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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Safety Match, by Ian Hay
+
+
+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: A Safety Match
+
+
+Author: Ian Hay
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 17, 2012  [eBook #39172]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SAFETY MATCH***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Quentin Johnson, Suzanne Shell, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/safetymatch00hayiuoft
+
+
+
+
+
+A SAFETY MATCH
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+
+Crown 8vo, 6s.
+
+A MAN'S MAN.
+
+Fourth Impression.
+
+
+
+Crown 8vo, 6s.
+
+THE RIGHT STUFF.
+
+_Fifth Impression._
+
+Popular Edition, Cloth, 1s. net.
+
+
+
+Crown 8vo, 6s.
+
+PIP.
+
+_Fourth Impression._
+
+Popular Edition, Cloth, 1s. net.
+
+
+
+WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS.
+
+Edinburgh and London.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+A SAFETY MATCH
+
+by
+
+IAN HAY
+
+Author of 'The Right Stuff,' 'A Man's Man,' 'Pip,' etc.
+
+Third Impression
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+William Blackwood and Sons
+Edinburgh and London
+1911
+
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+
+
+  _TO
+  H. M. S._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+  BOOK ONE.
+
+  THE STRIKING OF THE MATCH.
+
+  CHAP.                                           PAGE
+
+        I. HAPPY FAMILIES                            3
+
+       II. WANTED, A MAN                            23
+
+      III. THE WHEELS OF JUGGERNAUT                 36
+
+       IV. THE DEVIL A MONK WOULD BE                55
+
+        V. A SABBATH DAY'S JOURNEY                  76
+
+       VI. DAPHNE AS MATCHMAKER                     94
+
+      VII. THE MATCH IS STRUCK                     105
+
+     VIII. _MORITURA TE SALUTAT_                   115
+
+
+  BOOK TWO.
+
+  FLICKERINGS.
+
+       IX. A HORSE TO THE WATER                    129
+
+        X. A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SOCIAL SUCCESS   145
+
+       XI. _DIES IRAE_                             165
+
+      XII. CILLY; OR THE WORLD WELL LOST           184
+
+     XIII. THE COUNTERSTROKES                      197
+
+      XIV. INTERVENTION                            219
+
+       XV. JIM CARTHEW                             232
+
+
+  BOOK THREE.
+
+  THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLE.
+
+      XVI. SOME ONE TO CONFIDE IN                  243
+
+     XVII. THE CANDLE LIT                          250
+
+    XVIII. _ATHANASIUS CONTRA MUNDUM_              263
+
+      XIX. _LABORARE EST ORARE_                    276
+
+       XX. BLACK SUNDAY                            284
+
+      XXI. _VEILLESSE SAIT_                        289
+
+     XXII. HOLD THE FORT!                          296
+
+    XXIII. THE LAST TO LEAVE                       308
+
+     XXIV. ANOTHER ALIAS                           317
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE.
+
+THE STRIKING OF THE MATCH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+HAPPY FAMILIES.
+
+
+"Nicky, please, have you got Mr Pots the Painter?"
+
+"No, Stiffy, but I'll trouble you for Mrs Bones the Butcher's Wife.
+_Thank_ you. And Daph, have you got Master Bones the Butcher's Son?
+_Thank_ you. Family! One to me!"
+
+And Nicky, triumphantly plucking from her hand four pink-backed cards,
+slaps them down upon the table face upwards. They are apparently
+family portraits. The first--that of Bones _pere_--depicts a smug
+gentleman, with appropriate mutton-chop whiskers, mutilating a
+fearsome joint upon a block; the second, Mrs Bones, an ample matron in
+apple-green, proffering to an unseen customer a haunch of what looks
+like anaemic cab-horse; the third, Miss Bones, engaged in extracting
+nourishment from a colossal bone shaped like a dumb-bell; the fourth,
+Master Bones (bearing a strong family likeness to his papa), creeping
+unwillingly upon an errand, clad in canary trousers and a blue
+jacket, with a sirloin of beef nestling against his right ear.
+
+It was Saturday night at the Rectory, and the Vereker family--"those
+absurdly handsome Rectory children," as old Lady Curlew, of Hainings,
+invariably called them--sat round the dining-room table playing "Happy
+Families." The rules which govern this absorbing pastime are simple.
+The families are indeed happy. They contain no widows and no orphans,
+and each pair of parents possesses one son and one daughter--perhaps
+the perfect number, for the sides of the house are equally balanced
+both for purposes of companionship and in the event of sex-warfare. As
+for procedure, cards are dealt round, and each player endeavours, by
+requests based upon observation and deduction, to reunite within his
+own hand the members of an entire family,--an enterprise which, while
+it fosters in those who undertake it a reverence for the unities of
+home life, offers a more material and immediate reward in the shape of
+one point for each family collected. We will look over the shoulders
+of the players as they sit, and a brief consideration of each hand and
+of the tactics of its owner will possibly give us the key to the
+respective dispositions of the Vereker family, as well as a useful
+lesson in the art of acquiring that priceless possession, a Happy
+Family.
+
+Before starting on our tour of the table we may note that one member
+of the company is otherwise engaged. This is Master Anthony Cuthbert
+Vereker, aged ten years--usually known as Tony. He is the youngest
+member of the family, and is one of those fortunate people who are
+never bored, and who rarely require either company or assistance in
+their amusements. He lives in a world of his own, peopled by folk of
+his own creation; and with the help of this unseen host, which he can
+multiply to an indefinite extent and transform into anything he
+pleases, he organises and carries out schemes of recreation beside
+which all the Happy Families in the world become humdrum and suburban
+in tone. He has just taken his seat upon a chair opposite to another
+chair, across the arms of which he has laid the lid of his big box of
+bricks, and is feeling in his pocket for an imaginary key, for he is
+about to give an organ recital in the Albert Hall (which he has never
+seen) in a style modelled upon that of the village organist, whom he
+studies through a chink in a curtain every Sunday.
+
+Presently the lid is turned back, and the keyboard--a three-manual
+affair, ingeniously composed of tiers of wooden bricks--is exposed to
+view. The organist arranges unseen music and pulls out invisible
+stops. Then, having risen to set up on the mantelpiece hard by a
+square of cardboard bearing the figure 1, he resumes his seat, and
+embarks upon a rendering of Handel's "Largo in G," which its composer,
+to be just, would have experienced no difficulty in recognising,
+though he might have expressed some surprise that so large an
+instrument as the Albert Hall organ should produce so small a volume
+of sound. But then Handel never played his own Largo in a room full of
+elder brothers and sisters, immersed in the acquisition of Happy
+Families and impatient of distracting noises.
