sitting on a
+Tribunal, making up his accounts, planting potatoes, looking at the
+moon, riding his cob, reading the Lessons--no part of him stood aside
+to see how he was doing it, or wonder why he was doing it, or not
+doing it better.  He grew like a cork-tree, and acted like a sturdy
+and well-natured dog.  His griefs, angers, and enjoyments were simple
+as a child's, or as his somewhat noisy slumbers.  They were notably
+well-suited, for Thirza had the same secret of happiness, though her,
+absorption in the moment did not--as became a woman--prevent her
+being conscious of others; indeed, such formed the chief subject of
+her absorptions.  One might say that they neither of them had
+philosophy yet were as philosophic a couple as one could meet on this
+earth of the self-conscious.  Daily life to these two was still of
+simple savour.  To be absorbed in life--the queer endless tissue of
+moments and things felt and done and said and made, the odd
+inspiriting conjunctions of countless people--was natural to them;
+but they never thought whether they were absorbed or not, or had any
+particular attitude to Life or Death--a great blessing at the epoch
+in which they were living.
+
+Bob Pierson, then, paced the room, so absorbed in his dismay and
+concern, that he was almost happy.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, "what a ghastly thing!
+
+Nollie, of all people!  I feel perfectly wretched, Thirza; wretched
+beyond words."  But with each repetition his voice grew cheerier, and
+Thirza felt that he was already over the worst.
+
+"Your coffee's getting cold!"  she said.
+
+"What do you advise?  Shall I go up, heh?"
+
+"I think you'll be a godsend to poor Ted; you'll keep his spirits up.
+Eve won't get any leave till Easter; and I can be quite alone, and
+see to Nollie here.  The servants can have a holiday--, Nurse and I
+will run the house together.  I shall enjoy it."
+
+"You're a good woman, Thirza!"  Taking his wife's hand, he put it to
+his lips.  "There isn't another woman like you in the world."
+
+Thirza's eyes smiled.  "Pass me your cup; I'll give you some fresh
+coffee."
+
+It was decided to put the plan into operation at mid-month, and she
+bent all her wits to instilling into her husband the thought that a
+baby more or less was no great matter in a world which already
+contained twelve hundred million people.  With a man's keener sense
+of family propriety, he could not see that this baby would be the
+same as any other baby.  "By heaven!"  he would say, "I simply can't
+get used to it; in our family!  And Ted a parson!  What the devil
+shall we do with it?"
+
+"If Nollie will let us, why shouldn't we adopt it?  It'll be
+something to take my thoughts off the boys."
+
+"That's an idea!  But Ted's a funny fellow.  He'll have some doctrine
+of atonement, or other in his bonnet."
+
+"Oh, bother!" said Thirza with asperity.
+
+The thought of sojourning in town for a spell was not unpleasant to
+Bob Pierson.  His Tribunal work was over, his early, potatoes in, and
+he had visions of working for the Country, of being a special
+constable, and dining at his Club.  The nearer he was to the front,
+and the more he could talk about the war, the greater the service he
+felt he would be doing.  He would ask for a job where his brains
+would be of use.  He regretted keenly that Thirza wouldn't be with
+him; a long separation like this would be a great trial.  And he
+would sigh and run his fingers through his whiskers.  Still for the
+Country, and for Nollie, one must put up with it!
+
+When Thirza finally saw him into the train, tears stood in the eyes
+of both, for they were honestly attached, and knew well enough that
+this job, once taken in hand, would have to be seen through; a three
+months' separation at least.
+
+"I shall write every day."
+
+"So shall I, Bob."
+
+"You won't fret, old girl?"
+
+"Only if you do."
+
+"I shall be up at 5.5, and she'll be down at 4.50.  Give us a kiss--
+damn the porters.  God bless you!  I suppose she'd mind if--I--were
+to come down now and then?"
+
+"I'm afraid she would.  It's--it's--well, you know."
+
+"Yes, Yes; I do."  And he really did; for underneath, he had true
+delicacy.
+
+Her last words: "You're very sweet, Bob," remained in his ears all
+the way to Severn Junction.
+
+She went back to the house, emptied of her husband, daughter, boys,
+and maids; only the dogs left and the old nurse whom she had taken
+into confidence.  Even in that sheltered, wooded valley it was very
+cold this winter.  The birds hid themselves, not one flower bloomed,
+and the red-brown river was full and swift.  The sound of trees being
+felled for trench props, in the wood above the house resounded all
+day long in the frosty air.  She meant to do the cooking herself; and
+for the rest of the morning and early afternoon she concocted nice
+things, and thought out how she herself would feel if she were Noel
+and Noel she, so as to smooth out of the way anything which would
+hurt the girl.  In the afternoon she went down to the station in the
+village car, the same which had borne Cyril Morland away that July
+night, for their coachman had been taken for the army, and the horses
+were turned out.
+
+Noel looked tired and white, but calm--too calm.  Her face seemed to
+Thirza to have fined down, and with those brooding eyes, to be more
+beautiful.  In the car she possessed herself of the girl's hand, and
+squeezed it hard; their only allusion to the situation, except Noel's
+formal:
+
+"Thank you so much, Auntie, for having me; it's most awfully sweet of
+you and Uncle Bob."
+
+"There's no one in the house, my dear, except old Nurse.  It'll be
+very dull for you; but I thought I'd teach you to cook; it's rather
+useful."
+
+The smile which slipped on to Noel's face gave Thirza quite a turn.
+
+She had assigned the girl a different room, and had made it
+extraordinarily cheerful with a log fire, chrysanthemums, bright
+copper candlesticks, warming-pans, and such like.
+
+She went up with her at bedtime, and standing before the fire, said:
+
+"You know, Nollie, I absolutely refuse to regard this as any sort of
+tragedy.  To bring life into the worlds in these days, no matter-
+how, ought to make anyone happy.  I only wish I could do it again,
+then I should feel some use.  Good night dear; and if you want
+anything, knock on the wall.  I'm next door.  Bless you!"  She saw
+that the girl was greatly moved, underneath her pale mask; and went
+out astonished at her niece's powers of self-control.
+
+But she did not sleep at all well; for in imagination, she kept on
+seeing Noel turning from side to side in the big bed, and those great
+eyes of hers staring at the dark.
+
+
+
+2
+
+The meeting of the brothers Pierson took place at the dinner-hour,
+and was characterised by a truly English lack of display.  They were
+so extremely different, and had been together so little since early
+days in their old Buckinghamshire home, that they were practically
+strangers, with just the potent link of far-distant memories in
+common.  It was of these they talked, and about the war.  On this
+subject they agreed in the large, and differed in the narrow.  For
+instance, both thought they knew about Germany and other countries,
+and neither of course had any real knowledge of any country outside
+their own; for, though both had passed through considerable tracts of
+foreign ground at one time or another, they had never remarked
+anything except its surface,--its churches, and its sunsets.  Again,
+both assumed that they were democrats, but neither knew the meaning
+of the word, nor felt that the working man could be really trusted;
+and both revered Church and, King: Both disliked conscription, but
+considered it necessary.  Both favoured Home Rule for Ireland, but
+neither thought it possible to grant it.  Both wished for the war to
+end, but were for prosecuting it to Victory, and neither knew what
+they meant by that word.  So much for the large.  On the narrower
+issues, such as strategy, and the personality of their country's
+leaders, they were opposed.  Edward was a Westerner, Robert an
+Easterner, as was natural in one who had lived twenty-five years in
+Ceylon.  Edward favoured the fallen government, Robert the risen.
+Neither had any particular reasons for their partisanship except what
+he had read in the journals.  After all--what other reasons could
+they have had?  Edward disliked the Harmswortb Press; Robert thought
+it was doing good.  Robert was explosive, and rather vague; Edward
+dreamy, and a little didactic.  Robert thought poor Ted looking like
+a ghost; Edward thought poor Bob looking like the setting sun.  Their
+faces were indeed as curiously contrasted as their views and voices;
+the pale-dark, hollowed, narrow face of Edward, with its short,
+pointed beard, and the red-skinned, broad, full, whiskered face of
+Robert.  They parted for the night with an affectionate hand-clasp.
+So began a queer partnership which consisted, as the days went on, of
+half an hour's companionship at breakfast, each reading the paper;
+and of dinner together perhaps three times a week.  Each thought his
+brother very odd, but continued to hold the highest opinion of him.
+And, behind it all, the deep tribal sense that they stood together in
+trouble, grew.  But of that trouble they never spoke, though not
+seldom Robert would lower his journal, and above the glasses perched
+on his well-shaped nose, contemplate his brother, and a little frown
+of sympathy would ridge his forehead between his bushy eyebrows.  And
+once in a way he would catch Edward's eyes coming off duty from his
+journal, to look, not at his brother, but at--the skeleton; when that
+happened, Robert would adjust his glasses hastily, damn the newspaper
+type, and apologise to Edward for swearing.  And he would think:
+'Poor Ted!  He ought to drink port, and--and enjoy himself, and
+forget it.  What a pity he's a parson!'
+
+In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward's asceticism.  "He
+eats nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable cigarette once
+in a blue moon.  He's as lonely as a coot; it's a thousand pities he
+ever lost his wife.  I expect to see his wings sprout any day; but-
+dash it all I--I don't believe he's got the flesh to grow them on.
+Send him up some clotted cream; I'll see if I can get him to eat it."
+When the cream came, he got Edward to eat some the first morning, and
+at tea time found that he had finished it himself.  "We never talk
+about Nollie," he wrote, "I'm always meaning to have it out with him
+and tell him to buck up, but when it comes to the point I dry up;
+because, after all, I feel it too; it sticks in my gizzard horribly.
+We Piersons are pretty old, and we've always been respectable, ever
+since St. Bartholomew, when that Huguenot chap came over and founded
+us.  The only black sheep I ever heard of is Cousin Leila.  By the
+way, I saw her the other day; she came round here to see Ted.  I
+remember going to stay with her and her first husband; young Fane, at
+Simla, when I was coming home, just before we were married.  Phew!
+That was a queer menage; all the young chaps fluttering round her,
+and young Fane looking like a cynical ghost.  Even now she can't help
+setting her cap a little at Ted, and he swallows her whole; thinks
+her a devoted creature reformed to the nines with her hospital and
+all that.  Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap that ever was."
+
+"We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end," he wrote a
+little later; "I don't like her so well as Nollie; too serious and
+downright for me.  Her husband seems a sensible fellow, though; but
+the devil of a free-thinker.  He and poor Ted are like cat and dog.
+We had Leila in to dinner again on Saturday, and a man called Fort
+came too.  She's sweet on him, I could see with half an eye, but poor
+old Ted can't.  The doctor and Ted talked up hill and down dale.  The
+doctor said a thing which struck me.  'What divides us from the
+beasts?  Will power: nothing else.  What's this war, really, but a
+death carnival of proof that man's will is invincible?'  I stuck it
+down to tell you, when I got upstairs.  He's a clever fellow.  I
+believe in God, as you know, but I must say when it comes to an
+argument, poor old Ted does seem a bit weak, with his: 'We're told
+this,' and 'We're told that: Nobody mentioned Nollie.  I must have
+the whole thing out with Ted; we must know how to act when it's all
+over."
+
+But not till the middle of March, when the brothers had been sitting
+opposite each other at meals for two months, was the subject broached
+between them, and then not by Robert.  Edward, standing by the hearth
+after dinner, in his familiar attitude, one foot on the fender, one
+hand grasping the mantel-shelf, and his eyes fixed on the flames,
+said: "I've never asked your forgiveness, Bob."
+
+Robert, lingering at the table over his glass of port, started,
+looked at Edward's back in its parson's coat, and answered:
+
+"My dear old chap!"
+
+"It has been very difficult to speak of this."
+
+"Of course, of course!"  And there was a silence, while Robert's eyes
+travelled round the walls for inspiration.  They encountered only the
+effigies of past Piersons very oily works, and fell back on the
+dining-table.  Edward went on speaking to the fire:
+
+"It still seems to me incredible.  Day and night I think of what it's
+my duty to do."
+
+"Nothing!" ejaculated Robert.  "Leave the baby with Thirza; we'll
+take care of it, and when Nollie's fit, let her go back to work in a
+hospital again.  She'll soon get over it."  He saw his brother shake
+his head, and thought: 'Ah! yes; now there's going to be some d--d
+conscientious complication.'
+
+Edward turned round on him: "That is very sweet of you both, but it
+would be wrong and cowardly for me to allow it."
+
+The resentment which springs up in fathers when other fathers dispose
+of young lives, rose in Robert.
+
+"Dash it all, my dear Ted, that's for Nollie to say.  She's a woman
+now, remember."
+
+A smile went straying about in the shadows of his brother's face.  "A
+woman?  Little Nollie!  Bob, I've made a terrible mess of it with my
+girls."  He hid his lips with his hand, and turned again to the
+flames.  Robert felt a lump in his throat.  "Oh! Hang it, old boy, I
+don't think that.  What else could you have done?  You take too much
+on yourself.  After all, they're fine girls.  I'm sure Nollie's a
+darling.  It's these modern notions, and this war.  Cheer up!  It'll
+all dry straight."  He went up to his brother and put a hand on his
+shoulder.  Edward seemed to stiffen under that touch.
+
+"Nothing comes straight," he said, "unless it's faced; you know that,
+Bob."
+
+Robert's face was a study at that moment.  His cheeks filled and
+collapsed again like a dog's when it has been rebuked.  His colour
+deepened, and he rattled some money in a trouser pocket.
+
+"Something in that, of course," he said gruffly.  "All the same, the
+decision's with Nollie.  We'll see what Thirza says.  Anyway, there's
+no hurry.  It's a thousand pities you're a parson; the trouble's
+enough without that:"
+
+Edward shook his head.  "My position is nothing; it's the thought of
+my child, my wife's child.  It's sheer pride; and I can't subdue it.
+I can't fight it down.  God forgive me, I rebel."
+
+And Robert thought: 'By George, he does take it to heart!  Well, so
+should I!  I do, as it is!'  He took out his pipe, and filled it,
+pushing the tobacco down and down.
+
+"I'm not a man of the world," he heard his brother say; "I'm out of
+touch with many things.  It's almost unbearable to me to feel that
+I'm joining with the world to condemn my own daughter; not for their
+reasons, perhaps--I don't know; I hope not, but still, I'm against
+her."
+
+Robert lit his pipe.
+
+"Steady, old man!"  he said.  "It's a misfortune.  But if I were you
+I should feel: 'She's done a wild, silly thing, but, hang it, if
+anybody says a word against her, I'll wring his neck.'  And what's
+more, you'll feel much the same, when it comes to the point."  He
+emitted a huge puff of smoke, which obscured his brother's face, and
+the blood, buzzing in his temples, seemed to thicken the sound of
+Edward's voice.
+
+"I don't know; I've tried to see clearly.  I have prayed to be shown
+what her duty is, and mine.  It seems to me there can be no peace for
+her until she has atoned, by open suffering; that the world's
+judgment is her cross, and she must bear it; especially in these
+days, when all the world is facing suffering so nobly.  And then it
+seems so hard-so bitter; my poor little Nollie!"
+
+There was a silence, broken only by the gurgling of Robert's pipe,
+till he said abruptly:
+
+"I don't follow you, Ted; no, I don't.  I think a man should screen
+his children all he can.  Talk to her as you like, but don't let the
+world do it.  Dash it, the world's a rotten gabbling place.  I call
+myself a man of the world, but when it comes to private matters--
+well, then I draw the line.  It seems to me it seems to me inhuman.
+What does George Laird think about it?  He's a knowing chap.  I
+suppose you've--no, I suppose you haven't--"  For a peculiar smile
+had come on Edward's face.
+
+"No," he said, "I should hardly ask George Laird's opinion."
+
+And Robert realised suddenly the stubborn loneliness of that thin
+black figure, whose fingers were playing with a little gold cross.
+'By Jove!' he thought, 'I believe old Ted's like one of those Eastern
+chaps who go into lonely places.  He's got himself surrounded by
+visions of things that aren't there.  He lives in unreality--
+something we can't understand.  I shouldn't be surprised if he heard
+voices, like--who was it?  Tt, tt!  What a pity!'  Ted was deceptive.
+He was gentle and--all that, a gentleman of course, and that
+disguised him; but underneath; what was there--a regular ascetic, a
+fakir!  And a sense of bewilderment, of dealing with something which
+he could not grasp, beset Bob Pierson, so that he went back to the
+table, and sat down again beside his port.
+
+"It seems to me," he said rather gruffly, "that the chicken had
+better be hatched before we count it."  And then, sorry for his
+brusqueness, emptied his glass.  As the fluid passed over his palate,
+he thought: 'Poor old Ted!  He doesn't even drink--hasn't a pleasure
+in life, so far as I can see, except doing his duty, and doesn't even
+seem to know what that is.  There aren't many like him--luckily!  And
+yet I love him--pathetic chap!'
+
+The "pathetic chap" was still staring at the flames.
+
+
+
+3
+
+And at this very hour, when the brothers were talking--for thought
+and feeling do pass mysteriously over the invisible wires of space
+Cyril Morland's son was being born of Noel, a little before his time.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+I
+
+Down by the River Wye, among plum-trees in blossom, Noel had laid her
+baby in a hammock, and stood reading a letter:
+
+"MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
+"Now that you are strong again, I feel that I must put before you my
+feeling as to your duty in this crisis of your life.  Your aunt and
+uncle have made the most kind and generous offer to adopt your little
+boy.  I have known that this was in their minds for some time, and
+have thought it over day and night for weeks.  In the worldly sense
+it would be the best thing, no doubt.  But this is a spiritual
+matter.  The future of our souls depends on how we meet the
+consequences of our conduct.  And painful, dreadful, indeed, as they
+must be, I am driven to feel that you can only reach true peace by
+facing them in a spirit of brave humility.  I want you to think and
+think--till you arrive at a certainty which satisfies your
+conscience.  If you decide, as I trust you will, to come back to me
+here with your boy, I shall do all in my power to make you happy
+while we face the future together.  To do as your aunt and uncle in
+their kindness wish, would, I am sore afraid, end in depriving you of
+the inner strength and happiness which God only gives to those who do
+their duty and try courageously to repair their errors.  I have
+confidence in you, my dear child.
+"Ever your most loving father,
+"EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+She read it through a second time, and looked at her baby.  Daddy
+seemed to think that she might be willing to part from this wonderful
+creature!  Sunlight fell through the plum blossom, in an extra
+patchwork quilt over the bundle lying there, touched the baby's nose
+and mouth, so that he sneezed.  Noel laughed, and put her lips close
+to his face.  'Give you up!' she thought: 'Oh, no!  And I'm going to
+be happy too.  They shan't stop me:
+
+In answer to the letter she said simply that she was coming up; and a
+week later she went, to the dismay of her uncle and aunt.  The old
+nurse went too.  Everything had hitherto been so carefully watched
+and guarded against by Thirza, that Noel did not really come face to
+face with her position till she reached home.
+
+Gratian, who had managed to get transferred to a London Hospital, was
+now living at home.  She had provided the house with new maids
+against her sister's return; and though Noel was relieved not to meet
+her old familiars, she encountered with difficulty the stolid
+curiosity of new faces.  That morning before she left Kestrel, her
+aunt had come into her room while she was dressing, taken her left
+hand and slipped a little gold band on to its third finger.
+"To please me, Nollie, now that you're going, just for the foolish,
+who know nothing about you."
+
+Noel had suffered it with the thought: 'It's all very silly!'  But
+now, when the new maid was pouring out her hot water, she was
+suddenly aware of the girl's round blue eyes wandering, as it were,
+mechanically to her hand.  This little hoop of gold, then, had an
+awful power!  A rush of disgust came over her.  All life seemed
+suddenly a thing of forms and sham.  Everybody then would look at
+that little ring; and she was a coward, saving herself from them!
+When she was alone again, she slipped it off, and laid it on the
+washstand, where the sunlight fell.  Only this little shining band of
+metal, this little yellow ring, stood between her and the world's
+hostile scorn!  Her lips trembled.  She took up the ring, and went to
+the open window; to throw it out.  But she did not, uncertain and
+unhappy--half realising the cruelty of life.  A knock at the door
+sent her flying back to the washstand.  The visitor was Gratian.
+
+"I've been looking at him," she said softly; "he's like you, Nollie,
+except for his nose."
+
+"He's hardly got one yet.  But aren't his eyes intelligent?  I think
+they're wonderful."  She held up the ring: "What shall I do about
+this, Gratian?"
+
+Gratian flushed.  "Wear it.  I don't see why outsiders should know.
+For the sake of Dad I think you ought.  There's the parish."
+
+Noel slipped the ring back on to her finger.  "Would you?"
+
+"I can't tell.  I think I would."
+
+Noel laughed suddenly.  "I'm going to get cynical; I can feel it in
+my bones.  How is Daddy looking?"
+
+"Very thin; Mr. Lauder is back again from the Front for a bit, and
+taking some of the work now."
+
+"Do I hurt him very much still?"
+
+"He's awfully pleased that you've come.  He's as sweet as he can be
+about you."
+
+"Yes," murmured Noel, "that's what's dreadful.  I'm glad he wasn't in
+when I came.  Has he told anyone?"
+
+Gratian shook her head.  "I don't think anybody knows; unless--
+perhaps Captain Fort.  He came in again the other night; and
+somehow--"
+
+Noel flushed.  "Leila!"  she said enigmatically.  "Have you seen
+her?"
+
+"I went to her flat last week with Dad--he likes her."
+
+"Delilah is her real name, you know.  All men like her.  And Captain
+Fort is her lover."
+
+Gratian gasped.  Noel would say things sometimes which made her feel
+the younger of the two.
+
+"Of course he is," went on Noel in a hard voice.  "She has no men
+friends; her sort never have, only lovers.  Why do you think he knows
+about me?"
+
+"When he asked after you he looked--"
+
+"Yes; I've seen him look like that when he's sorry for anything.  I
+don't care.  Has Monsieur Lavendie been in lately?"
+
+"Yes; he looks awfully unhappy."
+
+"His wife drugs."
+
+"Oh, Nollie!  How do you know?"
+
+"I saw her once; I'm sure she does; there was a smell; and she's got
+wandering eyes that go all glassy.  He can paint me now, if he likes.
+I wouldn't let him before.  Does be know?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"He knows there was something; he's got second sight, I think.  But I
+mind him less than anybody.  Is his picture of Daddy good?"
+
+"Powerful, but it hurts, somehow."
+
+"Let's go down and see it."
+
+The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its intense modernity
+made that old-fashioned room seem lifeless and strange.  The black
+figure, with long pale fingers touching the paler piano keys, had a
+frightening actuality.  The face, three-quarters full, was raised as
+if for inspiration, and the eyes rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the
+face of a girl painted and hung on a background of wall above the
+piano.
+
+"It's the face of that girl," said Gratian, when they had looked at
+the picture for some time in silence:
+
+"No," said Noel, "it's the look in his eyes."
+
+"But why did he choose such a horrid, common girl?  Isn't she
+fearfully alive, though?  She looks as if she were saying:
+'Cheerio!'"
+
+"She is; it's awfully pathetic, I think.  Poor Daddy!"
+
+"It's a libel," said Gratian stubbornly.
+
+"No.  That's what hurts.  He isn't quite--quite all there.  Will he
+be coming in soon?"
+
+Gratian took her arm, and pressed it hard.  "Would you like me at
+dinner or not; I can easily be out?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "It's no good to funk it.  He wanted me, and
+now he's got me.  Oh!  why did he?  It'll be awful for him."
+
+Gratian sighed.  "I've tried my best, but he always said: ' I've
+thought so long about it all that I can't think any longer.  I can
+only feel the braver course is the best.  When things are bravely and
+humbly met, there will be charity and forgiveness.'"
+
+"There won't," said Noel, "Daddy's a saint, and he doesn't see."
+
+"Yes, he is a saint.  But one must think for oneself--one simply
+must.  I can't believe as he does, any more; can you, Nollie?"
+
+"I don't know.  When I was going through it, I prayed; but I don't
+know whether I really believed.  I don't think I mind much about
+that, one way or the other."
+
+"I mind terribly," said Gratian, "I want the truth."
+
+"I don't know what I want," said Noel slowly, "except that sometimes
+I want--life; awfully."
+
+And the two sisters were silent, looking at each other with a sort of
+wonder.
+
+Noel had a fancy to put on a bright-coloured blue frock that evening,
+and at her neck she hung a Breton cross of old paste, which had
+belonged to her mother.  When she had finished dressing she went into
+the nursery and stood by the baby's cot.  The old nurse who was
+sitting there beside him, got up at once and said:
+
+"He's sleeping beautiful--the lamb.  I'll go down and get a cup o'
+tea, and come up, ma'am, when the gong goes."  In the way peculiar to
+those who have never to initiate, but only to support positions in
+which they are placed by others, she had adopted for herself the
+theory that Noel was a real war-widow.  She knew the truth perfectly;
+for she had watched that hurried little romance at Kestrel, but by
+dint of charity and blurred meditations it was easy for her to
+imagine the marriage ceremony which would and should have taken
+place; and she was zealous that other people should imagine it too.
+It was so much more regular and natural like that, and "her" baby
+invested with his proper dignity.  She went downstairs to get a "cup
+o' tea," thinking: 'A picture they make--that they do, bless his
+little heart; and his pretty little mother--no more than a child, all
+said and done.'
+
+Noel had been standing there some minutes in the failing light,
+absorbed in the face of the sleeping baby, when, raising her eyes,
+she saw in a mirror the refection of her father's dark figure by
+the door.  She could hear him breathing as if the ascent of the
+stairs had tired him; and moving to the head of the cot, she rested
+her hand on it, and turned her face towards him.  He came up and
+stood beside her, looking silently down at the baby.  She saw him
+make the sign of the Cross above it, and the movement of his lips in
+prayer.  Love for her father, and rebellion against this intercession
+for her perfect baby fought so hard in the girl's heart that she felt
+suffocated, and glad of the dark, so that he could not see her eyes.
+Then he took her hand and put it to his lips, but still without a
+word; and for the life of her she could not speak either.  In
+silence, he kissed her forehead; and there mounted in Noel a sudden
+passion of longing to show him her pride and love for her baby.  She
+put her finger down and touched one of his hands.  The tiny sleeping
+fingers uncurled and, like some little sea anemone, clutched round
+it.  She heard her father draw his breath in; saw him turn away
+quickly, silently, and go out.  And she stayed, hardly breathing,
+with the hand of her baby squeezing her finger.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+1
+
+When Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit
+nursery, he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees beside
+his bed, absorbed in the vision he had seen.  That young figure in
+Madonna blue, with the halo of bright hair; the sleeping babe in the
+fine dusk; the silence, the adoration in that white room!  He saw,
+too; a vision of the past, when Noel herself had been the sleeping
+babe within her mother's arm, and he had stood beside them, wondering
+and giving praise.  It passed with its other-worldliness and the fine
+holiness which belongs to beauty, passed and left the tormenting
+realism of life.  Ah! to live with only the inner meaning, spiritual
+and beautifed, in a rare wonderment such as he had experienced just
+now!
+
+His alarum clock, while he knelt in his narrow, monkish little room--
+ticked the evening hour away into darkness.  And still he knelt,
+dreading to come back into it all, to face the world's eyes, and the
+sound of the world's tongue, and the touch of the rough, the gross,
+the unseemly.  How could he guard his child?  How preserve that
+vision in her life, in her spirit, about to enter such cold, rough
+waters?  But the gong sounded; he got up, and went downstairs.
+
+But this first family moment, which all had dreaded, was relieved, as
+dreaded moments so often are, by the unexpected appearance of the
+Belgian painter.  He had a general invitation, of which he often
+availed himself; but he was so silent, and his thin, beardless face,
+which seemed all eyes and brow, so mournful, that all three felt in
+the presence of a sorrow deeper even than their own family grief.
+During the meal he gazed silently at Noel.  Once he said: "You will
+let me paint you now, mademoiselle, I hope?" and his face brightened
+a little when she nodded.  There was never much talk when he came,
+for any depth of discussion, even of art, brought out at once too
+wide a difference.  And Pierson could never avoid a vague irritation
+with one who clearly had spirituality, but of a sort which he could
+not understand.  After dinner he excused himself, and went off to his
+study.  Monsieur would be happier alone with the two girls!  Gratian,
+too, got up.  She had remembered Noel's words: "I mind him less than
+anybody."  It was a chance for Nollie to break the ice.
+
+
+
+2
+
+"I have not seen you for a long time, mademoiselle," said the
+painter, when they were alone.
+
+Noel was sitting in front of the empty drawing-room hearth, with her
+arms stretched out as if there had been a fire there.
+
+"I've been away.  How are you going to paint me, monsieur?"
+
+"In that dress, mademoiselle; Just as you are now, warming yourself
+at the fire of life."
+
+"But it isn't there."
+
+"Yes, fires soon go out.  Mademoiselle, will you come and see my
+wife?  She is ill."
+
+"Now?" asked Noel, startled.
+
+"Yes, now.  She is really ill, and I have no one there.  That is what
+I came to ask of your sister; but--now you are here, it's even
+better.  She likes you."
+
+Noel got up.  "Wait one minute!" she said, and ran upstairs.  Her
+baby was asleep, and the old nurse dozing.  Putting on a cloak and
+cap of grey rabbit's fur, she ran down again to the hall where the
+painter was waiting; and they went out together.
+
+"I do not know if I am to blame," he said, "my wife has been no real
+wife to me since she knew I had a mistress and was no real husband to
+her."
+
+Noel stared round at his face lighted by a queer, smile.
+
+"Yes," he went on, "from that has come her tragedy.  But she should
+have known before I married her.  Nothing was concealed.  Bon Dieu!
+she should have known!  Why cannot a woman see things as they are?
+My mistress, mademoiselle, is not a thing of flesh.  It is my art.
+It has always been first with me, and always will.  She has never
+accepted that, she is incapable of accepting it.  I am sorry for her.
+But what would you?  I was a fool to marry her.  Chere mademoiselle,
+no troubles are anything beside the trouble which goes on day and
+night, meal after meal, year, after year, between two people who
+should never have married, because one loves too much and requires
+all, and the other loves not at all--no, not at all, now, it is long
+dead--and can give but little."
+
+"Can't you separate?"  asked Noel, wondering.
+
+"It is hard to separate from one who craves for you as she craves her
+drugs--yes, she takes drugs now, mademoiselle.  It is impossible for
+one who has any compassion in his soul.  Besides, what would she do?
+We live from hand to mouth, in a strange land.  She has no friends
+here, not one.  How could I leave her while this war lasts?  As well
+could two persons on a desert island separate.  She is killing
+herself, too, with these drugs, and I cannot stop her."
+
+"Poor madame!"  murmured Noel.  "Poor monsieur!"
+
+The painter drew his hand across his eyes.
+
+"I cannot change my nature," he said in a stifled voice, "nor she
+hers.  So we go on.  But life will stop suddenly some day for one of
+us.  After all, it is much worse for her than for me.  Enter,
+mademoiselle.  Do not tell her I am going to paint you; she likes
+you, because you refused to let me."
+
+Noel went up the stairs, shuddering; she had been there once before,
+and remembered that sickly scent of drugs.  On the third floor they
+entered a small sitting-room whose walls were covered with paintings
+and drawings; from one corner a triangular stack of canvases jutted
+out.  There was little furniture save an old red sofa, and on this
+was seated a stoutish man in the garb of a Belgian soldier, with his
+elbows on his knees and his bearded cheeks resting on his doubled
+fists.  Beside him on the sofa, nursing a doll, was a little girl,
+who looked up at Noel.  She had a most strange, attractive, pale
+little face, with pointed chin and large eyes, which never moved from
+this apparition in grey rabbits' skins.
+
+"Ah, Barra!  You here!"  said the painter:
+
+"Mademoiselle, this is Monsieur Barra, a friend of ours from the
+front; and this is our landlady's little girl.  A little refugee,
+too, aren't you, Chica?"
+
+The child gave him a sudden brilliant smile and resumed her grave
+scrutiny of the visitor.  The soldier, who had risen heavily, offered
+Noel one of his podgy hands, with a sad and heavy giggle.
+
+"Sit down, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, placing a chair for her: "I
+will bring my wife in," and he went out through some double doors.
+
+Noel sat down.  The soldier had resumed his old attitude, and the
+little girl her nursing of the doll, though her big eyes still
+watched the visitor.  Overcome by strangeness, Noel made no attempt
+to talk.  And presently through the double doors the painter and his
+wife came in.  She was a thin woman in a red wrapper, with hollow
+cheeks, high cheek-bones, and hungry eyes; her dark hair hung loose,
+and one hand played restlessly with a fold of her gown.  She took
+Noel's hand; and her uplifted eyes seemed to dig into the girl's
+face, to let go suddenly, and flutter.
+
+"How do you do?"  she said in English.  "So Pierre brought you, to
+see me again.  I remember you so well.  You would not let him paint
+you.  Ah! que c'est drole!  You are so pretty, too.  Hein, Monsieur
+Barra, is not mademoiselle pretty?"
+
+The soldier gave his heavy giggle, and resumed his scrutiny of the
+floor.
+
+"Henriette," said Lavendie, "sit down beside Chica--you must not
+stand.  Sit down, mademoiselle, I beg."
+
+"I'm so sorry you're not well," said Noel, and sat down again.
+
+The painter stood leaning against the wall, and his wife looked up at
+his tall, thin figure, with eyes which had in them anger, and a sort
+of cunning.
+
+"A great painter, my husband, is he not?"  she said to Noel.  "You
+would not imagine what that man can do.  And how he paints--all day
+long; and all night in his head.  And so you would not let him paint
+you, after all?"
+
+Lavendie said impatiently: "Voyons, Henriette, causez d'autre chose."
+
+His wife plucked nervously at a fold in her red gown, and gave him
+the look of a dog that has been rebuked.
+
+"I am a prisoner here, mademoiselle, I never leave the house.  Here I
+live day after day--my husband is always painting.  Who would go out
+alone under this grey sky of yours, and the hatreds of the war in
+every face?  I prefer to keep my room.  My husband goes painting;
+every face he sees interests him, except that which he sees every
+day.  But I am a prisoner.  Monsieur Barra is our first visitor for a
+long time."
+
+The soldier raised his face from his fists.  "Prisonnier, madame!
+What would you say if you were out there?"  And he gave his thick
+giggle.  "We are the prisoners, we others.  What would you say to
+imprisonment by explosion day and night; never a minute free.  Bom!
+Bom!  Bom!  Ah!  les tranchees!  It's not so free as all that,
+there."
+
+"Every one has his own prison," said Lavendie bitterly.
+"Mademoiselle even, has her prison--and little Chica, and her doll.
+Every one has his prison, Barra.  Monsieur Barra is also a painter,
+mademoiselle."
+
+"Moi!"  said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand.  "I paint puddles,
+star-bombs, horses' ribs--I paint holes and holes and holes, wire and
+wire and wire, and water--long white ugly water.  I paint splinters,
+and men's souls naked, and men's bodies dead, and nightmare--
+nightmare--all day and all night--I paint them in my head."  He
+suddenly ceased speaking and relapsed into contemplation of the
+carpet, with his bearded cheeks resting on his fists.  "And their
+souls as white as snow, les camarades," he added suddenly and loudly,
+"millions of Belgians, English, French, even the Boches, with white
+souls.  I paint those souls!"
+
+A little shiver ran through Noel, and she looked appealingly at
+Lavendie.
+
+"Barra," he said, as if the soldier were not there, "is a great
+painter, but the Front has turned his head a little.  What he says is
+true, though.  There is no hatred out there.  It is here that we are
+prisoners of hatred, mademoiselle; avoid hatreds--they are poison!"
+
+His wife put out her hand and touched the child's shoulder.
+
+"Why should we not hate?"  she said.  "Who killed Chica's father, and
+blew her home to-rags?  Who threw her out into this horrible England-
+-pardon, mademoiselle, but it is horrible.  Ah!  les Boches!  If my
+hatred could destroy them there would not be one left.  Even my
+husband was not so mad about his painting when we lived at home.  But
+here--!"  Her eyes darted at his face again, and then sank as if
+rebuked.  Noel saw the painter's lips move.  The sick woman's whole
+figure writhed.
+
+"It is mania, your painting!"  She looked at Noel with a smile.
+"Will you have some tea, mademoiselle?  Monsieur Barra, some tea?"
+
+The soldier said thickly: "No, madame; in the trenches we have tea
+enough.  It consoles us.  But when we get away--give us wine, le bon
+vin; le bon petit vin!"
+
+"Get some wine, Pierre!"
+
+Noel saw from the painter's face that there was no wine, and perhaps
+no money to get any; but he went quickly out.  She rose and said:
+
+"I must be going, madame."
+
+Madame Lavendie leaned forward and clutched her wrist.  "Wait a
+little, mademoiselle.  We shall have some wine, and Pierre shall take
+you back presently.  You cannot go home alone--you are too pretty.
+Is she not, Monsieur Barra?"
+
+The soldier looked up: "What would you say," he said, "to bottles of
+wine bursting in the air, bursting red and bursting white, all day
+long, all night long?  Great steel bottles, large as Chica: bits of
+bottles, carrying off men's heads?  Bsum, garra-a-a, and a house
+comes down, and little bits of people ever so small, ever so small,
+tiny bits in the air and all over the ground.  Great souls out there,
+madame.  But I will tell you a secret," and again he gave his heavy
+giggle, "all a little, little mad; nothing to speak of--just a little
+bit mad; like a watch, you know, that you can wind for ever.  That is
+the discovery of this war, mademoiselle," he said, addressing Noel
+for the first time, "you cannot gain a great soul till you are a
+little mad."  And lowering his piggy grey eyes at once, he resumed
+his former attitude.  "It is that madness I shall paint some day," he
+announced to the carpet; "lurking in one tiny corner of each soul of
+all those millions, as it creeps, as it peeps, ever so sudden, ever
+so little when we all think it has been put to bed, here--there, now
+--then, when you least think; in and out like a mouse with bright
+eyes.  Millions of men with white souls, all a little mad.  A great
+subject, I think," he added heavily.  Involuntarily Noel put her hand
+to her heart, which was beating fast.  She felt quite sick.
+
+"How long have you been at the Front, monsieur?"
+
+"Two years, mademoiselle.  Time to go home and paint, is it not?  But
+art--!" he shrugged his heavy round shoulders, his whole bear-like
+body.  "A little mad," he muttered once more.  "I will tell you a
+story.  Once in winter after I had rested a fortnight, I go back to
+the trenches at night, and I want some earth to fill up a hole in the
+ground where I was sleeping; when one has slept in a bed one becomes
+particular.  Well, I scratch it from my parapet, and I come to
+something funny.  I strike my briquet, and there is a Boche's face
+all frozen and earthy and dead and greeny-white in the flame from my
+briquet."
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Oh!  but yes, mademoiselle; true as I sit here.  Very useful in the
+parapet--dead Boche.  Once a man like me.  But in the morning I could
+not stand him; we dug him out and buried him, and filled the hole up
+with other things.  But there I stood in the night, and my face as
+close to his as this"--and he held his thick hand a foot before his
+face.  "We talked of our homes; he had a soul, that man.  Il me
+disait des cboses, how he had suffered; and I, too, told him my
+sufferings.  Dear God, we know all; we shall never know more than we
+know out there, we others, for we are mad--nothing to speak of, but
+just a little, little mad.  When you see us, mademoiselle, walking
+the streets, remember that."  And he dropped his face on to his fists
+again.
+
+A silence had fallen in the room-very queer and complete.  The little
+girl nursed her doll, the soldier gazed at the floor, the woman's
+mouth moved stealthily, and in Noel the thought rushed continually to
+the verge of action: 'Couldn't I get up and run downstairs?' But she
+sat on, hypnotised by that silence, till Lavendie reappeared with a
+bottle and four glasses.
+
+"To drink our health, and wish us luck, mademoiselle," he said.
+
+Noel raised the glass he had given her.  "I wish you all happiness."
+
+"And you, mademoiselle," the two men murmured.
+
+She drank a little, and rose.
+
+"And now, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, "if you must go, I will see
+you home."
+
+Noel took Madame Lavendie's hand; it was cold, and returned no
+pressure; her eyes had the glazed look that she remembered.  The
+soldier had put his empty glass down on the floor, and was regarding
+it unconscious of her.  Noel turned quickly to the door; the last
+thing she saw was the little girl nursing her doll.
+
+In the street the painter began at once in his rapid French:
+
+'I ought not to have asked you to come, mademoiselle; I did not know
+our friend Barra was there.  Besides, my wife is not fit to receive a
+lady; vous voyez qu'il y a de la manie dans cette pauvre tote.  I
+should not have asked you; but I was so miserable."
+
+"Oh!"  murmured Noel, "I know."
+
+"In our home over there she had interests.  In this great town she
+can only nurse her grief against me.  Ah! this war!  It seems to me
+we are all in the stomach of a great coiling serpent.  We lie there,
+being digested.  In a way it is better out there in the trenches;
+they are beyond hate, they have attained a height that we have not.
+It is wonderful how they still can be for going on till they have
+beaten the Boche; that is curious and it is very great.  Did Barra
+tell you how, when they come back--all these fighters--they are going
+to rule, and manage the future of the world?  But it will not be so.
+They will mix in with life, separate--be scattered, and they will be
+ruled as they were before.  The tongue and the pen will rule them:
+those who have not seen the war will rule them."
+
+"Oh!"' cried Noel, "surely they will be the bravest and strongest in
+the future."
+
+The painter smiled.
+
+"War makes men simple," he said, "elemental; life in peace is neither
+simple nor elemental, it is subtle, full of changing environments, to
+which man must adapt himself; the cunning, the astute, the adaptable,
+will ever rule in times of peace.  It is pathetic, the belief of
+those brave soldiers that the-future is theirs."
+
+"He said, a strange thing," murmured Noel; "that they were all a
+little mad."
+
+"He is a man of queer genius--Barra; you should see some of his
+earlier pictures.  Mad is not quite the word, but something is
+loosened, is rattling round in them, they have lost proportion, they
+are being forced in one direction.  I tell you, mademoiselle, this
+war is one great forcing-house; every living plant is being made to
+grow too fast, each quality, each passion; hate and love, intolerance
+and lust and avarice, courage and energy; yes, and self-sacrifice--
+all are being forced and forced beyond their strength, beyond the
+natural flow of the sap, forced till there has come a great wild
+luxuriant crop, and then--Psum! Presto!  The change comes, and these
+plants will wither and rot and stink.  But we who see Life in forms
+of Art are the only ones who feel that; and we are so few.  The
+natural shape of things is lost.  There is a mist of blood before all
+eyes.  Men are afraid of being fair.  See how we all hate not only
+our enemies, but those who differ from us.  Look at the streets too
+--see how men and women rush together, how Venus reigns in this
+forcing-house.  Is it not natural that Youth about to die should
+yearn for pleasure, for love, for union, before death?"
+
+Noel stared up at him.  'Now!' she thought: I will.'
+
+"Yes," she said, "I know that's true, because I rushed, myself.  I'd
+like you to know.  We couldn't be married--there wasn't time.  And--
+he was killed.  But his son is alive.  That's why I've been away so
+long.  I want every one to know."  She spoke very calmly, but her
+cheeks felt burning hot.
+
+The painter had made an upward movement of his hands, as if they had
+been jerked by an electric current, then he said quite quietly:
+
+"My profound respect, mademoiselle, and my great sympathy.  And your
+father?"
+
+"It's awful for him."
+
+The painter said gently: "Ah! mademoiselle, I am not so sure.
+Perhaps he does not suffer so greatly.  Perhaps not even your trouble
+can hurt him very much.  He lives in a world apart.  That, I think,
+is his true tragedy to be alive, and yet not living enough to feel
+reality.  Do you know Anatole France's description of an old woman:
+'Elle vivait, mais si peu.'  Would that not be well said of the
+Church in these days: 'Elle vivait, mais si peu.'  I see him always
+like a rather beautiful dark spire in the night-time when you cannot
+see how it is attached to the earth.  He does not know, he never will
+know, Life."
+
+Noel looked round at him.  "What do you mean by Life, monsieur?  I'm
+always reading about Life, and people talk of seeing Life!  What is
+it--where is it?  I never see anything that you could call Life."
+
+The painter smiled.
+
+"To 'see life'!"  he said.  "Ah! that is different.  To enjoy
+yourself!  Well, it is my experience that when people are 'seeing
+life' as they call it, they are not enjoying themselves.  You know
+when one is very thirsty one drinks and drinks, but the thirst
+remains all the same.  There are places where one can see life as it
+is called, but the only persons you will see enjoying themselves at
+such places are a few humdrums like myself, who go there for a talk
+over a cup of coffee.  Perhaps at your age, though, it is different."
+
+Noel clasped her hands, and her eyes seemed to shine in the gloom.
+"I want music and dancing and light, and beautiful things and faces;
+but I never get them."
+
+"No, there does not exist in this town, or in any other, a place
+which will give you that.  Fox-trots and ragtime and paint and powder
+and glare and half-drunken young men, and women with red lips you can
+get them in plenty.  But rhythm and beauty and charm never.  In
+Brussels when I was younger I saw much 'life' as they call it, but
+not one lovely thing unspoiled; it was all as ashes in the mouth.
+Ah! you may smile, but I know what I am talking of.  Happiness never
+comes when you are looking for it, mademoiselle; beauty is in Nature
+and in real art, never in these false silly make believes.  There is
+a place just here where we Belgians go; would you like to see how
+true my words are?
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"Tres-bien!  Let us go in?"
+
+They passed into a revolving doorway with little glass compartments
+which shot them out into a shining corridor.  At the end of this the
+painter looked at Noel and seemed to hesitate, then he turned off
+from the room they were about to enter into a room on the right.  It
+was large, full of gilt and plush and marble tables, where couples
+were seated; young men in khaki and older men in plain clothes,
+together or with young women.  At these last Noel looked, face after
+face, while they were passing down a long way to an empty table.  She
+saw that some were pretty, and some only trying to be, that nearly
+all were powdered and had their eyes darkened and their lips
+reddened, till she felt her own face to be dreadfully ungarnished: Up
+in a gallery a small band was playing an attractive jingling hollow
+little tune; and the buzz of talk and laughter was almost deafening.
+
+"What will you have, mademoiselle?"  said the painter.  "It is just
+nine o'clock; we must order quickly."
+
+"May I have one of those green things?"
+
+"Deux cremes de menthe," said Lavendie to the waiter.
+
+Noel was too absorbed to see the queer, bitter little smile hovering
+about his face.  She was busy looking at the faces of women whose
+eyes, furtively cold and enquiring, were fixed on her; and at the
+faces of men with eyes that were furtively warm and wondering.
+
+"I wonder if Daddy was ever in a place like this?"  she said, putting
+the glass of green stuff to her lips.  "Is it nice?  It smells of
+peppermint."
+
+"A beautiful colour.  Good luck, mademoiselle!"  and he chinked his
+glass with hers.
+
+Noel sipped, held it away, and sipped again.
+
+"It's nice; but awfully sticky.  May I have a cigarette?"
+
+"Des cigarettes," said Lavendie to the waiter, "Et deux cafes noirs.
+Now, mademoiselle," he murmured when they were brought, "if we
+imagine that we have drunk a bottle of wine each, we shall have
+exhausted all the preliminaries of what is called Vice.  Amusing,
+isn't it?"  He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+His face struck Noel suddenly as tarnished and almost sullen.
+
+"Don't be angry, monsieur, it's all new to me, you see."
+
+The painter smiled, his bright, skin-deep smile.
+
+"Pardon!  I forget myself.  Only, it hurts me to see beauty in a
+place like this.  It does not go well with that tune, and these
+voices, and these faces.  Enjoy yourself, mademoiselle; drink it all
+in!  See the way these people look at each other; what love shines in
+their eyes!  A pity, too, we cannot hear what they are saying.
+Believe me, their talk is most subtle, tres-spirituel.  These young
+women are 'doing their bit,' as you call it; bringing le plaisir to
+all these who are serving their country.  Eat, drink, love, for
+tomorrow we die.  Who cares for the world simple or the world
+beautiful, in days like these?  The house of the spirit is empty."
+
+He was looking at her sidelong as if he would enter her very soul.
+
+Noel got up.  "I'm ready to go, monsieur."
+
+He put her cloak on her shoulders, paid the bill, and they went out,
+threading again through the little tables, through the buzz of talk
+and laughter and the fumes of tobacco, while another hollow little
+tune jingled away behind them.
+
+"Through there," said the painter, pointing to another door, "they
+dance.  So it goes.  London in war-time!  Well, after all, it is
+never very different; no great town is.  Did you enjoy your sight of
+'life,' mademoiselle?"
+
+"I think one must dance, to be happy.  Is that where your friends
+go?"
+
+"Oh, no!  To a room much rougher, and play dominoes, and drink coffee
+and beer, and talk.  They have no money to throw away."
+
+"Why didn't you show me?"
+
+"Mademoiselle, in that room you might see someone perhaps whom one
+day you would meet again; in the place we visited you were safe
+enough at least I hope so."
+
+Noel shrugged.  "I suppose it doesn't matter now, what I do."
+
+And a rush of emotion caught at her throat--a wave from the past--the
+moonlit night, the dark old Abbey, the woods and the river.  Two
+tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+"I was thinking of--something," she said in a muffled voice.  "It's
+all right."
+
+"Chere mademoiselle!"  Lavendie murmured; and all the way home he was
+timid and distressed.  Shaking his hand at the door, she murmured:
+
+"I'm sorry I was such a fool; and thank you awfully, monsieur.  Good
+night."
+
+"Good night; and better dreams.  There is a good time coming--Peace
+and Happiness once more in the world.  It will not always be this
+Forcing-House.  Good night, chere mademoiselle!"
+
+Noel went up to the nursery, and stole in.  A night-light was
+burning, Nurse and baby were fast asleep.  She tiptoed through into
+her own room.  Once there, she felt suddenly so tired that she could
+hardly undress; and yet curiously rested, as if with that rush of
+emotion, Cyril and the past had slipped from her for ever.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+1
+
+Noel's first encounter with Opinion took place the following day.
+The baby had just come in from its airing; she had seen it
+comfortably snoozing, and was on her way downstairs, when a voice
+from the hall said:
+
+"How do you do?"  and she saw the khaki-clad figure of Adrian Lauder,
+her father's curate!  Hesitating just a moment, she finished her
+descent, and put her fingers in his.  He was a rather heavy, dough-
+coloured young man of nearly thirty, unsuited by khaki, with a round
+white collar buttoned behind; but his aspiring eyes redeemed him,
+proclaiming the best intentions in the world, and an inclination
+towards sentiment in the presence of beauty.
+
+"I haven't seen you for ages," he said rather fatuously, following
+her into her father's study.
+
+"No," said Noel.  "How--do you like being at the Front?"
+
+"Ah!" he said, "they're wonderful!"  And his eyes shone.  "It's so
+nice to see you again."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+He seemed puzzled by that answer; stammered, and said:
+
+"I didn't know your sister had a baby.  A jolly baby."
+
+"She hasn't."
+
+Lauder's mouth opened.  'A silly mouth,' she thought.
+
+"Oh!" he said.  "Is it a protegee--Belgian or something?"
+
+"No, it's mine; my own."  And, turning round, she slipped the little
+ring off her finger.  When she turned back to him, his face had not
+recovered from her words.  It had a hapless look, as of one to whom
+such a thing ought not to have happened.
+
+"Don't look like that," said Noel.  "Didn't you understand?  It's
+mine-mine."  She put out her left hand.  "Look!  There's no ring."
+
+He stammered: "I say, you oughtn't to--you oughtn't to--!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Joke about--about such things; ought you?"
+
+"One doesn't joke if one's had a baby without being married, you
+know."
+
+Lauder went suddenly slack.  A shell might have burst a few paces
+from him.  And then, just as one would in such a case, he made an
+effort, braced himself, and said in a curious voice, both stiff and
+heavy: "I can't--one doesn't--it's not--"
+
+"It is," said Noel.  "If you don't believe me, ask Daddy."
+
+He put his hand up to his round collar; and with the wild thought
+that he was going to tear it off, she cried: "Don't!"
+
+"You!"  he said."  You!  But--"
+
+Noel turned away from him to the window: She stood looking out, but
+saw nothing whatever.
+
+"I don't want it hidden," she said without turning round, "I want
+every one to know.  It's stupid as it is--stupid!" and she stamped
+her foot.  "Can't you see how stupid it is--everybody's mouth falling
+open!"
+
+He uttered a little sound which had pain in it, and she felt a real
+pang of compunction.  He had gripped the back of a chair; his face
+had lost its heaviness.  A dull flush coloured his cheeks.  Noel had
+a feeling, as if she had been convicted of treachery.  It was his
+silence, the curious look of an impersonal pain beyond power of
+words; she felt in him something much deeper than mere disapproval--
+something which echoed within herself.  She walked quickly past him
+and escaped.  She ran upstairs and threw herself on her bed.  He was
+nothing: it was not that!  It was in herself, the awful feeling, for
+the first time developed and poignant, that she had betrayed her
+caste, forfeited the right to be thought a lady, betrayed her secret
+reserve and refinement, repaid with black ingratitude the love
+lavished on her up bringing, by behaving like any uncared-for common
+girl.  She had never felt this before--not even when Gratian first
+heard of it, and they had stood one at each end of the hearth, unable
+to speak.  Then she still had her passion, and her grief for the
+dead.  That was gone now as if it had never been; and she had no
+defence, nothing between her and this crushing humiliation and
+chagrin.  She had been mad!  She must have been mad!  The Belgian
+Barra was right: "All a little mad" in this "forcing-house" of a war!
+She buried her face deep in the pillow, till it almost stopped her
+power of breathing; her head and cheeks and ears seemed to be on
+fire.  If only he had shown disgust, done something which roused her
+temper, her sense of justice, her feeling that Fate had been too
+cruel to her;, but he had just stood there, bewilderment incarnate,
+like a creature with some very deep illusion shattered.  It was
+horrible!  Then, feeling that she could not stay still, must walk,
+run, get away somehow from this feeling of treachery and betrayal,
+she sprang up.  All was quiet below, and she slipped downstairs and
+out, speeding along with no knowledge of direction, taking the way
+she had taken day after day to her hospital.  It was the last of
+April, trees and shrubs were luscious with blossom and leaf; the dogs
+ran gaily; people had almost happy faces in the sunshine.  'If I
+could get away from myself, I wouldn't care,' she thought.  Easy to
+get away from people, from London, even from England perhaps; but
+from oneself--impossible!  She passed her hospital; and looked at it
+dully, at the Red Cross flag against its stucco wall, and a soldier
+in his blue slops and red tie, coming out.  She had spent many
+miserable hours there, but none quite so miserable as this.  She
+passed the church opposite to the flats where Leila lived, and
+running suddenly into a tall man coming round the corner, saw Fort.
+She bent her head, and tried to hurry past.  But his hand was held
+out, she could not help putting hers into it; and looking up hardily,
+she said:
+
+"You know about me, don't you?"
+
+His face, naturally so frank, seemed to clench up, as if he were
+riding at a fence.  'He'll tell a lie,' she thought bitterly.  But he
+did not.
+
+"Yes, Leila told me."
+
+And she thought: 'I suppose he'll try and pretend that I've not been
+a beast!'
+
+"I admire your pluck," he said.
+
+"I haven't any."
+
+"We never know ourselves, do we?  I suppose you wouldn't walk my pace
+a minute or two, would you?  I'm going the same way."
+
+"I don't know which way I'm going."
+
+"That is my case, too."
+
+They walked on in silence.
+
+"I wish to God I were back in France," said Fort abruptly.  "One
+doesn't feel clean here."
+
+Noel's heart applauded.
+
+Ah!  to get away--away from oneself!  But at the thought of her baby,
+her heart fell again.  "Is your leg quite hopeless?"  she said.
+
+"Quite."
+
+"That must be horrid."
+
+"Hundreds of thousands would look on it as splendid luck; and so it
+is if you count it better to be alive than dead, which I do, in spite
+of the blues."
+
+"How is Cousin Leila?"
+
+"Very well.  She goes on pegging away at the hospital; she's a
+brick."  But he did not look at her, and again there was silence,
+till he stopped by Lord's Cricket-ground.
+
+"I mustn't keep you crawling along at this pace."
+
+"Oh, I don't mind!"
+
+"I only wanted to say that if I can be of any service to you at any
+time in any way whatever, please command me."
+
+He gave her hand a squeeze, took his hat off; and Noel walked slowly
+on.  The little interview, with its suppressions, and its
+implications, had but exasperated her restlessness, and yet, in a
+way, it had soothed the soreness of her heart.  Captain Fort at all
+events did not despise her; and he was in trouble like herself.  She
+felt that somehow by the look of his face, and the tone of his voice
+when he spoke of Leila.  She quickened her pace.  George's words came
+back to her: "If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will be of
+you!"  How easy to say!  The old days, her school, the little half
+grown-up dances she used to go to, when everything was happy.  Gone!
+All gone!
+
+But her meetings with Opinion were not over for the day, for turning
+again at last into the home Square, tired out by her three hours'
+ramble, she met an old lady whom she and Gratian had known from
+babyhood--a handsome dame, the widow of an official, who spent her
+days, which showed no symptom of declining, in admirable works.  Her
+daughter, the widow of an officer killed at the Marne, was with her,
+and the two greeted Noel with a shower of cordial questions: So she
+was back from the country, and was she quite well again?  And working
+at her hospital?  And how was her dear father?  They had thought him
+looking very thin and worn.  But now Gratian was at home-- How
+dreadfully the war kept husbands and wives apart!  And whose was the
+dear little baby they had in the house?
+
+"Mine," said Noel, walking straight past them with her head up.  In
+every fibre of her being she could feel the hurt, startled, utterly
+bewildered looks of those firm friendly persons left there on the
+pavement behind her; could feel the way they would gather themselves
+together, and walk on, perhaps without a word, and then round the
+corner begin: "What has come to Noel?  What did she mean?"  And
+taking the little gold hoop out of her pocket, she flung it with all
+her might into the Square Garden.  The action saved her from a
+breakdown; and she went in calmly.  Lunch was long over, but her
+father had not gone out, for he met her in the hall and drew her into
+the dining-room.
+
+"You must eat, my child," he said.  And while she was swallowing down
+what he had caused to be kept back for her, he stood by the hearth in
+that favourite attitude of his, one foot on the fender, and one hand
+gripping.  the mantel-shelf.
+
+"You've got your wish, Daddy," she said dully: "Everybody knows now.
+I've told Mr. Lauder, and Monsieur, and the Dinnafords."
+
+She saw his fingers uncrisp, then grip the shelf again.  "I'm glad,"
+he said.
+
+"Aunt Thirza gave me a ring to wear, but I've thrown it away."
+
+"My dearest child," he began, but could not go on, for the quivering
+of his lips.
+
+"I wanted to say once more, Daddy, that I'm fearfully sorry about
+you.  And I am ashamed of myself; I thought I wasn't, but I am--only,
+I think it was cruel, and I'm not penitent to God; and it's no good
+trying to make me."
+
+Pierson turned and looked at her.  For a long time after, she could
+not get that look out of her memory.
+
+Jimmy Fort had turned away from Noel feeling particularly wretched.
+Ever since the day when Leila had told him of the girl's misfortune
+he had been aware that his liaison had no decent foundation, save a
+sort of pity.  One day, in a queer access of compunction, he had made
+Leila an offer of marriage.  She had refused; and he had respected
+her the more, realising by the quiver in her voice and the look in
+her eyes that she refused him, not because she did not love him well
+enough, but because she was afraid of losing any of his affection.
+She was a woman of great experience.
+
+To-day he had taken advantage of the luncheon interval to bring her
+some flowers, with a note to say that he could not come that evening.
+Letting himself in with his latchkey, he had carefully put those
+Japanese azaleas in the bowl "Famille Rose," taking water from her
+bedroom.  Then he had sat down on the divan with his head in his
+hands.
+
+Though he had rolled so much about the world, he had never had much
+to do with women.  And there was nothing in him of the Frenchman, who
+takes what life puts in his way as so much enjoyment on the credit
+side, and accepts the ends of such affairs as they naturally and
+rather rapidly arrive.  It had been a pleasure, and was no longer a
+pleasure; but this apparently did not dissolve it, or absolve him.
+He felt himself bound by an obscure but deep instinct to go on
+pretending that he was not tired of her, so long as she was not tired
+of him.  And he sat there trying to remember any sign, however small,
+of such a consummation, quite without success.  On the contrary, he
+had even the wretched feeling that if only he had loved her, she
+would have been much more likely to have tired of him by now.  For
+her he was still the unconquered, in spite of his loyal endeavour to
+seem conquered.  He had made a fatal mistake, that evening after the
+concert at Queen's Hall, to let himself go, on a mixed tide of desire
+and pity!
+
+His folly came to him with increased poignancy after he had parted
+from Noel.  How could he have been such a base fool, as to have
+committed himself to Leila on an evening when he had actually been in
+the company of that child?  Was it the vague, unseizable likeness
+between them which had pushed him over the edge?  'I've been an ass,'
+he thought; 'a horrible ass.'  I would always have given every hour
+I've ever spent with Leila, for one real smile from that girl.'
+
+This sudden sight of Noel after months during which he had tried
+loyally to forget her existence, and not succeeded at all, made him
+realise as he never had yet that he was in love with her; so very
+much in love with her that the thought of Leila was become
+nauseating.  And yet the instincts of a gentleman seemed to forbid
+him to betray that secret to either of them.  It was an accursed
+coil!  He hailed a cab, for he was late; and all the way back to the
+War Office he continued to see the girl's figure and her face with
+its short hair.  And a fearful temptation rose within him.  Was it
+not she who was now the real object for chivalry and pity?  Had he
+not the right to consecrate himself to championship of one in such a
+deplorable position?  Leila had lived her life; but this child's
+life--pretty well wrecked--was all before her.  And then he grinned
+from sheer disgust.  For he knew that this was Jesuitry.  Not
+chivalry was moving him, but love!  Love!  Love of the unattainable!
+And with a heavy heart, indeed, he entered the great building, where,
+in a small room, companioned by the telephone, and surrounded by
+sheets of paper covered with figures, he passed his days.  The war
+made everything seem dreary, hopeless.  No wonder he had caught at
+any distraction which came along--caught at it, till it had caught
+him!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+To find out the worst is, for human nature, only a question of time.
+But where the "worst" is attached to a family haloed, as it were, by
+the authority and reputation of an institution like the Church, the
+process of discovery has to break through many a little hedge.  Sheer
+unlikelihood, genuine respect, the defensive instinct in those
+identified with an institution, who will themselves feel weaker if
+its strength be diminished, the feeling that the scandal is too good
+to be true--all these little hedges, and more, had to be broken
+through.  To the Dinnafords, the unholy importance of what Noel had
+said to them would have continued to keep them dumb, out of self-
+protection; but its monstrosity had given them the feeling that there
+must be some mistake, that the girl had been overtaken by a wild
+desire to "pull their legs" as dear Charlie would say.  With the hope
+of getting this view confirmed, they lay in wait for the old nurse
+who took the baby out, and obtained the information, shortly
+imparted: "Oh, yes; Miss Noel's.  Her 'usband was killed--poor lamb!"
+And they felt rewarded.  They had been sure there was some mistake.
+The relief of hearing that word "'usband" was intense.  One of these
+hasty war marriages, of which the dear Vicar had not approved, and so
+it had been kept dark.  Quite intelligible, but so sad!  Enough
+misgiving however remained in their minds, to prevent their going to
+condole with the dear Vicar; but not enough to prevent their roundly
+contradicting the rumours and gossip already coming to their ears.
+And then one day, when their friend Mrs. Curtis had said too
+positively: "Well, she doesn't wear a wedding-ring, that I'll swear,
+because I took very good care to look!" they determined to ask Mr.
+Lauder.  He would--indeed must--know; and, of course, would not tell
+a story.  When they asked him it was so manifest that he did know,
+that they almost withdrew the question.  The poor young man had gone
+the colour of a tomato.
+
+"I prefer not to answer," he said.  The rest of a very short
+interview was passed in exquisite discomfort.  Indeed discomfort,
+exquisite and otherwise, within a few weeks of Noel's return, had
+begun to pervade all the habitual congregation of Pierson's church.
+It was noticed that neither of the two sisters attended Service now.
+Certain people who went in the sincere hope of seeing Noel, only fell
+off again when she did not appear.  After all, she would not have the
+face!  And Gratian was too ashamed, no doubt.  It was constantly
+remarked that the Vicar looked very grave and thin, even for him.  As
+the rumours hardened into certainty, the feeling towards him became a
+curious medley of sympathy and condemnation.  There was about the
+whole business that which English people especially resent.  By the
+very fact of his presence before them every Sunday, and his public
+ministrations, he was exhibiting to them, as it were, the seamed and
+blushing face of his daughter's private life, besides affording one
+long and glaring demonstration of the failure of the Church to guide
+its flock: If a man could not keep his own daughter in the straight
+path--whom could he?  Resign!  The word began to be thought about,
+but not yet spoken.  He had been there so long; he had spent so much
+money on the church and the parish; his gentle dreamy manner was
+greatly liked.  He was a gentleman; and had helped many people; and,
+though his love of music and vestments had always caused heart-
+burnings, yet it had given a certain cachet to the church.  The
+women, at any rate, were always glad to know that the church they
+went to was capable of drawing their fellow women away from other
+churches.  Besides, it was war-time, and moral delinquency which in
+time of peace would have bulked too large to neglect, was now less
+insistently dwelt on, by minds preoccupied by food and air-raids.
+Things, of course, could not go on as they were; but as yet they did
+go on.
+
+The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk; and nothing
+concrete or tangible came Pierson's way.  He went about his usual
+routine without seeming change.  And yet there was a change, secret
+and creeping.  Wounded almost to death himself, he felt as though
+surrounded by one great wound in others; but it was some weeks before
+anything occurred to rouse within him the weapon of anger or the
+protective impulse.
+
+And then one day a little swift brutality shook him to the very soul.
+He was coming home from a long parish round, and had turned into the
+Square, when a low voice behind him said:
+
+"Wot price the little barstard?"
+
+A cold, sick feeling stifled his very breathing; he gasped, and spun
+round, to see two big loutish boys walking fast away.  With swift and
+stealthy passion he sprang after them, and putting his hands on their
+two neighbouring shoulders, wrenched them round so that they faced
+him, with mouths fallen open in alarm.  Shaking them with all his
+force, he said:
+
+"How dare you--how dare you use that word?"  His face and voice must
+have been rather terrible, for the scare in their faces brought him
+to sudden consciousness of his own violence, and he dropped his
+hands.  In two seconds they were at the corner.  They stopped there
+for a second; one of them shouted "Gran'pa"; then they vanished.  He
+was left with lips and hands quivering, and a feeling that he had not
+known for years--the weak white empty feeling one has after yielding
+utterly to sudden murderous rage.  He crossed over, and stood leaning
+against the Garden railings, with the thought: 'God forgive me!  I
+could have killed them--I could have killed them!'  There had been a
+devil in him.  If he had had something in his hand, he might now have
+been a murderer: How awful!  Only one had spoken;  but he could have
+killed them both!  And the word was true, and was in all mouths--all
+low common mouths, day after day, of his own daughter's child!  The
+ghastliness of this thought, brought home so utterly, made him
+writhe, and grasp the railings as if he would have bent them.
+
+>From that day on, a creeping sensation of being rejected of men,
+never left him; the sense of identification with Noel and her tiny
+outcast became ever more poignant, more real; the desire to protect
+them ever more passionate; and the feeling that round about there
+were whispering voices, pointing fingers, and a growing malevolence
+was ever more sickening.  He was beginning too to realise the deep
+and hidden truth: How easily the breath of scandal destroys the
+influence and sanctity of those endowed therewith by vocation; how
+invaluable it is to feel untarnished, and how difficult to feel that
+when others think you tarnished.
+
+He tried to be with Noel as much as possible; and in the evenings
+they sometimes went walks together, without ever talking of what was
+always in their minds.  Between six and eight the girl was giving
+sittings to Lavendie in the drawing-room, and sometimes Pierson would
+come there and play to them.  He was always possessed now by a sense
+of the danger Noel ran from companionship with any man.  On three
+occasions, Jimmy Fort made his appearance after dinner.  He had so
+little to say that it was difficult to understand why he came; but,
+sharpened by this new dread for his daughter, Pierson noticed his
+eyes always following her.  'He admires her,' he thought; and often
+he would try his utmost to grasp the character of this man, who had
+lived such a roving life.  'Is he--can he be the sort of man I would
+trust Nollie to?' he would think.  'Oh, that I should have to hope
+like this that some good man would marry her--my little Nollie, a
+child only the other day!'
+
+In these sad, painful, lonely weeks he found a spot of something like
+refuge in Leila's sitting-room, and would go there often for half an
+hour when she was back from her hospital.  That little black-walled
+room with its Japanese prints and its flowers, soothed him.  And
+Leila soothed him, innocent as he was of any knowledge of her latest
+aberration, and perhaps conscious that she herself was not too happy.
+To watch her arranging flowers, singing her little French songs, or
+to find her beside him, listening to his confidences, was the only
+real pleasure he knew in these days.  And Leila, in turn, would watch
+him and think: 'Poor Edward! He has never lived; and never will;
+now!'  But sometimes the thought would shoot through her: 'Perhaps
+he's to be envied.  He doesn't feel what I feel, anyway.  Why did I
+fall in love again?'
+
+They did not speak of Noel as a rule, but one evening she expressed
+her views roundly.
+
+"It was a great mistake to make Noel come back.  Edward.  It was
+Quixotic.  You'll be lucky if real mischief doesn't come of it.
+She's not a patient character; one day she'll do something rash.
+And, mind you, she'll be much more likely to break out if she sees
+the world treating you badly than if it happens to herself.  I should
+send her back to the country, before she makes bad worse."
+
+"I can't do that, Leila.  We must live it down together."
+
+"Wrong, Edward.  You should take things as they are."
+
+With a heavy sigh Pierson answered:
+
+"I wish I could see her future.  She's so attractive.  And her
+defences are gone.  She's lost faith, and belief in all that a good
+woman should be.  The day after she came back she told me she was
+ashamed of herself.  But since--she's not given a sign.  She's so
+proud--my poor little Nollie.  I see how men admire her, too.  Our
+Belgian friend is painting her.  He's a good man; but he finds her
+beautiful, and who can wonder.  And your friend Captain Fort.
+Fathers are supposed to be blind, but they see very clear sometimes."
+
+Leila rose and drew down a blind.
+
+"This sun," she said.  "Does Jimmy Fort come to you--often?"
+
+"Oh! no; very seldom.  But still--I can see."
+
+'You bat--you blunderer!' thought Leila: 'See!  You can't even see
+this beside you!'
+
+"I expect he's sorry for her," she said in a queer voice.
+
+"Why should he be sorry?  He doesn't know:"
+
+"Oh, yes!  He knows; I told him."
+
+"You told him!"
+
+"Yes," Leila repeated stubbornly; "and he's sorry for her."
+
+And even then "this monk" beside her did not see, and went blundering
+on.
+
+"No, no; it's not merely that he's sorry.  By the way he looks at
+her, I know I'm not mistaken.  I've wondered--what do you think,
+Leila.  He's too old for her; but he seems an honourable, kind man."
+
+"Oh!  a most honourable, kind man."  But only by pressing her hand
+against her lips had she smothered a burst of bitter laughter.  He,
+who saw nothing, could yet notice Fort's eyes when he looked at Noel,
+and be positive that he was in love with her!  How plainly those eyes
+must speak!  Her control gave way.
+
+"All this is very interesting," she said, spurning her words like
+Noel, "considering that he's more than my friend, Edward."  It gave
+her a sort of pleasure to see him wince.  'These blind bats!' she
+thought, terribly stung that he should so clearly assume her out of
+the running.  Then she was sorry, his face had become so still and
+wistful.  And turning away, she said:
+
+"Oh!  I shan't break my heart; I'm a good loser.  And I'm a good
+fighter, too; perhaps I shan't lose."  And snapping off a sprig of
+geranium, she pressed it to her lips.
+
+"Forgive me," said Pierson slowly; "I didn't know.  I'm stupid.  I
+thought your love for your poor soldiers had left no room for other
+feelings."
+
+Leila uttered a shrill laugh.  "What have they to do with each other?
+Did you never hear of passion, Edward?  Oh!  Don't look at me like
+that.  Do you think a woman can't feel passion at my age?  As much as
+ever, more than ever, because it's all slipping away."
+
+She took her hand from her lips, but a geranium petal was left
+clinging there, like a bloodstain.  "What has your life been all
+these years," she went on vehemently--"suppression of passion,
+nothing else!  You monks twist Nature up with holy words, and try to
+disguise what the eeriest simpleton can see.  Well, I haven't
+suppressed passion, Edward.  That's all."
+
+"And are you happier for that?"
+
+"I was; and I shall be again."
+
+A little smile curled Pierson's lips.  "Shall be?" he said.  "I hope
+so.  It's just two ways of looking at things, Leila."
+
+"Oh, Edward!  Don't be so gentle!  I suppose you don't think a person
+like me can ever really love?"
+
+He was standing before her with his head down, and a sense that,
+naive and bat-like as he was, there was something in him she could
+not reach or understand, made her cry out:
+
+"I've not been nice to you.  Forgive me, Edward!  I'm so unhappy."
+
+"There was a Greek who used to say: 'God is the helping of man by
+man.' It isn't true, but it's beautiful.  Good-bye, dear Leila, and
+don't be sorrowful"
+
+She squeezed his hand, and turned to the window.
+
+She stood there watching his black figure cross the road in the
+sunshine, and pass round the corner by the railings of the church.
+He walked quickly, very upright; there was something unseeing even
+about that back view of him; or was it that he saw-another world?
+She had never lost the mental habits of her orthodox girlhood, and in
+spite of all impatience, recognised his sanctity.  When he had
+disappeared she went into her bedroom.  What he had said, indeed, was
+no discovery.  She had known.  Oh!  She had known.  'Why didn't I
+accept Jimmy's offer?  Why didn't I marry him?  Is it too late?' she
+thought.  'Could I?  Would he--even now?' But then she started away
+from her own thought.  Marry him! knowing his heart was with this
+girl?
+
+She looked long at her face in the mirror, studying with a fearful
+interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light
+coating of powder.  She examined the cunning touches of colouring
+matter here and there in her front hair.  Were they cunning enough?
+Did they deceive?  They seemed to her suddenly to stare out.  She
+fingered and smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin
+below her chin.  She stretched herself, and passed her hands down
+over her whole form, searching as it were for slackness, or
+thickness.  And she had the bitter thought: 'I'm all out.  I'm doing
+all I can.' The lines of a little poem Fort had showed her went
+thrumming through her head:
+
+         "Time, you old gipsy man
+            Will you not stay
+          Put up your caravan
+            Just for a day?"
+
+What more could she do?  He did not like to see her lips reddened.
+She had marked his disapprovals, watched him wipe his mouth after a
+kiss, when he thought she couldn't see him.  'I need'nt!' she
+thought.  'Noel's lips are no redder, really.  What has she better
+than I?  Youth--dew on the grass!'  That didn't last long!  But long
+enough to "do her in" as her soldier-men would say.  And, suddenly
+she revolted against herself, against Fort, against this chilled and
+foggy country; felt a fierce nostalgia for African sun, and the
+African flowers; the happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth existence of those
+five years before the war began.  High Constantia at grape harvest!
+How many years ago--ten years, eleven years!  Ah!  To have before her
+those ten years, with him!  Ten years in the sun!  He would have
+loved her then, and gone on loving her!  And she would not have tired
+of him, as she had tired of those others.  'In half an hour,' she
+thought, 'he'll be here, sit opposite me; I shall see him struggling
+forcing himself to seem affectionate!  It's too humbling!  But I
+don't care; I want him!'
+
+She searched her wardrobe, for some garment or touch of colour,
+novelty of any sort, to help her.  But she had tried them all--those
+little tricks--was bankrupt.  And such a discouraged, heavy mood came
+on her, that she did not even "change," but went back in her nurse's
+dress and lay down on the divan, pretending to sleep, while the maid
+set out the supper.  She lay there moody and motionless, trying to
+summon courage, feeling that if she showed herself beaten she was
+beaten; knowing that she only held him by pity.  But when she heard
+his footstep on the stairs she swiftly passed her hands over her
+cheeks, as if to press the blood out of them, and lay absolutely
+still.  She hoped that she was white, and indeed she was, with
+finger-marks under the eyes, for she had suffered greatly this last
+hour.  Through her lashes she saw him halt, and look at her in
+surprise.  Asleep, or-ill, which?  She did not move.  She wanted to
+watch him.  He tiptoed across the room and stood looking down at her.
+There was a furrow between his eyes.  'Ah!' she thought, 'it would
+suit you, if I were dead, my kind friend.'  He bent a little towards
+her; and she wondered suddenly whether she looked graceful lying
+there, sorry now that she had not changed her dress.  She saw him
+shrug his shoulders ever so faintly with a puzzled little movement.
+He had not seen that she was shamming.  How nice his face was--not
+mean, secret, callous!  She opened her eyes, which against her will
+had in them the despair she was feeling.  He went on his knees, and
+lifting her hand to his lips, hid them with it.
+
+"Jimmy," she said gently, "I'm an awful bore to you.  Poor Jimmy!
+No!  Don't pretend!  I know what I know!"  'Oh, God!  What am I
+saying?' she thought.  'It's fatal-fatal.  I ought never!'  And
+drawing his head to her, she put it to her heart.  Then,
+instinctively aware that this moment had been pressed to its
+uttermost, she scrambled up, kissed his forehead, stretched herself,
+and laughed.
+
+"I was asleep, dreaming; dreaming you loved me.  Wasn't it funny?
+Come along.  There are oysters, for the last time this season."
+
+All that evening, as if both knew they had been looking over a
+precipice, they seemed to be treading warily, desperately anxious not
+to rouse emotion in each other, or touch on things which must bring a
+scene.  And Leila talked incessantly of Africa.
+
+"Don't you long for the sun, Jimmy?  Couldn't we--couldn't you go?
+Oh! why doesn't this wretched war end?  All that we've got here at
+home every scrap of wealth, and comfort, and age, and art, and music,
+I'd give it all for the light and the sun out there.  Wouldn't you?"
+
+And Fort said he would, knowing well of one thing which he would not
+give.  And she knew that, as well as he.
+
+They were both gayer than they had been for a long time; so that when
+he had gone, she fell back once more on to the divan, and burying her
+face in a cushion, wept bitterly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+It was not quite disillusionment that Pierson felt while he walked
+away.  Perhaps he had not really believed in Leila's regeneration.
+It was more an acute discomfort, an increasing loneliness.  A soft
+and restful spot was now denied him; a certain warmth and allurement
+had gone out of his life.  He had not even the feeling that it was
+his duty to try and save Leila by persuading her to marry Fort.  He
+had always been too sensitive, too much as it were of a gentleman,
+for the robuster sorts of evangelism.  Such delicacy had been a
+stumbling-block to him all through professional life.  In the eight
+years when his wife was with him, all had been more certain, more
+direct and simple, with the help of her sympathy, judgment; and
+companionship.  At her death a sort of mist had gathered in his soul.
+No one had ever spoken plainly to him.  To a clergyman, who does?  No
+one had told him in so many words that he should have married again--
+that to stay unmarried was bad for him, physically and spiritually,
+fogging and perverting life; not driving him, indeed, as it drove
+many, to intolerance and cruelty, but to that half-living dreaminess,
+and the vague unhappy yearnings which so constantly beset him.  All
+these celibate years he had really only been happy in his music, or
+in far-away country places, taking strong exercise, and losing
+himself in the beauties of Nature; and since the war began he had
+only once, for those three days at Kestrel, been out of London.
+
+He walked home, going over in his mind very anxiously all the
+evidence he had of Fort's feeling for Noel.  How many times had he
+been to them since she came back?  Only three times--three evening
+visits!  And he had not been alone with her a single minute!  Before
+this calamity befell his daughter, he would never have observed
+anything in Fort's demeanour; but, in his new watchfulness, he had
+seen the almost reverential way he looked at her, noticed the extra
+softness of his voice when he spoke to her, and once a look of sudden
+pain, a sort of dulling of his whole self, when Noel had got up and
+gone out of the room.  And the girl herself?  Twice he had surprised
+her gazing at Fort when he was not looking, with a sort of brooding
+interest.  He remembered how, as a little girl, she would watch a
+grown-up, and then suddenly one day attach herself to him, and be
+quite devoted.  Yes, he must warn her, before she could possibly
+become entangled.  In his fastidious chastity, the opinion he had
+held of Fort was suddenly lowered.  He, already a free-thinker, was
+now revealed as a free-liver.  Poor little Nollie!  Endangered again
+already!  Every man a kind of wolf waiting to pounce on her!
+
+He found Lavendie and Noel in the drawing-room, standing before the
+portrait which was nearing completion.  He looked at it for a long
+minute, and turned away:
+
+"Don't you think it's like me, Daddy?"
+
+"It's like you; but it hurts me.  I can't tell why."
+
+He saw the smile of a painter whose picture is being criticised come
+on Lavendie's face.
+
+"It is perhaps the colouring which does not please you, monsieur?"
+
+"No, no; deeper.  The expression; what is she waiting for?"
+
+The defensive smile died on Lavendie's lips.
+
+"It is as I see her, monsieur le cure."
+
+Pierson turned again to the picture, and suddenly covered his eyes.
+"She looks 'fey,"' he said, and went out of the room.
+
+Lavendie and Noel remained staring at the picture.  "Fey?  What does
+that mean, mademoiselle ?"
+
+"Possessed, or something."
+
+And they continued to stare at the picture, till Lavendie said:
+
+"I think there is still a little too much light on that ear."
+
+The same evening, at bedtime, Pierson called Noel back.
+
+"Nollie, I want you to know something.  In all but the name, Captain
+Fort is a married man."
+
+He saw her flush, and felt his own face darkening with colour.
+
+She said calmly: "I know; to Leila."
+
+"Do you mean she has told you?"
+
+Noel shook her head.
+
+"Then how?"
+
+"I guessed.  Daddy, don't treat me as a child any more.  What's the
+use, now?"
+
+He sat down in the chair before the hearth, and covered his face with
+his hands.  By the quivering of those hands, and the movement of his
+shoulders, she could tell that he was stifling emotion, perhaps even
+crying; and sinking down on his knees she pressed his hands and face
+to her, murmuring: "Oh, Daddy dear!  Oh, Daddy dear!"
+
+He put his arms round her, and they sat a long time with their cheeks
+pressed together, not speaking a word.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+The day after that silent outburst of emotion in the drawing-room was
+a Sunday.  And, obeying the longing awakened overnight to be as good
+as she could to her father; Noel said to him:
+
+"Would you like me to come to Church?"
+
+"Of course, Nollie."
+
+How could he have answered otherwise?  To him Church was the home of
+comfort and absolution, where people must bring their sins and
+troubles--a haven of sinners, the fount of charity, of forgiveness,
+and love.  Not to have believed that, after all these years, would
+have been to deny all his usefulness in life, and to cast a slur on
+the House of God.
+
+And so Noel walked there with him, for Gratian had gone down to
+George, for the week-end.  She slipped quietly up the side aisle to
+their empty pew, under the pulpit.  Never turning her eyes from the
+chancel, she remained unconscious of the stir her presence made,
+during that hour and twenty minutes.  Behind her, the dumb currents
+of wonder, disapproval, and resentment ran a stealthy course.  On her
+all eyes were fixed sooner or later, and every mind became the play
+ground of judgments.  From every soul, kneeling, standing, or
+sitting, while the voice of the Service droned, sang, or spoke, a
+kind of glare radiated on to that one small devoted head, which
+seemed so ludicrously devout.  She disturbed their devotions, this
+girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class.  She ought to
+repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there was
+something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she
+was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's authority, too
+visible a rent in the raiment of their priest.  Her figure focused
+all the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks.
+Mothers quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could see
+her; wives with the idea that their husbands were seeing her.  Men
+experienced sensations varying from condemnation to a sort of
+covetousness.  Young folk wondered, and felt inclined to giggle.  Old
+maids could hardly bear to look.  Here and there a man or woman who
+had seen life face to face, was simply sorry!  The consciousness of
+all who knew her personally was at stretch how to behave if they came
+within reach of her in going out.  For, though only half a dozen
+would actually rub shoulders with her, all knew that they might be,
+and many felt it their duty to be, of that half-dozen, so as to
+establish their attitude once for all.  It was, in fact, too severe a
+test for human nature and the feelings which Church ought to arouse.
+The stillness of that young figure, the impossibility of seeing her
+face and judging of her state of mind thereby; finally, a faint
+lurking shame that they should be so intrigued and disturbed by
+something which had to do with sex, in this House of Worship--all
+combined to produce in every mind that herd-feeling of defence, which
+so soon becomes, offensive.  And, half unconscious, half aware of it
+all, Noel stood, and sat, and knelt.  Once or twice she saw her
+father's eyes fixed on her; and, still in the glow of last night's
+pity and remorse, felt a kind of worship for his thin grave face.
+But for the most part, her own wore the expression Lavendie had
+translated to his canvas--the look of one ever waiting for the
+extreme moments of life, for those few and fleeting poignancies which
+existence holds for the human heart.  A look neither hungry nor
+dissatisfied, but dreamy and expectant, which might blaze into warmth
+and depth at any moment, and then go back to its dream.
+
+When the last notes of the organ died away she continued to sit very
+still, without looking round.
+
+There was no second Service, and the congregation melted out behind
+her, and had dispersed into the streets and squares long before she
+came forth.  After hesitating whether or no to go to the vestry door,
+she turned away and walked home alone.
+
+It was this deliberate evasion of all contact which probably clinched
+the business.  The absence of vent, of any escape-pipe for the
+feelings, is always dangerous.  They felt cheated.  If Noel had come
+out amongst all those whose devotions her presence had disturbed, if
+in that exit, some had shown and others had witnessed one knows not
+what of a manifested ostracism, the outraged sense of social decency
+might have been appeased and sleeping dogs allowed to lie, for we
+soon get used to things; and, after all, the war took precedence in
+every mind even over social decency.  But none of this had occurred,
+and a sense that Sunday after Sunday the same little outrage would
+happen to them, moved more than a dozen quite unrelated persons, and
+caused the posting that evening of as many letters, signed and
+unsigned, to a certain quarter.  London is no place for parish
+conspiracy, and a situation which in the country would have provoked
+meetings more or less public, and possibly a resolution, could
+perhaps only thus be dealt with.  Besides, in certain folk there is
+ever a mysterious itch to write an unsigned letter--such missives
+satisfy some obscure sense of justice, some uncontrollable longing to
+get even with those who have hurt or disturbed them, without
+affording the offenders chance for further hurt or disturbance.
+
+Letters which are posted often reach their destination.
+
+On Wednesday morning Pierson was sitting in his study at the hour
+devoted to the calls of his parishioners, when the maid announced,
+"Canon Rushbourne, sir," and he saw before him an old College friend
+whom he had met but seldom in recent years.  His visitor was a short,
+grey-haired man of rather portly figure, whose round, rosy, good-
+humoured face had a look of sober goodness, and whose light-blue eyes
+shone a little.  He grasped Pierson's hand, and said in a voice to
+whose natural heavy resonance professional duty had added a certain
+unction:
+
+"My dear Edward, how many years it is since we met!  Do you remember
+dear old Blakeway?  I saw him only yesterday.  He's just the same.
+I'm delighted to see you again," and he laughed a little soft nervous
+laugh.  Then for a few moments he talked of the war and old College
+days, and Pierson looked at him and thought: 'What has he come for?'
+
+"You've something to say to me, Alec," he said, at last.
+
+Canon Rushbourne leaned forward in his chair, and answered with
+evident effort: "Yes; I wanted to have a little talk with you,
+Edward.  I hope you won't mind.  I do hope you won't."
+
+"Why should I mind?"
+
+Canon Rushbourne's eyes shone more than ever, there was real
+friendliness in his face.
+
+"I know you've every right to say to me: 'Mind your own business.'
