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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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