+
+The Largo completed, its executant rises to his feet and bows again
+and again in the direction of the sideboard; and then (the applause
+apparently having subsided) solemnly turns round the cardboard square
+on the mantelpiece so as to display the figure 2, and sets to work
+upon "The Lost Chord."
+
+Meanwhile the Happy Families are being rapidly united. The houses of
+Pots the Painter, Bun the Baker, and Dose the Doctor lie neatly piled
+at Nicky's right hand; and that Machiavellian damosel is now engaged
+in a businesslike quest for the only outstanding member of the family
+of Grits the Grocer.
+
+Nicky--or Veronica Elizabeth Vereker--was in many respects the most
+remarkable of the Rectory children. She was thirteen years old, was
+the only dark-haired member of the family, and (as she was fond of
+explaining) was possessed of a devil. This remarkable attribute
+was sometimes adduced as a distinction and sometimes as an
+excuse,--the former when impressionable and nervous children came
+to tea, the latter when all other palliatives of crime had failed.
+Certainly she could lay claim to the brooding spirit, the entire
+absence of fear, the unlimited low cunning, and the love of sin for
+its own sake which go to make the master-criminal. At present she
+was enjoying herself in characteristic fashion. Her brother
+Stephen--known as "Stiffy"--Nicky's senior by one year, a
+transparently honest but somewhat limited youth, had for the
+greater part of the game been applying a slow-moving intellect to
+the acquisition of one complete Family. Higher he did not look.
+Nicky's habit was to allow Stiffy, with infinite labour, to collect
+the majority of the members of a Family in which she herself was
+interested, and then, at the eleventh hour, to swoop down and strip
+her unconscious collaborator of his hardly-earned collection.
+
+Stiffy, sighing patiently, had just surrendered Mr, Mrs, and Miss
+Block (Hairdressers and Dealers in Toilet Requisites) to the
+depredatory hands of Nicky, and was debating in his mind whether he
+should endeavour when his next chance came to complete the
+genealogical tree of Mr Soot the Sweep or corner the clan of Bung the
+Brewer. Possessing two Bungs to one Soot, he decided on the latter
+alternative.
+
+Presently he was asked by his elder sister, Cilly (Monica Cecilia),
+for a card which he did not possess, and this gave him the desired
+opening.
+
+"I say, Nicky," he began deferentially, "have you got Master Bung?"
+
+Nicky surveyed her hand for a moment, and then raised a pair of
+liquid-blue eyes and smiled seraphically.
+
+"No, Stiffy, dear," she replied; "but I'll have Mr Bung and Mrs Bung."
+
+Stiffy, resigned as ever, handed over the cards. Suddenly Sebastian
+Aloysius Vereker, the eldest son of the family (usually addressed as
+"Ally"), put down his cards and remarked, slowly and without heat--
+
+"Cheating again! My word, Nicky, you are the absolute _edge_!"
+
+"_Who_ is cheating?" inquired Veronica in a shocked voice.
+
+"You. Either you _must_ have Master Bung, or else you are asking for
+Stiffy's cards without having any Bungs at all; because I've got Miss
+myself."
+
+He laid the corybantic young lady in question upon the table to
+substantiate his statement.
+
+Nicky remained entirely unruffled.
+
+"Oh--_Bung_!" she exclaimed. "Sorry! I thought you said 'Bun,' Stiffy.
+You should spit out your G's a bit more, my lad. _Bung-gah_--like
+that! I really must speak to dad about your articulation."
+
+In polite card-playing circles a lady's word is usually accepted as
+sufficient; but the ordinary courtesies of everyday life do not
+prevail in a family of six.
+
+"Rot!" said Ally.
+
+"Cheat!" said Cilly.
+
+"Never mind!" said loyal and peaceable Stiffy. "I don't care, really.
+Let's go on."
+
+"It's not fair," cried Cilly. "Poor Stiffy hasn't got a single Family
+yet. Give it to him, Nicky, you little beast! Daph, make her!"
+
+Daphne was the eldest of the flock, and for want of a mother dispensed
+justice and equity to the rest of the family from the heights of
+nineteen. For the moment she was assisting the organist, who had
+inadvertently capsized a portion of his keyboard. Now she returned to
+the table.
+
+"What is it, rabble?" she inquired maternally.
+
+A full-throated chorus informed her, and the arbitress detached the
+threads of the dispute with effortless dexterity.
+
+"You said you thought he was asking for Miss Bun and not Bung?" she
+remarked to the accused.
+
+"Yes--that was all," began Nicky. "You see," she continued
+pathetically, "they're all so beastly unjust to me, and----"
+
+Daphne picked up her small sister's pile of completed Families and
+turned them over.
+
+"You couldn't have thought Stiffy wanted _Buns_," she said in measured
+tones, "because they're here. You collected them yourself. You've
+cheated again. Upstairs, and no jam till Wednesday!"
+
+It is a tribute to Miss Vereker's disciplinary methods that the
+turbulent Nicky rose at once to her feet and, with a half-tearful,
+half-defiant reference to her Satanic inhabitant, left the room and
+departed upstairs, there to meditate on a Bun-strewn past and a
+jamless future.
+
+Daphne Vereker was perhaps the most beautiful of an extraordinarily
+attractive family. Her full name was Daphne Margaret. Her parents,
+whether from inherent piety or on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle,
+had endowed their offspring with the names of early saints and
+martyrs. The pagan derivative Daphne was an exception. It had been the
+name of Brian Vereker's young bride, and had been bestowed,
+uncanonically linked with that of a saint of blameless antecedents,
+upon the first baby which had arrived at the Rectory. Mrs Vereker had
+died eleven years later, two hours after the birth of that fertile
+genius Anthony Cuthbert, and Brian Vereker, left to wrestle with the
+upbringing of six children on an insufficient stipend in a remote
+country parish, had come to lean more and more, in the instinctive but
+exacting fashion of lonely man, upon the slim shoulders of his eldest
+daughter.