+But I made up my mind to come as a friend, hoping to save you from
+--er" he stammered, and began again: "I think you ought to know of
+the feeling in your parish that--er--that--er--your position is very
+delicate.  Without breach of confidence I may tell you that letters
+have been sent to headquarters; you can imagine perhaps what I mean.
+Do believe, my dear friend, that I'm actuated by my old affection for
+you; nothing else, I do assure you."
+
+In the silence, his breathing could be heard, as of a man a little
+touched with asthma, while he continually smoothed his thick black
+knees, his whole face radiating an anxious kindliness.  The sun shone
+brightly on those two black figures, so very different, and drew out
+of their well-worn garments the faint latent green mossiness which.
+underlies the clothes of clergymen.
+
+At last Pierson said: "Thank you, Alec; I understand."
+
+The Canon uttered a resounding sigh.  "You didn't realise how very
+easily people misinterpret her being here with you; it seems to them
+a kind--a kind of challenge.  They were bound, I think, to feel that;
+and I'm afraid, in consequence--" He stopped, moved by the fact that
+Pierson had closed his eyes.
+
+"I am to choose, you mean, between my daughter and my parish?"
+
+The Canon seemed, with a stammer of words, to try and blunt the edge
+of that clear question.
+
+"My visit is quite informal, my dear fellow; I can't say at all.  But
+there is evidently much feeling; that is what I wanted you to know.
+You haven't quite seen, I think, that--"
+
+Pierson raised his hand.  "I can't talk of this."
+
+The Canon rose.  "Believe me, Edward, I sympathise deeply.  I felt I
+had to warn you."  He held out his hand.  "Good-bye, my dear friend,
+do forgive me"; and he went out.  In the hall an adventure befell him
+so plump, and awkward, that he could barely recite it to Mrs.
+Rushbourne that night.
+
+"Coming out from my poor friend," he said, "I ran into a baby's
+perambulator and that young mother, whom I remember as a little
+thing"--he held his hand at the level of his thigh--"arranging it for
+going out.  It startled me; and I fear I asked quite foolishly: 'Is
+it a boy?'  The poor young thing looked up at me.  She has very large
+eyes, quite beautiful, strange eyes.  'Have you been speaking to
+Daddy about me?'  'My dear young lady,' I said, 'I'm such an old
+friend, you see.  You must forgive me.'  And then she said: 'Are they
+going to ask him to resign?'  'That depends on you,' I said.  Why do
+I say these things, Charlotte?  I ought simply to have held my
+tongue.  Poor young thing; so very young!  And the little baby!"
+"She has brought it on herself, Alec," Mrs, Rushbourne replied.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+1
+
+The moment his visitor had vanished, Pierson paced up and down the
+study, with anger rising in his, heart.  His daughter or his parish!
+The old saw, "An Englishman's house is his castle!"  was being
+attacked within him.  Must he not then harbour his own daughter, and
+help her by candid atonement to regain her inward strength and peace?
+Was he not thereby acting as a true Christian, in by far the hardest
+course he and she could pursue?  To go back on that decision and
+imperil his daughter's spirit, or else resign his parish--the
+alternatives were brutal!  This was the centre of his world, the only
+spot where so lonely a man could hope to feel even the semblance of
+home; a thousand little threads tethered him to his church, his
+parishioners, and this house--for, to live on here if he gave up his
+church was out of the question.  But his chief feeling was a
+bewildered anger that for doing what seemed to him his duty, he
+should be attacked by his parishioners.
+
+A passion of desire to know what they really thought and felt--these
+parishioners of his, whom he had befriended, and for whom he had
+worked so long--beset him now, and he went out.  But the absurdity of
+his quest struck him before he had gone the length of the Square.
+One could not go to people and say: "Stand and deliver me your inmost
+judgments."  And suddenly he was aware of how far away he really was
+from them.  Through all his ministrations had he ever come to know
+their hearts?  And now, in this dire necessity for knowledge, there
+seemed no way of getting it.  He went at random into a stationer's
+shop; the shopman sang bass in his choir.  They had met Sunday after
+Sunday for the last seven years.  But when, with this itch for
+intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man behind the counter, it was
+as if he were looking on him for the first time.  The Russian
+proverb, "The heart of another is a dark forest," gashed into his
+mind, while he said:
+
+"Well, Hodson, what news of your son?"
+
+"Nothing more, Mr.  Pierson, thank you, sir, nothing more at
+present."
+
+And it seemed to Pierson, gazing at the man's face clothed in a
+short, grizzling beard cut rather like his own, that he must be
+thinking: 'Ah! sir, but what news of your daughter?' No one would
+ever tell him to his face what he was thinking.  And buying two
+pencils, he went out.  On the other side of the road was a bird-
+fancier's shop, kept by a woman whose husband had been taken for the
+Army.  She was not friendly towards him, for it was known to her that
+he had expostulated with her husband for keeping larks, and other
+wild birds.  And quite deliberately he crossed the road, and stood
+looking in at the window, with the morbid hope that from this
+unfriendly one he might hear truth.  She was in her shop, and came to
+the door.
+
+"Have you any news of your husband, Mrs.  Cherry?"
+
+"No, Mr.  Pierson, I 'ave not; not this week."
+
+"He hasn't gone out yet?"
+
+"No, Mr.  Pierson; 'e 'as not."
+
+There was no expression on her face, perfectly blank it was--Pierson
+had a mad longing to say 'For God's sake, woman, speak out what's in
+your mind; tell me what you think of me and my daughter.  Never mind
+my cloth!'  But he could no more say it than the woman could tell him
+what was in her mind.  And with a "Good morning" he passed on.  No
+man or woman would tell him anything, unless, perhaps, they were
+drunk.  He came to a public house, and for a moment even hesitated
+before it, but the thought of insult aimed at Noel stopped him, and
+he passed that too.  And then reality made itself known to him.
+Though he had come out to hear what they were thinking, he did not
+really want to hear it, could not endure it if he did.  He had been
+too long immune from criticism, too long in the position of one who
+may tell others what he thinks of them.  And standing there in the
+crowded street, he was attacked by that longing for the country which
+had always come on him when he was hard pressed.  He looked at his
+memoranda.  By stupendous luck it was almost a blank day.  An omnibus
+passed close by which would take him far out.  He climbed on to it,
+and travelled as far as Hendon; then getting down, set forth on foot.
+It was bright and hot, and the May blossom in full foam.  He walked
+fast along the perfectly straight road till he came to the top of
+Elstree Hill.  There for a few moments he stood gazing at the school
+chapel, the cricket-field, the wide land beyond.  All was very quiet,
+for it was lunch-time.  A horse was tethered there, and a strolling
+cat, as though struck by the tall black incongruity of his figure,
+paused in her progress, then, slithering under the wicket gate,
+arched her back and rubbed herself against his leg, crinkling and
+waving the tip of her tail.  Pierson bent down and stroked the
+creature's head; but uttering a faint miaou, the cat stepped daintily
+across the road, Pierson too stepped on, past the village, and down
+over the stile, into a field path.  At the edge of the young clover,
+under a bank of hawthorn, he lay down on his back, with his hat
+beside him and his arms crossed over his chest, like the effigy of
+some crusader one may see carved on an old tomb.  Though he lay quiet
+as that old knight, his eyes were not closed, but fixed on the blue,
+where a lark was singing.  Its song refreshed his spirit; its
+passionate light-heartedness stirred all the love of beauty in him,
+awoke revolt against a world so murderous and uncharitable.  Oh! to
+pass up with that song into a land of bright spirits, where was
+nothing ugly, hard, merciless, and the gentle face of the Saviour
+radiated everlasting love!  The scent of the mayflowers, borne down
+by the sun shine, drenched his senses; he closed his eyes, and, at
+once, as if resenting that momentary escape, his mind resumed debate
+with startling intensity.  This matter went to the very well-springs,
+had a terrible and secret significance.  If to act as conscience bade
+him rendered him unfit to keep his parish, all was built on sand, had
+no deep reality, was but rooted in convention.  Charity, and the
+forgiveness of sins honestly atoned for--what be came of them?
+Either he was wrong to have espoused straightforward confession and
+atonement for her, or they were wrong in chasing him from that
+espousal.  There could be no making those extremes to meet.  But if
+he were wrong, having done the hardest thing already--where could he
+turn?  His Church stood bankrupt of ideals.  He felt as if pushed
+over the edge of the world, with feet on space, and head in some
+blinding cloud.  'I cannot have been wrong,' he thought; 'any other
+course was so much easier.  I sacrificed my pride, and my poor girl's
+pride; I would have loved to let her run away.  If for this we are to
+be stoned and cast forth, what living force is there in the religion
+I have loved; what does it all come to?  Have I served a sham?  I
+cannot and will not believe it.  Something is wrong with me,
+something is wrong--but where--what?'  He rolled over, lay on his
+face, and prayed.  He prayed for guidance and deliverance from the
+gusts of anger which kept sweeping over him; even more for relief
+from the feeling of personal outrage, and the unfairness of this
+thing.  He had striven to be loyal to what he thought the right, had
+sacrificed all his sensitiveness, all his secret fastidious pride in
+his child and himself.  For that he was to be thrown out!  Whether
+through prayer, or in the scent and feel of the clover, he found
+presently a certain rest.  Away in the distance he could see the
+spire of Harrow Church.
+
+The Church!  No!  She was not, could not be, at fault.  The fault was
+in himself.  'I am unpractical,' he thought.  'It is so, I know.
+Agnes used to say so, Bob and Thirza think so.  They all think me
+unpractical and dreamy.  Is it a sin--I wonder?'  There were lambs in
+the next field; he watched their gambollings and his heart relaxed;
+brushing the clover dust off his black clothes, he began to retrace
+his steps.  The boys were playing cricket now, and he stood a few
+minutes watching them.  He had not seen cricket played since the war
+began; it seemed almost otherworldly, with the click of the bats, and
+the shrill young 'voices, under the distant drone of that sky-hornet
+threshing along to Hendon.  A boy made a good leg hit.  "Well
+played!" he called.  Then, suddenly conscious of his own incongruity
+and strangeness in that green spot, he turned away on the road back
+to London.  To resign; to await events; to send Noel away--of those
+three courses, the last alone seemed impossible.  'Am I really so far
+from them,' he thought, 'that they can wish me to go, for this?  If
+so, I had better go.  It will be just another failure.  But I won't
+believe it yet; I can't believe it.'
+
+The heat was sweltering, and he became very tired before at last he
+reached his omnibus, and could sit with the breeze cooling his hot
+face.  He did not reach home till six, having eaten nothing since
+breakfast.  Intending to have a bath and lie down till dinner, he
+went upstairs.
+
+Unwonted silence reigned.  He tapped on the nursery door.  It was
+deserted; he passed through to Noel's room; but that too was empty.
+The wardrobe stood open as if it had been hastily ransacked, and her
+dressing-table was bare.  In alarm he went to the bell and pulled it
+sharply.  The old-fashioned ring of it jingled out far below.  The
+parlour-maid came up.
+
+"Where are Miss Noel and Nurse, Susan?"
+
+"I didn't know you were in, sir.  Miss Noel left me this note to give
+you.  They--I--"
+
+Pierson stopped her with his hand.  "Thank you, Susan; get me some
+tea, please."  With the note unopened in his hand, he waited till she
+was gone.  His head was going round, and he sat down on the side of
+Noel's bed to read:
+
+"DARLING DADDY,
+
+"The man who came this morning told me of what is going to happen.  I
+simply won't have it.  I'm sending Nurse and baby down to Kestrel at
+once, and going to Leila's for the night, until I've made up my mind
+what to do.  I knew it was a mistake my coming back.  I don't care
+what happens to me, but I won't have you hurt.  I think it's hateful
+of people to try and injure you for my fault.  I've had to borrow
+money from Susan-six pounds.  Oh! Daddy dear, forgive me.
+
+"Your loving
+
+NOLLIE."
+
+
+He read it with unutterable relief; at all events he knew where she
+was--poor, wilful, rushing, loving-hearted child; knew where she was,
+and could get at her.  After his bath and some tea, he would go to
+Leila's and bring her back.  Poor little Nollie, thinking that by
+just leaving his house she could settle this deep matter!  He did not
+hurry, feeling decidedly exhausted, and it was nearly eight before he
+set out, leaving a message for Gratian, who did not as a rule come in
+from her hospital till past nine.
+
+The day was still glowing, and now, in the cool of evening, his
+refreshed senses soaked up its beauty.  'God has so made this world,'
+he thought, 'that, no matter what our struggles and sufferings, it's
+ever a joy to live when the sun shines, or the moon is bright, or the
+night starry.  Even we can't spoil it.'  In Regent's Park the lilacs
+and laburnums were still in bloom though June had come, and he gazed
+at them in passing, as a lover might at his lady.  His conscience
+pricked him suddenly.  Mrs. Mitchett and the dark-eyed girl she had
+brought to him on New Year's Eve, the very night he had learned of
+his own daughter's tragedy--had he ever thought of them since?  How
+had that poor girl fared?  He had been too impatient of her
+impenetrable mood.  What did he know of the hearts of others, when he
+did not even know his own, could not rule his feelings of anger and
+revolt, had not guided his own daughter into the waters of safety!
+And Leila!  Had he not been too censorious in thought?  How powerful,
+how strange was this instinct of sex, which hovered and swooped on
+lives, seized them, bore them away, then dropped them exhausted and
+defenceless!  Some munition-wagons, painted a dull grey, lumbered
+past, driven by sunburned youths in drab.  Life-force, Death-force--
+was it all one; the great unknowable momentum from which there was
+but the one escape, in the arms of their Heavenly Father?  Blake's
+little old stanzas came into his mind:
+
+    "And we are put on earth a little space,
+     That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
+     And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
+     Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
+
+    "For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
+     The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
+     Saying: Come out from the grove, my love and care,
+     And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!"
+
+Learned the heat to bear!  Those lambs he had watched in a field that
+afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their funny
+quivering wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts--what
+little miracles of careless joy among the meadow flowers!  Lambs, and
+flowers, and sunlight!  Famine, lust, and the great grey guns!  A
+maze, a wilderness; and but for faith, what issue, what path for man
+to take which did not keep him wandering hopeless, in its thicket?
+'God preserve our faith in love, in charity, and the life to come!'
+he thought.  And a blind man with a dog, to whose neck was tied a
+little deep dish for pennies, ground a hurdy-gurdy as he passed.
+Pierson put a shilling in the dish.  The man stopped playing, his
+whitish eyes looked up.  "Thank you kindly, sir; I'll go home now.
+Come on, Dick!"  He tapped his way round the corner, with his dog
+straining in front.  A blackbird hidden among the blossoms of an
+acacia, burst into evening song, and another great grey munition-
+wagon rumbled out through the Park gate.
+
+
+
+2
+
+The Church-clock was striking nine when he reached Leila's flat, went
+up, and knocked.  Sounds from-a piano ceased; the door was opened by
+Noel.  She recoiled when she saw who it was, and said:
+
+"Why did you come, Daddy?  It was much better not."
+
+"Are you alone here?"
+
+"Yes; Leila gave me her key.  She has to be at the hospital till ten
+to-night"
+
+"You must come home with me, my dear."
+
+Noel closed the piano, and sat down on the divan.  Her face had the
+same expression as when he had told her that she could not marry
+Cyril Morland.
+
+"Come, Nollie," he said; "don't be unreasonable.  We must see this
+through together."
+
+"No."
+
+"My dear, that's childish.  Do you think the mere accident of your
+being or not being at home can affect my decision as to what my duty
+is?"
+
+"Yes; it's my being there that matters.  Those people don't care, so
+long as it isn't an open scandal"
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"But it is so, Daddy.  Of course it's so, and you know it.  If I'm
+away they'll just pity you for having a bad daughter.  And quite
+right too.  I am a bad daughter."
+
+Pierson smiled.  "Just like when you were a tiny."
+
+"I wish I were a tiny again, or ten years older.  It's this half
+age-- But I'm not coming back with you, Daddy; so it's no good."
+
+Pierson sat down beside her.
+
+"I've been thinking this over all day," he said quietly.  "Perhaps in
+my pride I made a mistake when I first knew of your trouble.  Perhaps
+I ought to have accepted the consequences of my failure, then, and
+have given up, and taken you away at once.  After all, if a man is
+not fit to have the care of souls, he should have the grace to know
+it."
+
+"But you are fit," cried Noel passionately; "Daddy, you are fit!"
+
+"I'm afraid not.  There is something wanting in me, I don't know
+exactly what; but something very wanting."
+
+"There isn't.  It's only that you're too good--that's why!"
+
+Pierson shook his head.  "Don't, Nollie!"
+
+"I will," cried Noel.  "You're too gentle, and you're too good.
+You're charitable, and you're simple, and you believe in another
+world; that's what's the matter with you, Daddy.  Do you think they
+do, those people who want to chase us out?  They don't even begin to
+believe, whatever they say or think.  I hate them, and sometimes I
+hate the Church; either it's hard and narrow, or else it's worldly."
+She stopped at the expression on her father's face, the most strange
+look of pain, and horror, as if an unspoken treachery of his own had
+been dragged forth for his inspection.
+
+"You're talking wildly," he said, but his lips were trembling.  "You
+mustn't say things like that; they're blasphemous and wicked."
+
+Noel bit her lips, sitting very stiff and still, against a high blue
+cushion.  Then she burst out again:
+
+"You've slaved for those people years and years, and you've had no
+pleasure and you've had no love; and they wouldn't care that if you
+broke your heart.  They don't care for anything, so long as it all
+seems proper.  Daddy, if you let them hurt you, I won't forgive you!"
+
+"And what if you hurt me now, Nollie?"
+
+Noel pressed his hand against her warm cheek.
+
+"Oh, no!  Oh, no!  I don't--I won't.  Not again.  I've done that
+already."
+
+"Very well, my dear!  then come home with me, and we'll see what's
+best to be done.  It can't be settled by running away."
+
+Noel dropped his hand.  "No.  Twice I've done what you wanted, and
+it's been a mistake.  If I hadn't gone to Church on Sunday to please
+you, perhaps it would never have come to this.  You don't see things,
+Daddy.  I could tell, though I was sitting right in front.  I knew
+what their faces were like, and what they were thinking."
+
+"One must do right, Nollie, and not mind."
+
+"Yes; but what is right?  It's not right for me to hurt you, and I'm
+not going to."
+
+Pierson understood all at once that it was useless to try and move
+her.
+
+"What are you going to do, then?"
+
+"I suppose I shall go to Kestrel to-morrow.  Auntie will have me, I
+know; I shall talk to Leila."
+
+"Whatever you do, promise to let me know."
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Daddy, you--look awfully, awfully tired.  I'm going to give you some
+medicine."  She went to a little three-cornered cupboard, and bent
+down.  Medicine!  The medicine he wanted was not for the body;
+knowledge of what his duty was--that alone could heal him!
+
+The loud popping of a cork roused him.  "What are you doing, Nollie?"
+
+Noel rose with a flushed face, holding in one hand a glass of
+champagne, in the other a biscuit.
+
+"You're to take this; and I'm going to have some myself."
+
+"My dear," said Pierson bewildered; "it's not yours."
+
+"Drink it; Daddy!  Don't you know that Leila would never forgive me
+if I let you go home looking like that.  Besides, she told me I was
+to eat.  Drink it.  You can send her a nice present.  Drink it!"  And
+she stamped her foot.
+
+Pierson took the glass, and sat there nibbling and sipping.  It was
+nice, very!  He had not quite realised how much he needed food and
+drink.  Noel returned from the cupboard a second time; she too had a
+glass and a biscuit.
+
+"There, you look better already.  Now you're to go home at once, in a
+cab if you can get one; and tell Gratian to make you feed up, or you
+won't have a body at all; you can't do your duty if you haven't one,
+you know."
+
+Pierson smiled, and finished the champagne.
+
+Noel took the glass from him.  "You're my child to-night, and I'm
+going to send you to bed.  Don't worry, Daddy; it'll all come right."
+And, taking his arm, she went downstairs with him, and blew him a
+kiss from the doorway.
+
+He walked away in a sort of dream.  Daylight was not quite gone, but
+the moon was up, just past its full, and the search-lights had begun
+their nightly wanderings.  It was a sky of ghosts and shadows,
+fitting to the thought which came to him.  The finger of Providence
+was in all this, perhaps!  Why should he not go out to France!  At
+last; why not?  Some better man, who understood men's hearts, who
+knew the world, would take his place; and he could go where death
+made all things simple, and he could not fail.  He walked faster and
+faster, full of an intoxicating relief.  Thirza and Gratian would
+take care of Nollie far better than he.  Yes, surely it was ordained!
+Moonlight had the town now; and all was steel blue, the very air
+steel-blue; a dream-city of marvellous beauty, through which he
+passed, exalted.  Soon he would be where that poor boy, and a million
+others, had given their lives; with the mud and the shells and the
+scarred grey ground, and the jagged trees, where Christ was daily
+crucified--there where he had so often longed to be these three years
+past.  It was ordained!
+
+And two women whom he met looked at each other when he had gone by,
+and those words 'the blighted crow' which they had been about to
+speak, died on their lips.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Noel felt light-hearted too, as if she had won a victory.  She found
+some potted meat, spread it on another biscuit, ate it greedily, and
+finished the pint bottle of champagne.  Then she hunted for the
+cigarettes, and sat down at the piano.  She played old tunes--"There
+is a Tavern in the Town," "Once I Loved a Maiden Fair," "Mowing the
+Barley," "Clementine," "Lowlands," and sang to them such words as she
+remembered.  There was a delicious running in her veins, and once she
+got up and danced.  She was kneeling at the window, looking out, when
+she heard the door open, and without getting up, cried out:
+
+"Isn't it a gorgeous night!  I've had Daddy here.  I gave him some of
+your champagne, and drank the rest--" then was conscious of a figure
+far too tall for Leila, and a man's voice saying:
+
+"I'm awfully sorry.  It's only I, Jimmy Fort."
+
+Noel scrambled up.  "Leila isn't in; but she will be directly--it's
+past ten."
+
+He was standing stock-still in the middle of the room.
+
+"Won't you sit down?  Oh!  and won't you have a cigarette?"
+
+"Thanks."
+
+By the flash of his briquette she saw his face clearly; the look on
+it filled her with a sort of malicious glee.
+
+"I'm going now," she said.  "Would you mind telling Leila that I
+found I couldn't stop?"  She made towards the divan to get her hat.
+When she had put it on, she found him standing just in front of her.
+
+"Noel-if you don't mind me calling you that?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Don't go; I'm going myself."
+
+"Oh, no!  Not for worlds."  She tried to slip past, but he took hold
+of her wrist.
+
+"Please; just one minute!"
+
+Noel stayed motionless, looking at him, while his hand still held her
+wrist.  He said quietly:
+
+"Do you mind telling me why you came here?"
+
+"Oh, just to see Leila."
+
+"Things have come to a head at home, haven't they?"
+
+Noel shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"You came for refuge, didn't you?"
+
+"From whom?"
+
+"Don't be angry; from the need of hurting your father."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I knew it would come to that.  What are you going to do?"
+
+"Enjoy myself."  She was saying something fatuous, yet she meant it.
+
+"That's absurd.  Don't be angry!  You're quite right.  Only, you must
+begin at the right end, mustn't you?  Sit down!"
+
+Noel tried to free her wrist.
+
+"No; sit down, please."
+
+Noel sat down; but as he loosed her wrist, she laughed.  This was
+where he sat with Leila, where they would sit when she was gone.
+"It's awfully funny, isn't it?" she said.
+
+"Funny?"  he muttered savagely.  "Most things are, in this funny
+world."
+
+The sound of a taxi stopping not far off had come to her ears, and
+she gathered her feet under her, planting them firmly.  If she sprang
+up, could she slip by him before he caught her arm again, and get
+that taxi?
+
+"If I go now," he said, "will you promise me to stop till you've seen
+Leila?"
+
+"No."
+
+"That's foolish.  Come, promise!"
+
+Noel shook her head.  She felt a perverse pleasure at his
+embarrassment.
+
+"Leila's lucky, isn't she?  No children, no husband, no father, no
+anything.  Lovely!"
+
+She saw his arm go up as if to ward off a blow.  "Poor Leila!" he
+said.
+
+"Why are you sorry for her?  She has freedom!  And she has you!"
+
+She knew it would hurt; but she wanted to hurt him.
+
+"You needn't envy her for that."
+
+He had just spoken, when Noel saw a figure over by the door.
+
+She jumped up, and said breathlessly:
+
+"Oh, here you are, Leila!  Father's been here, and we've had some of
+your champagne!"
+
+"Capital!  You are in the dark!"
+
+Noel felt the blood rush into her cheeks.  The light leaped up, and
+Leila came forward.  She looked extremely pale, calm, and self-
+contained, in her nurse's dress; her full lips were tightly pressed
+together, but Noel could see her breast heaving violently.  A turmoil
+of shame and wounded pride began raging in the girl.  Why had she not
+flown long ago?  Why had she let herself be trapped like this?  Leila
+would think she had been making up to him!  Horrible!  Disgusting!
+Why didn't he--why didn't some one, speak?  Then Leila said:
+
+"I didn't expect you, Jimmy; I'm glad you haven't been dull.  Noel is
+staying here to-night.  Give me a cigarette.  Sit down, both of you.
+I'm awfully tired!"
+
+She sank into a chair, leaning back, with her knees crossed; and at
+that moment Noel admired her.  She had said it beautifully; she
+looked so calm.  Fort was lighting her cigarette; his hand was
+shaking, his face all sorry and mortified.
+
+"Give Noel one, too, and draw the curtains, Jimmy.  Quick!  Not that
+it makes any difference; it's as light as day.  Sit down, dear."
+
+But Noel remained standing.
+
+"What have you been talking of?  Love and Chinese lanterns, or only
+me?"
+
+At those words Fort, who was drawing the last curtain, turned round;
+his tall figure was poised awkwardly against the wall, his face,
+unsuited to diplomacy, had a look as of flesh being beaten.  If weals
+had started up across it, Noel would not have been surprised.
+
+He said with painful slowness:
+
+"I don't exactly know; we had hardly begun, had we?"
+
+"The night is young," said Leila.  "Go on while I just take off my
+things."
+
+She rose with the cigarette between her lips, and went into the inner
+room.  In passing, she gave Noel a look.  What there was in that
+look, the girl could never make clear even to herself.  Perhaps a
+creature shot would gaze like that, with a sort of profound and
+distant questioning, reproach, and anger, with a sort of pride, and
+the quiver of death.  As the door closed, Fort came right across the
+room.
+
+"Go to her;" cried Noel; "she wants you.  Can't you see, she wants
+you?"
+
+And before he could move, she was at the door.  She flew downstairs,
+and out into the moonlight.  The taxi, a little way off, was just
+beginning to move away; she ran towards it, calling out:
+
+"Anywhere!  Piccadilly!" and jumping in, blotted herself against the
+cushions in the far corner.
+
+She did not come to herself, as it were, for several minutes, and
+then feeling she 'could no longer bear the cab, stopped it, and got
+out.  Where was she?  Bond Street!  She began, idly, wandering down
+its narrow length; the fullest street by day, the emptiest by night.
+Oh!  it had been horrible!  Nothing said by any of them--nothing, and
+yet everything dragged out--of him, of Leila, of herself!  She seemed
+to have no pride or decency left, as if she had been caught stealing.
+All her happy exhilaration was gone, leaving a miserable
+recklessness.  Nothing she did was right, nothing turned out well, so
+what did it all matter?  The moonlight flooding down between the tall
+houses gave her a peculiar heady feeling.  "Fey" her father had
+called her.  She laughed.  'But I'm not going home,' she thought.
+Bored with the street's length; she turned off, and was suddenly in
+Hanover Square.  There was the Church, grey-white, where she had been
+bridesmaid to a second cousin, when she was fifteen.  She seemed to
+see it all again--her frock, the lilies in her hand, the surplices of
+the choir, the bride's dress, all moonlight-coloured, and unreal.
+'I wonder what's become of her!' she thought.  'He's dead, I expect,
+like Cyril!'  She saw her father's face as he was marrying them,
+heard his voice: "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
+sickness and in health, till death do you part."  And the moonlight
+on the Church seemed to shift and quiver-some pigeons perhaps had
+been disturbed up there.  Then instead of that wedding vision, she
+saw Monsieur Barra, sitting on his chair, gazing at the floor, and
+Chica nursing her doll.  "All mad, mademoiselle, a little mad.
+Millions of men with white souls, but all a little tiny bit mad, you
+know."  Then Leila's face came before her, with that look in her
+eyes.  She felt again the hot clasp of Fort's fingers on her wrist,
+and walked on, rubbing it with the other hand.  She turned into
+Regent Street.  The wide curve of the Quadrant swept into a sky of
+unreal blue, and the orange-shaded lamps merely added to the
+unreality.  'Love and Chinese lanterns!  I should like some coffee,'
+she thought suddenly.  She was quite close to the place where
+Lavendie had taken her.  Should she go in there?  Why not?  She must
+go somewhere.  She turned into the revolving cage of glass.  But no
+sooner was she imprisoned there than in a flash Lavendie's face of
+disgust; and the red-lipped women, the green stuff that smelled of
+peppermint came back, filling her with a rush of dismay.  She made
+the full circle in the revolving cage; and came out into the street
+again with a laugh.  A tall young man in khaki stood there: "Hallo!"
+he said.  "Come in and dance!"  She started, recoiled from him and
+began to walk away as fast as ever she could.  She passed a woman
+whose eyes seemed to scorch her.  A woman like a swift vision of ruin
+with those eyes, and thickly powdered cheeks, and loose red mouth.
+Noel shuddered and fled along, feeling that her only safety lay in
+speed.  But she could not walk about all night.  There would be no
+train for Kestrel till the morning--and did she really want to go
+there, and eat her heart out?  Suddenly she thought of George.  Why
+should she not go down to him?  He would know what was best for her
+to do.  At the foot of the steps below the Waterloo Column she stood
+still.  All was quiet there and empty, the great buildings whitened,
+the trees blurred and blue; and sweeter air was coming across their
+flowering tops.  The queer "fey" moony sensation was still with her;
+so that she felt small and light, as if she could have floated
+through a ring.  Faint rims of light showed round the windows of the
+Admiralty.  The war!  However lovely the night, however sweet the
+lilac smelt-that never stopped!  She turned away and passed out under
+the arch, making for the station.  The train of the wounded had just
+come in, and she stood in the cheering crowd watching the ambulances
+run out.  Tears of excited emotion filled her eyes, and trickled
+down.  Steady, smooth, grey, one after the other they came gliding,
+with a little burst of cheers greeting each one.  All were gone now,
+and she could pass in.  She went to the buffet and got a large cup of
+coffee, and a bun.  Then, having noted the time of her early morning
+train, she sought the ladies' waiting-room, and sitting down in a
+corner, took out her purse and counted her money.  Two pounds
+fifteen-enough to go to the hotel, if she liked.  But, without
+luggage--it was so conspicuous, and she could sleep in this corner
+all right, if she wanted.  What did girls do who had no money, and no
+friends to go to?  Tucked away in the corner of that empty, heavy,
+varnished room, she seemed to see the cruelty and hardness of life as
+she had never before seen it, not even when facing her confinement.
+How lucky she had been, and was!  Everyone was good to her.  She had
+no real want or dangers, to face.  But, for women--yes, and men too--
+who had no one to fall back on, nothing but their own hands and
+health and luck, it must be awful.  That girl whose eyes had scorched
+her--perhaps she had no one--nothing.  And people who were born ill,
+and the millions of poor women, like those whom she had gone visiting
+with Gratian sometimes in the poorer streets of her father's parish--
+for the first time she seemed to really know and feel the sort of
+lives they led.  And then, Leila's face came back to her once more--
+Leila whom she had robbed.  And the worst of it was, that, alongside
+her remorseful sympathy, she felt a sort of satisfaction.  She could
+not help his not loving Leila, she could not help it if he loved
+herself!  And he did--she knew it!  To feel that anyone loved her was
+so comforting.  But it was all awful!  And she--the cause of it!  And
+yet--she had never done or said anything to attract him.  No!  She
+could not have helped it.
+
+She had begun to feel drowsy, and closed her eyes.  And gradually
+there came on her a cosey sensation, as if she were leaning up
+against someone with her head tucked in against his shoulder, as she
+had so often leaned as a child against her father, coming back from
+some long darkening drive in Wales or Scotland.  She seemed even to
+feel the wet soft Westerly air on her face and eyelids, and to sniff
+the scent of a frieze coat; to hear the jog of hoofs and the rolling
+of the wheels; to feel the closing in of the darkness.  Then, so
+dimly and drowsily, she seemed to know that it was not her father,
+but someone--someone--then no more, no more at all.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+She was awakened by the scream of an engine, and looked around her
+amazed.  Her neck had fallen sideways while she slept, and felt
+horridly stiff; her head ached, and she was shivering.  She saw by
+the clock that it was past five.  'If only I could get some tea!' she
+thought.  'Anyway I won't stay here any longer!'  When she had
+washed, and rubbed some of the stiffness out of her neck, the tea
+renewed her sense of adventure wonderfully.  Her train did not start
+for an hour; she had time for a walk, to warm herself, and went down
+to the river.  There was an early haze, and all looked a little
+mysterious; but people were already passing on their way to work.
+She walked along, looking at the water flowing up under the bright
+mist to which the gulls gave a sort of hovering life.  She went as
+far as Blackfriars Bridge, and turning back, sat down on a bench
+under a plane-tree, just as the sun broke through.  A little pasty
+woman with a pinched yellowish face was already sitting there, so
+still, and seeming to see so little, that Noel wondered of what she
+could be thinking.  While she watched, the woman's face began
+puckering, and tears rolled slowly, down, trickling from pucker to
+pucker, till, summoning up her courage, Noel sidled nearer, and said:
+
+"Oh! What's the matter?"
+
+The tears seemed to stop from sheer surprise; little grey eyes gazed
+round, patient little eyes from above an almost bridgeless nose.
+
+"I'ad a baby.  It's dead....  its father's dead in France....  I was
+goin' in the water, but I didn't like the look of it, and now I never
+will."
+
+That "Now I never will," moved Noel terribly.  She slid her arm along
+the back of the bench and clasped the skinniest of shoulders.
+
+"Don't cry!"
+
+"It was my first.  I'm thirty-eight.  I'll never 'ave another.  Oh!
+Why didn't I go in the water?"
+
+The face puckered again, and the squeezed-out tears ran down.  'Of
+course she must cry,' thought Noel; 'cry and cry till it feels
+better.' And she stroked the shoulder of the little woman, whose
+emotion was disengaging the scent of old clothes.
+
+"The father of my baby was killed in France, too," she said at last.
+The little sad grey eyes looked curiously round.
+
+"Was 'e?  'Ave you got your baby still?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!"
+
+"I'm glad of that.  It 'urts so bad, it does.  I'd rather lose me
+'usband than me baby, any day."  The sun was shining now on a cheek
+of that terribly patient face; its brightness seemed cruel perching
+there.
+
+"Can I do anything to help you?"  Noel murmured.
+
+"No, thank you, miss.  I'm goin' 'ome now.  I don't live far.  Thank
+you kindly."  And raising her eyes for one more of those half-
+bewildered looks, she moved away along the Embankment wall.  When she
+was out of sight, Noel walked back to the station.  The train was in,
+and she took her seat.  She had three fellow passengers, all in
+khaki; very silent and moody, as men are when they have to get up
+early.  One was tall, dark, and perhaps thirty-five; the second
+small, arid about fifty, with cropped, scanty grey hair; the third
+was of medium height and quite sixty-five, with a long row of little
+coloured patches on his tunic, and a bald, narrow, well-shaped head,
+grey hair brushed back at the sides, and the thin, collected features
+and drooping moustache of the old school.  It was at him that Noel
+looked.  When he glanced out of the window, or otherwise retired
+within himself, she liked his face; but when he turned to the ticket-
+collector or spoke to the others, she did not like it half so much.
+It was as if the old fellow had two selves, one of which he used when
+alone, the other in which he dressed every morning to meet the world.
+They had begun to talk about some Tribunal on which they had to sit.
+Noel did not listen, but a word or two carried to her now and then.
+
+"How many to-day?"  she heard the old fellow ask, and the little
+cropped man answering: "Hundred and fourteen."
+
+Fresh from the sight of the poor little shabby woman and her grief,
+she could not help a sort of shrinking from that trim old soldier,
+with his thin, regular face, who held the fate of a "Hundred and
+fourteen" in his firm, narrow grasp, perhaps every day.  Would he
+understand their troubles or wants?  Of course he wouldn't!  Then,
+she saw him looking at her critically with his keen eyes.  If he had
+known her secret, he would be thinking: 'A lady and act like that!
+Oh, no!  Quite-quite out of the question!'  And she felt as if she
+could, sink under the seat with shame.  But no doubt he was only
+thinking: 'Very young to be travelling by herself at this hour of the
+morning.  Pretty too!'  If he knew the real truth of her--how he
+would stare!  But why should this utter stranger, this old
+disciplinarian, by a casual glance, by the mere form of his face,
+make her feel more guilty and ashamed than she had yet felt?  That
+puzzled her.  He was, must be, a narrow, conventional old man; but he
+had this power to make her feel ashamed, because she felt that he had
+faith in his gods, and was true to them; because she knew he would
+die sooner than depart from his creed of conduct.  She turned to the
+window, biting her lips-angry and despairing.  She would never--never
+get used to her position; it was no good!  And again she had the
+longing of her dream, to tuck her face away into that coat, smell the
+scent of the frieze, snuggle in, be protected, and forget.  'If I had
+been that poor lonely little woman,' she thought, 'and had lost
+everything, I should have gone into the water.  I should have rushed
+and jumped.  It's only luck that I'm alive.  I won't look at that old
+man again: then I shan't feel so bad.'
+
+She had bought some chocolate at the station, and nibbled it, gazing
+steadily at the fields covered with daisies and the first of the
+buttercups and cowslips.  The three soldiers were talking now in
+carefully lowered voices.  The words: "women," "under control,"
+"perfect plague," came to her, making her ears burn.  In the
+hypersensitive mood caused by the strain of yesterday, her broken
+night, and the emotional meeting with the little woman, she felt as
+if they were including her among those "women."  'If we stop, I'll
+get out,' she thought.  But when the train did stop it was they who
+got out.  She felt the old General's keen veiled glance sum her up
+for the last time, and looked full at him just for a moment.  He
+touched his cap, and said: "Will you have the window up or down?"
+and lingered to draw it half-way up.' His punctiliousness made her
+feel worse than ever.  When the train had started again she roamed up
+and down her empty carriage; there was no more a way out of her
+position than out of this rolling cushioned carriage!  And then she
+seemed to hear Fort's voice saying: 'Sit down, please!' and to feel
+his fingers clasp her wrist, Oh!  he was nice and comforting; he
+would never reproach or remind her!  And now, probably, she would
+never see him again.
+
+The train drew up at last.  She did not know where George lodged, and
+would have to go to his hospital.  She planned to get there at half
+past nine, and having eaten a sort of breakfast at the station, went
+forth into the town.  The seaside was still wrapped in the early
+glamour which haunts chalk of a bright morning.  But the streets were
+very much alive.  Here was real business of the war.  She passed
+houses which had been wrecked.  Trucks clanged and shunted, great
+lorries rumbled smoothly by.  Sea--and Air-planes were moving like
+great birds far up in the bright haze, and khaki was everywhere.  But
+it was the sea Noel wanted.  She made her way westward to a little
+beach; and, sitting down on a stone, opened her arms to catch the sun
+on her face and chest.  The tide was nearly up, with the wavelets of
+a blue bright sea.  The great fact, the greatest fact in the world,
+except the sun; vast and free, making everything human seem small and
+transitory!  It did her good, like a tranquillising friend.  The sea
+might be cruel and terrible, awful things it could do, and awful
+things were being done on it; but its wide level line, its never-
+ending song, its sane savour, were the best medicine she could
+possibly have taken.  She rubbed the Shelly sand between her fingers
+in absurd ecstasy; took off her shoes and stockings, paddled, and sat
+drying her legs in the sun.
+
+When she left the little beach, she felt as if someone had said to
+her:
+
+'Your troubles are very little.  There's the sun, the sea, the air;
+enjoy them.  They can't take those from you.'
+
+At the hospital she had to wait half an hour in a little bare room
+before George came.
+
+"Nollie!  Splendid.  I've got an hour.  Let's get out of this
+cemetery.  We'll have time for a good stretch on the tops.  Jolly of
+you to have come to me.  Tell us all about it."
+
+When she had finished, he squeezed her arm.  348
+
+"I knew it wouldn't do.  Your Dad forgot that he's a public figure,
+and must expect to be damned accordingly.  But though you've cut and
+run, he'll resign all the same, Nollie."
+
+"Oh, no!"  cried Noel.
+
+George shook his head.
+
+"Yes, he'll resign, you'll see, he's got no worldly sense; not a
+grain."
+
+"Then I shall have spoiled his life, just as if--oh, no!"
+
+"Let's sit down here.  I must be back at eleven."
+
+They sat down on a bench, where the green cliff stretched out before
+them, over a sea quite clear of haze, far down and very blue.
+
+"Why should he resign," cried Noel again, "now that I've gone?  He'll
+be lost without it all."
+
+George smiled.
+
+"Found, my dear.  He'll be where he ought to be, Nollie, where the
+Church is, and the Churchmen are not--in the air!"
+
+"Don't!"  cried Noel passionately.
+
+"No, no, I'm not chaffing.  There's no room on earth for saints in
+authority.  There's use for a saintly symbol, even if one doesn't
+hold with it, but there's no mortal use for those who try to have
+things both ways--to be saints and seers of visions, and yet to come
+the practical and worldly and rule ordinary men's lives.  Saintly
+example yes; but not saintly governance.  You've been his
+deliverance, Nollie."
+
+"But Daddy loves his Church."
+
+George frowned.  "Of course, it'll be a wrench.  A man's bound to
+have a cosey feeling about a place where he's been boss so long; and
+there is something about a Church--the drone, the scent, the half
+darkness; there's beauty in it, it's a pleasant drug.  But he's not
+being asked to give up the drug habit; only to stop administering
+drugs to others.  Don't worry, Nollie; I don't believe that's ever
+suited him, it wants a thicker skin than he's got."
+
+"But all the people he helps?"
+
+"No reason he shouldn't go on helping people, is there?"
+
+"But to go on living there, without--  Mother died there, you know!"
+
+George grunted.  "Dreams, Nollie, all round him; of the past and the
+future, of what people are and what he can do with them.  I never see
+him without a skirmish, as you know, and yet I'm fond of him.  But I
+should be twice as fond, and half as likely to skirmish, if he'd drop
+the habits of authority.  Then I believe he'd have some real
+influence over me; there's something beautiful about him, I know that
+quite well."
+
+"Yes," murmured Noel fervently.
+
+"He's such a queer mixture," mused George.  "Clean out of his age;
+chalks above most of the parsons in a spiritual sense and chalks
+below most of them in the worldly.  And yet I believe he's in the
+right of it.  The Church ought to be a forlorn hope, Nollie; then we
+should believe in it.  Instead of that, it's a sort of business that
+no one can take too seriously.  You see, the Church spiritual can't
+make good in this age--has no chance of making good, and so in the
+main it's given it up for vested interests and social influence.
+Your father is a symbol of what the Church is not.  But what about
+you, my dear?  There's a room at my boarding-house, and only one old
+lady besides myself, who knits all the time.  If Grace can get
+shifted we'll find a house, and you can have the baby.  They'll send
+your luggage on from Paddington if you write; and in the meantime
+Gracie's got some things here that you can have."
+
+"I'll have to send a wire to Daddy."
+
+"I'll do that.  You come to my diggings at half past one, and I'll
+settle you in.  Until then, you'd better stay up here."
+
+When he had gone she roamed a little farther, and lay down on the
+short grass, where the chalk broke through in patches.  She could
+hear a distant rumbling, very low, travelling in that grass, the long
+mutter of the Flanders guns.  'I wonder if it's as beautiful a day
+there,' she thought.  'How dreadful to see no green, no butterflies,
+no flowers-not even sky-for the dust of the shells.  Oh!  won't it
+ever, ever end?'  And a sort of passion for the earth welled up in
+her, the warm grassy earth along which she lay, pressed so close that
+she could feel it with every inch of her body, and the soft spikes of
+the grass against her nose and lips.  An aching sweetness tortured
+her, she wanted the earth to close its arms about her, she wanted the
+answer to her embrace of it.  She was alive, and wanted love.  Not
+death--not loneliness--not death!  And out there, where the guns
+muttered, millions of men would be thinking that same thought!
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Pierson had passed nearly the whole night with the relics of his
+past, the records of his stewardship, the tokens of his short married
+life.  The idea which had possessed him walking home in the moonlight
+sustained him in that melancholy task of docketing and destruction.
+There was not nearly so much to do as one would have supposed, for,
+with all his dreaminess, he had been oddly neat and businesslike in
+all parish matters.  But a hundred times that night he stopped,
+overcome by memories.  Every corner, drawer, photograph, paper was a
+thread in the long-spun web of his life in this house.  Some phase of
+his work, some vision of his wife or daughters started forth from
+each bit of furniture, picture, doorway.  Noiseless, in his slippers,
+he stole up and down between the study, diningroom, drawing-room, and
+anyone seeing him at his work in the dim light which visited the
+staircase from above the front door and the upper-passage window,
+would have thought: 'A ghost, a ghost gone into mourning for the
+condition of the world.'  He had to make this reckoning to-night,
+while the exaltation of his new idea was on him; had to rummage out
+the very depths of old association, so that once for all he might
+know whether he had strength to close the door on the past.  Five
+o'clock struck before he had finished, and, almost dropping from
+fatigue, sat down at his little piano in bright daylight.  The last
+memory to beset him was the first of all; his honeymoon, before they
+came back to live in this house, already chosen, furnished, and
+waiting for them.  They had spent it in Germany--the first days in
+Baden-baden, and each morning had been awakened by a Chorale played
+down in the gardens of the Kurhaus, a gentle, beautiful tune, to
+remind them that they were in heaven.  And softly, so softly that the
+tunes seemed to be but dreams he began playing those old Chorales,
+one after another, so that the stilly sounds floated out, through the
+opened window, puzzling the early birds and cats and those few humans
+who were abroad as yet.....
+
+He received the telegram from Noel in the afternoon of the same day,
+just as he was about to set out for Leila's to get news of her; and
+close on the top of it came Lavendie.  He found the painter standing
+disconsolate in front of his picture.
+
+"Mademoiselle has deserted me?"
+
+"I'm afraid we shall all desert you soon, monsieur."
+
+"You are going?"
+
+"Yes, I am leaving here.  I hope to go to France."
+
+"And mademoiselle?"
+
+"She is at the sea with my son-in-law."
+
+The painter ran his hands through his hair, but stopped them half-
+way, as if aware that he was being guilty of ill-breeding.
+
+"Mon dieu!"  he said: "Is this not a calamity for you, monsieur le
+cure?"  But his sense of the calamity was so patently limited to his
+unfinished picture that Pierson could not help a smile.
+
+"Ah, monsieur!"  said the painter, on whom nothing was lost.  "Comme
+je suis egoiste!  I show my feelings; it is deplorable.  My
+disappointment must seem a bagatelle to you, who will be so
+distressed at leaving your old home.  This must be a time of great
+trouble.  Believe me; I understand.  But to sympathise with a grief
+which is not shown would be an impertinence, would it not?  You
+English gentlefolk do not let us share your griefs; you keep them to
+yourselves."
+
+Pierson stared.  "True," he said.  "Quite true!"
+
+"I am no judge of Christianity, monsieur, but for us artists the
+doors of the human heart stand open, our own and others.  I suppose
+we have no pride--c'est tres-indelicat.  Tell me, monsieur, you would
+not think it worthy of you to speak to me of your troubles, would
+you, as I have spoken of mine?"
+
+Pierson bowed his head, abashed.
+
+"You preach of universal charity and love," went on Lavendie; "but
+how can there be that when you teach also secretly the keeping of
+your troubles to yourselves?  Man responds to example, not to
+teaching; you set the example of the stranger, not the brother.  You
+expect from others what you do not give.  Frankly, monsieur, do you
+not feel that with every revelation of your soul and feelings, virtue
+goes out of you?  And I will tell you why, if you will not think it
+an offence.  In opening your hearts you feel that you lose authority.
+You are officers, and must never forget that.  Is it not so?"
+
+Pierson grew red.  "I hope there is another feeling too.  I think we
+feel that to speak of our sufferings or, deeper feelings is to
+obtrude oneself, to make a fuss, to be self-concerned, when we might
+be concerned with others."
+
+"Monsieur, au fond we are all concerned with self.  To seem selfless
+is but your particular way of cultivating the perfection of self.
+You admit that not to obtrude self is the way to perfect yourself.
+Eh bien!  What is that but a deeper concern with self?  To be free of
+this, there is no way but to forget all about oneself in what one is
+doing, as I forget everything when I am painting.  But," he added,
+with a sudden smile, "you would not wish to forget the perfecting of
+self--it would not be right in your profession.  So I must take away
+this picture, must I not?  It is one of my best works: I regret much
+not to have finished it."
+
+"Some day, perhaps--"
+
+"Some day!  The picture will stand still, but mademoiselle will not.
+She will rush at something, and behold!  this face will be gone.  No;
+I prefer to keep it as it is.  It has truth now."  And lifting down
+the canvas, he stood it against the wall and folded up the easel.
+"Bon soir, monsieur, you have been very good to me."  He wrung
+Pierson's hand; and his face for a moment seemed all eyes and spirit.
+"Adieu!"
+
+"Good-bye," Pierson murmured.  "God bless you!"
+
+"I don't know if I have great confidence in Him," replied Lavendie,
+"but I shall ever remember that so good a man as you has wished it.
+To mademoiselle my distinguished salutations, if you please.  If you
+will permit me, I will come back for my other things to-morrow."  And
+carrying easel and canvas, he departed.
+
+Pierson stayed in the old drawing-room, waiting for Gratian to come
+in, and thinking over the painter's words.  Had his education and
+position really made it impossible for him to be brotherly?  Was this
+the secret of the impotence which he sometimes felt; the reason why
+charity and love were not more alive in the hearts of his
+congregation?  'God knows I've no consciousness of having felt myself
+superior,' he thought; 'and yet I would be truly ashamed to tell
+people of my troubles and of my struggles.  Can it be that Christ, if
+he were on earth, would count us Pharisees, believing ourselves not
+as other men?  But surely it is not as Christians but rather as
+gentlemen that we keep ourselves to ourselves.  Officers, he called
+us.  I fear--I fear it is true.'  Ah, well!  There would not be many
+more days now.  He would learn out there how to open the hearts of
+others, and his own.  Suffering and death levelled all barriers, made
+all men brothers.  He was still sitting there when Gratian came in;
+and taking her hand, he said:
+
+"Noel has gone down to George, and I want you to get transferred and
+go to them, Gracie.  I'm giving up the parish and asking for a
+chaplaincy."
+
+"Giving up?  After all this time?  Is it because of Nollie?"
+
+"No, I think not; I think the time has come.  I feel my work here is
+barren."
+
+"Oh, no!  And even if it is, it's only because--"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "Because of what, Gracie?"
+
+"Dad, it's what I've felt in myself.  We want to think and decide
+things for ourselves, we want to own our consciences, we can't take
+things at second-hand any longer."
+
+Pierson's face darkened.  "Ah!" he said, "to have lost faith is a
+grievous thing."
+
+"We're gaining charity," cried Gratian.
+
+"The two things are not opposed, my dear."
+
+"Not in theory; but in practice I think they often are.  Oh, Dad!
+you look so tired.  Have you really made up your mind?  Won't you
+feel lost?"
+
+"For a little.  I shall find myself, out there."
+
+But the look on his face was too much for Gratian's composure, and
+she turned away.
+
+Pierson went down to his study to write his letter of resignation.
+Sitting before that blank sheet of paper, he realised to the full how
+strongly he had resented the public condemnation passed on his own
+flesh and blood, how much his action was the expression of a purely
+mundane championship of his daughter; of a mundane mortification.
+'Pride,' he thought.  'Ought I to stay and conquer it?'  Twice he set
+his pen down, twice took it up again.  He could not conquer it.  To
+stay where he was not wanted, on a sort of sufferance--never!  And
+while he sat before that empty sheet of paper he tried to do the
+hardest thing a man can do--to see himself as others see him; and met
+with such success as one might expect--harking at once to the
+verdicts, not of others at all, but of his own conscience; and coming
+soon to that perpetual gnawing sense which had possessed him ever
+since the war began, that it was his duty to be dead.  This feeling
+that to be alive was unworthy of him when so many of his flock had
+made the last sacrifice, was reinforced by his domestic tragedy and
+the bitter disillusionment it had brought.  A sense of having lost
+caste weighed on him, while he sat there with his past receding from
+him, dusty and unreal.  He had the queerest feeling of his old life
+falling from him, dropping round his feet like the outworn scales of
+a serpent, rung after rung of tasks and duties performed day after
+day, year after year.  Had they ever been quite real?  Well, he had
+shed them now, and was to move out into life illumined by the great
+reality-death!  And taking up his pen, he wrote his resignation.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+The last Sunday, sunny and bright!  Though he did not ask her to go,
+Gratian went to every Service that day.  And the sight of her, after
+this long interval, in their old pew, where once he had been wont to
+see his wife's face, and draw refreshment therefrom, affected Pierson
+more than anything else.  He had told no one of his coming departure,
+shrinking from the falsity and suppression which must underlie every
+allusion and expression of regret.  In the last minute of his last
+sermon he would tell them!  He went through the day in a sort of
+dream.  Truly proud and sensitive, under this social blight, he
+shrank from all alike, made no attempt to single out supporters or
+adherents from those who had fallen away.  He knew there would be
+some, perhaps many, seriously grieved that he was going; but to try
+and realise who they were, to weigh them in the scales against the
+rest and so forth, was quite against his nature.  It was all or
+nothing.  But when for the last time of all those hundreds, he
+mounted the steps of his dark pulpit, he showed no trace of finality,
+did not perhaps even feel it yet.  For so beautiful a summer evening
+the congregation was large.  In spite of all reticence, rumour was
+busy and curiosity still rife.  The writers of the letters, anonymous
+and otherwise, had spent a week, not indeed in proclaiming what they
+had done, but in justifying to themselves the secret fact that they
+had done it.  And this was best achieved by speaking to their
+neighbours of the serious and awkward situation of the poor Vicar.
+The result was visible in a better attendance than had been seen
+since summer-time began.
+
+Pierson had never been a great preacher, his voice lacked resonance
+and pliancy, his thought breadth and buoyancy, and he was not free
+from, the sing-song which mars the utterance of many who have to
+speak professionally.  But he always made an impression of goodness
+and sincerity.  On this last Sunday evening he preached again the
+first sermon he had ever preached from that pulpit, fresh from the
+honeymoon with his young wife.  "Solomon in all his glory was not
+arrayed like one of these."  It lacked now the happy fervour of that
+most happy of all his days, yet gained poignancy, coming from so worn
+a face and voice.  Gratian, who knew that he was going to end with
+his farewell, was in a choke of emotion long before he came to it.
+She sat winking away her tears, and not till he paused, for so long
+that she thought his strength had failed, did she look up.  He was
+leaning a little forward, seeming to see nothing; but his hands,
+grasping the pulpit's edge, were quivering.  There was deep silence
+in the Church, for the look of his face and figure was strange, even
+to Gratian.  When his lips parted again to speak, a mist covered her
+eyes, and she lost sight of him.
+
+"Friends, I am leaving you; these are the last words I shall ever
+speak in this place.  I go to other work.  You have been very good to
+me.  God has been very good to me.  I pray with my whole heart that
+He may bless you all.  Amen!  Amen!"
+
+The mist cleared into tears, and she could see him again gazing down
+at her.  Was it at her?  He was surely seeing something--some vision
+sweeter than reality, something he loved more dearly.  She fell on
+her knees, and buried her face in her hand.  All through the hymn she
+knelt, and through his clear slow Benediction: "The peace of God,
+which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the
+knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and
+the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
+Ghost, be amongst you and remain with you always."  And still she
+knelt on; till she was alone in the Church.  Then she rose and stole
+home.  He did not come in; she did not expect him.  'It's over,' she
+kept thinking; 'all over.  My beloved Daddy!  Now he has no home;
+Nollie and I have pulled him down.  And yet I couldn't help it, and
+perhaps she couldn't.  Poor Nollie!...'
+
+
+
+2
+
+Pierson had stayed in the vestry, talking with his choir and wardens;
+there was no hitch, for his resignation had been accepted, and he had
+arranged with a friend to carry on till the new Vicar was appointed.
+When they were gone he went back into the empty Church, and mounted
+to the organ-loft.  A little window up there was open, and he stood
+leaning against the stone, looking out, resting his whole being.
+Only now that it was over did he know what stress he had been
+through.  Sparrows were chirping, but sound of traffic had almost
+ceased, in that quiet Sunday hour of the evening meal.  Finished!
+Incredible that he would never come up here again, never see those
+roof-lines, that corner of Square Garden, and hear this familiar
+chirping of the sparrows.  He sat down at the organ and began to
+play.  The last time the sound would roll out and echo 'round the
+emptied House of God.  For a long time he played, while the building
+darkened slowly down there below him.  Of all that he would leave, he
+would miss this most--the right to come and play here in the
+darkening Church, to release emotional sound in this dim empty space
+growing ever more beautiful.  From chord to chord he let himself go
+deeper and deeper into the surge and swell of those sound waves,
+losing all sense of actuality, till the music and the whole dark
+building were fused in one rapturous solemnity.  Away down there the
+darkness crept over the Church, till the pews, the altar-all was
+invisible, save the columns; and the walls.  He began playing his
+favourite slow movement from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony--kept to
+the end, for the visions it ever brought him.  And a cat, which had
+been stalking the sparrows, crept in through the little window, and
+crouched, startled, staring at him with her green eyes.  He closed
+the organ, went quickly down, and locked up his Church for the last
+time.  It was warmer outside than in, and lighter, for daylight was
+not quite gone.  He moved away a few yards, and stood looking up.
+Walls, buttresses, and spire were clothed in milky shadowy grey.  The
+top of the spire seemed to touch a star.  'Goodbye, my Church!' he
+thought.  'Good-bye, good-bye!' He felt his face quiver; clenched his
+teeth, and turned away.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+When Noel fled, Fort had started forward to stop her; then, realising
+that with his lameness he could never catch her, he went back and
+entered Leila's bedroom.
+
+She had taken off her dress, and was standing in front of her glass,
+with the cigarette still in her mouth; and the only movement was the
+curling of its blue smoke.  He could see her face reflected, pale,
+with a little spot of red in each cheek, and burning red ears.  She
+had not seemed to hear him coming in, but he saw her eyes change when
+they caught his reflection in the mirror.  From lost and blank, they
+became alive and smouldering.
+
+"Noel's gone!"  he said.
+
+She answered, as if to his reflection in the glass
+
+"And you haven't gone too?  Ah, no!  Of course--your leg!  She fled,
+I suppose?  It was rather a jar, my coming in, I'm afraid."
+
+"No; it was my coming in that was the jar."
+
+Leila turned round.  "Jimmy!  I wonder you could discuss me.  The
+rest--" She shrugged her shoulders-- "But that!"
+
+"I was not discussing you.  I merely said you were not to be envied
+for having me.  Are you?"
+
+The moment he had spoken, he was sorry.  The anger in her eyes
+changed instantly, first to searching, then to misery.  She cried
+out:
+
+"I was to be envied.  Oh!  Jimmy; I was!" and flung herself face down
+on the bed.
+
+Through Fort's mind went the thought: 'Atrocious!'  How could he
+soothe--make her feel that he loved her, when he didn't--that he
+wanted her, when he wanted Noel.  He went up to the bedside and
+touched her timidly:
+
+"Leila, what is it?  You're overtired.  What's the matter?  I
+couldn't help the child's being here.  Why do you let it upset you?
+She's gone.  It's all right.  Things are just as they were."
+
+"Yes!" came the strangled echo; "just!"
+
+He knelt down and stroked her arm.  It shivered under the touch,
+seemed to stop shivering and wait for the next touch, as if hoping it
+might be warmer; shivered again.
+
+"Look at me!" he said.  "What is it you want?  I'm ready to do
+anything."
+
+She turned and drew herself up on the bed, screwing herself back
+against the pillow as if for support, with her knees drawn under her.
+He was astonished at the strength of her face and figure, thus
+entrenched.
+
+"My dear Jimmy!" she said, "I want you to do nothing but get me
+another cigarette.  At my age one expects no more than one gets!  She
+held out her thumb and finger: "Do you mind?"
+
+Fort turned away to get the cigarette.  With what bitter restraint
+and curious little smile she had said that!  But no sooner was he out
+of the room and hunting blindly for the cigarettes, than his mind was
+filled with an aching concern for Noel, fleeing like that, reckless
+and hurt, with nowhere to go.  He found the polished birch-wood box
+which held the cigarettes, and made a desperate effort to dismiss the
+image of the girl before he again reached Leila.  She was still
+sitting there, with her arms crossed, in the stillness of one whose
+every nerve and fibre was stretched taut.
+
+"Have one yourself," she said.  "The pipe of peace."
+
+Fort lit the cigarettes, and sat down on the edge of the bed; and his
+mind at once went back to Noel.
+
+"Yes," she said suddenly; "I wonder where she's gone.  Can you see
+her?  She might do something reckless a second time.  Poor Jimmy!  It
+would be a pity.  And so that monk's been here, and drunk champagne.
+Good idea!  Get me some, Jimmy!"
+
+Again Fort went, and with him the image of the girl.  When he came
+back the second time; she had put on that dark silk garment in which
+she had appeared suddenly radiant the fatal night after the Queen's
+Hall concert.  She took the wineglass, and passed him, going into the
+sitting-room.
+
+"Come and sit down," she said.  "Is your leg hurting you?"
+
+"Not more than usual," and he sat down beside her.
+
+"Won't you have some?  'In vino veritas;' my friend."
+
+He shook his head, and said humbly: "I admire you, Leila."
+
+"That's lucky.  I don't know anyone else who, would."  And she drank
+her champagne at a draught.
+
+"Don't you wish," she said suddenly, "that I had been one of those
+wonderful New Women, all brain and good works.  How I should have
+talked the Universe up and down, and the war, and Causes, drinking
+tea, and never boring you to try and love me.  What a pity!"
+
+But to Fort there had come Noel's words: "It's awfully funny, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Leila," he said suddenly, "something's got to be done.  So long as
+you don't wish me to, I'll promise never to see that child again."
+
+"My dear boy, she's not a child.  She's ripe for love; and--I'm too
+ripe for love.  That's what's the matter, and I've got to lump it."
+She wrenched her hand out of his and, dropping the empty glass,
+covered her face.  The awful sensation which visits the true
+Englishman when a scene stares him in the face spun in Fort's brain.
+Should he seize her hands, drag them down, and kiss her?  Should he
+get up and leave her alone?  Speak, or keep silent; try to console;
+try to pretend?  And he did absolutely nothing.  So far as a man can
+understand that moment in a woman's life when she accepts the defeat
+of Youth and Beauty, he understood perhaps; but it was only a
+glimmering.  He understood much better how she was recognising once
+for all that she loved where she was not loved.
+
+'And I can't help that,' he thought dumbly; 'simply can't help that!'
+Nothing he could say or do would alter it.  No words can convince a
+woman when kisses have lost reality.  Then, to his infinite relief,
+she took her hands from her face, and said:
+
+"This is very dull.  I think you'd better go, Jimmy."
+
+He made an effort to speak, but was too afraid of falsity in his
+voice.
+
+"Very nearly a scene!" said Leila.  "My God!
+
+How men hate them!  So do I.  I've had too many in my time; nothing
+comes of them but a headache next morning.  I've spared you that,
+Jimmy.  Give me a kiss for it."
+
+He bent down and put his lips to hers.  With all his heart he tried
+to answer the passion in her kiss.  She pushed him away suddenly, and
+said faintly:
+
+"Thank you; you did try!"
+
+Fort dashed his hand across his eyes.  The sight of her face just
+then moved him horribly.  What a brute he felt!  He took her limp
+hand, put it to his lips, and murmured:
+
+"I shall come in to-morrow.  We'll go to the theatre, shall we?  Good
+night, Leila!"
+
+But, in opening the door, he caught sight of her face, staring at
+him, evidently waiting for him to turn; the eyes had a frightened
+look.  They went suddenly soft, so soft as to give his heart a
+squeeze.
+
+She lifted her hand, blew him a kiss, and he saw her smiling.
+Without knowing what his own lips answered, he went out.  He could
+not make up his mind to go away, but, crossing to the railings, stood
+leaning against them, looking up at her windows.  She had been very
+good to him.  He felt like a man who has won at cards, and sneaked
+away without giving the loser his revenge.  If only she hadn't loved
+him; and it had been a soulless companionship, a quite sordid
+business.  Anything rather than this!  English to the backbone, he
+could not divest himself of a sense of guilt.  To see no way of
+making up to her, of straightening it out, made him feel intensely
+mean.  'Shall I go up again?' he thought.  The window-curtain moved.
+Then the shreds of light up there vanished.  'She's gone to bed,' he
+thought.  'I should only upset her worse.  Where is Noel, now, I
+wonder?  I shall never see her again, I suppose.  Altogether a bad
+business.  My God, yes!  A bad-bad business!'
+
+And, painfully, for his leg was hurting him, he walked away.
+
+Leila was only too well aware of a truth that feelings are no less
+real, poignant, and important to those outside morality's ring fence
+than to those within.  Her feelings were, indeed, probably even more
+real and poignant, just as a wild fruit's flavour is sharper than
+that of the tame product.  Opinion--she knew--would say, that having
+wilfully chosen a position outside morality she had not half the case
+for brokenheartedness she would have had if Fort had been her
+husband: Opinion--she knew--would say she had no claim on him, and
+the sooner an illegal tie was broken, the better!  But she felt fully
+as wretched as if she had been married.  She had not wanted to be
+outside morality; never in her life wanted to be that.  She was like
+those who by confession shed their sins and start again with a clear
+conscience.  She never meant to sin, only to love, and when she was
+in love, nothing else mattered for the moment.  But, though a
+gambler, she had always so far paid up.  Only, this time the stakes
+were the heaviest a woman can put down.  It was her last throw; and
+she knew it.  So long as a woman believed in her attraction, there
+was hope, even when the curtain fell on a love-affair!  But for Leila
+the lamp of belief had suddenly gone out, and when this next curtain
+dropped she felt that she must sit in the dark until old age made her
+indifferent.  And between forty-four and real old age a gulf is
+fixed.  This was the first time a man had tired of her.  Why! he had
+been tired before he began, or so she felt.  In one swift moment as
+of a drowning person, she saw again all the passages of their
+companionship, knew with certainty that it had never been a genuine
+flame.  Shame ran, consuming, in her veins.  She buried her face in
+the cushions.  This girl had possessed his real heart all the time.
+With a laugh she thought: 'I put my money on the wrong horse; I ought
+to have backed Edward.  I could have turned that poor monk's head.
+If only I had never seen Jimmy again; if I had torn his letter up, I
+could have made poor Edward love me!'  Ifs!  What folly!  Things
+happened as they must!
+
+And, starting up, she began to roam the little room.  Without Jimmy
+she would be wretched, with him she would be wretched too!  'I can't
+bear to see his face,' she thought; 'and I can't live here without
+him!  It's really funny!'  The thought of her hospital filled her
+with loathing.  To go there day after day with this despair eating at
+her heart--she simply could not.  She went over her resources.  She
+had more money than she thought; Jimmy had given her a Christmas
+present of five hundred pounds.  She had wanted to tear up the
+cheque, or force him to take it back; but the realities of the
+previous five years had prevailed with her, and she had banked it.
+She was glad now.  She had not to consider money.  Her mind sought to
+escape in the past.  She thought of her first husband, Ronny Fane; of
+their mosquito-curtained rooms in that ghastly Madras heat.  Poor
+Ronny!  What a pale, cynical young ghost started up under that name.
+She thought of Lynch, his horsey, matter-of-fact solidity.  She had
+loved them both--for a time.  She thought of the veldt, of
+Constantia, and the loom of Table Mountain under the stars; and the
+first sight of Jimmy, his straight look, the curve of his crisp head,
+the kind, fighting-schoolboy frankness of his face.  Even now, after
+all those months of their companionship, that long-ago evening at
+grape harvest, when she sang to him under the scented creepers, was
+the memory of him most charged with real feeling.  That one evening
+at any rate he had longed for her, eleven: years ago, when she was in
+her prime.  She could have held her own then; Noel would have come in
+vain.  To think that this girl had still fifteen years before she
+would be even in her prime.  Fifteen years of witchery; and then
+another ten before she was on the shelf.  Why! if Noel married Jimmy,
+he would be an old man doting on her still, by the time she had
+reached this fatal age of forty-four: She felt as if she must scream,
+and; stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, turned out the light.
+Darkness cooled her, a little.  She pulled aside the curtains, and
+let in the moon light.  Jimmy and that girl were out in it some
+where, seeking each other, if not in body, then in thought.  And
+soon, somehow, somewhere, they would come together--come together
+because Fate meant them to!  Fate which had given her young cousin a
+likeness to herself; placed her, too, in just such a hopeless
+position as appealed to Jimmy, and gave him a chance against younger
+men.  She saw it with bitter surety.  Good gamblers cut their losses!
+Yes, and proud women did not keep unwilling lovers!  If she had even
+an outside chance, she would trail her pride, drag it through the
+mud, through thorns!  But she had not.  And she clenched her fist,
+and struck out at the night, as though at the face of that Fate which
+one could never reach--impalpable, remorseless, surrounding Fate with
+its faint mocking smile, devoid of all human warmth.  Nothing could
+set back the clock, and give her what this girl had.  Time had "done
+her in," as it "did in" every woman, one by one.  And she saw herself
+going down the years, powdering a little more, painting a little
+more, touching up her hair, till it was all artifice, holding on by
+every little device--and all, to what end?  To see his face get
+colder and colder, hear his voice more and more constrained to
+gentleness; and know that underneath, aversion was growing with the
+thought 'You are keeping me from life, and love!'  till one evening,
+in sheer nerve-break, she would say or do some fearful thing, and he
+would come no more.  'No, Jimmy!' she thought; 'find her, and stay
+with her.  You're not worth all that!'  And puffing to the curtains,
+as though with that gesture she could shut out her creeping fate, she
+turned up the light and sat down at her writing table.  She stayed
+some minutes motionless, her chin resting on her hands, the dark silk
+fallen down from her arms.  A little mirror, framed in curiously
+carved ivory, picked up by her in an Indian bazaar twenty-five years
+ago, hung on a level with her face and gave that face back to her.
+'I'm not ugly,' she thought passionately, 'I'm not.  I still have
+some looks left.  If only that girl hadn't come.  And it was all my
+doing.  Oh, what made me write to both of them, Edward and Jimmy?'
+She turned the mirror aside, and took up a pen.
+
+"MY DEAR JIMMY," she wrote: "It will be better for us both if you
+take a holiday from here.  Don't come again till I write for you.
+I'm sorry I made you so much disturbance to-night.  Have a good time,
+and a good rest; and don't worry.
+"Your--"
+
+So far she had written when a tear dropped on the page, and she had
+to tear it up and begin again.  This time she wrote to the end-"Your
+Leila."  'I must post it now,' she thought, 'or he may not get it
+before to-morrow evening.  I couldn't go through with this again.'
+She hurried out with it and slipped it in a pillar box.  The night
+smelled of flowers; and, hastening back, she lay down, and stayed
+awake for hours, tossing, and staring at the dark.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+1
+
+Leila had pluck, but little patience.  Her one thought was to get
+away and she at once began settling up her affairs and getting a
+permit to return to South Africa.  The excitements of purchase and
+preparation were as good an anodyne as she could have taken.  The
+perils of the sea were at full just then, and the prospect of danger
+gave her a sort of pleasure.  ' If I go down,' she thought, 'all the
+better; brisk, instead of long and dreary.'  But when she had the
+permit and her cabin was booked, the irrevocability of her step came
+to her with full force.  Should she see him again or no?  Her boat
+started in three days, and she must decide.  If in compunction he
+were to be affectionate, she knew she would never keep to her
+decision, and then the horror would begin again, till again she was
+forced to this same action.  She let the hours go and go till the
+very day before, when the ache to see him and the dread of it had
+become so unbearable that she could not keep quiet.  Late that
+afternoon--everything, to the last label, ready--she went out, still
+undecided.  An itch to turn the dagger in her wound, to know what had
+become of Noel, took her to Edward's house.  Almost unconsciously she
+had put on her prettiest frock, and spent an hour before the glass.
+A feverishness of soul, more than of body, which had hung about her
+ever since that night, gave her colour.  She looked her prettiest;
+and she bought a gardenia at a shop in Baker Street and fastened it
+in her dress.  Reaching the old Square, she was astonished to see a
+board up with the words: "To let," though the house still looked
+inhabited.  She rang, and was shown into the drawing-room.  She had
+only twice been in this house before; and for some reason, perhaps
+because of her own unhappiness, the old, rather shabby room struck
+her as pathetic, as if inhabited by the past.  'I wonder what his
+wife was like,' she thought: And then she saw, hanging against a
+strip of black velvet on the wall, that faded colour sketch of the
+slender young woman leaning forward, with her hands crossed in her
+lap.  The colouring was lavender and old ivory, with faint touches of
+rose.  The eyes, so living, were a little like Gratian's; the whole
+face delicate, eager, good.  'Yes,' she thought, 'he must have loved
+you very much.  To say good-bye must have been hard.' She was still
+standing before it when Pierson came in.
+
+"That's a dear face, Edward.  I've come to say good-bye.  I'm leaving
+for South Africa to-morrow."  And, as her hand touched his, she
+thought: 'I must have been mad to think I could ever have made him
+love me.'
+
+"Are you--are you leaving him?"
+
+Leila nodded:
+
+"That's very brave, and wonderful."
+
+"Oh! no.  Needs must when the devil drives--that's all.  I don't give
+up happiness of my own accord.  That's not within a hundred miles of
+the truth.  What I shall become, I don't know, but nothing better,
+you may be sure.  I give up because I can't keep, and you know why.
+Where is Noel?"
+
+"Down at the sea, with George and Gratian."
+
+He was looking at her in wonder; and the pained, puzzled expression
+on his face angered her.
+
+"I see the house is to let.  Who'd have thought a child like that
+could root up two fossils like us?  Never mind, Edward, there's the
+same blood in us.  We'll keep our ends up in our own ways.  Where are
+you going?"
+
+"They'll give me a chaplaincy in the East, I think."
+
+For a wild moment Leila thought: 'Shall I offer to go with him--the
+two lost dogs together?'
+
+"What would have happened, Edward, if you had proposed to me that May
+week, when we were--a little bit in love?  Which would it have been,
+worst for, you or me?"
+
+"You wouldn't have taken me, Leila."
+
+"Oh, one never knows.  But you'd never have been a priest then, and
+you'd never have become a saint."
+
+"Don't use that silly word.  If you knew--"
+
+"I do; I can see that you've been half burned alive; half burned and
+half buried!  Well, you have your reward, whatever it is, and I mine.
+Good-bye, Edward!"  She took his hand.  "You might give me your
+blessing; I want it."
+
+Pierson put his other hand on her shoulder and, bending forward,
+kissed her forehead.
+
+The tears rushed up in Leila's eyes.  "Ah me!" she said, "it's a sad
+world!"  And wiping the quivering off her lips with the back of her
+gloved hand, she went quickly past him to the door.  She looked back
+from there.  He had not stirred, but his lips were moving.  'He's
+praying for me!' she thought.  'How funny!'
+
+
+
+2
+
+The moment she was outside, she forgot him; the dreadful ache for
+Fort seemed to have been whipped up within her, as if that figure of
+lifelong repression had infuriated the love of life and pleasure in
+her.  She must and would see Jimmy again, if she had to wait and seek
+for him all night!  It was nearly seven, he would surely have
+finished at the War Office; he might be at his Club or at his rooms.
+She made for the latter.
+
+The little street near Buckingham Gate, where no wag had chalked
+"Peace" on the doors for nearly a year now, had an arid look after a
+hot day's sun.  The hair-dresser's shop below his rooms was still
+open, and the private door ajar: 'I won't ring,' she thought; 'I'll
+go straight up.' While she was mounting the two flights of stairs,
+she stopped twice, breathless, from a pain in her side.  She often
+had that pain now, as if the longing in her heart strained it
+physically.  On the modest landing at the top, outside his rooms, she
+waited, leaning against the wall, which was covered with a red paper.
+A window at the back was open and the confused sound of singing came
+in--a chorus "Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve.  Vive la compagnie."  So
+it came to her.  'O God!' she thought: 'Let him be in, let him be
+nice to me.  It's the last time.'  And, sick from anxiety, she opened
+the door.  He was in--lying on a wicker-couch against the wall in the
+far corner, with his arms crossed behind his head, and a pipe in his
+mouth; his eyes were closed, and he neither moved, nor opened them,
+perhaps supposing her to be the servant.  Noiseless as a cat, Leila
+crossed the room till she stood above him.  And waiting for him to
+come out of that defiant lethargy, she took her fill of his thin,
+bony face, healthy and hollow at the same time.  With teeth clenched
+on the pipe it had a look of hard resistance, as of a man with his
+head back, his arms pinioned to his sides, stiffened against some
+creature, clinging and climbing and trying to drag him down.  The
+pipe was alive, and dribbled smoke; and his leg, the injured one,
+wriggled restlessly, as if worrying him; but the rest of him was as
+utterly and obstinately still as though he were asleep.  His hair
+grew thick and crisp, not a thread of grey in it, the teeth which
+held the pipe glinted white and strong.  His face was young; so much
+younger than hers.  Why did she love it--the face of a man who
+couldn't love her?  For a second she felt as if she could seize the
+cushion which had slipped down off the couch, and smother him as he
+lay there, refusing, so it seemed to her, to come to consciousness.
+Love despised!  Humiliation!  She nearly turned and stole away.  Then
+through the door, left open, behind her, the sound of that chorus:
+"Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve!" came in and jolted her nerves
+unbearably.  Tearing the gardenia from her breast, she flung it on to
+his upturned face.
+
+"Jimmy!"
+
+Fort struggled up, and stared at her.  His face was comic from
+bewilderment, and she broke into a little nervous laugh.
+
+"You weren't dreaming of me, dear Jimmy, that's certain.  In what
+garden were you wandering?"
+
+"Leila!  You!  How--how jolly!"
+
+"How--how jolly!  I wanted to see you, so I came.  And I have seen
+you, as you are, when you aren't with me.  I shall remember it; it
+was good for me--awfully good for me."
+
+"I didn't hear you."
+
+"Far, far away, my dear.  Put my gardenia in, your buttonhole.  Stop,
+I'll pin it in.  Have you had a good rest all this week?  Do you like
+my dress?  It's new.  You wouldn't have noticed it, would you?"
+
+"I should have noticed.  I think it's charming.
+
+"Jimmy, I believe that nothing--nothing will ever shake your
+chivalry."
+
+"Chivalry?  I have none."
+
+"I am going to shut the door, do you mind?"  But he went to the door
+himself, shut it, and came back to her.  Leila looked up at him.
+
+"Jimmy, if ever you loved me a little bit, be nice to me today.  And
+if I say things--if I'm bitter--don't mind; don't notice it.
+Promise!"
+
+"I promise."
+
+She took off her hat and sat leaning against him on the couch, so
+that she could not see his face.  And with his arm round her, she let
+herself go, deep into the waters of illusion; down-down, trying to
+forget there was a surface to which she must return; like a little
+girl she played that game of make-believe.  'He loves me-he loves me-
+he loves me!'  To lose herself like that for, just an hour, only an
+hour; she felt that she would give the rest of the time vouchsafed to
+her; give it all and willingly.  Her hand clasped his against her
+heart, she turned her face backward, up to his, closing her eyes so
+as still not to see his face; the scent of the gardenia in his coat
+hurt her, so sweet and strong it was.
+
+
+
+3
+
+When with her hat on she stood ready to go, it was getting dark.  She
+had come out of her dream now, was playing at make-believe no more.
+And she stood with a stony smile, in the half-dark, looking between
+her lashes at the mortified expression on his unconscious face.
+
+"Poor Jimmy!" she said; "I'm not going to keep you from dinner any
+longer.  No, don't come with me.  I'm going alone; and don't light
+up, for heaven's sake."
+
+She put her hand on the lapel of his coat.  "That flower's gone brown
+at the edges.  Throw it away; I can't bear faded flowers.  Nor can
+you.  Get yourself a fresh one tomorrow."
+
+She pulled the flower from his buttonhole and, crushing it in her
+hand, held her face up.
+
+"Well, kiss me once more; it won't hurt you."
+
+For one moment her lips clung to his with all their might.  She
+wrenched them away, felt for the handle blindly, opened the door,
+and, shutting it in his face, went slowly, swaying a little, down the
+stairs.  She trailed a gloved hand along the wall, as if its solidity
+could help her.  At the last half-landing, where a curtain hung,
+dividing off back premises, she stopped and listened.  There wasn't a
+sound.  'If I stand here behind this curtain,' she thought, 'I shall
+see him again.' She slipped behind the curtain, close drawn but for a
+little chink.  It was so dark there that she could not see her own
+hand.  She heard the door open, and his slow footsteps coming down
+the stairs.  His feet, knees, whole figure came into sight, his face
+just a dim blur.  He passed, smoking a cigarette.  She crammed her
+hand against her mouth to stop herself from speaking and the crushed
+gardenia filled her nostrils with its cold, fragrant velvet.  He was
+gone, the door below was shut.  A wild, half-stupid longing came on
+her to go up again, wait till he came in, throw herself upon him,
+tell him she was going, beg him to keep her with him.  Ah! and he
+would!  He would look at her with that haggard pity she could not
+bear, and say, "Of course, Leila, of course."  No! By God, no! "I am
+going quietly home," she muttered; "just quietly home!  Come along,
+be brave; don't be a fool! Come along !"  And she went down into the
+street: At the entrance to the Park she saw him, fifty yards in
+front, dawdling along.  And, as if she had been his shadow lengthened
+out to that far distance, she moved behind him.  Slowly, always at
+that distance, she followed him under the plane-trees, along the Park
+railings, past St. James's Palace, into Pall Mall.  He went up some
+steps, and vanished into his Club.  It was the end.  She looked up at
+the building; a monstrous granite tomb, all dark.  An emptied cab was
+just moving from the door.  She got in.  "Camelot Mansions, St.
+John's Wood."  And braced against the cushions, panting, and
+clenching her hands, she thought: 'Well, I've seen him again.  Hard
+crust's better than no bread.  Oh, God!  All finished--not a crumb,
+not a crumb!  Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve.  Vive-la compagnie!'
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Fort had been lying there about an hour, sleeping and awake, before
+that visit: He had dreamed a curious and wonderfully emotionalising
+dream.  A long grey line, in a dim light, neither of night nor
+morning, the whole length of the battle-front in France, charging in
+short drives, which carried the line a little forward, with just a
+tiny pause and suck-back; then on again irresistibly, on and on; and
+at each rush, every voice, his own among them, shouted "Hooray! the
+English!  Hooray! the English!"  The sensation of that advancing tide
+of dim figures in grey light, the throb and roar, the wonderful,
+rhythmic steady drive of it, no more to be stopped than the waves of
+an incoming tide, was gloriously fascinating; life was nothing, death
+nothing.  "Hooray, the English!"  In that dream, he was his country,
+he was every one of that long charging line, driving forward in.
+those great heaving pulsations, irresistible, on and on.  Out of the
+very centre of this intoxicating dream he had been dragged by some
+street noise, and had closed his eyes again, in the vain hope that he
+might dream it on to its end.  But it came no more; and lighting his
+pipe, he lay there wondering at its fervid, fantastic realism.  Death
+was nothing, if his country lived and won.  In waking hours he never
+had quite that single-hearted knowledge of himself.  And what
+marvellously real touches got mixed into the fantastic stuff of
+dreams, as if something were at work to convince the dreamer in spite
+of himself--"Hooray!" not "Hurrah!"  Just common "Hooray!"  And "the
+English," not the literary "British."  And then the soft flower had
+struck his forehead, and Leila's voice cried: "Jimmy!"
+
+When she left him, his thought was just a tired: 'Well, so it's begun
+again!' What did it matter, since common loyalty and compassion cut
+him off from what his heart desired; and that desire was absurd, as
+little likely of attainment as the moon.  What did it matter?  If it
+gave her any pleasure to love him, let it go on!  Yet, all the time
+that he was walking across under the plane trees, Noel seemed to walk
+in front of him, just out of reach, so that he ached with the thought
+that he would never catch her up, and walk beside her.
+
+Two days later, on reaching his rooms in the evening, he found this
+letter on ship's note-paper, with the Plymouth postmark
+
+    "Fare thee well, and if for ever,
+     Then for ever fare thee well"
+                         "Leila"
+
+He read it with a really horrible feeling, for all the world as if he
+had been accused of a crime and did not know whether he had committed
+it or not.  And, trying to collect his thoughts, he took a cab and
+drove to her fiat.  It was closed, but her address was given him; a
+bank in Cape Town.  He had received his release.  In his remorse and
+relief, so confusing and so poignant, he heard the driver of the cab
+asking where he wanted to go now.  "Oh, back again!"  But before they
+had gone a mile he corrected the address, in an impulse of which next
+moment he felt thoroughly ashamed.  What he was doing indeed, was as
+indecent as if he were driving from the funeral of his wife to the
+boudoir of another woman.  When he reached the old Square, and the
+words "To let" stared him in the face, he felt a curious relief,
+though it meant that he would not see her whom to see for ten minutes
+he felt he would give a year of life.  Dismissing his cab, he stood
+debating whether to ring the bell.  The sight of a maid's face at the
+window decided him.  Mr. Pierson was out, and the young ladies were
+away.  He asked for Mrs. Laird's address, and turned away, almost
+into the arms of Pierson himself.  The greeting was stiff and
+strange.  'Does he know that Leila's gone?' he thought.  'If so, he
+must think me the most awful skunk.  And am I?  Am I?'
+When he reached home, he sat down to write to Leila.  But having
+stared at the paper for an hour and written these three lines
+
+"MY DEAR LEILA,
+"I cannot express to you the feelings with which I received your
+letter--"
+
+he tore it up.  Nothing would be adequate, nothing would be decent.
+Let the dead past bury its dead--the dead past which in his heart had
+never been alive!  Why pretend?  He had done his best to keep his end
+up.  Why pretend?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+I
+
+In the boarding-house, whence the Lairds had not yet removed, the old
+lady who knitted, sat by the fireplace, and light from the setting
+sun threw her shadow on the wall, moving spidery and grey, over the
+yellowish distemper, in time to the tune of her needles.  She was a
+very old lady--the oldest lady in the world, Noel thought--and she
+knitted without stopping, without breathing, so that the girl felt
+inclined to scream.  In the evening when George and Gratian were not
+in, Noel would often sit watching the needles, brooding over her as
+yet undecided future.  And now and again the old lady would look up
+above her spectacles; move the corners of her lips ever so slightly,
+and drop her gaze again.  She had pitted herself against Fate; so
+long as she knitted, the war could not stop--such was the conclusion
+Noel had come to.  This old lady knitted the epic of acquiesence to
+the tune of her needles; it was she who kept the war going such a
+thin old lady!  'If I were to hold her elbows from behind,' the girl
+used to think, 'I believe she'd die.  I expect I ought to; then the
+war would stop.  And if the war stopped, there'd be love and life
+again.'  Then the little silvery tune would click itself once more
+into her brain, and stop her thinking.  In her lap this evening lay a
+letter from her father.