+
+There are certain attributes of woman before which the male sex, whose
+sole knowledge of the ways of life is derived from that stern
+instructor Experience, can only stand and gape in reverent awe. When
+her mother died Daphne Vereker was a tow-headed, long-legged,
+irresponsible marauder of eleven. In six months she looked like a
+rather prim little nursery-governess: in two years she could have
+taken the chair at a Mother's meeting. Circumstance is a great
+forcing-house, especially where women are concerned. Her dreamy,
+unpractical, affectionate father, oblivious of the expectant presence
+in the offing of numerous female relatives-in-law, had remarked in
+sober earnest to his little daughter, walking erect by his side in her
+short black frock on the way home from the funeral:--"You and I will
+have to bring up the children between us now, Daphne;" and the child,
+with an odd thrill of pride at being thus promoted to woman's highest
+office at the age of eleven, had responded with the utmost gravity--
+
+"You had better stick to the parish, dad, and I'll manage the kids."
+
+And she had done it. As she presides at the table this Saturday
+evening, with her round chin resting on her hands, surveying the
+picturesque crew of ragamuffins before her, we cannot but congratulate
+her on the success of her methods, whatever those may be. On her right
+lolls the apple of her eye, the eldest son, Ally. He is a handsome
+boy, with a ready smile and a rather weak mouth. He is being
+educated--God knows by what anxious economies in other directions--at
+a great public school. When he leaves, which will be shortly, the
+money will go to educate Stiffy, who is rising fourteen.
+
+Next to Ally sprawls Cilly, an amorphous schoolgirl with long rippling
+hair and great grey eyes that are alternately full of shy inquiry and
+hoydenish exuberance. Then comes the chair recently vacated by the
+Madonna-like Nicky; then the ruddy countenance and cheerful presence
+of the sunny-tempered Stiffy, completing the circle. In the corner
+Master Anthony Cuthbert, cherubic and rapturous, is engaged, with
+every finger and toe in action, upon the final frenzy of the
+"Hallelujah Chorus." The number 6 stands upon the mantelpiece, for the
+recital is drawing to a close.
+
+To describe Daphne herself is not easy. One fact is obvious, and that
+is that she possesses an instinct for dress not as yet acquired by any
+of her brothers and sisters. Her hair is of a peculiarly radiant
+gold, reflecting high lights at every turn of her head. Her eyes are
+brown, of the hue of a Highland burn on a sunny afternoon, and her
+eyebrows are very level and serene. Her colouring is perfect, and when
+she smiles we understand why it is that her unregenerate brothers and
+sisters occasionally address her as "Odol." When her face is in
+repose--which, to be frank, is not often--there is a pathetic droop at
+the corners of her mouth, which is perhaps accounted for by the cares
+of premature responsibility. She is dressed in brown velvet, with a
+lace collar--evening dress does not prevail in a household which
+affects high tea, but Daphne always puts on her Sunday frock on
+Saturday evenings--and, having discovered that certain colours suit
+her better than others, she has threaded a pale blue ribbon through
+her hair.
+
+Altogether she is a rather astonishing young person to find sitting
+contentedly resting her elbows upon a dingy tablecloth in an untidy
+dining-room which smells of American leather and fried eggs. It is as
+if one had discovered the Venus de Milo presiding at a Dorcas Society
+or Helen of Troy serving crumpets in an A.B.C. shop.
+
+The "Hallelujah Chorus" has just stopped dead at that paralysing
+hiatus of two bars which immediately precedes the final crash, when
+the door opens and the Reverend Brian Vereker appears. A glance at
+his clear-cut aristocratic features goes a long way towards deciding
+the question of the origin of the good looks of "those Rectory
+children."
+
+He is a tall man--six feet two,--and although he is barely fifty his
+hair is specklessly white. He looks more like a great prelate or
+statesman than a country parson. Perhaps he might have been one or the
+other, had he been born the eldest son of the eldest son of a peer,
+instead of the youngest son of the youngest. And again, perhaps not.
+The lines of his face indicate brain rather than character, and after
+all it is character that brings us out top in this world. There are
+furrows about his forehead that tell of much study; but about the
+corners of his mouth, where promptitude and decision usually set their
+seal, there is nothing--nothing but a smile of rare sweetness. His
+gentle blue eyes have the dreamy gaze that marks the saints and poets
+of this world: the steely glitter of the man of action is lacking.
+Altogether you would say that Brian Vereker would make a noble
+figurehead to any high enterprise; but you would add that if that
+enterprise was to succeed, the figurehead would require a good deal of
+imported driving-power behind it. And you would be right.
+
+The Rector paused in the doorway and surveyed the lamp-lit room.
+
+... "_Halle-lu-u-ja-ah!_" vociferated the Albert Hall organ with an
+air of triumphant finality. Brian Vereker turned to his youngest son
+with the ready sympathy of one child for another child's games.
+
+"That's right, Tony! That's the stuff! Good old George Frederick! _He_
+knew the meaning of the word music--eh?"
+
+"Yes--George Fwederick!" echoed the organist. "_And_ Arthur Seymour,
+daddy! You've just missed 'The Lost Chord.'"
+
+"Ah," said the Rector in a tone of genuine regret, "that's a pity. But
+we had the Seventy-Eighth Psalm to-night, and I'm later than usual."
+
+"Quadruple chant?" inquired Tony professionally.
+
+"Rather! But is your recital quite over, boyo?"
+
+"Yes--bedtime!" replied the organist, with a reproachful glance in the
+direction of his eldest sister.
+
+"Run along, dear!" was all the comfort he received from that
+inflexible despot.
+
+"All right! I must lock up, though."
+
+Master Tony removed the last number from the mantelpiece,
+disintegrated his keyboard and packed it up with the other bricks, and
+drawing aside the window-curtain remarked solemnly into the dark
+recess behind it--
+
+"That will be all to-night, organ-blower. You can go home now."
+
+To which a husky and ventriloquial voice replied--
+
+"Thank you kindly, Mr Handel, sir. Good-night."
+
+"Now," concluded Mr Handel, turning to his elders with the air of a
+martyr addressing a group of arena lions, "I'm ready!"
+
+"Take him up, Cilly dear," said Daphne. "I must look after dad's
+supper."
+
+"Come on, Tony," said Cilly, uncoiling her long legs from under her
+and rising from the hearthrug.
+
+"Righto!" said Tony. "You be a cart-horse and I'll be a broken-down
+motor."
+
+Monica Cecilia Vereker meekly complied, and departed upstairs, towing
+the inanimate mechanism of the inventive Anthony behind her bump by
+bump, utilising her sash, which she had removed for the purpose, as a
+tow-rope.
+
+"Ally and Stiffy," commanded Daphne, turning to the two remaining
+members of the family, "you'd better go and pump the cistern full.
+Saturday night, you know, and the kids' baths have just been filled;
+so look sharp before the boiler bursts."
+
+Stiffy, obliging as ever, rose at once; Ally, cumbered by that majesty
+which doth hedge a sixth-form boy and a member of the school Fifteen
+(especially when ordered about by a female), was more deliberate in
+his acquiescence. However, presently both the boys were gone, and
+five minutes later Daphne, with the assistance of the one little maid
+whom the establishment supported, had laid the Rector's supper. She
+installed her father in his seat on one side of the table, and took
+her own on the other, assisting the progress of the meal from time to
+time, but for the most part sitting with her chin resting upon her two
+fists, and contemplating the tired man before her with serious brown
+eyes. Twice she had to leave her seat, once to remove the butter from
+the vicinity of her parent's elbow, and once to frustrate an attempt
+on the part of that excellent but absent-minded man to sprinkle sugar
+over a lettuce.
+
+"Well, my daughter," remarked the Rector presently, "what of the
+weekly report?"
+
+Saturday night at the Rectory was reserved for a sort of domestic
+budget.
+
+"Here are the books," said Daphne. "They're much as usual, except that
+I had to pay two bob on Wednesday for a bottle of embrocation for
+Ally. He is in training for the mile in the sports at the beginning of
+next term, and it does his muscles so much good."
+
+"When I won the mile at Fenner's, Daphne," began the Reverend Brian,
+with a sudden glow of reminiscence in his dreamy eyes, "I did it
+without embrocation, or any other new-fashioned----"
+
+"Yes, dear, but they have to run so much _faster_ now than they did,"
+explained Daphne soothingly. "Then, about the kitchen chimney----"
+
+"But I only took four minutes, twenty-eight----"
+
+"Yes, old man, and I'm _proud_ of you!" said Daphne swiftly. "Well,
+the sweep is coming in on Wednesday, when you'll be away at Wilford,
+so _that's_ all right." She was anxious to get away from the question
+of the embrocation. It had been a rank extravagance, and she knew it;
+but Ally was ever her weak spot. "Then, I've got three-and-nine in
+hand out of current expenses just now, and if I take two half-crowns
+out of the emergency bag and we go without a second joint this week, I
+can get Nicky a new pair of boots, if you don't mind. (Don't cut the
+cheese with a spoon, dear; take this knife.) Of course, we ought not
+to have to go to the emergency bag for boots at all. It's rather
+upsetting. To-day I find that a perfectly ducky pair of Sunday shoes,
+which I outgrew just before I stopped growing, and was keeping
+specially for that child, are too small for her by yards. (I had tried
+them on Cilly a year ago, but she simply couldn't get her toe in.) And
+now they'll be wasted, because there are no more of us girls. My feet
+are _most_ exasperating."
+
+"Your mother had tiny feet," said the Rector, half to himself.
+
+He pushed away his plate, and gazed absently before him into that
+land where his son Tony still spent so much of his time, and whither
+Tony's young and pretty mother had been borne away eleven years
+before. Daphne permitted him a reverie of five minutes, while she
+puckered her brow over the account-books. Then she rose and took down
+a pipe from a rack on the mantelpiece. This she filled from a cracked
+jar thirty years old, adorned with the coat-of-arms of one of the
+three royal colleges of Cambridge, and laid it by her father's left
+hand.
+
+"Then there's another thing," she continued, lighting a spill at the
+fire. "Isn't it time to enter Stiffy for school? Mr Allnutt asked us
+to say definitely by April whether he was coming to fill Ally's place
+after summer or not, otherwise he would be obliged to give the vacancy
+to some one else. It's the end of March now."
+
+The Rector lit his pipe--his one luxury--in a meditative fashion, and
+then leaned back to contemplate his daughter, with her glinting hair
+and troubled little frown.
+
+"Mr Allnutt? To be sure! Of course! A ripe scholar, Daphne, and a
+long-standing personal friend of my own. He took the Porson and Craven
+in successive years. His Iambics----"
+
+All this was highly irrelevant, and exceedingly characteristic. Daphne
+waited patiently through a _resume_ of Mr Allnutt's achievements as a
+scholar and a divine, and continued:--
+
+"Will you enter Stiffy at once, then? It would be a pity not to get
+him into Ally's old house."
+
+Brian Vereker, suddenly recalled to business, laid down his pipe and
+sighed.
+
+"Boys are terribly expensive things, little daughter," he said. "And
+we are so very very poor. I wonder if they are worth it."
+
+"Of _course_ they are, the dears!" said Daphne, up in arms at once.
+
+"Of course, of course," agreed the Rector apologetically. "You are
+right, child; you are always right. It is ungrateful and un-Christian
+of me to give expression to such thoughts when God has granted me
+three good sons. Still, I admit it _was_ a disappointment to me when
+Ally failed to gain a scholarship at Cambridge. He may have been right
+in his assertion that there were an exceptionally strong set of
+candidates up on that occasion, but it was unfortunate that he should
+have overslept himself on the morning of the Greek Prose Paper, even
+though, as he pointed out, Greek Prose is his weak subject. What a
+pity! Strange lodgings, probably! Still, his disappointment must be
+far greater than ours, so it would be ungenerous to dwell further on
+the matter. But I fail to see at present how he can be started in life
+now. If only one had a little money to spare! I have never felt the
+need of such a thing before."
+
+"Yes, we could do with a touch of it," assented Miss Vereker
+elegantly. She began to tick off the family requirements on her
+fingers. "There's Ally to be started in life; and Cilly ought to be
+sent somewhere and finished--she's tragically gawky, and she'd be
+perfectly lovely if she was given half a chance; and Stiffy has to be
+sent to school; and the two kiddies are growing up, and this house is
+simply tumbling down for want of repairs; and it's really time you had
+a curate for long-distance visiting."
+
+"Never!" said Brian Vereker firmly.
+
+"All right. Never, if you like, but he'll have to come some day," said
+Daphne serenely. (The question of the curate cropped up almost as
+regularly as that of the second joint on Wednesdays.) "And all we've
+got to run the whole show on," she concluded, with a pathetic little
+frown which many a man would gladly have given his whole estate to
+smooth away, "is--two pounds seventeen and ninepence in the emergency
+bag! It's a bit thick, isn't it?"
+
+Brian Vereker surveyed his daughter's troubled countenance with
+characteristic placidity. Simple faith--some called it unpractical
+optimism--was the main article of his creed.
+
+"The Lord will provide, my daughter," he said.