+
+"MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
+
+"I am glad to say I have my chaplaincy, and am to start for Egypt
+very soon.  I should have wished to go to France, but must take what
+I can get, in view of my age, for they really don't want us who are
+getting on, I fear.  It is a great comfort to me to think that
+Gratian is with you, and no doubt you will all soon be in a house
+where my little grandson can join you.  I have excellent accounts of
+him in a letter from your aunt, just received: My child, you must
+never again think that my resignation has been due to you.  It is not
+so.  You know, or perhaps you don't, that ever since the war broke
+out, I have chafed over staying at home, my heart has been with our
+boys out there, and sooner or later it must have come to this, apart
+from anything else.  Monsieur Lavendie has been round in the evening,
+twice; he is a nice man, I like him very much, in spite of our
+differences of view.  He wanted to give me the sketch he made of you
+in the Park, but what can I do with it now?  And to tell you the
+truth, I like it no better than the oil painting.  It is not a
+likeness, as I know you.  I hope I didn't hurt his feelings, the
+feelings of an artist are so very easily wounded.  There is one thing
+I must tell you.  Leila has gone back to South Africa; she came round
+one evening about ten days ago, to say goodbye.  She was very brave,
+for I fear it means a great wrench for her.  I hope and pray she may
+find comfort and tranquillity out there.  And now, my dear, I want
+you to promise me not to see Captain Fort.  I know that he admires
+you.  But, apart from the question of his conduct in regard to Leila,
+he made the saddest impression on me by coming to our house the very
+day after her departure.  There is something about that which makes
+me feel he cannot be the sort of man in whom I could feel any
+confidence.  I don't suppose for a moment that he is in your
+thoughts, and yet before going so far from you, I feel I must warn
+you.  I should rejoice to see you married to a good man; but, though
+I don't wish to think hardly of anyone, I cannot believe Captain Fort
+is that.
+
+"I shall come down to you before I start, which may be in quite a
+short time now.  My dear love to you and Gracie, and best wishes to
+George.
+
+"Your ever loving father,
+"EDWARD PIERSON
+
+
+Across this letter lying on her knees, Noel gazed at the spidery
+movement on the wall.  Was it acquiescence that the old lady knitted,
+or was it resistance--a challenge to death itself, a challenge
+dancing to the tune of the needles like the grey ghost of human
+resistance to Fate!  She wouldn't give in, this oldest lady in the
+world, she meant to knit till she fell into the grave.  And so Leila
+had gone!  It hurt her to know that; and yet it pleased her.
+Acquiescence--resistance!  Why did Daddy always want to choose the
+way she should go?  So gentle he was, yet he always wanted to!  And
+why did he always make her feel that she must go the other way?  The
+sunlight ceased to stream in, the old lady's shadow faded off the
+wall, but the needles still sang their little tune.  And the girl
+said:
+
+"Do you enjoy knitting, Mrs. Adam?"
+
+The old lady looked at her above the spectacles.
+
+"Enjoy, my dear?  It passes the time."
+
+"But do you want the time to pass?"
+
+There was no answer for a moment, and Noel thought: 'How dreadful of
+me to have said that!'
+
+"Eh?"  said the old lady.
+
+"I said: Isn't it very tiring?"
+
+"Not when I don't think about it, my dear."
+
+"What do you think about?"
+
+The old lady cackled gently.
+
+"Oh--well!"  she said.
+
+And Noel thought: 'It must be dreadful to grow old, and pass the
+time!'
+
+She took up her father's letter, and bent it meditatively against her
+chin.  He wanted her to pass the time--not to live, not to enjoy!  To
+pass the time.  What else had he been doing himself, all these years,
+ever since she could remember, ever since her mother died, but just
+passing the time?  Passing the time because he did not believe in
+this life; not living at all, just preparing for the life he did
+believe in.  Denying himself everything that was exciting and nice,
+so that when he died he might pass pure and saintly to his other
+world.  He could not believe Captain Fort a good man, because he had
+not passed the time, and resisted Leila; and Leila was gone!  And now
+it was a sin for him to love someone else; he must pass the time
+again.  'Daddy doesn't believe in life,' she thought; 'it's
+monsieur's picture.  Daddy's a saint; but I don't want to be a saint,
+and pass the time.  He doesn't mind making people unhappy, because
+the more they're repressed, the saintlier they'll be.  But I can't
+bear to be unhappy, or to see others unhappy.  I wonder if I could
+bear to be unhappy to save someone else--as Leila is?  I admire her!
+Oh!  I admire her!  She's not doing it because she thinks it good for
+her soul; only because she can't bear making him unhappy.  She must
+love him very much.  Poor Leila!  And she's done it all by herself,
+of her own accord.'  It was like what George said of the soldiers;
+they didn't know why they were heroes, it was not because they'd been
+told to be, or because they believed in a future life.  They just had
+to be, from inside somewhere, to save others.  'And they love life as
+much as I do,' she thought.  'What a beast it makes one feel!'  Those
+needles!  Resistance--acquiescence?  Both perhaps.  The oldest lady
+in the world, with her lips moving at the corners, keeping things in,
+had lived her life, and knew it.  How dreadful to live on when you
+were of no more interest to anyone, but must just "pass the time" and
+die.  But how much more dreadful to "pass the time" when you were
+strong, and life and love were yours for the taking!  'I shan't
+answer Daddy,' she thought.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The maid, who one Saturday in July opened the door to Jimmy Fort, had
+never heard the name of Laird, for she was but a unit in the
+ceaseless procession which pass through the boarding-houses of places
+subject to air-raids.  Placing him in a sitting-room, she said she
+would find Miss 'Allow.  There he waited, turning the leaves of an
+illustrated Journal, wherein Society beauties; starving Servians,
+actresses with pretty legs, prize dogs, sinking ships, Royalties,
+shells bursting, and padres reading funeral services, testified to
+the catholicity of the public taste, but did not assuage his nerves.
+What if their address were not known here?  Why, in his fear of
+putting things to the test, had he let this month go by?  An old lady
+was sitting by the hearth, knitting, the click of whose needles
+blended with the buzzing of a large bee on the window-pane.  'She may
+know,' he thought, 'she looks as if she'd been here for ever.' And
+approaching her, he said:
+
+"I can assure you those socks are very much appreciated, ma'am."
+
+The old lady bridled over her spectacles.
+
+"It passes the time," she said.
+
+"Oh, more than that; it helps to win the war, ma'am."
+
+The old lady's lips moved at the corners; she did not answer.
+'Deaf!' he thought.
+
+"May I ask if you knew my friends, Doctor and Mrs. Laird, and Miss
+Pierson?"
+
+The old lady cackled gently.
+
+"Oh, yes!  A pretty young girl; as pretty as life.  She used to sit
+with me.  Quite a pleasure to watch her; such large eyes she had."
+
+"Where have they gone?  Can you tell me?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know at all."
+
+It was a little cold douche on his heart.  He longed to say: 'Stop
+knitting a minute, please.  It's my life, to know.'  But the tune of
+the needles answered: 'It's my life to knit.'  And he turned away to
+the window.
+
+"She used to sit just there; quite still; quite still."
+
+Fort looked down at the window-seat.  So, she used to sit just here,
+quite still.
+
+"What a dreadful war this is!" said the old lady.  "Have you been at
+the front?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To think of the poor young girls who'll never have husbands!  I'm
+sure I think it's dreadful."
+
+"Yes," said Fort; "it's dreadful--"  And then a voice from the
+doorway said:
+
+"Did you want Doctor and Mrs. Laird, sir?  East Bungalow their
+address is; it's a little way out on the North Road.  Anyone will
+tell you."
+
+With a sigh of relief Fort looked gratefully at the old lady who had
+called Noel as pretty as life.  "Good afternoon, ma'am."
+
+"Good afternoon."  The needles clicked, and little movements occurred
+at the corners of her mouth.  Fort went out.  He could not find a
+vehicle, and was a long time walking.  The Bungalow was ugly, of
+yellow brick pointed with red.  It lay about two-thirds up between
+the main road and cliffs, and had a rock-garden and a glaring, brand-
+new look, in the afternoon sunlight.  He opened the gate, uttering
+one of those prayers which come so glibly from unbelievers when they
+want anything.  A baby's crying answered it, and he thought with
+ecstasy: 'Heaven, she is here!'  Passing the rock-garden he could see
+a lawn at the back of the house and a perambulator out there under a
+holm-oak tree, and Noel--surely Noel herself!  Hardening his heart,
+he went forward.  In a lilac sunbonnet she was bending over the
+perambulator.  He trod softly on the grass, and was quite close
+before she heard him.  He had prepared no words, but just held out
+his hand.  The baby, interested in the shadow failing across its
+pram, ceased crying.  Noel took his hand.  Under the sunbonnet, which
+hid her hair, she seemed older and paler, as if she felt the heat.
+He had no feeling that she was glad to see him.
+
+"How do you do?  Have you seen Gratian; she ought to be in."
+
+"I didn't come to see her; I came to see you."
+
+Noel turned to the baby.
+
+"Here he is."
+
+Fort stood at the end of the perambulator, and looked at that other
+fellow's baby.  In the shade of the hood, with the frilly clothes, it
+seemed to him lying with its head downhill.  It had scratched its
+snub nose and bumpy forehead, and it stared up at its mother with
+blue eyes, which seemed to have no underlids so fat were its cheeks.
+
+"I wonder what they think about," he said.
+
+Noel put her finger into the baby's fist.
+
+"They only think when they want some thing."
+
+"That's a deep saying: but his eyes are awfully interested in you."
+
+Noel smiled; and very slowly the baby's curly mouth unclosed, and
+discovered his toothlessness.
+
+"He's a darling," she said in a whisper.
+
+'And so are you,' he thought, 'if only I dared say it!'
+
+"Daddy is here," she said suddenly, without looking up.  "He's
+sailing for Egypt the day after to-morrow.  He doesn't like you."
+
+Fort's heart gave a jump.  Why did she tell him that, unless--unless
+she was just a little on his side?
+
+"I expected that," he said.  "I'm a sinner, as you know."
+
+Noel looked up at him.  "Sin!" she said, and bent again over her
+baby.  The word, the tone in which she said it, crouching over her
+baby, gave him the thought: 'If it weren't for that little creature,
+I shouldn't have a dog's chance.'  He said, "I'll go and see your
+father.  Is he in?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"May I come to-morrow?."
+
+"It's Sunday; and Daddy's last day."
+
+"Ah!  Of course."  He did not dare look back, to see if her gaze was
+following him, but he thought: 'Chance or no chance, I'm going to
+fight for her tooth and nail.'
+
+In a room darkened against the evening sun Pierson was sitting on a
+sofa reading.  The sight of that figure in khaki disconcerted Fort,
+who had not realised that there would be this metamorphosis.  The
+narrow face, clean-shaven now, with its deep-set eyes and compressed
+lips, looked more priestly than ever, in spite of this brown garb.
+He felt his hope suddenly to be very forlorn indeed.  And rushing at
+the fence, he began abruptly:
+
+"I've come to ask you, sir, for your permission to marry Noel, if she
+will have me."
+
+He had thought Pierson's face gentle; it was not gentle now.  "Did
+you know I was here, then, Captain Fort?"
+
+"I saw Noel in the garden.  I've said nothing to her, of course.  But
+she told me you were starting to-morrow for Egypt, so I shall have no
+other chance."
+
+"I am sorry you have come.  It is not for me to judge, but I don't
+think you will make Noel happy."
+
+"May I ask you why, sir?"
+
+"Captain Fort, the world's judgment of these things is not mine; but
+since you ask me.  I will tell you frankly.  My cousin Leila has a
+claim on you.  It is her you should ask to marry you."
+
+"I did ask her; she refused."
+
+"I know.  She would not refuse you again if you went out to her."
+
+"I am not free to go out to her; besides, she would refuse.  She
+knows I don't love her, and never have."
+
+
+"Never have?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Because I'm a man, I suppose, and a fool"
+
+"If it was simply, 'because you are a man' as you call it, it is
+clear that no principle or faith governs you.  And yet you ask me to
+give you Noel; my poor Noel, who wants the love and protection not of
+a 'man' but of a good man.  No, Captain Fort, no!"
+
+Fort bit his lips.  "I'm clearly not a good man in your sense of the
+word; but I love her terribly, and I would protect her.  I don't in
+the least know whether she'll have me.  I don't expect her to,
+naturally.  But I warn you that I mean to ask her, and to wait for
+her.  I'm so much in love that I can do nothing else."  .
+
+"The man who is truly in love does what is best for the one he
+loves."  Fort bent his head; he felt as if he were at school again,
+confronting his head-master.  "That's true," he said.  "And I shall
+never trade on her position.  If she can't feel anything for me now
+or in the future, I shan't trouble her, you may be sure of that.  But
+if by some wonderful chance she should, I know I can make her happy,
+sir."
+
+"She is a child."
+
+"No, she's not a child," said Fort stubbornly.
+
+Pierson touched the lapel of his new tunic.  "Captain Fort, I am
+going far away from her, and leaving her without protection.  I trust
+to your chivalry not to ask her, till I come back."
+
+Fort threw back his head.  "No, no, I won't accept that position.
+With or without your presence the facts will be the same.  Either she
+can love me, or she can't.  If she can, she'll be happier with me.
+If she can't, there's an end of it."
+
+Pierson came slowly up to him.  "In my view," he said, "you are as
+bound to Leila as if you were married to her."
+
+"You can't, expect me to take the priest's view, sir.
+
+Pierson's lips trembled.
+
+"You call it a priest's view; I think it is only the view of a man of
+honour."
+
+Fort reddened.  "That's for my conscience," he said stubbornly.
+"I can't tell you, and I'm not going to, how things began.  I was a
+fool.  But I did my best, and I know that Leila doesn't think I'm
+bound.  If she had, she would never have gone.  When there's no
+feeling--there never was real feeling on my side--and when there's
+this terribly real feeling for Noel, which I never sought, which I
+tried to keep down, which I ran away from
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Yes.  To go on with the other was foul.  I should have thought you
+might have seen that, sir; but I did go on with it.  It was Leila who
+made an end."
+
+"Leila behaved nobly, I think."
+
+"She was splendid; but that doesn't make me a brute.".
+
+Pierson turned away to the window, whence he must see Noel.
+
+"It is repugnant to me," he said.  "Is there never to be any purity
+in her life?"
+
+"Is there never to be any life for her?  At your rate, sir, there
+will be none.  I'm no worse than other men, and I love her more than
+they could."
+
+For fully a minute Pierson stood silent, before he said: "Forgive me
+if I've spoken harshly.  I didn't mean to.  I love her intensely; I
+wish for nothing but her good.  But all my life I have believed that
+for a man there is only one woman--for a woman only one man."
+
+"Then, Sir," Fort burst out, "you wish her--"
+
+Pierson had put his hand up, as if to ward off a blow; and, angry
+though he was, Fort stopped.
+
+"We are all made of flesh and blood," he continued coldly, "and it
+seems to me that you think we aren't."
+
+"We have spirits too, Captain Fort."  The voice was suddenly so
+gentle that Fort's anger evaporated.
+
+"I have a great respect for you, sir; but a greater love for Noel,
+and nothing in this world will prevent me trying to give my life to
+her."
+
+A smile quivered over Pierson's face.  "If you try, then I can but
+pray that you will fail."
+
+Fort did not answer, and went out.
+
+He walked slowly away from the bungalow, with his head down, sore,
+angry, and yet-relieved.  He knew where he stood; nor did he feel
+that he had been worsted--those strictures had not touched him.
+Convicted of immorality, he remained conscious of private
+justifications, in a way that human beings have.  Only one little
+corner of memory, unseen and uncriticised by his opponent, troubled
+him.  He pardoned himself the rest; the one thing he did not pardon
+was the fact that he had known Noel before his liaison with Leila
+commenced; had even let Leila sweep him away on, an evening when he
+had been in Noel's company.  For that he felt a real disgust with
+himself.  And all the way back to the station he kept thinking: 'How
+could I?  I deserve to lose her!  Still, I shall try; but not now--
+not yet!'  And, wearily enough, he took the train back to town.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Both girls rose early that last day, and went with their father to
+Communion.  As Gratian had said to George: "It's nothing to me now,
+but it will mean a lot to him out there, as a memory of us.  So I
+must go."  And he had answered: "Quite right, my dear.  Let him have
+all he can get of you both to-day.  I'll keep out of the way, and be
+back the last thing at night."  Their father's smile when he saw them
+waiting for him went straight to both their hearts.  It was a
+delicious day, and the early freshness had not yet dried out of the
+air, when they were walking home to breakfast.  Each girl had slipped
+a hand under his arm.  'It's like Moses or was it Aaron?' Noel
+thought absurdly Memory had complete hold of her.  All the old days!
+Nursery hours on Sundays after tea, stories out of the huge Bible
+bound in mother-o'pearl, with photogravures of the Holy Land--palms,
+and hills, and goats, and little Eastern figures, and funny boats on
+the Sea of Galilee, and camels--always camels.  The book would be on
+his knee, and they one on each arm of his chair, waiting eagerly for
+the pages to be turned so that a new picture came.  And there would
+be the feel of his cheek, prickly against theirs; and the old names
+with the old glamour--to Gratian, Joshua, Daniel, Mordecai, Peter; to
+Noel Absalom because of his hair, and Haman because she liked the
+sound, and Ruth because she was pretty and John because he leaned on
+Jesus' breast.  Neither of them cared for Job or David, and Elijah
+and Elisha they detested because they hated the name Eliza.  And
+later days by firelight in the drawing-room, roasting chestnuts just
+before evening church, and telling ghost stories, and trying to make
+Daddy eat his share.  And hours beside him at the piano, each eager
+for her special hymns--for Gratian, "Onward, Christian Soldiers,"
+"Lead, Kindly Light," and "O God Our Help"; for Noel, "Nearer, My
+God, to Thee," the one with "The Hosts of Midian" in it, and "For
+Those in Peril on the Sea."  And carols!  Ah!  And Choristers!  Noel
+had loved one deeply--the word "chorister" was so enchanting; and
+because of his whiteness, and hair which had no grease on it, but
+stood up all bright; she had never spoken to him--a far worship, like
+that for a star.  And always, always Daddy had been gentle; sometimes
+angry, but always gentle; and they sometimes not at all!  And mixed
+up with it all, the dogs they had had, and the cats they had had, and
+the cockatoo, and the governesses, and their red cloaks, and the
+curates, and the pantomimes, and "Peter Pan," and "Alice in
+Wonderland"--Daddy sitting between them, so that one could snuggle
+up.  And later, the school-days, the hockey, the prizes, the
+holidays, the rush into his arms; and the great and wonderful yearly
+exodus to far places, fishing and bathing; walks and drives; rides
+and climbs, always with him.  And concerts and Shakespeare plays in
+the Christmas and Easter holidays; and the walk home through the
+streets--all lighted in those days--one on each side of him.  And
+this was the end!  They waited on him at breakfast: they kept
+stealing glances at him, photographing him in their minds.  Gratian
+got her camera and did actually photograph him in the morning
+sunlight with Noel, without Noel, with the baby; against all
+regulations for the defence of the realm.  It was Noel who suggested:
+"Daddy, let's take lunch out and go for all day on the cliffs, us
+three, and forget there's a war."
+
+So easy to say, so difficult to do, with the boom of the guns
+travelling to their ears along the grass, mingled with the buzz of
+insects.  Yet that hum of summer, the innumerable voices of tiny
+lives, gossamer things all as alive as they, and as important to
+their frail selves; and the white clouds, few and so slow-moving, and
+the remote strange purity which clings to the chalky downs, all this
+white and green and blue of land and sea had its peace, which crept
+into the spirits of those three alone with Nature, this once more,
+the last time for--who could say how long?  They talked, by tacit
+agreement, of nothing but what had happened before the war began,
+while the flock of the blown dandelions drifted past.  Pierson sat
+cross-legged on the grass, without his cap, suffering a little still
+from the stiffness of his unwonted garments.  And the girls lay one
+on each side of him, half critical, and half admiring.  Noel could
+not bear his collar.
+
+"If you had a soft collar you'd be lovely, Daddy.  Perhaps out there
+they'll let you take it off.  It must be fearfully hot in Egypt.  Oh!
+I wish I were going.  I wish I were going everywhere in the world.
+Some day!"  Presently he read to them, Murray's "Hippolytus" of
+Euripides.  And now and then Gratian and he discussed a passage.  But
+Noel lay silent, looking at the sky.  Whenever his voice ceased,
+there was the song of the larks, and very faint, the distant mutter
+of the guns.
+
+They stayed up there till past six, and it was time to go and have
+tea before Evening Service.  Those hours in the baking sun had drawn
+virtue out of them; they were silent and melancholy all the evening.
+Noel was the first to go up to her bedroom.  She went without saying
+good night--she knew her father would come to her room that last
+evening.  George had not yet come in; and Gratian was left alone with
+Pierson in the drawing-room, round whose single lamp, in spite of
+close-drawn curtains, moths were circling: She moved over to him on
+the sofa.
+
+"Dad, promise me not to worry about Nollie; we'll take care of her."
+
+"She can only take care of herself, Gracie, and will she?  Did you
+know that Captain Fort was here yesterday?"
+
+"She told me."
+
+"What is her feeling about him?"
+
+"I don't think she knows.  Nollie dreams along, and then suddenly
+rushes."
+
+"I wish she were safe from that man."
+
+"But, Dad, why?  George likes him and so do I.
+
+A big grey moth was fluttering against the lamp.  Pierson got up and
+caught it in the curve of his palm.  "Poor thing!  You're like my
+Nollie; so soft, and dreamy, so feckless, so reckless."  And going to
+the curtains, he thrust his hand through, and released the moth.
+
+"Dad!"  said Gratian suddenly, "we can only find out for ourselves,
+even if we do singe our wings in doing it.  We've been reading
+James's 'Pragmatism.'  George says the only chapter that's important
+is missing--the one on ethics, to show that what we do is not wrong
+till it's proved wrong by the result.  I suppose he was afraid to
+deliver that lecture."
+
+Pierson's face wore the smile which always came on it when he had to
+deal with George, the smile which said: "Ah, George, that's very
+clever; but I know."
+
+"My dear," he said, "that doctrine is the most dangerous in the
+world.  I am surprised at George."
+
+"I don't think George is in danger, Dad."
+
+"George is a man of wide experience and strong judgment and
+character; but think how fatal it would be for Nollie, my poor
+Nollie, whom a little gust can blow into the candle."
+
+"All the same," said Gratian stubbornly, "I don't think anyone can be
+good or worth anything unless they judge for themselves and take
+risks."
+
+Pierson went close to her; his face was quivering.
+
+"Don't let us differ on this last night; I must go up to Nollie for a
+minute, and then to bed.  I shan't see you to-morrow; you mustn't get
+up; I can bear parting better like this.  And my train goes at eight.
+God bless you, Gracie; give George my love.  I know, I have always
+known that he's a good man, though we do fight so.  Good-bye, my
+darling."
+
+He went out with his cheeks wet from Gratian's tears, and stood in
+the porch a minute to recover his composure.  The shadow of the house
+stretched velvet and blunt over the rock-garden.  A night-jar was
+spinning; the churring sound affected him oddly.  The last English
+night-bird he would hear.  England!  What a night-to say good-bye!
+'My country!' he thought; 'my beautiful country!' The dew was lying
+thick and silvery already on the little patch of grass-the last dew,
+the last scent of an English night.  The call of a bugle floated out.
+"England!"  he prayed; "God be about you!"  A little sound answered
+from across the grass, like an old man's cough, and the scrape and
+rattle of a chain.  A face emerged at the edge of the house's shadow;
+bearded and horned like that of Pan, it seemed to stare at him.  And
+he saw the dim grey form of the garden goat, heard it scuttle round
+the stake to which it was tethered, as though alarmed at this visitor
+to its' domain.
+
+He went up the half-flight of stairs to Noel's narrow little room,
+next the nursery.  No voice answered his tap.  It was dark, but he
+could see her at the window, leaning far out, with her chin on her
+hands.
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+She answered without turning: "Such a lovely night, Daddy.  Come and
+look!  I'd like to set the goat free, only he'd eat the rock plants.
+But it is his night, isn't it?  He ought to be running and skipping
+in it: it's such a shame to tie things up.  Did you never, feel wild
+in your heart, Daddy?"
+
+"Always, I think, Nollie; too wild.  It's been hard to tame oneself."
+
+Noel slipped her hand through his arm.  "Let's go and take the goat
+and skip together on the hills.  If only we had a penny whistle!  Did
+you hear the bugle?  The bugle and the goat!"
+
+Pierson pressed the hand against him.
+
+"Nollie, be good while I'm away.  You know what I don't want.  I told
+you in my letter."  He looked at her cheek, and dared say no more.
+Her face had its "fey" look again.
+
+"Don't you feel," she said suddenly, "on a night like this, all the
+things, all the things--the stars have lives, Daddy, and the moon has
+a big life, and the shadows have, and the moths and the birds and the
+goats and the trees, and the flowers, and all of us--escaped?  Oh!
+Daddy, why is there a war?  And why are people so bound and so
+unhappy?.  Don't tell me it's God--don't!"
+
+Pierson could not answer, for there came into his mind the Greek song
+he had been reading aloud that afternoon
+
+    "O for a deep and dewy Spring,
+     With runlets cold to draw and drink,
+     And a great meadow blossoming,
+     Long-grassed, and poplars in a ring,
+     To rest me by the brink.
+     O take me to the mountain, O,
+     Past the great pines and through the wood,
+     Up where the lean hounds softly go,
+     A-whine for wild things' blood,
+     And madly flies the dappled roe,
+     O God, to shout and speed them there;
+     An arrow by my chestnut hair
+     Drawn tight and one keen glimmering spear
+     Ah! if I could!"
+
+
+All that in life had been to him unknown, of venture and wild savour;
+all the emotion he had stifled; the swift Pan he had denied; the
+sharp fruits, the burning suns, the dark pools, the unearthly
+moonlight, which were not of God--all came with the breath of that
+old song, and the look on the girl's face.  And he covered his eyes.
+
+Noel's hand tugged at his arm.  "Isn't beauty terribly alive," she
+murmured, "like a lovely person?  it makes you ache to kiss it."
+
+His lips felt parched.  "There is a beauty beyond all that," he said
+stubbornly.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Holiness, duty, faith.  O Nollie, my love!"  But Noel's hand
+tightened on his arm.
+
+"Shall I tell you what I should like?"  she whispered.  "To take
+God's hand and show Him things.  I'm certain He's not seen
+everything."
+
+A shudder went through Pierson, one of those queer sudden shivers,
+which come from a strange note in a voice, or a new sharp scent or
+sight.
+
+"My dear, what things you say!"
+
+"But He hasn't, and it's time He did.  We'd creep, and peep, and see
+it all for once, as He can't in His churches.  Daddy, oh!  Daddy!
+I can't bear it any more; to think of them being killed on a night
+like this; killed and killed so that they never see it all again--
+never see it--never see it!"  She sank down, and covered her face
+with her arms.
+
+"I can't, I can't!  Oh! take it all away, the cruelty!  Why does it
+come--why the stars and the flowers, if God doesn't care any more
+than that?"
+
+Horribly affected he stood bending over her, stroking her head.  Then
+the habit of a hundred death-beds helped him.  "Come, Nollie!  This
+life is but a minute.  We must all die."
+
+"But not they--not so young!"  She clung to his knees, and looked up.
+"Daddy, I don't want you to go; promise me to come back!"
+
+The childishness of those words brought back his balance.
+
+"My dear sweetheart, of course!  Come, Nollie, get up.  The sun's
+been too much for you."
+
+Noel got up, and put her hands on her father's shoulders.  "Forgive
+me for all my badness, and all my badness to come, especially all my
+badness to come!"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "I shall always forgive you, Nollie; but there won't
+be--there mustn't be any badness to come.  I pray God to keep you,
+and make you like your mother."
+
+"Mother never had a devil, like you and me."
+
+He was silent from surprise.  How did this child know the devil of
+wild feeling he had fought against year after year; until with the
+many years he had felt it weakening within him!  She whispered
+on: "I don't hate my devil.
+
+Why should I?--it's part of me.  Every day when the sun sets, I'll
+think of you, Daddy; and you might do the same--that'll keep me good.
+I shan't come to the station tomorrow, I should only cry.  And I
+shan't say good-bye now.  It's unlucky."
+
+She flung her arms round him; and half smothered by that fervent
+embrace, he kissed her cheeks and hair.  Freed of each other at last,
+he stood for a moment looking at her by the moonlight.
+
+"There never was anyone more loving than you; Nollie!"  he said
+quietly.  "Remember my letter.  And good night, my love!"  Then,
+afraid to stay another second, he went quickly out of the dark little
+room....
+
+George Laird, returning half an hour later, heard a voice saying
+softly: "George, George!"
+
+Looking up, he saw a little white blur at the window, and Noel's face
+just visible.
+
+"George, let the goat loose, just for to-night, to please me."
+
+Something in that voice, and in the gesture of her stretched-out arm
+moved George in a queer way, although, as Pierson had once said, he
+had no music in his soul.  He loosed the goat.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+In the weeks which succeeded Pierson's departure, Gratian and George
+often discussed Noel's conduct and position by the light of the
+Pragmatic theory.  George held a suitably scientific view.  Just as
+he would point out to his wife--in the physical world, creatures who
+diverged from the normal had to justify their divergence in
+competition with their environments, or else go under, so in the
+ethical world it was all a question of whether Nollie could make good
+her vagary.  If she could, and grew in strength of character thereby,
+it was ipso facto all right, her vagary would be proved an advantage,
+and the world enriched.  If not, the world by her failure to make
+good would be impoverished, and her vagary proved wrong.  The
+orthodox and academies--he insisted--were always forgetting the
+adaptability of living organisms; how every action which was out of
+the ordinary, unconsciously modified all the other actions together
+with the outlook, and philosophy of the doer.  "Of course Nollie was
+crazy," he said, "but when she did what she did, she at once began to
+think differently about life and morals.  The deepest instinct we all
+have is the instinct that we must do what we must, and think that
+what we've done is really all right; in fact the--instinct of self-
+preservation.  We're all fighting animals; and we feel in our bones
+that if we admit we're beaten--we are beaten; but that every fight we
+win, especially against odds, hardens those bones.  But personally I
+don't think she can make good on her own."
+
+Gratian, whose Pragmatism was not yet fully baked, responded
+doubtfully:
+
+"No, I don't think she can.  And if she could I'm not sure.  But
+isn't Pragmatism a perfectly beastly word, George?  It has no sense
+of humour in it at all."
+
+"It is a bit thick, and in the hands of the young, deuced likely to
+become Prigmatism; but not with Nollie."
+
+They watched the victim of their discussions with real anxiety.  The
+knowledge that she would never be more sheltered than she was with
+them, at all events until she married, gravely impeded the formation
+of any judgment as to whether or no she could make good.  Now and
+again there would come to Gratian who after all knew her sister
+better than George--the disquieting thought that whatever conclusion
+Noel led them to form, she would almost certainly force them to
+abandon sooner or later.
+
+Three days after her father's departure Noel had declared that she
+wanted to work on the land.  This George had promptly vetoed.
+
+"You aren't strong enough yet, my dear: Wait till the harvest begins.
+Then you can go and help on the farm here.  If you can stand that
+without damage, we'll think about it."
+
+But the weather was wet and harvest late, and Noel had nothing much
+to do but attend to her baby, already well attended to by Nurse, and
+dream and brood, and now and then cook an omelette or do some
+housework for the sake of a gnawing conscience.  Since Gratian and
+George were away in hospital all day, she was very much alone.
+Several times in the evenings Gratian tried to come at the core of
+her thoughts, Twice she flew the kite of Leila.  The first time Noel
+only answered: "Yes, she's a brick."  The second time, she said: "I
+don't want to think about her."
+
+But, hardening her heart, Gratian went on: "Don't you think it's
+queer we've never heard from Captain Fort since he came down?"
+
+In her calmest voice Noel answered: "Why should we, after being told
+that he wasn't liked?"
+
+"Who told him that?"
+
+"I told him, that Daddy didn't; but I expect Daddy said much worse
+things."  She gave a little laugh, then softly added: "Daddy's
+wonderful, isn't he?"
+
+"How?"
+
+"The way he drives one to do the other thing.  If he hadn't opposed
+my marriage to Cyril, you know, that wouldn't have happened, it just
+made all the difference.  It stirred me up so fearfully."  Gratian
+stared at her, astonished that she could see herself so clearly.
+Towards the end of August she had a letter from Fort.
+
+"DEAR MRS.  LAIRD,
+"You know all about things, of course, except the one thing which to
+me is all important.  I can't go on without knowing whether I have a
+chance with your sister.  It is against your father's expressed wish
+that she should have anything to do with me, but I told him that I
+could not and would not promise not to ask her.  I get my holiday at
+the end of this month, and am coming down to put it to the touch.  It
+means more to me than you can possibly imagine.
+"I am, dear Mrs. Laird,
+"Your very faithful servant,
+"JAMES FORT."
+
+She discussed the letter with George, whose advice was: "Answer it
+politely, but say nothing; and nothing to Nollie.  I think it would
+be a very good thing.  Of course it's a bit of a make-shift--twice
+her age; but he's a genuine man, if not exactly brilliant."
+
+Gratian answered almost sullenly: "I've always wanted the very best
+for Nollie."
+
+George screwed up his steel-coloured eyes, as he might have looked at
+one on whom he had to operate.  "Quite so," he said."  But you must
+remember, Gracie, that out of the swan she was, Nollie has made
+herself into a lame duck.  Fifty per cent at least is off her value,
+socially.  We must look at things as they are."
+
+"Father is dead against it."
+
+George smiled, on the point of saying: 'That makes me feel it must be
+a good thing' But he subdued the impulse.
+
+"I agree that we're bound by his absence not to further it actively.
+Still Nollie knows his wishes, and it's up to her and no one else.
+After all, she's no longer a child."
+
+His advice was followed.  But to write that polite letter, which said
+nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or three hours'
+penmanship.  She was very conscientious.  Knowledge of this impending
+visit increased the anxiety with which she watched her sister, but
+the only inkling she obtained of Noel's state of mind was when the
+girl showed her a letter she had received from Thirza, asking her to
+come back to Kestrel.  A postscript, in Uncle Bob's handwriting,
+added these words:
+
+"We're getting quite fossilised down here; Eve's gone and left us
+again.  We miss you and the youngster awfully.  Come along down,
+Nollie there's a dear!"
+
+"They're darlings," Noel said, "but I shan't go.  I'm too restless,
+ever since Daddy went; you don't know how restless.  This rain simply
+makes me want to die."
+
+
+
+2
+
+The weather improved next day, and at the end of that week harvest
+began.  By what seemed to Noel a stroke of luck the farmer's binder
+was broken; he could not get it repaired, and wanted all the human
+binders he could get.  That first day in the fields blistered her
+hands, burnt her face and neck, made every nerve and bone in her body
+ache; but was the happiest day she had spent for weeks, the happiest
+perhaps since Cyril Morland left her, over a year ago.  She had a
+bath and went to bed the moment she got in.
+
+Lying there nibbling chocolate and smoking a cigarette, she
+luxuriated in the weariness which had stilled her dreadful
+restlessness.  Watching the smoke of her cigarette curl up against
+the sunset glow which filled her window, she mused: If only she could
+be tired out like this every day!  She would be all right then, would
+lose the feeling of not knowing what she wanted, of being in a sort o
+of large box, with the lid slammed down, roaming round it like a
+dazed and homesick bee in an overturned tumbler; the feeling of being
+only half alive, of having a wing maimed so that she could only fly a
+little way, and must then drop.
+
+She slept like a top that night.  But the next day's work was real
+torture, and the third not much better.  By the end of the week,
+however, she was no longer stiff.
+
+Saturday was cloudless; a perfect day.  The field she was working in
+lay on a slope.  It was the last field to be cut, and the best wheat
+yet, with a glorious burnt shade in its gold and the ears blunt and
+full.  She had got used now to the feel of the great sheaves in her
+arms, and the binding wisps drawn through her hand till she held them
+level, below the ears, ready for the twist.  There was no new
+sensation in it now; just steady, rather dreamy work, to keep her
+place in the row, to the swish-swish of the cutter and the call of
+the driver to his horses at the turns; with continual little pauses,
+to straighten and rest her back a moment, and shake her head free
+from the flies, or suck her finger, sore from the constant pushing of
+the straw ends under.  So the hours went on, rather hot and
+wearisome, yet with a feeling of something good being done, of a job
+getting surely to its end.  And gradually the centre patch narrowed,
+and the sun slowly slanted down.
+
+When they stopped for tea, instead of running home as usual, she
+drank it cold out of a flask she had brought, ate a bun and some
+chocolate, and lay down on her back against the hedge.  She always
+avoided that group of her fellow workers round the tea-cans which the
+farmer's wife brought out.  To avoid people, if she could, had become
+habitual to her now.  They must know about her, or would soon if she
+gave them the chance.  She had never lost consciousness of her ring-
+finger, expecting every eye to fall on it as a matter of course.
+Lying on her face, she puffed her cigarette into the grass, and
+watched a beetle, till one of the sheep-dogs, scouting for scraps,
+came up, and she fed him with her second bun.  Having finished the
+bun, he tried to eat the beetle, and, when she rescued it, convinced
+that she had nothing more to give him, sneezed at her, and went away.
+Pressing the end of her cigarette out against the bank, she turned
+over.  Already the driver was perched on his tiny seat, and his
+companion, whose business it was to free the falling corn, was
+getting up alongside.  Swish-swish!  It had begun again.  She rose,
+stretched herself, and went back to her place in the row.  The field
+would be finished to-night; she would have a lovely rest-all Sunday I
+Towards seven o'clock a narrow strip, not twenty yards broad, alone
+was left.  This last half hour was what Noel dreaded.  To-day it was
+worse, for the farmer had no cartridges left, and the rabbits were
+dealt with by hullabaloo and sticks and chasing dogs.  Rabbits were
+vermin, of course, and ate the crops, and must be killed; besides,
+they were good food, and fetched two shillings apiece; all this she
+knew but to see the poor frightened things stealing out, pounced on,
+turned, shouted at, chased, rolled over by great swift dogs, fallen
+on by the boys and killed and carried with their limp grey bodies
+upside down, so dead and soft and helpless, always made her feel
+quite sick.  She stood very still, trying not to see or hear, and in
+the corn opposite to her a rabbit stole along, crouched, and peeped.
+'Oh!' she thought, 'come out here, bunny.  I'll let you away--can't
+you see I will? It's your only chance.  Come out!'  But the rabbit
+crouched, and gazed, with its little cowed head poked forward, and
+its ears laid flat; it seemed trying to understand whether this still
+thing in front of it was the same as those others.  With the thought,
+'Of course it won't while I look at it,' Noel turned her head away.
+Out of the corner of her eye she could see a man standing a few yards
+off.  The rabbit bolted out.  Now the man would shout and turn it.
+But he did not, and the rabbit scuttled past him and away to the
+hedge.  She heard a shout from the end of the row, saw a dog
+galloping.  Too late!  Hurrah!  And clasping her hands, she looked at
+the man.  It was Fort!  With the queerest feeling--amazement,
+pleasure, the thrill of conspiracy, she saw him coming up to her.
+
+"I did want that rabbit to get off," she sighed out; "I've been
+watching it.  Thank you!"
+
+He looked at her.  "My goodness!"  was all he said.
+
+Noel's hands flew up to her cheeks.  "Yes, I know; is my nose very
+red?"
+
+"No; you're as lovely as Ruth, if she was lovely."
+
+Swish-swish!  The cutter came by; Noel started forward to her place
+in the row; but catching her arm, he said: "No, let me do this little
+bit.  I haven't had a day in the fields since the war began.  Talk to
+me while I'm binding."
+
+She stood watching him.  He made a different, stronger twist from
+hers, and took larger sheaves, so that she felt a sort of jealousy.
+
+"I didn't know you knew about this sort of thing."
+
+"Oh, Lord, yes!  I had a farm once out West.  Nothing like field-
+work, to make you feel good.  I've been watching you; you bind jolly
+well."
+
+Noel gave a sigh of pleasure.
+
+"Where have you come from?"  she asked.
+
+"Straight from the station.  I'm on my holiday."  He looked up at
+her, and they both fell silent.
+
+Swish-swish!  The cutter was coming again.  Noel went to the
+beginning of her portion of the falling corn, he to the end of it.
+They worked towards each other, and met before the cutter was on them
+a third time.
+
+"Will you come in to supper?"
+
+"I'd love to."
+
+"Then let's go now, please.  I don't want to see any more rabbits
+killed."
+
+They spoke very little on the way to the bungalow, but she felt his
+eyes on her all the time.  She left him with George and Gratian who
+had just come in, and went up for her bath.
+
+Supper had been laid out in the verandah, and it was nearly dark
+before they had finished.  In rhyme with the failing of the light
+Noel became more and more silent.  When they went in, she ran up to
+her baby.  She did not go down again, but as on the night before her
+father went away, stood at her window, leaning out.  A dark night, no
+moon; in the starlight she could only just see the dim garden, where
+no goat was grazing.  Now that her first excitement had worn off,
+this sudden reappearance of Fort filled her with nervous melancholy:
+She knew perfectly well what he had come for, she had always known.
+She had no certain knowledge of her own mind; but she knew that all
+these weeks she had been between his influence and her father's,
+listening to them, as it were, pleading with her.  And, curiously,
+the pleading of each, instead of drawing her towards the pleader, had
+seemed dragging her away from him, driving her into the arms of the
+other.  To the protection of one or the other she felt she must go;
+and it humiliated her to think that in all the world there was no
+other place for her.  The wildness of that one night in the old Abbey
+seemed to have power to govern all her life to come.  Why should that
+one night, that one act, have this uncanny power to drive her this
+way or that, to those arms or these?  Must she, because of it, always
+need protection?  Standing there in the dark it was almost as if they
+had come up behind her, with their pleadings; and a shiver ran down
+her back.  She longed to turn on them, and cry out: "Go away; oh; go
+away!  I don't want either of you; I just want to be left alone!"
+Then something, a moth perhaps, touched her neck.  She gasped and
+shook herself.  How silly!
+
+She heard the back door round the corner of the house opening; a
+man's low voice down in the dark said:
+
+"Who's the young lady that comes out in the fields?"
+
+Another voice--one of the maids--answered:
+
+"The Missis's sister."
+
+"They say she's got a baby."
+
+"Never you mind what she's got."
+
+Noel heard the man's laugh.  It seemed to her the most odious laugh
+she had ever heard.  She thought swiftly and absurdly: 'I'll get away
+from all this.'  The window was only a few feet up.  She got out on
+to the ledge, let herself down, and dropped.  There was a flower-bed
+below, quite soft, with a scent of geranium-leaves and earth.  She
+brushed herself, and went tiptoeing across the gravel and the little
+front lawn, to the gate.  The house was quite dark, quite silent.
+She walked on, down the road.  'Jolly!' she thought.  'Night after
+night we sleep, and never see the nights: sleep until we're called,
+and never see anything.  If they want to catch me they'll have to
+run.'  And she began running down the road in her evening frock and
+shoes, with nothing on her head.  She stopped after going perhaps
+three hundred yards, by the edge of the wood.  It was splendidly dark
+in there, and she groped her way from trunk to trunk, with a
+delicious, half-scared sense of adventure and novelty.  She stopped
+at last by a thin trunk whose bark glimmered faintly.  She felt it
+with her cheek, quite smooth--a birch tree; and, with her arms round
+it, she stood perfectly still.  Wonderfully, magically silent, fresh
+and sweet-scented and dark!  The little tree trembled suddenly within
+her arms, and she heard the low distant rumble, to which she had
+grown so accustomed--the guns, always at work, killing--killing men
+and killing trees, little trees perhaps like this within her arms,
+little trembling trees!  Out there, in this dark night, there would
+not be a single unscarred tree like this smooth quivering thing, no
+fields of corn, not even a bush or a blade of grass, no leaves to
+rustle and smell sweet, not a bird, no little soft-footed night
+beasts, except the rats; and she shuddered, thinking of the Belgian
+soldier-painter.  Holding the tree tight, she squeezed its smooth
+body against her.  A rush of the same helpless, hopeless revolt and
+sorrow overtook her, which had wrung from her that passionate little
+outburst to her father, the night before he went away.  Killed, torn,
+and bruised; burned, and killed, like Cyril!  All the young things,
+like this little tree.
+
+Rumble!  Rumble!  Quiver!  Quiver!  And all else so still, so sweet
+and still, and starry, up there through the leaves....  'I can't bear
+it!' she thought.  She pressed her lips, which the sun had warmed all
+day, against the satiny smooth bark.  But the little tree stood
+within her arms insentient, quivering only to the long rumbles.  With
+each of those dull mutterings, life and love were going out, like the
+flames of candles on a Christmas-tree, blown, one by one.  To her
+eyes, accustomed by now to the darkness in there, the wood seemed
+slowly to be gathering a sort of life, as though it were a great
+thing watching her; a great thing with hundreds of limbs and eyes,
+and the power of breathing.  The little tree, which had seemed so
+individual and friendly, ceased to be a comfort and became a part of
+the whole living wood, absorbed in itself, and coldly watching her,
+this intruder of the mischievous breed, the fatal breed which loosed
+those rumblings on the earth.  Noel unlocked her arms, and recoiled.
+A bough scraped her neck, some leaves flew against her eyes; she
+stepped aside, tripped over a root, and fell.  A bough had hit her
+too, and she lay a little dazed, quivering at such dark
+unfriendliness.  She held her hands up to her face for the mere
+pleasure of seeing something a little less dark; it was childish, and
+absurd, but she was frightened.  The wood seemed to have so many
+eyes, so many arms, and all unfriendly; it seemed waiting to give her
+other blows, other falls, and to guard her within its darkness
+until--!  She got up, moved a few steps, and stood still, she had
+forgotten from where she had come in.  And afraid of moving deeper
+into the unfriendly wood, she turned slowly round, trying to tell
+which way to go.  It was all just one dark watching thing, of limbs
+on the ground and in the air.  'Any way,' she thought; 'any way of
+course will take me out!' And she groped forward, keeping her hands
+up to guard her face.  It was silly, but she could not help the
+sinking, scattered feeling which comes to one bushed, or lost in a
+fog.  If the wood had not been so dark, so,--alive!  And for a second
+she had the senseless, terrifying thought of a child: 'What if I
+never get out!'  Then she laughed at it, and stood still again,
+listening.  There was no sound to guide her, no sound at all except
+that faint dull rumble, which seemed to come from every side, now.
+And the trees watched her.  'Ugh!' she thought; 'I hate this wood!'
+She saw it now, its snaky branches, its darkness, and great forms, as
+an abode of giants and witches.  She groped and scrambled on again,
+tripped once more, and fell, hitting her forehead against a trunk.
+The blow dazed and sobered her.  'It's idiotic,' she thought; 'I'm a
+baby!  I'll Just walk very slowly till I reach the edge.  I know it
+isn't a large wood!'  She turned deliberately to face each direction;
+solemnly selected that from which the muttering of the guns seemed to
+come, and started again, moving very slowly with her hands stretched
+out.  Something rustled in the undergrowth, quite close,; she saw a
+pair of green eyes shining.  Her heart jumped into her mouth.  The
+thing sprang--there was a swish of ferns and twigs, and silence.
+Noel clasped her breast.  A poaching cat!  And again she moved
+forward.  But she had lost direction.  'I'm going round and round,'
+she thought.  'They always do.' And the sinking scattered feeling of
+the "bushed" clutched at her again.  'Shall I call?' she thought.  'I
+must be near the road.  But it's so babyish.' She moved on again.
+Her foot struck something soft.  A voice muttered a thick oath; a
+hand seized her ankle.  She leaped, and dragged and wrenched it free;
+and, utterly unnerved, she screamed, and ran forward blindly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+No one could have so convinced a feeling as Jimmy Fort that he would
+be a 'bit of a makeshift' for Noel.  He had spent the weeks after his
+interview with her father obsessed by her image, often saying to
+himself "It won't do.  It's playing it too low down to try and get
+that child, when I know that, but for her trouble, I shouldn't have a
+chance."  He had never had much opinion of his looks, but now he
+seemed to himself absurdly old and dried-up in this desert of a
+London.  He loathed the Office job to which they had put him, and the
+whole atmosphere of officialdom.  Another year of it, and he would
+shrivel like an old apple!  He began to look at himself anxiously,
+taking stock of his physical assets now that he had this dream of
+young beauty.  He would be forty next month, and she was nineteen!
+But there would be times too when he would feel that, with her, he
+could be as much of a "three-year-old" as the youngster she had
+loved.  Having little hope of winning her, he took her "past" but
+lightly.  Was it not that past which gave him what chance he had?  On
+two things he was determined: He would not trade on her past.  And if
+by any chance she took him, he would never show her that he
+remembered that she had one.
+
+After writing to Gratian he had spent the week before his holiday
+began, in an attempt to renew the youthfulness of his appearance,
+which made him feel older, leaner, bonier and browner than ever.  He
+got up early, rode in the rain, took Turkish baths, and did all
+manner of exercises; neither smoked nor drank, and went to bed early,
+exactly as if he had been going to ride a steeplechase.  On the
+afternoon, when at last he left on that terrific pilgrimage, he gazed
+at his face with a sort of despair, it was so lean, and leather-
+coloured, and he counted almost a dozen grey hairs.
+
+When he reached the bungalow, and was told that she was working in
+the corn-fields, he had for the first time a feeling that Fate was on
+his side.  Such a meeting would be easier than any other!  He had
+been watching her for several minutes before she saw him, with his
+heart beating more violently than it had ever beaten in the trenches;
+and that new feeling of hope stayed with him--all through the
+greeting, throughout supper, and even after she had left them and
+gone upstairs.  Then, with the suddenness of a blind drawn down, it
+vanished, and he sat on, trying to talk, and slowly getting more and
+more silent and restless.
+
+"Nollie gets so tired, working," Gratian said: He knew she meant it
+kindly but that she should say it at all was ominous.  He got up at
+last, having lost hope of seeing Noel again, conscious too that he
+had answered the last three questions at random.
+
+In the porch George said: "You'll come in to lunch tomorrow, won't
+you?"
+
+"Oh, thanks, I'm afraid it'll bore you all."
+
+"Not a bit.  Nollie won't be so tired."
+
+Again--so well meant.  They were very kind.  He looked up from the
+gate, trying to make out which her window might be; but all was dark.
+A little way down the road he stopped to light a cigarette; and,
+leaning against a gate, drew the smoke of it deep into his lungs,
+trying to assuage the ache in his heart.  So it was hopeless!  She
+had taken the first, the very first chance, to get away from him!
+She knew that he loved her, could not help knowing, for he had never
+been able to keep it out of his eyes and voice.  If she had felt ever
+so little for him, she would not have avoided him this first evening.
+'I'll go back to that desert,' he thought; 'I'm not going to whine
+and crawl.  I'll go back, and bite on it; one must have some pride.
+Oh, why the hell am I crocked-up like this?  If only I could get out
+to France again!' And then Noel's figure bent over the falling corn
+formed before him.  'I'll have one more try,' he thought; 'one more--
+tomorrow somewhere, I'll get to know for certain.  And if I get what
+Leila's got I shall deserve it, I suppose.  Poor Leila!  Where is
+she?  Back at High Constantia?'  What was that?  A cry--of terror--in
+that wood!  Crossing to the edge, he called "Coo-ee!" and stood
+peering into its darkness.  He heard the sound of bushes being
+brushed aside, and whistled.  A figure came bursting out, almost into
+his arms.
+
+"Hallo!"  he said; "what's up?"
+
+A voice gasped: "Oh!  It's--it's nothing!"
+
+He saw Noel.  She had swayed back, and stood about a yard away.  He
+could dimly see her covering her face with her arms.  Feeling
+instinctively that she wanted to hide her fright, he said quietly:
+
+"What luck!  I was just passing.  It's awfully dark."
+
+"I--I got lost; and a man--caught my foot, in there!"
+
+Moved beyond control by the little gulps and gasps of her breathing,
+he stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders.  He held her
+lightly, without speaking, terrified lest he should wound her pride.
+
+"I-I got in there," she gasped, "and the trees--and I stumbled over a
+roan asleep, and he--"
+
+"Yes, Yes, I know," he murmured, as if to a child.  She had dropped
+her arms now, and he could see her face, with eyes unnaturally
+dilated, and lips quivering.  Then moved again beyond control, he
+drew her so close that he could feel the throbbing of her heart, and
+put his lips to her forehead all wet with heat.  She closed her eyes,
+gave a little choke, and buried her face against his coat.
+
+"There, there, my darling!" he kept on saying.  "There, there, my
+darling!"  He could feel the snuggling of her cheek against his
+shoulder.  He had got her--had got her!  He was somehow certain that
+she would not draw back now.  And in the wonder and ecstasy of that
+thought, all the world above her head, the stars in their courses,
+the wood which had frightened her, seemed miracles of beauty and
+fitness.  By such fortune as had never come to man, he had got her!
+And he murmured over and over again:
+
+"I love you!"  She was resting perfectly quiet against him, while her
+heart ceased gradually to beat so fast.  He could feel her cheek
+rubbing against his coat of Harris tweed.  Suddenly she sniffed at
+it, and whispered:
+
+"It smells good."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+When summer sun has burned all Egypt, the white man looks eagerly
+each day for evening, whose rose-coloured veil melts opalescent into
+the dun drift, of the hills, and iridescent above, into the slowly
+deepening blue.  Pierson stood gazing at the mystery of the desert
+from under the little group of palms and bougainvillea which formed
+the garden of the hospital.  Even-song was in full voice: From the
+far wing a gramophone was grinding out a music-hall ditty; two
+aeroplanes, wheeling exactly like the buzzards of the desert, were
+letting drip the faint whir of their flight; metallic voices drifted
+from the Arab village; the wheels of the water-wells creaked; and
+every now and then a dry rustle was stirred from the palm-leaves by
+puffs of desert wind.  On either hand an old road ran out, whose line
+could be marked by the little old watch-towers of another age.  For
+how many hundred years had human life passed along it to East and
+West; the brown men and their camels, threading that immemorial track
+over the desert, which ever filled him with wonder, so still it was,
+so wide, so desolate, and every evening so beautiful!  He sometimes
+felt that he could sit for ever looking at it; as though its cruel
+mysterious loveliness were--home; and yet he never looked at it
+without a spasm of homesickness.
+
+So far his new work had brought him no nearer to the hearts of men.
+Or at least he did not feel it had.  Both at the regimental base, and
+now in this hospital--an intermediate stage--waiting for the draft
+with which he would be going into Palestine, all had been very nice
+to him, friendly, and as it were indulgent; so might schoolboys have
+treated some well-intentioned dreamy master, or business men a
+harmless idealistic inventor who came visiting their offices.  He had
+even the feeling that they were glad to have him about, just as they
+were glad to have their mascots and their regimental colours; but of
+heart-to-heart simple comradeship--it seemed they neither wanted it
+of him nor expected him to give it, so that he had a feeling that he
+would be forward and impertinent to offer it.  Moreover, he no longer
+knew how.  He was very lonely.  'When I come face to face with
+death,' he would think, 'it will be different.  Death makes us all
+brothers.  I may be of real use to them then.'
+
+They brought him a letter while he stood there listening to that
+even-song, gazing at the old desert road.
+
+"DARLING DAD,
+
+"I do hope this will reach you before you move on to Palestine.  You
+said in your last--at the end of September, so I hope you'll just get
+it.  There is one great piece of news, which I'm afraid will hurt and
+trouble you; Nollie is married to Jimmy Fort.  They were married down
+here this afternoon, and have just gone up to Town.  They have to
+find a house of course.  She has been very restless, lonely, and
+unhappy ever since you went, and I'm sure it is really for the best:
+She is quite another creature, and simply devoted, headlong.  It's
+just like Nollie.  She says she didn't know what she wanted, up to
+the last minute.  But now she seems as if she could never want
+anything else.
+
+"Dad dear, Nollie could never have made good by herself.  It isn't
+her nature, and it's much better like this, I feel sure, and so does
+George.  Of course it isn't ideal--and one wanted that for her; but
+she did break her wing, and he is so awfully good and devoted to her,
+though you didn't believe it, and perhaps won't, even now.  The great
+thing is to feel her happy again, and know she's safe.  Nollie is
+capable of great devotion; only she must be anchored.  She was
+drifting all about; and one doesn't know what she might have done, in
+one of her moods.  I do hope you won't grieve about it.  She's
+dreadfully anxious about how you'll feel.  I know it will be wretched
+for you, so far off; but do try and believe it's for the best....
+She's out of danger; and she was really in a horrible position.  It's
+so good for the baby, too, and only fair to him.  I do think one must
+take things as they are, Dad dear.  It was impossible to mend
+Nollie's wing.  If she were a fighter, and gloried in it, or if she
+were the sort who would 'take the veil'--but she isn't either.  So it
+is all right, Dad.  She's writing to you herself.  I'm sure Leila
+didn't want Jimmy Fort to be unhappy because he couldn't love her; or
+she would never have gone away.  George sends you his love; we are
+both very well.  And Nollie is looking splendid still, after her
+harvest work.  All, all my love, Dad dear.  Is there anything we can
+get, and send you?  Do take care of your blessed self, and don't
+grieve about Nollie.
+
+"GRATIAN."
+
+A half-sheet of paper fluttered down; he picked it up from among the
+parched fibre of dead palm-leaves.
+
+
+"DADDY DARLING,
+
+"I've done it.  Forgive me-I'm so happy.
+
+"Your NOLLIE."
+
+
+The desert shimmered, the palm-leaves rustled, and Pierson stood
+trying to master the emotion roused in him by those two letters.  He
+felt no anger, not even vexation; he felt no sorrow, but a loneliness
+so utter and complete that he did not know how to bear it.  It seemed
+as if some last link with life had' snapped.  'My girls are happy,'
+he thought.  'If I am not--what does it matter?  If my faith and my
+convictions mean nothing to them--why should they follow?  I must and
+will not feel lonely.  I ought to have the sense of God present, to
+feel His hand in mine.  If I cannot, what use am I--what use to the
+poor fellows in there, what use in all the world?'
+
+An old native on a donkey went by, piping a Soudanese melody on a
+little wooden Arab flute.  Pierson turned back into the hospital
+humming it.  A nurse met him there.
+
+"The poor boy at the end of A ward is sinking fast, sir; I expect
+he'd like to see you,"
+
+He went into A ward, and walked down between the beds to the west
+window end, where two screens had been put, to block off the cot.
+Another nurse, who was sitting beside it, rose at once.
+
+"He's quite conscious," she whispered; "he can still speak a little.
+He's such a dear."  A tear rolled down her cheek, and she passed out
+behind the screens.  Pierson looked down at the boy; perhaps he was
+twenty, but the unshaven down on his cheeks was soft and almost
+colourless.  His eyes were closed.  He breathed regularly, and did
+not seem in pain; but there was about him that which told he was
+going; something resigned, already of the grave.  The window was wide
+open, covered by mosquito-netting, and a tiny line of sunlight,
+slanting through across the foot of the cot, crept slowly backwards
+over the sheets and the boy's body, shortening as it crept.  In the
+grey whiteness of the walls; the bed, the boy's face, just that pale
+yellow bar of sunlight, and one splash of red and blue from a little
+flag on the wall glowed out.  At this cooler hour, the ward behind
+the screens was almost empty, and few sounds broke the stillness; but
+from without came that intermittent rustle of dry palm-leaves.
+Pierson waited in silence, watching the sun sink.  If the boy might
+pass like this, it would be God's mercy.  Then he saw the boy's eyes
+open, wonderfully clear eyes of the lighted grey which has dark rims;
+his lips moved, and Pierson bent down to hear.
+
+"I'm goin' West, zurr."  The whisper had a little soft burr; the lips
+quivered; a pucker as of a child formed on his face, and passed.
+
+Through Pierson's mind there flashed the thought: 'O God!  Let me be
+some help to him!'
+
+"To God, my dear son!"  he said.
+
+A flicker of humour, of ironic question, passed over the boy's lips.
+
+Terribly moved, Pierson knelt down, and began softly, fervently
+praying.  His whispering mingled with the rustle of the palm-leaves,
+while the bar of sunlight crept up the body.  In the boy's smile had
+been the whole of stoic doubt, of stoic acquiescence.  It had met him
+with an unconscious challenge; had seemed to know so much.  Pierson
+took his hand, which lay outside the sheet.  The boy's lips moved, as
+though in thanks; he drew a long feeble breath, as if to suck in the
+thread of sunlight; and his eyes closed.  Pierson bent over the hand.
+When he looked up the boy was dead.  He kissed his forehead and went
+quietly out.
+
+The sun had set, and he walked away from the hospital to a hillock
+beyond the track on the desert's edge, and stood looking at the
+afterglow.  The sun and the boy--together they had gone West, into
+that wide glowing nothingness.
+
+The muezzin call to sunset prayer in the Arab village came to him
+clear and sharp, while he sat there, unutterably lonely.  Why had
+that smile so moved him?  Other death smiles had been like this
+evening smile on the desert hills--a glowing peace, a promise of
+heaven.  But the boy's smile had said: 'Waste no breath on me--you
+cannot help.  Who knows--who knows?  I have no hope, no faith; but I
+am adventuring.  Good-bye!'  Poor boy!  He had braved all things, and
+moved out uncertain, yet undaunted!  Was that, then, the uttermost
+truth, was faith a smaller thing?  But from that strange notion he.
+recoiled with horror.  'In faith I have lived, in faith I will die!'
+he thought, 'God helping me!'  And the breeze, ruffling the desert
+sand, blew the grains against the palms of his hands, outstretched
+above the warm earth.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
+#8 in our series by John Galsworthy
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+Title: Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: June, 2001 [Etext #2683]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[Most recently updated: December 9, 2001]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
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+
+SAINTS PROGRESS
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+I
+
+Such a day made glad the heart.  All the flags of July were waving;
+the sun and the poppies flaming; white butterflies spiring up and
+twining, and the bees busy on the snapdragons.  The lime-trees were
+coming into flower.  Tall white lilies in the garden beds already
+rivaled the delphiniums; the York and Lancaster roses were full-blown
+round their golden hearts.  There was a gentle breeze, and a swish
+and stir and hum rose and fell above the head of Edward Pierson,
+coming back from his lonely ramble over Tintern Abbey.  He had
+arrived at Kestrel, his brother Robert's home on the bank of the Wye
+only that morning, having stayed at Bath on the way down; and now he
+had got his face burnt in that parti-coloured way peculiar to the
+faces of those who have been too long in London.  As he came along
+the narrow, rather overgrown avenue, the sound of a waltz thrummed
+out on a piano fell on his ears, and he smiled, for music was the
+greatest passion he had.  His dark grizzled hair was pushed back off
+his hot brow, which he fanned with his straw hat.  Though not broad,
+that brow was the broadest part of a narrow oval face whose length
+was increased by a short, dark, pointed beard--a visage such as
+Vandyk might have painted, grave and gentle, but for its bright grey
+eyes, cinder-lashed.  and crow's-footed, and its strange look of not
+seeing what was before it.  He walked quickly, though he was tired
+and hot; tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit, on whose
+black kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled.
+
+Above his brother's house, whose sloping garden ran down to the
+railway line and river, a large room had been built out apart.
+Pierson stood where the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the
+waltz, and the cool whipping of the breeze in the sycamores and
+birches.  A man of fifty, with a sense of beauty, born and bred in
+the country, suffers fearfully from nostalgia during a long unbroken
+spell of London; so that his afternoon in the old Abbey had been
+almost holy.  He had let his senses sink into the sunlit greenery of
+the towering woods opposite; he had watched the spiders and the
+little shining beetles, the flycatchers, and sparrows in the ivy;
+touched the mosses and the lichens; looked the speedwells in the eye;
+dreamed of he knew not what.  A hawk had been wheeling up there above
+the woods, and he had been up there with it in the blue.  He had
+taken a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret of London off
+his soul.
+
+For a year he had been working his parish single-handed--no joke--
+for his curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real
+holiday since the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to
+his brother's home.  He looked down at the garden, and up at the
+trees of the avenue.  Bob had found a perfect retreat after his
+quarter of a century in Ceylon.  Dear old Bob!  And he smiled at the
+thought of his elder brother, whose burnt face and fierce grey
+whiskers somewhat recalled a Bengal tiger; the kindest fellow that
+ever breathed!  Yes, he had found a perfect home for Thirza and
+himself.  And Edward Pierson sighed.  He too had once had a perfect
+home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose death, fifteen years ago,
+still bled a little in his heart.  Their two daughters, Gratian and
+Noel, had not "taken after" her; Gratian was like his own mother, and
+Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded him of his cousin
+Leila, who--poor thing!--had made that sad mess of her life, and now,
+he had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa.  Ah!  What a
+pretty girl she had been
+
+Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the music-
+room.  A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet slipping
+on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly in the
+arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
+circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
+have come in recently, for he did not recognise them.  At the piano
+sat his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face.  But it was
+at his young daughter that Edward Pierson looked.  Her eyes were
+half-closed, her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite
+short, curled into her slim round neck.  Quite cool she seemed,
+though the young man in whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery
+hot; a handsome boy, with blue eyes and a little golden down on the
+upper lip of his sunny red-cheeked face.  Edward Pierson thought:
+'Nice couple!' And had a moment's vision of himself and Leila,
+dancing at that long-ago Cambridge May Week--on her seventeenth
+birthday, he remembered, so that she must have been a year younger
+than Nollie was now!  This would be the young man she had talked of
+in her letters during the last three weeks.  Were they never going to
+stop?
+
+He passed into view of those within, and said:
+
+"Aren't you very hot, Nollie?"
+
+She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and self-
+conscious, and Eve called out:
+
+"It's a bet, Uncle.  They've got to dance me down."
+
+Pierson said mildly:
+
+"A bet?  My dears!"
+
+Noel murmured over her shoulder:
+
+"It's all right, Daddy!"  And the young man gasped:
+
+"She's bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir!"
+
+Pierson sat down, a little hypnotized by the sleepy strumming, the
+slow giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-closed swimming
+eyes of his young daughter, looking at him over her shoulder as she
+went by.  He sat with a smile on his lips.  Nollie was growing up!
+Now that Gratian was married, she had become a great responsibility.
+If only his dear wife had lived!  The smile faded from his lips; he
+looked suddenly very tired.  The struggle, physical and spiritual, he
+had been through, these fifteen years, sometimes weighed him almost
+to the ground: Most men would have married again, but he had always
+felt it would be sacrilege.  Real unions were for ever, even though
+the Church permitted remarriage.
+
+He watched his young daughter with a mixture of aesthetic pleasure
+and perplexity.  Could this be good for her?  To go on dancing
+indefinitely with one young man could that possibly be good for her?
+But they looked very happy; and there was so much in young creatures
+that he did not understand.  Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy,
+seemed sometimes possessed of a little devil.  Edward Pierson was
+naif; attributed those outbursts of demonic possession to the loss of
+her mother when she was such a mite; Gratian, but two years older,
+had never taken a mother's place.  That had been left to himself, and
+he was more or less conscious of failure.
+
+He sat there looking up at her with a sort of whimsical distress.
+And, suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn
+each word a little, she said:
+
+"I'm going to stop!" and, sitting down beside him, took up his hat to
+fan herself.
+
+Eve struck a triumphant chord.  "Hurrah I've won!"
+
+The young man muttered:
+
+"I say, Noel, we weren't half done!"
+
+"I know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren't you, dear?  This is
+Cyril Morland."
+
+Pierson shook the young man's hand.
+
+"Daddy, your nose is burnt!"
+
+"My dear; I know."
+
+"I can give you some white stuff for it.  You have to sleep with it
+on all night.  Uncle and Auntie both use it."
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"Well, Eve says so.  If you're going to bathe, Cyril, look out for
+that current!"
+
+The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration, muttered:
+
+"Rather!"  and went out.
+
+Noel's eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.
+
+"If you're going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you'd better
+hurry up."
+
+"All right.  Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?"
+
+"Lovely; like a great piece of music."
+
+"Daddy always puts everything into music.  You ought to see it by
+moonlight; it's gorgeous then.  All right, Eve; I'm coming."  But she
+did not get up, and when Eve was gone, cuddled her arm through her
+father's and murmured:
+
+"What d'you think of Cyril?"
+
+"My dear, how can I tell?  He seems a nice-looking young man."
+
+"All right, Daddy; don't strain yourself.  It's jolly down here,
+isn't it?"  She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away,
+looking like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round
+her head.
+
+Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a
+lovely thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following,
+went to the piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue
+in E minor.  He had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy
+passion.  It was his way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings;
+a way which never quite failed him.
+
+At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a profession, but
+family tradition had destined him for Holy Orders, and an emotional
+Church revival of that day had caught him in its stream.  He had
+always had private means, and those early years before he married had
+passed happily in an East-End parish.  To have not only opportunity
+but power to help in the lives of the poor had been fascinating;
+simple himself, the simple folk of his parish had taken hold of his
+heart.  When, however, he married Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish
+of his own on the borders of East and West, where he had been ever
+since, even after her death had nearly killed him.  It was better to
+go on where work and all reminded him of one whom he had resolved
+never to forget in other ties.  But he knew that his work had not the
+zest it used to have in her day, or even before her day.  It may well
+be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy Orders twenty-six years,
+quite knew now what he believed.  Everything had become
+circumscribed, and fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to have
+taken fresh stock of his faith, to have gone deep into its roots,
+would have been like taking up the foundations of a still-standing
+house.  Some men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible--for
+which one formula is much the same as another; though Edward Pierson,
+gently dogmatic, undoubtedly preferred his High-Church statement of
+the inexpressible to that of, say, the Zoroastrians.  The subtleties
+of change, the modifications by science, left little sense of
+inconsistency or treason on his soul.  Sensitive, charitable, and
+only combative deep down, he instinctively avoided discussion on
+matters where he might hurt others or they hurt him.  And, since
+explanation was the last thing which o could be expected of one who
+did not base himself on Reason, he had found but scant occasion ever
+to examine anything.  Just as in the old Abbey he had soared off into
+the infinite with the hawk, the beetles, and the grasses, so now, at
+the piano, by these sounds of his own making, he was caught away
+again into emotionalism, without realising that he was in one of his,
+most religious moods.
+
+"Aren't you coming to tea, Edward?"
+
+The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown, had one of
+those faces which remain innocent to the end of the chapter, in spite
+of the complete knowledge of life which appertains to mothers.  In
+days of suffering and anxiety, like these of the great war, Thirza
+Pierson was a valuable person.  Without ever expressing an opinion on
+cosmic matters, she reconfirmed certain cosmic truths, such as that
+though the whole world was at war, there was such a thing as peace;
+that though all the sons of mothers were being killed, there remained
+such a thing as motherhood; that while everybody was living for the
+future, the present still existed.  Her tranquil, tender, matter-of-
+fact busyness, and the dew in her eyes, had been proof against
+twenty-three years of life on a tea-plantation in the hot part of
+Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against the anxiety of having two sons
+at the front, and the confidences of nearly every one she came
+across.  Nothing disturbed her.  She was like a painting of
+"Goodness" by an Old Master, restored by Kate Greenaway.  She never
+went to meet life, but when it came, made the best of it.  This was
+her secret, and Pierson always felt rested in her presence.
+
+He rose, and moved by her side, over the lawn, towards the big tree
+at the bottom of the garden.
+
+"How d'you think Noel is looking, Edward?"
+
+"Very pretty.  That young man, Thirza?"
+
+"Yes; I'm afraid he's over head and ears in love with her."
+
+At the dismayed sound he uttered, she slipped her soft round arm
+within his.  "He's going to the front soon, poor boy!"
+
+"Have they talked to you?"
+
+"He has.  Nollie hasn't yet."
+
+"Nollie is a queer child, Thirza."
+
+"Nollie is a darling, but rather a desperate character, Edward."
+
+Pierson sighed.
+
+In a swing under the tree, where the tea-things were set out, the
+"rather desperate character" was swaying.  "What a picture she is!"
+he said, and sighed again.
+
+The voice of his brother came to them,--high and steamy, as though
+corrupted by the climate of Ceylon:
+
+"You incorrigible dreamy chap, Ted!  We've eaten all the raspberries.
+Eve, give him some jam; he must be dead!  Phew! the heat!  Come on,
+my dear, and pour out his tea.  Hallo, Cyril!  Had a good bathe?  By
+George, wish my head was wet!  Squattez-vous down over there, by
+Nollie; she'll swing, and keep the flies off you."
+
+"Give me a cigarette, Uncle Bob--"
+
+"What!  Your father doesn't--"
+
+"Just for the flies.  You don't mind, Daddy?"
+
+"Not if it's necessary, my dear."
+
+Noel smiled, showing her upper teeth, and her eyes seemed to swim
+under their long lashes.
+
+"It isn't necessary, but it's nice."
+
+"Ah, ha!" said Bob Pierson.  "Here you are, Nollie!"
+
+But Noel shook her head.  At that moment she struck her father as
+startlingly grown-up-so composed, swaying above that young man at her
+feet, whose sunny face was all adoration.  'No longer a child!' he
+thought.  'Dear Nollie!'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+1
+
+Awakened by that daily cruelty, the advent of hot water, Edward
+Pierson lay in his chintz-curtained room, fancying himself back in
+London.  A wild bee hunting honey from the bowl of flowers on the
+window-sill, and the scent of sweetbrier, shattered that illusion.
+He drew the curtain, and, kneeling on the window-seat thrust his head
+out into the morning.  The air was intoxicatingly sweet.  Haze clung
+over the river and the woods beyond; the lawn sparkled with dew, and
+two wagtails strutted in the dewy sunshine.  'Thank God for
+loveliness!' he thought.  'Those poor boys at the front!'  And
+kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he began to say his prayers.
+The same feeling which made him beautify his church, use vestments,
+good music, and incense, filled him now.  God was in the loveliness
+of His world, as well as in His churches.  One could worship Him in a
+grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a high hill, by the
+banks of a bright river.  God was in the rustle of the leaves, and
+the hum of a bee, in the dew on the grass, and the scent of flowers;
+God was in everything!  And he added to his usual prayer this
+whisper: "I give Thee thanks for my senses, O Lord.  In all of us,
+keep them bright, and grateful for beauty."  Then he remained
+motionless, prey to a sort of happy yearning very near, to
+melancholy.  Great beauty ever had that effect on him.  One could
+capture so little of it--could never enjoy it enough!  Who was it had
+said not long ago: "Love of beauty is really only the sex instinct,
+which nothing but complete union satisfies."  Ah!  yes, George--
+Gratian's husband.  George Laird!  And a little frown came between
+his brows, as though at some thorn in the flesh.  Poor George!  But
+then, all doctors were materialists at heart--splendid fellows,
+though; a fine fellow, George, working himself to death out there in
+France.  One must not take them too seriously.  He plucked a bit of
+sweetbrier and put it to his nose, which still retained the shine of
+that bleaching ointment Noel had insisted on his using.  The sweet
+smell of those little rough leaves stirred up an acute aching.  He
+dropped them, and drew back.  No longings, no melancholy; one ought
+to be out, this beautiful morning!
+
+It was Sunday; but he had not to take three Services and preach at
+least one sermon; this day of rest was really to be his own, for
+once.  It was almost disconcerting; he had so long felt like the cab
+horse who could not be taken out of the shafts lest he should fall
+down.  He dressed with extraordinary deliberation, and had not quite
+finished when there came a knock on his door, and Noel's voice said:
+"Can I come in, Daddy?"
+
+In her flax-blue frock, with a Gloire de Dijon rose pinned where it
+met on her faintly browned neck, she seemed to her father a perfect
+vision of freshness.
+
+"Here's a letter from Gratian; George has been sent home ill, and
+he's gone to our house.  She's got leave from her hospital to come
+home and nurse him."
+
+Pierson read the letter.  "Poor George!"
+
+"When are you going to let me be a nurse, Daddy?"
+
+"We must wait till you're eighteen, Nollie."
+
+"I could easily say I was.  It's only a month; and I look much more."
+
+Pierson smiled.
+
+"Don't I?"
+
+"You might be anything from fifteen to twenty-five, my dear,
+according as you behave."
+
+"I want to go out as near the front as possible."
+
+Her head was poised so that the sunlight framed her face, which was
+rather broad--the brow rather too broad--under the waving light-brown
+hair, the nose short and indeterminate; cheeks still round from
+youth, almost waxen-pale, and faintly hollowed under the eyes.  It
+was her lips, dainty yet loving, and above all her grey eyes, big and
+dreamily alive, which made her a swan.  He could not imagine her in
+nurse's garb.
+
+"This is new, isn't it, Nollie?"
+
+"Cyril Morland's sisters are both out; and he'll be going soon.
+Everybody goes."
+
+"Gratian hasn't got out yet: It takes a long time to get trained."
+
+"I know; all the more reason to begin."
+
+She got up, looked at him, looked at her hands, seemed about to
+speak, but did not.  A little colour had come into her cheeks.  Then,
+obviously making conversation, she asked:
+
+"Are you going to church?  It's worth anything to hear Uncle Bob read
+the Lessons, especially when he loses his place.  No; you're not to
+put on your long coat till just before church time.  I won't have
+it!"
+
+Obediently Pierson resigned his long coat.
+
+"Now, you see, you can have my rose.  Your nose is better!"  She
+kissed his nose, and transferred her rose to the buttonhole of his
+short coat.  "That's all.  Come along!"  And with her arm through
+his, they went down.  But he knew she had come to say something which
+she had not said.
+
+
+
+2
+
+Bob Pierson, in virtue of greater wealth than the rest of the
+congregation, always read the Lessons, in his high steamy voice, his
+breathing never adjusted to the length of any period.  The
+congregation, accustomed, heard nothing peculiar; he was the
+necessary gentry with the necessary finger in the pie.  It was his
+own family whom he perturbed.  In the second row, Noel, staring
+solemnly at the profile of her father in the front row, was thinking:
+'Poor Daddy!  His eyes look as if they were coming out.  Oh, Daddy!
+Smile! or it'll hurt you!'  Young Morland beside her, rigid in his
+tunic, was thinking: 'She isn't thinking of me!'  And just then her
+little finger crooked into his.  Edward Pierson was thinking: 'Oh! My
+dear old Bob! Oh!'  And, beside him, Thirza thought: 'Poor dear Ted I
+how nice for him to be having a complete rest!  I must make him eat
+he's so thin!'  And Eve was thinking: 'Oh, Father! Mercy!'  But Bob
+Pierson was thinking: 'Cheer oh!  Only another three verses!'  Noel's
+little finger unhooked itself, but her eyes stole round to young
+Morland's eyes, and there was a light in them which lingered through
+the singing and the prayers.  At last, in the reverential rustle of
+the settling congregation, a surpliced figure mounted the pulpit.
+
+"I come not to bring Peace, but a sword."
+
+Pierson looked up.  He felt deep restfulness.  There was a pleasant
+light in this church; the hum of a country bluebottle made all the
+difference to the quality of silence.  No critical thought stirred
+within him, nor any excitement.  He was thinking: 'Now I shall hear
+something for my good; a fine text; when did I preach from it last?'
+Turned a little away from the others, he saw nothing but the
+preacher's homely face up there above the carved oak; it was so long
+since he had been preached to, so long since he had had a rest!  The
+words came forth, dropped on his forehead, penetrated, met something
+which absorbed them, and disappeared.  'A good plain sermon!' he
+thought.  'I suppose I'm stale; I don't seem--'  "Let us not, dear
+brethren," droned the preacher's earnest voice, "think that our dear
+Lord, in saying that He brought a sword, referred to a physical
+sword.  It was the sword of the spirit to which He was undoubtedly
+referring, that bright sword of the spirit which in all ages has
+cleaved its way through the fetters imposed on men themselves by
+their own desires, imposed by men on other men in gratification of
+their ambitions, as we have had so striking an example in the
+invasion by our cruel enemies of a little neighbouring country which
+had done them no harm.  Dear brethren, we may all bring swords."
+Pierson's chin jerked; he raised his hand quickly and passed it over
+his face.  'All bring swords,' he thought, 'swords--I wasn't asleep--
+surely!'  "But let us be sure that our swords are bright; bright with
+hope, and bright with faith, that we may see them flashing among the
+carnal desires of this mortal life, carving a path for us towards
+that heavenly kingdom where alone is peace, perfect peace.  Let us
+pray."
+
+Pierson did not shut his eyes; he opened them as he fell on his
+knees.  In the seat behind, Noel and young Morland had also fallen on
+their knees their faces covered each with a single hand; but her left
+hand and his right hung at their sides.  They prayed a little longer
+than any others and, on rising, sang the hymn a little louder.
+
+
+
+3
+
+No paper came on Sundays--not even the local paper, which had so long
+and so nobly done its bit with headlines to win the war.  No news
+whatever came, of men blown up, to enliven the hush of the hot July
+afternoon, or the sense of drugging--which followed Aunt Thirza's
+Sunday lunch.  Some slept, some thought they were awake; but Noel and
+young Morland walked upward through the woods towards a high common
+of heath and furze, crowned by what was known as Kestrel rocks.
+Between these two young people no actual word of love had yet been
+spoken.  Their lovering had advanced by glance and touch alone.
+
+Young Morland was a school and college friend of the two Pierson boys
+now at the front.  He had no home of his own, for his parents were
+dead; and this was not his first visit to Kestrel.  Arriving three
+weeks ago, for his final leave before he should go out, he had found
+a girl sitting in a little wagonette outside the station, and had
+known his fate at once.  But who knows when Noel fell in love?  She
+was--one supposes--just ready for that sensation.  For the last two
+years she had been at one of those high-class finishing
+establishments where, in spite of the healthy curriculum, perhaps
+because of it, there is ever an undercurrent of interest in the
+opposing sex; and not even the gravest efforts to eliminate instinct
+are quite successful.  The disappearance of every young male thing
+into the maw of the military machine put a premium on instinct.  The
+thoughts of Noel and her school companions were turned, perforce, to
+that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they could afford to
+regard as of secondary interest.  Love and Marriage and Motherhood,
+fixed as the lot of women by the countless ages, were threatened for
+these young creatures.  They not unnaturally pursued what they felt
+to be receding.
+
+When young Morland showed, by following her about with his eyes, what
+was happening to him, Noel was pleased.  From being pleased, she
+became a little excited; from being excited she became dreamy.  Then,
+about a week before her father's arrival, she secretly began to
+follow the young man about with her eyes; became capricious too, and
+a little cruel.  If there had been another young man to favour--but
+there was not; and she favoured Uncle Bob's red setter.  Cyril
+Morland grew desperate.  During those three days the demon her father
+dreaded certainly possessed her.  And then, one evening, while they
+walked back together from the hay-fields, she gave him a sidelong
+glance; and he gasped out: "Oh! Noel, what have I done?"  She caught
+his hand, and gave it a quick squeeze.  What a change!  What blissful
+alteration ever since!
+
+Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up
+to put things to the touch.  Noel too mounted silently, thinking: 'I
+will kiss him if he kisses me!'  Eagerness, and a sort of languor,
+were running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her
+shady hat.  Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage;
+made the greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive;
+flashed on beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground
+in little runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the
+beech mast, the ferns; butterflies chased each other in that
+sunlight, and myriads of ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by
+a frenzy of life.  The whole wood seemed possessed, as if the
+sunshine were a happy Being which had come to dwell therein.  At a
+half-way spot, where the trees opened and they could see, far below
+them, the gleam of the river, she sat down on the bole of a beech-
+tree, and young Morland stood looking at her.  Why should one face
+and not an other, this voice and not that, make a heart beat; why
+should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and a touch from another
+awaken nothing?  He knelt down and pressed his lips to her foot.  Her
+eyes grew very bright; but she got up and ran on--she had not
+expected him to kiss her foot.  She heard him hurrying after her, and
+stopped, leaning against a birch trunk.  He rushed to her, and,
+without a word spoken, his lips were on her lips.  The moment in
+life, which no words can render, had come for them.  They had found
+their enchanted spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their
+arms round each other, while the happy Being of the wood watched.  A
+marvellous speeder-up of Love is War.  What might have taken six
+months, was thus accomplished in three weeks.
+
+A short hour passed, then Noel said:
+
+"I must tell Daddy, Cyril.  I meant to tell him something this
+morning, only I thought I'd better wait, in case you didn't."
+
+Morland answered: "Oh, Noel!"  It was the staple of his conversation
+while they sat there.
+
+Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:
+
+"I shall go off my chump if we're not married before I go out."
+
+"How long does it take?"
+
+"No time, if we hurry up.  I've got six days before I rejoin, and
+perhaps the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him."
+
+"Poor Daddy!  Kiss me again; a long one."
+
+When the long one was over, she said:
+
+"Then I can come and be near you till you go out?  Oh, Cyril!"
+
+"Oh, Noel!"
+
+"Perhaps you won't go so soon.  Don't go if you can help it!"
+
+"Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan't be able."
+
+"No, of course not; I know."
+
+Young Morland clutched his hair.  "Everyone's in the same boat, but
+it can't last for ever; and now we're engaged we can be together all
+the time till I've got the licence or whatever it is.  And then--!"
+
+"Daddy won't like our not being married in a church; but I don't
+care!"
+
+Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on her
+cheeks, young Morland thought:
+
+'My God! I'm in heaven!'
+
+Another short hour passed before she freed herself.
+
+"We must go, Cyril.  Kiss me once more!"
+
+It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down.
+
+
+
+4
+
+Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where he had read
+the Lessons, saw them in the distance, and compressed his lips.
+Their long absence had vexed him.  What ought he to do?  In the
+presence of Love's young dream, he felt strange and helpless.  That
+night, when he opened the door of his room, he saw Noel on the
+window-seat, in her dressing-gown, with the moonlight streaming in on
+her.
+
+"Don't light up, Daddy; I've got something to say."
+
+She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned it
+over.
+
+"I'm engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week."
+
+It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs; and at the
+sound he made she hurried on:
+
+"You see, we must be; he may be going out any day."
+
+In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind of
+reason in her words.  But he said:
+
+"My dear, you're only a child.  Marriage is the most serious thing in
+life; you've only known him three weeks."
+
+"I know all that, Daddy" her voice sounded so ridiculously calm; "but
+we can't afford to wait.  He might never come back, you see, and then
+I should have missed him."
+
+"But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only be much
+worse for you."
+
+She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it
+against her heart.  But still her voice was calm:
+
+"No; much better, Daddy; you think I don't know my own feelings, but
+I do,"'
+
+The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.
+
+"Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is
+wanted.  Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the
+same things."
+
+"Yes, I know; but we do."
+
+"You can't tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks."
+
+"But these aren't ordinary times, are they?  People have to do things
+in a hurry.  Oh, Daddy!  Be an angel!  Mother would have understood,
+and let me, I know!"
+
+Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his
+loss, from reminder of the poor substitute he was.
+
+"Look, Nollie!"  he said.  "After all these years since she left us,
+I'm as lonely as ever, because we were really one.  If you marry this
+young man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can in
+such a little time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it
+turn out, after all, nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if
+anything happens to him before you've had any real married life
+together, you'll have a much greater grief and sense of loss to put
+up with than if you simply stay engaged till after the war.  Besides,
+my child, you're much too young."
+
+She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm.  "But I must!"
+
+He bit his lips, and said sharply: "You can't, Nollie!"
+
+She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone.  With the closing
+of the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took its place.  Poor
+child!  What to do with this wayward chicken just out of the egg, and
+wanting to be full-fledged at once?  The thought that she would be
+lying miserable, crying, perhaps, beset him so that he went out into
+the passage and tapped on her door.  Getting no answer, he went in.
+It was dark but for a streak of moonlight, and in that he saw her,
+lying on her bed, face down; and stealing up laid his hand on her
+head.  She did not move; and, stroking her hair, he said gently:
+
+"Nollie dear, I didn't mean to be harsh.  If I were your mother, I
+should know how to make you see, but I'm only an old bumble-daddy."
+
+She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on the bed.
+He could see her eyes shining.  But she did not speak; she seemed to
+know that in silence was her strength.
+
+He said with a sort of despair:
+
+"You must let me talk it over with your aunt.  She has a lot of good
+sense."
+
+"Yes."
+
+He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.
+
+"Good night, my dear; don't cry.  Promise me!"
+
+She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on his
+forehead, and went away a little comforted.