+
+At this moment the door opened with a flourish, and, the crimson and
+enraged countenance of Master Anthony Cuthbert Vereker having been
+thrust into the room, its owner inquired, in a voice rendered husky
+by indignation, how any one could be expected to impersonate a
+Dreadnought going into action in the bath, when the said bath was
+encumbered with the flotsam and jetsam of a previous occupant. In
+other words, was he to be bathed in the same water as Nicky?
+
+It was an old grievance, arising from the insufficient nature of the
+Rectory water-supply (which had to be pumped up by hand from the
+garden) and the smallness of the kitchen boiler; and Daphne had
+perforce to go upstairs to adjust it. Consequently the sitting of the
+Committee of Ways and Means, with all its immediate necessities and
+problems for the future, was incontinently suspended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+WANTED, A MAN.
+
+
+Five gentlemen sat side by side along a baize-covered table in a dingy
+room in a dingier building not far from the principal pit-head of
+Mirkley Colliery. They were the representatives of the local Colliery
+Owners' Association, and they were assembled and met together for the
+purpose of receiving a deputation representing the united interests
+and collective wisdom of their _employes_.
+
+It should be noted that although there were five gentlemen present,
+six chairs were set along the table.
+
+Now a deputation may be defined as an instrument designed to extract
+from you something which you have not the slightest desire to give up.
+Consequently the reception of such, whether you be a damsel listening
+for the rat-a-tat of an undesired suitor who has written asking for an
+interview, or a dethroned Royal Family sitting in its deserted abode
+awaiting the irruption of a Committee of Public Safety composed of
+the greater part of its late loyal subjects armed with billhooks and
+asking for blood, is always an uncomfortable business at the best. Our
+five gentlemen do not appear to be enjoying their present position any
+more than the two examples cited above. In fact, they look so
+exceedingly averse to interviews or arguments of any description, that
+we will leave them for a moment and divert our attention to the
+deputation itself, which is delicately skirting puddles of coal-black
+water and heaps of pit refuse on its way from the boiler-house, where
+its members have assembled, to the office-buildings of the colliery.
+
+They are six in number, and we will describe them _seriatim_.
+
+Mr Tom Winch is a professional agitator, though he calls himself
+something else. He is loud-voiced, and ceaseless in argument of a
+sort. His notion of a typical member of the upper classes is a
+debilitated imbecile suffering from chronic alcoholism and various
+maladies incident on over-indulgence, who divides his time between
+gloating over money-bags and grinding the faces of the poor. He
+privately regards Trades Unions as an antiquated drag upon the wheels
+of that chariot at the tail of which he hopes one day to see Capital
+led captive, gentlemen like Mr Tom Winch handling the reins and plying
+the whip.
+
+Mr Amos Entwistle is a working collier, and is rightly regarded by
+both parties as a safe man. He is habitually sober, scrupulously
+honest, and has worked at Belton Pit for nearly forty years. He looks
+upon Trades Unions as his father and mother.
+
+Mr Jacob Entwistle is the Nestor of the party. (Amos is his son.) He
+is a patriarchal old gentleman, with a long white beard, the manner of
+an ambassador, the deafness of an adder, and the obstinacy of a mule.
+Altogether he is just the sort of man to prove a valuable asset to any
+properly constituted deputation. He is the senior member of the local
+branch of the _Employes'_ Association. He regards himself as the
+father and mother of Trades Unions.
+
+Mr Albert Brash is an expert in the art of what may be called
+Righteous Indignation. Never was there such an exploiter of
+grievances. Is short time declared? Mr Brash calls for an Act of
+Parliament. Is there an explosion of fire-damp? Mr Brash mutters
+darkly that one of these days a director must swing. Does a careless
+worker remove a pit-prop and bring down an avalanche of coal on
+himself? Mr Brash raises clenched hands to heaven and clamours for a
+revolution. So persistently and so methodically does Mr Brash lay upon
+the shoulders of Capital the responsibility for all the ills to which
+flesh is liable, from a hard winter to triplets, that he has
+ultimately (as is the way in this short-sighted world of ours)
+achieved the position of Sir Oracle. His deportment is that of a
+stage conspirator, and he rarely speaks above a hoarse and arresting
+whisper. He calls himself an Anarchist, but he quails at the passing
+of the most benevolent policeman. He regards Trades Unions as
+well-meaning institutions, with but little discrimination as to their
+choice of leaders.
+
+Mr James Killick is a thoroughly honest, thoroughly muddle-headed
+Socialist of a rather common type. Like many a wiser and more
+observant man before him, he has realised something of the grinding
+misery and suffering of this world, and a great and vague desire to
+better things is surging inarticulately within him. He has come to
+the conclusion, as most half-educated philosophers usually do, that
+the simplest remedy would be to take from those who have and give
+the proceeds to those who have not. The fact that the world is
+divided into men to whose hands money sticks like glue and men
+through whose fingers it slips like water, and that consequently a
+Utopian re-distribution of property would have to be repeated at
+inconveniently frequent intervals in order to preserve the social
+balance, has not yet been borne in on him. He regards Trades Unionism
+as a broken reed.
+
+Mr Adam Wilkie is a Scot of the dourest and most sepulchral
+appearance. Native reticence and an extremely cautious manner of
+expressing himself have invested him with that halo of business acumen
+which appears to be inevitable to the Scot as viewed by the Sassenach,
+and his very silence is regarded with respectful admiration by his
+more verbose colleagues. In reality, he is an intensely stupid,
+entirely placid individual. Still, he has kept himself by native
+thrift in tolerable comfort all his life without extraneous
+assistance, and he consequently regards Trades Unionism as an
+institution specially and mercifully introduced by Providence for the
+purpose of keeping the weak-kneed English out of the poorhouse.
+
+"Who's to be there?" inquired Mr Brash of Mr Entwistle senior.
+
+That patriarch, who was negotiating a mountainous waste-heap, made no
+reply.
+
+"Who are we going to meet?" repeated Mr Brash in a louder tone.
+
+"Eh?" inquires Mr Entwistle, giving his invariable answer to any
+sudden question.
+
+"Who are we going to _meet_?" bawled Mr Winch.
+
+Mr Entwistle, who was never at a loss a second time, smiled
+benignantly and replied--
+
+"Ay, that's so. But maybe we can manage to dry 'em at the fire in the
+office."
+
+"I expect there will be five of them, Mr Winch," interpolated Amos,
+coming to the rescue. "Kirkley, Thompson, Crisp, Aymer, Montague----"
+
+There was a grunt of disapproval from Mr Wilkie as the last name was
+mentioned.
+
+"Yon felly!" he observed darkly. "Aha! Mphm!"
+
+Then he relapsed into silence. It was upon such safe utterances as
+these that Mr Wilkie's reputation for profound wisdom was based.
+
+"Is that all?" said Winch. "Because if it is, I'll undertake to learn
+that lot right enough! Kirkley, of course, is just an empty-headed
+aristocrat: he don't count. Then that Crisp--he's too cautious to do
+anything. We can talk Thompson round all right: done it half a dozen
+times meself. Aymer never knows his own mind two minutes together, and
+Moses is a coward. But _is_ that all? Ain't the big man going to be
+there? He's the lad that counts in that crowd."
+
+"He was away in London yesterday," said Entwistle junior. "But you
+never know----"
+
+"Wallowing in the vice and luxury of the metropolis!" chanted Mr Brash
+suddenly, as if from some internal missal. "The master absent,
+squandering his tainted millions, while we stay here and starve! If I
+was a Member o' Parliament----"
+
+"Talk sense," said Amos Entwistle curtly. "He may be back for all we
+know. Anyway, they're certain to bring him up if they can, because
+they know they can't do without him. Mind that tank-engine, father."
+
+He impelled his aged parent, who, oblivious to delirious whistling,
+was resolutely obstructing the progress of a diminutive locomotive
+hauling a string of trucks, on to safer ground.
+
+"Well, we'll hope for the best," said Mr Winch piously. "It would be
+something if he was to come late, even. Give me twenty minutes with
+the rest before he can get his oar in, and I'll undertake to make them
+outvote him."
+
+By this time the deputation had arrived at the managerial offices, and
+five minutes later they were admitted to the presence of the Board.
+They did not know that they had been immediately preceded by an
+orange-coloured envelope, which was eagerly torn open by Lord Kirkley,
+the deputy-chairman.
+
+"Good egg!" observed his lordship, with a sigh of heartfelt relief.
+"Juggernaut's coming."
+
+A gentle murmur of satisfaction was audible. Evidently the Board felt
+the need of a little stiffening. We may as well describe them.
+
+The Marquis of Kirkley was more accustomed to exercising a kindly
+despotism over rustics who lived contentedly on fourteen shillings
+a-week than to splitting hairs with unbending mechanics earning four
+pounds, whose views on the relations between master and man were
+dictated by a cast-iron bureaucracy, and who regarded not the elastic
+laws of Give and Take. He was a handsome, breezy, kind-hearted
+patrician of thirty-four, and considered Trades Unions a damned
+interfering nuisance.
+
+James Crisp was a solicitor, and represented the Dean and Chapter of
+Kilchester, beneath the very foundation of whose mighty cathedral ran
+a very profitable little seam of coal, which was chiefly responsible
+for making the bishopric of the diocese one of the richest
+ecclesiastical plums in England. He was a shrewd man of business,
+probably the best qualified of those present to take the lead in the
+present instance. Consequently he remained studiously in the
+background. He regarded Trades Unions as inevitable, but by no means
+invulnerable.
+
+Sir Nigel Thompson had inherited great possessions, including a
+colliery, from his father. There was no vice in him, but he loved coal
+about as much as a schoolboy loves irregular verbs, and his only
+passions in life were old furniture and chemical research. He attended
+under compulsion, having torn himself from his comfortable house in
+London at the bidding of his manager, in whose hands he was reported
+(not altogether unjustly) to be as wax. He was full of theoretical
+enthusiasm for Trades Unions, which he identified in some mysterious
+way with the liberty of the individual; but wished mildly that people
+could contrive to settle their affairs without dragging him north.
+Altogether a pleasant but entirely useless member of the Board.
+
+Mr Alfred Aymer was the owner of Cherry Hill Colliery. He was
+middle-aged, timorous, and precipitate. Left to himself, he would
+probably have been a kind and fair-dealing employer. But it was his
+misfortune to be so constituted that his opinions on any subject were
+invariably those of the last man with whom he had discussed it.
+Consequently his line of action in the affairs of life was something
+in the nature of an alternating electric current. After an interview
+with his manager he would issue a decree of unparalleled ferocity:
+after five minutes with a deputation of _employes_ he would rescind
+all previous resolutions and promise a perfectly fabulous bonus next
+pay-day. In his present company he was an adamantine Capitalist, and
+regarded Trades Unions as the most pernicious of institutions.
+
+Last of all came Mr Montague, whose surname at an earlier and less
+distinguished period in his history had probably rhymed with "noses."
+He came from London, where he earned a livelihood by acquiring the
+controlling interest in various commercial ventures, and making these
+pay cent per cent. He had recently become proprietor of Marbledown
+Colliery, and it was said that he was making a better thing out of it
+than his _employes_. He regarded Trade Unions as an impertinent
+infringement of the right of the upper classes to keep the lower
+classes in their proper place. From which the intelligent reader will
+have no difficulty in deciding to which class Mr Montague considered
+that he himself belonged.
+
+The deputation was introduced with the usual formalities. Its object
+was to effect the reinstatement of two _employes_ at Marbledown
+Colliery, an engineman and a hewer, who had been summarily dismissed
+from their positions for endeavouring, in a society whose relations
+had never been of the most cordial, to heighten dissension between
+master and man.
+
+Mr Tom Winch's version of the case, delivered with great wealth of
+detail and a good deal of unnecessary shouting, was different. The
+men, it appeared, were models of what enginemen and hewers should be.
+Their sole offence consisted in having incurred the dislike of the
+mine-manager, Mr Dodd--whether through their own sturdy independence
+as true-born Englishmen (_applause from Mr Brash_), or the natural
+jealousy of an incompetent official towards two able and increasingly
+prominent subordinates, it was not for Mr Winch to say. Proceeding,
+the orator warmed to his work, and mentioned that one man was as good
+as another. Indeed, but for the merest accident of fortune, Lord
+Kirkley himself might be delving for coal in the bowels of the earth,
+what time Messrs Conlin and Murton, the dismissed _employes_, sate in
+the House of Lords smoking cigars and drinking champagne.
+
+After this singularly convincing peroration Mr Winch fell back into
+line with his companions, amid the _sotto voce_ commendations of
+Messrs Brash and Killick. Mr Aymer, who had been taking notes on a
+sheet of paper, tore it up with a resigned air of finality. The case
+was clear: these poor fellows must be reinstated.
+
+The chairman conferred briefly with Mr Crisp.
+
+"Would any other of you gentlemen like to say anything?" he inquired.