+
+But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the night,
+to the emptiness and silence; each minute so much lost of the little,
+little time left, that she might have been with him.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he had
+thought himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.
+
+After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him more
+forcibly than the needlessness of his words: "Don't cry, Nollie!"
+for he had realised with uneasiness that she had not been near
+crying.  No; there was in her some emotion very different from the
+tearful.  He kept seeing her cross-legged figure on the bed in that
+dim light; tense, enigmatic, almost Chinese; kept feeling the
+feverish touch of her lips.  A good girlish burst of tears would have
+done her good, and been a guarantee.  He had the uncomfortable
+conviction that his refusal had passed her by, as if unspoken.  And,
+since he could not go and make music at that time of night, he had
+ended on his knees, in a long search for guidance, which was not
+vouchsafed him.
+
+The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told that
+for the last hour they had been sitting with their arms round each
+other, watching the river flow by, talking but little, through lips
+too busy.  Pierson pursued his sister-in-law to the room where she
+did her flowers every morning.  He watched her for a minute dividing
+ramblers from pansies, cornflowers from sweet peas, before he said:
+
+"I'm very troubled, Thirza.  Nollie came to me last night.  Imagine!
+They want to get married--those two!"
+
+Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her cheeks
+grew a little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder.  She took up a
+sprig of mignonette, and said placidly:
+
+"Oh, my dear!"
+
+"Think of it, Thirza--that child!  Why, it's only a year or two since
+she used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with her hair."
+
+Thirza went on arranging her flowers.
+
+"Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her age.  And
+real married life wouldn't begin for them till after--if it ever
+began."
+
+Pierson experienced a sort of shock.  His sister-in-law's words
+seemed criminally light-hearted.
+
+"But--but--" he stammered; "the union, Thirza!  Who can tell what
+will happen before they come together again!"
+
+She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:
+
+"I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in these
+days, of what Noel might do.  I told you there's a streak of
+desperation in her."
+
+"Noel will obey me."
+
+"I wonder!  There are so many of these war marriages now."
+
+Pierson turned away.
+
+"I think they're dreadful.  What do they mean--Just a momentary
+gratification of passion.  They might just as well not be."
+
+"They mean pensions, as a rule," said Thirza calmly.
+
+"Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn't affect this case.  I
+can't bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a moment
+which may come to nothing, or may turn out the beginning of an
+unhappy marriage.  Who is this boy--what is he?  I know nothing of
+him.  How can I give her to him--it's impossible!  If they had been
+engaged some time and I knew something of him--yes, perhaps; even at
+her age.  But this hasty passionateness--it isn't right, it isn't
+decent.  I don't understand, I really don't--how a child like that
+can want it.  The fact is, she doesn't know what she's asking, poor
+little Nollie.  She can't know the nature of marriage, and she can't
+realise its sacredness.  If only her mother were here!  Talk to her,
+Thirza; you can say things that I can't!"
+
+Thirza looked after the retreating figure.  In spite of his cloth,
+perhaps a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child who had
+come to show her his sore finger.  And, having finished the
+arrangement of her flowers, she went out to find her niece.  She had
+not far to go; for Noel was standing in the hall, quite evidently
+lying in wait.  They went out together to the avenue.
+
+The girl began at once:
+
+"It isn't any use talking to me, Auntie; Cyril is going to get a
+license."
+
+"Oh!  So you've made up your minds?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Do you think that's fair by me, Nollie?  Should I have asked him
+here if I'd thought this was going to happen?"
+
+Noel only smiled.
+
+"Have you the least idea what marriage means?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Of course.  Gratian is married.  Besides, at school--"
+
+"Your father is dead against it.  This is a sad thing for him.  He's
+a perfect saint, and you oughtn't to hurt him.  Can't you wait, at
+least till Cyril's next leave?"
+
+"He might never have one, you see."
+
+The heart of her whose boys were out there too, and might also never
+have another leave; could not but be responsive to those words.  She
+looked at her niece, and a dim appreciation of this revolt of life
+menaced by death, of youth threatened with extinction, stirred in
+her.  Noel's teeth were clenched, her lips drawn back, and she was
+staring in front of her.
+
+"Daddy oughtn't to mind.  Old people haven't to fight, and get
+killed; they oughtn't to mind us taking what we can.  They've had
+their good time."
+
+It was such a just little speech that Thirza answered:
+
+"Yes; perhaps he hasn't quite realised that."
+
+"I want to make sure of Cyril, Auntie; I want everything I can have
+with him while there's the chance.  I don't think it's much to ask,
+when perhaps I'll never have any more of him again."
+
+Thirza slipped her hand through the girl's arm.
+
+"I understand," she said.  "Only, Nollie, suppose, when all this is
+over, and we breathe and live naturally once more, you found you'd
+made a mistake?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "I haven't."
+
+"We all think that, my dear; but thousands of mistakes are made by
+people who no more dream they're making them than you do now; and
+then it's a very horrible business.  It would be especially horrible
+for you; your father believes heart and soul in marriage being for
+ever."
+
+"Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes, you
+know.  Besides, I'm not making a mistake, Auntie! I love Cyril ever
+so."
+
+Thirza gave her waist a squeeze.
+
+"You mustn't make a mistake.  We love you too much, Nollie.  I wish
+we had Gratian here."
+
+"Gratian would back me up," said Noel; "she knows what the war is.
+And you ought to, Auntie.  If Rex or Harry wanted to be married, I'm
+sure you'd never oppose them.  And they're no older than Cyril.  You
+must understand what it means to me Auntie dear, to feel that we
+belong to each other properly before--before it all begins for him,
+and--and there may be no more.  Daddy doesn't realise.  I know he's
+awfully good, but--he's forgotten."
+
+"My dear, I think he remembers only too well.  He was desperately
+attached to your mother."
+
+Noel clenched her hands.
+
+"Was he?  Well, so am I to Cyril, and he to me.  We wouldn't be
+unreasonable if it wasn't--wasn't necessary.  Talk, to Cyril, Auntie;
+then you'll understand.  There he is; only, don't keep him long,
+because I want him.  Oh! Auntie; I want him so badly!"
+
+She turned; and slipped back into the house; and Thirza, conscious of
+having been decoyed to this young man, who stood there with his arms
+folded, like Napoleon before a battle, smiled and said:
+
+"Well, Cyril, so you've betrayed me!"
+
+Even in speaking she was conscious of the really momentous change in
+this sunburnt, blue-eyed, lazily impudent youth since the day he
+arrived, three weeks ago, in their little wagonette.  He took her
+arm, just as Noel had, and made her sit down beside him on the rustic
+bench, where he had evidently been told to wait.
+
+"You see, Mrs.  Pierson," he said, "it's not as if Noel were an
+ordinary girl in an ordinary time, is it?  Noel is the sort of girl
+one would knock one's brains out for; and to send me out there
+knowing that I could have been married to her and wasn't, will take
+all the heart out of me.  Of course I mean to come back, but chaps do
+get knocked over, and I think it's cruel that we can't take what we
+can while we can.  Besides, I've got money; and that would be hers
+anyway.  So, do be a darling, won't you?"  He put his arm round her
+waist, just as if he had been her son, and her heart, which wanted
+her own boys so badly, felt warmed within her.
+
+"You see, I don't know Mr. Pierson, but he seems awfully gentle and
+jolly, and if he could see into me he wouldn't mind, I know.  We
+don't mind risking our lives and all that, but we do think we ought
+to have the run of them while we're alive.  I'll give him my dying
+oath or anything, that I could never change towards Noel, and she'll
+do the same.  Oh!  Mrs.  Pierson, do be a jolly brick, and put in a
+word for me, quick!  We've got so few days!"
+
+"But, my dear boy," said Thirza feebly, "do you think it's fair to
+such a child as Noel?"
+
+"Yes, I do.  You don't understand; she's simply had to grow up.  She
+is grown-up--all in this week; she's quite as old as I am, really--
+and I'm twenty-two.  And you know it's going to be--it's got to be
+--a young world, from now on; people will begin doing things much
+earlier.  What's the use of pretending it's like what it was, and
+being cautious, and all that?  If I'm going to be killed, I think
+we've got a right to be married first; and if I'm not, then what does
+it matter?"
+
+"You've known each other twenty-one days, Cyril."
+
+"No; twenty-one years!  Every day's a year when   Oh!  Mrs.  Pierson,
+this isn't like you, is it?  You never go to meet trouble, do you?"
+
+At that shrewd remark, Thirza put her hand on the hand which still
+clasped her waist, and pressed it closer.
+
+"Well, my dear," she said softly, "we must see what can be done."
+
+Cyril Morland kissed her cheek.  "I will bless you for ever," he
+said.  "I haven't got any people, you know, except my two sisters."
+
+And something like tears started up on Thirza's eyelashes.  They
+seemed to her like the babes in the wood--those two!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+In the dining-room of her father's house in that old London Square
+between East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor garb of a nurse,
+was writing a telegram: "Reverend Edward Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern,
+Monmouthshire.  George terribly ill.  Please come if you can.
+Gratian."  Giving it to a maid, she took off her long coat and sat
+down for a moment.  She had been travelling all night, after a full
+day's work, and had only just arrived, to find her husband between
+life and death.  She was very different from Noel; not quite so tall,
+but of a stronger build; with dark chestnut-coloured hair, clear
+hazel eyes, and a broad brow.  The expression of her face was
+earnest, with a sort of constant spiritual enquiry; and a singularly
+truthful look: She was just twenty; and of the year that she had been
+married, had only spent six weeks with her husband; they had not even
+a house of their own as yet.  After resting five minutes, she passed
+her hand vigorously over her face, threw back her head, and walked up
+stairs to the room where he lay.  He was not conscious, and there was
+nothing to be done but sit and watch him.
+
+'If he dies,' she thought, 'I shall hate God for His cruelty.  I have
+had six weeks with George; some people have sixty years.' She fixed
+her eyes on his face, short and broad, with bumps of "observation" on
+the brows.  He had been sunburnt.  The dark lashes of his closed eyes
+lay on deathly yellow cheeks; his thick hair grew rather low on his
+broad forehead.  The lips were just open and showed strong white
+teeth.  He had a little clipped moustache, and hair had grown on his
+clean-cut jaw.  His pyjama jacket had fallen open.  Gratian drew it
+close.  It was curiously still, for a London day, though the window
+was wide open.  Anything to break this heavy stupor, which was not
+only George's, but her own, and the very world's!  The cruelty of it
+--when she might be going to lose him for ever, in a few hours or
+days!  She thought of their last parting.  It had not been very
+loving, had come too soon after one of those arguments they were
+inclined to have, in which they could not as yet disagree with
+suavity.  George had said there was no future life for the
+individual; she had maintained there was.  They had grown hot and
+impatient.  Even in the cab on the way to his train they had pursued
+the wretched discussion, and the last kiss had been from lips on lips
+yet warm from disagreement.
+
+Ever since, as if in compunction, she had been wavering towards his
+point of view; and now, when he was perhaps to solve the problem--
+find out for certain--she had come to feel that if he died, she would
+never see him after.  It was cruel that such a blight should have
+come on her belief at this, of all moments.
+
+She laid her hand on his.  It was warm, felt strong, although so
+motionless and helpless.  George was so vigorous, so alive, and
+strong-willed; it seemed impossible that life might be going to play
+him false.  She recalled the unflinching look of his steel-bright
+eyes, his deep, queerly vibrating voice, which had no trace of self-
+consciousness or pretence.  She slipped her hand on to his heart, and
+began very slowly, gently rubbing it.  He, as doctor, and she, as
+nurse, had both seen so much of death these last two years!  Yet it
+seemed suddenly as if she had never seen death, and that the young
+faces she had seen, empty and white, in the hospital wards, had just
+been a show.  Death would appear to her for the first time, if this
+face which she loved were to be drained for ever of light and colour
+and movement and meaning.
+
+A humblebee from the Square Garden boomed in and buzzed idly round
+the room.  She caught her breath in a little sob....
+
+
+
+2
+
+Pierson received that telegram at midday, returning from a lonely
+walk after his talk with Thirza.  Coming from Gratian so self-
+reliant--it meant the worst.  He prepared at once to catch the next
+train.  Noel was out, no one knew where: so with a sick feeling he
+wrote:
+
+"DEAREST CHILD,
+
+"I am going up to Gratian; poor George is desperately ill.  If it
+goes badly you should be with your sister.  I will wire to-morrow
+morning early.  I leave you in your aunt's hands, my dear.  Be
+reasonable and patient.  God bless you.
+
+"Your devoted
+
+"DADDY."
+
+
+He was alone in his third-class compartment, and, leaning forward,
+watched the ruined Abbey across the river till it was out of sight.
+Those old monks had lived in an age surely not so sad as this.  They
+must have had peaceful lives, remote down here, in days when the
+Church was great and lovely, and men laid down their lives for their
+belief in her, and built everlasting fanes to the glory of God!  What
+a change to this age of rush and hurry, of science, trade, material
+profit, and this terrible war!  He tried to read his paper, but it
+was full of horrors and hate.  'When will it end?' he thought.  And
+the train with its rhythmic jolting seemed grinding out the answer:
+"Never--never!"
+
+At Chepstow a soldier got in, followed by a woman with a very flushed
+face and curious, swimmy eyes; her hair was in disorder, and her lip
+bleeding, as if she had bitten it through.  The soldier, too, looked
+strained and desperate.  They sat down, far apart, on the seat
+opposite.  Pierson, feeling that he was in their way, tried to hide
+himself behind his paper; when he looked again, the soldier had taken
+off his tunic and cap and was leaning out of the window.  The woman,
+on the seat's edge, sniffing and wiping her face, met his glance with
+resentful eyes, then, getting up, she pulled the man's sleeve.
+
+"Sit dahn; don't 'ang out o' there."
+
+The soldier flung himself back on the seat and looked at Pierson.
+
+"The wife an' me's 'ad a bit of a row," he said companionably.  "Gits
+on me nerves; I'm not used to it.  She was in a raid, and 'er nerves
+are all gone funny; ain't they, old girl?  Makes me feel me 'ead.
+I've been wounded there, you know; can't stand much now.  I might do
+somethin' if she was to go on like this for long."
+
+Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resentfully.
+The soldier held out a packet of cigarettes.  "Take one," he said.
+Pierson took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted him to speak,
+murmured: "We all have these troubles with those we're fond of; the
+fonder we are of people, the more we feel them, don't we?  I had one
+with my daughter last night."
+
+"Ah!"  said the soldier; "that's right.  The wife and me'll make it
+up.  'Ere, come orf it, old girl."
+
+>From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds of
+reconciliation--reproaches because someone had been offered a drink,
+kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse.  When they got out at
+Bristol the soldier shook his hand warmly, but the woman still gave
+him her resentful stare, and he thought dreamily: 'The war!  How it
+affects everyone!'  His carriage was invaded by a swarm of soldiers,
+and the rest of the journey was passed in making himself small.  When
+at last he reached home, Gratian met him in the hall.
+
+"Just the same.  The doctor says we shall know in a few hours now.
+How sweet of you to come!  You must be tired, in this heat.  It was
+dreadful to spoil your holiday."
+
+"My dear!  As if   May I go up and see him?"
+
+George Laird was still lying in that stupor.  And Pierson stood
+gazing down at him compassionately.  Like most parsons, he had a wide
+acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellowship
+with death.  Death!  The commonest thing in the world, now--commoner
+than life!  This young doctor must have seen many die in these last
+two years, saved many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift
+a finger to save himself.  Pierson looked at his daughter; what a
+strong, promising young couple they were!  And putting his arm round
+her, he led her away to the sofa, whence they could see the sick man.
+
+"If he dies, Dad--" she whispered.
+
+"He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as ever our
+soldiers do."
+
+"I know; but that's no comfort.  I've been watching here all day;
+I've been thinking; men will be just as brutal afterwards--more
+brutal.  The world will go on the same."
+
+"We must hope not.  Shall we pray, Gracie?"
+
+Gratian shook her head.
+
+"If I could believe that the world--if I could believe anything!
+I've lost the power, Dad; I don't even believe in a future life.  If
+George dies, we shall never meet again."
+
+Pierson stared at her without a word.
+
+Gratian went on: "The last time we talked, I was angry with George
+because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want belief, I
+feel that he was right."
+
+Pierson said tremulously:
+
+"No, no, my dear; it's only that you're overwrought.  God in His
+mercy will give you back belief."
+
+"There is no God, Dad"
+
+"My darling child, what are you saying?"
+
+"No God who can help us; I feel it.  If there were any God who could
+take part in our lives, alter anything without our will, knew or
+cared what we did--He wouldn't let the world go on as it does."
+
+"But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable.  We dare not say He
+should not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He is
+working."
+
+"Then He's no good to us.  It's the same as if He didn't exist.  Why
+should I pray for George's life to One whose ends are just His own?
+I know George oughtn't to die.  If there's a God who can help, it
+will be a wicked shame if George dies; if there's a God who can help,
+it's a wicked shame when babies die, and all these millions of poor
+boys.  I would rather think there's no God than a helpless or a
+wicked God--"
+
+Her father had suddenly thrown up his hands to his ears.  She moved
+closer, and put her arm round him.
+
+"Dad dear, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to hurt you."
+
+Pierson pressed her face down to his shoulder; and said in a dull
+voice:
+
+"What do you think would have happened to me, Gracie, if I had lost
+belief when your mother died?  I have never lost belief.  Pray God I
+never shall!"
+
+Gratian murmured:
+
+"George would not wish me to pretend I believe--he would want me to
+be honest.  If I'm not honest, I shan't deserve that he should live.
+I don't believe, and I can't pray."
+
+"My darling, you're overtired."
+
+"No, Dad."  She raised her head from his shoulder and, clasping her
+hands round her knees, looked straight before her.  "We can only help
+ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel."
+
+Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could say
+would touch her just then.  The sick man's face was hardly visible
+now in the twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed.  She stood
+looking down at him a long time.
+
+"Go and rest, Dad; the doctor's coming again at eleven.  I'll call
+you if I want anything.  I shall lie down a little, beside him."
+
+Pierson kissed her, and went out.  To lie there beside him would be
+the greatest comfort she could get.  He went to the bare narrow
+little room he had occupied ever since his wife died; and, taking off
+his boots, walked up and down, with a feeling of almost crushing
+loneliness.  Both his daughters in such trouble, and he of no use to
+them!  It was as if Life were pushing him utterly aside!  He felt
+confused, helpless, bewildered.  Surely if Gratian loved George, she
+had not left God's side, whatever she might say.  Then, conscious of
+the profound heresy of this thought, he stood still at the open
+window.
+
+Earthly love--heavenly love; was there any analogy between them?
+
+>From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves
+answered; and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly tale
+of murder.
+
+
+
+3
+
+George Laird passed the crisis of his illness that night, and in the
+morning was pronounced out of danger.  He had a splendid
+constitution, and--Scotsman on his father's side--a fighting
+character.  He came back to life very weak, but avid of recovery; and
+his first words were: "I've been hanging over the edge, Gracie!"
+
+A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch, the
+merest fraction of an inch more, and over he would have gone.  Deuced
+rum sensation!  But not so horrible as it would have been in real
+life.  With the slip of that last inch he felt he would have passed
+at once into oblivion, without the long horror of a fall.  So this
+was what it was for all the poor fellows he had seen slip in the past
+two years!  Mercifully, at the end, one was not alive enough to be
+conscious of what one was leaving, not alive enough even to care.  If
+he had been able to take in the presence of his young wife, able to
+realise that he was looking at her face, touching her for the last
+time--it would have been hell; if he had been up to realising
+sunlight, moonlight, the sound of the world's life outside, the
+softness of the bed he lay on--it would have meant the most poignant
+anguish of defraudment.  Life was a rare good thing, and to be
+squashed out of it with your powers at full, a wretched mistake in
+Nature's arrangements, a wretched villainy on the part of Man--for
+his own death, like all those other millions of premature deaths,
+would have been due to the idiocy and brutality of men!  He could
+smile now, with Gratian looking down at him, but the experience had
+heaped fuel on a fire which had always smouldered in his doctor's
+soul against that half emancipated breed of apes, the human race.
+Well, now he would get a few days off from his death-carnival!  And
+he lay, feasting his returning senses on his wife.  She made a pretty
+nurse, and his practised eye judged her a good one--firm and quiet.
+
+George Laird was thirty.  At the opening of the war he was in an
+East-End practice, and had volunteered at once for service with the
+Army.  For the first nine months he had been right up in the thick of
+it.  A poisoned arm; rather than the authorities, had sent him home.
+During that leave he married Gratian.  He had known the Piersons some
+time; and, made conscious of the instability of life, had resolved to
+marry her at the first chance he got.  For his father-in-law he had
+respect and liking, ever mixed with what was not quite contempt and
+not quite pity.  The blend of authority with humility, cleric with
+dreamer, monk with artist, mystic with man of action, in Pierson,
+excited in him an interested, but often irritated, wonder.  He saw
+things so differently himself, and had little of the humorous
+curiosity which enjoys what is strange simply because it is strange.
+They could never talk together without soon reaching a point when he
+wanted to say: "If we're not to trust our reason and our senses for
+what they're worth, sir--will you kindly tell me what we are to
+trust?  How can we exert them to the utmost in some matters, and in
+others suddenly turn our backs on them?"  Once, in one of their
+discussions, which often bordered on acrimony, he had expounded
+himself at length.
+
+"I grant," he had said, "that there's a great ultimate Mystery, that
+we shall never know anything for certain about the origin of life and
+the principle of the Universe; but why should we suddenly shut up our
+enquiring apparatus and deny all the evidence of our reason--say,
+about the story of Christ, or the question of a future life, or our
+moral code?  If you want me to enter a temple of little mysteries,
+leaving my reason and senses behind--as a Mohammedan leaves his
+shoes--it won't do to say to me simply: 'There it is! Enter!' You
+must show me the door; and you can't!  And I'll tell you why, sir.
+Because in your brain there's a little twist which is not in mine, or
+the lack of a little twist which is in mine.  Nothing more than that
+divides us into the two main species of mankind, one of whom
+worships, and one of whom doesn't.  Oh, yes! I know; you won't admit
+that, because it makes your religions natural instead of what you
+call supernatural.  But I assure you there's nothing more to it.
+Your eyes look up or they look down--they never look straight before
+them.  Well, mine do just the opposite."
+
+That day Pierson had been feeling very tired, and though to meet this
+attack was vital, he had been unable to meet it.  His brain had
+stammered.  He had turned a little away, leaning his cheek on his
+hand, as if to cover that momentary break in his defences.  Some days
+later he had said:
+
+"I am able now to answer your questions, George.  I think I can make
+you understand."
+
+Laird had answered: "All right, sir; go ahead."
+
+"You begin by assuming that the human reason is the final test of all
+things.  What right have you to assume that?  Suppose you were an
+ant.  You would take your ant's reason as the final test, wouldn't
+you?  Would that be the truth?"  And a smile had fixed itself on his
+lips above his little grave beard.
+
+George Laird also had smiled.
+
+"That seems a good point, sir," he said, "until you recognise that I
+don't take, the human reason as final test in any absolute sense.  I
+only say it's the highest test we can apply; and that, behind that
+test all is quite dark and unknowable."
+
+"Revelation, then, means nothing to you?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"I don't think we can usefully go on, George."
+
+"I don't think we can, sir.  In talking with you, I always feel like
+fighting a man with one hand tied behind his back."
+
+"And I, perhaps, feel that I am arguing with one who was blind from
+birth."
+
+For all that, they had often argued since; but never without those
+peculiar smiles coming on their faces.  Still, they respected each
+other, and Pierson had not opposed his daughter's marriage to this
+heretic, whom he knew to be an honest and trustworthy man.  It had
+taken place before Laird's arm was well, and the two had snatched a
+month's honeymoon before he went back to France, and she to her
+hospital in Manchester.  Since then, just one February fortnight by
+the sea had been all their time together....
+
+In the afternoon he had asked for beef tea, and, having drunk a cup,
+said:
+
+"I've got something to tell your father."
+
+But warned by the pallor of his smiling lips, Gratian answered:
+
+"Tell me first, George."
+
+"Our last talk, Gracie; well--there's nothing--on the other side.  I
+looked over; it's as black as your hat."
+
+Gratian shivered.
+
+"I know.  While you were lying here last night, I told father."
+
+He squeezed her hand, and said: "I also want to tell him."
+
+"Dad will say the motive for life is gone."
+
+"I say it leaps out all the more, Gracie.  What a mess we make of it
+--we angel-apes!  When shall we be men, I wonder?  You and I, Gracie,
+will fight for a decent life for everybody.  No hands-upping about
+that!  Bend down!  It's good to touch you again; everything's good.
+I'm going to have a sleep...."
+
+After the relief of the doctor's report in the early morning Pierson
+had gone through a hard struggle.  What should he wire to Noel?  He
+longed to get her back home, away from temptation to the burning
+indiscretion of this marriage.  But ought he to suppress reference to
+George's progress?  Would that be honest?  At last he sent this
+telegram: "George out of danger but very weak.  Come up."
+By the afternoon post, however, he received a letter from Thirza:
+
+"I have had two long talks with Noel and Cyril.  It is impossible to
+budge them.  And I really think, dear Edward, that it will be a
+mistake to oppose it rigidly.  He may not go out as soon as we think.
+How would it be to consent to their having banns published?--that
+would mean another three weeks anyway, and in absence from each other
+they might be influenced to put it off.  I'm afraid this is the only
+chance, for if you simply forbid it, I feel they will run off and get
+married somewhere at a registrar's."
+
+Pierson took this letter out with him into the Square Garden, for
+painful cogitation.  No man can hold a position of spiritual
+authority for long years without developing the habit of judgment.
+He judged Noel's conduct to be headlong and undisciplined, and the
+vein of stubbornness in his character fortified the father and the
+priest within him.  Thirza disappointed him; she did not seem to see
+the irretrievable gravity of this hasty marriage.  She seemed to look
+on it as something much lighter than it was, to consider that it
+might be left to Chance, and that if Chance turned out unfavourable,
+there would still be a way out.  To him there would be no way out.
+He looked up at the sky, as if for inspiration.  It was such a
+beautiful day, and so bitter to hurt his child, even for her good!
+What would her mother have advised?  Surely Agnes had felt at least
+as deeply as himself the utter solemnity of marriage!  And, sitting
+there in the sunlight, he painfully hardened his heart.  He must do
+what he thought right, no matter what the consequences.  So he went
+in and wrote that he could not agree, and wished Noel to come back
+home at once.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+But on the same afternoon, just about that hour, Noel was sitting on
+the river-bank with her arms folded tight across her chest, and by
+her side Cyril Morland, with despair in his face, was twisting a
+telegram "Rejoin tonight.  Regiment leaves to-morrow."
+
+What consolation that a million such telegrams had been read and
+sorrowed over these last two years!  What comfort that the sun was
+daily blotted dim for hundreds of bright eyes; the joy of life poured
+out and sopped up by the sands of desolation!
+
+"How long have we got, Cyril?"
+
+"I've engaged a car from the Inn, so I needn't leave till midnight.
+I've packed already, to have more time."
+
+"Let's have it to ourselves, then.  Let's go off somewhere.  I've got
+some chocolate."
+
+Morland answered miserably:
+
+"I can send the car up here for my things, and have it pick me up at
+the Inn, if you'll say goodbye to them for me, afterwards.  We'll
+walk down the line, then we shan't meet anyone."
+
+And in the bright sunlight they walked hand in hand on each side of a
+shining rail.  About six they reached the Abbey.
+
+"Let's get a boat," said Noel.  "We can come back here when it's
+moonlight.  I know a way of getting in, after the gate's shut."
+
+They hired a boat, rowed over to the far bank, and sat on the stern
+seat, side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep
+green by the high woods.  If they talked, it was but a word of love
+now and then, or to draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a
+dragon-fly.  What use making plans--for lovers the chief theme?
+Longing paralysed their brains.  They could do nothing but press
+close to each other, their hands enlaced, their lips meeting now and
+then.  On Noel's face was a strange fixed stillness, as if she were
+waiting--expecting!  They ate their chocolates.  The sun set, dew
+began to fall; the river changed, and grew whiter; the sky paled to
+the colour of an amethyst; shadows lengthened, dissolved slowly.  It
+was past nine already; a water-rat came out, a white owl flew over
+the river, towards the Abbey.  The moon had come up, but shed no
+light as yet.  They saw no beauty in all this--too young, too
+passionate, too unhappy.
+
+Noel said: "When she's over those trees, Cyril, let's go.  It'll be
+half dark."
+
+They waited, watching the moon, which crept with infinite slowness up
+and up, brightening ever so little every minute.
+
+"Now!"  said Noel.  And Morland rowed across.
+
+They left the boat, and she led the way past an empty cottage, to a
+shed with a roof sloping up to the Abbey's low outer wall.
+
+"We can get over here," she whispered.
+
+They clambered up, and over, to a piece of grassy courtyard, and
+passed on to an inner court, under the black shadow of the high
+walls.
+
+"What's the time?"  said Noel.
+
+"Half-past ten."
+
+"Already!  Let's sit here in the dark, and watch for the moon."
+
+They sat down close together.  Noel's face still had on it that
+strange look of waiting; and Morland sat obedient, with his hand on
+her heart, and his own heart beating almost to suffocation.  They
+sat, still as mice, and the moon crept up.  It laid a first vague
+greyness on the high wall, which spread slowly down, and brightened
+till the lichen and the grasses up there were visible; then crept on,
+silvering the dark above their heads.  Noel pulled his sleeve, and
+whispered: "See!"  There came the white owl, soft as a snowflake,
+drifting across in that unearthly light, as if flying to the moon.
+And just then the top of the moon itself looked over the wall, a
+shaving of silvery gold.  It grew, became a bright spread fan, then
+balanced there, full and round, the colour of pale honey.
+
+"Ours!" Noel whispered.
+
+
+
+2
+
+>From the side of the road Noel listened till the sound of the car was
+lost in the folds of the valley.  She did not cry, but passed her
+hands over her face, and began to walk home, keeping to the shadow of
+the trees.  How many years had been added to her age in those six
+hours since the telegram came!  Several times in that mile and a half
+she stepped into a patch of brighter moonlight, to take out and kiss
+a little photograph, then slip it back next her heart, heedless that
+so warm a place must destroy any effigy.  She felt not the faintest
+compunction for the recklessness of her love--it was her only comfort
+against the crushing loneliness of the night.  It kept her up, made
+her walk on with a sort of pride, as if she had got the best of Fate.
+He was hers for ever now, in spite of anything that could be done.
+She did not even think what she would say when she got in.  She came
+to the avenue, and passed up it still in a sort of dream.  Her uncle
+was standing before the porch; she could hear his mutterings.  She
+moved out of the shadow of the trees, went straight up to him, and,
+looking in his perturbed face, said calmly:
+
+"Cyril asked me to say good-bye to you all, Uncle.  Good night!"
+
+"But, I say, Nollie look here you !"
+
+She had passed on.  She went up to her room.  There, by the door, her
+aunt was standing, and would have kissed her.  She drew back:
+
+"No, Auntie.  Not to-night!"  And, slipping by, she locked her door.
+
+Bob and Thirza Pierson, meeting in their own room, looked at each
+other askance.  Relief at their niece's safe return was confused by
+other emotions.  Bob Pierson expressed his first:
+
+"Phew!  I was beginning to think we should w have to drag the river.
+What girls are coming to!"
+
+"It's the war, Bob."
+
+"I didn't like her face, old girl.  I don't know what it was, but I
+didn't like her face."
+
+Neither did Thirza, but she would not admit it, and encourage Bob to
+take it to heart.  He took things so hardly, and with such a noise!
+
+She only said: "Poor young things!  I suppose it will be a relief to
+Edward!"
+
+"I love Nollie!" said Bob Pierson suddenly.  "She's an affectionate
+creature.  D-nit, I'm sorry about this.  It's not so bad for young
+Morland; he's got the excitement--though I shouldn't like to be
+leaving Nollie, if I were young again.  Thank God, neither of our
+boys is engaged.  By George! when I think of them out there, and
+myself here, I feel as if the top of my head would come off.  And
+those politician chaps spouting away in every country--how they can
+have the cheek!"
+
+Thirza looked at him anxiously.
+
+"And no dinner!" he said suddenly.  "What d'you think they've been
+doing with themselves ?"
+
+"Holding each other's hands, poor dears!  D'you know what time it is,
+Bob?  Nearly one o'clock."
+
+"Well, all I can say is, I've had a wretched evening.  Get to bed,
+old girl.  You'll be fit for nothing."
+
+He was soon asleep, but Thirza lay awake, not exactly worrying, for
+that was not her nature, but seeing Noel's face, pale, languid,
+passionate, possessed by memory.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+Noel reached her father's house next day late in the afternoon.
+There was a letter in the hall for her.  She tore it open, and read:
+
+"MY DARLING LOVE,
+
+"I got back all right, and am posting this at once to tell you we
+shall pass through London, and go from Charing Cross, I expect about
+nine o'clock to-night.  I shall look out for you, there, in case you
+are up in time.  Every minute I think of you, and of last night.  Oh!
+Noel!
+
+"Your devoted lover,
+"C."
+
+
+She looked at the wrist-watch which, like every other little patriot,
+she possessed.  Past seven!  If she waited, Gratian or her father
+would seize on her.
+
+"Take my things up, Dinah.  I've got a headache from travelling; I'm
+going to walk it off.  Perhaps I shan't be in till past nine or so.
+Give my love to them all."
+
+"Oh, Miss Noel, you can't,--"
+
+But Noel was gone.  She walked towards Charing Cross; and, to kill
+time, went into a restaurant and had that simple repast, coffee and a
+bun, which those in love would always take if Society did not
+forcibly feed them on other things.  Food was ridiculous to her.  She
+sat there in the midst of a perfect hive of creatures eating
+hideously.  The place was shaped like a modern prison, having tiers
+of gallery round an open space, and in the air was the smell of
+viands and the clatter of plates and the music of a band.  Men in
+khaki everywhere, and Noel glanced from form to form to see if by
+chance one might be that which represented, for her, Life and the
+British Army.  At half-past eight she went out and made her way:
+through the crowd, still mechanically searching "khaki" for what she
+wanted; and it was perhaps fortunate that there was about her face
+and walk something which touched people.  At the station she went up
+to an old porter, and, putting a shilling into his astonished hand,
+asked him to find out for her whence Morland's regiment would start.
+He came back presently, and said:
+
+"Come with me, miss."
+
+Noel went.  He was rather lame, had grey whiskers, and a ghostly thin
+resemblance to her uncle Bob, which perhaps had been the reason why
+she had chosen him.  64
+
+"Brother goin' out, miss?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Ah!  It's a crool war.  I shan't be sorry when it's over.  Goin' out
+and comin' in, we see some sad sights 'ere.  Wonderful spirit they've
+got, too.  I never look at the clock now but what I think: 'There you
+go, slow-coach!  I'd like to set you on to the day the boys come
+back!'  When I puts a bag in: 'Another for 'ell" I thinks.  And so it
+is, miss, from all I can 'ear.  I've got a son out there meself.
+It's 'ere they'll come along.  You stand quiet and keep a lookout,
+and you'll get a few minutes with him when he's done with 'is men.  I
+wouldn't move, if I were you; he'll come to you, all right--can't
+miss you, there."  And, looking at her face, he thought: 'Astonishin'
+what a lot o' brothers go.  Wot oh!  Poor little missy!  A little
+lady, too.  Wonderful collected she is.  It's 'ard!'  And trying to
+find something consoling to say, he mumbled out: "You couldn't be in
+a better place for seen'im off.  Good night, miss; anything else I
+can do for you?"
+
+"No, thank you; you're very kind."
+
+He looked back once or twice at her blue-clad figure standing very
+still.  He had left her against a little oasis of piled-up empty
+milk-cans, far down the platform where a few civilians in similar
+case were scattered.  The trainway was empty as yet.  In the grey
+immensity of the station and the turmoil of its noise, she felt
+neither lonely nor conscious of others waiting; too absorbed in the
+one thought of seeing him and touching him again.  The empty train
+began backing in, stopped, and telescoped with a series of little
+clattering bangs, backed on again, and subsided to rest.  Noel turned
+her eyes towards the station arch ways.  Already she felt tremulous,
+as though the regiment were sending before it the vibration of its
+march.
+
+She had not as yet seen a troop-train start, and vague images of
+brave array, of a flag fluttering, and the stir of drums, beset her.
+Suddenly she saw a brown swirling mass down there at the very edge,
+out of which a thin brown trickle emerged towards her; no sound of
+music, no waved flag.  She had a longing to rush down to the barrier,
+but remembering the words of the porter, stayed where she was, with
+her hands tightly squeezed together.  The trickle became a stream, a
+flood, the head of which began to reach her.  With a turbulence of
+voices, sunburnt men, burdened up to the nose, passed, with rifles
+jutting at all angles; she strained her eyes, staring into that
+stream as one might into a walking wood, to isolate a single tree.
+Her head reeled with the strain of it, and the effort to catch his
+voice among the hubbub of all those cheery, common, happy-go-lucky
+sounds.  Some who saw her clucked their tongues, some went by silent,
+others seemed to scan her as though she might be what they were
+looking for.  And ever the stream and the hubbub melted into the
+train, and yet came pouring on.  And still she waited motionless,
+with an awful fear.  How could he ever find her, or she him?  Then
+she saw that others of those waiting had found their men.  And the
+longing to rush up and down the platform almost overcame her; but
+still she waited.  And suddenly she saw him with two other officer
+boys, close to the carriages, coming slowly down towards her.  She
+stood with her eyes fixed on his face; they passed, and she nearly
+cried out.  Then he turned, broke away from the other two, and came
+straight to her.  He had seen her before she had seen him.  He was
+very flushed, had a little fixed frown between his blue eyes and a
+set jaw.  They stood looking at each other, their hands hard gripped;
+all the emotion of last night welling up within them, so that to
+speak would have been to break down.  The milk-cans formed a kind of
+shelter, and they stood so close together that none could see their
+faces.  Noel was the first to master her power of speech; her words
+came out, dainty as ever, through trembling lips:
+
+"Write to me as much as ever you can, Cyril.  I'm going to be a nurse
+at once.  And the first leave you get, I shall come to you--don't
+forget."
+
+"Forget!  Move a little back, darling; they can't see us here.  Kiss
+me!"  She moved back, thrust her face forward so that he need not
+stoop, and put her lips up to his.  Then, feeling that she might
+swoon and fall over among the cans, she withdrew her mouth, leaving
+her forehead against his lips.  He murmured:
+
+"Was it all right when you got in last night?"
+
+"Yes; I said good-bye for you."
+
+"Oh!  Noel--I've been afraid--I oughtn't--I oughtn't--"
+
+"Yes, yes; nothing can take you from me now."
+
+"You have got pluck.  More than!"
+
+Along whistle sounded.  Morland grasped her hands convulsively:
+
+"Good-bye, my little wife!  Don't fret.  Goodbye!  I must go.  God
+bless you, Noel!"
+
+"I love you."
+
+They looked at each other, just another moment, then she took her
+hands from his and stood back in the shadow of the milk-cans, rigid,
+following him with her eyes till he was lost in the train.
+
+Every carriage window was full of those brown figures and red-brown
+faces, hands were waving vaguely, voices calling vaguely, here and
+there one cheered; someone leaning far out started to sing: "If auld
+acquaintance--"  But Noel stood quite still in the shadow of the
+milk-cans, her lips drawn in, her hands hard clenched in front of
+her; and young Morland at his window gazed back at her.
+
+
+
+2
+
+How she came to be sitting in Trafalgar Square she did not know.
+Tears had formed a mist between her and all that seething, summer-
+evening crowd.  Her eyes mechanically followed the wandering search-
+lights, those new milky ways, quartering the heavens and leading
+nowhere.  All was wonderfully beautiful, the sky a deep dark blue,
+the moonlight whitening the spire of St. Martin's, and everywhere
+endowing the great blacked-out buildings with dream-life.  Even the
+lions had come to life, and stared out over this moonlit desert of
+little human figures too small to be worth the stretching out of a
+paw.  She sat there, aching dreadfully, as if the longing of every
+bereaved heart in all the town had settled in her.  She felt it
+tonight a thousand times worse; for last night she had been drugged
+on the new sensation of love triumphantly fulfilled.  Now she felt as
+if life had placed her in the corner of a huge silent room, blown out
+the flame of joy, and locked the door.  A little dry sob came from
+her.  The hay-fields and Cyril, with shirt unbuttoned at the neck,
+pitching hay and gazing at her while she dabbled her fork in the thin
+leavings.  The bright river, and their boat grounded on the shallows,
+and the swallows flitting over them.  And that long dance, with the
+feel of his hand between her shoulder-blades!  Memories so sweet and
+sharp that she almost cried out.  She saw again their dark grassy
+courtyard in the Abbey, and the white owl flying over them.  The
+white owl!  Flying there again to-night, with no lovers on the grass
+below!  She could only picture Cyril now as a brown atom in that
+swirling brown flood of men, flowing to a huge brown sea.  Those
+cruel minutes on the platform, when she had searched and searched the
+walking wood for her, one tree, seemed to have burned themselves into
+her eyes.  Cyril was lost, she could not single him out, all blurred
+among those thousand other shapes.  And suddenly she thought: 'And I
+--I'm lost to him; he's never seen me at home, never seen me in
+London; he won't be able to imagine me.  It's all in the past, only
+the past--for both of us.  Is there anybody so unhappy?'  And the
+town's voices-wheels, and passing feet, whistles, talk, laughter-
+seemed to answer callously: 'Not one.'  She looked at her wrist-
+watch; like his, it had luminous hands: 'Half-past ten' was
+greenishly imprinted there.  She got up in dismay.  They would think
+she was lost, or run over, or something silly!  She could not find an
+empty taxi, and began to walk, uncertain of her way at night.  At
+last she stopped a policeman, and said:
+
+"Which is the way towards Bloomsbury, please?  I can't find a taxi."
+The man looked at her, and took time to think it over; then he said:
+
+"They're linin' up for the theatres," and looked at her again.
+Something seemed to move in his mechanism:
+
+"I'm goin' that way, miss.  If you like, you can step along with me."
+Noel stepped along.
+
+"The streets aren't what they ought to be," the policeman said.
+"What with the darkness, and the war turning the girls heads--you'd
+be surprised the number of them that comes out.  It's the soldiers,
+of course."
+
+Noel felt her cheeks burning.
+
+"I daresay you wouldn't have noticed it," the policeman went on: "but
+this war's a funny thing.  The streets are gayer and more crowded at
+night than I've ever seen them; it's a fair picnic all the time.
+What we're goin' to settle down to when peace comes, I don't know.  I
+suppose you find it quiet enough up your way, miss?"
+
+"Yes," said Noel; "quite quiet."
+
+"No soldiers up in Bloomsbury.  You got anyone in the Army, miss?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Ah!  It's anxious times for ladies.  What with the Zeps, and their
+brothers and all in France, it's 'arassin'.  I've lost a brother
+meself, and I've got a boy out there in the Garden of Eden; his
+mother carries on dreadful about him.  What we shall think of it when
+it's all over, I can't tell.  These Huns are a wicked tough lot!"
+
+Noel looked at him; a tall man, regular and orderly, with one of
+those perfectly decent faces so often seen in the London police.
+
+"I'm sorry you've lost someone," she said.  "I haven't lost anyone
+very near, yet."
+
+"Well, let's 'ope you won't, miss.  These times make you feel for
+others, an' that's something.  I've noticed a great change in folks
+you'd never think would feel for anyone.  And yet I've seen some
+wicked things too; we do, in the police.  Some of these English wives
+of aliens, and 'armless little German bakers, an' Austrians, and
+what-not: they get a crool time.  It's their misfortune, not their
+fault, that's what I think; and the way they get served--well, it
+makes you ashamed o' bein' English sometimes--it does straight: And
+the women are the worst.  I said to my wife only last night, I said:
+'They call themselves Christians,' I said, 'but for all the charity
+that's in 'em they might as well be Huns.' She couldn't see it-not
+she!'  Well, why do they drop bombs?' she says.  'What!'  I said,
+'those English wives and bakers drop bombs?  Don't be silly,' I said.
+'They're as innocent as we.'  It's the innocent that gets punished
+for the guilty.  'But they're all spies,' she says.  'Oh!' I said,
+'old lady!  Now really!  At your time of life!'  But there it is; you
+can't get a woman to see reason.  It's readin' the papers.  I often
+think they must be written by women--beggin' your pardon, miss--but
+reely, the 'ysterics and the 'atred--they're a fair knockout.  D'you
+find much hatred in your household, miss?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "No; my father's a clergyman, you see."
+
+"Ah!"  said the policeman.  And in the glance he bestowed on her
+could be seen an added respect.
+
+"Of course," he went on, "you're bound to have a sense of justice
+against these Huns; some of their ways of goin' on have been above
+the limit.  But what I always think is--of course I don't say these
+things--no use to make yourself unpopular--but to meself I often
+think: Take 'em man for man, and you'd find 'em much the same as we
+are, I daresay.  It's the vicious way they're brought up, of actin'
+in the mass, that's made 'em such a crool lot.  I see a good bit of
+crowds in my profession, and I've a very low opinion of them.  Crowds
+are the most blunderin' blighted things that ever was.  They're like
+an angry woman with a bandage over her eyes, an' you can't have
+anything more dangerous than that.  These Germans, it seems, are
+always in a crowd.  They get a state o' mind read out to them by Bill
+Kaser and all that bloody-minded lot, an' they never stop to think
+for themselves."
+
+"I suppose they'd be shot if they did," said Noel.
+
+"Well, there is that," said the policeman reflectively.  "They've
+brought discipline to an 'igh pitch, no doubt.  An' if you ask me,"--
+he lowered his voice till it was almost lost in his chin-strap,
+"we'll be runnin' 'em a good second 'ere, before long.  The things we
+'ave to protect now are gettin' beyond a joke.  There's the City
+against lights, there's the streets against darkness, there's the
+aliens, there's the aliens' shops, there's the Belgians, there's the
+British wives, there's the soldiers against the women, there's the
+women against the soldiers, there's the Peace Party, there's 'orses
+against croolty, there's a Cabinet Minister every now an' then; and
+now we've got these Conchies.  And, mind you, they haven't raised our
+pay; no war wages in the police.  So far as I can see, there's only
+one good result of the war--the burglaries are off.  But there again,
+you wait a bit and see if we don't have a prize crop of 'm, or my
+name's not 'Arris."
+
+"You must have an awfully exciting life!"  said Noel.
+
+The policeman looked down at her sideways, without lowering his face,
+as only a policeman can, and said indulgently:
+
+"We're used to it, you see; there's no excitement in what you're used
+to.  They find that in the trenches, I'm told.  Take our seamen--
+there's lots of 'em been blown up over and over again, and there they
+go and sign on again next day.  That's where the Germans make their
+mistake!  England in war-time!  I think a lot, you know, on my go;
+you can't 'elp it--the mind will work--an' the more I think, the more
+I see the fightin' spirit in the people.  We don't make a fuss about
+it like Bill Kaser.  But you watch a little shopman, one o' those
+fellows who's had his house bombed; you watch the way he looks at the
+mess--sort of disgusted.  You watch his face, and you see he's got
+his teeth into it.  You watch one of our Tommies on 'is crutches,
+with the sweat pourin' off his forehead an' 'is eyes all strainy,
+stumpin' along--that gives you an idea!  I pity these Peace fellows,
+reely I pity them; they don't know what they're up against.  I expect
+there's times when you wish you was a man, don't you, miss?  I'm sure
+there's times when I feel I'd like to go in the trenches.  That's the
+worst o' my job; you can't be a human bein'--not in the full sense of
+the word.  You mustn't let your passions rise, you mustn't drink, you
+mustn't talk; it's a narrow walk o' life.  Well, here you are, miss;
+your Square's the next turnin' to the right.  Good night and thank
+you for your conversation."
+
+Noel held out her hand.  "Good night!"  she said.
+
+The policeman took her hand with a queer, flattered embarrassment.
+
+"Good night, miss," he said again.  "I see you've got a trouble; and
+I'm sure I hope it'll turn out for the best."
+
+Noel gave his huge hand a squeeze; her eyes had filled with tears,
+and she turned quickly up towards the Square, where a dark figure was
+coming towards her, in whom she recognised her father.  His face was
+worn and harassed; he walked irresolutely, like a man who has lost
+something.
+
+"Nollie!" he said.  "Thank God!"  In his voice was an infinite
+relief.  "My child, where have you been?"
+
+"It's all right, Daddy.  Cyril has just gone to the front.  I've been
+seeing him off from Charing Cross."
+
+Pierson slipped his arm round her.  They entered the house without
+speaking....
+
+
+
+3
+
+By the rail of his transport, as far--about two feet--as he could get
+from anyone, Cyril Morland stood watching Calais, a dream city,
+brighten out of the heat and grow solid.  He could hear the guns
+already, the voice of his new life-talking in the distance.  It came
+with its strange excitement into a being held by soft and marvellous
+memories, by one long vision of Noel and the moonlit grass, under the
+dark Abbey wall.  This moment of passage from wonder to wonder was
+quite too much for a boy unused to introspection, and he stood
+staring stupidly at Calais, while the thunder of his new life came
+rolling in on that passionate moonlit dream.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+After the emotions of those last three days Pierson woke with the
+feeling a ship must have when it makes landfall.  Such reliefs are
+natural, and as a rule delusive; for events are as much the parents
+of the future as they were the children of the past.  To be at home
+with both his girls, and resting--for his holiday would not be over
+for ten days--was like old times.  Now George was going on so well
+Gratian would be herself again; now Cyril Morland was gone Noel would
+lose that sudden youthful love fever.  Perhaps in two or three days
+if George continued to progress, one might go off with Noel somewhere
+for one's last week.  In the meantime the old house, wherein was
+gathered so much remembrance of happiness and pain, was just as
+restful as anywhere else, and the companionship of his girls would be
+as sweet as on any of their past rambling holidays in Wales or
+Ireland.  And that first morning of perfect idleness--for no one knew
+he was back in London--pottering, and playing the piano in the homely
+drawing-room where nothing to speak of was changed since his wife's
+day, was very pleasant.  He had not yet seen the girls, for Noel did
+not come down to breakfast, and Gratian was with George.
+
+Discovery that there was still a barrier between him and them came
+but slowly in the next two days.  He would not acknowledge it, yet it
+was there, in their voices, in their movements--rather an absence of
+something old than the presence of something new.  It was as if each
+had said to him: "We love you, but you are not in our secrets--and
+you must not be, for you would try to destroy them."  They showed no
+fear of him, but seemed to be pushing him unconsciously away, lest he
+should restrain or alter what was very dear to them.  They were both
+fond of him, but their natures had set foot on definitely diverging
+paths.  The closer the affection, the more watchful they were against
+interference by that affection.  Noel had a look on her face, half
+dazed, half proud, which touched, yet vexed him.  What had he done to
+forfeit her confidence--surely she must see how natural and right his
+opposition had been!  He made one great effort to show the real
+sympathy he felt for her.  But she only said: "I can't talk of Cyril,
+Daddy; I simply can't!"  And he, who easily shrank into his shell,
+could not but acquiesce in her reserve.
+
+With Gratian it was different.  He knew that an encounter was before
+him; a struggle between him and her husband--for characteristically
+he set the change in her, the defection of her faith, down to George,
+not to spontaneous thought and feeling in herself.  He dreaded and
+yet looked forward to this encounter.  It came on the third day, when
+Laird was up, lying on that very sofa where Pierson had sat listening
+to Gratian's confession of disbelief.  Except for putting in his head
+to say good morning, he had not yet seen his son-in-law: The young
+doctor could not look fragile, the build of his face, with that law
+and those heavy cheekbones was too much against it, but there was
+about him enough of the look of having come through a hard fight to
+give Pierson's heart a squeeze.
+
+"Well, George," he said, "you gave us a dreadful fright!  I thank
+God's mercy."  With that half-mechanical phrase he had flung an
+unconscious challenge.  Laird looked up whimsically.
+
+"So you really think God merciful, sir?"
+
+"Don't let us argue, George; you're not strong enough."
+
+"Oh!  I'm pining for something to bite on."
+
+Pierson looked at Gratian, and said softly:
+
+"God's mercy is infinite, and you know it is."
+
+Laird also looked at Gratian, before he answered:
+
+"God's mercy is surely the amount of mercy man has succeeded in
+arriving at.  How much that is, this war tells you, sir."
+
+Pierson flushed.  "I don't follow you," he said painfully.  "How can
+you say such things, when you yourself are only just   No; I refuse
+to argue, George; I refuse."
+
+Laird stretched out his hand to his wife, who came to him, and stood
+clasping it with her own. "Well, I'm going to argue," he said; "I'm
+simply bursting with it.  I challenge you, sir, to show me where
+there's any sign of altruistic pity, except in man.  Mother love
+doesn't count--mother and child are too much one."
+
+The curious smile had come already, on both their faces.
+
+"My dear George, is not man the highest work of God, and mercy the
+highest quality in man?"
+
+"Not a bit.  If geological time be taken as twenty-four hours, man's
+existence on earth so far equals just two seconds of it; after a few
+more seconds, when man has been frozen off the earth, geological time
+will stretch for as long again, before the earth bumps into
+something, and be comes nebula once more.  God's hands haven't been
+particularly full, sir, have they--two seconds out of twenty-four
+hours--if man is His pet concern?  And as to mercy being the highest
+quality in, man, that's only a modern fashion of talking.  Man's
+highest quality is the sense of proportion, for that's what keeps him
+alive; and mercy, logically pursued, would kill him off.  It's a sort
+of a luxury or by-product."
+
+"George!  You can have no music in your soul!  Science is such a
+little thing, if you could only see."
+
+"Show me a bigger, sir."
+
+"Faith."
+
+"In what?"
+
+"In what has been revealed to us."
+
+"Ah!  There it is again!  By whom--how?
+
+"By God Himself--through our Lord."
+
+A faint flush rose in Laird's yellow face, and his eyes brightened.
+
+"Christ," he said; "if He existed, which some people, as you know,
+doubt, was a very beautiful character; there have been others.  But
+to ask us to believe in His supernaturalness or divinity at this time
+of day is to ask us to walk through the world blindfold.  And that's
+what you do, don't you?"
+
+Again Pierson looked at his daughter's face.  She was standing quite
+still, with her eyes fixed on her husband.  Somehow he was aware that
+all these words of the sick man's were for her benefit.  Anger, and a
+sort of despair rose within him, and he said painfully:
+
+"I cannot explain.  There are things that I can't make clear, because
+you are wilfully blind to all that I believe in.  For what do you
+imagine we are fighting this great war, if it is not to reestablish
+the belief in love as the guiding principle of life?"
+
+Laird shook his head.  "We are fighting to redress a balance, which
+was in danger of being lost."
+
+"The balance of power?"
+
+"Heavens!--no!  The balance of philosophy."
+
+Pierson smiled.  "That sounds very clever, George; but again, I don't
+follow you."
+
+"The balance between the sayings: 'Might is Right,' and 'Right is
+Might.'  They're both half-truth, but the first was beating the other
+out of the field.  All the rest of it is cant, you know.  And by the
+way, sir, your Church is solid for punishment of the evildoer.
+Where's mercy there?  Either its God is not merciful, or else it
+doesn't believe in its God."
+
+"Just punishment does not preclude mercy, George."
+
+"It does in Nature."
+
+"Ah!  Nature, George--always Nature.  God transcends Nature."
+
+"Then why does He give it a free rein?  A man too fond of drink, or
+women--how much mercy does he get from Nature?  His overindulgence
+brings its exact equivalent of penalty; let him pray to God as much
+as he likes--unless he alters his ways he gets no mercy.  If he does
+alter his ways, he gets no mercy either; he just gets Nature's due
+reward.  We English who have neglected brain and education--how much
+mercy are we getting in this war?  Mercy's a man-made ornament,
+disease, or luxury--call it what you will.  Except that, I've nothing
+to say against it.  On the contrary, I am all for it."
+
+Once more Pierson looked at his daughter.  Something in her face hurt
+him--the silent intensity with which she was hanging on her husband's
+words, the eager search of her eyes.  And he turned to the door,
+saying:
+
+"This is bad for you, George."
+
+He saw Gratian put her hand on her husband's forehead, and thought--
+jealously: 'How can I save my poor girl from this infidelity?  Are my
+twenty years of care to go for nothing, against this modern spirit?'
+
+Down in his study, the words went through his mind: "Holy, holy,
+holy, Merciful and Mighty!"  And going to the little piano in the
+corner, he opened it, and began playing the hymn.  He played it
+softly on the shabby keys of this thirty-year old friend, which had
+been with him since College days; and sang it softly in his worn
+voice.
+
+A sound made him look up.  Gratian had come in.  She put her hand on
+his shoulder, and said:
+
+"I know it hurts you, Dad.  But we've got to find out for ourselves,
+haven't we?  All the time you and George were talking, I felt that
+you didn't see that it's I who've changed.  It's not what he thinks,
+but what I've come to think of my own accord.  I wish you'd
+understand that I've got a mind of my own, Dad."
+
+Pierson looked up with amazement.
+
+"Of course you have a mind."
+
+Gratian shook her head.  "No, you thought my mind was yours; and now
+you think it's George's.  But it's my own.  When you were my age
+weren't you trying hard to find the truth yourself, and differing
+from your father?"
+
+Pierson did not answer.  He could not remember.  It was like stirring
+a stick amongst a drift of last year's leaves, to awaken but a dry
+rustling, a vague sense of unsubstantiality.  Searched?  No doubt he
+had searched, but the process had brought him nothing.  Knowledge was
+all smoke!  Emotional faith alone was truth--reality
+
+"Ah, Gracie!"  he said, "search if you must, but where will you find
+bottom?  The well is too deep for us.  You will come back to God, my
+child, when you're tired out; the only rest is there."
+
+"I don't want to rest.  Some people search all their lives, and die
+searching.  Why shouldn't I.
+
+"You will be most unhappy, my child."
+
+"If I'm unhappy, Dad, it'll be because the world's unhappy.  I don't
+believe it ought to be; I think it only is, because it shuts its
+eyes."
+
+Pierson got up.  "You think I shut my eyes?"
+
+Gratian nodded.
+
+"If I do, it is because there is no other way to happiness."
+
+"Are you happy; Dad?"
+
+"As happy as my nature will let me be.  I miss your mother.  If I
+lose you and Noel--"
+
+"Oh, but we won't let you!"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "My dear," he said, "I think I have!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+1
+
+Some wag, with a bit of chalk, had written the word "Peace" on three
+successive doors of a little street opposite Buckingham Palace.
+
+It caught the eye of Jimmy Fort, limping home to his rooms from a
+very late discussion at his Club, and twisted his lean shaven lips
+into a sort of smile.  He was one of those rolling-stone Englishmen,
+whose early lives are spent in all parts of the world, and in all
+kinds of physical conflict--a man like a hickory stick, tall, thin,
+bolt-upright, knotty, hard as nails, with a curved fighting back to
+his head and a straight fighting front to his brown face.  His was
+the type which becomes, in a generation or so, typically Colonial or
+American; but no one could possibly have taken Jimmy Fort for
+anything but an Englishman.  Though he was nearly forty, there was
+still something of the boy in his face, something frank and curly-
+headed, gallant and full of steam, and his small steady grey eyes
+looked out on life with a sort of combative humour.  He was still in
+uniform, though they had given him up as a bad job after keeping him
+nine months trying to mend a wounded leg which would never be sound
+again; and he was now in the War Office in connection with horses,
+about which he knew.  He did not like it, having lived too long with
+all sorts and conditions of men who were neither English nor
+official, a combination which he found trying.  His life indeed, just
+now, bored him to distraction, and he would ten times rather have
+been back in France.  This was why he found the word "Peace" so
+exceptionally tantalising.
+
+Reaching his rooms, he threw off his tunic, to whose stiff regularity
+he still had a rooted aversion; and, pulling out a pipe, filled it
+and sat down at his window.
+
+Moonshine could not cool the hot town, and it seemed sleeping badly
+--the seven million sleepers in their million homes.  Sound lingered
+on, never quite ceased; the stale odours clung in the narrow street
+below, though a little wind was creeping about to sweeten the air.
+'Curse the war!' he thought.  'What wouldn't I give to be sleeping
+out, instead of in this damned city!'  They who slept in the open,
+neglecting morality, would certainly have the best of it tonight, for
+no more dew was falling than fell into Jimmy Fort's heart to cool the
+fret of that ceaseless thought: 'The war! The cursed war!' In the
+unending rows of little grey houses, in huge caravanserais, and the
+mansions of the great, in villas, and high slum tenements; in the
+government offices, and factories, and railway stations where they
+worked all night; in the long hospitals where they lay in rows; in
+the camp prisons of the interned; in bar racks, work-houses, palaces
+--no head, sleeping or waking, would be free of that thought: 'The,
+cursed war!'  A spire caught his eye, rising ghostly over the roofs.
+Ah! churches alone, void of the human soul, would be unconscious!
+But for the rest, even sleep would not free them!  Here a mother
+would be whispering the name of her boy; there a merchant would snore
+and dream he was drowning, weighted with gold; and a wife would be
+turning to stretch out her arms to-no one; and a wounded soldier wake
+out of a dream trench with sweat on his brow; and a newsvendor in his
+garret mutter hoarsely.  By thousands the bereaved would be tossing,
+stifling their moans; by thousands the ruined would be gazing into
+the dark future; and housewives struggling with sums; and soldiers
+sleeping like logs--for to morrow they died; and children dreaming of
+them; and prostitutes lying in stale wonder at the busyness of their
+lives; and journalists sleeping the sleep of the just.  And over them
+all, in the moonlight that thought 'The cursed war!' flapped its
+black wings, like an old crow!  "If Christ were real," he mused,
+"He'd reach that moon down, and go chalking 'Peace' with it on every
+door of every house, all over Europe.  But Christ's not real, and
+Hindenburg and Harmsworth are!"  As real they were as two great bulls
+he had once seen in South Africa, fighting.  He seemed to hear again
+the stamp and snort and crash of those thick skulls, to see the
+beasts recoiling and driving at each other, and the little red eyes
+of them.  And pulling a letter out of his pocket, he read it again by
+the light of the moon:
+
+"15, Camelot Mansions,
+"St.  John's Wood.
+
+"DEAR MR.  FORT,
+"I came across your Club address to-night, looking at some old
+letters.  Did you know that I was in London?  I left Steenbok when my
+husband died, five years ago.  I've had a simply terrific time since.
+While the German South West campaign was on I was nursing out there,
+but came back about a year ago to lend a hand here.  It would be
+awfully nice to meet you again, if by any chance you are in England.
+I'm working in a V. A. D.  hospital in these parts, but my evenings
+are usually free.  Do you remember that moonlit night at grape
+harvest?  The nights here aren't scented quite like that.  Listerine!
+Oh!  This war!
+"With all good remembrances,
+"LEILA LYNCH."
+
+
+A terrific time!  If he did not mistake, Leila Lynch had always had a
+terrific time.  And he smiled, seeing again the stoep of an old Dutch
+house at High Constantia, and a woman sitting there under the white
+flowers of a sweet-scented creeper--a pretty woman, with eyes which
+could put a spell on you, a woman he would have got entangled with if
+he had not cut and run for it!  Ten years ago, and here she was
+again, refreshing him out of the past.  He sniffed the fragrance of
+the little letter.  How everybody always managed to work into a
+letter what they were doing in the war!  If he answered her he would
+be sure to say: "Since I got lamed, I've been at the War Office,
+working on remounts, and a dull job it is!"  Leila Lynch!  Women
+didn't get younger, and he suspected her of being older than himself.
+But he remembered agreeably her white shoulders and that turn of her
+neck when she looked at you with those big grey eyes of hers.  Only a
+five-day acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one
+did in a strange land.  The episode had been a green and dangerous
+spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-
+shooting, to set foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at
+least.  Well, there was none of that danger now, for her husband was
+dead-poor chap!  It would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody
+spent any time whatever except in the service of the country, to
+improve his powers of service by a few hours' recreation in her
+society.  'What humbugs we are!' he thought: 'To read the newspapers
+and the speeches you'd believe everybody thought of nothing but how
+to get killed for the sake of the future.  Drunk on verbiage!  What
+heads and mouths we shall all have when we wake up some fine morning
+with Peace shining in at the window!  Ah!  If only we could; and
+enjoy ourselves again!'  And he gazed at the moon.  She was dipping
+already, reeling away into the dawn.  Water carts and street sweepers
+had come out into the glimmer; sparrows twittered in the eaves.  The
+city was raising a strange unknown face to the grey light, shuttered
+and deserted as Babylon.  Jimmy Fort tapped out his pipe, sighed, and
+got into bed.
+
+
+
+2
+
+Coming off duty at that very moment, Leila Lynch decided to have her
+hour's walk before she went home.  She was in charge of two wards,
+and as a rule took the day watches; but some slight upset had given
+her this extra spell.  She was, therefore, at her worst, or perhaps
+at her best, after eighteen hours in hospital.  Her cheeks were pale,
+and about her eyes were little lines, normally in hiding.  There was
+in this face a puzzling blend of the soft and hard, for the eyes, the
+rather full lips, and pale cheeks, were naturally soft; but they were
+hardened by the self-containment which grows on women who have to
+face life for themselves, and, conscious of beauty, intend to keep
+it, in spite of age.  Her figure was contradictory, also; its soft
+modelling a little too rigidified by stays.  In this desert of the
+dawn she let her long blue overcoat flap loose, and swung her hat on
+a finger, so that her light-brown, touched-up hair took the morning
+breeze with fluffy freedom.  Though she could not see herself, she
+appreciated her appearance, swaying along like that, past lonely
+trees and houses.  A pity there was no one to see her in that round
+of Regent's Park, which took her the best part of an hour, walking in
+meditation, enjoying the colour coming back into the world, as if
+especially for her.
+
+There was character in Leila Lynch, and she had lived an interesting
+life from a certain point of view.  In her girlhood she had fluttered
+the hearts of many besides Cousin Edward Pierson, and at eighteen had
+made a passionate love match with a good-looking young Indian
+civilian, named Fane.  They had loved each other to a standstill in
+twelve months.  Then had begun five years of petulance, boredom, and
+growing cynicism, with increasing spells of Simla, and voyages home
+for her health which was really harmed by the heat.  All had
+culminated, of course, in another passion for a rifleman called
+Lynch.  Divorce had followed, remarriage, and then the Boer War, in
+which he had been badly wounded.  She had gone out and nursed him
+back to half his robust health, and, at twenty-eight, taken up life
+with him on an up-country farm in Cape Colony.  This middle period
+had lasted ten years, between the lonely farm and an old Dutch house
+at High Constantia.  Lynch was not a bad fellow, but, like most
+soldiers of the old Army, had been quite carefully divested of an
+aesthetic sense.  And it was Leila's misfortune to have moments when
+aesthetic sense seemed necessary.  She had struggled to overcome this
+weakness, and that other weakness of hers--a liking for men's
+admiration; but there had certainly been intervals when she had not
+properly succeeded.  Her acquaintance with Jimmy Fort had occurred
+during one of these intervals, and when he went back to England so
+abruptly, she had been feeling very tenderly towards him.  She still
+remembered him with a certain pleasure.  Before Lynch died, these
+"intervals" had been interrupted by a spell of returning warmth for
+the invalided man to whom she had joined her life under the romantic
+conditions of divorce.  He had failed, of course, as a farmer, and
+his death left her with nothing but her own settled income of a
+hundred and fifty pounds a year.  Faced by the prospect of having
+almost to make her living, at thirty-eight, she felt but momentary
+dismay--for she had real pluck.  Like many who have played with
+amateur theatricals, she fancied herself as an actress; but, after
+much effort, found that only her voice and the perfect preservation
+of her legs were appreciated by the discerning managers and public of
+South Africa; and for three chequered years she made face against
+fortune with the help of them, under an assumed name.  What she did
+--keeping a certain bloom of refinement, was far better than the
+achievements of many more respectable ladies in her shoes.  At least
+she never bemoaned her "reduced circumstances," and if her life was
+irregular and had at least three episodes, it was very human.  She
+bravely took the rough with the smooth, never lost the power of
+enjoying herself, and grew in sympathy with the hardships of others.
+But she became deadly tired.  When the war broke out, remembering
+that she was a good nurse, she took her real name again and a change
+of occupation.  For one who liked to please men, and to be pleased by
+them, there was a certain attraction about that life in war-time; and
+after two years of it she could still appreciate the way her Tommies
+turned their heads to look at her when she passed their beds.  But in
+a hard school she had learned perfect self-control; and though the
+sour and puritanical perceived her attraction, they knew her to be
+forty-three.  Besides, the soldiers liked her; and there was little
+trouble in her wards.  The war moved her in simple ways; for she was
+patriotic in the direct fashion of her class.  Her father had been a
+sailor, her husbands an official and a soldier; the issue for her was
+uncomplicated by any abstract meditation.  The Country before
+everything!  And though she had tended during those two years so many
+young wrecked bodies, she had taken it as all in the a day's work,
+lavishing her sympathy on the individual, without much general sense
+of pity and waste.  Yes, she had worked really hard, had "done her
+bit"; but of late she had felt rising within her the old vague
+craving for "life," for pleasure, for something more than the mere
+negative admiration bestowed on her by her "Tommies."  Those old
+letters--to look them through them had been a sure sign of this vague
+craving--had sharpened to poignancy the feeling that life was
+slipping away from her while she was still comely.  She had been long
+out of England, and so hard-worked since she came back that there
+were not many threads she could pick up suddenly.  Two letters out of
+that little budget of the past, with a far cry between them, had
+awakened within her certain sentimental longings.
+
+"DEAR LADY OF THE STARRY FLOWERS,
+
+"Exiturus (sic) to saluto!  The tender carries you this message of
+good-bye.  Simply speaking, I hate leaving South Africa.  And of all
+my memories, the last will live the longest.  Grape harvest at
+Constantia, and you singing: 'If I could be the falling dew: If ever
+you and your husband come to England, do let me know, that I may try
+and repay a little the happiest five days I've spent out here.
+
+"Your very faithful servant,
+
+"TIMMY FORT."
+
+
+She remembered a very brown face, a tall slim figure, and something
+gallant about the whole of him.  What was he like after ten years?
+Grizzled, married, with a large family?  An odious thing--Time!  And
+Cousin Edward's little yellow letter.
+
+Good heavens!  Twenty-six years ago--before he was a parson, or
+married or anything!  Such a good partner, really musical; a queer,
+dear fellow, devoted, absentminded, easily shocked, yet with flame
+burning in him somewhere.
+
+'DEAR LEILA,
+
+"After our last dance I went straight off'--I couldn't go in.  I went
+down to the river, and walked along the bank; it was beautiful, all
+grey and hazy, and the trees whispered, and the cows looked holy; and
+I walked along and thought of you.  And a farmer took me for a
+lunatic, in my dress clothes.  Dear Leila, you were so pretty last
+night, and I did love our dances.  I hope you are not tired, and that
+I shall see you soon again:
+
+"Your affectionate cousin,
+
+"EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+
+And then he had gone and become a parson, and married, and been a
+widower fifteen years.  She remembered the death of his wife, just
+before she left for South Africa, at that period of disgrace when she
+had so shocked her family by her divorce.  Poor Edward--quite the
+nicest of her cousins!  The only one she would care to see again.  He
+would be very old and terribly good and proper, by now
+
+Her wheel of Regent's Park was coming full circle, and the sun was up
+behind the houses, but still no sound of traffic stirred.  She
+stopped before a flower-bed where was some heliotrope, and took a
+long, luxurious sniff: She could not resist plucking a sprig, too,
+and holding it to her nose.  A sudden want of love had run through
+every nerve and fibre of her; she shivered, standing there with her
+eyes half closed, above the pale violet blossom.  Then, noting by her
+wrist-watch that it was four o'clock, she hurried on, to get to her
+bed, for she would have to be on duty again at noon.  Oh!  the war!
+She was tired!  If only it were over, and one could live!...
+
+Somewhere by Twickenham the moon had floated down; somewhere up from
+Kentish Town the sun came soaring; wheels rolled again, and the seven
+million sleepers in their million houses woke from morning sleep to
+that same thought....
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Edward Pierson, dreaming over an egg at breakfast, opened a letter in
+a handwriting which he did not recognise.
+
+"V. A. D. Hospital,
+
+"Mulberry Road, St. John's Wood N. W.
+
+"DEAR COUSIN EDWARD,
+
+"Do you remember me, or have I gone too far into the shades of night?
+I was Leila Pierson once upon a time, and I often think of you and
+wonder what you are like now, and what your girls are like.  I have
+been here nearly a year, working for our wounded, and for a year
+before that was nursing in South Africa.  My husband died five years
+ago out there.  Though we haven't met for I dare not think how long,
+I should awfully like to see you again.  Would you care to come some
+day and look over my hospital?  I have two wards under me; our men
+are rather dears.
+
+"Your forgotten but still affectionate cousin
+
+"LEILA LYNCH."
+
+"P. S.  I came across a little letter you once wrote me; it brought
+back old days."
+
+
+No!  He had not forgotten.  There was a reminder in the house.  And
+he looked up at Noel sitting opposite.  How like the eyes were!  And
+he thought: 'I wonder what Leila has become.  One mustn't be
+uncharitable.  That man is dead; she has been nursing two years.  She
+must be greatly changed; I should certainly like to see her.  I will
+go!'  Again he looked at Noel.  Only yesterday she had renewed her
+request to be allowed to begin her training as a nurse.
+
+"I'm going to see a hospital to-day, Nollie," he said; "if you like,
+I'll make enquiries.  I'm afraid it'll mean you have to begin by
+washing up."
+
+"I know; anything, so long as I do begin."
+
+"Very well; I'll see about it."  And he went back to his egg.
+
+Noel's voice roused him.  "Do you feel the war much, Daddy?  Does it
+hurt you here?"  She had put her hand on her heart.  "Perhaps it
+doesn't, because you live half in the next world, don't you?"
+
+The words: "God forbid," sprang to Pierson's lips; he did not speak
+them, but put his egg-spoon down, hurt and bewildered.  What did the
+child mean?  Not feel the war!  He smiled.
+
+"I hope I'm able to help people sometimes, Nollie," and was conscious
+that he had answered his own thoughts, not her words.  He finished
+his breakfast quickly, and very soon went out.  He crossed the
+Square, and passed East, down two crowded streets to his church.  In
+the traffic of those streets, all slipshod and confused, his black-
+clothed figure and grave face, with its Vandyk beard, had a curious
+remote appearance, like a moving remnant of a past civilisation.  He
+went in by the side door.  Only five days he had been away, but they
+had been so full of emotion that the empty familiar building seemed
+almost strange to him.  He had come there unconsciously, groping for
+anchorage and guidance in this sudden change of relationship between
+him and his daughters.  He stood by the pale brazen eagle, staring
+into the chancel.  The choir were wanting new hymn-books--he must not
+forget to order them!  His eyes sought the stained-glass window he
+had put in to the memory of his wife.  The sun, too high to slant,
+was burnishing its base, till it glowed of a deep sherry colour.  "In
+the next world!"  What strange words of Noel's!  His eyes caught the
+glimmer of the organ-pipes; and, mounting to the loft, he began to
+play soft chords wandering into each other.  He finished, and stood
+gazing down.  This space within high walls, under high vaulted roof,
+where light was toned to a perpetual twilight, broken here and there
+by a little glow of colour from glass and flowers, metal, and dark
+wood, was his home, his charge, his refuge.  Nothing moved down
+there, and yet--was not emptiness mysteriously living, the closed-in
+air imprinted in strange sort, as though the drone of music and
+voices in prayer and praise clung there still?  Had not sanctity a
+presence?  Outside, a barrel-organ drove its tune along; a wagon
+staggered on the paved street, and the driver shouted to his horses;
+some distant guns boomed out in practice, and the rolling of wheels
+on wheels formed a net of sound.  But those invading noises were
+transmuted to a mere murmuring in here; only the silence and the
+twilight were real to Pierson, standing there, a little black figure
+in a great empty space.
+
+When he left the church, it was still rather early to go to Leila's
+hospital; and, having ordered the new hymn-books, he called in at the
+house of a parishioner whose son had been killed in France.  He found
+her in her kitchen; an oldish woman who lived by charing.  She wiped
+a seat for the Vicar.
+
+"I was just makin' meself a cup o' tea, sir."
+
+"Ah!  What a comfort tea is, Mrs. Soles!"  And he sat down, so that
+she should feel "at home."
+
+"Yes; it gives me 'eart-burn; I take eight or ten cups a day, now.  I
+take 'em strong, too.  I don't seem able to get on without it.  I
+'ope the young ladies are well, sir?"
+
+"Very well, thank you.  Miss Noel is going to begin nursing, too."
+
+"Deary-me!  She's very young; but all the young gells are doin'
+something these days.  I've got a niece in munitions-makin' a pretty
+penny she is.  I've been meanin' to tell you--I don't come to church
+now; since my son was killed, I don't seem to 'ave the 'eart to go
+anywhere--'aven't been to a picture-palace these three months.  Any
+excitement starts me cryin'."
+
+"I know; but you'd find rest in church."
+
+Mrs. Soles shook her head, and the small twisted bob of her
+discoloured hair wobbled vaguely.
+
+"I can't take any recreation," she said.  "I'd rather sit 'ere, or be
+at work.  My son was a real son to me.  This tea's the only thing
+that does me any good.  I can make you a fresh cup in a minute."
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Soles, but I must be getting on.  We must all look
+forward to meeting our beloved again, in God's mercy.  And one of
+these days soon I shall be seeing you in church, shan't I."
+
+Mrs. Soles shifted her weight from one slippered foot to the other.
+
+"Well! let's 'ope so," she said.  "But I dunno when I shall 'ave the
+spirit.  Good day, sir, and thank you kindly for calling, I'm sure."
+
+Pierson walked away with a very faint smile.  Poor queer old soul!
+--she was no older than himself, but he thought of her as ancient
+--cut off from her son, like so many--so many; and how good and
+patient!  The melody of an anthem began running in his head.  His
+fingers moved on the air beside him, and he stood still, waiting for
+an omnibus to take him to St. John's Wood.  A thousand people went by
+while he was waiting, but he did not notice them, thinking of that
+anthem, of his daughters, and the mercy of God; and on the top of his
+'bus, when it came along, he looked lonely and apart, though the man
+beside him was so fat that there was hardly any seat left to sit on.
+Getting down at Lord's Cricket-ground, he asked his way of a lady in
+a nurse's dress.
+
+"If you'll come with me," she said, "I'm just going there."
+
+"Oh!  Do you happen to know a Mrs. Lynch who nurses"
+
+"I am Mrs. Lynch.  Why, you're Edward Pierson!"
+
+He looked into her face, which he had not yet observed.
+
+"Leila!"  he said.
+
+"Yes, Leila!  How awfully nice of you to come, Edward!"
+
+They continued to stand, searching each for the other's youth, till
+she murmured:
+
+"In spite of your beard, I should have known you anywhere!"  But she
+thought: 'Poor Edward!  He is old, and monk-like!'
+
+And Pierson, in answer, murmured:
+
+"You're very little changed, Leila!  We haven't, seen each other
+since my youngest girl was born.  She's just a little like you."  But
+he thought: 'My Nollie!  So much more dewy; poor Leila!'
+
+They walked on, talking of his daughters, till they reached the
+hospital.
+
+"If you'll wait here a minute, I'll take you over my wards."
+
+She had left him in a bare hall, holding his hat in one hand and
+touching his gold cross with the other; but she soon came hack, and a
+little warmth crept about his heart.  How works of mercy suited
+women!  She looked so different, so much softer, beneath the white
+coif, with a white apron over the bluish frock.
+
+At the change in his face, a little warmth crept about Leila, too,
+just where the bib of her apron stopped; and her eyes slid round at
+him while they went towards what had once been a billiard-room.
+
+"My men are dears," she said; "they love to be talked to."
+
+Under a skylight six beds jutted out from a green distempered wall,
+opposite to six beds jutting out from another green distempered wall,
+and from each bed a face was turned towards them young faces, with
+but little expression in them.  A nurse, at the far end, looked
+round, and went on with her work.  The sight of the ward was no more
+new to Pierson than to anyone else in these days.  It was so
+familiar, indeed, that it had practically no significance.  He stood
+by the first bed, and Leila stood alongside.  The man smiled up when
+she spoke, and did not smile when he spoke, and that again was
+familiar to him.  They passed from bed to bed, with exactly the same
+result, till she was called away, and he sat down by a young soldier
+with a long, very narrow head and face, and a heavily bandaged
+shoulder. Touching the bandage reverently, Pierson said:
+
+"Well, my dear fellow-still bad?"
+
+"Ah!" replied the soldier.  "Shrapnel wound: It's cut the flesh
+properly."
+
+"But not the spirit, I can see!"
+
+The young soldier gave him a quaint look, as much as to say: "Not
+'arf bad!"  and a gramophone close to the last bed began to play:
+"God bless Daddy at the war!"
+
+"Are you fond of music?"
+
+"I like it well enough.  Passes the time."
+
+"I'm afraid the time hangs heavy in hospital."
+
+"Yes; it hangs a bit 'eavy; it's just 'orspital life.  I've been
+wounded before, you see.  It's better than bein' out there.  I expect
+I'll lose the proper use o' this arm.  I don't worry; I'll get my
+discharge."
+
+"You've got some good nurses here."
+
+"Yes; I like Mrs. Lynch; she's the lady I like."
+
+"My cousin."
+
+"I see you come in together.  I see everything 'ere.  I think a lot,
+too.  Passes the time."
+
+"Do they let you smoke?"
+
+"Oh, yes!  They let us smoke."
+
+"Have one of mine?"
+
+The young soldier smiled for the first time.  "Thank you; I've got
+plenty."
+
+The nurse came by, and smiled at Pierson.
+
+"He's one of our blase ones; been in before, haven't you, Simson?"
+
+Pierson looked at the young man, whose long, narrow face; where one
+sandy-lashed eyelid drooped just a little, seemed armoured with a
+sort of limited omniscience.  The gramophone had whirred and grunted
+into "Sidi Brahim."  The nurse passed on.
+
+"'Seedy Abram,'" said the young soldier.  "The Frenchies sing it;
+they takes it up one after the other, ye know."
+
+"Ah!"  murmured Pierson; "it's pretty."  And his fingers drummed on
+the counterpane, for the tune was new to him.  Something seemed to
+move in the young man's face, as if a blind had been drawn up a
+little.
+
+"I don't mind France," he said abruptly; "I don't mind the shells and
+that; but I can't stick the mud.  There's a lot o' wounded die in the
+mud; can't get up--smothered."  His unwounded arm made a restless
+movement.  "I was nearly smothered myself.  Just managed to keep me
+nose up."
+
+Pierson shuddered.  "Thank God you did!"
+
+"Yes; I didn't like that.  I told Mrs. Lynch about that one day when
+I had the fever.  She's a nice lady; she's seen a lot of us boys:
+That mud's not right, you know."  And again his unwounded arm made
+that restless movement; while the gramophone struck up: "The boys in
+brown."  The movement of the arm affected Pierson horribly; he rose
+and, touching the bandaged shoulder, said:
+
+"Good-bye; I hope you'll soon be quite recovered."
+
+The young soldier's lips twisted in the semblance of a smile; his
+drooped eyelid seemed to try and raise itself.
+
+"Good day, sir," he said; "and thank you."
+
+Pierson went back to the hall.  The sunlight fell in a pool just
+inside the open door, and an uncontrollable impulse made him move
+into it, so that it warmed him up to the waist.  The mud!  How ugly
+life was!  Life and Death!  Both ugly!  Poor boys!  Poor boys!
+
+A voice behind him said:
+
+"Oh!  There you are, Edward!  Would you like to see the other ward,
+or shall I show you our kitchen?"
+
+Pierson took her hand impulsively.  "You're doing a noble work,
+Leila.  I wanted to ask you: Could you arrange for Noel to come and
+get trained here?  She wants to begin at once.  The fact is, a boy
+she is attracted to has just gone out to the Front."
+
+"Ah!"  murmured Leila, and her eyes looked very soft.  "Poor child!
+We shall be wanting an extra hand next week.  I'll see if she could
+come now.  I'll speak to our Matron, and let you know to-night."  She
+squeezed his hand hard.
+
+"Dear Edward, I'm so glad to see you again.  You're the first of our
+family I've seen for sixteen years.  I wonder if you'd bring Noel to
+have supper at my flat to-night--Just nothing to eat, you know!  It's
+a tiny place.  There's a Captain Fort coming; a nice man."
+
+Pierson accepted, and as he walked away he thought: 'Dear Leila!
+I believe it was Providence.  She wants sympathy.  She wants to feel
+the past is the past.  How good women are!'
+
+And the sun, blazing suddenly out of a cloud, shone on his black
+figure and the little gold cross, in the middle of Portland Place.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Men, even if they are not artistic, who have been in strange places
+and known many nooks of the world, get the scenic habit, become open
+to pictorial sensation.  It was as a picture or series of pictures
+that Jimmy Fort ever afterwards remembered his first supper at
+Leila's.  He happened to have been all day in the open, motoring
+about to horse farms under a hot sun; and Leila's hock cup possessed
+a bland and subtle strength.  The scenic sense derived therefrom had
+a certain poignancy, the more so because the tall child whom he met
+there did not drink it, and her father seemed but to wet his lips, so
+that Leila and he had all the rest.  Rather a wonderful little scene
+it made in his mind, very warm, glowing, yet with a strange dark
+sharpness to it, which came perhaps from the black walls.
+
+The flat had belonged to an artist who was at the war.  It was but a
+pocket dwelling on the third floor.  The two windows of the little
+square sitting-room looked out on some trees and a church.  But
+Leila, who hated dining by daylight, had soon drawn curtains of a
+deep blue over them.  The picture which Fort remembered was this: A
+little four-square table of dark wood, with a Chinese mat of vivid
+blue in the centre, whereon stood a silver lustre bowl of clove
+carnations; some greenish glasses with hock cup in them; on his left,
+Leila in a low lilac frock, her neck and shoulders very white, her
+face a little powdered, her eyes large, her lips smiling; opposite
+him a black-clothed padre with a little gold cross, over whose thin
+darkish face, with its grave pointed beard, passed little gentle
+smiles, but whose deep sunk grey eyes were burnt and bright; on his
+right, a girl in a high grey frock, almost white, just hollowed at
+the neck, with full sleeves to the elbow, so that her slim arms
+escaped; her short fair hair a little tumbled; her big grey eyes
+grave; her full lips shaping with a strange daintiness round every
+word--and they not many; brilliant red shades over golden lights
+dotting the black walls; a blue divan; a little black piano flush
+with the wall; a dark polished floor; four Japanese prints; a white
+ceiling.  He was conscious that his own khaki spoiled something as
+curious and rare as some old Chinese tea-chest.  He even remembered
+what they ate; lobster; cold pigeon pie; asparagus; St. Ivel cheese;
+raspberries and cream.  He did not remember half so well what they
+talked of, except that he himself told them stories of the Boer War,
+in which he had served in the Yeomanry, and while he was telling
+them, the girl, like a child listening to a fairy-tale, never moved
+her eyes from his face.  He remembered that after supper they all
+smoked cigarettes, even the tall child, after the padre had said to
+her mildly, "My dear!" and she had answered: "I simply must, Daddy,
+just one."  He remembered Leila brewing Turkish coffee--very good,
+and how beautiful her white arms looked, hovering about the cups.  He
+remembered her making the padre sit down at the piano, and play to
+them.  And she and the girl on the divan together, side by side, a
+strange contrast; with just as strange a likeness to each other.  He
+always remembered how fine and rare that music sounded in the little
+room, flooding him with a dreamy beatitude.  Then--he remembered--
+Leila sang, the padre standing-by; and the tall child on the divan
+bending forward over her knees, with her chin on her hands.  He
+remembered rather vividly how Leila turned her neck and looked up,
+now at the padre, now at himself; and, all through, the delightful
+sense of colour and warmth, a sort of glamour over all the evening;
+and the lingering pressure of Leila's hand when he said good-bye and
+they went away, for they all went together.  He remembered talking a
+great deal to the padre in the cab, about the public school they had
+both been at, and thinking: 'It's a good padre--this!'  He remembered
+how their taxi took them to an old Square which he did not know,
+where the garden trees looked densely black in the starshine.  He
+remembered that a man outside the house had engaged the padre in
+earnest talk, while the tall child and himself stood in the open
+doorway, where the hall beyond was dark.  Very exactly he remembered
+the little conversation which then took place between them, while
+they waited for her father.