+
+The question was communicated to Mr Entwistle senior, who stepped
+forward and delivered himself of a courtly but rambling discourse,
+consisting chiefly of reminiscences of something portentous but
+unintelligible which had happened forty years ago, and even to the
+most irrelevant mind presented no sort of bearing upon the case
+whatsoever.
+
+After this Lord Kirkley replied. His remarks were not convincing, for
+he was hampered in dealing with the question by complete inability to
+understand where the men's grievance came in, and said so. The owners,
+he explained, tried to do the fair thing, and most of them did
+considerably more. Sick funds, pensions, benevolent schemes, and all
+that sort of thing, didn't they know? He quite admitted that an
+employer of labour had grave responsibilities and duties laid upon
+him, and he for one had always tried to live up to them. But hang it!
+surely an employer had the right to get rid of a couple of fellows who
+went about preaching anarchy and red revolution in all the
+public-houses in the district--what? He did not mind ordinary
+grousing. It did everybody good to blow off steam periodically: he did
+it himself. But there was grousing and grousing: and when it came to
+the sort of game that Messrs Conlin and Murton were playing, it was
+his lordship's opinion that a _ne plus ultra_ of thickness had been
+attained.
+
+The chairman concluded a somewhat colloquial address amid a deathly
+silence, and the deputation and the board glared uncomfortably at one
+another. An _impasse_ had been reached, it was clear.
+
+"It's all very well, gentlemen," broke in Killick suddenly, "for you
+aristocrats----"
+
+Lord Kirkley, who was not without a certain sense of proportion,
+glanced involuntarily at Mr Montague and then at Mr Killick. Did this
+omniscient and self-opinionated son of toil really see no moral
+difference between a Peer of the realm, with centuries of clean-bred
+ancestry behind him, and a man who wore diamond rings and
+elastic-sided boots? Mr Montague looked up, and regarded Mr Killick
+with something akin to affection.
+
+There was a sudden rumble underneath the windows, accompanied by the
+hoot of a motor-horn.
+
+The drama having run itself to a deadlock, the _deus_ had duly
+arrived--in his _machina_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+THE WHEELS OF JUGGERNAUT.
+
+
+There was a dead silence, unbroken until Juggernaut entered the room.
+
+"Good-morning, gentlemen," he said briskly. "I am glad to see that the
+deputation has only just arrived."
+
+He turned to the clerk who had shown him in.
+
+"Andrews," he said, "bring chairs for these gentlemen, and then we can
+get to business."
+
+Chairs were brought, and the deputation, which had been balancing
+itself on alternate legs for nearly half an hour, sat down with an
+enhanced sense of comfort and importance to what they realised at once
+was to be the interview proper.
+
+Juggernaut took the seat at the middle of the table vacated by Lord
+Kirkley, and inquired--
+
+"Has any one spoken yet?"
+
+Progress was reported by Mr Crisp.
+
+"I wonder if I might trouble the deputation again," said the chairman.
+"Not you, Mr Winch, thank you!" as that Demosthenes cleared his
+throat in a threatening manner. "In the first place, you don't
+represent the men in any sense. In fact, considering that you are
+engaged in no employment in this district, I think it would have been
+much wiser on the part of those responsible for this deputation to
+have left you out altogether. You are not even a properly accredited
+Trades Union official."
+
+"Gentlemen of the Board," began Mr Winch portentously, "I appeal----"
+
+"Don't trouble, really, Mr Winch," broke in Juggernaut with inflexible
+cheerfulness. "You see, I know exactly what you are going to say. I
+have heard it so often in other places where you have been kind enough
+to come forward and champion the cause--of--of--the oppressed millions
+of this country. That's right, isn't it?"
+
+A muffled sound proceeded from the interior of Mr Wilkie--his first
+contribution to the debate--and the chairman proceeded.
+
+"I wonder if Mr Entwistle junior would kindly give us the facts."
+
+Amos Entwistle, rising from his seat, re-stated the case of the two
+men. They were competent and industrious workmen, he maintained, and
+so long as they gave satisfaction in their situations their private
+lives and leisure occupations were entirely their own concern.
+Possibly their views on the relations of Labour and Capital were
+extreme, but the speaker begged respectfully to point out that there
+were extremists on both sides; and since many employers might and did
+regard the men they paid as dirt beneath their feet, it seemed only
+natural that a section of the men should regard their employers as
+bullies and tyrants. Mr Entwistle followed up this undoubted
+home-thrust with a request for a categorical list of the offences
+alleged against the two men, and solemnly but respectfully warned the
+Board against risking a serious upheaval by endeavouring to stifle
+legitimate criticism of its actions. With apologies for plain-speaking
+he resumed his seat, and Mr Aymer tore up a sheet of paper upon which
+he had commenced operations on the arrival of the chairman.
+
+"Would any other gentleman like to say anything?" inquired Juggernaut.
+"Mr Brash? Mr Wilkie?"
+
+No, the gentlemen addressed had nothing to say. Their _forte_ was
+plainly that of chorus.
+
+"Very well," said Juggernaut. "In the first place, I am going to
+accede to Mr Entwistle's perfectly just request that a definite reason
+should be given for the dismissal of these men. I agree with him that
+it is a foolish thing to stifle legitimate criticism. Unfortunately, I
+don't agree with him that the criticisms of Messrs Conlin and Murton
+_are_ legitimate. I have been making inquiries into the antecedents of
+these two. Murton is a paid agitator. He is not a local man. He came
+here less than a year ago, and has been making deliberate mischief
+ever since. He has money to spend: he backs his arguments with beer. I
+shouldn't be surprised if he drew his salary from the organisation
+which retains your services, Mr Winch."
+
+Mr Winch's small eyes began to protrude. He did not relish this line
+of argument. In dealing with Boards and other representatives of
+bloated Capital he preferred to keep to the high moral and sentimental
+plane--the sufferings of the downtrodden sons of Labour, the equality
+of all men in the sight of God, and so on. Mundane personalities,
+coupled with the suggestion that he, a high priest of altruism, was
+making a good thing out of his exertions on behalf of his
+fellow-toilers, took him below the belt, he considered.