+
+"Is it very horrid in the trenches, Captain Fort?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Pierson; it is very horrid, as a rule."
+
+"Is it dangerous all the time?"
+
+"Pretty well."
+
+"Do officers run more risks than the men?"
+
+"Not unless there's an attack."
+
+"Are there attacks very often?"
+
+It had seemed to him so strangely primitive a little catechism, that
+he had smiled.  And, though it was so dark, she had seen that smile,
+for her face went proud and close all of a sudden.  He had cursed
+himself, and said gently:
+
+"Have you a brother out there?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"But someone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Someone!  He had heard that answer with a little shock.  This child--
+this fairy princess of a child already to have someone!  He wondered
+if she went about asking everyone these questions, with that someone
+in her thoughts.  Poor child!  And quickly he said:
+
+"After all, look at me!  I was out there a year, and here I am with
+only half a game leg; times were a lot worse, then, too.  I often
+wish I were back there.  Anything's better than London and the War
+Office."  But just then he saw the padre coming, and took her hand.
+"Good night, Miss Pierson.  Don't worry.  That does no good, and
+there isn't half the risk you think."
+
+Her hand stirred, squeezed his gratefully, as a child's would
+squeeze.
+
+"Good night," she murmured; "thank you awfully."
+
+And, in the dark cab again, he remembered thinking: 'Fancy that
+child!  A jolly lucky boy, out there!  Too bad!  Poor little fairy
+princess!'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+I
+
+1
+
+To wash up is not an exciting operation.  To wash up in August became
+for Noel a process which taxed her strength and enthusiasm.  She
+combined it with other forms of instruction in the art of nursing,
+had very little leisure, and in the evenings at home would often fall
+asleep curled up in a large chintz-covered chair.
+
+George and Gratian had long gone back to their respective hospitals,
+and she and her father had the house to themselves.  She received
+many letters from Cyril which she carried about with her and read on
+her way to and from the hospital; and every other day she wrote to
+him.  He was not yet in the firing line; his letters were descriptive
+of his men, his food, or the natives, or reminiscent of Kestrel; hers
+descriptive of washing up, or reminiscent of Kestrel.  But in both
+there was always some little word of the longing within them.
+
+It was towards the end of August when she had the letter which said
+that he had been moved up.  From now on he would be in hourly danger!
+That evening after dinner she did not go to sleep in the chair, but
+sat under the open window, clenching her hands, and reading "Pride
+and Prejudice" without understanding a word.  While she was so
+engaged her father came up and said:
+
+"Captain Fort, Nollie.  Will you give him some coffee?  I'm afraid I
+must go out."
+
+When he had gone, Noel looked at her visitor drinking his coffee.  He
+had been out there, too, and he was alive; with only a little limp.
+The visitor smiled and said:
+
+"What were you thinking about when we came in?"
+
+"Only the war."
+
+"Any news of him?"
+
+Noel frowned, she hated to show her feelings.
+
+"Yes!  he's gone to the Front.  Won't you have a cigarette?"
+
+"Thanks.  Will you?"
+
+"I want one awfully.  I think sitting still and waiting is more
+dreadful than anything in the world."
+
+"Except, knowing that others are waiting.  When I was out there I
+used to worry horribly over my mother.  She was ill at the time.  The
+cruelest thing in war is the anxiety of people about each other--
+nothing touches that."
+
+The words exactly summed up Noel's hourly thought.  He said nice
+things, this man with the long legs and the thin brown bumpy face!
+
+"I wish I were a man," she said, "I think women have much the worst
+time in the war.  Is your mother old?"  But of course she was old why
+he was old himself!
+
+"She died last Christmas."
+
+"Oh!  I'm so sorry!"
+
+"You lost your mother when you were a babe, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes.  That's her portrait."  At the end of the room, hanging on a
+strip of black velvet was a pastel, very faint in colouring, as
+though faded, of a young woman, with an eager, sweet face, dark eyes,
+and bent a little forward, as if questioning her painter.  Fort went
+up to it.
+
+"It's not a bit like you.  But she must have been a very sweet
+woman."
+
+"It's a sort of presence in the room.  I wish I were like her!"
+
+Fort turned.  "No," he said; "no.  Better as you are.  It would only
+have spoiled a complete thing."
+
+"She was good."
+
+"And aren't you?"
+
+"Oh! no.  I get a devil."
+
+"You!  Why, you're out of a fairy-tale!"
+
+"It comes from Daddy--only he doesn't know, because he's a perfect
+saint; but I know he's had a devil somewhere, or he couldn't be the
+saint he is."
+
+"H'm!" said Fort.  "That's very deep: and I believe it's true--the
+saints did have devils."
+
+"Poor Daddy's devil has been dead ages.  It's been starved out of
+him, I think."
+
+"Does your devil ever get away with you?"
+
+Noel felt her cheeks growing red under his stare, and she turned to
+the window:
+
+"Yes.  It's a real devil."
+
+Vividly there had come before her the dark Abbey, and the moon
+balancing over the top of the crumbling wall, and the white owl
+flying across.  And, speaking to the air, she said:
+
+"It makes you do things that you want to do."
+
+She wondered if he would laugh--it sounded so silly.  But he did not.
+
+"And damn the consequences?  I know.  It's rather a jolly thing to
+have."
+
+Noel shook her head.  "Here's Daddy coming back!"
+
+Fort held out his hand.
+
+"I won't stay.  Good night; and don't worry too much, will you?"
+
+He kept her hand rather a long time, and gave it a hard squeeze.
+
+Don't worry!  What advice!  Ah!  if she could see Cyril just for a
+minute!
+
+
+
+2
+
+In September, 1916, Saturday still came before Sunday, in spite of
+the war.  For Edward Pierson this Saturday had been a strenuous day,
+and even now, at nearly midnight, he was still conning his just-
+completed sermon.
+
+A patriot of patriots, he had often a passionate longing to resign
+his parish, and go like his curate for a chaplain at the Front.  It
+seemed to him that people must think his life idle and sheltered and
+useless.  Even in times of peace he had been sensitive enough to feel
+the cold draughty blasts which the Church encounters in a material
+age.  He knew that nine people out of ten looked on him as something
+of a parasite, with no real work in the world.  And since he was
+nothing if not conscientious, he always worked himself to the bone.
+
+To-day he had risen at half-past six, and after his bath and
+exercises, had sat down to his sermon--for, even now, he wrote a new
+sermon once a month, though he had the fruits of twenty-six years to
+choose from.  True, these new sermons were rather compiled than
+written, because, bereft of his curate, he had not time enough for
+fresh thought on old subjects.  At eight he had breakfasted with
+Noel, before she went off to her hospital, whence she would return at
+eight in the evening.  Nine to ten was his hour for seeing
+parishioners who had troubles, or wanted help or advice, and he had
+received three to-day who all wanted help, which he had given.  From
+ten to eleven he had gone back to his sermon, and had spent from
+eleven to one at his church, attending to small matters, writing
+notices, fixing hymns, holding the daily half-hour Service instituted
+during wartime, to which but few ever came.  He had hurried back to
+lunch, scamping it so that he might get to his piano for an hour of
+forgetfulness.  At three he had christened a very noisy baby, and
+been detained by its parents who wished for information on a variety
+of topics.  At half-past four he had snatched a cup of tea, reading
+the paper; and had spent from five to seven visiting two Parish
+Clubs, and those whose war-pension matters he had in hand, and
+filling up forms which would be kept in official places till such
+time as the system should be changed and a fresh set of forms issued.
+>From seven to eight he was at home again, in case his flock wanted to
+see him; to-day four sheep had come, and gone away, he was afraid,
+but little the wiser.  From half-past eight to half-past nine he had
+spent in choir practice, because the organist was on his holiday.
+Slowly in the cool of the evening he had walked home, and fallen
+asleep in his chair on getting in.  At eleven he had woken with a
+start, and, hardening his heart, had gone back to his sermon.  And
+now, at nearly midnight, it was still less than twenty minutes long.
+He lighted one of his rare cigarettes, and let thought wander.  How
+beautiful those pale pink roses were in that old silver bowl-like a
+little strange poem, or a piece of Debussy music, or a Mathieu Maris
+picture-reminding him oddly of the word Leila.  Was he wrong in
+letting Noel see so much of Leila?  But then she was so improved--
+dear Leila!...  The pink roses were just going to fall!  And yet how
+beautiful!...  It was quiet to-night; he felt very drowsy....  Did
+Nollie still think of that young man, or had it passed?  She had
+never confided in him since!  After the war, it would be nice to take
+her to Italy, to all the little towns.  They would see the Assisi of
+St. Francis.  The Little Flowers of St. Francis.  The Little
+Flowers!...  His hand dropped, the cigarette went out.  He slept with
+his face in shadow.  Slowly into the silence of his sleep little
+sinister sounds intruded.  Short concussions, dragging him back out
+of that deep slumber.  He started up.  Noel was standing at the door,
+in a long coat.  She said in her calm voice:
+
+"Zeps, Daddy!"
+
+"Yes, my dear.  Where are the maids?"
+
+An Irish voice answered from the hall: "Here, sir; trustin' in God;
+but 'tis better on the ground floor."
+
+He saw a huddle of three figures, queerly costumed, against the
+stairs.
+
+"Yes, Yes, Bridgie; you're safe down here."  Then he noticed that
+Noel was gone.  He followed her out into the Square, alive with faces
+faintly luminous in the darkness, and found her against the garden
+railings.
+
+"You must come back in, Nollie."
+
+"Oh, no!  Cyril has this every day."
+
+He stood beside her; not loth, for excitement had begun to stir his
+blood.  They stayed there for some minutes, straining their eyes for
+sight of anything save the little zagged splashes of bursting
+shrapnel, while voices buzzed, and muttered: "Look!  There!  There!
+There it is!"
+
+But the seers had eyes of greater faith than Pierson's, for he saw
+nothing: He took her arm at last, and led her in.  In the hall she
+broke from him.
+
+"Let's go up on the roof, Daddy!" and ran upstairs.
+
+Again he followed, mounting by a ladder, through a trapdoor on to the
+roof.
+
+"It's splendid up here!" she cried.
+
+He could see her eyes blazing, and thought: 'How my child does love
+excitement--it's almost terrible!'
+
+Over the wide, dark, star-strewn sky travelling searchlights, were
+lighting up the few little clouds; the domes and spires rose from
+among the spread-out roofs, all fine and ghostly.  The guns had
+ceased firing, as though puzzled.  One distant bang rumbled out.
+
+"A bomb!  Oh!  If we could only get one of the Zeps!"
+
+A furious outburst of firing followed, lasting perhaps a minute, then
+ceased as if by magic.  They saw two searchlights converge and meet
+right overhead.
+
+"It's above us!" murmured Noel.
+
+Pierson put his arm round her waist.  'She feels no fear!' he
+thought.  The search-lights switched apart; and suddenly, from far
+away, came a confusion of weird sounds.
+
+"What is it?  They're cheering.  Oh! Daddy, look!" There in the
+heavens, towards the east, hung a dull red thing, lengthening as they
+gazed.
+
+"They've got it.  It's on fire!  Hurrah!"
+
+Through the dark firmament that fiery orange shape began canting
+downward; and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy of sound.  And
+Pierson's arm tightened on her waist.
+
+"Thank God!" he muttered.
+
+The bright oblong seemed to break and spread, tilted down below the
+level of the roofs; and suddenly the heavens flared, as if some huge
+jug of crimson light had been flung out on them.  Something turned
+over in Pierson's heart; he flung up his hand to his eyes.
+
+"The poor men in it!"  he said.  "How terrible!"
+
+Noel's voice answered, hard and pitiless:
+
+"They needn't have come.  They're murderers!"
+
+Yes, they were murderers--but how terrible!  And he stood quivering,
+with his hands pressed to his face, till the cheering had died out
+into silence.
+
+"Let's pray, Nollie!"  he whispered.  "O God, Who in Thy great mercy
+hath delivered us from peril, take into Thy keeping the souls of
+these our enemies, consumed by Thy wrath before our eyes; give us the
+power to pity them--men like ourselves."
+
+But even while he prayed he could see Noel's face flame-white in the
+darkness; and, as that glow in the sky faded out, he felt once more
+the thrill of triumph.
+
+They went down to tell the maids, and for some time after sat up
+together, talking over what they had seen, eating biscuits and
+drinking milk, which they warmed on an etna.  It was nearly two
+o'clock before they went to bed.  Pierson fell asleep at once, and
+never turned till awakened at half-past six by his alarum.  He had
+Holy Communion to administer at eight, and he hurried to get early to
+his church and see that nothing untoward had happened to it.  There
+it stood in the sunlight; tall, grey, quiet, unharmed, with bell
+gently ringing.
+
+
+
+3
+
+And at that hour Cyril Morland, under the parapet of his trench,
+tightening his belt, was looking at his wrist-watch for the hundredth
+time, calculating exactly where he meant to put foot and hand for the
+going over: 'I absolutely mustn't let those chaps get in front of
+me,' he thought.  So many yards before the first line of trenches, so
+many yards to the second line, and there stop.  So his rehearsals had
+gone; it was the performance now!  Another minute before the terrific
+racket of the drum-fire should become the curtain-fire, which would
+advance before them.  He ran his eye down the trench.  The man next
+him was licking his two first fingers, as if he might be going to
+bowl at cricket.  Further down, a man was feeling his puttees.  A
+voice said: "Wot price the orchestra nah!"  He saw teeth gleam in
+faces burnt almost black.  Then he looked up; the sky was blue beyond
+the brownish film of dust raised by the striking shells.  Noel!
+Noel!  Noel!...  He dug his fingers deep into the left side of his
+tunic till he could feel the outline of her photograph between his
+dispatch-case and his heart.  His heart fluttered just as it used
+when he was stretched out with hand touching the ground, before the
+start of the "hundred yards" at school.  Out of the corner of his eye
+he caught the flash of a man's "briquet" lighting a cigarette.  All
+right for those chaps, but not for him; he wanted all his breath--
+this rifle, and kit were handicap enough!  Two days ago he had been
+reading in some paper how men felt just before an attack.  And now he
+knew.  He just felt nervous.  If only the moment would come, and get
+itself over!  For all the thought he gave to the enemy there might
+have been none--nothing but shells and bullets, with lives of their
+own.  He heard the whistle; his foot was on the spot he had marked
+down; his hand where he had seen it; he called out: "Now, boys!"  His
+head was over the top, his body over; he was conscious of someone
+falling, and two men neck and neck beside him.  Not to try and run,
+not to break out of a walk; to go steady, and yet keep ahead!  D--n
+these holes!  A bullet tore through his sleeve, grazing his arm--a
+red-hot sensation, like the touch of an iron.  A British shell from
+close over his head burst sixty yards ahead; he stumbled, fell flat,
+picked himself up.  Three ahead of him now!  He walked faster, and
+drew alongside.  Two of them fell.  'What luck!' he thought; and
+gripping his rifle harder, pitched headlong into a declivity.  Dead
+bodies lay there!  The first German trench line, and nothing alive in
+it, nothing to clean up, nothing of it left!  He stopped, getting his
+wind; watching the men panting and stumbling in.  The roar of the
+guns was louder than ever again, barraging the second line.  So far,
+good!  And here was his captain!
+
+"Ready, boys?  On, then!"
+
+This time he moved more slowly still, over terrible going, all holes
+and hummocks.  Half consciously he took cover all he could.  The air
+was alive with the whistle from machine-gun fire storming across
+zigzag fashion-alive it was with bullets, dust, and smoke.  'How
+shall I tell her?' he thought.  There would be nothing to tell but
+just a sort of jagged brown sensation.  He kept his eyes steadily
+before him, not wanting to seethe men falling, not wanting anything
+to divert him from getting there.  He felt the faint fanning of the
+passing bullets.  The second line must be close now.  Why didn't that
+barrage lift?  Was this new dodge of firing till the last second
+going to do them in?  Another hundred yards and he would be bang into
+it.  He flung himself flat and waited; looking at his wrist-watch he
+noted that his arm was soaked with blood.  He thought: 'A wound!  Now
+I shall go home.  Thank God!  Oh, Noel!' The passing bullets whirled
+above him; he could hear them even through the screech and thunder of
+the shell-fire.  'The beastly things!' he thought: A voice beside him
+gasped out:
+
+"It's lifted, sir."
+
+He called: "Come on, boys!" and went forward, stooping.  A bullet
+struck his rifle.  The shock made him stagger and sent an electric
+shock spinning up his arm.  'Luck again!' he thought.  'Now for it!
+I haven't seen a German yet!' He leaped forward, spun round, flung up
+his arms, and fell on his back, shot through and through....
+
+The position was consolidated, as they say, and in the darkness
+stretcher-bearers were out over the half-mile.  Like will-o'-the-
+wisps, with their shaded lanterns, they moved, hour after hour,
+slowly quartering the black honeycomb which lay behind the new
+British line.  Now and then in the light of some star-shell their
+figures were disclosed, bending and raising the forms of the wounded,
+or wielding pick and shovel.
+
+"Officer."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Search."
+
+>From the shaded lantern, lowered to just above the body, a yellowish
+glare fell on face and breast.  The hands of the searcher moved in
+that little pool of light.  The bearer who was taking notes bent
+down.
+
+"Another boy," he said.  "That all he has?"
+
+The searcher raised himself.
+
+"Just those, and a photo."
+
+"Dispatch-case; pound loose; cigarette-case; wristwatch; photo.
+Let's see it."
+
+The searcher placed the photo in the pool of light.  The tiny face of
+a girl stared up at them, unmoved, from its short hair.
+
+"Noel," said the searcher, reading.
+
+"H'm!  Take care of it.  Stick it in his case.  Come on!"
+
+The pool of light dissolved, and darkness for ever covered Cyril
+Morland.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+When those four took their seats in the Grand Circle at Queen's Hall
+the programme was already at the second number, which, in spite of
+all the efforts of patriotism, was of German origin--a Brandenburg
+concerto by Bach.  More curious still, it was encored.  Pierson did
+not applaud, he was too far gone in pleasure, and sat with a rapt
+smile on his face, oblivious of his surroundings.  He remained thus
+removed from mortal joys and sorrows till the last applause had died
+away, and Leila's voice said in his ear:
+
+"Isn't it a wonderful audience, Edward?  Look at all that khaki.
+Who'd have thought those young men cared for music--good music--
+German music, too?"
+
+Pierson looked down at the patient mass of standing figures in straw
+hats and military caps, with faces turned all one way, and sighed.
+
+"I wish I could get an audience like that in my church."
+
+A smile crept out at the corner of Leila's lips.  She was thinking:
+'Ah!  Your Church is out of date, my dear, and so are you! Your
+Church, with its smell of mould and incense, its stained-glass, and
+narrowed length and droning organ.  Poor Edward, so out of the
+world!'  But she only pressed his arm, and whispered:
+
+"Look at Noel!"
+
+The girl was talking to Jimmy Fort.  Her cheeks were gushed, and she
+looked prettier than Pierson had seen her look for a long time now,
+ever since Kestrel, indeed.  He heard Leila sigh.
+
+"Does she get news of her boy?  Do you remember that May Week,
+Edward?  We were very young then; even you were young.  That was such
+a pretty little letter you wrote me.  I can see you still-wandering
+in your dress clothes along the river, among the 'holy' cows."
+
+But her eyes slid round again, watching her other neighbour and the
+girl.  A violinist had begun to play the Cesar Franck Sonata.  It was
+Pierson's favourite piece of music, bringing him, as it were, a view
+of heaven, of devotional blue air where devout stars were shining in
+a sunlit noon, above ecstatic trees and waters where ecstatic swans
+were swimming.
+
+"Queer world, Mr. Pierson!  Fancy those boys having to go back to
+barrack life after listening to that!, What's your feeling?  Are we
+moving back to the apes?  Did we touch top note with that Sonata?"
+
+Pierson turned and contemplated his questioner shrewdly.
+
+"No, Captain Fort, I do not think we are moving back to the apes; if
+we ever came from them.  Those boys have the souls of heroes!"
+
+"I know that, sir, perhaps better than you do."
+
+"Ah!  yes," said Pierson humbly, "I forgot, of course."  But he still
+looked at his neighbour doubtfully.  This Captain Fort, who was a
+friend of Leila's, and who had twice been to see them, puzzled him.
+He had a frank face, a frank voice, but queer opinions, or so it
+seemed to, Pierson--little bits of Moslemism, little bits of the
+backwoods, and the veldt; queer unexpected cynicisms, all sorts of
+side views on England had lodged in him, and he did not hide them.
+They came from him like bullets, in that frank voice, and drilled
+little holes in the listener.  Those critical sayings flew so much
+more poignantly from one who had been through the same educational
+mill as himself, than if they had merely come from some rough
+diamond, some artist, some foreigner, even from a doctor like George.
+And they always made him uncomfortable, like the touch of a prickly
+leaf; they did not amuse him.  Certainly Edward Pierson shrank from
+the rough touches of a knock-about philosophy.  After all, it was but
+natural that he should.
+
+He and Noel left after the first part of the concert, parting from
+the other two at the door.  He slipped his hand through her arm; and,
+following out those thoughts of his in the concert-hall, asked:
+
+"Do you like Captain Fort, Nollie?"
+
+"Yes; he's a nice man."
+
+"He seems a nice man, certainly; he has a nice smile, but strange
+views, I'm afraid."
+
+"He thinks the Germans are not much worse than we are; he says that a
+good many of us are bullies too."
+
+"Yes, that is the sort of thing I mean."
+
+"But are we, Daddy?"
+
+"Surely not."
+
+"A policeman I talked to once said the same.  Captain Fort says that
+very few men can stand having power put into their hands without
+being spoiled.  He told me some dreadful stories.  He says we have no
+imagination, so that we often do things without seeing how brutal
+they are."
+
+"We're not perfect, Nollie; but on the whole I think we're a kind
+people."
+
+Noel was silent a moment, then said suddenly:
+
+"Kind people often think others are kind too, when they really
+aren't.  Captain Fort doesn't make that mistake."
+
+"I think he's a little cynical, and a little dangerous."
+
+"Are all people dangerous who don't think like others, Daddy?"
+
+Pierson, incapable of mockery, was not incapable of seeing when he
+was being mocked.  He looked at his daughter with a smile.
+
+"Not quite so bad as that, Nollie; but Mr. Fort is certainly
+subversive.  I think perhaps he has seen too many queer sides of
+life."
+
+"I like him the better for that."
+
+"Well, well," Pierson answered absently.  He had work to do in
+preparation for a Confirmation Class, and sought his study on getting
+in.
+
+Noel went to the dining-room to drink her hot milk.  The curtains
+were not drawn, and bright moonlight was coming in.  Without lighting
+up, she set the etna going, and stood looking at the moon-full for
+the second time since she and Cyril had waited for it in the Abbey.
+And pressing her hands to her breast, she shivered.  If only she
+could summon him from the moonlight out there; if only she were a
+witch-could see him, know where he was, what doing!  For a fortnight
+now she had received no letter.  Every day since he had left she had
+read the casualty lists, with the superstitious feeling that to do so
+would keep him out of them.  She took up the Times.  There was just
+enough light, and she read the roll of honour--till the moon shone in
+on her, lying on the floor, with the dropped journal....
+
+But she was proud, and soon took grief to her room, as on that night
+after he left her, she had taken love.  No sign betrayed to the house
+her disaster; the journal on the floor, and the smell of the burnt
+milk which had boiled over, revealed nothing.  After all, she was but
+one of a thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony.
+Each night, year in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in
+pillows to smother that first awful sense of desolation, and grope
+for the secret spirit-place where bereaved souls go, to receive some
+feeble touch of healing from knowledge of each other's trouble....
+
+In the morning she got up from her sleepless bed, seemed to eat her
+breakfast, and went off to her hospital.  There she washed up plates
+and dishes, with a stony face, dark under the eyes.
+
+The news came to Pierson in a letter from Thirza, received at lunch-
+time.  He read it with a dreadful aching.  Poor, poor little Nollie!
+What an awful trouble for her!  And he, too, went about his work with
+the nightmare thought that he had to break the news to her that
+evening.  Never had he felt more lonely, more dreadfully in want of
+the mother of his children.  She would have known how to soothe, how
+to comfort.  On her heart the child could have sobbed away grief.
+And all that hour, from seven to eight, when he was usually in
+readiness to fulfil the functions of God's substitute to his
+parishioners, he spent in prayer of his own, for guidance how to
+inflict and heal this blow.  When, at last, Noel came, he opened.
+the door to her himself, and, putting back the hair from her
+forehead, said: "Come in here a moment, my darling!"  Noel followed
+him into the study, and sat down.  "I know already, Daddy."  Pierson
+was more dismayed by this stoicism than he would have been by any
+natural out burst.  He stood, timidly stroking her hair, murmuring to
+her what he had said to Gratian, and to so many others in these days:
+"There is no death; look forward to seeing him again; God is
+merciful"  And he marvelled at the calmness of that pale face--so
+young.
+
+"You are very brave, my child!"  he said.
+
+"There's nothing else to be, is there?"
+
+"Isn't there anything I can do for you, Nollie?"
+
+"No, Daddy."
+
+"When did you see it?"
+
+"Last night."  She had already known for twenty-four hours without
+telling him!
+
+"Have you prayed, my darling?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Try, Nollie!"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah, try!"
+
+"It would be ridiculous, Daddy; you don't know."
+
+Grievously upset and bewildered, Pierson moved away from her, and
+said:
+
+"You look dreadfully tired.  Would you like a hot bath, and your
+dinner in bed?"
+
+"I'd like some tea; that's all."  And she went out.
+
+When he had seen that the tea had gone up to her, he too went out;
+and, moved by a longing for woman's help, took a cab to Leila's flat.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+1
+
+
+On leaving the concert Leila and Jimmy Fort had secured a taxi; a
+vehicle which, at night, in wartime, has certain advantages for those
+who desire to become better acquainted.  Vibration, sufficient noise,
+darkness, are guaranteed; and all that is lacking for the furtherance
+of emotion is the scent of honeysuckle and roses, or even of the
+white flowering creeper which on the stoep at High Constantia had
+smelled so much sweeter than petrol.
+
+When Leila found herself with Fort in that loneliness to which she
+had been looking forward, she was overcome by an access of nervous
+silence.  She had been passing through a strange time for weeks past.
+Every night she examined her sensations without quite understanding
+them as yet.  When a woman comes to her age, the world-force is
+liable to take possession, saying:
+
+"You were young, you were beautiful, you still have beauty, you are
+not, cannot be, old.  Cling to youth, cling to beauty; take all you
+can get, before your face gets lines and your hair grey; it is
+impossible that you have been loved for the last time."
+
+To see Jimmy Fort at the concert, talking to Noel, had brought this
+emotion to a head.  She was not of a grudging nature, and could
+genuinely admire Noel, but the idea that Jimmy Fort might also admire
+disturbed her greatly.  He must not; it was not fair; he was too old-
+-besides, the girl had her boy; and she had taken care that he should
+know it.  So, leaning towards him, while a bare-shouldered young lady
+sang, she had whispered:
+
+"Penny?"
+
+And he had whispered back:
+
+"Tell you afterwards."
+
+That had comforted her.  She would make him take her home.  It was
+time she showed her heart.
+
+And now, in the cab, resolved to make her feelings known, in sudden
+shyness she found it very difficult.  Love, to which for quite three
+years she had been a stranger, was come to life within her.  The
+knowledge was at once so sweet, and so disturbing, that she sat with
+face averted, unable to turn the precious minutes to account.  They
+arrived at the flat without having done more than agree that the
+streets were dark, and the moon bright.  She got out with a sense of
+bewilderment, and said rather desperately:
+
+"You must come up and have a cigarette.  It's quite early, still."
+
+He went up.
+
+"Wait just a minute," said Leila.
+
+Sitting there with his drink and his cigarette, he stared at some
+sunflowers in a bowl--Famille Rose--and waited just ten; smiling a
+little, recalling the nose of the fairy princess, and the dainty way
+her lips shaped the words she spoke.  If she had not had that lucky
+young devil of a soldier boy, one would have wanted to buckle her
+shoes, lay one's coat in the mud for her, or whatever they did in
+fairytales.  One would have wanted--ah! what would one not have
+wanted!  Hang that soldier boy!  Leila said he was twenty-two.  By
+George!  how old it made a man feel who was rising forty, and tender
+on the off-fore!  No fairy princesses for him!  Then a whiff of
+perfume came to his nostrils; and, looking up, he saw Leila standing
+before him, in a long garment of dark silk, whence her white arms
+peeped out.
+
+"Another penny?  Do you remember these things, Jimmy?  The Malay
+women used to wear them in Cape Town.  You can't think what a relief
+it is to get out of my slave's dress.  Oh!  I'm so sick of nursing!
+Jimmy, I want to live again a little!"
+
+The garment had taken fifteen years off her age, and a gardenia, just
+where the silk crossed on her breast, seemed no whiter than her skin.
+He wondered whimsically whether it had dropped to her out of the
+dark!
+
+"Live?"  he said.  "Why!  Don't you always?"
+
+She raised her hands so that the dark silk fell, back from the whole
+length of those white arms.
+
+"I haven't lived for two years.  Oh, Jimmy!  Help me to live a
+little!  Life's so short, now."
+
+Her eyes disturbed him, strained and pathetic; the sight of her arms;
+the scent of the flower disturbed him; he felt his cheeks growing
+warm, and looked down.
+
+She slipped suddenly forward on to her knees at his feet, took his
+hand, pressed it with both of hers, and murmured:
+
+"Love me a little!  What else is there?  Oh! Jimmy, what else is
+there?"
+
+And with the scent of the flower, crushed by their hands, stirring
+his senses, Fort thought: 'Ah, what else is there, in these forsaken
+days?'
+
+To Jimmy Fort, who had a sense of humour, and was in some sort a
+philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom failed to
+seem amusing.  But when he walked away from Leila's he was pensive.
+She was a good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an
+enchantress; but--she was decidedly mature.  And here he was--
+involved in helping her to "live"; involved almost alarmingly, for
+there had been no mistaking the fact that she had really fallen in
+love with him.
+
+This was flattering and sweet.  Times were sad, and pleasure scarce,
+but--!  The roving instinct which had kept him, from his youth up,
+rolling about the world, shied instinctively at bonds, however
+pleasant, the strength and thickness of which he could not gauge; or,
+was it that perhaps for the first time in his life he had been
+peeping into fairyland of late, and this affair with Leila was by no
+means fairyland?  He had another reason, more unconscious, for
+uneasiness.  His heart, for all his wanderings, was soft, he had
+always found it difficult to hurt anyone, especially anyone who did
+him the honour to love him.  A sort of presentiment weighed on him
+while he walked the moonlit streets at this most empty hour, when
+even the late taxis had ceased to run.  Would she want him to marry
+her?  Would it be his duty, if she did?  And then he found himself
+thinking of the concert, and that girl's face, listening to the tales
+he was telling her.  'Deuced queer world,' he thought, 'the way
+things go!  I wonder what she would think of us, if she knew--and
+that good padre!  Phew!'
+
+He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in his leg,
+and having to spend the night on a door-step, that he had plenty of
+time for rumination; but since it brought him no confidence whatever,
+he began at last to feel: 'Well; it might be a lot worse.  Take the
+goods the gods send you and don't fuss!'  And suddenly he remembered
+with extreme vividness that night on the stoep at High Constantia,
+and thought with dismay: 'I could have plunged in over head and ears
+then; and now--I can't!  That's life all over!  Poor Leila!  Me
+miserum, too, perhaps--who knows!'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+When Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were smiling,
+and her lips were soft.  She seemed to smile and be soft all over,
+and she took both his hands.  Everything was a pleasure to her that
+day, even the sight of this sad face.  She was in love and was loved
+again; had a present and a future once more, not only her own full
+past; and she must finish with Edward in half an hour, for Jimmy was
+coming.  She sat down on the divan, took his hand in a sisterly way,
+and said:
+
+"Tell me, Edward; I can see you're in trouble.  What is it?"
+
+"Noel.  The boy she was fond of has been killed."
+
+She dropped his hand.
+
+"Oh, no!  Poor child!  It's too cruel!"  Tears started up in her grey
+eyes, and she touched them with a tiny handkerchief.  "Poor, poor
+little Noel!  Was she very fond of him?"
+
+"A very sudden, short engagement; but I'm afraid she takes it
+desperately to heart.  I don't know how to comfort her; only a woman
+could.  I came to ask you: Do you think she ought to go on with her
+work?  What do you think, Leila?  I feel lost!"
+
+Leila, gazing at him, thought: 'Lost?  Yes, you look lost, my poor
+Edward!'
+
+"I should let her go on," she said: "it helps; it's the only thing
+that does help.  I'll see if I can get them to let her come into the
+wards.  She ought to be in touch with suffering and the men; that
+kitchen work will try her awfully just now: Was he very young?"
+
+"Yes.  They wanted to get married.  I was opposed to it."
+
+Leila's lip curled ever so little.  'You would be!' she thought.
+
+"I couldn't bear to think of Nollie giving herself hastily, like
+that; they had only known each other three weeks.  It was very hard
+for me, Leila.  And then suddenly he was sent to the front."
+
+Resentment welled up in Leila.  The kill-Joys!  As if life didn't
+kill joy fast enough!  Her cousin's face at that moment was almost
+abhorrent to her, its gentle perplexed goodness darkened and warped
+by that monkish look.  She turned away, glanced at the clock over the
+hearth, and thought: 'Yes, and he would stop Jimmy and me!  He would
+say: "Oh, no! dear Leila--you mustn't love--it's sin!"  How I hate
+that word!'
+
+"I think the most dreadful thing in life," she said abruptly, "is the
+way people suppress their natural instincts; what they suppress in
+themselves they make other people suppress too, if they can; and
+that's the cause of half the misery in this world."
+
+Then at the surprise on his face at this little outburst, whose cause
+he could not know, she added hastily: "I hope Noel will get over it
+quickly, and find someone else."
+
+"Yes.  If they had been married--how much worse it would have been.
+Thank God, they weren't!"
+
+"I don't know.  They would have had an hour of bliss.  Even an hour
+of bliss is worth something in these days."
+
+"To those who only believe in this 'life--perhaps."
+
+'Ten minutes more!' she thought: 'Oh, why doesn't he go?' But at that
+very moment he got up, and instantly her heart went out to him again.
+
+"I'm so sorry, Edward.  If I can help in any way--I'll try my best
+with Noel to-morrow; and do come to me whenever you feel inclined."
+
+She took his hand in hers; afraid that he would sit down again, she
+yet could not help a soft glance into his eyes, and a little rush of
+pitying warmth in the pressure of her hand.
+
+Pierson smiled; the smile which always made her sorry for him.
+
+"Good-bye, Leila; you're very good and kind to me.  Good-bye."
+
+Her bosom swelled with relief and compassion; and--she let him out.
+
+Running upstairs again she thought: 'I've just time.  What shall I
+put on?  Poor Edward, poor Noel!  What colour does Jimmy like?  Oh!
+Why didn't I keep him those ten years ago--what utter waste!'  And,
+feverishly adorning herself, she came back to the window, and stood
+there in the dark to watch, while some jasmine which grew below sent
+up its scent to her.  'Would I marry him?' she thought, 'if he asked
+me?  But he won't ask me--why should he now?  Besides, I couldn't
+bear him to feel I wanted position or money from him.  I only want
+love--love--love!'  The silent repetition of that word gave her a
+wonderful sense of solidity and comfort.  So long as she only wanted
+love, surely he would give it.
+
+A tall figure turned down past the church, coming towards her.  It
+was he!  And suddenly she bethought herself.  She went to the little
+black piano, sat down, and began to sing the song she had sung to him
+ten years ago: "If I could be the falling dew and fall on thee all
+day!"  She did not even look round when he came in, but continued to
+croon out the words, conscious of him just behind her shoulder in the
+dark.  But when she had finished, she got up and threw her arms round
+him, strained him to her, and burst into tears on his shoulder;
+thinking of Noel and that dead boy, thinking of the millions of other
+boys, thinking of her own happiness, thinking of those ten years
+wasted, of how short was life, and love; thinking--hardly knowing
+what she thought!  And Jimmy Fort, very moved by this emotion which
+he only half understood, pressed her tightly in his arms, and kissed
+her wet cheeks and her neck, pale and warm in the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+Noel went on with her work for a month, and then, one morning,
+fainted over a pile of dishes.  The noise attracted attention, and
+Mrs. Lynch was summoned.
+
+The sight of her lying there so deadly white taxed Leila's nerves
+severely.  But the girl revived quickly, and a cab was sent for.
+Leila went with her, and told the driver to stop at Camelot Mansions.
+Why take her home in this state, why not save the jolting, and let
+her recover properly?  They went upstairs arm in arm.  Leila made her
+lie down on the divan, and put a hot-water bottle to her feet.  Noel
+was still so passive and pale that even to speak to her seemed a
+cruelty.  And, going to her little sideboard, Leila stealthily
+extracted a pint bottle of some champagne which Jimmy Fort had sent
+in, and took it with  two glasses and a corkscrew into her bedroom.
+She drank a little herself, and came out bearing a glass to the girl.
+Noel shook her head, and her eyes seemed to say: "Do you really think
+I'm so easily mended?"  But Leila had been through too much in her
+time to despise earthly remedies, and she held it to the girl's lips
+until she drank.  It was excellent champagne, and, since Noel had
+never yet touched alcohol, had an instantaneous effect.  Her eyes
+brightened; little red spots came up in her cheeks.  And suddenly she
+rolled over and buried her face deep in a cushion.  With her short
+hair, she looked so like a child lying there, that Leila knelt down,
+stroking her head, and saying: "There, there; my love!  There,
+there!"
+
+At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, masklike
+despair of the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and her
+face had a wild look.  She withdrew herself from Leila's touch,
+and, crossing her arms tightly across her chest, said:
+
+"I can't bear it; I can't sleep.  I want him back; I hate life--
+I hate the world.  We hadn't done anything--only just loved each
+other.  God likes punishing; just because we loved each other; we had
+only one day to love each other--only one day--only one!"
+
+Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms
+straining and swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch it.
+The voice, uncannily dainty for all the wildness of the words and
+face, went on:
+
+"I won't--I don't want to live.  If there's another life, I shall go
+to him.  And if there isn't--it's just sleep."
+
+Leila put out her hand to ward of these wild wanderings.  Like most
+women who live simply the life of their senses and emotions, she was
+orthodox; or rather never speculated on such things.
+
+"Tell me about yourself and him," she said.
+
+Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin.  "We loved each other;
+and children are born, aren't they, after you've loved?  But mine
+won't be!"  From the look on her face rather than from her words, the
+full reality of her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again.
+Nonsense!  But--what an awful thing, if true!  That which had always
+seemed to her such an exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of
+life--why! now, it was a tragedy!  Instinctively she raised herself
+and put her arms round the girl.
+
+"My poor dear!" she said; "you're fancying things!"
+
+The colour had faded out of Noel's face, and, with her head thrown
+back and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young
+ghost.
+
+"If it is--I shan't live.  I don't mean to--it's easy to die.
+I don't mean Daddy to know."
+
+"Oh! my dear, my dear!"  was all Leila could stammer.
+
+"Was it wrong, Leila?"
+
+"Wrong?  I don't know--wrong?  If it really is so--it was--
+unfortunate.  But surely, surely--you're mistaken?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "I did it so that we should belong to each
+other.  Nothing could have taken him from me."
+
+Leila caught at the girl's words.
+
+"Then, my dear--he hasn't quite gone from you, you see?"
+
+Noel's lips formed a "No" which was inaudible.  "But Daddy!"  she
+whispered.
+
+Edward's face came before Leila so vividly that she could hardly see
+the girl for the tortured shape of it.  Then the hedonist in her
+revolted against that ascetic vision.  Her worldly judgment condemned
+and deplored this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding
+that hour of life and love, snatched out of the jaws of death.  "Need
+he ever know?" she said.
+
+"I could never lie to Daddy.  But it doesn't matter.  Why should one
+go on living, when life is rotten?"
+
+Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late October.
+Leila got up from her knees.  She stood at the window thinking hard.
+
+"My dear," she said at last, "you mustn't get morbid.  Look at me!
+I've had two husbands, and--and--well, a pretty stormy up and down
+time of it; and I daresay I've got lots of trouble before me.  But
+I'm not going to cave in.  Nor must you.  The Piersons have plenty of
+pluck; you mustn't be a traitor to your blood.  That's the last
+thing.  Your boy would have told you to stick it.  These are your
+'trenches,' and you're not going to be downed, are you?"
+
+After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel said:
+
+"Give me a cigarette, Leila."
+
+Leila produced the little flat case she carried.
+
+"That's brave," she said.  "Nothing's incurable at your age.  Only
+one thing's incurable--getting old."
+
+Noel laughed.  "That's curable too, isn't it?"
+
+"Not without surrender."
+
+Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two cigarettes
+fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling.  Then Noel got up from the
+divan, and went over to the piano.  She was still in her hospital
+dress of lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the
+keys, playing a chord now, and then, Leila's heart felt hollow from
+compassion; she was so happy herself just now, and this child so very
+wretched!
+
+"Play to me," she said; "no--don't; I'll play to you."  And sitting
+down, she began to play and sing a little French song, whose first
+line ran: "Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous."  It was soft, gay,
+charming.  If the girl cried, so much the better.  But Noel did not
+cry.  She seemed suddenly to have recovered all her self-possession.
+She spoke calmly, answered Leila's questions without emotion, and
+said she would go home.  Leila went out with her, and walked some way
+in the direction of her home; distressed, but frankly at a loss.  At
+the bottom of Portland Place Noel stopped and said: "I'm quite all
+right now, Leila; thank you awfully.  I shall just go home and lie
+down.  And I shall come to-morrow, the same as usual.  Goodbye!"
+Leila could only grasp the girl's hand, and say: "My dear, that's
+splendid.  There's many a slip--besides, it's war-time."
+
+With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the girl
+moving slowly away; and turned back herself towards her hospital,
+with a disturbed and compassionate heart.
+
+
+
+2
+
+But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street.  She had
+received a certain measure of comfort, been steadied by her
+experienced cousin's vitality, and the new thoughts suggested by
+those words: "He hasn't quite gone from you, has he?"  "Besides, it's
+war-time."  Leila had spoken freely, too, and the physical ignorance
+in which the girl had been groping these last weeks was now removed.
+Like most proud natures, she did not naturally think much about the
+opinion of other people; besides, she knew nothing of the world, its
+feelings and judgments.  Her nightmare was the thought of her
+father's horror and grief.  She tried to lessen that nightmare by
+remembering his opposition to her marriage, and the resentment she
+had felt.  He had never realised, never understood, how she and Cyril
+loved.  Now, if she were really going to have a child, it would be
+Cyril's--Cyril's son--Cyril over again.  The instinct stronger than
+reason, refinement, tradition, upbringing, which had pushed her on in
+such haste to make sure of union--the irrepressible pulse of life
+faced with annihilation--seemed to revive within her, and make her
+terrible secret almost precious.  She had read about "War babies" in
+the papers, read with a dull curiosity; but now the atmosphere, as it
+were, of those writings was illumined for her.  These babies were
+wrong, were a "problem," and yet, behind all that, she seemed now to
+know that people were glad of them; they made up, they filled the
+gaps.  Perhaps, when she had one, she would be proud, secretly proud,
+in spite of everyone, in spite of her father!  They had tried to kill
+Cyril--God and everyone; but they hadn't been able, he was alive
+within her!  A glow came into her face, walking among the busy
+shopping crowd, and people turned to look at her; she had that
+appearance of seeing no one, nothing, which is strange and attractive
+to those who have a moment to spare from contemplation of their own
+affairs.  Fully two hours she wandered thus, before going in, and
+only lost that exalted feeling when, in her own little room, she had
+taken up his photograph, and was sitting on her bed gazing at it.
+She had a bad breakdown then.  Locked in there, she lay on her bed,
+crying, dreadfully lonely, till she fell asleep exhausted, with the
+tear-stained photograph clutched in her twitching fingers.  She woke
+with a start.  It was dark, and someone was knocking on her door.
+
+"Miss Noel!"
+
+Childish perversity kept her silent.  Why couldn't they leave her
+alone?  They would leave her alone if they knew.  Then she heard
+another kind of knocking, and her father's voice:
+
+"Nollie!  Nollie !"
+
+She scrambled up, and opened.  He looked scared, and her heart smote
+her.
+
+"It's all right, Daddy; I was asleep."
+
+"My dear, I'm sorry, but dinner's ready."
+
+"I don't want any dinner; I think I'll go to bed."
+
+The frown between his brows deepened.
+
+"You shouldn't lock your door, Nollie: I was quite frightened.  I
+went round to the hospital to bring you home, and they told me about
+your fainting.  I want you to see a doctor."
+
+Noel shook her head vigorously.  "Oh, no!  It's nothing!"
+
+"Nothing?  To faint like that?  Come, my child.  To please me."  He
+took her face in his hands.  Noel shrank away.
+
+"No, Daddy.  I won't see a doctor.  Extravagance in wartime!  I
+won't.  It's no good trying to make me.  I'll come down if you like;
+I shall be all right to-morrow."
+
+With this Pierson had to be content; but, often that evening, she saw
+him looking at her anxiously.  And when she went up, he came out of
+his study, followed to her room, and insisted on lighting her fire.
+Kissing her at the door, he said very quietly:
+
+"I wish I could be a mother to you, my child!"
+
+For a moment it flashed through Noel: 'He knows!' then, by the
+puzzled look on his face, she knew that he did not.  If only he did
+know; what a weight it would be off her mind!  But she answered
+quietly too; "Good night, Daddy dear!" kissed him, and shut the door.
+
+She sat down before the little new fire, and spread her hands out to
+it; all was so cold and wintry in her heart.  And the firelight
+flickered on her face, where shadows lay thick under her eyes, for
+all the roundness of her cheeks, and on her slim pale hands, and the
+supple grace of her young body.  And out in the night, clouds raced
+over the moon, which had come full once more.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+Pierson went back to his study, and wrote to Gratian.
+
+"If you can get leave for a few days, my dear, I want you at home.  I
+am troubled about Nollie.  Ever since that disaster happened to her
+she has been getting paler; and to-day she fainted.  She won't see a
+doctor, but perhaps you could get her to see George.  If you come up,
+he will surely be able to run up to us for a day or two.  If not, you
+must take her down to him at the sea.  I have just seen the news of
+your second cousin Charlie Pierson's death; he was killed in one of
+the last attacks on the Somme; he was nephew of my cousin Leila whom,
+as you know, Noel sees every day at her hospital.  Bertram has the
+D. S. O.  I have been less hard-pressed lately; Lauder has been home
+on leave and has taken some Services for me.  And now the colder
+weather has come, I am feeling much fresher.  Try your best to come.
+I am seriously concerned for our beloved child.
+"Your affectionate father
+"EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+Gratian answered that she could get week-end leave, and would come on
+Friday.  He met her at the station, and they drove thence straight to
+the hospital, to pick up Noel.  Leila came to them in the waiting-
+room, and Pierson, thinking they would talk more freely about Noel's
+health if he left them alone, went into the recreation room, and
+stood watching a game of bagatelle between two convalescents.  When
+he returned to the little sitting-room they were still standing by
+the hearth, talking in low voices.  Gratian must surely have been
+stooping over the fire, for her face was red, almost swollen, and her
+eyes looked as if she had scorched them.
+
+Leila said lightly:
+
+"Well, Edward, aren't the men delightful?  When are we going to
+another concert together?"
+
+She, too, was flushed and looking almost young.
+
+"Ah!  If we could do the things we want to.
+
+"That's very pretty, Edward; but you should, you know--for a tonic."
+He shook his head and smiled.
+
+"You're a temptress, Leila.  Will you let Nollie know, please, that
+we can take her back with us?  Can you let her off to-morrow?"
+
+"For as long as you like; she wants a rest.  I've been talking to
+Gratian.  We oughtn't to have let her go on after a shock like that
+--my fault, I'm afraid.  I thought that work might be best."
+
+Pierson was conscious of Gratian walking past him out of the room.
+He held out his hand to Leila, and followed.  A small noise occurred
+behind him such as a woman makes when she has put a foot through her
+own skirt, or has other powerful cause for dismay.  Then he saw Noel
+in the hall, and was vaguely aware of being the centre of a triangle
+of women whose eyes were playing catch-glance.  His daughters kissed
+each other; and he became seated between them in the taxi.  The most
+unobservant of men, he parted from them in the hall without having
+perceived anything except that they were rather silent; and, going to
+his study, he took up a Life of Sir Thomas More.  There was a passage
+therein which he itched to show George Laird, who was coming up that
+evening.
+
+Gratian and Noel had mounted the stairs with lips tight set, and eyes
+averted; both were very pale.  When they reached the door of
+Gratian's room the room which had been their mother's--Noel was for
+passing on, but Gratian caught her by the arm, and said: "Come in."
+The fire was burning brightly in there, and the two sisters stood in
+front of it, one on each side, their hands clutching the mantel-
+shelf, staring at the flames.  At last Noel put one hand in front of
+her eyes, and said:
+
+"I asked her to tell you."
+
+Gratian made the movement of one who is gripped by two strong
+emotions, and longs to surrender to one or to the other.
+
+"It's too horrible," was all she said.
+
+Noel turned towards the door.
+
+"Stop, Nollie!"
+
+Noel stopped with her hand on the door knob.  "I don't want to be
+forgiven and sympathised with.  I just want to be let alone."
+
+"How can you be let alone?"
+
+The tide of misery surged up in Noel, and she cried out passionately:
+
+"I hate sympathy from people who can't understand.  I don't want
+anyone's.  I can always go away, and lose myself."
+
+The words "can't understand" gave Gratian a shock.
+
+"I can understand," she said.
+
+"You can't; you never saw him.  You never saw--" her lips quivered so
+that she had to stop and bite them, to keep back a rush of tears.
+
+"Besides you would never have done it yourself."
+
+Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the bed.  It
+was true.  She would never have done it herself; it was just that
+which, for all her longing to help her sister, iced her love and
+sympathy.  How terrible, wretched, humiliating!  Her own sister, her
+only sister, in the position of all those poor, badly brought up
+girls, who forgot themselves!  And her father--their father!  Till
+that moment she had hardly thought of him, too preoccupied by the
+shock to her own pride.  The word: "Dad!" was forced from her.
+
+Noel shuddered.
+
+"That boy!" said Gratian suddenly; "I can't forgive him.  If you
+didn't know--he did.  It was--it was--" She stopped at the sight of
+Noel's face.
+
+"I did know," she said.  "It was I.  He was my husband, as much as
+yours is.  If you say a word against him, I'll never speak to you
+again: I'm glad, and you would be, if you were going to have one.
+What's the difference, except that you've had luck, and I--haven't."
+Her lips quivered again, and she was silent.
+
+Gratian stared up at her.  She had a longing for George--to know what
+he thought and felt.
+
+"Do you mind if I tell George?"  she said.
+
+Noel shook her head.  "No! not now.  Tell anybody."  And suddenly the
+misery behind the mask of her face went straight to Gratian's heart.
+She got up and put her arms round her sister.
+
+"Nollie dear, don't look like that!"
+
+Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was over,
+went to her own room.
+
+Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious.  Her pride
+was deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry with herself.  Why
+couldn't she have been more sympathetic?  And yet, now that Noel was
+no longer there, she again condemned the dead.  What he had done was
+unpardonable.  Nollie was such--a child!  He had committed sacrilege.
+If only George would come, and she could talk it all out with him!
+She, who had married for love and known passion, had insight enough
+to feel that Noel's love had been deep--so far as anything, of
+course, could be deep in such a child.  Gratian was at the mature age
+of twenty.  But to have forgotten herself like that!  And this boy!
+If she had known him, that feeling might have been mitigated by the
+personal element, so important to all human judgment; but never
+having seen him, she thought of his conduct as "caddish."  And she
+knew that this was, and would be, the trouble between her and her
+sister.  However she might disguise it, Noel would feel that judgment
+underneath.
+
+She stripped off her nurse's garb, put on an evening frock, and
+fidgeted about the room.  Anything rather than go down and see her
+father again before she must.  This, which had happened, was beyond
+words terrible for him; she dreaded the talk with him about Noel's
+health which would have to come.  She could say nothing, of course,
+until Noel wished; and, very truthful by nature, the idea, of having
+to act a lie distressed her.
+
+She went down at last, and found them both in the drawing-room
+already; Noel in a frilly evening frock, sitting by the fire with her
+chin on her hand, while her father was reading out the war news from
+the evening paper.  At sight of that cool, dainty, girlish figure
+brooding over the fire, and of her father's worn face, the tragedy of
+this business thrust itself on her with redoubled force.  Poor Dad!
+Poor Nollie!  Awful!  Then Noel turned, and gave a little shake of
+her head, and her eyes said, almost as plainly as lips could have
+said it: 'Silence!' Gratian nodded, and came forward to the fire.
+And so began one of those calm, domestic evenings, which cover
+sometimes such depths of heartache.
+
+
+
+2
+
+Noel stayed up until her father went to bed, then went upstairs at
+once.  She had evidently determined that they should not talk about
+her.  Gratian sat on alone, waiting for her husband!  It was nearly
+midnight when he came, and she did not tell him the family news till
+next morning.  He received it with a curious little grunt.  Gratian
+saw his eyes contract, as they might have, perhaps, looking at some
+bad and complicated wound, and then stare steadily at the ceiling.
+Though they had been married over a year, she did not yet know what
+he thought about many things, and she waited with a queer sinking at
+her heart.  This skeleton in the family cupboard was a test of his
+affection for herself, a test of the quality of the man she had
+married.  He did not speak for a little, and her anxiety grew.  Then
+his hand sought hers, and gave it a hard squeeze.
+
+"Poor little Nollie!  This is a case for Mark Tapleyism.  But cheer
+up, Gracie!  We'll get her through somehow."
+
+"But father!  It's impossible to keep it from him, and impossible to
+tell him!  Oh George!  I never knew what family pride was till now.
+It's incredible.  That wretched boy!"
+
+"'De mortuis.' Come, Gracie!  In the midst of death we are in life!
+Nollie was a plumb little idiot.  But it's the war--the war!  Your
+father must get used to it; it's a rare chance for his Christianity."
+
+"Dad will be as sweet as anything--that's what makes it so horrible!"
+
+George Laird redoubled his squeeze.  "Quite right!  The old-fashioned
+father could let himself go.  But need he know?  We can get her away
+from London, and later on, we must manage somehow.  If he does hear,
+we must make him feel that Nollie was 'doing her bit.'"
+
+Gratian withdrew her hand.  "Don't!" she said in a muffled voice.
+
+George Laird turned and looked at her.  He was greatly upset himself,
+realising perhaps more truly than his young wife the violence of this
+disaster; he was quite capable, too, of feeling how deeply she was
+stirred and hurt; but, a born pragmatist, confronting life always in
+the experimental spirit, he was impatient of the: "How awful!"
+attitude.  And this streak of her father's ascetic traditionalism in
+Gratian always roused in him a wish to break it up.  If she had not
+been his wife he would have admitted at once that he might just as
+well try and alter the bone-formation of her head, as break down such
+a fundamental trait of character, but, being his wife, he naturally
+considered alteration as possible as putting a new staircase in a
+house, or throwing two rooms into one.  And, taking her in his arms,
+he said: "I know; but it'll all come right, if we put a good face on
+it.  Shall I talk to Nollie?"
+
+Gratian assented, from the desire to be able to say to her father:
+"George is seeing her!"  and so stay the need for a discussion.  But
+the whole thing seemed to her more and more a calamity which nothing
+could lessen or smooth away.
+
+George Laird had plenty of cool courage, invaluable in men who have
+to inflict as well as to alleviate pain, but he did not like his
+mission "a little bit" as he would have said; and he proposed a walk
+because he dreaded a scene.  Noel accepted for the same reason.  She
+liked George, and with the disinterested detachment of a sister-in-
+law, and the shrewdness of extreme youth, knew him perhaps better
+than did his wife.  She was sure, at all events, of being neither
+condemned nor sympathised with.
+
+They might have gone, of course, in any direction, but chose to make
+for the City.  Such deep decisions are subconscious.  They sought, no
+doubt, a dry, unemotional region; or perhaps one where George, who
+was in uniform, might rest his arm from the automatic-toy game which
+the military play.  They had reached Cheapside before he was
+conscious to the full of the bizarre nature of this walk with his
+pretty young sister-in-law among all the bustling, black-coated mob
+of money-makers.  'I wish the devil we hadn't come out!' he thought;
+'it would have been easier indoors, after all.'
+
+He cleared his throat, however, and squeezing her arm gently, began:
+"Gratian's told me, Nollie.  The great thing is to keep your spirit
+up, and not worry."
+
+"I suppose you couldn't cure me."
+
+The words, in that delicate spurning voice, absolutely staggered
+George; but he said quickly:
+
+"Out of the question, Nollie; impossible!  What are you thinking of?"
+
+"Daddy."
+
+The words: "D--n Daddy!"  rose to his teeth; he bit them off, and
+said: "Bless him!  We shall have to see to all that.  Do you really
+want to keep it from him?  It must be one way or the other; no use
+concealing it, if it's to come out later."
+
+"No."
+
+He stole a look at her.  She was gazing straight before her.  How
+damnably young she was, how pretty!  A lump came up in his throat.
+
+"I shouldn't do anything yet," he said; "too early.  Later on, if
+you'd like me to tell him.  But that's entirely up to you, my dear;
+he need never know."
+
+"No."
+
+He could not follow her thought.  Then she said:
+
+"Gratian condemns Cyril.  Don't let her.  I won't have him badly
+thought of.  It was my doing.  I wanted to make sure of him."
+
+George answered stoutly:
+
+"Gracie's upset, of course, but she'll soon be all right.  You
+mustn't let it come between you.  The thing you've got to keep
+steadily before you is that life's a huge wide adaptable thing.  Look
+at all these people!  There's hardly one of them who hasn't got now,
+or hasn't had, some personal difficulty or trouble before them as big
+as yours almost; bigger perhaps.  And here they are as lively as
+fleas.  That's what makes the fascination of life--the jolly irony of
+it all.  It would do you good to have a turn in France, and see
+yourself in proportion to the whole."  He felt her fingers suddenly
+slip under his arm, and went on with greater confidence:
+
+"Life's going to be the important thing in the future, Nollie; not
+comfort and cloistered virtue and security; but living, and pressure
+to the square inch.  Do you twig?  All the old hard-and-fast
+traditions and drags on life are in the melting-pot.  Death's boiling
+their bones, and they'll make excellent stock for the new soup.  When
+you prune and dock things, the sap flows quicker.  Regrets and
+repinings and repressions are going out of fashion; we shall have no
+time or use for them in the future.  You're going to make life--well,
+that's something to be thankful for, anyway.  You've kept Cyril
+Morland alive.  And--well, you know, we've all been born; some of us
+properly, and some improperly, and there isn't a ha'porth of
+difference in the value of the article, or the trouble of bringing it
+into the world.  The cheerier you are the better your child will be,
+and that's all you've got to think about.  You needn't begin to
+trouble at all for another couple of months, at least; after that,
+just let us know where you'd like to go, and I'll arrange it
+somehow."
+
+She looked round at him, and under that young, clear, brooding gaze
+he had the sudden uncomfortable feeling of having spoken like a
+charlatan.  Had he really touched the heart of the matter?  What good
+were his generalities to this young, fastidiously nurtured girl,
+brought up to tell the truth, by a father so old-fashioned and
+devoted, whom she loved?  It was George's nature, too, to despise
+words; and the conditions of his life these last two years had given
+him a sort of horror of those who act by talking.  He felt inclined
+to say: 'Don't pay the slightest attention to me; it's all humbug;
+what will be will be, and there's an end of it:
+
+Then she said quietly:
+
+"Shall I tell Daddy or not?"
+
+He wanted to say: "No," but somehow couldn't.  After all, the
+straightforward course was probably the best.  For this would have to
+be a lifelong concealment.  It was impossible to conceal a thing for
+ever; sooner or later he would find out.  But the doctor rose up in
+him, and he said:
+
+"Don't go to meet trouble, Nollie; it'll be time enough in two
+months.  Then tell him, or let me."
+
+She shook her head.  "No; I will, if it is to be done."
+
+He put his hand on hers, within his arm, and gave it a squeeze.
+
+"What shall I do till then?"  she asked.
+
+"Take a week's complete rest, and then go on where you are."
+
+Noel was silent a minute, then said: "Yes; I will."
+
+They spoke no more on the subject, and George exerted himself to talk
+about hospital experiences, and that phenomenon, the British soldier.
+But just before they reached home he said:
+
+"Look here, Nollie!  If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will
+be ashamed of you.  If you put ashes on your own head, your fellow-
+beings will, assist you; for of such is their charity."
+
+And, receiving another of those clear, brooding looks, he left her
+with the thought: 'A lonely child!'
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Noel went back to her hospital after a week's rest.  George had done
+more for her than he suspected, for his saying: "Life's a huge wide
+adaptable thing!" had stuck in her mind.  Did it matter what happened
+to her?  And she used to look into the faces of the people she met,
+and wonder what was absorbing them.  What secret griefs and joys were
+they carrying about with them?  The loneliness of her own life now
+forced her to this speculation concerning others, for she was
+extraordinarily lonely; Gratian and George were back at work, her
+father must be kept at bay; with Leila she felt ill at ease, for the
+confession had hurt her pride; and family friends and acquaintances
+of all sorts she shunned like the plague.  The only person she did
+not succeed in avoiding was Jimmy Fort, who came in one evening after
+dinner, bringing her a large bunch of hothouse violets.  But then, he
+did not seem to matter--too new an acquaintance, too detached.
+Something he said made her aware that he had heard of her loss, and
+that the violets were a token of sympathy.  He seemed awfully kind
+that evening, telling her "tales of Araby," and saying nothing which
+would shock her father.  It was wonderful to be a man and roll about
+the world as he had, and see all life, and queer places, and people
+--Chinamen, and Gauchos, and Boers, and Mexicans.  It gave her a kind
+of thirst.  And she liked to watch his brown, humorous face; which
+seemed made of dried leather.  It gave her the feeling that life and
+experience were all that mattered, doing and seeing things; it made
+her own trouble seem smaller; less important.  She squeezed his hand
+when she said good night: "Thank you for my violets and for coming;
+it was awfully kind of you!  I wish I could have adventures!"  And he
+answered: "You will, my dear fairy princess!" He said it queerly and
+very kindly.
+
+Fairy Princess!  What a funny thing to call her!  If he had only
+known!
+
+There were not many adventures to be had in those regions where she
+washed up.  Not much "wide and adaptable life" to take her thoughts
+off herself.  But on her journeys to and from the hospital she had
+more than one odd little experience.  One morning she noticed a
+poorly dressed woman with a red and swollen face, flapping along
+Regent Street like a wounded bird, and biting strangely at her hand.
+Hearing her groan, Noel asked her what the matter was.  The woman
+held out the hand.  "Oh!" she moaned, "I was scrubbin' the floor and
+I got this great needle stuck through my 'and, and it's broke off,
+and I can't get it out.  Oh!  Oh!"  She bit at the needle-end, not
+quite visible, but almost within reach of teeth, and suddenly went
+very white.  In dismay, Noel put an arm round her, and turned her
+into a fine chemist's shop.  Several ladies were in there, buying
+perfumes, and they looked with acerbity at this disordered dirty
+female entering among them.  Noel went up to a man behind the
+counter.  "Please give me something quick, for this poor woman, I
+think she's going to faint.  She's run a needle through her hand, and
+can't get it out."  The man gave her "something quick," and Noel
+pushed past two of the dames back to where the woman was sitting.
+She was still obstinately biting at her hand, and suddenly her chin
+flew up, and there, between her teeth, was the needle.  She took it
+from them with her other hand, stuck it proudly in the front of her
+dress, and out tumbled the words: "Oh! there--I've got it!"
+
+When she had swallowed the draught, she looked round her, bewildered,
+and said:
+
+"Thank you kindly, miss!" and shuffled out.  Noel paid for the
+draught, and followed; and, behind her, the shining shop seemed to
+exhale a perfumed breath of relief.
+
+"You can't go back to work," she said to the woman.  "Where do you
+live?"
+
+"'Ornsey, miss."
+
+"You must take a 'bus and go straight home, and put your hand at once
+into weak Condy's fluid and water.  It's swelling.  Here's five
+shillings."
+
+"Yes, miss; thank you, miss, I'm sure.  It's very kind of you.  It
+does ache cruel."
+
+"If it's not better this afternoon, you must go to a doctor.
+Promise!"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes.  'Ere's my 'bus.  Thank you kindly, miss."
+
+Noel saw her borne away, still sucking at her dirty swollen hand.
+She walked on in a glow of love for the poor woman, and hate for the
+ladies in the chemist's shop, and forgot her own trouble till she had
+almost reached the hospital.
+
+Another November day, a Saturday, leaving early, she walked to Hyde
+Park.  The plane-trees were just at the height of their spotted
+beauty.  Few--very few-yellow leaves still hung; and the slender
+pretty trees seemed rejoicing in their freedom from summer foliage.
+All their delicate boughs and twigs were shaking and dancing in the
+wind; and their rain-washed leopard-like bodies had a lithe
+un-English gaiety.  Noel passed down their line, and seated herself
+on a bench.  Close by, an artist was painting.  His easel was only
+some three yards away from her, and she could see the picture; a
+vista of the Park Lane houses through, the gay plane-tree screen.  He
+was a tall man, about forty, evidently foreign, with a thin, long,
+oval, beardless face, high brow, large grey eyes which looked as if
+he suffered from headaches and lived much within himself.  He cast
+many glances at her, and, pursuant of her new interest in "life" she
+watched him discreetly; a little startled however, when, taking off
+his broad-brimmed squash hat, he said in a broken accent:
+
+"Forgive me the liberty I take, mademoiselle, but would you so very
+kindly allow me to make a sketch of you sitting there?  I work very
+quick.  I beg you will let me.  I am Belgian, and have no manners,
+you see."  And he smiled.
+
+"If you like," said Noel.
+
+"I thank you very much:"
+
+He shifted his easel, and began to draw.  She felt flattered, and a
+little fluttered.  He was so pale, and had a curious, half-fed look,
+which moved her.
+
+"Have you been long in England?"  she said presently.
+
+"Ever since the first months of the war."
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"I was very homesick at first.  But I live in my pictures; there are
+wonderful things in London."
+
+"Why did you want to sketch me?"
+
+The painter smiled again.  "Mademoiselle, youth is so mysterious.
+Those young trees I have been painting mean so much more than the old
+big trees.  Your eyes are seeing things that have not yet happened.
+There is Fate in them, and a look of defending us others from seeing
+it.  We have not such faces in my country; we are simpler; we do not
+defend our expressions.  The English are very mysterious.  We are
+like children to them.  Yet in some ways you are like children to us.
+You are not people of the world at all.  You English have been good
+to us, but you do not like us."
+
+"And I suppose you do not like us, either?"
+
+He smiled again, and she noticed how white his teeth were.
+
+"Well, not very much.  The English do things from duty, but their
+hearts they keep to themselves.  And their Art--well, that is really
+amusing!"
+
+"I don't know much about Art," Noel murmured.
+
+"It is the world to me," said the painter, and was silent, drawing
+with increased pace and passion.
+
+"It is so difficult to get subjects," he remarked abruptly.  "I
+cannot afford to pay models, and they are not fond of me painting out
+of doors.  If I had always a subject like you!  You--you have a
+grief, have you not?"
+
+At that startling little question, Noel looked up, frowning.
+
+"Everybody has, now."
+
+The painter grasped his chin; his eyes had suddenly become tragical.
+
+"Yes," he said, "everybody.  Tragedy is daily bread.  I have lost my
+family; they are in Belgium.  How they live I do not know."
+
+"I'm sorry; very sorry, too, if we aren't nice to you, here.  We
+ought to be."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "What would you have?  We are different.
+That is unpardonable.  An artist is always lonely, too; he has a skin
+fewer than other people, and he sees things that they do not.  People
+do not like you to be different.  If ever in your life you act
+differently from others, you will find it so, mademoiselle."
+
+Noel felt herself flushing.  Was he reading her secret?  His eyes had
+such a peculiar, secondsighted look.
+
+"Have you nearly finished?"  she asked.
+
+"No, mademoiselle; I could go on for hours; but I do not wish to keep
+you.  It is cold for you, sitting there."
+
+Noel got up.  "May I look?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+She did not quite recognise herself--who does?--but she saw a face
+which affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something which was,
+and yet was not, in front of her.
+
+"My name is Lavendie," the painter said; "my wife and I live here,"
+and he gave her a card.
+
+Noel could not help answering: "My name is Noel Pierson; I live with
+my father; here's the address"--she found her case, and fished out a
+card.  "My father is a clergyman; would you care to come and see him?
+He loves music and painting."
+
+"It would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be allowed to
+paint you.  Alas! I have no studio."
+
+Noel drew back.  "I'm afraid that I work in a hospital all day, and--
+and I don't want to be painted, thank you.  But, Daddy would like to
+meet you, I'm sure."
+
+The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.
+
+"Of course I can see that you're a very fine painter," she said
+quickly; "only--only--I don't want to, you see.  Perhaps you'd like
+to paint Daddy; he's got a most interesting face."
+
+The painter smiled.  "He is your father, mademoiselle.  May I ask you
+one question?  Why do you not want to be painted?"
+
+"Because--because I don't, I'm afraid."  She held out her hand.  The
+painter bowed over it.  "Au revoir, mademoiselle."
+
+"Thank you," said Noel; "it was awfully interesting."  And she walked
+away.  The sky had become full of clouds round the westerly sun; and
+the foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree branches against that
+French-grey, golden-edged mass, was very lovely.  Beauty, and the
+troubles of others, soothed her.  She felt sorry for the painter, but
+his eyes saw too much!  And his words: "If ever you act differently
+from others," made her feel him uncanny.  Was it true that people
+always disliked and condemned those who acted differently?  If her
+old school-fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat
+her?  In her father's study hung a little reproduction of a tiny
+picture in the Louvre, a "Rape of Europa," by an unknown painter--
+a humorous delicate thing, of an enraptured; fair-haired girl mounted
+on a prancing white bull, crossing a shallow stream, while on the
+bank all her white girl-companions were gathered, turning half-sour,
+half-envious faces away from that too-fearful spectacle, while one of
+them tried with timid desperation to mount astride of a sitting cow,
+and follow.  The face of the girl on the bull had once been compared
+by someone with her own.  She thought of this picture now, and saw
+her school fellows-a throng of shocked and wondering girls.  Suppose
+one of them had been in her position!  'Should I have been turning my
+face away, like the rest?  I wouldn't no, I wouldn't,' she thought;
+'I should have understood!'  But she knew there was a kind of false
+emphasis in her thought.  Instinctively she felt the painter right.
+One who acted differently from others, was lost.
+
+She told her father of the encounter, adding:
+
+"I expect he'll come, Daddy."
+
+Pierson answered dreamily: "Poor fellow, I shall be glad to see him
+if he does."
+
+"And you'll sit to him, won't you?"
+
+"My dear--I?"
+
+"He's lonely, you know, and people aren't nice to him.  Isn't it
+hateful that people should hurt others, because they're foreign or
+different?"
+
+She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on: "I know you
+think people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren't, of course."
+
+"That's not exactly charitable, Nollie."
+
+"You know they're not.  I think sin often just means doing things
+differently.  It's not real sin when it only hurts yourself; but that
+doesn't prevent people condemning you, does it?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Nollie."
+
+Noel bit her lips, and murmured: "Are you sure we're really
+Christians, Daddy?"
+
+The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson
+took refuge in an attempt at wit.  "I should like notice of that
+question, Nollie, as they say in Parliament."
+
+"That means you don't."
+
+Pierson flushed.  "We're fallible enough; but, don't get such ideas
+into your head, my child.  There's a lot of rebellious talk and
+writing in these days...."
+
+Noel clasped her hands behind her head.  "I think," she said, looking
+straight before her, and speaking to the air, "that Christianity is
+what you do, not what you think or say.  And I don't believe people
+can be Christians when they act like others--I mean, when they join
+together to judge and hurt people."
+
+Pierson rose and paced the room.  "You have not seen enough of life
+to talk like that," he said.  But Noel went on:
+
+"One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of
+conscientious objectors--it was horrible.  Why do they treat them
+like that, just because they disagree?  Captain Fort says it's fear
+which makes people bullies.  But how can it be fear when they're
+hundreds to one?  He says man has domesticated his animals but has
+never succeeded in domesticating himself.  Man must be a wild beast,
+you know, or the world couldn't be so awfully brutal.  I don't see
+much difference between being brutal for good reasons, and being
+brutal for bad ones."
+
+Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile.  There was
+something fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom
+he had watched grow up from a tiny thing.  Out of the mouths of babes
+and sucklings--sometimes!  But then the young generation was always
+something of a sealed book to him; his sensitive shyness, and, still
+more, his cloth, placed a sort of invisible barrier between him and
+the hearts of others, especially the young.  There were so many
+things of which he was compelled to disapprove, or which at least he
+couldn't discuss.  And they knew it too well.  Until these last few
+months he had never realised that his own daughters had remained as
+undiscovered by him as the interior of Brazil.  And now that he
+perceived this, he was bewildered, yet could not imagine how to get
+on terms with them.
+
+And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting nothing
+of the hard fact which was altering her--vaguely jealous, anxious,
+pained.  And when she had gone up to bed, he roamed up and down the
+room a long time, thinking.  He longed for a friend to confide in,
+and consult; but he knew no one.  He shrank from them all, as too
+downright, bluff, and active; too worldly and unaesthetic; or too
+stiff and narrow.  Amongst the younger men in his profession he was
+often aware of faces which attracted him, but one could not confide
+deep personal questions to men half one's age.  But of his own
+generation, or his elders, he knew not one to whom he could have
+gone.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+1
+
+Leila was deep in her new draught of life.  When she fell in love it
+had always been over head and ears, and so far her passion had always
+burnt itself out before that of her partner.  This had been, of
+course, a great advantage to her.  Not that Leila had ever expected
+her passions to burn themselves out.  When she fell in love she had
+always thought it was for always.  This time she was sure it was,
+surer than she had ever been.  Jimmy Fort seemed to her the man she
+had been looking for all her life.  He was not so good-looking as
+either Farie or Lynch, but beside him these others seemed to her now
+almost ridiculous.  Indeed they did not figure at all, they shrank,
+they withered, they were husks, together with the others for whom she
+had known passing weaknesses.  There was only one man in the world
+for her now, and would be for evermore.  She did not idealise him
+either, it was more serious than that; she was thrilled by his voice,
+and his touch, she dreamed of him, longed for him when he was not
+with her.  She worried, too, for she was perfectly aware that he was
+not half as fond of her as she was of him.  Such a new experience
+puzzled her, kept her instincts painfully on the alert.  It was
+perhaps just this uncertainty about his affection which made him seem
+more precious than any of the others.  But there was ever the other
+reason, too-consciousness that Time was after her, and this her last
+grand passion.  She watched him as a mother-cat watches her kitten,
+without seeming to, of course, for she had much experience.  She had
+begun to have a curious secret jealousy of Noel though why she could
+not have said.  It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or
+sprang from that vague resemblance between her and one who
+outrivalled even what she had been as a girl; or from the occasional
+allusions Fort made to what he called "that little fairy princess."
+Something intangible, instinctive, gave her that jealousy.  Until the
+death of her young cousin's lover she had felt safe, for she knew
+that Jimmy Fort would not hanker after another man's property; had he
+not proved that in old days, with herself, by running away from her?
+And she had often regretted having told him of Cyril Morland's death.
+One day she determined to repair that error.  It was at the Zoo,
+where they often went on Sunday afternoons.  They were standing
+before a creature called the meercat, which reminded them both of old
+days on the veldt.  Without turning her head she said, as if to the
+little animal: "Do you know that your fairy princess, as you call
+her, is going to have what is known as a war-baby?"
+
+The sound of his "What!" gave her quite a stab.  It was so utterly
+horrified.
+
+She said stubbornly: "She came and told me all about it.  The boy is
+dead, as you know.  Yes, terrible, isn't it?"  And she looked at him.
+His face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity.
+
+"That lovely child!  But it's impossible!"
+
+"The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy."
+
+"I refuse to believe it."
+
+"I tell you it is so," she said angrily.
+
+"What a ghastly shame!"
+
+"It was her own doing; she said so, herself."
+
+"And her father--the padre!  My God!"
+
+Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt.  She had thought it
+would disgust him, cure him of any little tendency to romanticise
+that child; and now she perceived that it was rousing in him,
+instead, a dangerous compassion.  She could have bitten her tongue
+out for having spoken.  When he got on the high horse of some
+championship, he was not to be trusted, she had found that out; was
+even finding it out bitterly in her own relations with him,
+constantly aware that half her hold on him, at least, lay in his
+sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her lurking dread of being
+flung on the beach, by age.  Only ten minutes ago he had uttered a
+tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed unhappy.  And now she
+had roused that dangerous side of him in favour of Noel.  What an
+idiot she had been!
+
+"Don't look like that, Jimmy.  I'm sorry I told you."
+
+His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he muttered:
+
+"Well, I do think that's the limit.  What's to be done for her?"
+
+Leila answered softly: "Nothing, I'm afraid.  Do you love me?"  And
+she pressed his hand hard.
+
+"Of course."
+
+But Leila thought: 'If I were that meercat he'd have taken more
+notice of my paw!'  Her heart began suddenly to ache, and she walked
+on to the next cage with head up, and her mouth hard set.
+
+Jimmy Fort walked away from Camelot Mansions that evening in extreme
+discomfort of mind.  Leila had been so queer that he had taken leave
+immediately after supper.  She had refused to talk about Noel; had
+even seemed angry when he had tried to.  How extraordinary some women
+were!  Did they think that a man could hear of a thing like that
+about such a dainty young creature without being upset!  It was the
+most perfectly damnable news!  What on earth would she do--poor
+little fairy princess!  Down had come her house of cards with a
+vengeance!  The whole of her life--the whole of her life!  With her
+bringing-up and her father and all--it seemed inconceivable that she
+could ever survive it.  And Leila had been almost callous about the
+monstrous business.  Women were hard to each other!  Bad enough,
+these things, when it was a simple working girl, but this dainty,
+sheltered, beautiful child!  No, it was altogether too strong--too
+painful!  And following an impulse which he could not resist, he made
+his way to the old Square.  But having reached the house, he nearly
+went away again.  While he stood hesitating with his hand on the
+bell, a girl and a soldier passed, appearing as if by magic out of
+the moonlit November mist, blurred and solid shapes embraced, then
+vanished into it again, leaving the sound of footsteps.  Fort jerked
+the bell.  He was shown into what seemed, to one coming out of that
+mist, to be a brilliant, crowded room, though in truth there were but
+two lamps and five people in it.  They were sitting round the fire,
+talking, and paused when he came in.  When he had shaken hands with
+Pierson and been introduced to "my daughter Gratian" and a man in
+khaki "my son-in-law George Laird," to a tall thin-faced, foreign-
+looking man in a black stock and seemingly no collar, he went up to
+Noel, who had risen from a chair before the fire.  'No!' he thought,
+'I've dreamed it, or Leila has lied!'  She was so perfectly the self-
+possessed, dainty maiden he remembered.  Even the feel of her hand
+was the same-warm and confident; and sinking into a chair, he said:
+"Please go on, and let me chip in."
+
+"We were quarrelling about the Universe, Captain Fort," said the man
+in khaki; "delighted to have your help.  I was just saying that this
+particular world has no particular importance, no more than a
+newspaper-seller would accord to it if it were completely destroyed
+tomorrow--''Orrible catastrophe, total destruction of the world--six
+o'clock edition-pyper!'  I say that it will become again the nebula
+out of which it was formed, and by friction with other nebula re-form
+into a fresh shape and so on ad infinitum--but I can't explain why.
+My wife wonders if it exists at all except in the human mind--but she
+can't explain what the human mind is.  My father-in-law thinks that
+it is God's hobby--but he can't explain who or what God is.  Nollie
+is silent.  And Monsieur Lavendie hasn't yet told us what he thinks.
+What do you think, monsieur?"  The thin-faced, big-eyed man put up
+his hand to his high, veined brow as if he had a headache, reddened,
+and began to speak in French, which Fort followed with difficulty.
+
+"For me the Universe is a limitless artist, monsieur, who from all
+time and to all time is ever expressing himself in differing forms--
+always trying to make a masterpiece, and generally failing.  For me
+this world, and all the worlds, are like ourselves, and the flowers
+and trees--little separate works of art, more or less perfect, whose
+little lives run their course, and are spilled or powdered back into
+this Creative Artist, whence issue ever fresh attempts at art.  I
+agree with Monsieur Laird, if I understand him right; but I agree
+also with Madame Laird, if I understand her.  You see, I think mind
+and matter are one, or perhaps there is no such thing as either mind
+or matter, only growth and decay and growth again, for ever and ever;
+but always conscious growth--an artist expressing himself in millions
+of ever-changing forms; decay and death as we call them, being but
+rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide, which must ever come between
+two rising tides, or the night which comes between two days.  But the
+next day is never the same as the day before, nor the tide as the
+last tide; so the little shapes of the world and of ourselves, these
+works of art by the Eternal Artist, are never renewed in the same
+form, are never twice alike, but always fresh-fresh worlds, fresh
+individuals, fresh flowers, fresh everything.  I do not see anything
+depressing in that.  To me it would be depressing to think that I
+would go on living after death, or live again in a new body, myself
+yet not myself.  How stale that would be!  When I finish a picture it
+is inconceivable to me that this picture should ever become another
+picture, or that one can divide the expression from the mind-stuff it
+has expressed.  The Great Artist who is the whole of Everything, is
+ever in fresh effort to achieve new things.  He is as a fountain who
+throws up new drops, no two ever alike, which fall back into the
+water, flow into the pipe, and so are thrown up again in fresh-shaped
+drops.  But I cannot explain why there should be this Eternal Energy,
+ever expressing itself in fresh individual shapes, this Eternal
+Working Artist, instead of nothing at all--just empty dark for
+always; except indeed that it must be one thing or the other, either
+all or nothing; and it happens to be this and not that, the all and
+not the nothing."
+
+He stopped speaking, and his big eyes, which had fixed themselves on
+Fort's face, seemed to the latter not to be seeing him at all, but to
+rest on something beyond.  The man in khaki, who had risen and was
+standing with his hand on his wife's shoulder, said:
+
+"Bravo, monsieur; Jolly well put from the artist's point of view.
+The idea is pretty, anyway; but is there any need for an idea at all?
+Things are; and we have just to take them."  Fort had the impression
+of something dark and writhing; the thin black form of his host, who
+had risen and come close to the fire.
+
+"I cannot admit," he was saying, "the identity of the Creator with
+the created.  God exists outside ourselves.  Nor can I admit that
+there is no defnite purpose and fulfilment.  All is shaped to His
+great ends.  I think we are too given to spiritual pride.  The world
+has lost reverence; I regret it, I bitterly regret it."
+
+"I rejoice at it," said the man in khaki.  "Now, Captain Fort, your
+turn to bat!"
+
+Fort, who had been looking at Noel, gave himself a shake, and said:
+"I think what monsieur calls expression, I call fighting.  I suspect
+the Universe of being simply a long fight, a sum of conquests and
+defeats.  Conquests leading to defeats, defeats to conquests.  I want
+to win while I'm alive, and because I want to win, I want to live on
+after death.  Death is a defeat.  I don't want to admit it.  While I
+have that instinct, I don't think I shall really die; when I lose it,
+I think I shall."  He was conscious of Noel's face turning towards
+him, but had the feeling that she wasn't really listening.
+"I suspect that what we call spirit is just the fighting instinct;
+that what we call matter is the mood of lying down.  Whether, as Mr.
+Pierson says, God is outside us, or, as monsieur thinks, we are all
+part of God, I don't know, I'm sure."
+
+"Ah! There we are!" said the man in khaki.  "We all speak after our
+temperaments, and none of us know.  The religions of the world are
+just the poetic expressions of certain strongly marked temperaments.
+Monsieur was a poet just now, and his is the only temperament which
+has never yet been rammed down the world's throat in the form of
+religion.  Go out and proclaim your views from the housetops,
+monsieur, and see what happens."
+
+The painter shook his head with a smile which seemed to Fort very
+bright on the surface, and very sad underneath.
+
+"Non, monsieur," he said; "the artist does not wish to impose his
+temperament.  Difference of temperament is the very essence of his
+joy, and his belief in life.  Without difference there would be no
+life for him.  'Tout casse, tout lasse,' but change goes on for ever:
+We artists reverence change, monsieur; we reverence the newness of
+each morning, of each night, of each person, of each expression of
+energy.  Nothing is final for us; we are eager for all and always for
+more.  We are in love, you see, even with-death."
+
+There was a silence; then Fort heard Pierson murmur:
+
+"That is beautiful, monsieur; but oh! how wrong!"  "And what do you
+think, Nollie?" said the man in khaki suddenly.  The girl had been
+sitting very still in her low chair, with her hands crossed in her
+lap, her eyes on the fire, and the lamplight shining down on her fair
+hair; she looked up, startled, and her eyes met Fort's.
+
+"I don't know; I wasn't listening."  Something moved in him, a kind
+of burning pity, a rage of protection.  He said quickly:
+
+"These are times of action.  Philosophy seems to mean nothing
+nowadays.  The one thing is to hate tyranny and cruelty, and protect
+everything that's weak and lonely.  It's all that's left to make life
+worth living, when all the packs of all the world are out for blood."
+
+Noel was listening now, and he went on fervently: "Why!  Even we who
+started out to fight this Prussian pack, have caught the pack feeling
+--so that it's hunting all over the country, on every sort of scent.
+It's a most infectious thing."
+
+"I cannot see that we are being infected, Captain Fort."
+
+"I'm afraid we are, Mr.  Pierson.  The great majority of people are
+always inclined to run with the hounds; the pressure's great just
+now; the pack spirit's in the air."
+
+Pierson shook his head.  "No, I cannot see it," he repeated; "it
+seems to me that we are all more brotherly, and more tolerant."
+
+"Ah!  monsieur le cure," Fort heard the painter say very gently, "it
+is difficult for a good man to see the evil round him.  There are
+those whom the world's march leaves apart, and reality cannot touch.
+They walk with God, and the bestialities of us animals are fantastic
+to them.  The spirit of the pack, as monsieur says, is in the air.  I
+see all human nature now, running with gaping mouths and red tongues
+lolling out, their breath and their cries spouting thick before them.
+On whom they will fall next--one never knows; the innocent with the
+guilty.  Perhaps if you were to see some one dear to you devoured
+before your eyes, monsieur le cure, you would feel it too; and yet I
+do not know."
+
+Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expression at
+that moment was very strange, searching, half frightened.  No!  Leila
+had not lied, and he had not dreamed!  That thing was true!
+
+When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the Square, he
+could see nothing but her face and form before him in the moonlight:
+its soft outline, fair colouring, slender delicacy, and the brooding
+of the big grey eyes.  He had already crossed New Oxford Street and
+was some way down towards the Strand, when a voice behind him
+murmured: "Ah! c'est vous, monsieur!"  and the painter loomed up at
+his elbow.
+
+"Are you going my way?"  said Fort.  "I go slowly, I'm afraid."
+
+"The slower the better, monsieur.  London is so beautiful in the
+dark.  It is the despair of the painter--these moonlit nights.  There
+are moments when one feels that reality does not exist.  All is in
+dreams--like the face of that young lady."
+
+Fort stared sharply round at him.  "Oh! She strikes you like that,
+does she?"
+
+"Ah! What a charming figure!  What an atmosphere of the past and
+future round her!  And she will not let me paint her!  Well, perhaps
+only Mathieu Maris."  He raised his broad Bohemian hat, and ran his
+fingers through his hair.
+
+"Yes," said Fort, "she'd make a wonderful picture.  I'm not a judge
+of Art, but I can see that."
+
+The painter smiled, and went on in his rapid French:
+
+"She has youth and age all at once--that is rare.  Her father is an
+interesting man, too; I am trying to paint him; he is very difficult.
+He sits lost in some kind of vacancy of his own; a man whose soul has
+gone before him somewhere, like that of his Church, escaped from this
+age of machines, leaving its body behind--is it not?  He is so kind;
+a saint, I think.  The other clergymen I see passing in the street
+are not at all like him; they look buttoned-up and busy, with faces
+of men who might be schoolmasters or lawyers, or even soldiers--men
+of this world.  Do you know this, monsieur--it is ironical, but it is
+true, I think a man cannot be a successful priest unless he is a man
+of this world.  I do not see any with that look of Monsieur Pierson,
+a little tortured within, and not quite present.  He is half an
+artist, really a lover of music, that man.  I am painting him at the
+piano; when he is playing his face is alive, but even then, so far
+away.  To me, monsieur, he is exactly like a beautiful church which
+knows it is being deserted.  I find him pathetic.  Je suis
+socialiste, but I have always an aesthetic admiration for that old
+Church, which held its children by simple emotion.  The times have
+changed; it can no longer hold them so; it stands in the dusk, with
+its spire to a heaven which exists no more, its bells, still
+beautiful but out of tune with the music of the streets.  It is
+something of that which I wish to get into my picture of Monsieur
+Pierson; and sapristi!  it is difficult!"  Fort grunted assent.  So
+far as he could make out the painter's words, it seemed to him a
+large order.
+
+"To do it, you see," went on the painter, "one should have the proper
+background--these currents of modern life and modern types, passing
+him and leaving him untouched.  There is no illusion, and no
+dreaming, in modern life.  Look at this street.  La, la!"
+
+In the darkened Strand, hundreds of khaki-clad figures and girls were
+streaming by, and all their voices had a hard, half-jovial vulgarity.
+The motor-cabs and buses pushed along remorselessly; newspaper-
+sellers muttered their ceaseless invitations.  Again the painter made
+his gesture of despair: "How am I to get into my picture this modern
+life, which washes round him as round that church, there, standing in
+the middle of the street?  See how the currents sweep round it, as if
+to wash it away; yet it stands, seeming not to see them.  If I were a
+phantasist, it would be easy enough: but to be a phantasist is too
+simple for me--those romantic gentlemen bring what they like from
+anywhere, to serve their ends.  Moi, je suis realiste.  And so,
+monsieur, I have invented an idea.  I am painting over his head while
+he sits there at the piano a picture hanging on the wall--of one of
+these young town girls who have no mysteriousness at all, no youth;
+nothing but a cheap knowledge and defiance, and good humour.  He is
+looking up at it, but he does not see it.  I will make the face of
+that girl the face of modern life, and he shall sit staring at it,
+seeing nothing.  What do you think of my idea?"
+
+But Fort had begun to feel something of the revolt which the man of
+action so soon experiences when he listens to an artist talking.
+
+"It sounds all right," he said abruptly; "all the same, monsieur, all
+my sympathy is with modern life.  Take these young girls, and these
+Tommies.  For all their feather-pated vulgarity and they are damned
+vulgar, I must say--they're marvellous people; they do take the rough
+with the smooth; they're all 'doing their bit,' you know, and facing
+this particularly beastly world.  Aesthetically, I daresay, they're
+deplorable, but can you say that on the whole their philosophy isn't
+an advance on anything we've had up till now?  They worship nothing,
+it's true; but they keep their ends up marvellously."
+
+The painter, who seemed to feel the wind blowing cold on his ideas,
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I am not concerned with that, monsieur; I set down what I see;
+better or worse, I do not know.  But look at this!"  And he pointed
+down the darkened and moonlit street.  It was all jewelled and
+enamelled with little spots and splashes of subdued red and green-
+blue light, and the downward orange glow of the high lamps--like an
+enchanted dream-street peopled by countless moving shapes, which only
+came to earth-reality when seen close to.  The painter drew his
+breath in with a hiss.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "what beauty!  And they don't see it--not one in a
+thousand!  Pity, isn't it?  Beauty is the holy thing!"
+
+Fort, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders.  "Every man to his
+vision!"  he said.  "My leg's beginning to bother me; I'm afraid I
+must take a cab.  Here's my address; any time you like to come.  I'm
+often in about seven.  I can't take you anywhere, I suppose?"
+
+"A thousand thanks, monsieur; but I go north.  I loved your words
+about the pack.  I often wake at night and hear the howling of all
+the packs of the world.  Those who are by nature gentle nowadays feel
+they are strangers in a far land.  Good night, monsieur!"
+
+He took off his queer hat, bowed low, and crossed out into the
+Strand, like one who had come in a dream, and faded out with the
+waking.  Fort hailed a cab, and went home, still seeing Noel's face.
+There was one, if you liked, waiting to be thrown to the wolves,
+waiting for the world's pack to begin howling round her--that lovely
+child; and the first, the loudest of all the pack, perhaps, must be
+her own father, the lean, dark figure with the gentle face, and the
+burnt bright eyes.  What a ghastly business!  His dreams that night
+were not such as Leila would have approved.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+When in the cupboard there is a real and very bony skeleton,
+carefully kept from the sight of a single member of the family, the
+position of that member is liable to become lonely.  But Pierson, who
+had been lonely fifteen years, did not feel it so much, perhaps, as
+most men would have.  In his dreamy nature there was a curious self-
+sufficiency, which only violent shocks disturbed, and he went on with
+his routine of duty, which had become for him as set as the pavements
+he trod on his way to and from it.  It was not exactly true, as the
+painter had said, that this routine did not bring him into touch with
+life.  After all he saw people when they were born, when they
+married, when they died.  He helped them when they wanted money, and
+when they were ill; he told their children Bible stories on Sunday
+afternoons; he served those who were in need with soup and bread from
+his soup kitchen.  He never spared himself in any way, and his ears
+were always at the service of their woes.  And yet he did not
+understand them, and they knew that.  It was as though he, or they,
+were colour-blind.  The values were all different.  He was seeing one
+set of objects, they another.
+
+One street of his parish touched a main line of thoroughfare, and
+formed a little part of the new hunting-grounds of women, who, chased
+forth from their usual haunts by the Authorities under pressure of
+the country's danger, now pursued their calling in the dark.  This
+particular evil had always been a sort of nightmare to Pierson.  The
+starvation which ruled his own existence inclined him to a
+particularly severe view and severity was not his strong point.  In
+consequence there was ever within him a sort of very personal and
+poignant struggle going on beneath that seeming attitude of rigid
+disapproval.  He joined the hunters, as it were, because he was
+afraid-not, of course, of his own instincts, for he was fastidious, a
+gentleman, and a priest, but of being lenient to a sin, to something
+which God abhorred: He was, as it were, bound to take a professional
+view of this particular offence.  When in his walks abroad he passed
+one of these women, he would unconsciously purse his lips, and frown.
+The darkness of the streets seemed to lend them such power, such
+unholy sovereignty over the night.  They were such a danger to the
+soldiers, too; and in turn, the soldiers were such a danger to the
+lambs of his flock.  Domestic disasters in his parish came to his
+ears from time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were turned
+by soldiers, so that they were about to become mothers.  They seemed
+to him pitiful indeed; but he could not forgive them for their
+giddiness, for putting temptation in the way of brave young men,
+fighting, or about to fight.  The glamour which surrounded soldiers
+was not excuse enough.  When the babies were born, and came to his
+notice, he consulted a Committee he had formed, of three married and
+two maiden ladies, who visited the mothers, and if necessary took the
+babies into a creche; for those babies had a new value to the
+country, and were not--poor little things!--to be held responsible
+for their mothers' faults.  He himself saw little of the young
+mothers; shy of them, secretly afraid, perhaps, of not being
+censorious enough.  But once in a way Life set him face to face with
+one.
+
+On New Year's Eve he was sitting in his study after tea, at that hour
+which he tried to keep for his parishioners, when a Mrs. Mitchett was
+announced, a small bookseller's wife, whom he knew for an occasional
+Communicant.  She came in, accompanied by a young dark-eyed girl in a
+loose mouse-coloured coat.  At his invitation they sat down in front
+of the long bookcase on the two green leather chairs which had grown
+worn in the service of the parish; and, screwed round in his chair at
+the bureau, with his long musician's fingers pressed together, he
+looked at them and waited.  The woman had taken out her handkerchief,
+and was wiping her eyes; but the girl sat quiet, as the mouse she
+somewhat resembled in that coat.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Mitchett?"  He said gently, at last.
+
+The woman put away her handkerchief, sniffed resolutely, and began:
+
+"It's 'Ilda, sir.  Such a thing Mitchett and me never could 'ave
+expected, comin' on us so sudden.  I thought it best to bring ,'er
+round, poor girl.  Of course, it's all the war.  I've warned 'er a
+dozen times; but there it is, comin' next month, and the man in
+France."  Pierson instinctively averted his gaze from the girl, who
+had not moved her eyes from his face, which she scanned with a
+seeming absence of interest, as if she had long given up thinking
+over her lot, and left it now to others.
+
+"That is sad," he said; "very, very sad."
+
+"Yes," murmured Mrs. Mitchett; "that's what I tell 'Ilda."
+
+The girl's glance, lowered for a second, resumed its impersonal
+scrutiny of Pierson's face.
+
+"What is the man's name and regiment?  Perhaps we can get leave for
+him to come home and marry Hilda at once."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett sniffed.  "She won't give it, sir.  Now, 'Ilda, give it
+to Mr.  Pierson."  And her voice had a real note of entreaty.  The
+girl shook her head.  Mrs. Mitchett murmured dolefully: "That's 'ow
+she is, sir; not a word will she say.  And as I tell her, we can only
+think there must 'ave been more than one.  And that does put us to
+shame so!"
+
+But still the girl made no sign.
+
+"You speak to her, sir; I'm really at my wit's end."
+
+"Why won't you tell us?" said Pierson.  "The man will want to do the
+right thing, 'I'm sure."
+
+The girl shook her head, and spoke for the first time.
+
+"I don't know his name."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett's face twitched.
+
+"Oh, dear!" she said: "Think of that!  She's never said as much to
+us."
+
+"Not know his name?"  Pierson murmured.  "But how--how could you--"
+he stopped, but his face had darkened.  "Surely you would never have
+done such a thing without affection?  Come, tell me!"
+
+"I don't know it," the girl repeated.
+
+"It's these Parks," said Mrs.  Mitchett, from behind her
+handkerchief.  "And to think that this'll be our first grandchild and
+all!  'Ilda is difficult; as quiet, as quiet; but that stubborn--"
+
+Pierson looked at the girl, who seemed, if anything, less interested
+than ever.  This impenetrability and something mulish in her attitude
+annoyed him.  "I can't think," he said, "how you could so have
+forgotten yourself.  It's truly grievous."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett murmured: "Yes, sir; the girls gets it into their heads
+that there's going to be no young men for them."
+
+"That's right," said the girl sullenly.
+
+Pierson's lips grew tighter.  "Well, what can I do for you, Mrs.
+Mitchett?"  he said.  "Does your daughter come to church?"
+
+Mrs.  Mitchett shook her head mournfully.  "Never since she had her
+byke."
+
+Pierson rose from his chair.  The old story! Control and discipline
+undermined, and these bitter apples the result!
+
+"Well," he said, "if you need our creche, you have only to come to
+me," and he turned to the girl.  "And you--won't you let this
+dreadful experience move your heart?  My dear girl, we must all
+master ourselves, our passions, and our foolish wilfulness,
+especially in these times when our country needs us strong, and self-
+disciplined, not thinking of ourselves.  I'm sure you're a good girl
+at heart."
+
+The girl's dark eyes, unmoved from his face, roused in him a spasm of
+nervous irritation.  "Your soul is in great danger, and you're very
+unhappy, I can see.  Turn to God for help, and in His mercy
+everything will be made so different for you--so very different!
+Come!"
+
+The girl said with a sort of surprising quietness: "I don't want the
+baby!"
+
+The remark staggered him, almost as if she had uttered a hideous
+oath.
+
+'Ilda was in munitions," said her mother in an explanatory voice:
+"earnin' a matter of four pound a week.  Oh! dear, it is a waste an'
+all!"  A queer, rather terrible little smile curled Pierson's lips.
+
+"A judgment!" he said.  "Good evening, Mrs. Mitchett.  Good evening,
+Hilda.  If you want me when the time comes, send for me."
+
+They stood up; he shook hands with them; and was suddenly aware that
+the door was open, and Noel standing there.  He had heard no sound;
+and how long she had been there he could not tell.  There was a
+singular fixity in her face and attitude.  She was staring at the
+girl, who, as she passed, lifted her face, so that the dark eyes and
+the grey eyes met.  The door was shut, and Noel stood there alone
+with him.
+
+"Aren't you early, my child?"  said Pierson.  "You came in very
+quietly."
+
+"Yes; I heard."
+
+A slight shock went through him at the tone of her voice; her face
+had that possessed look which he always dreaded.  "What did you
+hear?"  he said.
+
+"I heard you say: 'A judgment!'  You'll say the same to me, won't
+you?  Only, I do want my baby."
+
+She was standing with her back to the door, over which a dark curtain
+hung; her face looked young and small against its stuff, her eyes
+very large.  With one hand she plucked at her blouse, just over her
+heart.
+
+Pierson stared at her, and gripped the back of the chair he had been
+sitting in.  A lifetime of repression served him in the half-realised
+horror of that moment.  He stammered out the single word
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"It's quite true," she said, turned round, and went out.
+
+Pierson had a sort of vertigo; if he had moved, he must have fallen
+down.  Nollie!  He slid round and sank into his chair, and by some
+horrible cruel fiction of his nerves, he seemed to feel Noel on his
+knee, as, when a little girl, she had been wont to sit, with her fair
+hair fluffing against his cheek.  He seemed to feel that hair
+tickling his skin; it used to be the greatest comfort he had known
+since her mother died.  At that moment his pride shrivelled like a
+flower held to a flame; all that abundant secret pride of a father
+who loves and admires, who worships still a dead wife in the children
+she has left him; who, humble by nature, yet never knows how proud he
+is till the bitter thing happens; all the long pride of the priest
+who, by dint of exhortation and remonstrance has coated himself in a
+superiority he hardly suspects--all this pride shrivelled in him.
+Then something writhed and cried within, as a tortured beast cries,
+at loss to know why it is being tortured.  How many times has not a
+man used those words: "My God!  My God!  Why hast Thou forsaken me!"
+He sprang up and tried to pace his way out of this cage of confusion:
+His thoughts and feelings made the strangest medley, spiritual and
+worldly--Social ostracism--her soul in peril--a trial sent by God!
+The future!  Imagination failed him.  He went to his little piano,
+opened it, closed it again; took his hat, and stole out.  He walked
+fast, without knowing where.  It was very cold--a clear, bitter
+evening.  Silent rapid motion in the frosty air was some relief.  As
+Noel had fled from him, having uttered her news, so did he fly from
+her.  The afflicted walk fast.  He was soon down by the river, and
+turned West along its wall.  The moon was up, bright and nearly full,
+and the steel-like shimmer of its light burnished the ebbing water.
+A cruel night!  He came to the Obelisk, and leaned against it,
+overcome by a spasm of realisation.  He seemed to see his dead wife's
+face staring at him out of the past, like an accusation.  "How have
+you cared for Nollie, that she should have come to this?"  It became
+the face of the moonlit sphinx, staring straight at him, the broad
+dark face with wide nostrils, cruel lips, full eyes blank of pupils,
+all livened and whitened by the moonlight--an embodiment of the
+marvellous unseeing energy of Life, twisting and turning hearts
+without mercy.  He gazed into those eyes with a sort of scared
+defiance.  The great clawed paws of the beast, the strength and
+remorseless serenity of that crouching creature with human head, made
+living by his imagination and the moonlight, seemed to him like a
+temptation to deny God, like a refutation of human virtue.
+
+Then, the sense of beauty stirred in him; he moved where he could see
+its flanks coated in silver by the moonlight, the ribs and the great
+muscles, and the tail with tip coiled over the haunch, like the head
+of a serpent.  It was weirdly living; fine and cruel, that great man-
+made thing.  It expressed something in the soul of man, pitiless and
+remote from love--or rather, the remorselessness which man had seen,
+lurking within man's fate.  Pierson recoiled from it, and resumed his
+march along the Embankment, almost deserted in the bitter cold.  He
+came to where, in the opening of the Underground railway, he could
+see the little forms of people moving, little orange and red lights
+glowing.  The sight arrested him by its warmth and motion.  Was it
+not all a dream?  That woman and her daughter, had they really come?
+Had not Noel been but an apparition, her words a trick which his
+nerves had played him?  Then, too vividly again, he saw her face
+against the dark stuff of the curtain, the curve of her hand plucking
+at her blouse, heard the sound of his own horrified: "Nollie!"  No
+illusion, no deception!  The edifice of his life was in the dust.
+And a queer and ghastly company of faces came about him; faces he had
+thought friendly, of good men and women whom he knew, yet at that
+moment did not know, all gathered round Noel, with fingers pointing
+at her.  He staggered back from that vision, could not bear it, could
+not recognise this calamity.  With a sort of comfort, yet an aching
+sense of unreality, his mind flew to all those summer holidays spent
+in Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, by mountain and lake, with his
+two girls; what sunsets, and turning leaves, birds, beasts, and
+insects they had watched together!  From their youthful
+companionship, their eagerness, their confidence in him, he had known
+so much warmth and pleasure.  If all those memories were true, surely
+this could not be true.  He felt suddenly that he must hurry back, go
+straight to Noel, tell her that she had been cruel to him, or assure
+himself that, for the moment, she had been insane: His temper rose
+suddenly, took fire.  He felt anger against her, against every one he
+knew, against life itself.  Thrusting his hands deep into the pockets
+of his thin black overcoat, he plunged into that narrow glowing
+tunnel of the station booking-office, which led back to the crowded
+streets.  But by the time he reached home his anger had evaporated;
+he felt nothing but utter lassitude.  It was nine o'clock, and the
+maids had cleared the dining table.  In despair Noel had gone up to
+her room.  He had no courage left, and sat down supperless at his
+little piano, letting his fingers find soft painful harmonies, so
+that Noel perhaps heard the faint far thrumming of that music through
+uneasy dreams.  And there he stayed, till it became time for him to
+go forth to the Old Year's Midnight Service.
+
+When he returned, Pierson wrapped himself in a rug and lay down on
+the old sofa in his study.  The maid, coming in next morning to "do"
+the grate, found him still asleep.  She stood contemplating him in
+awe; a broad-faced, kindly, fresh-coloured girl.  He lay with his
+face resting on his hand, his dark, just grizzling hair unruffled, as
+if he had not stirred all night; his other hand clutched the rug to
+his chest, and his booted feet protruded beyond it.  To her young
+eyes he looked rather appallingly neglected.  She gazed with interest
+at the hollows in his cheeks, and the furrows in his brow, and the
+lips, dark-moustached and bearded, so tightly compressed, even in.
+sleep.  Being holy didn't make a man happy, it seemed!  What
+fascinated her were the cindery eyelashes resting on the cheeks, the
+faint movement of face and body as he breathed, the gentle hiss of
+breath escaping through the twitching nostrils.  She moved nearer,
+bending down over him, with the childlike notion of counting those
+lashes.  Her lips parted in readiness to say: "Oh!" if he waked.
+Something in his face, and the little twitches which passed over it,
+made her feel "that sorry" for him.  He was a gentleman, had money,
+preached to her every Sunday, and was not so very old--what more
+could a man want?  And yet--he looked so tired, with those cheeks.
+
+She pitied him; helpless and lonely he seemed to her, asleep there
+instead of going to bed properly.  And sighing, she tiptoed towards
+the door.
+
+"Is that you, Bessie?"
+
+The girl turned: "Yes, sir.  I'm sorry I woke you, sir.  'Appy New
+Year, sir!"
+
+"Ah, yes.  A Happy New Year, Bessie."
+
+She saw his usual smile, saw it die, and a fixed look come on his
+face; it scared her, and she hurried away.  Pierson had remembered.
+For full five minutes he lay there staring at nothing.  Then he rose,
+folded the rug mechanically, and looked at the clock.  Eight!  He
+went upstairs, knocked on Noel's door, and entered.
+
+The blinds were drawn up, but she was still in bed.  He stood looking
+down at her.  "A Happy New Year, my child!"  he said; and he trembled
+all over, shivering visibly.  She looked so young and innocent, so
+round-faced and fresh, after her night's sleep, that the thought
+sprang up in him again: 'It must have been a dream!'  She did not
+move, but a slow flush came up in her cheeks.  No dream--dream!  He
+said tremulously: "I can't realise.  I--I hoped I had heard wrong.
+Didn't I, Nollie?  Didn't I?"
+
+She just shook her head.
+
+"Tell me--everything," he said; "for God's sake!"
+
+He saw her lips moving, and caught the murmur: "There s nothing more.
+Gratian and George know, and Leila.  It can't be undone, Daddy.
+Perhaps I wouldn't have wanted to make sure, if you hadn't tried to
+stop Cyril and me--and I'm glad sometimes, because I shall have
+something of his--"  She looked up at him.  "After all, it's the
+same, really; only, there's no ring.  It's no good talking to me now,
+as if I hadn't been thinking of this for ages.  I'm used to anything
+you can say; I've said it to myself, you see.  There's nothing but to
+make the best of it."
+
+Her hot hand came out from under the bedclothes, and clutched his
+very tight.  Her flush had deepened, and her eyes seemed to him to
+glitter.
+
+"Oh, Daddy!  You do look tired!  Haven't you been to bed?  Poor
+Daddy!"
+
+That hot clutch, and the words: "Poor Daddy!"  brought tears into his
+eyes.  They rolled slowly down to his beard, and he covered his face
+with the other hand.  Her grip tightened convulsively; suddenly she
+dragged it to her lips, kissed it, and let it drop.
+
+"Don't!"  she said, and turned away her face.
+
+Pierson effaced his emotion, and said quite calmly:
+
+"Shall you wish to be at home, my dear, or to go elsewhere?"
+
+Noel had begun to toss her head on her pillow, like a feverish child
+whose hair gets in its eyes and mouth.
+
+"Oh!  I don't know; what does it matter?"
+
+"Kestrel; would you like to go there?  Your aunt--I could write to
+her."  Noel stared at him a moment; a struggle seemed going on within
+her.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I would.  Only, not Uncle Bob."
+
+"Perhaps your uncle would come up here, and keep me company."
+
+She turned her face away, and that tossing movement of the limbs
+beneath the clothes began again.  "I don't care," she said;
+"anywhere--it doesn't matter."
+
+Pierson put his chilly hand on her forehead.  "Gently!"  he said, and
+knelt down by the bed.  "Merciful Father," he murmured, "give us
+strength to bear this dreadful trial.  Keep my beloved child safe,
+and bring her peace; and give me to understand how I have done wrong,
+how I have failed towards Thee, and her.  In all things chasten and
+strengthen her, my child, and me."
+
+His thoughts moved on in the confused, inarticulate suspense of
+prayer, till he heard her say: "You haven't failed; why do you talk
+of failing--it isn't true; and don't pray for me, Daddy."
+
+Pierson raised himself, and moved back from the bed.  Her words
+confounded him, yet he was afraid to answer.  She pushed her head
+deep into the pillow, and lay looking up at the ceiling.
+
+"I shall have a son; Cyril won't quite have died.  And I don't want
+to be forgiven."
+
+He dimly perceived what long dumb processes of thought and feeling
+had gone on in her to produce this hardened state of mind, which to
+him seemed almost blasphemous.  And in the very midst of this turmoil
+in his heart, he could not help thinking how lovely her face looked,
+lying back so that the curve of her throat was bared, with the short
+tendrils of hair coiling about it.  That flung-back head, moving
+restlessly from side to side in the heat of the soft pillow, had such
+a passion of protesting life in it!  And he kept silence.
+
+"I want you to know it was all me.  But I can't pretend.  Of course
+I'll try and not let it hurt you more than I possibly can.  I'm sorry
+for you, poor Daddy; oh!  I'm sorry for you!"  With a movement
+incredibly lithe and swift, she turned and pressed her face down in
+the pillow, so that all he could see was her tumbled hair and the
+bedclothes trembling above her shoulders.  He tried to stroke that
+hair, but she shook her head free, and he stole out.
+
+She did not come to breakfast; and when his own wretched meal was
+over, the mechanism of his professional life caught him again at
+once.  New Year's Day!  He had much to do.  He had, before all, to be
+of a cheerful countenance before his flock, to greet all and any with
+an air of hope and courage.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+1
+
+Thirza Pierson, seeing her brother-in-law's handwriting, naturally
+said: "Here's a letter from Ted."
+
+Bob Pierson, with a mouth full of sausage, as naturally responded:
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+In reading on, she found that to answer that question was one of the
+most difficult tasks ever set her.  Its news moved and disturbed her
+deeply.  Under her wing this disaster had happened!  Down here had
+been wrought this most deplorable miracle, fraught with such
+dislocation of lives!  Noel's face, absorbed and passionate, outside
+the door of her room on the night when Cyril Morland went away--her
+instinct had been right!
+
+"He wants you to go up and stay with him, Bob."
+
+"Why not both of us?"
+
+"He wants Nollie to come down to me; she's not well."
+
+"Not well?  What's the matter?"
+
+To tell him seemed disloyalty to her sex; not to tell him, disloyalty
+to her husband.  A simple consideration of fact and not of principle,
+decided her.  He would certainly say in a moment: 'Here!  Pitch it
+over!' and she would have to.  She said tranquilly:
+
+"You remember that night when Cyril Morland went away, and Noel
+behaved so strangely.  Well, my dear; she is going to have a child at
+the beginning of April.  The poor boy is dead, Bob; he died for the
+Country."
+
+She saw the red tide flow up into his face.
+
+"What!"
+
+"Poor Edward is dreadfully upset.  We must do what we can.  I blame
+myself."  By instinct she used those words.
+
+"Blame yourself?  Stuff!  That young--!"  He stopped.
+
+Thirza said quietly: "No, Bob; of the two, I'm sure it was Noel; she
+was desperate that day.  Don't you remember her face?  Oh!  this war!
+It's turned the whole world upside down.  That's the only comfort;
+nothing's normal"
+
+Bob Pierson possessed beyond most men the secret of happiness, for he
+was always absorbed in the moment, to the point of unself-
+consciousness.  Eating an egg, cutting down a tree, sitting on a
+Tribunal, making up his accounts, planting potatoes, looking at the
+moon, riding his cob, reading the Lessons--no part of him stood aside
+to see how he was doing it, or wonder why he was doing it, or not
+doing it better.  He grew like a cork-tree, and acted like a sturdy
+and well-natured dog.  His griefs, angers, and enjoyments were simple
+as a child's, or as his somewhat noisy slumbers.  They were notably
+well-suited, for Thirza had the same secret of happiness, though her,
+absorption in the moment did not--as became a woman--prevent her
+being conscious of others; indeed, such formed the chief subject of
+her absorptions.  One might say that they neither of them had
+philosophy yet were as philosophic a couple as one could meet on this
+earth of the self-conscious.  Daily life to these two was still of
+simple savour.  To be absorbed in life--the queer endless tissue of
+moments and things felt and done and said and made, the odd
+inspiriting conjunctions of countless people--was natural to them;
+but they never thought whether they were absorbed or not, or had any
+particular attitude to Life or Death--a great blessing at the epoch
+in which they were living.
+
+Bob Pierson, then, paced the room, so absorbed in his dismay and
+concern, that he was almost happy.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, "what a ghastly thing!
+
+"Nollie, of all people!  I feel perfectly wretched, Thirza; wretched
+beyond words."  But with each repetition his voice grew cheerier, and
+Thirza felt that he was already over the worst.
+
+"Your coffee's getting cold!"  she said.
+
+"What do you advise?  Shall I go up, heh?"
+
+"I think you'll be a godsend to poor Ted; you'll keep his spirits up.
+Eve won't get any leave till Easter; and I can be quite alone, and
+see to Nollie here.  The servants can have a holiday--, Nurse and I
+will run the house together.  I shall enjoy it."
+
+"You're a good woman, Thirza!"  Taking his wife's hand, he put it to
+his lips.  "There isn't another woman like you in the world."
+
+Thirza's eyes smiled.  "Pass me your cup; I'll give you some fresh
+coffee."
+
+It was decided to put the plan into operation at mid-month, and she
+bent all her wits to instilling into her husband the thought that a
+baby more or less was no great matter in a world which already
+contained twelve hundred million people.  With a man's keener sense
+of family propriety, he could not see that this baby would be the
+same as any other baby.  "By heaven!"  he would say, "I simply can't
+get used to it; in our family!  And Ted a parson!  What the devil
+shall we do with it?"
+
+"If Nollie will let us, why shouldn't we adopt it?  It'll be
+something to take my thoughts off the boys."
+
+"That's an idea!  But Ted's a funny fellow.  He'll have some doctrine
+of atonement, or other in his bonnet."
+
+"Oh, bother!" said Thirza with asperity.
+
+The thought of sojourning in town for a spell was not unpleasant to
+Bob Pierson.  His Tribunal work was over, his early, potatoes in, and
+he had visions of working for the Country, of being a special
+constable, and dining at his Club.  The nearer he was to the front,
+and the more he could talk about the war, the greater the service he
+felt he would be doing.  He would ask for a job where his brains
+would be of use.  He regretted keenly that Thirza wouldn't be with
+him; a long separation like this would be a great trial.  And he
+would sigh and run his fingers through his whiskers.  Still for the
+Country, and for Nollie, one must put up with it!
+
+When Thirza finally saw him into the train, tears stood in the eyes
+of both, for they were honestly attached, and knew well enough that
+this job, once taken in hand, would have to be seen through; a three
+months' separation at least.
+
+"I shall write every day."
+
+"So shall I, Bob."
+
+"You won't fret, old girl?"
+
+"Only if you do."
+
+"I shall be up at 5.5, and she'll be down at 4.50.  Give us a kiss--
+damn the porters.  God bless you!  I suppose she'd mind if--I--were
+to come down now and then?"
+
+"I'm afraid she would.  It's--it's--well, you know."
+
+"Yes, Yes; I do."  And he really did; for underneath, he had true
+delicacy.
+
+Her last words: "You're very sweet, Bob," remained in his ears all
+the way to Severn Junction.
+
+She went back to the house, emptied of her husband, daughter, boys,
+and maids; only the dogs left and the old nurse whom she had taken
+into confidence.  Even in that sheltered, wooded valley it was very
+cold this winter.  The birds hid themselves, not one flower bloomed,
+and the red-brown river was full and swift.  The sound of trees being
+felled for trench props, in the wood above the house resounded all
+day long in the frosty air.  She meant to do the cooking herself; and
+for the rest of the morning and early afternoon she concocted nice
+things, and thought out how she herself would feel if she were Noel
+and Noel she, so as to smooth out of the way anything which would
+hurt the girl.  In the afternoon she went down to the station in the
+village car, the same which had borne Cyril Morland away that July
+night, for their coachman had been taken for the army, and the horses
+were turned out.
+
+Noel looked tired and white, but calm--too calm.  Her face seemed to
+Thirza to have fined down, and with those brooding eyes, to be more
+beautiful.  In the car she possessed herself of the girl's hand, and
+squeezed it hard; their only allusion to the situation, except Noel's
+formal:
+
+"Thank you so much, Auntie, for having me; it's most awfully sweet of
+you and Uncle Bob."
+
+"There's no one in the house, my dear, except old Nurse.  It'll be
+very dull for you; but I thought I'd teach you to cook; it's rather
+useful."
+
+The smile which slipped on to Noel's face gave Thirza quite a turn.
+
+She had assigned the girl a different room, and had made it
+extraordinarily cheerful with a log fire, chrysanthemums, bright
+copper candlesticks, warming-pans, and such like.
+
+She went up with her at bedtime, and standing before the fire, said:
+
+"You know, Nollie, I absolutely refuse to regard this as any sort of
+tragedy.  To bring life into the worlds in these days, no matter-
+how, ought to make anyone happy.  I only wish I could do it again,
+then I should feel some use.  Good night dear; and if you want
+anything, knock on the wall.  I'm next door.  Bless you!"  She saw
+that the girl was greatly moved, underneath her pale mask; and went
+out astonished at her niece's powers of self-control.
+
+But she did not sleep at all well; for in imagination, she kept on
+seeing Noel turning from side to side in the big bed, and those great
+eyes of hers staring at the dark.
+
+
+
+2
+
+The meeting of the brothers Pierson took place at the dinner-hour,
+and was characterised by a truly English lack of display.  They were
+so extremely different, and had been together so little since early
+days in their old Buckinghamshire home, that they were practically
+strangers, with just the potent link of far-distant memories in
+common.  It was of these they talked, and about the war.  On this
+subject they agreed in the large, and differed in the narrow.  For
+instance, both thought they knew about Germany and other countries,
+and neither of course had any real knowledge of any country outside
+their own; for, though both had passed through considerable tracts of
+foreign ground at one time or another, they had never remarked
+anything except its surface,--its churches, and its sunsets.  Again,
+both assumed that they were democrats, but neither knew the meaning
+of the word, nor felt that the working man could be really trusted;
+and both revered Church and, King: Both disliked conscription, but
+considered it necessary.  Both favoured Home Rule for Ireland, but
+neither thought it possible to grant it.  Both wished for the war to
+end, but were for prosecuting it to Victory, and neither knew what
+they meant by that word.  So much for the large.  On the narrower
+issues, such as strategy, and the personality of their country's
+leaders, they were opposed.  Edward was a Westerner, Robert an
+Easterner, as was natural in one who had lived twenty-five years in
+Ceylon.  Edward favoured the fallen government, Robert the risen.
+Neither had any particular reasons for their partisanship except what
+he had read in the journals.  After all--what other reasons could
+they have had?  Edward disliked the Harmsworth Press; Robert thought
+it was doing good.  Robert was explosive, and rather vague; Edward
+dreamy, and a little didactic.  Robert thought poor Ted looking like
+a ghost; Edward thought poor Bob looking like the setting sun.  Their
+faces were indeed as curiously contrasted as their views and voices;
+the pale-dark, hollowed, narrow face of Edward, with its short,
+pointed beard, and the red-skinned, broad, full, whiskered face of
+Robert.  They parted for the night with an affectionate hand-clasp.
+So began a queer partnership which consisted, as the days went on, of
+half an hour's companionship at breakfast, each reading the paper;
+and of dinner together perhaps three times a week.  Each thought his
+brother very odd, but continued to hold the highest opinion of him.
+And, behind it all, the deep tribal sense that they stood together in
+trouble, grew.  But of that trouble they never spoke, though not
+seldom Robert would lower his journal, and above the glasses perched
+on his well-shaped nose, contemplate his brother, and a little frown
+of sympathy would ridge his forehead between his bushy eyebrows.  And
+once in a way he would catch Edward's eyes coming off duty from his
+journal, to look, not at his brother, but at--the skeleton; when that
+happened, Robert would adjust his glasses hastily, damn the newspaper
+type, and apologise to Edward for swearing.  And he would think:
+'Poor Ted!  He ought to drink port, and--and enjoy himself, and
+forget it.  What a pity he's a parson!'
+
+In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward's asceticism.  "He
+eats nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable cigarette once
+in a blue moon.  He's as lonely as a coot; it's a thousand pities he
+ever lost his wife.  I expect to see his wings sprout any day; but-
+dash it all I--I don't believe he's got the flesh to grow them on.
+Send him up some clotted cream; I'll see if I can get him to eat it."
+When the cream came, he got Edward to eat some the first morning, and
+at tea time found that he had finished it himself.  "We never talk
+about Nollie," he wrote, "I'm always meaning to have it out with him
+and tell him to buck up, but when it comes to the point I dry up;
+because, after all, I feel it too; it sticks in my gizzard horribly.
+We Piersons are pretty old, and we've always been respectable, ever
+since St. Bartholomew, when that Huguenot chap came over and founded
+us.  The only black sheep I ever heard of is Cousin Leila.  By the
+way, I saw her the other day; she came round here to see Ted.  I
+remember going to stay with her and her first husband; young Fane, at
+Simla, when I was coming home, just before we were married.  Phew!
+That was a queer menage; all the young chaps fluttering round her,
+and young Fane looking like a cynical ghost.  Even now she can't help
+setting her cap a little at Ted, and he swallows her whole; thinks
+her a devoted creature reformed to the nines with her hospital and
+all that.  Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap that ever was."
+
+"We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end," he wrote a
+little later; "I don't like her so well as Nollie; too serious and
+downright for me.  Her husband seems a sensible fellow, though; but
+the devil of a free-thinker.  He and poor Ted are like cat and dog.
+We had Leila in to dinner again on Saturday, and a man called Fort
+came too.  She's sweet on him, I could see with half an eye, but poor
+old Ted can't.  The doctor and Ted talked up hill and down dale.  The
+doctor said a thing which struck me.  'What divides us from the
+beasts?  Will power: nothing else.  What's this war, really, but a
+death carnival of proof that man's will is invincible?'  I stuck it
+down to tell you, when I got upstairs.  He's a clever fellow.  I
+believe in God, as you know, but I must say when it comes to an
+argument, poor old Ted does seem a bit weak, with his: 'We're told
+this,' and 'We're told that: Nobody mentioned Nollie.  I must have
+the whole thing out with Ted; we must know how to act when it's all
+over."
+
+But not till the middle of March, when the brothers had been sitting
+opposite each other at meals for two months, was the subject broached
+between them, and then not by Robert.  Edward, standing by the hearth
+after dinner, in his familiar attitude, one foot on the fender, one
+hand grasping the mantel-shelf, and his eyes fixed on the flames,
+said: "I've never asked your forgiveness, Bob."
+
+Robert, lingering at the table over his glass of port, started,
+looked at Edward's back in its parson's coat, and answered:
+
+"My dear old chap!"
+
+"It has been very difficult to speak of this."
+
+"Of course, of course!"  And there was a silence, while Robert's eyes
+travelled round the walls for inspiration.  They encountered only the
+effigies of past Piersons very oily works, and fell back on the
+dining-table.  Edward went on speaking to the fire:
+
+"It still seems to me incredible.  Day and night I think of what it's
+my duty to do."
+
+"Nothing!" ejaculated Robert.  "Leave the baby with Thirza; we'll
+take care of it, and when Nollie's fit, let her go back to work in a
+hospital again.  She'll soon get over it."  He saw his brother shake
+his head, and thought: 'Ah! yes; now there's going to be some d--d
+conscientious complication.'
+
+Edward turned round on him: "That is very sweet of you both, but it
+would be wrong and cowardly for me to allow it."
+
+The resentment which springs up in fathers when other fathers dispose
+of young lives, rose in Robert.
+
+"Dash it all, my dear Ted, that's for Nollie to say.  She's a woman
+now, remember."
+
+A smile went straying about in the shadows of his brother's face.  "A
+woman?  Little Nollie!  Bob, I've made a terrible mess of it with my
+girls."  He hid his lips with his hand, and turned again to the
+flames.  Robert felt a lump in his throat.  "Oh! Hang it, old boy, I
+don't think that.  What else could you have done?  You take too much
+on yourself.  After all, they're fine girls.  I'm sure Nollie's a
+darling.  It's these modern notions, and this war.  Cheer up!  It'll
+all dry straight."  He went up to his brother and put a hand on his
+shoulder.  Edward seemed to stiffen under that touch.
+
+"Nothing comes straight," he said, "unless it's faced; you know that,
+Bob."
+
+Robert's face was a study at that moment.  His cheeks filled and
+collapsed again like a dog's when it has been rebuked.  His colour
+deepened, and he rattled some money in a trouser pocket.
+
+"Something in that, of course," he said gruffly.  "All the same, the
+decision's with Nollie.  We'll see what Thirza says.  Anyway, there's
+no hurry.  It's a thousand pities you're a parson; the trouble's
+enough without that:"
+
+Edward shook his head.  "My position is nothing; it's the thought of
+my child, my wife's child.  It's sheer pride; and I can't subdue it.
+I can't fight it down.  God forgive me, I rebel."
+
+And Robert thought: 'By George, he does take it to heart!  Well, so
+should I!  I do, as it is!'  He took out his pipe, and filled it,
+pushing the tobacco down and down.
+
+"I'm not a man of the world," he heard his brother say; "I'm out of
+touch with many things.  It's almost unbearable to me to feel that
+I'm joining with the world to condemn my own daughter; not for their
+reasons, perhaps--I don't know; I hope not, but still, I'm against
+her."
+
+Robert lit his pipe.
+
+"Steady, old man!"  he said.  "It's a misfortune.  But if I were you
+I should feel: 'She's done a wild, silly thing, but, hang it, if
+anybody says a word against her, I'll wring his neck.'  And what's
+more, you'll feel much the same, when it comes to the point."  He
+emitted a huge puff of smoke, which obscured his brother's face, and
+the blood, buzzing in his temples, seemed to thicken the sound of
+Edward's voice.
+
+"I don't know; I've tried to see clearly.  I have prayed to be shown
+what her duty is, and mine.  It seems to me there can be no peace for
+her until she has atoned, by open suffering; that the world's
+judgment is her cross, and she must bear it; especially in these
+days, when all the world is facing suffering so nobly.  And then it
+seems so hard-so bitter; my poor little Nollie!"
+
+There was a silence, broken only by the gurgling of Robert's pipe,
+till he said abruptly:
+
+"I don't follow you, Ted; no, I don't.  I think a man should screen
+his children all he can.  Talk to her as you like, but don't let the
+world do it.  Dash it, the world's a rotten gabbling place.  I call
+myself a man of the world, but when it comes to private matters--
+well, then I draw the line.  It seems to me it seems to me inhuman.
+What does George Laird think about it?  He's a knowing chap.  I
+suppose you've--no, I suppose you haven't--"  For a peculiar smile
+had come on Edward's face.
+
+"No," he said, "I should hardly ask George Laird's opinion."
+
+And Robert realised suddenly the stubborn loneliness of that thin
+black figure, whose fingers were playing with a little gold cross.
+'By Jove!' he thought, 'I believe old Ted's like one of those Eastern
+chaps who go into lonely places.  He's got himself surrounded by
+visions of things that aren't there.  He lives in unreality--
+something we can't understand.  I shouldn't be surprised if he heard
+voices, like--'who was it?  Tt, tt!  What a pity!'  Ted was deceptive.
+He was gentle and--all that, a gentleman of course, and that
+disguised him; but underneath; what was there--a regular ascetic, a
+fakir!  And a sense of bewilderment, of dealing with something which
+he could not grasp, beset Bob Pierson, so that he went back to the
+table, and sat down again beside his port.
+
+"It seems to me," he said rather gruffly, "that the chicken had
+better be hatched before we count it."  And then, sorry for his
+brusqueness, emptied his glass.  As the fluid passed over his palate,
+he thought: 'Poor old Ted!  He doesn't even drink--hasn't a pleasure
+in life, so far as I can see, except doing his duty, and doesn't even
+seem to know what that is.  There aren't many like him--luckily!  And
+yet I love him--pathetic chap!'
+
+The "pathetic chap" was still staring at the flames.
+
+
+
+3
+
+And at this very hour, when the brothers were talking--for thought
+and feeling do pass mysteriously over the invisible wires of space
+Cyril Morland's son was being born of Noel, a little before his time.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+I
+
+Down by the River Wye, among plum-trees in blossom, Noel had laid her
+baby in a hammock, and stood reading a letter:
+
+"MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
+"Now that you are strong again, I feel that I must put before you my
+feeling as to your duty in this crisis of your life.  Your aunt and
+uncle have made the most kind and generous offer to adopt your little
+boy.  I have known that this was in their minds for some time, and
+have thought it over day and night for weeks.  In the worldly sense
+it would be the best thing, no doubt.  But this is a spiritual
+matter.  The future of our souls depends on how we meet the
+consequences of our conduct.  And painful, dreadful, indeed, as they
+must be, I am driven to feel that you can only reach true peace by
+facing them in a spirit of brave humility.  I want you to think and
+think--till you arrive at a certainty which satisfies your
+conscience.  If you decide, as I trust you will, to come back to me
+here with your boy, I shall do all in my power to make you happy
+while we face the future together.  To do as your aunt and uncle in
+their kindness wish, would, I am sore afraid, end in depriving you of
+the inner strength and happiness which God only gives to those who do
+their duty and try courageously to repair their errors.  I have
+confidence in you, my dear child.
+"Ever your most loving father,
+"EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+She read it through a second time, and looked at her baby.  Daddy
+seemed to think that she might be willing to part from this wonderful
+creature!  Sunlight fell through the plum blossom, in an extra
+patchwork quilt over the bundle lying there, touched the baby's nose
+and mouth, so that he sneezed.  Noel laughed, and put her lips close
+to his face.  'Give you up!' she thought: 'Oh, no!  And I'm going to
+be happy too.  They shan't stop me:
+
+In answer to the letter she said simply that she was coming up; and a
+week later she went, to the dismay of her uncle and aunt.  The old
+nurse went too.  Everything had hitherto been so carefully watched
+and guarded against by Thirza, that Noel did not really come face to
+face with her position till she reached home.
+
+Gratian, who had managed to get transferred to a London Hospital, was
+now living at home.  She had provided the house with new maids
+against her sister's return; and though Noel was relieved not to meet
+her old familiars, she encountered with difficulty the stolid
+curiosity of new faces.  That morning before she left Kestrel, her
+aunt had come into her room while she was dressing, taken her left
+hand and slipped a little gold band on to its third finger.
+"To please me, Nollie, now that you're going, just for the foolish,
+who know nothing about you."
+
+Noel had suffered it with the thought: 'It's all very silly!'  But
+now, when the new maid was pouring out her hot water, she was
+suddenly aware of the girl's round blue eyes wandering, as it were,
+mechanically to her hand.  This little hoop of gold, then, had an
+awful power!  A rush of disgust came over her.  All life seemed
+suddenly a thing of forms and sham.  Everybody then would look at
+that little ring; and she was a coward, saving herself from them!
+When she was alone again, she slipped it off, and laid it on the
+washstand, where the sunlight fell.  Only this little shining band of
+metal, this little yellow ring, stood between her and the world's
+hostile scorn!  Her lips trembled.  She took up the ring, and went to
+the open window; to throw it out.  But she did not, uncertain and
+unhappy--half realising the cruelty of life.  A knock at the door
+sent her flying back to the washstand.  The visitor was Gratian.
+
+"I've been looking at him," she said softly; "he's like you, Nollie,
+except for his nose."
+
+"He's hardly got one yet.  But aren't his eyes intelligent?  I think
+they're wonderful."  She held up the ring: "What shall I do about
+this, Gratian?"
+
+Gratian flushed.  "Wear it.  I don't see why outsiders should know.
+For the sake of Dad I think you ought.  There's the parish."
+
+Noel slipped the ring back on to her finger.  "Would you?"
+
+"I can't tell.  I think I would."
+
+Noel laughed suddenly.  "I'm going to get cynical; I can feel it in
+my bones.  How is Daddy looking?"
+
+"Very thin; Mr. Lauder is back again from the Front for a bit, and
+taking some of the work now."
+
+"Do I hurt him very much still?"
+
+"He's awfully pleased that you've come.  He's as sweet as he can be
+about you."
+
+"Yes," murmured Noel, "that's what's dreadful.  I'm glad he wasn't in
+when I came.  Has he told anyone?"
+
+Gratian shook her head.  "I don't think anybody knows; unless--
+perhaps Captain Fort.  He came in again the other night; and
+somehow--"
+
+Noel flushed.  "Leila!"  she said enigmatically.  "Have you seen
+her?"
+
+"I went to her flat last week with Dad--he likes her."
+
+"Delilah is her real name, you know.  All men like her.  And Captain
+Fort is her lover."
+
+Gratian gasped.  Noel would say things sometimes which made her feel
+the younger of the two.
+
+"Of course he is," went on Noel in a hard voice.  "She has no men
+friends; her sort never have, only lovers.  Why do you think he knows
+about me?"
+
+"When he asked after you he looked--"
+
+"Yes; I've seen him look like that when he's sorry for anything.  I
+don't care.  Has Monsieur Lavendie been in lately?"
+
+"Yes; he looks awfully unhappy."
+
+"His wife drugs."
+
+"Oh, Nollie!  How do you know?"
+
+"I saw her once; I'm sure she does; there was a smell; and she's got
+wandering eyes that go all glassy.  He can paint me now, if he likes.
+I wouldn't let him before.  Does be know?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"He knows there was something; he's got second sight, I think.  But I
+mind him less than anybody.  Is his picture of Daddy good?"
+
+"Powerful, but it hurts, somehow."
+
+"Let's go down and see it."
+
+The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its intense modernity
+made that old-fashioned room seem lifeless and strange.  The black
+figure, with long pale fingers touching the paler piano keys, had a
+frightening actuality.  The face, three-quarters full, was raised as
+if for inspiration, and the eyes rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the
+face of a girl painted and hung on a background of wall above the
+piano.
+
+"It's the face of that girl," said Gratian, when they had looked at
+the picture for some time in silence:
+
+"No," said Noel, "it's the look in his eyes."
+
+"But why did he choose such a horrid, common girl?  Isn't she
+fearfully alive, though?  She looks as if she were saying:
+'Cheerio!'"
+
+"She is; it's awfully pathetic, I think.  Poor Daddy!"
+
+"It's a libel," said Gratian stubbornly.
+
+"No.  That's what hurts.  He isn't quite--quite all there.  Will he
+be coming in soon?"
+
+Gratian took her arm, and pressed it hard.  "Would you like me at
+dinner or not; I can easily be out?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "It's no good to funk it.  He wanted me, and
+now he's got me.  Oh!  why did he?  It'll be awful for him."
+
+Gratian sighed.  "I've tried my best, but he always said: 'I've
+thought so long about it all that I can't think any longer.  I can
+only feel the braver course is the best.  When things are bravely and
+humbly met, there will be charity and forgiveness.'"
+
+"There won't," said Noel, "Daddy's a saint, and he doesn't see."
+
+"Yes, he is a saint.  But one must think for oneself--one simply
+must.  I can't believe as he does, any more; can you, Nollie?"
+
+"I don't know.  When I was going through it, I prayed; but I don't
+know whether I really believed.  I don't think I mind much about
+that, one way or the other."
+
+"I mind terribly," said Gratian, "I want the truth."
+
+"I don't know what I want," said Noel slowly, "except that sometimes
+I want--life; awfully."
+
+And the two sisters were silent, looking at each other with a sort of
+wonder.
+
+Noel had a fancy to put on a bright-coloured blue frock that evening,
+and at her neck she hung a Breton cross of old paste, which had
+belonged to her mother.  When she had finished dressing she went into
+the nursery and stood by the baby's cot.  The old nurse who was
+sitting there beside him, got up at once and said:
+
+"He's sleeping beautiful--the lamb.  I'll go down and get a cup o'
+tea, and come up, ma'am, when the gong goes."  In the way peculiar to
+those who have never to initiate, but only to support positions in
+which they are placed by others, she had adopted for herself the
+theory that Noel was a real war-widow.  She knew the truth perfectly;
+for she had watched that hurried little romance at Kestrel, but by
+dint of charity and blurred meditations it was easy for her to
+imagine the marriage ceremony which would and should have taken
+place; and she was zealous that other people should imagine it too.
+It was so much more regular and natural like that, and "her" baby
+invested with his proper dignity.  She went downstairs to get a "cup
+o' tea," thinking: 'A picture they make--that they do, bless his
+little heart; and his pretty little mother--no more than a child, all
+said and done.'
+
+Noel had been standing there some minutes in the failing light,
+absorbed in the face of the sleeping baby, when, raising her eyes,
+she saw in a mirror the refection of her father's dark figure by
+the door.  She could hear him breathing as if the ascent of the
+stairs had tired him; and moving to the head of the cot, she rested
+her hand on it, and turned her face towards him.  He came up and
+stood beside her, looking silently down at the baby.  She saw him
+make the sign of the Cross above it, and the movement of his lips in
+prayer.  Love for her father, and rebellion against this intercession
+for her perfect baby fought so hard in the girl's heart that she felt
+suffocated, and glad of the dark, so that he could not see her eyes.
+Then he took her hand and put it to his lips, but still without a
+word; and for the life of her she could not speak either.  In
+silence, he kissed her forehead; and there mounted in Noel a sudden
+passion of longing to show him her pride and love for her baby.  She
+put her finger down and touched one of his hands.  The tiny sleeping
+fingers uncurled and, like some little sea anemone, clutched round
+it.  She heard her father draw his breath in; saw him turn away
+quickly, silently, and go out.  And she stayed, hardly breathing,
+with the hand of her baby squeezing her finger.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+1
+
+When Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit
+nursery, he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees beside
+his bed, absorbed in the vision he had seen.  That young figure in
+Madonna blue, with the halo of bright hair; the sleeping babe in the
+fine dusk; the silence, the adoration in that white room!  He saw,
+too; a vision of the past, when Noel herself had been the sleeping
+babe within her mother's arm, and he had stood beside them, wondering
+and giving praise.  It passed with its other-worldliness and the fine
+holiness which belongs to beauty, passed and left the tormenting
+realism of life.  Ah! to live with only the inner meaning, spiritual
+and beautifed, in a rare wonderment such as he had experienced just
+now!
+
+His alarum clock, while he knelt in his narrow, monkish little room--
+ticked the evening hour away into darkness.  And still he knelt,
+dreading to come back into it all, to face the world's eyes, and the
+sound of the world's tongue, and the touch of the rough, the gross,
+the unseemly.  How could he guard his child?  How preserve that
+vision in her life, in her spirit, about to enter such cold, rough
+waters?  But the gong sounded; he got up, and went downstairs.
+
+But this first family moment, which all had dreaded, was relieved, as
+dreaded moments so often are, by the unexpected appearance of the
+Belgian painter.  He had a general invitation, of which he often
+availed himself; but he was so silent, and his thin, beardless face,
+which seemed all eyes and brow, so mournful, that all three felt in
+the presence of a sorrow deeper even than their own family grief.
+During the meal he gazed silently at Noel.  Once he said: "You will
+let me paint you now, mademoiselle, I hope?" and his face brightened
+a little when she nodded.  There was never much talk when he came,
+for any depth of discussion, even of art, brought out at once too
+wide a difference.  And Pierson could never avoid a vague irritation
+with one who clearly had spirituality, but of a sort which he could
+not understand.  After dinner he excused himself, and went off to his
+study.  Monsieur would be happier alone with the two girls!  Gratian,
+too, got up.  She had remembered Noel's words: "I mind him less than
+anybody."  It was a chance for Nollie to break the ice.
+
+
+
+2
+
+"I have not seen you for a long time, mademoiselle," said the
+painter, when they were alone.
+
+Noel was sitting in front of the empty drawing-room hearth, with her
+arms stretched out as if there had been a fire there.
+
+"I've been away.  How are you going to paint me, monsieur?"
+
+"In that dress, mademoiselle; Just as you are now, warming yourself
+at the fire of life."
+
+"But it isn't there."
+
+"Yes, fires soon go out.  Mademoiselle, will you come and see my
+wife?  She is ill."
+
+"Now?" asked Noel, startled.
+
+"Yes, now.  She is really ill, and I have no one there.  That is what
+I came to ask of your sister; but--now you are here, it's even
+better.  She likes you."
+
+Noel got up.  "Wait one minute!" she said, and ran upstairs.  Her
+baby was asleep, and the old nurse dozing.  Putting on a cloak and
+cap of grey rabbit's fur, she ran down again to the hall where the
+painter was waiting; and they went out together.
+
+"I do not know if I am to blame," he said, "my wife has been no real
+wife to me since she knew I had a mistress and was no real husband to
+her."
+
+Noel stared round at his face lighted by a queer, smile.
+
+"Yes," he went on, "from that has come her tragedy.  But she should
+have known before I married her.  Nothing was concealed.  Bon Dieu!
+she should have known!  Why cannot a woman see things as they are?
+My mistress, mademoiselle, is not a thing of flesh.  It is my art.
+It has always been first with me, and always will.  She has never
+accepted that, she is incapable of accepting it.  I am sorry for her.
+But what would you?  I was a fool to marry her.  Chere mademoiselle,
+no troubles are anything beside the trouble which goes on day and
+night, meal after meal, year, after year, between two people who
+should never have married, because one loves too much and requires
+all, and the other loves not at all--no, not at all, now, it is long
+dead--and can give but little."
+
+"Can't you separate?"  asked Noel, wondering.
+
+"It is hard to separate from one who craves for you as she craves her
+drugs--yes, she takes drugs now, mademoiselle.  It is impossible for
+one who has any compassion in his soul.  Besides, what would she do?
+We live from hand to mouth, in a strange land.  She has no friends
+here, not one.  How could I leave her while this war lasts?  As well
+could two persons on a desert island separate.  She is killing
+herself, too, with these drugs, and I cannot stop her."
+
+"Poor madame!"  murmured Noel.  "Poor monsieur!"
+
+The painter drew his hand across his eyes.
+
+"I cannot change my nature," he said in a stifled voice, "nor she
+hers.  So we go on.  But life will stop suddenly some day for one of
+us.  After all, it is much worse for her than for me.  Enter,
+mademoiselle.  Do not tell her I am going to paint you; she likes
+you, because you refused to let me."
+
+Noel went up the stairs, shuddering; she had been there once before,
+and remembered that sickly scent of drugs.  On the third floor they
+entered a small sitting-room whose walls were covered with paintings
+and drawings; from one corner a triangular stack of canvases jutted
+out.  There was little furniture save an old red sofa, and on this
+was seated a stoutish man in the garb of a Belgian soldier, with his
+elbows on his knees and his bearded cheeks resting on his doubled
+fists.  Beside him on the sofa, nursing a doll, was a little girl,
+who looked up at Noel.  She had a most strange, attractive, pale
+little face, with pointed chin and large eyes, which never moved from
+this apparition in grey rabbits' skins.
+
+"Ah, Barra!  You here!"  said the painter:
+
+"Mademoiselle, this is Monsieur Barra, a friend of ours from the
+front; and this is our landlady's little girl.  A little refugee,
+too, aren't you, Chica?"
+
+The child gave him a sudden brilliant smile and resumed her grave
+scrutiny of the visitor.  The soldier, who had risen heavily, offered
+Noel one of his podgy hands, with a sad and heavy giggle.
+
+"Sit down, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, placing a chair for her: "I
+will bring my wife in," and he went out through some double doors.
+
+Noel sat down.  The soldier had resumed his old attitude, and the
+little girl her nursing of the doll, though her big eyes still
+watched the visitor.  Overcome by strangeness, Noel made no attempt
+to talk.  And presently through the double doors the painter and his
+wife came in.  She was a thin woman in a red wrapper, with hollow
+cheeks, high cheek-bones, and hungry eyes; her dark hair hung loose,
+and one hand played restlessly with a fold of her gown.  She took
+Noel's hand; and her uplifted eyes seemed to dig into the girl's
+face, to let go suddenly, and flutter.
+
+"How do you do?"  she said in English.  "So Pierre brought you, to
+see me again.  I remember you so well.  You would not let him paint
+you.  Ah! que c'est drole!  You are so pretty, too.  Hein, Monsieur
+Barra, is not mademoiselle pretty?"
+
+The soldier gave his heavy giggle, and resumed his scrutiny of the
+floor.
+
+"Henriette," said Lavendie, "sit down beside Chica--you must not
+stand.  Sit down, mademoiselle, I beg."
+
+"I'm so sorry you're not well," said Noel, and sat down again.
+
+The painter stood leaning against the wall, and his wife looked up at
+his tall, thin figure, with eyes which had in them anger, and a sort
+of cunning.
+
+"A great painter, my husband, is he not?"  she said to Noel.  "You
+would not imagine what that man can do.  And how he paints--all day
+long; and all night in his head.  And so you would not let him paint
+you, after all?"
+
+Lavendie said impatiently: "Voyons, Henriette, causez d'autre chose."
+
+His wife plucked nervously at a fold in her red gown, and gave him
+the look of a dog that has been rebuked.
+
+"I am a prisoner here, mademoiselle, I never leave the house.  Here I
+live day after day--my husband is always painting.  Who would go out
+alone under this grey sky of yours, and the hatreds of the war in
+every face?  I prefer to keep my room.  My husband goes painting;
+every face he sees interests him, except that which he sees every
+day.  But I am a prisoner.  Monsieur Barra is our first visitor for a
+long time."
+
+The soldier raised his face from his fists.  "Prisonnier, madame!
+What would you say if you were out there?"  And he gave his thick
+giggle.  "We are the prisoners, we others.  What would you say to
+imprisonment by explosion day and night; never a minute free.  Bom!
+Bom!  Bom!  Ah!  les tranchees!  It's not so free as all that,
+there."
+
+"Every one has his own prison," said Lavendie bitterly.
+"Mademoiselle even, has her prison--and little Chica, and her doll.
+Every one has his prison, Barra.  Monsieur Barra is also a painter,
+mademoiselle."
+
+"Moi!"  said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand.  "I paint puddles,
+star-bombs, horses' ribs--I paint holes and holes and holes, wire and
+wire and wire, and water--long white ugly water.  I paint splinters,
+and men's souls naked, and men's bodies dead, and nightmare--
+nightmare--all day and all night--I paint them in my head."  He
+suddenly ceased speaking and relapsed into contemplation of the
+carpet, with his bearded cheeks resting on his fists.  "And their
+souls as white as snow, les camarades," he added suddenly and loudly,
+"millions of Belgians, English, French, even the Boches, with white
+souls.  I paint those souls!"
+
+A little shiver ran through Noel, and she looked appealingly at
+Lavendie.
+
+"Barra," he said, as if the soldier were not there, "is a great
+painter, but the Front has turned his head a little.  What he says is
+true, though.  There is no hatred out there.  It is here that we are
+prisoners of hatred, mademoiselle; avoid hatreds--they are poison!"
+
+His wife put out her hand and touched the child's shoulder.
+
+"Why should we not hate?"  she said.  "Who killed Chica's father, and
+blew her home to-rags?  Who threw her out into this horrible England-
+-pardon, mademoiselle, but it is horrible.  Ah!  les Boches!  If my
+hatred could destroy them there would not be one left.  Even my
+husband was not so mad about his painting when we lived at home.  But
+here--!"  Her eyes darted at his face again, and then sank as if
+rebuked.  Noel saw the painter's lips move.  The sick woman's whole
+figure writhed.
+
+"It is mania, your painting!"  She looked at Noel with a smile.
+"Will you have some tea, mademoiselle?  Monsieur Barra, some tea?"
+
+The soldier said thickly: "No, madame; in the trenches we have tea
+enough.  It consoles us.  But when we get away--give us wine, le bon
+vin; le bon petit vin!"
+
+"Get some wine, Pierre!"
+
+Noel saw from the painter's face that there was no wine, and perhaps
+no money to get any; but he went quickly out.  She rose and said:
+
+"I must be going, madame."
+
+Madame Lavendie leaned forward and clutched her wrist.  "Wait a
+little, mademoiselle.  We shall have some wine, and Pierre shall take
+you back presently.  You cannot go home alone--you are too pretty.
+Is she not, Monsieur Barra?"
+
+The soldier looked up: "What would you say," he said, "to bottles of
+wine bursting in the air, bursting red and bursting white, all day
+long, all night long?  Great steel bottles, large as Chica: bits of
+bottles, carrying off men's heads?  Bsum, garra-a-a, and a house
+comes down, and little bits of people ever so small, ever so small,
+tiny bits in the air and all over the ground.  Great souls out there,
+madame.  But I will tell you a secret," and again he gave his heavy
+giggle, "all a little, little mad; nothing to speak of--just a little
+bit mad; like a watch, you know, that you can wind for ever.  That is
+the discovery of this war, mademoiselle," he said, addressing Noel
+for the first time, "you cannot gain a great soul till you are a
+little mad."  And lowering his piggy grey eyes at once, he resumed
+his former attitude.  "It is that madness I shall paint some day," he
+announced to the carpet; "lurking in one tiny corner of each soul of
+all those millions, as it creeps, as it peeps, ever so sudden, ever
+so little when we all think it has been put to bed, here--there, now
+--then, when you least think; in and out like a mouse with bright
+eyes.  Millions of men with white souls, all a little mad.  A great
+subject, I think," he added heavily.  Involuntarily Noel put her hand
+to her heart, which was beating fast.  She felt quite sick.
+
+"How long have you been at the Front, monsieur?"
+
+"Two years, mademoiselle.  Time to go home and paint, is it not?  But
+art--!" he shrugged his heavy round shoulders, his whole bear-like
+body.  "A little mad," he muttered once more.  "I will tell you a
+story.  Once in winter after I had rested a fortnight, I go back to
+the trenches at night, and I want some earth to fill up a hole in the
+ground where I was sleeping; when one has slept in a bed one becomes
+particular.  Well, I scratch it from my parapet, and I come to
+something funny.  I strike my briquet, and there is a Boche's face
+all frozen and earthy and dead and greeny-white in the flame from my
+briquet."
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Oh!  but yes, mademoiselle; true as I sit here.  Very useful in the
+parapet--dead Boche.  Once a man like me.  But in the morning I could
+not stand him; we dug him out and buried him, and filled the hole up
+with other things.  But there I stood in the night, and my face as
+close to his as this"--and he held his thick hand a foot before his
+face.  "We talked of our homes; he had a soul, that man.  'Il me
+disait des choses', how he had suffered; and I, too, told him my
+sufferings.  Dear God, we know all; we shall never know more than we
+know out there, we others, for we are mad--nothing to speak of, but
+just a little, little mad.  When you see us, mademoiselle, walking
+the streets, remember that."  And he dropped his face on to his fists
+again.
+
+A silence had fallen in the room-very queer and complete.  The little
+girl nursed her doll, the soldier gazed at the floor, the woman's
+mouth moved stealthily, and in Noel the thought rushed continually to
+the verge of action: 'Couldn't I get up and run downstairs?' But she
+sat on, hypnotised by that silence, till Lavendie reappeared with a
+bottle and four glasses.
+
+"To drink our health, and wish us luck, mademoiselle," he said.
+
+Noel raised the glass he had given her.  "I wish you all happiness."
+
+"And you, mademoiselle," the two men murmured.
+
+She drank a little, and rose.
+
+"And now, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, "if you must go, I will see
+you home."
+
+Noel took Madame Lavendie's hand; it was cold, and returned no
+pressure; her eyes had the glazed look that she remembered.  The
+soldier had put his empty glass down on the floor, and was regarding
+it unconscious of her.  Noel turned quickly to the door; the last
+thing she saw was the little girl nursing her doll.
+
+In the street the painter began at once in his rapid French:
+
+'I ought not to have asked you to come, mademoiselle; I did not know
+our friend Barra was there.  Besides, my wife is not fit to receive a
+lady; vous voyez qu'il y a de la manie dans cette pauvre tote.  I
+should not have asked you; but I was so miserable."
+
+"Oh!"  murmured Noel, "I know."
+
+"In our home over there she had interests.  In this great town she
+can only nurse her grief against me.  Ah! this war!  It seems to me
+we are all in the stomach of a great coiling serpent.  We lie there,
+being digested.  In a way it is better out there in the trenches;
+they are beyond hate, they have attained a height that we have not.
+It is wonderful how they still can be for going on till they have
+beaten the Boche; that is curious and it is very great.  Did Barra
+tell you how, when they come back--all these fighters--they are going
+to rule, and manage the future of the world?  But it will not be so.
+They will mix in with life, separate--be scattered, and they will be
+ruled as they were before.  The tongue and the pen will rule them:
+those who have not seen the war will rule them."
+
+"Oh!"' cried Noel, "surely they will be the bravest and strongest in
+the future."
+
+The painter smiled.
+
+"War makes men simple," he said, "elemental; life in peace is neither
+simple nor elemental, it is subtle, full of changing environments, to
+which man must adapt himself; the cunning, the astute, the adaptable,
+will ever rule in times of peace.  It is pathetic, the belief of
+those brave soldiers that the-future is theirs."
+
+"He said, a strange thing," murmured Noel; "that they were all a
+little mad."
+
+"He is a man of queer genius--Barra; you should see some of his
+earlier pictures.  Mad is not quite the word, but something is
+loosened, is rattling round in them, they have lost proportion, they
+are being forced in one direction.  I tell you, mademoiselle, this
+war is one great forcing-house; every living plant is being made to
+grow too fast, each quality, each passion; hate and love, intolerance
+and lust and avarice, courage and energy; yes, and self-sacrifice--
+all are being forced and forced beyond their strength, beyond the
+natural flow of the sap, forced till there has come a great wild
+luxuriant crop, and then--Psum! Presto!  The change comes, and these
+plants will wither and rot and stink.  But we who see Life in forms
+of Art are the only ones who feel that; and we are so few.  The
+natural shape of things is lost.  There is a mist of blood before all
+eyes.  Men are afraid of being fair.  See how we all hate not only
+our enemies, but those who differ from us.  Look at the streets too
+--see how men and women rush together, how Venus reigns in this
+forcing-house.  Is it not natural that Youth about to die should
+yearn for pleasure, for love, for union, before death?"
+
+Noel stared up at him.  'Now!' she thought: I will.'
+
+"Yes," she said, "I know that's true, because I rushed, myself.  I'd
+like you to know.  We couldn't be married--there wasn't time.  And--
+he was killed.  But his son is alive.  That's why I've been away so
+long.  I want every one to know."  She spoke very calmly, but her
+cheeks felt burning hot.
+
+The painter had made an upward movement of his hands, as if they had
+been jerked by an electric current, then he said quite quietly:
+
+"My profound respect, mademoiselle, and my great sympathy.  And your
+father?"
+
+"It's awful for him."
+
+The painter said gently: "Ah! mademoiselle, I am not so sure.
+Perhaps he does not suffer so greatly.  Perhaps not even your trouble
+can hurt him very much.  He lives in a world apart.  That, I think,
+is his true tragedy to be alive, and yet not living enough to feel
+reality.  Do you know Anatole France's description of an old woman:
+'Elle vivait, mais si peu.'  Would that not be well said of the
+Church in these days: 'Elle vivait, mais si peu.'  I see him always
+like a rather beautiful dark spire in the night-time when you cannot
+see how it is attached to the earth.  He does not know, he never will
+know, Life."
+
+Noel looked round at him.  "What do you mean by Life, monsieur?  I'm
+always reading about Life, and people talk of seeing Life!  What is
+it--where is it?  I never see anything that you could call Life."
+
+The painter smiled.
+
+"To 'see life'!"  he said.  "Ah! that is different.  To enjoy
+yourself!  Well, it is my experience that when people are 'seeing
+life' as they call it, they are not enjoying themselves.  You know
+when one is very thirsty one drinks and drinks, but the thirst
+remains all the same.  There are places where one can see life as it
+is called, but the only persons you will see enjoying themselves at
+such places are a few humdrums like myself, who go there for a talk
+over a cup of coffee.  Perhaps at your age, though, it is different."
+
+Noel clasped her hands, and her eyes seemed to shine in the gloom.
+"I want music and dancing and light, and beautiful things and faces;
+but I never get them."
+
+"No, there does not exist in this town, or in any other, a place
+which will give you that.  Fox-trots and ragtime and paint and powder
+and glare and half-drunken young men, and women with red lips you can
+get them in plenty.  But rhythm and beauty and charm never.  In
+Brussels when I was younger I saw much 'life' as they call it, but
+not one lovely thing unspoiled; it was all as ashes in the mouth.
+Ah! you may smile, but I know what I am talking of.  Happiness never
+comes when you are looking for it, mademoiselle; beauty is in Nature
+and in real art, never in these false silly make believes.  There is
+a place just here where we Belgians go; would you like to see how
+true my words are?
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"Tres-bien!  Let us go in?"
+
+They passed into a revolving doorway with little glass compartments
+which shot them out into a shining corridor.  At the end of this the
+painter looked at Noel and seemed to hesitate, then he turned off
+from the room they were about to enter into a room on the right.  It
+was large, full of gilt and plush and marble tables, where couples
+were seated; young men in khaki and older men in plain clothes,
+together or with young women.  At these last Noel looked, face after
+face, while they were passing down a long way to an empty table.  She
+saw that some were pretty, and some only trying to be, that nearly
+all were powdered and had their eyes darkened and their lips
+reddened, till she felt her own face to be dreadfully ungarnished: Up
+in a gallery a small band was playing an attractive jingling hollow
+little tune; and the buzz of talk and laughter was almost deafening.
+
+"What will you have, mademoiselle?"  said the painter.  "It is just
+nine o'clock; we must order quickly."
+
+"May I have one of those green things?"
+
+"Deux cremes de menthe," said Lavendie to the waiter.
+
+Noel was too absorbed to see the queer, bitter little smile hovering
+about his face.  She was busy looking at the faces of women whose
+eyes, furtively cold and enquiring, were fixed on her; and at the
+faces of men with eyes that were furtively warm and wondering.
+
+"I wonder if Daddy was ever in a place like this?"  she said, putting
+the glass of green stuff to her lips.  "Is it nice?  It smells of
+peppermint."
+
+"A beautiful colour.  Good luck, mademoiselle!"  and he chinked his
+glass with hers.
+
+Noel sipped, held it away, and sipped again.
+
+"It's nice; but awfully sticky.  May I have a cigarette?"
+
+"Des cigarettes," said Lavendie to the waiter, "Et deux cafes noirs.
+Now, mademoiselle," he murmured when they were brought, "if we
+imagine that we have drunk a bottle of wine each, we shall have
+exhausted all the preliminaries of what is called Vice.  Amusing,
+isn't it?"  He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+His face struck Noel suddenly as tarnished and almost sullen.
+
+"Don't be angry, monsieur, it's all new to me, you see."
+
+The painter smiled, his bright, skin-deep smile.
+
+"Pardon!  I forget myself.  Only, it hurts me to see beauty in a
+place like this.  It does not go well with that tune, and these
+voices, and these faces.  Enjoy yourself, mademoiselle; drink it all
+in!  See the way these people look at each other; what love shines in
+their eyes!  A pity, too, we cannot hear what they are saying.
+Believe me, their talk is most subtle, tres-spirituel.  These young
+women are 'doing their bit,' as you call it; bringing le plaisir to
+all these who are serving their country.  Eat, drink, love, for
+tomorrow we die.  Who cares for the world simple or the world
+beautiful, in days like these?  The house of the spirit is empty."
+
+He was looking at her sidelong as if he would enter her very soul.
+
+Noel got up.  "I'm ready to go, monsieur."
+
+He put her cloak on her shoulders, paid the bill, and they went out,
+threading again through the little tables, through the buzz of talk
+and laughter and the fumes of tobacco, while another hollow little
+tune jingled away behind them.
+
+"Through there," said the painter, pointing to another door, "they
+dance.  So it goes.  London in war-time!  Well, after all, it is
+never very different; no great town is.  Did you enjoy your sight of
+'life,' mademoiselle?"
+
+"I think one must dance, to be happy.  Is that where your friends
+go?"
+
+"Oh, no!  To a room much rougher, and play dominoes, and drink coffee
+and beer, and talk.  They have no money to throw away."
+
+"Why didn't you show me?"
+
+"Mademoiselle, in that room you might see someone perhaps whom one
+day you would meet again; in the place we visited you were safe
+enough at least I hope so."
+
+Noel shrugged.  "I suppose it doesn't matter now, what I do."
+
+And a rush of emotion caught at her throat--a wave from the past--the
+moonlit night, the dark old Abbey, the woods and the river.  Two
+tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+"I was thinking of--something," she said in a muffled voice.  "It's
+all right."
+
+"Chere mademoiselle!"  Lavendie murmured; and all the way home he was
+timid and distressed.  Shaking his hand at the door, she murmured:
+
+"I'm sorry I was such a fool; and thank you awfully, monsieur.  Good
+night."
+
+"Good night; and better dreams.  There is a good time coming--Peace
+and Happiness once more in the world.  It will not always be this
+Forcing-House.  Good night, chere mademoiselle!"
+
+Noel went up to the nursery, and stole in.  A night-light was
+burning, Nurse and baby were fast asleep.  She tiptoed through into
+her own room.  Once there, she felt suddenly so tired that she could
+hardly undress; and yet curiously rested, as if with that rush of
+emotion, Cyril and the past had slipped from her for ever.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+1
+
+Noel's first encounter with Opinion took place the following day.
+The baby had just come in from its airing; she had seen it
+comfortably snoozing, and was on her way downstairs, when a voice
+from the hall said:
+
+"How do you do?"  and she saw the khaki-clad figure of Adrian Lauder,
+her father's curate!  Hesitating just a moment, she finished her
+descent, and put her fingers in his.  He was a rather heavy, dough-
+coloured young man of nearly thirty, unsuited by khaki, with a round
+white collar buttoned behind; but his aspiring eyes redeemed him,
+proclaiming the best intentions in the world, and an inclination
+towards sentiment in the presence of beauty.
+
+"I haven't seen you for ages," he said rather fatuously, following
+her into her father's study.
+
+"No," said Noel.  "How--do you like being at the Front?"
+
+"Ah!" he said, "they're wonderful!"  And his eyes shone.  "It's so
+nice to see you again."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+He seemed puzzled by that answer; stammered, and said:
+
+"I didn't know your sister had a baby.  A jolly baby."
+
+"She hasn't."
+
+Lauder's mouth opened.  'A silly mouth,' she thought.
+
+"Oh!" he said.  "Is it a protegee--Belgian or something?"
+
+"No, it's mine; my own."  And, turning round, she slipped the little
+ring off her finger.  When she turned back to him, his face had not
+recovered from her words.  It had a hapless look, as of one to whom
+such a thing ought not to have happened.
+
+"Don't look like that," said Noel.  "Didn't you understand?  It's
+mine-mine."  She put out her left hand.  "Look!  There's no ring."
+
+He stammered: "I say, you oughtn't to--you oughtn't to--!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Joke about--about such things; ought you?"
+
+"One doesn't joke if one's had a baby without being married, you
+know."
+
+Lauder went suddenly slack.  A shell might have burst a few paces
+from him.  And then, just as one would in such a case, he made an
+effort, braced himself, and said in a curious voice, both stiff and
+heavy: "I can't--one doesn't--it's not--"
+
+"It is," said Noel.  "If you don't believe me, ask Daddy."
+
+He put his hand up to his round collar; and with the wild thought
+that he was going to tear it off, she cried: "Don't!"
+
+"You!"  he said."  You!  But--"
+
+Noel turned away from him to the window: She stood looking out, but
+saw nothing whatever.
+
+"I don't want it hidden," she said without turning round, "I want
+every one to know.  It's stupid as it is--stupid!" and she stamped
+her foot.  "Can't you see how stupid it is--everybody's mouth falling
+open!"
+
+He uttered a little sound which had pain in it, and she felt a real
+pang of compunction.  He had gripped the back of a chair; his face
+had lost its heaviness.  A dull flush coloured his cheeks.  Noel had
+a feeling, as if she had been convicted of treachery.  It was his
+silence, the curious look of an impersonal pain beyond power of
+words; she felt in him something much deeper than mere disapproval--
+something which echoed within herself.  She walked quickly past him
+and escaped.  She ran upstairs and threw herself on her bed.  He was
+nothing: it was not that!  It was in herself, the awful feeling, for
+the first time developed and poignant, that she had betrayed her
+caste, forfeited the right to be thought a lady, betrayed her secret
+reserve and refinement, repaid with black ingratitude the love
+lavished on her up bringing, by behaving like any uncared-for common
+girl.  She had never felt this before--not even when Gratian first
+heard of it, and they had stood one at each end of the hearth, unable
+to speak.  Then she still had her passion, and her grief for the
+dead.  That was gone now as if it had never been; and she had no
+defence, nothing between her and this crushing humiliation and
+chagrin.  She had been mad!  She must have been mad!  The Belgian
+Barra was right: "All a little mad" in this "forcing-house" of a war!
+She buried her face deep in the pillow, till it almost stopped her
+power of breathing; her head and cheeks and ears seemed to be on
+fire.  If only he had shown disgust, done something which roused her
+temper, her sense of justice, her feeling that Fate had been too
+cruel to her; but he had just stood there, bewilderment incarnate,
+like a creature with some very deep illusion shattered.  It was
+horrible!  Then, feeling that she could not stay still, must walk,
+run, get away somehow from this feeling of treachery and betrayal,
+she sprang up.  All was quiet below, and she slipped downstairs and
+out, speeding along with no knowledge of direction, taking the way
+she had taken day after day to her hospital.  It was the last of
+April, trees and shrubs were luscious with blossom and leaf; the dogs
+ran gaily; people had almost happy faces in the sunshine.  'If I
+could get away from myself, I wouldn't care,' she thought.  Easy to
+get away from people, from London, even from England perhaps; but
+from oneself--impossible!  She passed her hospital; and looked at it
+dully, at the Red Cross flag against its stucco wall, and a soldier
+in his blue slops and red tie, coming out.  She had spent many
+miserable hours there, but none quite so miserable as this.  She
+passed the church opposite to the flats where Leila lived, and
+running suddenly into a tall man coming round the corner, saw Fort.
+She bent her head, and tried to hurry past.  But his hand was held
+out, she could not help putting hers into it; and looking up hardily,
+she said:
+
+"You know about me, don't you?"
+
+His face, naturally so frank, seemed to clench up, as if he were
+riding at a fence.  'He'll tell a lie,' she thought bitterly.  But he
+did not.
+
+"Yes, Leila told me."
+
+And she thought: 'I suppose he'll try and pretend that I've not been
+a beast!'
+
+"I admire your pluck," he said.
+
+"I haven't any."
+
+"We never know ourselves, do we?  I suppose you wouldn't walk my pace
+a minute or two, would you?  I'm going the same way."
+
+"I don't know which way I'm going."
+
+"That is my case, too."
+
+They walked on in silence.
+
+"I wish to God I were back in France," said Fort abruptly.  "One
+doesn't feel clean here."
+
+Noel's heart applauded.
+
+Ah!  to get away--away from oneself!  But at the thought of her baby,
+her heart fell again.  "Is your leg quite hopeless?"  she said.
+
+"Quite."
+
+"That must be horrid."
+
+"Hundreds of thousands would look on it as splendid luck; and so it
+is if you count it better to be alive than dead, which I do, in spite
+of the blues."
+
+"How is Cousin Leila?"
+
+"Very well.  She goes on pegging away at the hospital; she's a
+brick."  But he did not look at her, and again there was silence,
+till he stopped by Lord's Cricket-ground.
+
+"I mustn't keep you crawling along at this pace."
+
+"Oh, I don't mind!"
+
+"I only wanted to say that if I can be of any service to you at any
+time in any way whatever, please command me."
+
+He gave her hand a squeeze, took his hat off; and Noel walked slowly
+on.  The little interview, with its suppressions, and its
+implications, had but exasperated her restlessness, and yet, in a
+way, it had soothed the soreness of her heart.  Captain Fort at all
+events did not despise her; and he was in trouble like herself.  She
+felt that somehow by the look of his face, and the tone of his voice
+when he spoke of Leila.  She quickened her pace.  George's words came
+back to her: "If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will be of
+you!"  How easy to say!  The old days, her school, the little half
+grown-up dances she used to go to, when everything was happy.  Gone!
+All gone!
+
+But her meetings with Opinion were not over for the day, for turning
+again at last into the home Square, tired out by her three hours'
+ramble, she met an old lady whom she and Gratian had known from
+babyhood--a handsome dame, the widow of an official, who spent her
+days, which showed no symptom of declining, in admirable works.  Her
+daughter, the widow of an officer killed at the Marne, was with her,
+and the two greeted Noel with a shower of cordial questions: So she
+was back from the country, and was she quite well again?  And working
+at her hospital?  And how was her dear father?  They had thought him
+looking very thin and worn.  But now Gratian was at home--How
+dreadfully the war kept husbands and wives apart!  And whose was the
+dear little baby they had in the house?
+
+"Mine," said Noel, walking straight past them with her head up.  In
+every fibre of her being she could feel the hurt, startled, utterly
+bewildered looks of those firm friendly persons left there on the
+pavement behind her; could feel the way they would gather themselves
+together, and walk on, perhaps without a word, and then round the
+corner begin: "What has come to Noel?  What did she mean?"  And
+taking the little gold hoop out of her pocket, she flung it with all
+her might into the Square Garden.  The action saved her from a
+breakdown; and she went in calmly.  Lunch was long over, but her
+father had not gone out, for he met her in the hall and drew her into
+the dining-room.
+
+"You must eat, my child," he said.  And while she was swallowing down
+what he had caused to be kept back for her, he stood by the hearth in
+that favourite attitude of his, one foot on the fender, and one hand
+gripping.  the mantel-shelf.
+
+"You've got your wish, Daddy," she said dully: "Everybody knows now.
+I've told Mr. Lauder, and Monsieur, and the Dinnafords."
+
+She saw his fingers uncrisp, then grip the shelf again.  "I'm glad,"
+he said.
+
+"Aunt Thirza gave me a ring to wear, but I've thrown it away."
+
+"My dearest child," he began, but could not go on, for the quivering
+of his lips.
+
+"I wanted to say once more, Daddy, that I'm fearfully sorry about
+you.  And I am ashamed of myself; I thought I wasn't, but I am--only,
+I think it was cruel, and I'm not penitent to God; and it's no good
+trying to make me."
+
+Pierson turned and looked at her.  For a long time after, she could
+not get that look out of her memory.
+
+Jimmy Fort had turned away from Noel feeling particularly wretched.
+Ever since the day when Leila had told him of the girl's misfortune
+he had been aware that his liaison had no decent foundation, save a
+sort of pity.  One day, in a queer access of compunction, he had made
+Leila an offer of marriage.  She had refused; and he had respected
+her the more, realising by the quiver in her voice and the look in
+her eyes that she refused him, not because she did not love him well
+enough, but because she was afraid of losing any of his affection.
+She was a woman of great experience.
+
+To-day he had taken advantage of the luncheon interval to bring her
+some flowers, with a note to say that he could not come that evening.
+Letting himself in with his latchkey, he had carefully put those
+Japanese azaleas in the bowl "Famille Rose," taking water from her
+bedroom.  Then he had sat down on the divan with his head in his
+hands.
+
+Though he had rolled so much about the world, he had never had much
+to do with women.  And there was nothing in him of the Frenchman, who
+takes what life puts in his way as so much enjoyment on the credit
+side, and accepts the ends of such affairs as they naturally and
+rather rapidly arrive.  It had been a pleasure, and was no longer a
+pleasure; but this apparently did not dissolve it, or absolve him.
+He felt himself bound by an obscure but deep instinct to go on
+pretending that he was not tired of her, so long as she was not tired
+of him.  And he sat there trying to remember any sign, however small,
+of such a consummation, quite without success.  On the contrary, he
+had even the wretched feeling that if only he had loved her, she
+would have been much more likely to have tired of him by now.  For
+her he was still the unconquered, in spite of his loyal endeavour to
+seem conquered.  He had made a fatal mistake, that evening after the
+concert at Queen's Hall, to let himself go, on a mixed tide of desire
+and pity!
+
+His folly came to him with increased poignancy after he had parted
+from Noel.  How could he have been such a base fool, as to have
+committed himself to Leila on an evening when he had actually been in
+the company of that child?  Was it the vague, unseizable likeness
+between them which had pushed him over the edge?  'I've been an ass,'
+he thought; 'a horrible ass.'  I would always have given every hour
+I've ever spent with Leila, for one real smile from that girl.'
+
+This sudden sight of Noel after months during which he had tried
+loyally to forget her existence, and not succeeded at all, made him
+realise as he never had yet that he was in love with her; so very
+much in love with her that the thought of Leila was become
+nauseating.  And yet the instincts of a gentleman seemed to forbid
+him to betray that secret to either of them.  It was an accursed
+coil!  He hailed a cab, for he was late; and all the way back to the
+War Office he continued to see the girl's figure and her face with
+its short hair.  And a fearful temptation rose within him.  Was it
+not she who was now the real object for chivalry and pity?  Had he
+not the right to consecrate himself to championship of one in such a
+deplorable position?  Leila had lived her life; but this child's
+life--pretty well wrecked--was all before her.  And then he grinned
+from sheer disgust.  For he knew that this was Jesuitry.  Not
+chivalry was moving him, but love!  Love!  Love of the unattainable!
+And with a heavy heart, indeed, he entered the great building, where,
+in a small room, companioned by the telephone, and surrounded by
+sheets of paper covered with figures, he passed his days.  The war
+made everything seem dreary, hopeless.  No wonder he had caught at
+any distraction which came along--caught at it, till it had caught
+him!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+To find out the worst is, for human nature, only a question of time.
+But where the "worst" is attached to a family haloed, as it were, by
+the authority and reputation of an institution like the Church, the
+process of discovery has to break through many a little hedge.  Sheer
+unlikelihood, genuine respect, the defensive instinct in those
+identified with an institution, who will themselves feel weaker if
+its strength be diminished, the feeling that the scandal is too good
+to be true--all these little hedges, and more, had to be broken
+through.  To the Dinnafords, the unholy importance of what Noel had
+said to them would have continued to keep them dumb, out of self-
+protection; but its monstrosity had given them the feeling that there
+must be some mistake, that the girl had been overtaken by a wild
+desire to "pull their legs" as dear Charlie would say.  With the hope
+of getting this view confirmed, they lay in wait for the old nurse
+who took the baby out, and obtained the information, shortly
+imparted: "Oh, yes; Miss Noel's.  Her 'usband was killed--poor lamb!"
+And they felt rewarded.  They had been sure there was some mistake.
+The relief of hearing that word "'usband" was intense.  One of these
+hasty war marriages, of which the dear Vicar had not approved, and so
+it had been kept dark.  Quite intelligible, but so sad!  Enough
+misgiving however remained in their minds, to prevent their going to
+condole with the dear Vicar; but not enough to prevent their roundly
+contradicting the rumours and gossip already coming to their ears.
+And then one day, when their friend Mrs. Curtis had said too
+positively: "Well, she doesn't wear a wedding-ring, that I'll swear,
+because I took very good care to look!" they determined to ask Mr.
+Lauder.  He would--indeed must--know; and, of course, would not tell
+a story.  When they asked him it was so manifest that he did know,
+that they almost withdrew the question.  The poor young man had gone
+the colour of a tomato.
+
+"I prefer not to answer," he said.  The rest of a very short
+interview was passed in exquisite discomfort.  Indeed discomfort,
+exquisite and otherwise, within a few weeks of Noel's return, had
+begun to pervade all the habitual congregation of Pierson's church.
+It was noticed that neither of the two sisters attended Service now.
+Certain people who went in the sincere hope of seeing Noel, only fell
+off again when she did not appear.  After all, she would not have the
+face!  And Gratian was too ashamed, no doubt.  It was constantly
+remarked that the Vicar looked very grave and thin, even for him.  As
+the rumours hardened into certainty, the feeling towards him became a
+curious medley of sympathy and condemnation.  There was about the
+whole business that which English people especially resent.  By the
+very fact of his presence before them every Sunday, and his public
+ministrations, he was exhibiting to them, as it were, the seamed and
+blushing face of his daughter's private life, besides affording one
+long and glaring demonstration of the failure of the Church to guide
+its flock: If a man could not keep his own daughter in the straight
+path--whom could he?  Resign!  The word began to be thought about,
+but not yet spoken.  He had been there so long; he had spent so much
+money on the church and the parish; his gentle dreamy manner was
+greatly liked.  He was a gentleman; and had helped many people; and,
+though his love of music and vestments had always caused heart-
+burnings, yet it had given a certain cachet to the church.  The
+women, at any rate, were always glad to know that the church they
+went to was capable of drawing their fellow women away from other
+churches.  Besides, it was war-time, and moral delinquency which in
+time of peace would have bulked too large to neglect, was now less
+insistently dwelt on, by minds preoccupied by food and air-raids.
+Things, of course, could not go on as they were; but as yet they did
+go on.
+
+The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk; and nothing
+concrete or tangible came Pierson's way.  He went about his usual
+routine without seeming change.  And yet there was a change, secret
+and creeping.  Wounded almost to death himself, he felt as though
+surrounded by one great wound in others; but it was some weeks before
+anything occurred to rouse within him the weapon of anger or the
+protective impulse.
+
+And then one day a little swift brutality shook him to the very soul.
+He was coming home from a long parish round, and had turned into the
+Square, when a low voice behind him said:
+
+"Wot price the little barstard?"
+
+A cold, sick feeling stifled his very breathing; he gasped, and spun
+round, to see two big loutish boys walking fast away.  With swift and
+stealthy passion he sprang after them, and putting his hands on their
+two neighbouring shoulders, wrenched them round so that they faced
+him, with mouths fallen open in alarm.  Shaking them with all his
+force, he said:
+
+"How dare you--how dare you use that word?"  His face and voice must
+have been rather terrible, for the scare in their faces brought him
+to sudden consciousness of his own violence, and he dropped his
+hands.  In two seconds they were at the corner.  They stopped there
+for a second; one of them shouted "Gran'pa"; then they vanished.  He
+was left with lips and hands quivering, and a feeling that he had not
+known for years--the weak white empty feeling one has after yielding
+utterly to sudden murderous rage.  He crossed over, and stood leaning
+against the Garden railings, with the thought: 'God forgive me!  I
+could have killed them--I could have killed them!'  There had been a
+devil in him.  If he had had something in his hand, he might now have
+been a murderer: How awful!  Only one had spoken;  but he could have
+killed them both!  And the word was true, and was in all mouths--all
+low common mouths, day after day, of his own daughter's child!  The
+ghastliness of this thought, brought home so utterly, made him
+writhe, and grasp the railings as if he would have bent them.
+
+>From that day on, a creeping sensation of being rejected of men,
+never left him; the sense of identification with Noel and her tiny
+outcast became ever more poignant, more real; the desire to protect
+them ever more passionate; and the feeling that round about there
+were whispering voices, pointing fingers, and a growing malevolence
+was ever more sickening.  He was beginning too to realise the deep
+and hidden truth: How easily the breath of scandal destroys the
+influence and sanctity of those endowed therewith by vocation; how
+invaluable it is to feel untarnished, and how difficult to feel that
+when others think you tarnished.
+
+He tried to be with Noel as much as possible; and in the evenings
+they sometimes went walks together, without ever talking of what was
+always in their minds.  Between six and eight the girl was giving
+sittings to Lavendie in the drawing-room, and sometimes Pierson would
+come there and play to them.  He was always possessed now by a sense
+of the danger Noel ran from companionship with any man.  On three
+occasions, Jimmy Fort made his appearance after dinner.  He had so
+little to say that it was difficult to understand why he came; but,
+sharpened by this new dread for his daughter, Pierson noticed his
+eyes always following her.  'He admires her,' he thought; and often
+he would try his utmost to grasp the character of this man, who had
+lived such a roving life.  'Is he--can he be the sort of man I would
+trust Nollie to?' he would think.  'Oh, that I should have to hope
+like this that some good man would marry her--my little Nollie, a
+child only the other day!'
+
+In these sad, painful, lonely weeks he found a spot of something like
+refuge in Leila's sitting-room, and would go there often for half an
+hour when she was back from her hospital.  That little black-walled
+room with its Japanese prints and its flowers, soothed him.  And
+Leila soothed him, innocent as he was of any knowledge of her latest
+aberration, and perhaps conscious that she herself was not too happy.
+To watch her arranging flowers, singing her little French songs, or
+to find her beside him, listening to his confidences, was the only
+real pleasure he knew in these days.  And Leila, in turn, would watch
+him and think: 'Poor Edward! He has never lived; and never will;
+now!'  But sometimes the thought would shoot through her: 'Perhaps
+he's to be envied.  He doesn't feel what I feel, anyway.  Why did I
+fall in love again?'
+
+They did not speak of Noel as a rule, but one evening she expressed
+her views roundly.
+
+"It was a great mistake to make Noel come back.  Edward.  It was
+Quixotic.  You'll be lucky if real mischief doesn't come of it.
+She's not a patient character; one day she'll do something rash.
+And, mind you, she'll be much more likely to break out if she sees
+the world treating you badly than if it happens to herself.  I should
+send her back to the country, before she makes bad worse."
+
+"I can't do that, Leila.  We must live it down together."
+
+"Wrong, Edward.  You should take things as they are."
+
+With a heavy sigh Pierson answered:
+
+"I wish I could see her future.  She's so attractive.  And her
+defences are gone.  She's lost faith, and belief in all that a good
+woman should be.  The day after she came back she told me she was
+ashamed of herself.  But since--she's not given a sign.  She's so
+proud--my poor little Nollie.  I see how men admire her, too.  Our
+Belgian friend is painting her.  He's a good man; but he finds her
+beautiful, and who can wonder.  And your friend Captain Fort.
+Fathers are supposed to be blind, but they see very clear sometimes."
+
+Leila rose and drew down a blind.
+
+"This sun," she said.  "Does Jimmy Fort come to you--often?"
+
+"Oh! no; very seldom.  But still--I can see."
+
+'You bat--you blunderer!' thought Leila: 'See!  You can't even see
+this beside you!'
+
+"I expect he's sorry for her," she said in a queer voice.
+
+"Why should he be sorry?  He doesn't know:"
+
+"Oh, yes!  He knows; I told him."
+
+"You told him!"
+
+"Yes," Leila repeated stubbornly; "and he's sorry for her."
+
+And even then "this monk" beside her did not see, and went blundering
+on.
+
+"No, no; it's not merely that he's sorry.  By the way he looks at
+her, I know I'm not mistaken.  I've wondered--what do you think,
+Leila.  He's too old for her; but he seems an honourable, kind man."
+
+"Oh!  a most honourable, kind man."  But only by pressing her hand
+against her lips had she smothered a burst of bitter laughter.  He,
+who saw nothing, could yet notice Fort's eyes when he looked at Noel,
+and be positive that he was in love with her!  How plainly those eyes
+must speak!  Her control gave way.
+
+"All this is very interesting," she said, spurning her words like
+Noel, "considering that he's more than my friend, Edward."  It gave
+her a sort of pleasure to see him wince.  'These blind bats!' she
+thought, terribly stung that he should so clearly assume her out of
+the running.  Then she was sorry, his face had become so still and
+wistful.  And turning away, she said:
+
+"Oh!  I shan't break my heart; I'm a good loser.  And I'm a good
+fighter, too; perhaps I shan't lose."  And snapping off a sprig of
+geranium, she pressed it to her lips.
+
+"Forgive me," said Pierson slowly; "I didn't know.  I'm stupid.  I
+thought your love for your poor soldiers had left no room for other
+feelings."
+
+Leila uttered a shrill laugh.  "What have they to do with each other?
+Did you never hear of passion, Edward?  Oh!  Don't look at me like
+that.  Do you think a woman can't feel passion at my age?  As much as
+ever, more than ever, because it's all slipping away."
+
+She took her hand from her lips, but a geranium petal was left
+clinging there, like a bloodstain.  "What has your life been all
+these years," she went on vehemently--"suppression of passion,
+nothing else!  You monks twist Nature up with holy words, and try to
+disguise what the eeriest simpleton can see.  Well, I haven't
+suppressed passion, Edward.  That's all."
+
+"And are you happier for that?"
+
+"I was; and I shall be again."
+
+A little smile curled Pierson's lips.  "Shall be?" he said.  "I hope
+so.  It's just two ways of looking at things, Leila."
+
+"Oh, Edward!  Don't be so gentle!  I suppose you don't think a person
+like me can ever really love?"
+
+He was standing before her with his head down, and a sense that,
+naive and bat-like as he was, there was something in him she could
+not reach or understand, made her cry out:
+
+"I've not been nice to you.  Forgive me, Edward!  I'm so unhappy."
+
+"There was a Greek who used to say: 'God is the helping of man by
+man.' It isn't true, but it's beautiful.  Good-bye, dear Leila, and
+don't be sorrowful"
+
+She squeezed his hand, and turned to the window.
+
+She stood there watching his black figure cross the road in the
+sunshine, and pass round the corner by the railings of the church.
+He walked quickly, very upright; there was something unseeing even
+about that back view of him; or was it that he saw-another world?
+She had never lost the mental habits of her orthodox girlhood, and in
+spite of all impatience, recognised his sanctity.  When he had
+disappeared she went into her bedroom.  What he had said, indeed, was
+no discovery.  She had known.  Oh!  She had known.  'Why didn't I
+accept Jimmy's offer?  Why didn't I marry him?  Is it too late?' she
+thought.  'Could I?  Would he--even now?' But then she started away
+from her own thought.  Marry him! knowing his heart was with this
+girl?
+
+She looked long at her face in the mirror, studying with a fearful
+interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light
+coating of powder.  She examined the cunning touches of colouring
+matter here and there in her front hair.  Were they cunning enough?
+Did they deceive?  They seemed to her suddenly to stare out.  She
+fingered and smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin
+below her chin.  She stretched herself, and passed her hands down
+over her whole form, searching as it were for slackness, or
+thickness.  And she had the bitter thought: 'I'm all out.  I'm doing
+all I can.' The lines of a little poem Fort had showed her went
+thrumming through her head:
+
+         "Time, you old gipsy man
+            Will you not stay
+          Put up your caravan
+            Just for a day?"
+
+What more could she do?  He did not like to see her lips reddened.
+She had marked his disapprovals, watched him wipe his mouth after a
+kiss, when he thought she couldn't see him.  'I need'nt!' she
+thought.  'Noel's lips are no redder, really.  What has she better
+than I?  Youth--dew on the grass!'  That didn't last long!  But long
+enough to "do her in" as her soldier-men would say.  And, suddenly
+she revolted against herself, against Fort, against this chilled and
+foggy country; felt a fierce nostalgia for African sun, and the
+African flowers; the happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth existence of those
+five years before the war began.  High Constantia at grape harvest!
+How many years ago--ten years, eleven years!  Ah!  To have before her
+those ten years, with him!  Ten years in the sun!  He would have
+loved her then, and gone on loving her!  And she would not have tired
+of him, as she had tired of those others.  'In half an hour,' she
+thought, 'he'll be here, sit opposite me; I shall see him struggling
+forcing himself to seem affectionate!  It's too humbling!  But I
+don't care; I want him!'
+
+She searched her wardrobe, for some garment or touch of colour,
+novelty of any sort, to help her.  But she had tried them all--those
+little tricks--was bankrupt.  And such a discouraged, heavy mood came
+on her, that she did not even "change," but went back in her nurse's
+dress and lay down on the divan, pretending to sleep, while the maid
+set out the supper.  She lay there moody and motionless, trying to
+summon courage, feeling that if she showed herself beaten she was
+beaten; knowing that she only held him by pity.  But when she heard
+his footstep on the stairs she swiftly passed her hands over her
+cheeks, as if to press the blood out of them, and lay absolutely
+still.  She hoped that she was white, and indeed she was, with
+finger-marks under the eyes, for she had suffered greatly this last
+hour.  Through her lashes she saw him halt, and look at her in
+surprise.  Asleep, or-ill, which?  She did not move.  She wanted to
+watch him.  He tiptoed across the room and stood looking down at her.
+There was a furrow between his eyes.  'Ah!' she thought, 'it would
+suit you, if I were dead, my kind friend.'  He bent a little towards
+her; and she wondered suddenly whether she looked graceful lying
+there, sorry now that she had not changed her dress.  She saw him
+shrug his shoulders ever so faintly with a puzzled little movement.
+He had not seen that she was shamming.  How nice his face was--not
+mean, secret, callous!  She opened her eyes, which against her will
+had in them the despair she was feeling.  He went on his knees, and
+lifting her hand to his lips, hid them with it.
+
+"Jimmy," she said gently, "I'm an awful bore to you.  Poor Jimmy!
+No!  Don't pretend!  I know what I know!"  'Oh, God!  What am I
+saying?' she thought.  'It's fatal-fatal.  I ought never!'  And
+drawing his head to her, she put it to her heart.  Then,
+instinctively aware that this moment had been pressed to its
+uttermost, she scrambled up, kissed his forehead, stretched herself,
+and laughed.
+
+"I was asleep, dreaming; dreaming you loved me.  Wasn't it funny?
+Come along.  There are oysters, for the last time this season."
+
+All that evening, as if both knew they had been looking over a
+precipice, they seemed to be treading warily, desperately anxious not
+to rouse emotion in each other, or touch on things which must bring a
+scene.  And Leila talked incessantly of Africa.
+
+"Don't you long for the sun, Jimmy?  Couldn't we--couldn't you go?
+Oh! why doesn't this wretched war end?  All that we've got here at
+home every scrap of wealth, and comfort, and age, and art, and music,
+I'd give it all for the light and the sun out there.  Wouldn't you?"
+
+And Fort said he would, knowing well of one thing which he would not
+give.  And she knew that, as well as he.
+
+They were both gayer than they had been for a long time; so that when
+he had gone, she fell back once more on to the divan, and burying her
+face in a cushion, wept bitterly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+It was not quite disillusionment that Pierson felt while he walked
+away.  Perhaps he had not really believed in Leila's regeneration.
+It was more an acute discomfort, an increasing loneliness.  A soft
+and restful spot was now denied him; a certain warmth and allurement
+had gone out of his life.  He had not even the feeling that it was
+his duty to try and save Leila by persuading her to marry Fort.  He
+had always been too sensitive, too much as it were of a gentleman,
+for the robuster sorts of evangelism.  Such delicacy had been a
+stumbling-block to him all through professional life.  In the eight
+years when his wife was with him, all had been more certain, more
+direct and simple, with the help of her sympathy, judgment; and
+companionship.  At her death a sort of mist had gathered in his soul.
+No one had ever spoken plainly to him.  To a clergyman, who does?  No
+one had told him in so many words that he should have married again--
+that to stay unmarried was bad for him, physically and spiritually,
+fogging and perverting life; not driving him, indeed, as it drove
+many, to intolerance and cruelty, but to that half-living dreaminess,
+and the vague unhappy yearnings which so constantly beset him.  All
+these celibate years he had really only been happy in his music, or
+in far-away country places, taking strong exercise, and losing
+himself in the beauties of Nature; and since the war began he had
+only once, for those three days at Kestrel, been out of London.
+
+He walked home, going over in his mind very anxiously all the
+evidence he had of Fort's feeling for Noel.  How many times had he
+been to them since she came back?  Only three times--three evening
+visits!  And he had not been alone with her a single minute!  Before
+this calamity befell his daughter, he would never have observed
+anything in Fort's demeanour; but, in his new watchfulness, he had
+seen the almost reverential way he looked at her, noticed the extra
+softness of his voice when he spoke to her, and once a look of sudden
+pain, a sort of dulling of his whole self, when Noel had got up and
+gone out of the room.  And the girl herself?  Twice he had surprised
+her gazing at Fort when he was not looking, with a sort of brooding
+interest.  He remembered how, as a little girl, she would watch a
+grown-up, and then suddenly one day attach herself to him, and be
+quite devoted.  Yes, he must warn her, before she could possibly
+become entangled.  In his fastidious chastity, the opinion he had
+held of Fort was suddenly lowered.  He, already a free-thinker, was
+now revealed as a free-liver.  Poor little Nollie!  Endangered again
+already!  Every man a kind of wolf waiting to pounce on her!
+
+He found Lavendie and Noel in the drawing-room, standing before the
+portrait which was nearing completion.  He looked at it for a long
+minute, and turned away:
+
+"Don't you think it's like me, Daddy?"
+
+"It's like you; but it hurts me.  I can't tell why."
+
+He saw the smile of a painter whose picture is being criticised come
+on Lavendie's face.
+
+"It is perhaps the colouring which does not please you, monsieur?"
+
+"No, no; deeper.  The expression; what is she waiting for?"
+
+The defensive smile died on Lavendie's lips.
+
+"It is as I see her, monsieur le cure."
+
+Pierson turned again to the picture, and suddenly covered his eyes.
+"She looks 'fey,"' he said, and went out of the room.
+
+Lavendie and Noel remained staring at the picture.  "Fey?  What does
+that mean, mademoiselle ?"
+
+"Possessed, or something."
+
+And they continued to stare at the picture, till Lavendie said:
+
+"I think there is still a little too much light on that ear."
+
+The same evening, at bedtime, Pierson called Noel back.
+
+"Nollie, I want you to know something.  In all but the name, Captain
+Fort is a married man."
+
+He saw her flush, and felt his own face darkening with colour.
+
+She said calmly: "I know; to Leila."
+
+"Do you mean she has told you?"
+
+Noel shook her head.
+
+"Then how?"
+
+"I guessed.  Daddy, don't treat me as a child any more.  What's the
+use, now?"
+
+He sat down in the chair before the hearth, and covered his face with
+his hands.  By the quivering of those hands, and the movement of his
+shoulders, she could tell that he was stifling emotion, perhaps even
+crying; and sinking down on his knees she pressed his hands and face
+to her, murmuring: "Oh, Daddy dear!  Oh, Daddy dear!"
+
+He put his arms round her, and they sat a long time with their cheeks
+pressed together, not speaking a word.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+The day after that silent outburst of emotion in the drawing-room was
+a Sunday.  And, obeying the longing awakened overnight to be as good
+as she could to her father; Noel said to him:
+
+"Would you like me to come to Church?"
+
+"Of course, Nollie."
+
+How could he have answered otherwise?  To him Church was the home of
+comfort and absolution, where people must bring their sins and
+troubles--a haven of sinners, the fount of charity, of forgiveness,
+and love.  Not to have believed that, after all these years, would
+have been to deny all his usefulness in life, and to cast a slur on
+the House of God.
+
+And so Noel walked there with him, for Gratian had gone down to
+George, for the week-end.  She slipped quietly up the side aisle to
+their empty pew, under the pulpit.  Never turning her eyes from the
+chancel, she remained unconscious of the stir her presence made,
+during that hour and twenty minutes.  Behind her, the dumb currents
+of wonder, disapproval, and resentment ran a stealthy course.  On her
+all eyes were fixed sooner or later, and every mind became the play
+ground of judgments.  From every soul, kneeling, standing, or
+sitting, while the voice of the Service droned, sang, or spoke, a
+kind of glare radiated on to that one small devoted head, which
+seemed so ludicrously devout.  She disturbed their devotions, this
+girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class.  She ought to
+repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there was
+something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she
+was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's authority, too
+visible a rent in the raiment of their priest.  Her figure focused
+all the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks.
+Mothers quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could see
+her; wives with the idea that their husbands were seeing her.  Men
+experienced sensations varying from condemnation to a sort of
+covetousness.  Young folk wondered, and felt inclined to giggle.  Old
+maids could hardly bear to look.  Here and there a man or woman who
+had seen life face to face, was simply sorry!  The consciousness of
+all who knew her personally was at stretch how to behave if they came
+within reach of her in going out.  For, though only half a dozen
+would actually rub shoulders with her, all knew that they might be,
+and many felt it their duty to be, of that half-dozen, so as to
+establish their attitude once for all.  It was, in fact, too severe a
+test for human nature and the feelings which Church ought to arouse.
+The stillness of that young figure, the impossibility of seeing her
+face and judging of her state of mind thereby; finally, a faint
+lurking shame that they should be so intrigued and disturbed by
+something which had to do with sex, in this House of Worship--all
+combined to produce in every mind that herd-feeling of defence, which
+so soon becomes, offensive.  And, half unconscious, half aware of it
+all, Noel stood, and sat, and knelt.  Once or twice she saw her
+father's eyes fixed on her; and, still in the glow of last night's
+pity and remorse, felt a kind of worship for his thin grave face.
+But for the most part, her own wore the expression Lavendie had
+translated to his canvas--the look of one ever waiting for the
+extreme moments of life, for those few and fleeting poignancies which
+existence holds for the human heart.  A look neither hungry nor
+dissatisfied, but dreamy and expectant, which might blaze into warmth
+and depth at any moment, and then go back to its dream.
+
+When the last notes of the organ died away she continued to sit very
+still, without looking round.
+
+There was no second Service, and the congregation melted out behind
+her, and had dispersed into the streets and squares long before she
+came forth.  After hesitating whether or no to go to the vestry door,
+she turned away and walked home alone.
+
+It was this deliberate evasion of all contact which probably clinched
+the business.  The absence of vent, of any escape-pipe for the
+feelings, is always dangerous.  They felt cheated.  If Noel had come
+out amongst all those whose devotions her presence had disturbed, if
+in that exit, some had shown and others had witnessed one knows not
+what of a manifested ostracism, the outraged sense of social decency
+might have been appeased and sleeping dogs allowed to lie, for we
+soon get used to things; and, after all, the war took precedence in
+every mind even over social decency.  But none of this had occurred,
+and a sense that Sunday after Sunday the same little outrage would
+happen to them, moved more than a dozen quite unrelated persons, and
+caused the posting that evening of as many letters, signed and
+unsigned, to a certain quarter.  London is no place for parish
+conspiracy, and a situation which in the country would have provoked
+meetings more or less public, and possibly a resolution, could
+perhaps only thus be dealt with.  Besides, in certain folk there is
+ever a mysterious itch to write an unsigned letter--such missives
+satisfy some obscure sense of justice, some uncontrollable longing to
+get even with those who have hurt or disturbed them, without
+affording the offenders chance for further hurt or disturbance.
+
+Letters which are posted often reach their destination.
+
+On Wednesday morning Pierson was sitting in his study at the hour
+devoted to the calls of his parishioners, when the maid announced,
+"Canon Rushbourne, sir," and he saw before him an old College friend
+whom he had met but seldom in recent years.  His visitor was a short,
+grey-haired man of rather portly figure, whose round, rosy, good-
+humoured face had a look of sober goodness, and whose light-blue eyes
+shone a little.  He grasped Pierson's hand, and said in a voice to
+whose natural heavy resonance professional duty had added a certain
+unction:
+
+"My dear Edward, how many years it is since we met!  Do you remember
+dear old Blakeway?  I saw him only yesterday.  He's just the same.
+I'm delighted to see you again," and he laughed a little soft nervous
+laugh.  Then for a few moments he talked of the war and old College
+days, and Pierson looked at him and thought: 'What has he come for?'
+
+"You've something to say to me, Alec," he said, at last.
+
+Canon Rushbourne leaned forward in his chair, and answered with
+evident effort: "Yes; I wanted to have a little talk with you,
+Edward.  I hope you won't mind.  I do hope you won't."
+
+"Why should I mind?"
+
+Canon Rushbourne's eyes shone more than ever, there was real
+friendliness in his face.
+
+"I know you've every right to say to me: 'Mind your own business.'
+But I made up my mind to come as a friend, hoping to save you from
+--er" he stammered, and began again: "I think you ought to know of
+the feeling in your parish that--er--that--er--your position is very
+delicate.  Without breach of confidence I may tell you that letters
+have been sent to headquarters; you can imagine perhaps what I mean.
+Do believe, my dear friend, that I'm actuated by my old affection for
+you; nothing else, I do assure you."
+
+In the silence, his breathing could be heard, as of a man a little
+touched with asthma, while he continually smoothed his thick black
+knees, his whole face radiating an anxious kindliness.  The sun shone
+brightly on those two black figures, so very different, and drew out
+of their well-worn garments the faint latent green mossiness which.
+underlies the clothes of clergymen.
+
+At last Pierson said: "Thank you, Alec; I understand."
+
+The Canon uttered a resounding sigh.  "You didn't realise how very
+easily people misinterpret her being here with you; it seems to them
+a kind--a kind of challenge.  They were bound, I think, to feel that;
+and I'm afraid, in consequence--" He stopped, moved by the fact that
+Pierson had closed his eyes.
+
+"I am to choose, you mean, between my daughter and my parish?"
+
+The Canon seemed, with a stammer of words, to try and blunt the edge
+of that clear question.
+
+"My visit is quite informal, my dear fellow; I can't say at all.  But
+there is evidently much feeling; that is what I wanted you to know.
+You haven't quite seen, I think, that--"
+
+Pierson raised his hand.  "I can't talk of this."
+
+The Canon rose.  "Believe me, Edward, I sympathise deeply.  I felt I
+had to warn you."  He held out his hand.  "Good-bye, my dear friend,
+do forgive me"; and he went out.  In the hall an adventure befell him
+so plump, and awkward, that he could barely recite it to Mrs.
+Rushbourne that night.
+
+"Coming out from my poor friend," he said, "I ran into a baby's
+perambulator and that young mother, whom I remember as a little
+thing"--he held his hand at the level of his thigh--"arranging it for
+going out.  It startled me; and I fear I asked quite foolishly: 'Is
+it a boy?'  The poor young thing looked up at me.  She has very large
+eyes, quite beautiful, strange eyes.  'Have you been speaking to
+Daddy about me?'  'My dear young lady,' I said, 'I'm such an old
+friend, you see.  You must forgive me.'  And then she said: 'Are they
+going to ask him to resign?'  'That depends on you,' I said.  Why do
+I say these things, Charlotte?  I ought simply to have held my
+tongue.  Poor young thing; so very young!  And the little baby!"
+"She has brought it on herself, Alec," Mrs, Rushbourne replied.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+1
+
+The moment his visitor had vanished, Pierson paced up and down the
+study, with anger rising in his, heart.  His daughter or his parish!
+The old saw, "An Englishman's house is his castle!"  was being
+attacked within him.  Must he not then harbour his own daughter, and
+help her by candid atonement to regain her inward strength and peace?
+Was he not thereby acting as a true Christian, in by far the hardest
+course he and she could pursue?  To go back on that decision and
+imperil his daughter's spirit, or else resign his parish--the
+alternatives were brutal!  This was the centre of his world, the only
+spot where so lonely a man could hope to feel even the semblance of
+home; a thousand little threads tethered him to his church, his
+parishioners, and this house--for, to live on here if he gave up his
+church was out of the question.  But his chief feeling was a
+bewildered anger that for doing what seemed to him his duty, he
+should be attacked by his parishioners.
+
+A passion of desire to know what they really thought and felt--these
+parishioners of his, whom he had befriended, and for whom he had
+worked so long--beset him now, and he went out.  But the absurdity of
+his quest struck him before he had gone the length of the Square.
+One could not go to people and say: "Stand and deliver me your inmost
+judgments."  And suddenly he was aware of how far away he really was
+from them.  Through all his ministrations had he ever come to know
+their hearts?  And now, in this dire necessity for knowledge, there
+seemed no way of getting it.  He went at random into a stationer's
+shop; the shopman sang bass in his choir.  They had met Sunday after
+Sunday for the last seven years.  But when, with this itch for
+intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man behind the counter, it was
+as if he were looking on him for the first time.  The Russian
+proverb, "The heart of another is a dark forest," gashed into his
+mind, while he said:
+
+"Well, Hodson, what news of your son?"
+
+"Nothing more, Mr.  Pierson, thank you, sir, nothing more at
+present."
+
+And it seemed to Pierson, gazing at the man's face clothed in a
+short, grizzling beard cut rather like his own, that he must be
+thinking: 'Ah! sir, but what news of your daughter?' No one would
+ever tell him to his face what he was thinking.  And buying two
+pencils, he went out.  On the other side of the road was a bird-
+fancier's shop, kept by a woman whose husband had been taken for the
+Army.  She was not friendly towards him, for it was known to her that
+he had expostulated with her husband for keeping larks, and other
+wild birds.  And quite deliberately he crossed the road, and stood
+looking in at the window, with the morbid hope that from this
+unfriendly one he might hear truth.  She was in her shop, and came to
+the door.
+
+"Have you any news of your husband, Mrs.  Cherry?"
+
+"No, Mr.  Pierson, I 'ave not; not this week."
+
+"He hasn't gone out yet?"
+
+"No, Mr.  Pierson; 'e 'as not."
+
+There was no expression on her face, perfectly blank it was--Pierson
+had a mad longing to say 'For God's sake, woman, speak out what's in
+your mind; tell me what you think of me and my daughter.  Never mind
+my cloth!'  But he could no more say it than the woman could tell him
+what was in her mind.  And with a "Good morning" he passed on.  No
+man or woman would tell him anything, unless, perhaps, they were
+drunk.  He came to a public house, and for a moment even hesitated
+before it, but the thought of insult aimed at Noel stopped him, and
+he passed that too.  And then reality made itself known to him.
+Though he had come out to hear what they were thinking, he did not
+really want to hear it, could not endure it if he did.  He had been
+too long immune from criticism, too long in the position of one who
+may tell others what he thinks of them.  And standing there in the
+crowded street, he was attacked by that longing for the country which
+had always come on him when he was hard pressed.  He looked at his
+memoranda.  By stupendous luck it was almost a blank day.  An omnibus
+passed close by which would take him far out.  He climbed on to it,
+and travelled as far as Hendon; then getting down, set forth on foot.
+It was bright and hot, and the May blossom in full foam.  He walked
+fast along the perfectly straight road till he came to the top of
+Elstree Hill.  There for a few moments he stood gazing at the school
+chapel, the cricket-field, the wide land beyond.  All was very quiet,
+for it was lunch-time.  A horse was tethered there, and a strolling
+cat, as though struck by the tall black incongruity of his figure,
+paused in her progress, then, slithering under the wicket gate,
+arched her back and rubbed herself against his leg, crinkling and
+waving the tip of her tail.  Pierson bent down and stroked the
+creature's head; but uttering a faint miaou, the cat stepped daintily
+across the road, Pierson too stepped on, past the village, and down
+over the stile, into a field path.  At the edge of the young clover,
+under a bank of hawthorn, he lay down on his back, with his hat
+beside him and his arms crossed over his chest, like the effigy of
+some crusader one may see carved on an old tomb.  Though he lay quiet
+as that old knight, his eyes were not closed, but fixed on the blue,
+where a lark was singing.  Its song refreshed his spirit; its
+passionate light-heartedness stirred all the love of beauty in him,
+awoke revolt against a world so murderous and uncharitable.  Oh! to
+pass up with that song into a land of bright spirits, where was
+nothing ugly, hard, merciless, and the gentle face of the Saviour
+radiated everlasting love!  The scent of the mayflowers, borne down
+by the sun shine, drenched his senses; he closed his eyes, and, at
+once, as if resenting that momentary escape, his mind resumed debate
+with startling intensity.  This matter went to the very well-springs,
+had a terrible and secret significance.  If to act as conscience bade
+him rendered him unfit to keep his parish, all was built on sand, had
+no deep reality, was but rooted in convention.  Charity, and the
+forgiveness of sins honestly atoned for--what be came of them?
+Either he was wrong to have espoused straightforward confession and
+atonement for her, or they were wrong in chasing him from that
+espousal.  There could be no making those extremes to meet.  But if
+he were wrong, having done the hardest thing already--where could he
+turn?  His Church stood bankrupt of ideals.  He felt as if pushed
+over the edge of the world, with feet on space, and head in some
+blinding cloud.  'I cannot have been wrong,' he thought; 'any other
+course was so much easier.  I sacrificed my pride, and my poor girl's
+pride; I would have loved to let her run away.  If for this we are to
+be stoned and cast forth, what living force is there in the religion
+I have loved; what does it all come to?  Have I served a sham?  I
+cannot and will not believe it.  Something is wrong with me,
+something is wrong--but where--what?'  He rolled over, lay on his
+face, and prayed.  He prayed for guidance and deliverance from the
+gusts of anger which kept sweeping over him; even more for relief
+from the feeling of personal outrage, and the unfairness of this
+thing.  He had striven to be loyal to what he thought the right, had
+sacrificed all his sensitiveness, all his secret fastidious pride in
+his child and himself.  For that he was to be thrown out!  Whether
+through prayer, or in the scent and feel of the clover, he found
+presently a certain rest.  Away in the distance he could see the
+spire of Harrow Church.
+
+The Church!  No!  She was not, could not be, at fault.  The fault was
+in himself.  'I am unpractical,' he thought.  'It is so, I know.
+Agnes used to say so, Bob and Thirza think so.  They all think me
+unpractical and dreamy.  Is it a sin--I wonder?'  There were lambs in
+the next field; he watched their gambollings and his heart relaxed;
+brushing the clover dust off his black clothes, he began to retrace
+his steps.  The boys were playing cricket now, and he stood a few
+minutes watching them.  He had not seen cricket played since the war
+began; it seemed almost otherworldly, with the click of the bats, and
+the shrill young 'voices, under the distant drone of that sky-hornet
+threshing along to Hendon.  A boy made a good leg hit.  "Well
+played!" he called.  Then, suddenly conscious of his own incongruity
+and strangeness in that green spot, he turned away on the road back
+to London.  To resign; to await events; to send Noel away--of those
+three courses, the last alone seemed impossible.  'Am I really so far
+from them,' he thought, 'that they can wish me to go, for this?  If
+so, I had better go.  It will be just another failure.  But I won't
+believe it yet; I can't believe it.'
+
+The heat was sweltering, and he became very tired before at last he
+reached his omnibus, and could sit with the breeze cooling his hot
+face.  He did not reach home till six, having eaten nothing since
+breakfast.  Intending to have a bath and lie down till dinner, he
+went upstairs.
+
+Unwonted silence reigned.  He tapped on the nursery door.  It was
+deserted; he passed through to Noel's room; but that too was empty.
+The wardrobe stood open as if it had been hastily ransacked, and her
+dressing-table was bare.  In alarm he went to the bell and pulled it
+sharply.  The old-fashioned ring of it jingled out far below.  The
+parlour-maid came up.
+
+"Where are Miss Noel and Nurse, Susan?"
+
+"I didn't know you were in, sir.  Miss Noel left me this note to give
+you.  They--I--"
+
+Pierson stopped her with his hand.  "Thank you, Susan; get me some
+tea, please."  With the note unopened in his hand, he waited till she
+was gone.  His head was going round, and he sat down on the side of
+Noel's bed to read:
+
+"DARLING DADDY,
+
+"The man who came this morning told me of what is going to happen.  I
+simply won't have it.  I'm sending Nurse and baby down to Kestrel at
+once, and going to Leila's for the night, until I've made up my mind
+what to do.  I knew it was a mistake my coming back.  I don't care
+what happens to me, but I won't have you hurt.  I think it's hateful
+of people to try and injure you for my fault.  I've had to borrow
+money from Susan--six pounds.  Oh! Daddy dear, forgive me.
+
+"Your loving
+
+"NOLLIE."
+
+
+He read it with unutterable relief; at all events he knew where she
+was--poor, wilful, rushing, loving-hearted child; knew where she was,
+and could get at her.  After his bath and some tea, he would go to
+Leila's and bring her back.  Poor little Nollie, thinking that by
+just leaving his house she could settle this deep matter!  He did not
+hurry, feeling decidedly exhausted, and it was nearly eight before he
+set out, leaving a message for Gratian, who did not as a rule come in
+from her hospital till past nine.
+
+The day was still glowing, and now, in the cool of evening, his
+refreshed senses soaked up its beauty.  'God has so made this world,'
+he thought, 'that, no matter what our struggles and sufferings, it's
+ever a joy to live when the sun shines, or the moon is bright, or the
+night starry.  Even we can't spoil it.'  In Regent's Park the lilacs
+and laburnums were still in bloom though June had come, and he gazed
+at them in passing, as a lover might at his lady.  His conscience
+pricked him suddenly.  Mrs. Mitchett and the dark-eyed girl she had
+brought to him on New Year's Eve, the very night he had learned of
+his own daughter's tragedy--had he ever thought of them since?  How
+had that poor girl fared?  He had been too impatient of her
+impenetrable mood.  What did he know of the hearts of others, when he
+did not even know his own, could not rule his feelings of anger and
+revolt, had not guided his own daughter into the waters of safety!
+And Leila!  Had he not been too censorious in thought?  How powerful,
+how strange was this instinct of sex, which hovered and swooped on
+lives, seized them, bore them away, then dropped them exhausted and
+defenceless!  Some munition-wagons, painted a dull grey, lumbered
+past, driven by sunburned youths in drab.  Life-force, Death-force--
+was it all one; the great unknowable momentum from which there was
+but the one escape, in the arms of their Heavenly Father?  Blake's
+little old stanzas came into his mind:
+
+    "And we are put on earth a little space,
+     That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
+     And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
+     Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
+
+    "For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
+     The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
+     Saying: Come out from the grove, my love and care,
+     And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!"
+
+Learned the heat to bear!  Those lambs he had watched in a field that
+afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their funny
+quivering wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts--what
+little miracles of careless joy among the meadow flowers!  Lambs, and
+flowers, and sunlight!  Famine, lust, and the great grey guns!  A
+maze, a wilderness; and but for faith, what issue, what path for man
+to take which did not keep him wandering hopeless, in its thicket?
+'God preserve our faith in love, in charity, and the life to come!'
+he thought.  And a blind man with a dog, to whose neck was tied a
+little deep dish for pennies, ground a hurdy-gurdy as he passed.
+Pierson put a shilling in the dish.  The man stopped playing, his
+whitish eyes looked up.  "Thank you kindly, sir; I'll go home now.
+Come on, Dick!"  He tapped his way round the corner, with his dog
+straining in front.  A blackbird hidden among the blossoms of an
+acacia, burst into evening song, and another great grey munition-
+wagon rumbled out through the Park gate.
+
+
+
+2
+
+The Church-clock was striking nine when he reached Leila's flat, went
+up, and knocked.  Sounds from-a piano ceased; the door was opened by
+Noel.  She recoiled when she saw who it was, and said:
+
+"Why did you come, Daddy?  It was much better not."
+
+"Are you alone here?"
+
+"Yes; Leila gave me her key.  She has to be at the hospital till ten
+to-night"
+
+"You must come home with me, my dear."
+
+Noel closed the piano, and sat down on the divan.  Her face had the
+same expression as when he had told her that she could not marry
+Cyril Morland.
+
+"Come, Nollie," he said; "don't be unreasonable.  We must see this
+through together."
+
+"No."
+
+"My dear, that's childish.  Do you think the mere accident of your
+being or not being at home can affect my decision as to what my duty
+is?"
+
+"Yes; it's my being there that matters.  Those people don't care, so
+long as it isn't an open scandal"
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"But it is so, Daddy.  Of course it's so, and you know it.  If I'm
+away they'll just pity you for having a bad daughter.  And quite
+right too.  I am a bad daughter."
+
+Pierson smiled.  "Just like when you were a tiny."
+
+"I wish I were a tiny again, or ten years older.  It's this half
+age--But I'm not coming back with you, Daddy; so it's no good."
+
+Pierson sat down beside her.
+
+"I've been thinking this over all day," he said quietly.  "Perhaps in
+my pride I made a mistake when I first knew of your trouble.  Perhaps
+I ought to have accepted the consequences of my failure, then, and
+have given up, and taken you away at once.  After all, if a man is
+not fit to have the care of souls, he should have the grace to know
+it."
+
+"But you are fit," cried Noel passionately; "Daddy, you are fit!"
+
+"I'm afraid not.  There is something wanting in me, I don't know
+exactly what; but something very wanting."
+
+"There isn't.  It's only that you're too good--that's why!"
+
+Pierson shook his head.  "Don't, Nollie!"
+
+"I will," cried Noel.  "You're too gentle, and you're too good.
+You're charitable, and you're simple, and you believe in another
+world; that's what's the matter with you, Daddy.  Do you think they
+do, those people who want to chase us out?  They don't even begin to
+believe, whatever they say or think.  I hate them, and sometimes I
+hate the Church; either it's hard and narrow, or else it's worldly."
+She stopped at the expression on her father's face, the most strange
+look of pain, and horror, as if an unspoken treachery of his own had
+been dragged forth for his inspection.
+
+"You're talking wildly," he said, but his lips were trembling.  "You
+mustn't say things like that; they're blasphemous and wicked."
+
+Noel bit her lips, sitting very stiff and still, against a high blue
+cushion.  Then she burst out again:
+
+"You've slaved for those people years and years, and you've had no
+pleasure and you've had no love; and they wouldn't care that if you
+broke your heart.  They don't care for anything, so long as it all
+seems proper.  Daddy, if you let them hurt you, I won't forgive you!"
+
+"And what if you hurt me now, Nollie?"
+
+Noel pressed his hand against her warm cheek.
+
+"Oh, no!  Oh, no!  I don't--I won't.  Not again.  I've done that
+already."
+
+"Very well, my dear!  then come home with me, and we'll see what's
+best to be done.  It can't be settled by running away."
+
+Noel dropped his hand.  "No.  Twice I've done what you wanted, and
+it's been a mistake.  If I hadn't gone to Church on Sunday to please
+you, perhaps it would never have come to this.  You don't see things,
+Daddy.  I could tell, though I was sitting right in front.  I knew
+what their faces were like, and what they were thinking."
+
+"One must do right, Nollie, and not mind."
+
+"Yes; but what is right?  It's not right for me to hurt you, and I'm
+not going to."
+
+Pierson understood all at once that it was useless to try and move
+her.
+
+"What are you going to do, then?"
+
+"I suppose I shall go to Kestrel to-morrow.  Auntie will have me, I
+know; I shall talk to Leila."
+
+"Whatever you do, promise to let me know."
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Daddy, you--look awfully, awfully tired.  I'm going to give you some
+medicine."  She went to a little three-cornered cupboard, and bent
+down.  Medicine!  The medicine he wanted was not for the body;
+knowledge of what his duty was--that alone could heal him!
+
+The loud popping of a cork roused him.  "What are you doing, Nollie?"
+
+Noel rose with a flushed face, holding in one hand a glass of
+champagne, in the other a biscuit.
+
+"You're to take this; and I'm going to have some myself."
+
+"My dear," said Pierson bewildered; "it's not yours."
+
+"Drink it; Daddy!  Don't you know that Leila would never forgive me
+if I let you go home looking like that.  Besides, she told me I was
+to eat.  Drink it.  You can send her a nice present.  Drink it!"  And
+she stamped her foot.
+
+Pierson took the glass, and sat there nibbling and sipping.  It was
+nice, very!  He had not quite realised how much he needed food and
+drink.  Noel returned from the cupboard a second time; she too had a
+glass and a biscuit.
+
+"There, you look better already.  Now you're to go home at once, in a
+cab if you can get one; and tell Gratian to make you feed up, or you
+won't have a body at all; you can't do your duty if you haven't one,
+you know."
+
+Pierson smiled, and finished the champagne.
+
+Noel took the glass from him.  "You're my child to-night, and I'm
+going to send you to bed.  Don't worry, Daddy; it'll all come right."
+And, taking his arm, she went downstairs with him, and blew him a
+kiss from the doorway.
+
+He walked away in a sort of dream.  Daylight was not quite gone, but
+the moon was up, just past its full, and the search-lights had begun
+their nightly wanderings.  It was a sky of ghosts and shadows,
+fitting to the thought which came to him.  The finger of Providence
+was in all this, perhaps!  Why should he not go out to France!  At
+last; why not?  Some better man, who understood men's hearts, who
+knew the world, would take his place; and he could go where death
+made all things simple, and he could not fail.  He walked faster and
+faster, full of an intoxicating relief.  Thirza and Gratian would
+take care of Nollie far better than he.  Yes, surely it was ordained!
+Moonlight had the town now; and all was steel blue, the very air
+steel-blue; a dream-city of marvellous beauty, through which he
+passed, exalted.  Soon he would be where that poor boy, and a million
+others, had given their lives; with the mud and the shells and the
+scarred grey ground, and the jagged trees, where Christ was daily
+crucified--there where he had so often longed to be these three years
+past.  It was ordained!
+
+And two women whom he met looked at each other when he had gone by,
+and those words 'the blighted crow' which they had been about to
+speak, died on their lips.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Noel felt light-hearted too, as if she had won a victory.  She found
+some potted meat, spread it on another biscuit, ate it greedily, and
+finished the pint bottle of champagne.  Then she hunted for the
+cigarettes, and sat down at the piano.  She played old tunes--"There
+is a Tavern in the Town," "Once I Loved a Maiden Fair," "Mowing the
+Barley," "Clementine," "Lowlands," and sang to them such words as she
+remembered.  There was a delicious running in her veins, and once she
+got up and danced.  She was kneeling at the window, looking out, when
+she heard the door open, and without getting up, cried out:
+
+"Isn't it a gorgeous night!  I've had Daddy here.  I gave him some of
+your champagne, and drank the rest--" then was conscious of a figure
+far too tall for Leila, and a man's voice saying:
+
+"I'm awfully sorry.  It's only I, Jimmy Fort."
+
+Noel scrambled up.  "Leila isn't in; but she will be directly--it's
+past ten."
+
+He was standing stock-still in the middle of the room.
+
+"Won't you sit down?  Oh!  and won't you have a cigarette?"
+
+"Thanks."
+
+By the flash of his briquette she saw his face clearly; the look on
+it filled her with a sort of malicious glee.
+
+"I'm going now," she said.  "Would you mind telling Leila that I
+found I couldn't stop?"  She made towards the divan to get her hat.
+When she had put it on, she found him standing just in front of her.
+
+"Noel-if you don't mind me calling you that?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Don't go; I'm going myself."
+
+"Oh, no!  Not for worlds."  She tried to slip past, but he took hold
+of her wrist.
+
+"Please; just one minute!"
+
+Noel stayed motionless, looking at him, while his hand still held her
+wrist.  He said quietly:
+
+"Do you mind telling me why you came here?"
+
+"Oh, just to see Leila."
+
+"Things have come to a head at home, haven't they?"
+
+Noel shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"You came for refuge, didn't you?"
+
+"From whom?"
+
+"Don't be angry; from the need of hurting your father."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I knew it would come to that.  What are you going to do?"
+
+"Enjoy myself."  She was saying something fatuous, yet she meant it.
+
+"That's absurd.  Don't be angry!  You're quite right.  Only, you must
+begin at the right end, mustn't you?  Sit down!"
+
+Noel tried to free her wrist.
+
+"No; sit down, please."
+
+Noel sat down; but as he loosed her wrist, she laughed.  This was
+where he sat with Leila, where they would sit when she was gone.
+"It's awfully funny, isn't it?" she said.
+
+"Funny?"  he muttered savagely.  "Most things are, in this funny
+world."
+
+The sound of a taxi stopping not far off had come to her ears, and
+she gathered her feet under her, planting them firmly.  If she sprang
+up, could she slip by him before he caught her arm again, and get
+that taxi?
+
+"If I go now," he said, "will you promise me to stop till you've seen
+Leila?"
+
+"No."
+
+"That's foolish.  Come, promise!"
+
+Noel shook her head.  She felt a perverse pleasure at his
+embarrassment.
+
+"Leila's lucky, isn't she?  No children, no husband, no father, no
+anything.  Lovely!"
+
+She saw his arm go up as if to ward off a blow.  "Poor Leila!" he
+said.
+
+"Why are you sorry for her?  She has freedom!  And she has you!"
+
+She knew it would hurt; but she wanted to hurt him.
+
+"You needn't envy her for that."
+
+He had just spoken, when Noel saw a figure over by the door.
+
+She jumped up, and said breathlessly:
+
+"Oh, here you are, Leila!  Father's been here, and we've had some of
+your champagne!"
+
+"Capital!  You are in the dark!"
+
+Noel felt the blood rush into her cheeks.  The light leaped up, and
+Leila came forward.  She looked extremely pale, calm, and self-
+contained, in her nurse's dress; her full lips were tightly pressed
+together, but Noel could see her breast heaving violently.  A turmoil
+of shame and wounded pride began raging in the girl.  Why had she not
+flown long ago?  Why had she let herself be trapped like this?  Leila
+would think she had been making up to him!  Horrible!  Disgusting!
+Why didn't he--why didn't some one, speak?  Then Leila said:
+
+"I didn't expect you, Jimmy; I'm glad you haven't been dull.  Noel is
+staying here to-night.  Give me a cigarette.  Sit down, both of you.
+I'm awfully tired!"
+
+She sank into a chair, leaning back, with her knees crossed; and at
+that moment Noel admired her.  She had said it beautifully; she
+looked so calm.  Fort was lighting her cigarette; his hand was
+shaking, his face all sorry and mortified.
+
+"Give Noel one, too, and draw the curtains, Jimmy.  Quick!  Not that
+it makes any difference; it's as light as day.  Sit down, dear."
+
+But Noel remained standing.
+
+"What have you been talking of?  Love and Chinese lanterns, or only
+me?"
+
+At those words Fort, who was drawing the last curtain, turned round;
+his tall figure was poised awkwardly against the wall, his face,
+unsuited to diplomacy, had a look as of flesh being beaten.  If weals
+had started up across it, Noel would not have been surprised.
+
+He said with painful slowness:
+
+"I don't exactly know; we had hardly begun, had we?"
+
+"The night is young," said Leila.  "Go on while I just take off my
+things."
+
+She rose with the cigarette between her lips, and went into the inner
+room.  In passing, she gave Noel a look.  What there was in that
+look, the girl could never make clear even to herself.  Perhaps a
+creature shot would gaze like that, with a sort of profound and
+distant questioning, reproach, and anger, with a sort of pride, and
+the quiver of death.  As the door closed, Fort came right across the
+room.
+
+"Go to her;" cried Noel; "she wants you.  Can't you see, she wants
+you?"
+
+And before he could move, she was at the door.  She flew downstairs,
+and out into the moonlight.  The taxi, a little way off, was just
+beginning to move away; she ran towards it, calling out:
+
+"Anywhere!  Piccadilly!" and jumping in, blotted herself against the
+cushions in the far corner.
+
+She did not come to herself, as it were, for several minutes, and
+then feeling she 'could no longer bear the cab, stopped it, and got
+out.  Where was she?  Bond Street!  She began, idly, wandering down
+its narrow length; the fullest street by day, the emptiest by night.
+Oh!  it had been horrible!  Nothing said by any of them--nothing, and
+yet everything dragged out--of him, of Leila, of herself!  She seemed
+to have no pride or decency left, as if she had been caught stealing.
+All her happy exhilaration was gone, leaving a miserable
+recklessness.  Nothing she did was right, nothing turned out well, so
+what did it all matter?  The moonlight flooding down between the tall
+houses gave her a peculiar heady feeling.  "Fey" her father had
+called her.  She laughed.  'But I'm not going home,' she thought.
+Bored with the street's length; she turned off, and was suddenly in
+Hanover Square.  There was the Church, grey-white, where she had been
+bridesmaid to a second cousin, when she was fifteen.  She seemed to
+see it all again--her frock, the lilies in her hand, the surplices of
+the choir, the bride's dress, all moonlight-coloured, and unreal.
+'I wonder what's become of her!' she thought.  'He's dead, I expect,
+like Cyril!'  She saw her father's face as he was marrying them,
+heard his voice: "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
+sickness and in health, till death do you part."  And the moonlight
+on the Church seemed to shift and quiver-some pigeons perhaps had
+been disturbed up there.  Then instead of that wedding vision, she
+saw Monsieur Barra, sitting on his chair, gazing at the floor, and
+Chica nursing her doll.  "All mad, mademoiselle, a little mad.
+Millions of men with white souls, but all a little tiny bit mad, you
+know."  Then Leila's face came before her, with that look in her
+eyes.  She felt again the hot clasp of Fort's fingers on her wrist,
+and walked on, rubbing it with the other hand.  She turned into
+Regent Street.  The wide curve of the Quadrant swept into a sky of
+unreal blue, and the orange-shaded lamps merely added to the
+unreality.  'Love and Chinese lanterns!  I should like some coffee,'
+she thought suddenly.  She was quite close to the place where
+Lavendie had taken her.  Should she go in there?  Why not?  She must
+go somewhere.  She turned into the revolving cage of glass.  But no
+sooner was she imprisoned there than in a flash Lavendie's face of
+disgust; and the red-lipped women, the green stuff that smelled of
+peppermint came back, filling her with a rush of dismay.  She made
+the full circle in the revolving cage; and came out into the street
+again with a laugh.  A tall young man in khaki stood there: "Hallo!"
+he said.  "Come in and dance!"  She started, recoiled from him and
+began to walk away as fast as ever she could.  She passed a woman
+whose eyes seemed to scorch her.  A woman like a swift vision of ruin
+with those eyes, and thickly powdered cheeks, and loose red mouth.
+Noel shuddered and fled along, feeling that her only safety lay in
+speed.  But she could not walk about all night.  There would be no
+train for Kestrel till the morning--and did she really want to go
+there, and eat her heart out?  Suddenly she thought of George.  Why
+should she not go down to him?  He would know what was best for her
+to do.  At the foot of the steps below the Waterloo Column she stood
+still.  All was quiet there and empty, the great buildings whitened,
+the trees blurred and blue; and sweeter air was coming across their
+flowering tops.  The queer "fey" moony sensation was still with her;
+so that she felt small and light, as if she could have floated
+through a ring.  Faint rims of light showed round the windows of the
+Admiralty.  The war!  However lovely the night, however sweet the
+lilac smelt-that never stopped!  She turned away and passed out under
+the arch, making for the station.  The train of the wounded had just
+come in, and she stood in the cheering crowd watching the ambulances
+run out.  Tears of excited emotion filled her eyes, and trickled
+down.  Steady, smooth, grey, one after the other they came gliding,
+with a little burst of cheers greeting each one.  All were gone now,
+and she could pass in.  She went to the buffet and got a large cup of
+coffee, and a bun.  Then, having noted the time of her early morning
+train, she sought the ladies' waiting-room, and sitting down in a
+corner, took out her purse and counted her money.  Two pounds
+fifteen-enough to go to the hotel, if she liked.  But, without
+luggage--it was so conspicuous, and she could sleep in this corner
+all right, if she wanted.  What did girls do who had no money, and no
+friends to go to?  Tucked away in the corner of that empty, heavy,
+varnished room, she seemed to see the cruelty and hardness of life as
+she had never before seen it, not even when facing her confinement.
+How lucky she had been, and was!  Everyone was good to her.  She had
+no real want or dangers, to face.  But, for women--yes, and men too--
+who had no one to fall back on, nothing but their own hands and
+health and luck, it must be awful.  That girl whose eyes had scorched
+her--perhaps she had no one--nothing.  And people who were born ill,
+and the millions of poor women, like those whom she had gone visiting
+with Gratian sometimes in the poorer streets of her father's parish--
+for the first time she seemed to really know and feel the sort of
+lives they led.  And then, Leila's face came back to her once more--
+Leila whom she had robbed.  And the worst of it was, that, alongside
+her remorseful sympathy, she felt a sort of satisfaction.  She could
+not help his not loving Leila, she could not help it if he loved
+herself!  And he did--she knew it!  To feel that anyone loved her was
+so comforting.  But it was all awful!  And she--the cause of it!  And
+yet--she had never done or said anything to attract him.  No!  She
+could not have helped it.
+
+She had begun to feel drowsy, and closed her eyes.  And gradually
+there came on her a cosey sensation, as if she were leaning up
+against someone with her head tucked in against his shoulder, as she
+had so often leaned as a child against her father, coming back from
+some long darkening drive in Wales or Scotland.  She seemed even to
+feel the wet soft Westerly air on her face and eyelids, and to sniff
+the scent of a frieze coat; to hear the jog of hoofs and the rolling
+of the wheels; to feel the closing in of the darkness.  Then, so
+dimly and drowsily, she seemed to know that it was not her father,
+but someone--someone--then no more, no more at all.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+She was awakened by the scream of an engine, and looked around her
+amazed.  Her neck had fallen sideways while she slept, and felt
+horridly stiff; her head ached, and she was shivering.  She saw by
+the clock that it was past five.  'If only I could get some tea!' she
+thought.  'Anyway I won't stay here any longer!'  When she had
+washed, and rubbed some of the stiffness out of her neck, the tea
+renewed her sense of adventure wonderfully.  Her train did not start
+for an hour; she had time for a walk, to warm herself, and went down
+to the river.  There was an early haze, and all looked a little
+mysterious; but people were already passing on their way to work.
+She walked along, looking at the water flowing up under the bright
+mist to which the gulls gave a sort of hovering life.  She went as
+far as Blackfriars Bridge, and turning back, sat down on a bench
+under a plane-tree, just as the sun broke through.  A little pasty
+woman with a pinched yellowish face was already sitting there, so
+still, and seeming to see so little, that Noel wondered of what she
+could be thinking.  While she watched, the woman's face began
+puckering, and tears rolled slowly, down, trickling from pucker to
+pucker, till, summoning up her courage, Noel sidled nearer, and said:
+
+"Oh! What's the matter?"
+
+The tears seemed to stop from sheer surprise; little grey eyes gazed
+round, patient little eyes from above an almost bridgeless nose.
+
+"I'ad a baby.  It's dead....  its father's dead in France....  I was
+goin' in the water, but I didn't like the look of it, and now I never
+will."
+
+That "Now I never will," moved Noel terribly.  She slid her arm along
+the back of the bench and clasped the skinniest of shoulders.
+
+"Don't cry!"
+
+"It was my first.  I'm thirty-eight.  I'll never 'ave another.  Oh!
+Why didn't I go in the water?"
+
+The face puckered again, and the squeezed-out tears ran down.  'Of
+course she must cry,' thought Noel; 'cry and cry till it feels
+better.' And she stroked the shoulder of the little woman, whose
+emotion was disengaging the scent of old clothes.
+
+"The father of my baby was killed in France, too," she said at last.
+The little sad grey eyes looked curiously round.
+
+"Was 'e?  'Ave you got your baby still?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!"
+
+"I'm glad of that.  It 'urts so bad, it does.  I'd rather lose me
+'usband than me baby, any day."  The sun was shining now on a cheek
+of that terribly patient face; its brightness seemed cruel perching
+there.
+
+"Can I do anything to help you?"  Noel murmured.
+
+"No, thank you, miss.  I'm goin' 'ome now.  I don't live far.  Thank
+you kindly."  And raising her eyes for one more of those half-
+bewildered looks, she moved away along the Embankment wall.  When she
+was out of sight, Noel walked back to the station.  The train was in,
+and she took her seat.  She had three fellow passengers, all in
+khaki; very silent and moody, as men are when they have to get up
+early.  One was tall, dark, and perhaps thirty-five; the second
+small, arid about fifty, with cropped, scanty grey hair; the third
+was of medium height and quite sixty-five, with a long row of little
+coloured patches on his tunic, and a bald, narrow, well-shaped head,
+grey hair brushed back at the sides, and the thin, collected features
+and drooping moustache of the old school.  It was at him that Noel
+looked.  When he glanced out of the window, or otherwise retired
+within himself, she liked his face; but when he turned to the ticket-
+collector or spoke to the others, she did not like it half so much.
+It was as if the old fellow had two selves, one of which he used when
+alone, the other in which he dressed every morning to meet the world.
+They had begun to talk about some Tribunal on which they had to sit.
+Noel did not listen, but a word or two carried to her now and then.
+
+"How many to-day?"  she heard the old fellow ask, and the little
+cropped man answering: "Hundred and fourteen."
+
+Fresh from the sight of the poor little shabby woman and her grief,
+she could not help a sort of shrinking from that trim old soldier,
+with his thin, regular face, who held the fate of a "Hundred and
+fourteen" in his firm, narrow grasp, perhaps every day.  Would he
+understand their troubles or wants?  Of course he wouldn't!  Then,
+she saw him looking at her critically with his keen eyes.  If he had
+known her secret, he would be thinking: 'A lady and act like that!
+Oh, no!  Quite-quite out of the question!'  And she felt as if she
+could, sink under the seat with shame.  But no doubt he was only
+thinking: 'Very young to be travelling by herself at this hour of the
+morning.  Pretty too!'  If he knew the real truth of her--how he
+would stare!  But why should this utter stranger, this old
+disciplinarian, by a casual glance, by the mere form of his face,
+make her feel more guilty and ashamed than she had yet felt?  That
+puzzled her.  He was, must be, a narrow, conventional old man; but he
+had this power to make her feel ashamed, because she felt that he had
+faith in his gods, and was true to them; because she knew he would
+die sooner than depart from his creed of conduct.  She turned to the
+window, biting her lips-angry and despairing.  She would never--never
+get used to her position; it was no good!  And again she had the
+longing of her dream, to tuck her face away into that coat, smell the
+scent of the frieze, snuggle in, be protected, and forget.  'If I had
+been that poor lonely little woman,' she thought, 'and had lost
+everything, I should have gone into the water.  I should have rushed
+and jumped.  It's only luck that I'm alive.  I won't look at that old
+man again: then I shan't feel so bad.'
+
+She had bought some chocolate at the station, and nibbled it, gazing
+steadily at the fields covered with daisies and the first of the
+buttercups and cowslips.  The three soldiers were talking now in
+carefully lowered voices.  The words: "women," "under control,"
+"perfect plague," came to her, making her ears burn.  In the
+hypersensitive mood caused by the strain of yesterday, her broken
+night, and the emotional meeting with the little woman, she felt as
+if they were including her among those "women."  'If we stop, I'll
+get out,' she thought.  But when the train did stop it was they who
+got out.  She felt the old General's keen veiled glance sum her up
+for the last time, and looked full at him just for a moment.  He
+touched his cap, and said: "Will you have the window up or down?"
+and lingered to draw it half-way up.' His punctiliousness made her
+feel worse than ever.  When the train had started again she roamed up
+and down her empty carriage; there was no more a way out of her
+position than out of this rolling cushioned carriage!  And then she
+seemed to hear Fort's voice saying: 'Sit down, please!' and to feel
+his fingers clasp her wrist, Oh!  he was nice and comforting; he
+would never reproach or remind her!  And now, probably, she would
+never see him again.
+
+The train drew up at last.  She did not know where George lodged, and
+would have to go to his hospital.  She planned to get there at half
+past nine, and having eaten a sort of breakfast at the station, went
+forth into the town.  The seaside was still wrapped in the early
+glamour which haunts chalk of a bright morning.  But the streets were
+very much alive.  Here was real business of the war.  She passed
+houses which had been wrecked.  Trucks clanged and shunted, great
+lorries rumbled smoothly by.  Sea--and Air-planes were moving like
+great birds far up in the bright haze, and khaki was everywhere.  But
+it was the sea Noel wanted.  She made her way westward to a little
+beach; and, sitting down on a stone, opened her arms to catch the sun
+on her face and chest.  The tide was nearly up, with the wavelets of
+a blue bright sea.  The great fact, the greatest fact in the world,
+except the sun; vast and free, making everything human seem small and
+transitory!  It did her good, like a tranquillising friend.  The sea
+might be cruel and terrible, awful things it could do, and awful
+things were being done on it; but its wide level line, its never-
+ending song, its sane savour, were the best medicine she could
+possibly have taken.  She rubbed the Shelly sand between her fingers
+in absurd ecstasy; took off her shoes and stockings, paddled, and sat
+drying her legs in the sun.
+
+When she left the little beach, she felt as if someone had said to
+her:
+
+'Your troubles are very little.  There's the sun, the sea, the air;
+enjoy them.  They can't take those from you.'
+
+At the hospital she had to wait half an hour in a little bare room
+before George came.
+
+"Nollie!  Splendid.  I've got an hour.  Let's get out of this
+cemetery.  We'll have time for a good stretch on the tops.  Jolly of
+you to have come to me.  Tell us all about it."
+
+When she had finished, he squeezed her arm.  348
+
+"I knew it wouldn't do.  Your Dad forgot that he's a public figure,
+and must expect to be damned accordingly.  But though you've cut and
+run, he'll resign all the same, Nollie."
+
+"Oh, no!"  cried Noel.
+
+George shook his head.
+
+"Yes, he'll resign, you'll see, he's got no worldly sense; not a
+grain."
+
+"Then I shall have spoiled his life, just as if--oh, no!"
+
+"Let's sit down here.  I must be back at eleven."
+
+They sat down on a bench, where the green cliff stretched out before
+them, over a sea quite clear of haze, far down and very blue.
+
+"Why should he resign," cried Noel again, "now that I've gone?  He'll
+be lost without it all."
+
+George smiled.
+
+"Found, my dear.  He'll be where he ought to be, Nollie, where the
+Church is, and the Churchmen are not--in the air!"
+
+"Don't!"  cried Noel passionately.
+
+"No, no, I'm not chaffing.  There's no room on earth for saints in
+authority.  There's use for a saintly symbol, even if one doesn't
+hold with it, but there's no mortal use for those who try to have
+things both ways--to be saints and seers of visions, and yet to come
+the practical and worldly and rule ordinary men's lives.  Saintly
+example yes; but not saintly governance.  You've been his
+deliverance, Nollie."
+
+"But Daddy loves his Church."
+
+George frowned.  "Of course, it'll be a wrench.  A man's bound to
+have a cosey feeling about a place where he's been boss so long; and
+there is something about a Church--the drone, the scent, the half
+darkness; there's beauty in it, it's a pleasant drug.  But he's not
+being asked to give up the drug habit; only to stop administering
+drugs to others.  Don't worry, Nollie; I don't believe that's ever
+suited him, it wants a thicker skin than he's got."
+
+"But all the people he helps?"
+
+"No reason he shouldn't go on helping people, is there?"
+
+"But to go on living there, without--Mother died there, you know!"
+
+George grunted.  "Dreams, Nollie, all round him; of the past and the
+future, of what people are and what he can do with them.  I never see
+him without a skirmish, as you know, and yet I'm fond of him.  But I
+should be twice as fond, and half as likely to skirmish, if he'd drop
+the habits of authority.  Then I believe he'd have some real
+influence over me; there's something beautiful about him, I know that
+quite well."
+
+"Yes," murmured Noel fervently.
+
+"He's such a queer mixture," mused George.  "Clean out of his age;
+chalks above most of the parsons in a spiritual sense and chalks
+below most of them in the worldly.  And yet I believe he's in the
+right of it.  The Church ought to be a forlorn hope, Nollie; then we
+should believe in it.  Instead of that, it's a sort of business that
+no one can take too seriously.  You see, the Church spiritual can't
+make good in this age--has no chance of making good, and so in the
+main it's given it up for vested interests and social influence.
+Your father is a symbol of what the Church is not.  But what about
+you, my dear?  There's a room at my boarding-house, and only one old
+lady besides myself, who knits all the time.  If Grace can get
+shifted we'll find a house, and you can have the baby.  They'll send
+your luggage on from Paddington if you write; and in the meantime
+Gracie's got some things here that you can have."
+
+"I'll have to send a wire to Daddy."
+
+"I'll do that.  You come to my diggings at half past one, and I'll
+settle you in.  Until then, you'd better stay up here."
+
+When he had gone she roamed a little farther, and lay down on the
+short grass, where the chalk broke through in patches.  She could
+hear a distant rumbling, very low, travelling in that grass, the long
+mutter of the Flanders guns.  'I wonder if it's as beautiful a day
+there,' she thought.  'How dreadful to see no green, no butterflies,
+no flowers-not even sky-for the dust of the shells.  Oh!  won't it
+ever, ever end?'  And a sort of passion for the earth welled up in
+her, the warm grassy earth along which she lay, pressed so close that
+she could feel it with every inch of her body, and the soft spikes of
+the grass against her nose and lips.  An aching sweetness tortured
+her, she wanted the earth to close its arms about her, she wanted the
+answer to her embrace of it.  She was alive, and wanted love.  Not
+death--not loneliness--not death!  And out there, where the guns
+muttered, millions of men would be thinking that same thought!
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Pierson had passed nearly the whole night with the relics of his
+past, the records of his stewardship, the tokens of his short married
+life.  The idea which had possessed him walking home in the moonlight
+sustained him in that melancholy task of docketing and destruction.
+There was not nearly so much to do as one would have supposed, for,
+with all his dreaminess, he had been oddly neat and businesslike in
+all parish matters.  But a hundred times that night he stopped,
+overcome by memories.  Every corner, drawer, photograph, paper was a
+thread in the long-spun web of his life in this house.  Some phase of
+his work, some vision of his wife or daughters started forth from
+each bit of furniture, picture, doorway.  Noiseless, in his slippers,
+he stole up and down between the study, diningroom, drawing-room, and
+anyone seeing him at his work in the dim light which visited the
+staircase from above the front door and the upper-passage window,
+would have thought: 'A ghost, a ghost gone into mourning for the
+condition of the world.'  He had to make this reckoning to-night,
+while the exaltation of his new idea was on him; had to rummage out
+the very depths of old association, so that once for all he might
+know whether he had strength to close the door on the past.  Five
+o'clock struck before he had finished, and, almost dropping from
+fatigue, sat down at his little piano in bright daylight.  The last
+memory to beset him was the first of all; his honeymoon, before they
+came back to live in this house, already chosen, furnished, and
+waiting for them.  They had spent it in Germany--the first days in
+Baden-baden, and each morning had been awakened by a Chorale played
+down in the gardens of the Kurhaus, a gentle, beautiful tune, to
+remind them that they were in heaven.  And softly, so softly that the
+tunes seemed to be but dreams he began playing those old Chorales,
+one after another, so that the stilly sounds floated out, through the
+opened window, puzzling the early birds and cats and those few humans
+who were abroad as yet.....
+
+He received the telegram from Noel in the afternoon of the same day,
+just as he was about to set out for Leila's to get news of her; and
+close on the top of it came Lavendie.  He found the painter standing
+disconsolate in front of his picture.
+
+"Mademoiselle has deserted me?"
+
+"I'm afraid we shall all desert you soon, monsieur."
+
+"You are going?"
+
+"Yes, I am leaving here.  I hope to go to France."
+
+"And mademoiselle?"
+
+"She is at the sea with my son-in-law."
+
+The painter ran his hands through his hair, but stopped them half-
+way, as if aware that he was being guilty of ill-breeding.
+
+"Mon dieu!"  he said: "Is this not a calamity for you, monsieur le
+cure?"  But his sense of the calamity was so patently limited to his
+unfinished picture that Pierson could not help a smile.
+
+"Ah, monsieur!"  said the painter, on whom nothing was lost.  "Comme
+je suis egoiste!  I show my feelings; it is deplorable.  My
+disappointment must seem a bagatelle to you, who will be so
+distressed at leaving your old home.  This must be a time of great
+trouble.  Believe me; I understand.  But to sympathise with a grief
+which is not shown would be an impertinence, would it not?  You
+English gentlefolk do not let us share your griefs; you keep them to
+yourselves."
+
+Pierson stared.  "True," he said.  "Quite true!"
+
+"I am no judge of Christianity, monsieur, but for us artists the
+doors of the human heart stand open, our own and others.  I suppose
+we have no pride--c'est tres-indelicat.  Tell me, monsieur, you would
+not think it worthy of you to speak to me of your troubles, would
+you, as I have spoken of mine?"
+
+Pierson bowed his head, abashed.
+
+"You preach of universal charity and love," went on Lavendie; "but
+how can there be that when you teach also secretly the keeping of
+your troubles to yourselves?  Man responds to example, not to
+teaching; you set the example of the stranger, not the brother.  You
+expect from others what you do not give.  Frankly, monsieur, do you
+not feel that with every revelation of your soul and feelings, virtue
+goes out of you?  And I will tell you why, if you will not think it
+an offence.  In opening your hearts you feel that you lose authority.
+You are officers, and must never forget that.  Is it not so?"
+
+Pierson grew red.  "I hope there is another feeling too.  I think we
+feel that to speak of our sufferings or, deeper feelings is to
+obtrude oneself, to make a fuss, to be self-concerned, when we might
+be concerned with others."
+
+"Monsieur, au fond we are all concerned with self.  To seem selfless
+is but your particular way of cultivating the perfection of self.
+You admit that not to obtrude self is the way to perfect yourself.
+Eh bien!  What is that but a deeper concern with self?  To be free of
+this, there is no way but to forget all about oneself in what one is
+doing, as I forget everything when I am painting.  But," he added,
+with a sudden smile, "you would not wish to forget the perfecting of
+self--it would not be right in your profession.  So I must take away
+this picture, must I not?  It is one of my best works: I regret much
+not to have finished it."
+
+"Some day, perhaps--"
+
+"Some day!  The picture will stand still, but mademoiselle will not.
+She will rush at something, and behold!  this face will be gone.  No;
+I prefer to keep it as it is.  It has truth now."  And lifting down
+the canvas, he stood it against the wall and folded up the easel.
+"Bon soir, monsieur, you have been very good to me."  He wrung
+Pierson's hand; and his face for a moment seemed all eyes and spirit.
+"Adieu!"
+
+"Good-bye," Pierson murmured.  "God bless you!"
+
+"I don't know if I have great confidence in Him," replied Lavendie,
+"but I shall ever remember that so good a man as you has wished it.
+To mademoiselle my distinguished salutations, if you please.  If you
+will permit me, I will come back for my other things to-morrow."  And
+carrying easel and canvas, he departed.
+
+Pierson stayed in the old drawing-room, waiting for Gratian to come
+in, and thinking over the painter's words.  Had his education and
+position really made it impossible for him to be brotherly?  Was this
+the secret of the impotence which he sometimes felt; the reason why
+charity and love were not more alive in the hearts of his
+congregation?  'God knows I've no consciousness of having felt myself
+superior,' he thought; 'and yet I would be truly ashamed to tell
+people of my troubles and of my struggles.  Can it be that Christ, if
+he were on earth, would count us Pharisees, believing ourselves not
+as other men?  But surely it is not as Christians but rather as
+gentlemen that we keep ourselves to ourselves.  Officers, he called
+us.  I fear--I fear it is true.'  Ah, well!  There would not be many
+more days now.  He would learn out there how to open the hearts of
+others, and his own.  Suffering and death levelled all barriers, made
+all men brothers.  He was still sitting there when Gratian came in;
+and taking her hand, he said:
+
+"Noel has gone down to George, and I want you to get transferred and
+go to them, Gracie.  I'm giving up the parish and asking for a
+chaplaincy."
+
+"Giving up?  After all this time?  Is it because of Nollie?"
+
+"No, I think not; I think the time has come.  I feel my work here is
+barren."
+
+"Oh, no!  And even if it is, it's only because--"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "Because of what, Gracie?"
+
+"Dad, it's what I've felt in myself.  We want to think and decide
+things for ourselves, we want to own our consciences, we can't take
+things at second-hand any longer."
+
+Pierson's face darkened.  "Ah!" he said, "to have lost faith is a
+grievous thing."
+
+"We're gaining charity," cried Gratian.
+
+"The two things are not opposed, my dear."
+
+"Not in theory; but in practice I think they often are.  Oh, Dad!
+you look so tired.  Have you really made up your mind?  Won't you
+feel lost?"
+
+"For a little.  I shall find myself, out there."
+
+But the look on his face was too much for Gratian's composure, and
+she turned away.
+
+Pierson went down to his study to write his letter of resignation.
+Sitting before that blank sheet of paper, he realised to the full how
+strongly he had resented the public condemnation passed on his own
+flesh and blood, how much his action was the expression of a purely
+mundane championship of his daughter; of a mundane mortification.
+'Pride,' he thought.  'Ought I to stay and conquer it?'  Twice he set
+his pen down, twice took it up again.  He could not conquer it.  To
+stay where he was not wanted, on a sort of sufferance--never!  And
+while he sat before that empty sheet of paper he tried to do the
+hardest thing a man can do--to see himself as others see him; and met
+with such success as one might expect--harking at once to the
+verdicts, not of others at all, but of his own conscience; and coming
+soon to that perpetual gnawing sense which had possessed him ever
+since the war began, that it was his duty to be dead.  This feeling
+that to be alive was unworthy of him when so many of his flock had
+made the last sacrifice, was reinforced by his domestic tragedy and
+the bitter disillusionment it had brought.  A sense of having lost
+caste weighed on him, while he sat there with his past receding from
+him, dusty and unreal.  He had the queerest feeling of his old life
+falling from him, dropping round his feet like the outworn scales of
+a serpent, rung after rung of tasks and duties performed day after
+day, year after year.  Had they ever been quite real?  Well, he had
+shed them now, and was to move out into life illumined by the great
+reality-death!  And taking up his pen, he wrote his resignation.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+The last Sunday, sunny and bright!  Though he did not ask her to go,
+Gratian went to every Service that day.  And the sight of her, after
+this long interval, in their old pew, where once he had been wont to
+see his wife's face, and draw refreshment therefrom, affected Pierson
+more than anything else.  He had told no one of his coming departure,
+shrinking from the falsity and suppression which must underlie every
+allusion and expression of regret.  In the last minute of his last
+sermon he would tell them!  He went through the day in a sort of
+dream.  Truly proud and sensitive, under this social blight, he
+shrank from all alike, made no attempt to single out supporters or
+adherents from those who had fallen away.  He knew there would be
+some, perhaps many, seriously grieved that he was going; but to try
+and realise who they were, to weigh them in the scales against the
+rest and so forth, was quite against his nature.  It was all or
+nothing.  But when for the last time of all those hundreds, he
+mounted the steps of his dark pulpit, he showed no trace of finality,
+did not perhaps even feel it yet.  For so beautiful a summer evening
+the congregation was large.  In spite of all reticence, rumour was
+busy and curiosity still rife.  The writers of the letters, anonymous
+and otherwise, had spent a week, not indeed in proclaiming what they
+had done, but in justifying to themselves the secret fact that they
+had done it.  And this was best achieved by speaking to their
+neighbours of the serious and awkward situation of the poor Vicar.
+The result was visible in a better attendance than had been seen
+since summer-time began.
+
+Pierson had never been a great preacher, his voice lacked resonance
+and pliancy, his thought breadth and buoyancy, and he was not free
+from, the sing-song which mars the utterance of many who have to
+speak professionally.  But he always made an impression of goodness
+and sincerity.  On this last Sunday evening he preached again the
+first sermon he had ever preached from that pulpit, fresh from the
+honeymoon with his young wife.  "Solomon in all his glory was not
+arrayed like one of these."  It lacked now the happy fervour of that
+most happy of all his days, yet gained poignancy, coming from so worn
+a face and voice.  Gratian, who knew that he was going to end with
+his farewell, was in a choke of emotion long before he came to it.
+She sat winking away her tears, and not till he paused, for so long
+that she thought his strength had failed, did she look up.  He was
+leaning a little forward, seeming to see nothing; but his hands,
+grasping the pulpit's edge, were quivering.  There was deep silence
+in the Church, for the look of his face and figure was strange, even
+to Gratian.  When his lips parted again to speak, a mist covered her
+eyes, and she lost sight of him.
+
+"Friends, I am leaving you; these are the last words I shall ever
+speak in this place.  I go to other work.  You have been very good to
+me.  God has been very good to me.  I pray with my whole heart that
+He may bless you all.  Amen!  Amen!"
+
+The mist cleared into tears, and she could see him again gazing down
+at her.  Was it at her?  He was surely seeing something--some vision
+sweeter than reality, something he loved more dearly.  She fell on
+her knees, and buried her face in her hand.  All through the hymn she
+knelt, and through his clear slow Benediction: "The peace of God,
+which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the
+knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and
+the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
+Ghost, be amongst you and remain with you always."  And still she
+knelt on; till she was alone in the Church.  Then she rose and stole
+home.  He did not come in; she did not expect him.  'It's over,' she
+kept thinking; 'all over.  My beloved Daddy!  Now he has no home;
+Nollie and I have pulled him down.  And yet I couldn't help it, and
+perhaps she couldn't.  Poor Nollie!...'
+
+
+
+2
+
+Pierson had stayed in the vestry, talking with his choir and wardens;
+there was no hitch, for his resignation had been accepted, and he had
+arranged with a friend to carry on till the new Vicar was appointed.
+When they were gone he went back into the empty Church, and mounted
+to the organ-loft.  A little window up there was open, and he stood
+leaning against the stone, looking out, resting his whole being.
+Only now that it was over did he know what stress he had been
+through.  Sparrows were chirping, but sound of traffic had almost
+ceased, in that quiet Sunday hour of the evening meal.  Finished!
+Incredible that he would never come up here again, never see those
+roof-lines, that corner of Square Garden, and hear this familiar
+chirping of the sparrows.  He sat down at the organ and began to
+play.  The last time the sound would roll out and echo 'round the
+emptied House of God.  For a long time he played, while the building
+darkened slowly down there below him.  Of all that he would leave, he
+would miss this most--the right to come and play here in the
+darkening Church, to release emotional sound in this dim empty space
+growing ever more beautiful.  From chord to chord he let himself go
+deeper and deeper into the surge and swell of those sound waves,
+losing all sense of actuality, till the music and the whole dark
+building were fused in one rapturous solemnity.  Away down there the
+darkness crept over the Church, till the pews, the altar-all was
+invisible, save the columns; and the walls.  He began playing his
+favourite slow movement from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony--kept to
+the end, for the visions it ever brought him.  And a cat, which had
+been stalking the sparrows, crept in through the little window, and
+crouched, startled, staring at him with her green eyes.  He closed
+the organ, went quickly down, and locked up his Church for the last
+time.  It was warmer outside than in, and lighter, for daylight was
+not quite gone.  He moved away a few yards, and stood looking up.
+Walls, buttresses, and spire were clothed in milky shadowy grey.  The
+top of the spire seemed to touch a star.  'Goodbye, my Church!' he
+thought.  'Good-bye, good-bye!' He felt his face quiver; clenched his
+teeth, and turned away.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+When Noel fled, Fort had started forward to stop her; then, realising
+that with his lameness he could never catch her, he went back and
+entered Leila's bedroom.
+
+She had taken off her dress, and was standing in front of her glass,
+with the cigarette still in her mouth; and the only movement was the
+curling of its blue smoke.  He could see her face reflected, pale,
+with a little spot of red in each cheek, and burning red ears.  She
+had not seemed to hear him coming in, but he saw her eyes change when
+they caught his reflection in the mirror.  From lost and blank, they
+became alive and smouldering.
+
+"Noel's gone!"  he said.
+
+She answered, as if to his reflection in the glass
+
+"And you haven't gone too?  Ah, no!  Of course--your leg!  She fled,
+I suppose?  It was rather a jar, my coming in, I'm afraid."
+
+"No; it was my coming in that was the jar."
+
+Leila turned round.  "Jimmy!  I wonder you could discuss me.  The
+rest--"She shrugged her shoulders--"But that!"
+
+"I was not discussing you.  I merely said you were not to be envied
+for having me.  Are you?"
+
+The moment he had spoken, he was sorry.  The anger in her eyes
+changed instantly, first to searching, then to misery.  She cried
+out:
+
+"I was to be envied.  Oh!  Jimmy; I was!" and flung herself face down
+on the bed.
+
+Through Fort's mind went the thought: 'Atrocious!'  How could he
+soothe--make her feel that he loved her, when he didn't--that he
+wanted her, when he wanted Noel.  He went up to the bedside and
+touched her timidly:
+
+"Leila, what is it?  You're overtired.  What's the matter?  I
+couldn't help the child's being here.  Why do you let it upset you?
+She's gone.  It's all right.  Things are just as they were."
+
+"Yes!" came the strangled echo; "just!"
+
+He knelt down and stroked her arm.  It shivered under the touch,
+seemed to stop shivering and wait for the next touch, as if hoping it
+might be warmer; shivered again.
+
+"Look at me!" he said.  "What is it you want?  I'm ready to do
+anything."
+
+She turned and drew herself up on the bed, screwing herself back
+against the pillow as if for support, with her knees drawn under her.
+He was astonished at the strength of her face and figure, thus
+entrenched.
+
+"My dear Jimmy!" she said, "I want you to do nothing but get me
+another cigarette.  At my age one expects no more than one gets!"  She
+held out her thumb and finger: "Do you mind?"
+
+Fort turned away to get the cigarette.  With what bitter restraint
+and curious little smile she had said that!  But no sooner was he out
+of the room and hunting blindly for the cigarettes, than his mind was
+filled with an aching concern for Noel, fleeing like that, reckless
+and hurt, with nowhere to go.  He found the polished birch-wood box
+which held the cigarettes, and made a desperate effort to dismiss the
+image of the girl before he again reached Leila.  She was still
+sitting there, with her arms crossed, in the stillness of one whose
+every nerve and fibre was stretched taut.
+
+"Have one yourself," she said.  "The pipe of peace."
+
+Fort lit the cigarettes, and sat down on the edge of the bed; and his
+mind at once went back to Noel.
+
+"Yes," she said suddenly; "I wonder where she's gone.  Can you see
+her?  She might do something reckless a second time.  Poor Jimmy!  It
+would be a pity.  And so that monk's been here, and drunk champagne.
+Good idea!  Get me some, Jimmy!"
+
+Again Fort went, and with him the image of the girl.  When he came
+back the second time; she had put on that dark silk garment in which
+she had appeared suddenly radiant the fatal night after the Queen's
+Hall concert.  She took the wineglass, and passed him, going into the
+sitting-room.
+
+"Come and sit down," she said.  "Is your leg hurting you?"
+
+"Not more than usual," and he sat down beside her.
+
+"Won't you have some?  'In vino veritas;' my friend."
+
+He shook his head, and said humbly: "I admire you, Leila."
+
+"That's lucky.  I don't know anyone else who, would."  And she drank
+her champagne at a draught.
+
+"Don't you wish," she said suddenly, "that I had been one of those
+wonderful New Women, all brain and good works.  How I should have
+talked the Universe up and down, and the war, and Causes, drinking
+tea, and never boring you to try and love me.  What a pity!"
+
+But to Fort there had come Noel's words: "It's awfully funny, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Leila," he said suddenly, "something's got to be done.  So long as
+you don't wish me to, I'll promise never to see that child again."
+
+"My dear boy, she's not a child.  She's ripe for love; and--I'm too
+ripe for love.  That's what's the matter, and I've got to lump it."
+She wrenched her hand out of his and, dropping the empty glass,
+covered her face.  The awful sensation which visits the true
+Englishman when a scene stares him in the face spun in Fort's brain.
+Should he seize her hands, drag them down, and kiss her?  Should he
+get up and leave her alone?  Speak, or keep silent; try to console;
+try to pretend?  And he did absolutely nothing.  So far as a man can
+understand that moment in a woman's life when she accepts the defeat
+of Youth and Beauty, he understood perhaps; but it was only a
+glimmering.  He understood much better how she was recognising once
+for all that she loved where she was not loved.
+
+'And I can't help that,' he thought dumbly; 'simply can't help that!'
+Nothing he could say or do would alter it.  No words can convince a
+woman when kisses have lost reality.  Then, to his infinite relief,
+she took her hands from her face, and said:
+
+"This is very dull.  I think you'd better go, Jimmy."
+
+He made an effort to speak, but was too afraid of falsity in his
+voice.
+
+"Very nearly a scene!" said Leila.  "My God!
+
+"How men hate them!  So do I.  I've had too many in my time; nothing
+comes of them but a headache next morning.  I've spared you that,
+Jimmy.  Give me a kiss for it."
+
+He bent down and put his lips to hers.  With all his heart he tried
+to answer the passion in her kiss.  She pushed him away suddenly, and
+said faintly:
+
+"Thank you; you did try!"
+
+Fort dashed his hand across his eyes.  The sight of her face just
+then moved him horribly.  What a brute he felt!  He took her limp
+hand, put it to his lips, and murmured:
+
+"I shall come in to-morrow.  We'll go to the theatre, shall we?  Good
+night, Leila!"
+
+But, in opening the door, he caught sight of her face, staring at
+him, evidently waiting for him to turn; the eyes had a frightened
+look.  They went suddenly soft, so soft as to give his heart a
+squeeze.
+
+She lifted her hand, blew him a kiss, and he saw her smiling.
+Without knowing what his own lips answered, he went out.  He could
+not make up his mind to go away, but, crossing to the railings, stood
+leaning against them, looking up at her windows.  She had been very
+good to him.  He felt like a man who has won at cards, and sneaked
+away without giving the loser his revenge.  If only she hadn't loved
+him; and it had been a soulless companionship, a quite sordid
+business.  Anything rather than this!  English to the backbone, he
+could not divest himself of a sense of guilt.  To see no way of
+making up to her, of straightening it out, made him feel intensely
+mean.  'Shall I go up again?' he thought.  The window-curtain moved.
+Then the shreds of light up there vanished.  'She's gone to bed,' he
+thought.  'I should only upset her worse.  Where is Noel, now, I
+wonder?  I shall never see her again, I suppose.  Altogether a bad
+business.  My God, yes!  A bad-bad business!'
+
+And, painfully, for his leg was hurting him, he walked away.
+
+Leila was only too well aware of a truth that feelings are no less
+real, poignant, and important to those outside morality's ring fence
+than to those within.  Her feelings were, indeed, probably even more
+real and poignant, just as a wild fruit's flavour is sharper than
+that of the tame product.  Opinion--she knew--would say, that having
+wilfully chosen a position outside morality she had not half the case
+for brokenheartedness she would have had if Fort had been her
+husband: Opinion--she knew--would say she had no claim on him, and
+the sooner an illegal tie was broken, the better!  But she felt fully
+as wretched as if she had been married.  She had not wanted to be
+outside morality; never in her life wanted to be that.  She was like
+those who by confession shed their sins and start again with a clear
+conscience.  She never meant to sin, only to love, and when she was
+in love, nothing else mattered for the moment.  But, though a
+gambler, she had always so far paid up.  Only, this time the stakes
+were the heaviest a woman can put down.  It was her last throw; and
+she knew it.  So long as a woman believed in her attraction, there
+was hope, even when the curtain fell on a love-affair!  But for Leila
+the lamp of belief had suddenly gone out, and when this next curtain
+dropped she felt that she must sit in the dark until old age made her
+indifferent.  And between forty-four and real old age a gulf is
+fixed.  This was the first time a man had tired of her.  Why! he had
+been tired before he began, or so she felt.  In one swift moment as
+of a drowning person, she saw again all the passages of their
+companionship, knew with certainty that it had never been a genuine
+flame.  Shame ran, consuming, in her veins.  She buried her face in
+the cushions.  This girl had possessed his real heart all the time.
+With a laugh she thought: 'I put my money on the wrong horse; I ought
+to have backed Edward.  I could have turned that poor monk's head.
+If only I had never seen Jimmy again; if I had torn his letter up, I
+could have made poor Edward love me!'  Ifs!  What folly!  Things
+happened as they must!
+
+And, starting up, she began to roam the little room.  Without Jimmy
+she would be wretched, with him she would be wretched too!  'I can't
+bear to see his face,' she thought; 'and I can't live here without
+him!  It's really funny!'  The thought of her hospital filled her
+with loathing.  To go there day after day with this despair eating at
+her heart--she simply could not.  She went over her resources.  She
+had more money than she thought; Jimmy had given her a Christmas
+present of five hundred pounds.  She had wanted to tear up the
+cheque, or force him to take it back; but the realities of the
+previous five years had prevailed with her, and she had banked it.
+She was glad now.  She had not to consider money.  Her mind sought to
+escape in the past.  She thought of her first husband, Ronny Fane; of
+their mosquito-curtained rooms in that ghastly Madras heat.  Poor
+Ronny!  What a pale, cynical young ghost started up under that name.
+She thought of Lynch, his horsey, matter-of-fact solidity.  She had
+loved them both--for a time.  She thought of the veldt, of
+Constantia, and the loom of Table Mountain under the stars; and the
+first sight of Jimmy, his straight look, the curve of his crisp head,
+the kind, fighting-schoolboy frankness of his face.  Even now, after
+all those months of their companionship, that long-ago evening at
+grape harvest, when she sang to him under the scented creepers, was
+the memory of him most charged with real feeling.  That one evening
+at any rate he had longed for her, eleven: years ago, when she was in
+her prime.  She could have held her own then; Noel would have come in
+vain.  To think that this girl had still fifteen years before she
+would be even in her prime.  Fifteen years of witchery; and then
+another ten before she was on the shelf.  Why! if Noel married Jimmy,
+he would be an old man doting on her still, by the time she had
+reached this fatal age of forty-four: She felt as if she must scream,
+and; stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, turned out the light.
+Darkness cooled her, a little.  She pulled aside the curtains, and
+let in the moon light.  Jimmy and that girl were out in it some
+where, seeking each other, if not in body, then in thought.  And
+soon, somehow, somewhere, they would come together--come together
+because Fate meant them to!  Fate which had given her young cousin a
+likeness to herself; placed her, too, in just such a hopeless
+position as appealed to Jimmy, and gave him a chance against younger
+men.  She saw it with bitter surety.  Good gamblers cut their losses!
+Yes, and proud women did not keep unwilling lovers!  If she had even
+an outside chance, she would trail her pride, drag it through the
+mud, through thorns!  But she had not.  And she clenched her fist,
+and struck out at the night, as though at the face of that Fate which
+one could never reach--impalpable, remorseless, surrounding Fate with
+its faint mocking smile, devoid of all human warmth.  Nothing could
+set back the clock, and give her what this girl had.  Time had "done
+her in," as it "did in" every woman, one by one.  And she saw herself
+going down the years, powdering a little more, painting a little
+more, touching up her hair, till it was all artifice, holding on by
+every little device--and all, to what end?  To see his face get
+colder and colder, hear his voice more and more constrained to
+gentleness; and know that underneath, aversion was growing with the
+thought 'You are keeping me from life, and love!'  till one evening,
+in sheer nerve-break, she would say or do some fearful thing, and he
+would come no more.  'No, Jimmy!' she thought; 'find her, and stay
+with her.  You're not worth all that!'  And puffing to the curtains,
+as though with that gesture she could shut out her creeping fate, she
+turned up the light and sat down at her writing table.  She stayed
+some minutes motionless, her chin resting on her hands, the dark silk
+fallen down from her arms.  A little mirror, framed in curiously
+carved ivory, picked up by her in an Indian bazaar twenty-five years
+ago, hung on a level with her face and gave that face back to her.
+'I'm not ugly,' she thought passionately, 'I'm not.  I still have
+some looks left.  If only that girl hadn't come.  And it was all my
+doing.  Oh, what made me write to both of them, Edward and Jimmy?'
+She turned the mirror aside, and took up a pen.
+
+"MY DEAR JIMMY," she wrote: "It will be better for us both if you
+take a holiday from here.  Don't come again till I write for you.
+I'm sorry I made you so much disturbance to-night.  Have a good time,
+and a good rest; and don't worry.
+"Your--"
+
+So far she had written when a tear dropped on the page, and she had
+to tear it up and begin again.  This time she wrote to the end--"Your
+Leila."  'I must post it now,' she thought, 'or he may not get it
+before to-morrow evening.  I couldn't go through with this again.'
+She hurried out with it and slipped it in a pillar box.  The night
+smelled of flowers; and, hastening back, she lay down, and stayed
+awake for hours, tossing, and staring at the dark.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+1
+
+Leila had pluck, but little patience.  Her one thought was to get
+away and she at once began settling up her affairs and getting a
+permit to return to South Africa.  The excitements of purchase and
+preparation were as good an anodyne as she could have taken.  The
+perils of the sea were at full just then, and the prospect of danger
+gave her a sort of pleasure.  'If I go down,' she thought, 'all the
+better; brisk, instead of long and dreary.'  But when she had the
+permit and her cabin was booked, the irrevocability of her step came
+to her with full force.  Should she see him again or no?  Her boat
+started in three days, and she must decide.  If in compunction he
+were to be affectionate, she knew she would never keep to her
+decision, and then the horror would begin again, till again she was
+forced to this same action.  She let the hours go and go till the
+very day before, when the ache to see him and the dread of it had
+become so unbearable that she could not keep quiet.  Late that
+afternoon--everything, to the last label, ready--she went out, still
+undecided.  An itch to turn the dagger in her wound, to know what had
+become of Noel, took her to Edward's house.  Almost unconsciously she
+had put on her prettiest frock, and spent an hour before the glass.
+A feverishness of soul, more than of body, which had hung about her
+ever since that night, gave her colour.  She looked her prettiest;
+and she bought a gardenia at a shop in Baker Street and fastened it
+in her dress.  Reaching the old Square, she was astonished to see a
+board up with the words: "To let," though the house still looked
+inhabited.  She rang, and was shown into the drawing-room.  She had
+only twice been in this house before; and for some reason, perhaps
+because of her own unhappiness, the old, rather shabby room struck
+her as pathetic, as if inhabited by the past.  'I wonder what his
+wife was like,' she thought: And then she saw, hanging against a
+strip of black velvet on the wall, that faded colour sketch of the
+slender young woman leaning forward, with her hands crossed in her
+lap.  The colouring was lavender and old ivory, with faint touches of
+rose.  The eyes, so living, were a little like Gratian's; the whole
+face delicate, eager, good.  'Yes,' she thought, 'he must have loved
+you very much.  To say good-bye must have been hard.' She was still
+standing before it when Pierson came in.
+
+"That's a dear face, Edward.  I've come to say good-bye.  I'm leaving
+for South Africa to-morrow."  And, as her hand touched his, she
+thought: 'I must have been mad to think I could ever have made him
+love me.'
+
+"Are you--are you leaving him?"
+
+Leila nodded:
+
+"That's very brave, and wonderful."
+
+"Oh! no.  Needs must when the devil drives--that's all.  I don't give
+up happiness of my own accord.  That's not within a hundred miles of
+the truth.  What I shall become, I don't know, but nothing better,
+you may be sure.  I give up because I can't keep, and you know why.
+Where is Noel?"
+
+"Down at the sea, with George and Gratian."
+
+He was looking at her in wonder; and the pained, puzzled expression
+on his face angered her.
+
+"I see the house is to let.  Who'd have thought a child like that
+could root up two fossils like us?  Never mind, Edward, there's the
+same blood in us.  We'll keep our ends up in our own ways.  Where are
+you going?"
+
+"They'll give me a chaplaincy in the East, I think."
+
+For a wild moment Leila thought: 'Shall I offer to go with him--the
+two lost dogs together?'
+
+"What would have happened, Edward, if you had proposed to me that May
+week, when we were--a little bit in love?  Which would it have been,
+worst for, you or me?"
+
+"You wouldn't have taken me, Leila."
+
+"Oh, one never knows.  But you'd never have been a priest then, and
+you'd never have become a saint."
+
+"Don't use that silly word.  If you knew--"
+
+"I do; I can see that you've been half burned alive; half burned and
+half buried!  Well, you have your reward, whatever it is, and I mine.
+Good-bye, Edward!"  She took his hand.  "You might give me your
+blessing; I want it."
+
+Pierson put his other hand on her shoulder and, bending forward,
+kissed her forehead.
+
+The tears rushed up in Leila's eyes.  "Ah me!" she said, "it's a sad
+world!"  And wiping the quivering off her lips with the back of her
+gloved hand, she went quickly past him to the door.  She looked back
+from there.  He had not stirred, but his lips were moving.  'He's
+praying for me!' she thought.  'How funny!'
+
+
+
+2
+
+The moment she was outside, she forgot him; the dreadful ache for
+Fort seemed to have been whipped up within her, as if that figure of
+lifelong repression had infuriated the love of life and pleasure in
+her.  She must and would see Jimmy again, if she had to wait and seek
+for him all night!  It was nearly seven, he would surely have
+finished at the War Office; he might be at his Club or at his rooms.
+She made for the latter.
+
+The little street near Buckingham Gate, where no wag had chalked
+"Peace" on the doors for nearly a year now, had an arid look after a
+hot day's sun.  The hair-dresser's shop below his rooms was still
+open, and the private door ajar: 'I won't ring,' she thought; 'I'll
+go straight up.' While she was mounting the two flights of stairs,
+she stopped twice, breathless, from a pain in her side.  She often
+had that pain now, as if the longing in her heart strained it
+physically.  On the modest landing at the top, outside his rooms, she
+waited, leaning against the wall, which was covered with a red paper.
+A window at the back was open and the confused sound of singing came
+in--a chorus "Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve.  Vive la compagnie."  So
+it came to her.  'O God!' she thought: 'Let him be in, let him be
+nice to me.  It's the last time.'  And, sick from anxiety, she opened
+the door.  He was in--lying on a wicker-couch against the wall in the
+far corner, with his arms crossed behind his head, and a pipe in his
+mouth; his eyes were closed, and he neither moved, nor opened them,
+perhaps supposing her to be the servant.  Noiseless as a cat, Leila
+crossed the room till she stood above him.  And waiting for him to
+come out of that defiant lethargy, she took her fill of his thin,
+bony face, healthy and hollow at the same time.  With teeth clenched
+on the pipe it had a look of hard resistance, as of a man with his
+head back, his arms pinioned to his sides, stiffened against some
+creature, clinging and climbing and trying to drag him down.  The
+pipe was alive, and dribbled smoke; and his leg, the injured one,
+wriggled restlessly, as if worrying him; but the rest of him was as
+utterly and obstinately still as though he were asleep.  His hair
+grew thick and crisp, not a thread of grey in it, the teeth which
+held the pipe glinted white and strong.  His face was young; so much
+younger than hers.  Why did she love it--the face of a man who
+couldn't love her?  For a second she felt as if she could seize the
+cushion which had slipped down off the couch, and smother him as he
+lay there, refusing, so it seemed to her, to come to consciousness.
+Love despised!  Humiliation!  She nearly turned and stole away.  Then
+through the door, left open, behind her, the sound of that chorus:
+"Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve!" came in and jolted her nerves
+unbearably.  Tearing the gardenia from her breast, she flung it on to
+his upturned face.
+
+"Jimmy!"
+
+Fort struggled up, and stared at her.  His face was comic from
+bewilderment, and she broke into a little nervous laugh.
+
+"You weren't dreaming of me, dear Jimmy, that's certain.  In what
+garden were you wandering?"
+
+"Leila!  You!  How--how jolly!"
+
+"How--how jolly!  I wanted to see you, so I came.  And I have seen
+you, as you are, when you aren't with me.  I shall remember it; it
+was good for me--awfully good for me."
+
+"I didn't hear you."
+
+"Far, far away, my dear.  Put my gardenia in, your buttonhole.  Stop,
+I'll pin it in.  Have you had a good rest all this week?  Do you like
+my dress?  It's new.  You wouldn't have noticed it, would you?"
+
+"I should have noticed.  I think it's charming.
+
+"Jimmy, I believe that nothing--nothing will ever shake your
+chivalry."
+
+"Chivalry?  I have none."
+
+"I am going to shut the door, do you mind?"  But he went to the door
+himself, shut it, and came back to her.  Leila looked up at him.
+
+"Jimmy, if ever you loved me a little bit, be nice to me today.  And
+if I say things--if I'm bitter--don't mind; don't notice it.
+Promise!"
+
+"I promise."
+
+She took off her hat and sat leaning against him on the couch, so
+that she could not see his face.  And with his arm round her, she let
+herself go, deep into the waters of illusion; down-down, trying to
+forget there was a surface to which she must return; like a little
+girl she played that game of make-believe.  'He loves me-he loves me-
+he loves me!'  To lose herself like that for, just an hour, only an
+hour; she felt that she would give the rest of the time vouchsafed to
+her; give it all and willingly.  Her hand clasped his against her
+heart, she turned her face backward, up to his, closing her eyes so
+as still not to see his face; the scent of the gardenia in his coat
+hurt her, so sweet and strong it was.
+
+
+
+3
+
+When with her hat on she stood ready to go, it was getting dark.  She
+had come out of her dream now, was playing at make-believe no more.
+And she stood with a stony smile, in the half-dark, looking between
+her lashes at the mortified expression on his unconscious face.
+
+"Poor Jimmy!" she said; "I'm not going to keep you from dinner any
+longer.  No, don't come with me.  I'm going alone; and don't light
+up, for heaven's sake."
+
+She put her hand on the lapel of his coat.  "That flower's gone brown
+at the edges.  Throw it away; I can't bear faded flowers.  Nor can
+you.  Get yourself a fresh one tomorrow."
+
+She pulled the flower from his buttonhole and, crushing it in her
+hand, held her face up.
+
+"Well, kiss me once more; it won't hurt you."
+
+For one moment her lips clung to his with all their might.  She
+wrenched them away, felt for the handle blindly, opened the door,
+and, shutting it in his face, went slowly, swaying a little, down the
+stairs.  She trailed a gloved hand along the wall, as if its solidity
+could help her.  At the last half-landing, where a curtain hung,
+dividing off back premises, she stopped and listened.  There wasn't a
+sound.  'If I stand here behind this curtain,' she thought, 'I shall
+see him again.' She slipped behind the curtain, close drawn but for a
+little chink.  It was so dark there that she could not see her own
+hand.  She heard the door open, and his slow footsteps coming down
+the stairs.  His feet, knees, whole figure came into sight, his face
+just a dim blur.  He passed, smoking a cigarette.  She crammed her
+hand against her mouth to stop herself from speaking and the crushed
+gardenia filled her nostrils with its cold, fragrant velvet.  He was
+gone, the door below was shut.  A wild, half-stupid longing came on
+her to go up again, wait till he came in, throw herself upon him,
+tell him she was going, beg him to keep her with him.  Ah! and he
+would!  He would look at her with that haggard pity she could not
+bear, and say, "Of course, Leila, of course."  No! By God, no! "I am
+going quietly home," she muttered; "just quietly home!  Come along,
+be brave; don't be a fool! Come along !"  And she went down into the
+street: At the entrance to the Park she saw him, fifty yards in
+front, dawdling along.  And, as if she had been his shadow lengthened
+out to that far distance, she moved behind him.  Slowly, always at
+that distance, she followed him under the plane-trees, along the Park
+railings, past St. James's Palace, into Pall Mall.  He went up some
+steps, and vanished into his Club.  It was the end.  She looked up at
+the building; a monstrous granite tomb, all dark.  An emptied cab was
+just moving from the door.  She got in.  "Camelot Mansions, St.
+John's Wood."  And braced against the cushions, panting, and
+clenching her hands, she thought: 'Well, I've seen him again.  Hard
+crust's better than no bread.  Oh, God!  All finished--not a crumb,
+not a crumb!  Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve.  Vive-la compagnie!'
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Fort had been lying there about an hour, sleeping and awake, before
+that visit: He had dreamed a curious and wonderfully emotionalising
+dream.  A long grey line, in a dim light, neither of night nor
+morning, the whole length of the battle-front in France, charging in
+short drives, which carried the line a little forward, with just a
+tiny pause and suck-back; then on again irresistibly, on and on; and
+at each rush, every voice, his own among them, shouted "Hooray! the
+English!  Hooray! the English!"  The sensation of that advancing tide
+of dim figures in grey light, the throb and roar, the wonderful,
+rhythmic steady drive of it, no more to be stopped than the waves of
+an incoming tide, was gloriously fascinating; life was nothing, death
+nothing.  "Hooray, the English!"  In that dream, he was his country,
+he was every one of that long charging line, driving forward in.
+those great heaving pulsations, irresistible, on and on.  Out of the
+very centre of this intoxicating dream he had been dragged by some
+street noise, and had closed his eyes again, in the vain hope that he
+might dream it on to its end.  But it came no more; and lighting his
+pipe, he lay there wondering at its fervid, fantastic realism.  Death
+was nothing, if his country lived and won.  In waking hours he never
+had quite that single-hearted knowledge of himself.  And what
+marvellously real touches got mixed into the fantastic stuff of
+dreams, as if something were at work to convince the dreamer in spite
+of himself--"Hooray!" not "Hurrah!"  Just common "Hooray!"  And "the
+English," not the literary "British."  And then the soft flower had
+struck his forehead, and Leila's voice cried: "Jimmy!"
+
+When she left him, his thought was just a tired: 'Well, so it's begun
+again!' What did it matter, since common loyalty and compassion cut
+him off from what his heart desired; and that desire was absurd, as
+little likely of attainment as the moon.  What did it matter?  If it
+gave her any pleasure to love him, let it go on!  Yet, all the time
+that he was walking across under the plane trees, Noel seemed to walk
+in front of him, just out of reach, so that he ached with the thought
+that he would never catch her up, and walk beside her.
+
+Two days later, on reaching his rooms in the evening, he found this
+letter on ship's note-paper, with the Plymouth postmark
+
+    "Fare thee well, and if for ever,
+     Then for ever fare thee well"
+                         "Leila"
+
+He read it with a really horrible feeling, for all the world as if he
+had been accused of a crime and did not know whether he had committed
+it or not.  And, trying to collect his thoughts, he took a cab and
+drove to her fiat.  It was closed, but her address was given him; a
+bank in Cape Town.  He had received his release.  In his remorse and
+relief, so confusing and so poignant, he heard the driver of the cab
+asking where he wanted to go now.  "Oh, back again!"  But before they
+had gone a mile he corrected the address, in an impulse of which next
+moment he felt thoroughly ashamed.  What he was doing indeed, was as
+indecent as if he were driving from the funeral of his wife to the
+boudoir of another woman.  When he reached the old Square, and the
+words "To let" stared him in the face, he felt a curious relief,
+though it meant that he would not see her whom to see for ten minutes
+he felt he would give a year of life.  Dismissing his cab, he stood
+debating whether to ring the bell.  The sight of a maid's face at the
+window decided him.  Mr. Pierson was out, and the young ladies were
+away.  He asked for Mrs. Laird's address, and turned away, almost
+into the arms of Pierson himself.  The greeting was stiff and
+strange.  'Does he know that Leila's gone?' he thought.  'If so, he
+must think me the most awful skunk.  And am I?  Am I?'
+When he reached home, he sat down to write to Leila.  But having
+stared at the paper for an hour and written these three lines
+
+"MY DEAR LEILA,
+"I cannot express to you the feelings with which I received your
+letter--"
+
+he tore it up.  Nothing would be adequate, nothing would be decent.
+Let the dead past bury its dead--the dead past which in his heart had
+never been alive!  Why pretend?  He had done his best to keep his end
+up.  Why pretend?
+
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+I
+
+In the boarding-house, whence the Lairds had not yet removed, the old
+lady who knitted, sat by the fireplace, and light from the setting
+sun threw her shadow on the wall, moving spidery and grey, over the
+yellowish distemper, in time to the tune of her needles.  She was a
+very old lady--the oldest lady in the world, Noel thought--and she
+knitted without stopping, without breathing, so that the girl felt
+inclined to scream.  In the evening when George and Gratian were not
+in, Noel would often sit watching the needles, brooding over her as
+yet undecided future.  And now and again the old lady would look up
+above her spectacles; move the corners of her lips ever so slightly,
+and drop her gaze again.  She had pitted herself against Fate; so
+long as she knitted, the war could not stop--such was the conclusion
+Noel had come to.  This old lady knitted the epic of acquiesence to
+the tune of her needles; it was she who kept the war going such a
+thin old lady!  'If I were to hold her elbows from behind,' the girl
+used to think, 'I believe she'd die.  I expect I ought to; then the
+war would stop.  And if the war stopped, there'd be love and life
+again.'  Then the little silvery tune would click itself once more
+into her brain, and stop her thinking.  In her lap this evening lay a
+letter from her father.
+
+"MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
+
+"I am glad to say I have my chaplaincy, and am to start for Egypt
+very soon.  I should have wished to go to France, but must take what
+I can get, in view of my age, for they really don't want us who are
+getting on, I fear.  It is a great comfort to me to think that
+Gratian is with you, and no doubt you will all soon be in a house
+where my little grandson can join you.  I have excellent accounts of
+him in a letter from your aunt, just received: My child, you must
+never again think that my resignation has been due to you.  It is not
+so.  You know, or perhaps you don't, that ever since the war broke
+out, I have chafed over staying at home, my heart has been with our
+boys out there, and sooner or later it must have come to this, apart
+from anything else.  Monsieur Lavendie has been round in the evening,
+twice; he is a nice man, I like him very much, in spite of our
+differences of view.  He wanted to give me the sketch he made of you
+in the Park, but what can I do with it now?  And to tell you the
+truth, I like it no better than the oil painting.  It is not a
+likeness, as I know you.  I hope I didn't hurt his feelings, the
+feelings of an artist are so very easily wounded.  There is one thing
+I must tell you.  Leila has gone back to South Africa; she came round
+one evening about ten days ago, to say goodbye.  She was very brave,
+for I fear it means a great wrench for her.  I hope and pray she may
+find comfort and tranquillity out there.  And now, my dear, I want
+you to promise me not to see Captain Fort.  I know that he admires
+you.  But, apart from the question of his conduct in regard to Leila,
+he made the saddest impression on me by coming to our house the very
+day after her departure.  There is something about that which makes
+me feel he cannot be the sort of man in whom I could feel any
+confidence.  I don't suppose for a moment that he is in your
+thoughts, and yet before going so far from you, I feel I must warn
+you.  I should rejoice to see you married to a good man; but, though
+I don't wish to think hardly of anyone, I cannot believe Captain Fort
+is that.
+
+"I shall come down to you before I start, which may be in quite a
+short time now.  My dear love to you and Gracie, and best wishes to
+George.
+
+"Your ever loving father,
+"EDWARD PIERSON
+
+
+Across this letter lying on her knees, Noel gazed at the spidery
+movement on the wall.  Was it acquiescence that the old lady knitted,
+or was it resistance--a challenge to death itself, a challenge
+dancing to the tune of the needles like the grey ghost of human
+resistance to Fate!  She wouldn't give in, this oldest lady in the
+world, she meant to knit till she fell into the grave.  And so Leila
+had gone!  It hurt her to know that; and yet it pleased her.
+Acquiescence--resistance!  Why did Daddy always want to choose the
+way she should go?  So gentle he was, yet he always wanted to!  And
+why did he always make her feel that she must go the other way?  The
+sunlight ceased to stream in, the old lady's shadow faded off the
+wall, but the needles still sang their little tune.  And the girl
+said:
+
+"Do you enjoy knitting, Mrs. Adam?"
+
+The old lady looked at her above the spectacles.
+
+"Enjoy, my dear?  It passes the time."
+
+"But do you want the time to pass?"
+
+There was no answer for a moment, and Noel thought: 'How dreadful of
+me to have said that!'
+
+"Eh?"  said the old lady.
+
+"I said: Isn't it very tiring?"
+
+"Not when I don't think about it, my dear."
+
+"What do you think about?"
+
+The old lady cackled gently.
+
+"Oh--well!"  she said.
+
+And Noel thought: 'It must be dreadful to grow old, and pass the
+time!'
+
+She took up her father's letter, and bent it meditatively against her
+chin.  He wanted her to pass the time--not to live, not to enjoy!  To
+pass the time.  What else had he been doing himself, all these years,
+ever since she could remember, ever since her mother died, but just
+passing the time?  Passing the time because he did not believe in
+this life; not living at all, just preparing for the life he did
+believe in.  Denying himself everything that was exciting and nice,
+so that when he died he might pass pure and saintly to his other
+world.  He could not believe Captain Fort a good man, because he had
+not passed the time, and resisted Leila; and Leila was gone!  And now
+it was a sin for him to love someone else; he must pass the time
+again.  'Daddy doesn't believe in life,' she thought; 'it's
+monsieur's picture.  Daddy's a saint; but I don't want to be a saint,
+and pass the time.  He doesn't mind making people unhappy, because
+the more they're repressed, the saintlier they'll be.  But I can't
+bear to be unhappy, or to see others unhappy.  I wonder if I could
+bear to be unhappy to save someone else--as Leila is?  I admire her!
+Oh!  I admire her!  She's not doing it because she thinks it good for
+her soul; only because she can't bear making him unhappy.  She must
+love him very much.  Poor Leila!  And she's done it all by herself,
+of her own accord.'  It was like what George said of the soldiers;
+they didn't know why they were heroes, it was not because they'd been
+told to be, or because they believed in a future life.  They just had
+to be, from inside somewhere, to save others.  'And they love life as
+much as I do,' she thought.  'What a beast it makes one feel!'  Those
+needles!  Resistance--acquiescence?  Both perhaps.  The oldest lady
+in the world, with her lips moving at the corners, keeping things in,
+had lived her life, and knew it.  How dreadful to live on when you
+were of no more interest to anyone, but must just "pass the time" and
+die.  But how much more dreadful to "pass the time" when you were
+strong, and life and love were yours for the taking!  'I shan't
+answer Daddy,' she thought.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The maid, who one Saturday in July opened the door to Jimmy Fort, had
+never heard the name of Laird, for she was but a unit in the
+ceaseless procession which pass through the boarding-houses of places
+subject to air-raids.  Placing him in a sitting-room, she said she
+would find Miss 'Allow.  There he waited, turning the leaves of an
+illustrated Journal, wherein Society beauties; starving Servians,
+actresses with pretty legs, prize dogs, sinking ships, Royalties,
+shells bursting, and padres reading funeral services, testified to
+the catholicity of the public taste, but did not assuage his nerves.
+What if their address were not known here?  Why, in his fear of
+putting things to the test, had he let this month go by?  An old lady
+was sitting by the hearth, knitting, the click of whose needles
+blended with the buzzing of a large bee on the window-pane.  'She may
+know,' he thought, 'she looks as if she'd been here for ever.' And
+approaching her, he said:
+
+"I can assure you those socks are very much appreciated, ma'am."
+
+The old lady bridled over her spectacles.
+
+"It passes the time," she said.
+
+"Oh, more than that; it helps to win the war, ma'am."
+
+The old lady's lips moved at the corners; she did not answer.
+'Deaf!' he thought.
+
+"May I ask if you knew my friends, Doctor and Mrs. Laird, and Miss
+Pierson?"
+
+The old lady cackled gently.
+
+"Oh, yes!  A pretty young girl; as pretty as life.  She used to sit
+with me.  Quite a pleasure to watch her; such large eyes she had."
+
+"Where have they gone?  Can you tell me?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know at all."
+
+It was a little cold douche on his heart.  He longed to say: 'Stop
+knitting a minute, please.  It's my life, to know.'  But the tune of
+the needles answered: 'It's my life to knit.'  And he turned away to
+the window.
+
+"She used to sit just there; quite still; quite still."
+
+Fort looked down at the window-seat.  So, she used to sit just here,
+quite still.
+
+"What a dreadful war this is!" said the old lady.  "Have you been at
+the front?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To think of the poor young girls who'll never have husbands!  I'm
+sure I think it's dreadful."
+
+"Yes," said Fort; "it's dreadful--"  And then a voice from the
+doorway said:
+
+"Did you want Doctor and Mrs. Laird, sir?  East Bungalow their
+address is; it's a little way out on the North Road.  Anyone will
+tell you."
+
+With a sigh of relief Fort looked gratefully at the old lady who had
+called Noel as pretty as life.  "Good afternoon, ma'am."
+
+"Good afternoon."  The needles clicked, and little movements occurred
+at the corners of her mouth.  Fort went out.  He could not find a
+vehicle, and was a long time walking.  The Bungalow was ugly, of
+yellow brick pointed with red.  It lay about two-thirds up between
+the main road and cliffs, and had a rock-garden and a glaring, brand-
+new look, in the afternoon sunlight.  He opened the gate, uttering
+one of those prayers which come so glibly from unbelievers when they
+want anything.  A baby's crying answered it, and he thought with
+ecstasy: 'Heaven, she is here!'  Passing the rock-garden he could see
+a lawn at the back of the house and a perambulator out there under a
+holm-oak tree, and Noel--surely Noel herself!  Hardening his heart,
+he went forward.  In a lilac sunbonnet she was bending over the
+perambulator.  He trod softly on the grass, and was quite close
+before she heard him.  He had prepared no words, but just held out
+his hand.  The baby, interested in the shadow failing across its
+pram, ceased crying.  Noel took his hand.  Under the sunbonnet, which
+hid her hair, she seemed older and paler, as if she felt the heat.
+He had no feeling that she was glad to see him.
+
+"How do you do?  Have you seen Gratian; she ought to be in."
+
+"I didn't come to see her; I came to see you."
+
+Noel turned to the baby.
+
+"Here he is."
+
+Fort stood at the end of the perambulator, and looked at that other
+fellow's baby.  In the shade of the hood, with the frilly clothes, it
+seemed to him lying with its head downhill.  It had scratched its
+snub nose and bumpy forehead, and it stared up at its mother with
+blue eyes, which seemed to have no underlids so fat were its cheeks.
+
+"I wonder what they think about," he said.
+
+Noel put her finger into the baby's fist.
+
+"They only think when they want some thing."
+
+"That's a deep saying: but his eyes are awfully interested in you."
+
+Noel smiled; and very slowly the baby's curly mouth unclosed, and
+discovered his toothlessness.
+
+"He's a darling," she said in a whisper.
+
+'And so are you,' he thought, 'if only I dared say it!'
+
+"Daddy is here," she said suddenly, without looking up.  "He's
+sailing for Egypt the day after to-morrow.  He doesn't like you."
+
+Fort's heart gave a jump.  Why did she tell him that, unless--unless
+she was just a little on his side?
+
+"I expected that," he said.  "I'm a sinner, as you know."
+
+Noel looked up at him.  "Sin!" she said, and bent again over her
+baby.  The word, the tone in which she said it, crouching over her
+baby, gave him the thought: 'If it weren't for that little creature,
+I shouldn't have a dog's chance.'  He said, "I'll go and see your
+father.  Is he in?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"May I come to-morrow?"
+
+"It's Sunday; and Daddy's last day."
+
+"Ah!  Of course."  He did not dare look back, to see if her gaze was
+following him, but he thought: 'Chance or no chance, I'm going to
+fight for her tooth and nail.'
+
+In a room darkened against the evening sun Pierson was sitting on a
+sofa reading.  The sight of that figure in khaki disconcerted Fort,
+who had not realised that there would be this metamorphosis.  The
+narrow face, clean-shaven now, with its deep-set eyes and compressed
+lips, looked more priestly than ever, in spite of this brown garb.
+He felt his hope suddenly to be very forlorn indeed.  And rushing at
+the fence, he began abruptly:
+
+"I've come to ask you, sir, for your permission to marry Noel, if she
+will have me."
+
+He had thought Pierson's face gentle; it was not gentle now.  "Did
+you know I was here, then, Captain Fort?"
+
+"I saw Noel in the garden.  I've said nothing to her, of course.  But
+she told me you were starting to-morrow for Egypt, so I shall have no
+other chance."
+
+"I am sorry you have come.  It is not for me to judge, but I don't
+think you will make Noel happy."
+
+"May I ask you why, sir?"
+
+"Captain Fort, the world's judgment of these things is not mine; but
+since you ask me.  I will tell you frankly.  My cousin Leila has a
+claim on you.  It is her you should ask to marry you."
+
+"I did ask her; she refused."
+
+"I know.  She would not refuse you again if you went out to her."
+
+"I am not free to go out to her; besides, she would refuse.  She
+knows I don't love her, and never have."
+
+
+"Never have?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Because I'm a man, I suppose, and a fool"
+
+"If it was simply, 'because you are a man' as you call it, it is
+clear that no principle or faith governs you.  And yet you ask me to
+give you Noel; my poor Noel, who wants the love and protection not of
+a 'man' but of a good man.  No, Captain Fort, no!"
+
+Fort bit his lips.  "I'm clearly not a good man in your sense of the
+word; but I love her terribly, and I would protect her.  I don't in
+the least know whether she'll have me.  I don't expect her to,
+naturally.  But I warn you that I mean to ask her, and to wait for
+her.  I'm so much in love that I can do nothing else."
+
+"The man who is truly in love does what is best for the one he
+loves."  Fort bent his head; he felt as if he were at school again,
+confronting his head-master.  "That's true," he said.  "And I shall
+never trade on her position.  If she can't feel anything for me now
+or in the future, I shan't trouble her, you may be sure of that.  But
+if by some wonderful chance she should, I know I can make her happy,
+sir."
+
+"She is a child."
+
+"No, she's not a child," said Fort stubbornly.
+
+Pierson touched the lapel of his new tunic.  "Captain Fort, I am
+going far away from her, and leaving her without protection.  I trust
+to your chivalry not to ask her, till I come back."
+
+Fort threw back his head.  "No, no, I won't accept that position.
+With or without your presence the facts will be the same.  Either she
+can love me, or she can't.  If she can, she'll be happier with me.
+If she can't, there's an end of it."
+
+Pierson came slowly up to him.  "In my view," he said, "you are as
+bound to Leila as if you were married to her."
+
+"You can't, expect me to take the priest's view, sir."
+
+Pierson's lips trembled.
+
+"You call it a priest's view; I think it is only the view of a man of
+honour."
+
+Fort reddened.  "That's for my conscience," he said stubbornly.
+"I can't tell you, and I'm not going to, how things began.  I was a
+fool.  But I did my best, and I know that Leila doesn't think I'm
+bound.  If she had, she would never have gone.  When there's no
+feeling--there never was real feeling on my side--and when there's
+this terribly real feeling for Noel, which I never sought, which I
+tried to keep down, which I ran away from
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Yes.  To go on with the other was foul.  I should have thought you
+might have seen that, sir; but I did go on with it.  It was Leila who
+made an end."
+
+"Leila behaved nobly, I think."
+
+"She was splendid; but that doesn't make me a brute.".
+
+Pierson turned away to the window, whence he must see Noel.
+
+"It is repugnant to me," he said.  "Is there never to be any purity
+in her life?"
+
+"Is there never to be any life for her?  At your rate, sir, there
+will be none.  I'm no worse than other men, and I love her more than
+they could."
+
+For fully a minute Pierson stood silent, before he said: "Forgive me
+if I've spoken harshly.  I didn't mean to.  I love her intensely; I
+wish for nothing but her good.  But all my life I have believed that
+for a man there is only one woman--for a woman only one man."
+
+"Then, Sir," Fort burst out, "you wish her--"
+
+Pierson had put his hand up, as if to ward off a blow; and, angry
+though he was, Fort stopped.
+
+"We are all made of flesh and blood," he continued coldly, "and it
+seems to me that you think we aren't."
+
+"We have spirits too, Captain Fort."  The voice was suddenly so
+gentle that Fort's anger evaporated.
+
+"I have a great respect for you, sir; but a greater love for Noel,
+and nothing in this world will prevent me trying to give my life to
+her."
+
+A smile quivered over Pierson's face.  "If you try, then I can but
+pray that you will fail."
+
+Fort did not answer, and went out.
+
+He walked slowly away from the bungalow, with his head down, sore,
+angry, and yet-relieved.  He knew where he stood; nor did he feel
+that he had been worsted--those strictures had not touched him.
+Convicted of immorality, he remained conscious of private
+justifications, in a way that human beings have.  Only one little
+corner of memory, unseen and uncriticised by his opponent, troubled
+him.  He pardoned himself the rest; the one thing he did not pardon
+was the fact that he had known Noel before his liaison with Leila
+commenced; had even let Leila sweep him away on, an evening when he
+had been in Noel's company.  For that he felt a real disgust with
+himself.  And all the way back to the station he kept thinking: 'How
+could I?  I deserve to lose her!  Still, I shall try; but not now--
+not yet!'  And, wearily enough, he took the train back to town.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Both girls rose early that last day, and went with their father to
+Communion.  As Gratian had said to George: "It's nothing to me now,
+but it will mean a lot to him out there, as a memory of us.  So I
+must go."  And he had answered: "Quite right, my dear.  Let him have
+all he can get of you both to-day.  I'll keep out of the way, and be
+back the last thing at night."  Their father's smile when he saw them
+waiting for him went straight to both their hearts.  It was a
+delicious day, and the early freshness had not yet dried out of the
+air, when they were walking home to breakfast.  Each girl had slipped
+a hand under his arm.  'It's like Moses or was it Aaron?' Noel
+thought absurdly Memory had complete hold of her.  All the old days!
+Nursery hours on Sundays after tea, stories out of the huge Bible
+bound in mother-o'pearl, with photogravures of the Holy Land--palms,
+and hills, and goats, and little Eastern figures, and funny boats on
+the Sea of Galilee, and camels--always camels.  The book would be on
+his knee, and they one on each arm of his chair, waiting eagerly for
+the pages to be turned so that a new picture came.  And there would
+be the feel of his cheek, prickly against theirs; and the old names
+with the old glamour--to Gratian, Joshua, Daniel, Mordecai, Peter; to
+Noel Absalom because of his hair, and Haman because she liked the
+sound, and Ruth because she was pretty and John because he leaned on
+Jesus' breast.  Neither of them cared for Job or David, and Elijah
+and Elisha they detested because they hated the name Eliza.  And
+later days by firelight in the drawing-room, roasting chestnuts just
+before evening church, and telling ghost stories, and trying to make
+Daddy eat his share.  And hours beside him at the piano, each eager
+for her special hymns--for Gratian, "Onward, Christian Soldiers,"
+"Lead, Kindly Light," and "O God Our Help"; for Noel, "Nearer, My
+God, to Thee," the one with "The Hosts of Midian" in it, and "For
+Those in Peril on the Sea."  And carols!  Ah!  And Choristers!  Noel
+had loved one deeply--the word "chorister" was so enchanting; and
+because of his whiteness, and hair which had no grease on it, but
+stood up all bright; she had never spoken to him--a far worship, like
+that for a star.  And always, always Daddy had been gentle; sometimes
+angry, but always gentle; and they sometimes not at all!  And mixed
+up with it all, the dogs they had had, and the cats they had had, and
+the cockatoo, and the governesses, and their red cloaks, and the
+curates, and the pantomimes, and "Peter Pan," and "Alice in
+Wonderland"--Daddy sitting between them, so that one could snuggle
+up.  And later, the school-days, the hockey, the prizes, the
+holidays, the rush into his arms; and the great and wonderful yearly
+exodus to far places, fishing and bathing; walks and drives; rides
+and climbs, always with him.  And concerts and Shakespeare plays in
+the Christmas and Easter holidays; and the walk home through the
+streets--all lighted in those days--one on each side of him.  And
+this was the end!  They waited on him at breakfast: they kept
+stealing glances at him, photographing him in their minds.  Gratian
+got her camera and did actually photograph him in the morning
+sunlight with Noel, without Noel, with the baby; against all
+regulations for the defence of the realm.  It was Noel who suggested:
+"Daddy, let's take lunch out and go for all day on the cliffs, us
+three, and forget there's a war."
+
+So easy to say, so difficult to do, with the boom of the guns
+travelling to their ears along the grass, mingled with the buzz of
+insects.  Yet that hum of summer, the innumerable voices of tiny
+lives, gossamer things all as alive as they, and as important to
+their frail selves; and the white clouds, few and so slow-moving, and
+the remote strange purity which clings to the chalky downs, all this
+white and green and blue of land and sea had its peace, which crept
+into the spirits of those three alone with Nature, this once more,
+the last time for--who could say how long?  They talked, by tacit
+agreement, of nothing but what had happened before the war began,
+while the flock of the blown dandelions drifted past.  Pierson sat
+cross-legged on the grass, without his cap, suffering a little still
+from the stiffness of his unwonted garments.  And the girls lay one
+on each side of him, half critical, and half admiring.  Noel could
+not bear his collar.
+
+"If you had a soft collar you'd be lovely, Daddy.  Perhaps out there
+they'll let you take it off.  It must be fearfully hot in Egypt.  Oh!
+I wish I were going.  I wish I were going everywhere in the world.
+Some day!"  Presently he read to them, Murray's "Hippolytus" of
+Euripides.  And now and then Gratian and he discussed a passage.  But
+Noel lay silent, looking at the sky.  Whenever his voice ceased,
+there was the song of the larks, and very faint, the distant mutter
+of the guns.
+
+They stayed up there till past six, and it was time to go and have
+tea before Evening Service.  Those hours in the baking sun had drawn
+virtue out of them; they were silent and melancholy all the evening.
+Noel was the first to go up to her bedroom.  She went without saying
+good night--she knew her father would come to her room that last
+evening.  George had not yet come in; and Gratian was left alone with
+Pierson in the drawing-room, round whose single lamp, in spite of
+close-drawn curtains, moths were circling: She moved over to him on
+the sofa.
+
+"Dad, promise me not to worry about Nollie; we'll take care of her."
+
+"She can only take care of herself, Gracie, and will she?  Did you
+know that Captain Fort was here yesterday?"
+
+"She told me."
+
+"What is her feeling about him?"
+
+"I don't think she knows.  Nollie dreams along, and then suddenly
+rushes."
+
+"I wish she were safe from that man."
+
+"But, Dad, why?  George likes him and so do I."
+
+A big grey moth was fluttering against the lamp.  Pierson got up and
+caught it in the curve of his palm.  "Poor thing!  You're like my
+Nollie; so soft, and dreamy, so feckless, so reckless."  And going to
+the curtains, he thrust his hand through, and released the moth.
+
+"Dad!"  said Gratian suddenly, "we can only find out for ourselves,
+even if we do singe our wings in doing it.  We've been reading
+James's 'Pragmatism.'  George says the only chapter that's important
+is missing--the one on ethics, to show that what we do is not wrong
+till it's proved wrong by the result.  I suppose he was afraid to
+deliver that lecture."
+
+Pierson's face wore the smile which always came on it when he had to
+deal with George, the smile which said: "Ah, George, that's very
+clever; but I know."
+
+"My dear," he said, "that doctrine is the most dangerous in the
+world.  I am surprised at George."
+
+"I don't think George is in danger, Dad."
+
+"George is a man of wide experience and strong judgment and
+character; but think how fatal it would be for Nollie, my poor
+Nollie, whom a little gust can blow into the candle."
+
+"All the same," said Gratian stubbornly, "I don't think anyone can be
+good or worth anything unless they judge for themselves and take
+risks."
+
+Pierson went close to her; his face was quivering.
+
+"Don't let us differ on this last night; I must go up to Nollie for a
+minute, and then to bed.  I shan't see you to-morrow; you mustn't get
+up; I can bear parting better like this.  And my train goes at eight.
+God bless you, Gracie; give George my love.  I know, I have always
+known that he's a good man, though we do fight so.  Good-bye, my
+darling."
+
+He went out with his cheeks wet from Gratian's tears, and stood in
+the porch a minute to recover his composure.  The shadow of the house
+stretched velvet and blunt over the rock-garden.  A night-jar was
+spinning; the churring sound affected him oddly.  The last English
+night-bird he would hear.  England!  What a night-to say good-bye!
+'My country!' he thought; 'my beautiful country!' The dew was lying
+thick and silvery already on the little patch of grass-the last dew,
+the last scent of an English night.  The call of a bugle floated out.
+"England!"  he prayed; "God be about you!"  A little sound answered
+from across the grass, like an old man's cough, and the scrape and
+rattle of a chain.  A face emerged at the edge of the house's shadow;
+bearded and horned like that of Pan, it seemed to stare at him.  And
+he saw the dim grey form of the garden goat, heard it scuttle round
+the stake to which it was tethered, as though alarmed at this visitor
+to its' domain.
+
+He went up the half-flight of stairs to Noel's narrow little room,
+next the nursery.  No voice answered his tap.  It was dark, but he
+could see her at the window, leaning far out, with her chin on her
+hands.
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+She answered without turning: "Such a lovely night, Daddy.  Come and
+look!  I'd like to set the goat free, only he'd eat the rock plants.
+But it is his night, isn't it?  He ought to be running and skipping
+in it: it's such a shame to tie things up.  Did you never, feel wild
+in your heart, Daddy?"
+
+"Always, I think, Nollie; too wild.  It's been hard to tame oneself."
+
+Noel slipped her hand through his arm.  "Let's go and take the goat
+and skip together on the hills.  If only we had a penny whistle!  Did
+you hear the bugle?  The bugle and the goat!"
+
+Pierson pressed the hand against him.
+
+"Nollie, be good while I'm away.  You know what I don't want.  I told
+you in my letter."  He looked at her cheek, and dared say no more.
+Her face had its "fey" look again.
+
+"Don't you feel," she said suddenly, "on a night like this, all the
+things, all the things--the stars have lives, Daddy, and the moon has
+a big life, and the shadows have, and the moths and the birds and the
+goats and the trees, and the flowers, and all of us--escaped?  Oh!
+Daddy, why is there a war?  And why are people so bound and so
+unhappy?  Don't tell me it's God--don't!"
+
+Pierson could not answer, for there came into his mind the Greek song
+he had been reading aloud that afternoon
+
+    "O for a deep and dewy Spring,
+     With runlets cold to draw and drink,
+     And a great meadow blossoming,
+     Long-grassed, and poplars in a ring,
+     To rest me by the brink.
+     O take me to the mountain, O,
+     Past the great pines and through the wood,
+     Up where the lean hounds softly go,
+     A-whine for wild things' blood,
+     And madly flies the dappled roe,
+     O God, to shout and speed them there;
+     An arrow by my chestnut hair
+     Drawn tight and one keen glimmering spear
+     Ah! if I could!"
+
+
+All that in life had been to him unknown, of venture and wild savour;
+all the emotion he had stifled; the swift Pan he had denied; the
+sharp fruits, the burning suns, the dark pools, the unearthly
+moonlight, which were not of God--all came with the breath of that
+old song, and the look on the girl's face.  And he covered his eyes.
+
+Noel's hand tugged at his arm.  "Isn't beauty terribly alive," she
+murmured, "like a lovely person?  it makes you ache to kiss it."
+
+His lips felt parched.  "There is a beauty beyond all that," he said
+stubbornly.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Holiness, duty, faith.  O Nollie, my love!"  But Noel's hand
+tightened on his arm.
+
+"Shall I tell you what I should like?"  she whispered.  "To take
+God's hand and show Him things.  I'm certain He's not seen
+everything."
+
+A shudder went through Pierson, one of those queer sudden shivers,
+which come from a strange note in a voice, or a new sharp scent or
+sight.
+
+"My dear, what things you say!"
+
+"But He hasn't, and it's time He did.  We'd creep, and peep, and see
+it all for once, as He can't in His churches.  Daddy, oh!  Daddy!
+I can't bear it any more; to think of them being killed on a night
+like this; killed and killed so that they never see it all again--
+never see it--never see it!"  She sank down, and covered her face
+with her arms.
+
+"I can't, I can't!  Oh! take it all away, the cruelty!  Why does it
+come--why the stars and the flowers, if God doesn't care any more
+than that?"
+
+Horribly affected he stood bending over her, stroking her head.  Then
+the habit of a hundred death-beds helped him.  "Come, Nollie!  This
+life is but a minute.  We must all die."
+
+"But not they--not so young!"  She clung to his knees, and looked up.
+"Daddy, I don't want you to go; promise me to come back!"
+
+The childishness of those words brought back his balance.
+
+"My dear sweetheart, of course!  Come, Nollie, get up.  The sun's
+been too much for you."
+
+Noel got up, and put her hands on her father's shoulders.  "Forgive
+me for all my badness, and all my badness to come, especially all my
+badness to come!"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "I shall always forgive you, Nollie; but there won't
+be--there mustn't be any badness to come.  I pray God to keep you,
+and make you like your mother."
+
+"Mother never had a devil, like you and me."
+
+He was silent from surprise.  How did this child know the devil of
+wild feeling he had fought against year after year; until with the
+many years he had felt it weakening within him!  She whispered
+on: "I don't hate my devil.
+
+"Why should I?--it's part of me.  Every day when the sun sets, I'll
+think of you, Daddy; and you might do the same--that'll keep me good.
+I shan't come to the station tomorrow, I should only cry.  And I
+shan't say good-bye now.  It's unlucky."
+
+She flung her arms round him; and half smothered by that fervent
+embrace, he kissed her cheeks and hair.  Freed of each other at last,
+he stood for a moment looking at her by the moonlight.
+
+"There never was anyone more loving than you; Nollie!"  he said
+quietly.  "Remember my letter.  And good night, my love!"  Then,
+afraid to stay another second, he went quickly out of the dark little
+room....
+
+George Laird, returning half an hour later, heard a voice saying
+softly: "George, George!"
+
+Looking up, he saw a little white blur at the window, and Noel's face
+just visible.
+
+"George, let the goat loose, just for to-night, to please me."
+
+Something in that voice, and in the gesture of her stretched-out arm
+moved George in a queer way, although, as Pierson had once said, he
+had no music in his soul.  He loosed the goat.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+In the weeks which succeeded Pierson's departure, Gratian and George
+often discussed Noel's conduct and position by the light of the
+Pragmatic theory.  George held a suitably scientific view.  Just as
+he would point out to his wife--in the physical world, creatures who
+diverged from the normal had to justify their divergence in
+competition with their environments, or else go under, so in the
+ethical world it was all a question of whether Nollie could make good
+her vagary.  If she could, and grew in strength of character thereby,
+it was ipso facto all right, her vagary would be proved an advantage,
+and the world enriched.  If not, the world by her failure to make
+good would be impoverished, and her vagary proved wrong.  The
+orthodox and academies--he insisted--were always forgetting the
+adaptability of living organisms; how every action which was out of
+the ordinary, unconsciously modified all the other actions together
+with the outlook, and philosophy of the doer.  "Of course Nollie was
+crazy," he said, "but when she did what she did, she at once began to
+think differently about life and morals.  The deepest instinct we all
+have is the instinct that we must do what we must, and think that
+what we've done is really all right; in fact the--instinct of self-
+preservation.  We're all fighting animals; and we feel in our bones
+that if we admit we're beaten--we are beaten; but that every fight we
+win, especially against odds, hardens those bones.  But personally I
+don't think she can make good on her own."
+
+Gratian, whose Pragmatism was not yet fully baked, responded
+doubtfully:
+
+"No, I don't think she can.  And if she could I'm not sure.  But
+isn't Pragmatism a perfectly beastly word, George?  It has no sense
+of humour in it at all."
+
+"It is a bit thick, and in the hands of the young, deuced likely to
+become Prigmatism; but not with Nollie."
+
+They watched the victim of their discussions with real anxiety.  The
+knowledge that she would never be more sheltered than she was with
+them, at all events until she married, gravely impeded the formation
+of any judgment as to whether or no she could make good.  Now and
+again there would come to Gratian who after all knew her sister
+better than George--the disquieting thought that whatever conclusion
+Noel led them to form, she would almost certainly force them to
+abandon sooner or later.
+
+Three days after her father's departure Noel had declared that she
+wanted to work on the land.  This George had promptly vetoed.
+
+"You aren't strong enough yet, my dear: Wait till the harvest begins.
+Then you can go and help on the farm here.  If you can stand that
+without damage, we'll think about it."
+
+But the weather was wet and harvest late, and Noel had nothing much
+to do but attend to her baby, already well attended to by Nurse, and
+dream and brood, and now and then cook an omelette or do some
+housework for the sake of a gnawing conscience.  Since Gratian and
+George were away in hospital all day, she was very much alone.
+Several times in the evenings Gratian tried to come at the core of
+her thoughts, Twice she flew the kite of Leila.  The first time Noel
+only answered: "Yes, she's a brick."  The second time, she said: "I
+don't want to think about her."
+
+But, hardening her heart, Gratian went on: "Don't you think it's
+queer we've never heard from Captain Fort since he came down?"
+
+In her calmest voice Noel answered: "Why should we, after being told
+that he wasn't liked?"
+
+"Who told him that?"
+
+"I told him, that Daddy didn't; but I expect Daddy said much worse
+things."  She gave a little laugh, then softly added: "Daddy's
+wonderful, isn't he?"
+
+"How?"
+
+"The way he drives one to do the other thing.  If he hadn't opposed
+my marriage to Cyril, you know, that wouldn't have happened, it just
+made all the difference.  It stirred me up so fearfully."  Gratian
+stared at her, astonished that she could see herself so clearly.
+Towards the end of August she had a letter from Fort.
+
+"DEAR MRS.  LAIRD,
+"You know all about things, of course, except the one thing which to
+me is all important.  I can't go on without knowing whether I have a
+chance with your sister.  It is against your father's expressed wish
+that she should have anything to do with me, but I told him that I
+could not and would not promise not to ask her.  I get my holiday at
+the end of this month, and am coming down to put it to the touch.  It
+means more to me than you can possibly imagine.
+"I am, dear Mrs. Laird,
+"Your very faithful servant,
+"JAMES FORT."
+
+She discussed the letter with George, whose advice was: "Answer it
+politely, but say nothing; and nothing to Nollie.  I think it would
+be a very good thing.  Of course it's a bit of a make-shift--twice
+her age; but he's a genuine man, if not exactly brilliant."
+
+Gratian answered almost sullenly: "I've always wanted the very best
+for Nollie."
+
+George screwed up his steel-coloured eyes, as he might have looked at
+one on whom he had to operate.  "Quite so," he said."  But you must
+remember, Gracie, that out of the swan she was, Nollie has made
+herself into a lame duck.  Fifty per cent at least is off her value,
+socially.  We must look at things as they are."
+
+"Father is dead against it."
+
+George smiled, on the point of saying: 'That makes me feel it must be
+a good thing' But he subdued the impulse.
+
+"I agree that we're bound by his absence not to further it actively.
+Still Nollie knows his wishes, and it's up to her and no one else.
+After all, she's no longer a child."
+
+His advice was followed.  But to write that polite letter, which said
+nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or three hours'
+penmanship.  She was very conscientious.  Knowledge of this impending
+visit increased the anxiety with which she watched her sister, but
+the only inkling she obtained of Noel's state of mind was when the
+girl showed her a letter she had received from Thirza, asking her to
+come back to Kestrel.  A postscript, in Uncle Bob's handwriting,
+added these words:
+
+"We're getting quite fossilised down here; Eve's gone and left us
+again.  We miss you and the youngster awfully.  Come along down,
+Nollie there's a dear!"
+
+"They're darlings," Noel said, "but I shan't go.  I'm too restless,
+ever since Daddy went; you don't know how restless.  This rain simply
+makes me want to die."
+
+
+
+2
+
+The weather improved next day, and at the end of that week harvest
+began.  By what seemed to Noel a stroke of luck the farmer's binder
+was broken; he could not get it repaired, and wanted all the human
+binders he could get.  That first day in the fields blistered her
+hands, burnt her face and neck, made every nerve and bone in her body
+ache; but was the happiest day she had spent for weeks, the happiest
+perhaps since Cyril Morland left her, over a year ago.  She had a
+bath and went to bed the moment she got in.
+
+Lying there nibbling chocolate and smoking a cigarette, she
+luxuriated in the weariness which had stilled her dreadful
+restlessness.  Watching the smoke of her cigarette curl up against
+the sunset glow which filled her window, she mused: If only she could
+be tired out like this every day!  She would be all right then, would
+lose the feeling of not knowing what she wanted, of being in a sort o
+of large box, with the lid slammed down, roaming round it like a
+dazed and homesick bee in an overturned tumbler; the feeling of being
+only half alive, of having a wing maimed so that she could only fly a
+little way, and must then drop.
+
+She slept like a top that night.  But the next day's work was real
+torture, and the third not much better.  By the end of the week,
+however, she was no longer stiff.
+
+Saturday was cloudless; a perfect day.  The field she was working in
+lay on a slope.  It was the last field to be cut, and the best wheat
+yet, with a glorious burnt shade in its gold and the ears blunt and
+full.  She had got used now to the feel of the great sheaves in her
+arms, and the binding wisps drawn through her hand till she held them
+level, below the ears, ready for the twist.  There was no new
+sensation in it now; just steady, rather dreamy work, to keep her
+place in the row, to the swish-swish of the cutter and the call of
+the driver to his horses at the turns; with continual little pauses,
+to straighten and rest her back a moment, and shake her head free
+from the flies, or suck her finger, sore from the constant pushing of
+the straw ends under.  So the hours went on, rather hot and
+wearisome, yet with a feeling of something good being done, of a job
+getting surely to its end.  And gradually the centre patch narrowed,
+and the sun slowly slanted down.
+
+When they stopped for tea, instead of running home as usual, she
+drank it cold out of a flask she had brought, ate a bun and some
+chocolate, and lay down on her back against the hedge.  She always
+avoided that group of her fellow workers round the tea-cans which the
+farmer's wife brought out.  To avoid people, if she could, had become
+habitual to her now.  They must know about her, or would soon if she
+gave them the chance.  She had never lost consciousness of her ring-
+finger, expecting every eye to fall on it as a matter of course.
+Lying on her face, she puffed her cigarette into the grass, and
+watched a beetle, till one of the sheep-dogs, scouting for scraps,
+came up, and she fed him with her second bun.  Having finished the
+bun, he tried to eat the beetle, and, when she rescued it, convinced
+that she had nothing more to give him, sneezed at her, and went away.
+Pressing the end of her cigarette out against the bank, she turned
+over.  Already the driver was perched on his tiny seat, and his
+companion, whose business it was to free the falling corn, was
+getting up alongside.  Swish-swish!  It had begun again.  She rose,
+stretched herself, and went back to her place in the row.  The field
+would be finished to-night; she would have a lovely rest-all Sunday I
+Towards seven o'clock a narrow strip, not twenty yards broad, alone
+was left.  This last half hour was what Noel dreaded.  To-day it was
+worse, for the farmer had no cartridges left, and the rabbits were
+dealt with by hullabaloo and sticks and chasing dogs.  Rabbits were
+vermin, of course, and ate the crops, and must be killed; besides,
+they were good food, and fetched two shillings apiece; all this she
+knew but to see the poor frightened things stealing out, pounced on,
+turned, shouted at, chased, rolled over by great swift dogs, fallen
+on by the boys and killed and carried with their limp grey bodies
+upside down, so dead and soft and helpless, always made her feel
+quite sick.  She stood very still, trying not to see or hear, and in
+the corn opposite to her a rabbit stole along, crouched, and peeped.
+'Oh!' she thought, 'come out here, bunny.  I'll let you away--can't
+you see I will? It's your only chance.  Come out!'  But the rabbit
+crouched, and gazed, with its little cowed head poked forward, and
+its ears laid flat; it seemed trying to understand whether this still
+thing in front of it was the same as those others.  With the thought,
+'Of course it won't while I look at it,' Noel turned her head away.
+Out of the corner of her eye she could see a man standing a few yards
+off.  The rabbit bolted out.  Now the man would shout and turn it.
+But he did not, and the rabbit scuttled past him and away to the
+hedge.  She heard a shout from the end of the row, saw a dog
+galloping.  Too late!  Hurrah!  And clasping her hands, she looked at
+the man.  It was Fort!  With the queerest feeling--amazement,
+pleasure, the thrill of conspiracy, she saw him coming up to her.
+
+"I did want that rabbit to get off," she sighed out; "I've been
+watching it.  Thank you!"
+
+He looked at her.  "My goodness!"  was all he said.
+
+Noel's hands flew up to her cheeks.  "Yes, I know; is my nose very
+red?"
+
+"No; you're as lovely as Ruth, if she was lovely."
+
+Swish-swish!  The cutter came by; Noel started forward to her place
+in the row; but catching her arm, he said: "No, let me do this little
+bit.  I haven't had a day in the fields since the war began.  Talk to
+me while I'm binding."
+
+She stood watching him.  He made a different, stronger twist from
+hers, and took larger sheaves, so that she felt a sort of jealousy.
+
+"I didn't know you knew about this sort of thing."
+
+"Oh, Lord, yes!  I had a farm once out West.  Nothing like field-
+work, to make you feel good.  I've been watching you; you bind jolly
+well."
+
+Noel gave a sigh of pleasure.
+
+"Where have you come from?"  she asked.
+
+"Straight from the station.  I'm on my holiday."  He looked up at
+her, and they both fell silent.
+
+Swish-swish!  The cutter was coming again.  Noel went to the
+beginning of her portion of the falling corn, he to the end of it.
+They worked towards each other, and met before the cutter was on them
+a third time.
+
+"Will you come in to supper?"
+
+"I'd love to."
+
+"Then let's go now, please.  I don't want to see any more rabbits
+killed."
+
+They spoke very little on the way to the bungalow, but she felt his
+eyes on her all the time.  She left him with George and Gratian who
+had just come in, and went up for her bath.
+
+Supper had been laid out in the verandah, and it was nearly dark
+before they had finished.  In rhyme with the failing of the light
+Noel became more and more silent.  When they went in, she ran up to
+her baby.  She did not go down again, but as on the night before her
+father went away, stood at her window, leaning out.  A dark night, no
+moon; in the starlight she could only just see the dim garden, where
+no goat was grazing.  Now that her first excitement had worn off,
+this sudden reappearance of Fort filled her with nervous melancholy:
+She knew perfectly well what he had come for, she had always known.
+She had no certain knowledge of her own mind; but she knew that all
+these weeks she had been between his influence and her father's,
+listening to them, as it were, pleading with her.  And, curiously,
+the pleading of each, instead of drawing her towards the pleader, had
+seemed dragging her away from him, driving her into the arms of the
+other.  To the protection of one or the other she felt she must go;
+and it humiliated her to think that in all the world there was no
+other place for her.  The wildness of that one night in the old Abbey
+seemed to have power to govern all her life to come.  Why should that
+one night, that one act, have this uncanny power to drive her this
+way or that, to those arms or these?  Must she, because of it, always
+need protection?  Standing there in the dark it was almost as if they
+had come up behind her, with their pleadings; and a shiver ran down
+her back.  She longed to turn on them, and cry out: "Go away; oh; go
+away!  I don't want either of you; I just want to be left alone!"
+Then something, a moth perhaps, touched her neck.  She gasped and
+shook herself.  How silly!
+
+She heard the back door round the corner of the house opening; a
+man's low voice down in the dark said:
+
+"Who's the young lady that comes out in the fields?"
+
+Another voice--one of the maids--answered:
+
+"The Missis's sister."
+
+"They say she's got a baby."
+
+"Never you mind what she's got."
+
+Noel heard the man's laugh.  It seemed to her the most odious laugh
+she had ever heard.  She thought swiftly and absurdly: 'I'll get away
+from all this.'  The window was only a few feet up.  She got out on
+to the ledge, let herself down, and dropped.  There was a flower-bed
+below, quite soft, with a scent of geranium-leaves and earth.  She
+brushed herself, and went tiptoeing across the gravel and the little
+front lawn, to the gate.  The house was quite dark, quite silent.
+She walked on, down the road.  'Jolly!' she thought.  'Night after
+night we sleep, and never see the nights: sleep until we're called,
+and never see anything.  If they want to catch me they'll have to
+run.'  And she began running down the road in her evening frock and
+shoes, with nothing on her head.  She stopped after going perhaps
+three hundred yards, by the edge of the wood.  It was splendidly dark
+in there, and she groped her way from trunk to trunk, with a
+delicious, half-scared sense of adventure and novelty.  She stopped
+at last by a thin trunk whose bark glimmered faintly.  She felt it
+with her cheek, quite smooth--a birch tree; and, with her arms round
+it, she stood perfectly still.  Wonderfully, magically silent, fresh
+and sweet-scented and dark!  The little tree trembled suddenly within
+her arms, and she heard the low distant rumble, to which she had
+grown so accustomed--the guns, always at work, killing--killing men
+and killing trees, little trees perhaps like this within her arms,
+little trembling trees!  Out there, in this dark night, there would
+not be a single unscarred tree like this smooth quivering thing, no
+fields of corn, not even a bush or a blade of grass, no leaves to
+rustle and smell sweet, not a bird, no little soft-footed night
+beasts, except the rats; and she shuddered, thinking of the Belgian
+soldier-painter.  Holding the tree tight, she squeezed its smooth
+body against her.  A rush of the same helpless, hopeless revolt and
+sorrow overtook her, which had wrung from her that passionate little
+outburst to her father, the night before he went away.  Killed, torn,
+and bruised; burned, and killed, like Cyril!  All the young things,
+like this little tree.
+
+Rumble!  Rumble!  Quiver!  Quiver!  And all else so still, so sweet
+and still, and starry, up there through the leaves....  'I can't bear
+it!' she thought.  She pressed her lips, which the sun had warmed all
+day, against the satiny smooth bark.  But the little tree stood
+within her arms insentient, quivering only to the long rumbles.  With
+each of those dull mutterings, life and love were going out, like the
+flames of candles on a Christmas-tree, blown, one by one.  To her
+eyes, accustomed by now to the darkness in there, the wood seemed
+slowly to be gathering a sort of life, as though it were a great
+thing watching her; a great thing with hundreds of limbs and eyes,
+and the power of breathing.  The little tree, which had seemed so
+individual and friendly, ceased to be a comfort and became a part of
+the whole living wood, absorbed in itself, and coldly watching her,
+this intruder of the mischievous breed, the fatal breed which loosed
+those rumblings on the earth.  Noel unlocked her arms, and recoiled.
+A bough scraped her neck, some leaves flew against her eyes; she
+stepped aside, tripped over a root, and fell.  A bough had hit her
+too, and she lay a little dazed, quivering at such dark
+unfriendliness.  She held her hands up to her face for the mere
+pleasure of seeing something a little less dark; it was childish, and
+absurd, but she was frightened.  The wood seemed to have so many
+eyes, so many arms, and all unfriendly; it seemed waiting to give her
+other blows, other falls, and to guard her within its darkness
+until--!  She got up, moved a few steps, and stood still, she had
+forgotten from where she had come in.  And afraid of moving deeper
+into the unfriendly wood, she turned slowly round, trying to tell
+which way to go.  It was all just one dark watching thing, of limbs
+on the ground and in the air.  'Any way,' she thought; 'any way of
+course will take me out!' And she groped forward, keeping her hands
+up to guard her face.  It was silly, but she could not help the
+sinking, scattered feeling which comes to one bushed, or lost in a
+fog.  If the wood had not been so dark, so,--alive!  And for a second
+she had the senseless, terrifying thought of a child: 'What if I
+never get out!'  Then she laughed at it, and stood still again,
+listening.  There was no sound to guide her, no sound at all except
+that faint dull rumble, which seemed to come from every side, now.
+And the trees watched her.  'Ugh!' she thought; 'I hate this wood!'
+She saw it now, its snaky branches, its darkness, and great forms, as
+an abode of giants and witches.  She groped and scrambled on again,
+tripped once more, and fell, hitting her forehead against a trunk.
+The blow dazed and sobered her.  'It's idiotic,' she thought; 'I'm a
+baby!  I'll Just walk very slowly till I reach the edge.  I know it
+isn't a large wood!'  She turned deliberately to face each direction;
+solemnly selected that from which the muttering of the guns seemed to
+come, and started again, moving very slowly with her hands stretched
+out.  Something rustled in the undergrowth, quite close; she saw a
+pair of green eyes shining.  Her heart jumped into her mouth.  The
+thing sprang--there was a swish of ferns and twigs, and silence.
+Noel clasped her breast.  A poaching cat!  And again she moved
+forward.  But she had lost direction.  'I'm going round and round,'
+she thought.  'They always do.' And the sinking scattered feeling of
+the "bushed" clutched at her again.  'Shall I call?' she thought.
+'I must be near the road.  But it's so babyish.' She moved on again.
+Her foot struck something soft.  A voice muttered a thick oath; a
+hand seized her ankle.  She leaped, and dragged and wrenched it free;
+and, utterly unnerved, she screamed, and ran forward blindly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+No one could have so convinced a feeling as Jimmy Fort that he would
+be a 'bit of a makeshift' for Noel.  He had spent the weeks after his
+interview with her father obsessed by her image, often saying to
+himself "It won't do.  It's playing it too low down to try and get
+that child, when I know that, but for her trouble, I shouldn't have a
+chance."  He had never had much opinion of his looks, but now he
+seemed to himself absurdly old and dried-up in this desert of a
+London.  He loathed the Office job to which they had put him, and the
+whole atmosphere of officialdom.  Another year of it, and he would
+shrivel like an old apple!  He began to look at himself anxiously,
+taking stock of his physical assets now that he had this dream of
+young beauty.  He would be forty next month, and she was nineteen!
+But there would be times too when he would feel that, with her, he
+could be as much of a "three-year-old" as the youngster she had
+loved.  Having little hope of winning her, he took her "past" but
+lightly.  Was it not that past which gave him what chance he had?  On
+two things he was determined: He would not trade on her past.  And if
+by any chance she took him, he would never show her that he
+remembered that she had one.
+
+After writing to Gratian he had spent the week before his holiday
+began, in an attempt to renew the youthfulness of his appearance,
+which made him feel older, leaner, bonier and browner than ever.  He
+got up early, rode in the rain, took Turkish baths, and did all
+manner of exercises; neither smoked nor drank, and went to bed early,
+exactly as if he had been going to ride a steeplechase.  On the
+afternoon, when at last he left on that terrific pilgrimage, he gazed
+at his face with a sort of despair, it was so lean, and leather-
+coloured, and he counted almost a dozen grey hairs.
+
+When he reached the bungalow, and was told that she was working in
+the corn-fields, he had for the first time a feeling that Fate was on
+his side.  Such a meeting would be easier than any other!  He had
+been watching her for several minutes before she saw him, with his
+heart beating more violently than it had ever beaten in the trenches;
+and that new feeling of hope stayed with him--all through the
+greeting, throughout supper, and even after she had left them and
+gone upstairs.  Then, with the suddenness of a blind drawn down, it
+vanished, and he sat on, trying to talk, and slowly getting more and
+more silent and restless.
+
+"Nollie gets so tired, working," Gratian said: He knew she meant it
+kindly but that she should say it at all was ominous.  He got up at
+last, having lost hope of seeing Noel again, conscious too that he
+had answered the last three questions at random.
+
+In the porch George said: "You'll come in to lunch tomorrow, won't
+you?"
+
+"Oh, thanks, I'm afraid it'll bore you all."
+
+"Not a bit.  Nollie won't be so tired."
+
+Again--so well meant.  They were very kind.  He looked up from the
+gate, trying to make out which her window might be; but all was dark.
+A little way down the road he stopped to light a cigarette; and,
+leaning against a gate, drew the smoke of it deep into his lungs,
+trying to assuage the ache in his heart.  So it was hopeless!  She
+had taken the first, the very first chance, to get away from him!
+She knew that he loved her, could not help knowing, for he had never
+been able to keep it out of his eyes and voice.  If she had felt ever
+so little for him, she would not have avoided him this first evening.
+'I'll go back to that desert,' he thought; 'I'm not going to whine
+and crawl.  I'll go back, and bite on it; one must have some pride.
+Oh, why the hell am I crocked-up like this?  If only I could get out
+to France again!' And then Noel's figure bent over the falling corn
+formed before him.  'I'll have one more try,' he thought; 'one more--
+tomorrow somewhere, I'll get to know for certain.  And if I get what
+Leila's got I shall deserve it, I suppose.  Poor Leila!  Where is
+she?  Back at High Constantia?'  What was that?  A cry--of terror--in
+that wood!  Crossing to the edge, he called "Coo-ee!" and stood
+peering into its darkness.  He heard the sound of bushes being
+brushed aside, and whistled.  A figure came bursting out, almost into
+his arms.
+
+"Hallo!"  he said; "what's up?"
+
+A voice gasped: "Oh!  It's--it's nothing!"
+
+He saw Noel.  She had swayed back, and stood about a yard away.  He
+could dimly see her covering her face with her arms.  Feeling
+instinctively that she wanted to hide her fright, he said quietly:
+
+"What luck!  I was just passing.  It's awfully dark."
+
+"I--I got lost; and a man--caught my foot, in there!"
+
+Moved beyond control by the little gulps and gasps of her breathing,
+he stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders.  He held her
+lightly, without speaking, terrified lest he should wound her pride.
+
+"I-I got in there," she gasped, "and the trees--and I stumbled over a
+roan asleep, and he--"
+
+"Yes, Yes, I know," he murmured, as if to a child.  She had dropped
+her arms now, and he could see her face, with eyes unnaturally
+dilated, and lips quivering.  Then moved again beyond control, he
+drew her so close that he could feel the throbbing of her heart, and
+put his lips to her forehead all wet with heat.  She closed her eyes,
+gave a little choke, and buried her face against his coat.
+
+"There, there, my darling!" he kept on saying.  "There, there, my
+darling!"  He could feel the snuggling of her cheek against his
+shoulder.  He had got her--had got her!  He was somehow certain that
+she would not draw back now.  And in the wonder and ecstasy of that
+thought, all the world above her head, the stars in their courses,
+the wood which had frightened her, seemed miracles of beauty and
+fitness.  By such fortune as had never come to man, he had got her!
+And he murmured over and over again:
+
+"I love you!"  She was resting perfectly quiet against him, while her
+heart ceased gradually to beat so fast.  He could feel her cheek
+rubbing against his coat of Harris tweed.  Suddenly she sniffed at
+it, and whispered:
+
+"It smells good."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+When summer sun has burned all Egypt, the white man looks eagerly
+each day for evening, whose rose-coloured veil melts opalescent into
+the dun drift, of the hills, and iridescent above, into the slowly
+deepening blue.  Pierson stood gazing at the mystery of the desert
+from under the little group of palms and bougainvillea which formed
+the garden of the hospital.  Even-song was in full voice: From the
+far wing a gramophone was grinding out a music-hall ditty; two
+aeroplanes, wheeling exactly like the buzzards of the desert, were
+letting drip the faint whir of their flight; metallic voices drifted
+from the Arab village; the wheels of the water-wells creaked; and
+every now and then a dry rustle was stirred from the palm-leaves by
+puffs of desert wind.  On either hand an old road ran out, whose line
+could be marked by the little old watch-towers of another age.  For
+how many hundred years had human life passed along it to East and
+West; the brown men and their camels, threading that immemorial track
+over the desert, which ever filled him with wonder, so still it was,
+so wide, so desolate, and every evening so beautiful!  He sometimes
+felt that he could sit for ever looking at it; as though its cruel
+mysterious loveliness were--home; and yet he never looked at it
+without a spasm of homesickness.
+
+So far his new work had brought him no nearer to the hearts of men.
+Or at least he did not feel it had.  Both at the regimental base, and
+now in this hospital--an intermediate stage--waiting for the draft
+with which he would be going into Palestine, all had been very nice
+to him, friendly, and as it were indulgent; so might schoolboys have
+treated some well-intentioned dreamy master, or business men a
+harmless idealistic inventor who came visiting their offices.  He had
+even the feeling that they were glad to have him about, just as they
+were glad to have their mascots and their regimental colours; but of
+heart-to-heart simple comradeship--it seemed they neither wanted it
+of him nor expected him to give it, so that he had a feeling that he
+would be forward and impertinent to offer it.  Moreover, he no longer
+knew how.  He was very lonely.  'When I come face to face with
+death,' he would think, 'it will be different.  Death makes us all
+brothers.  I may be of real use to them then.'
+
+They brought him a letter while he stood there listening to that
+even-song, gazing at the old desert road.
+
+"DARLING DAD,
+
+"I do hope this will reach you before you move on to Palestine.  You
+said in your last--at the end of September, so I hope you'll just get
+it.  There is one great piece of news, which I'm afraid will hurt and
+trouble you; Nollie is married to Jimmy Fort.  They were married down
+here this afternoon, and have just gone up to Town.  They have to
+find a house of course.  She has been very restless, lonely, and
+unhappy ever since you went, and I'm sure it is really for the best:
+She is quite another creature, and simply devoted, headlong.  It's
+just like Nollie.  She says she didn't know what she wanted, up to
+the last minute.  But now she seems as if she could never want
+anything else.
+
+"Dad dear, Nollie could never have made good by herself.  It isn't
+her nature, and it's much better like this, I feel sure, and so does
+George.  Of course it isn't ideal--and one wanted that for her; but
+she did break her wing, and he is so awfully good and devoted to her,
+though you didn't believe it, and perhaps won't, even now.  The great
+thing is to feel her happy again, and know she's safe.  Nollie is
+capable of great devotion; only she must be anchored.  She was
+drifting all about; and one doesn't know what she might have done, in
+one of her moods.  I do hope you won't grieve about it.  She's
+dreadfully anxious about how you'll feel.  I know it will be wretched
+for you, so far off; but do try and believe it's for the best....
+She's out of danger; and she was really in a horrible position.  It's
+so good for the baby, too, and only fair to him.  I do think one must
+take things as they are, Dad dear.  It was impossible to mend
+Nollie's wing.  If she were a fighter, and gloried in it, or if she
+were the sort who would 'take the veil'--but she isn't either.  So it
+is all right, Dad.  She's writing to you herself.  I'm sure Leila
+didn't want Jimmy Fort to be unhappy because he couldn't love her; or
+she would never have gone away.  George sends you his love; we are
+both very well.  And Nollie is looking splendid still, after her
+harvest work.  All, all my love, Dad dear.  Is there anything we can
+get, and send you?  Do take care of your blessed self, and don't
+grieve about Nollie.
+
+"GRATIAN."
+
+A half-sheet of paper fluttered down; he picked it up from among the
+parched fibre of dead palm-leaves.
+
+
+"DADDY DARLING,
+
+"I've done it.  Forgive me-I'm so happy.
+
+"Your NOLLIE."
+
+
+The desert shimmered, the palm-leaves rustled, and Pierson stood
+trying to master the emotion roused in him by those two letters.  He
+felt no anger, not even vexation; he felt no sorrow, but a loneliness
+so utter and complete that he did not know how to bear it.  It seemed
+as if some last link with life had' snapped.  'My girls are happy,'
+he thought.  'If I am not--what does it matter?  If my faith and my
+convictions mean nothing to them--why should they follow?  I must and
+will not feel lonely.  I ought to have the sense of God present, to
+feel His hand in mine.  If I cannot, what use am I--what use to the
+poor fellows in there, what use in all the world?'
+
+An old native on a donkey went by, piping a Soudanese melody on a
+little wooden Arab flute.  Pierson turned back into the hospital
+humming it.  A nurse met him there.
+
+"The poor boy at the end of A ward is sinking fast, sir; I expect
+he'd like to see you,"
+
+He went into A ward, and walked down between the beds to the west
+window end, where two screens had been put, to block off the cot.
+Another nurse, who was sitting beside it, rose at once.
+
+"He's quite conscious," she whispered; "he can still speak a little.
+He's such a dear."  A tear rolled down her cheek, and she passed out
+behind the screens.  Pierson looked down at the boy; perhaps he was
+twenty, but the unshaven down on his cheeks was soft and almost
+colourless.  His eyes were closed.  He breathed regularly, and did
+not seem in pain; but there was about him that which told he was
+going; something resigned, already of the grave.  The window was wide
+open, covered by mosquito-netting, and a tiny line of sunlight,
+slanting through across the foot of the cot, crept slowly backwards
+over the sheets and the boy's body, shortening as it crept.  In the
+grey whiteness of the walls; the bed, the boy's face, just that pale
+yellow bar of sunlight, and one splash of red and blue from a little
+flag on the wall glowed out.  At this cooler hour, the ward behind
+the screens was almost empty, and few sounds broke the stillness; but
+from without came that intermittent rustle of dry palm-leaves.
+Pierson waited in silence, watching the sun sink.  If the boy might
+pass like this, it would be God's mercy.  Then he saw the boy's eyes
+open, wonderfully clear eyes of the lighted grey which has dark rims;
+his lips moved, and Pierson bent down to hear.
+
+"I'm goin' West, zurr."  The whisper had a little soft burr; the lips
+quivered; a pucker as of a child formed on his face, and passed.
+
+Through Pierson's mind there flashed the thought: 'O God!  Let me be
+some help to him!'
+
+"To God, my dear son!"  he said.
+
+A flicker of humour, of ironic question, passed over the boy's lips.
+
+Terribly moved, Pierson knelt down, and began softly, fervently
+praying.  His whispering mingled with the rustle of the palm-leaves,
+while the bar of sunlight crept up the body.  In the boy's smile had
+been the whole of stoic doubt, of stoic acquiescence.  It had met him
+with an unconscious challenge; had seemed to know so much.  Pierson
+took his hand, which lay outside the sheet.  The boy's lips moved, as
+though in thanks; he drew a long feeble breath, as if to suck in the
+thread of sunlight; and his eyes closed.  Pierson bent over the hand.
+When he looked up the boy was dead.  He kissed his forehead and went
+quietly out.
+
+The sun had set, and he walked away from the hospital to a hillock
+beyond the track on the desert's edge, and stood looking at the
+afterglow.  The sun and the boy--together they had gone West, into
+that wide glowing nothingness.
+
+The muezzin call to sunset prayer in the Arab village came to him
+clear and sharp, while he sat there, unutterably lonely.  Why had
+that smile so moved him?  Other death smiles had been like this
+evening smile on the desert hills--a glowing peace, a promise of
+heaven.  But the boy's smile had said: 'Waste no breath on me--you
+cannot help.  Who knows--who knows?  I have no hope, no faith; but I
+am adventuring.  Good-bye!'  Poor boy!  He had braved all things, and
+moved out uncertain, yet undaunted!  Was that, then, the uttermost
+truth, was faith a smaller thing?  But from that strange notion he.
+recoiled with horror.  'In faith I have lived, in faith I will die!'
+he thought, 'God helping me!'  And the breeze, ruffling the desert
+sand, blew the grains against the palms of his hands, outstretched
+above the warm earth.
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
+
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