+
+"Conlin," continued Juggernaut, disregarding the fermenting Mr Winch,
+"seems to be a comparatively sincere and honest grumbler. He has
+realised that this is an unjust world, and he wants to put it right by
+Act of Parliament. Consequently he goes about advocating certain
+special and particular forms of legislation which, if they came into
+being, would benefit about one member of the community in a hundred
+and be grossly unfair to the other ninety-nine. He has not yet
+discovered for himself that the aim of all legislation must be to
+benefit the type and not the individual. That is the rock upon which
+all your friends split, Mr Winch. You are always trying to legislate
+for special cases, and it can't be _done_. I quite agree with you that
+the conditions of labour in parts of this country are deplorable. We
+all want to put them right. But there are two things we cannot do. We
+can't cure them in a hurry, and we can't cure them by swallowing quack
+medicines. What we have to do is to set to work on systematic lines,
+and go on working, with patience and a sense of proportion, until our
+whole social fabric develops into a sounder and more healthy
+condition. That requires time, and time requires patience, and
+patience requires common-sense, and common-sense is a thing which is
+lamentably scarce in this world, Mr Winch. We are marching on to a
+better state of things every year; but every bit of unsound,
+panic-stricken, vote-catching legislation--Right-to-Work Bills,
+Unemployment Acts, and so on--throws us back a step, because its
+tendency is to remove the symptom instead of curing the disease. Now,
+symptoms are very valuable assets. They give us reliable and necessary
+information, which is more than can be said of most intelligence
+departments. If ever you have such a vulgar thing as a pain in your
+stomach, Mr Winch, that is a kindly hint from Nature that there is
+something wrong with the works. If you drink two of whisky hot the
+pain may cease, but it does not follow that the real cause of the
+trouble has been removed. In effect you have merely put back the
+danger-signal to safety without removing the danger. That is just what
+all this despicable, hand-to-mouth, time-serving legislation that you
+and your friends are trying to force upon a popularity-hunting
+Government is doing for the country to-day."
+
+The speaker paused. The deputation wore a distinctly chastened
+appearance. Mr Aymer was engaged upon a third sheet of notes. Sir
+Nigel Thompson was working out a chemical formula on the back of an
+envelope.
+
+"Let us get back to the point, sir," said Amos Entwistle doggedly. "I
+agree with a great deal of what you say----"
+
+"Shame!" interpolated Mr Killick suddenly.
+
+"But we came here to ask for the reinstatement of these two men, and
+not to discuss social problems."
+
+"Granted all the time," said Juggernaut cheerfully. "I admit that I
+have not made Messrs Conlin and Murton my Alpha and Omega in these
+remarks of mine; but that is because I deliberately went back to first
+principles instead of cutting into the middle of things. Now for your
+request! You want an answer? Here it is. The two men cannot be
+reinstated under any circumstances whatsoever. I confess I am rather
+sorry for Conlin: he is in a different class from Murton. But he is
+tarred with the same brush, and he must go."
+
+"Take care, Sir John," broke in Mr Winch, in the declamatory bray
+which he reserved for extreme crises. "Don't push us too hard! What if
+a strike was to be proclaimed at Marbledown Colliery? You wouldn't
+like that, Mr Montague! You have a bad enough name in the district as
+it is. You grind your 'eel----"
+
+"Mr Winch," said Juggernaut in a voice of thunder, "I must ask you to
+address yourself to me. This matter has been taken out of Mr
+Montague's hands by the combined action of the Owners' Association; so
+if you have any strictures to offer they must be laid upon me as
+representing the Association collectively. As for striking--well, you
+struck before, you know. I don't think any of us have forgotten that
+winter--masters or men!"
+
+"We nearly beat you then," said Killick hotly.
+
+"That," retorted Mr Montague, suddenly breaking into the debate, "was
+because some sentimental fool sent food and necessaries to your
+wives."
+
+"It's the women and children who pay for strikes, you know, Mr Winch,"
+said Mr Crisp, speaking for the first time--"not you men. You can do
+without beer and baccy at a pinch, but your families must have
+groceries and fire. If they had not been kept going by that unknown
+benefactor the strike would have collapsed as soon as the Union funds
+gave out."
+
+"Perhaps they will be kept going again," said Amos Entwistle quietly.
+
+"They won't," said Juggernaut emphatically. "You can take my word for
+that, Mr Entwistle. I have seen to it. And I may add that if you
+consider it advisable to proclaim a sectional strike, the owners on
+their part might find it necessary to declare a lock-out at all the
+collieries in the district. If men can combine, so can masters."
+
+There was a staggered silence. Even the Board were hardly prepared for
+this. Juggernaut had so dominated the situation since his arrival that
+one or two--Mr Montague in particular--were beginning to wonder rather
+peevishly why they had been admitted to the meeting. But Mr Crisp
+leaned back and took snuff contentedly. He appreciated strong
+measures, though he was averse to initiating them.
+
+Still, the temper of the meeting was rising. Killick broke out
+furiously. It was a burning shame, a monstrous iniquity, he declared,
+that men who had never done an honest day's work in their lives should
+be enabled, simply because they had money in their pockets, to force
+humiliating conditions on a majority who had no alternative but to
+submit or starve. He spoke with all the conviction that absolute
+sincerity carries; but the effect of his philippic was not enhanced by
+the marginal comments of his colleague, Mr Brash, who kept up a
+running fire of _sotto voce_ references to bloody-minded tyrants,
+champagne, ballet-girls, and other equally relevant topics with a
+persistence and enthusiasm which would have proved embarrassing to a
+more self-conscious and less frenzied rhetorician than Mr Killick.
+
+When both solo and _obligato_ had subsided, Juggernaut spoke again.
+
+"It is one of the most common delusions of men of your way of
+thinking, Mr Killick, to imagine that the only kind of work worthy of
+the name is manual labour. Personally, I have tried both. For two
+years after I came down from the University I worked for experience's
+sake in a pit not far from here. I went down with my shift daily and
+worked full time; but I assure you that those two years were far from
+being the most laborious of my life."
+
+"Your case was different, sir," said Amos Entwistle, with a practical
+man's quick perception of his opponent's weak points. "You were doing
+it for pleasure, to acquire experience--not to earn your bread. You
+could look forward to something better later on."
+
+"And so can every man!" replied Juggernaut. "Each one of us is able
+if he likes to work his way up, and up, and up; and the lower he
+starts, the greater is his range of opportunity. The man at the bottom
+has the whole ladder to climb, instead of a few paltry rungs, as is
+the case of a man born near the top. Let him think of that, and be
+thankful!"
+
+The chairman's sombre eyes glowed. His tone of raillery was gone: he
+was in sober earnest now. To him poverty and riches were nothing; he
+could have lived happily on a pound a-week: the salt of life lay in
+the overcoming of its difficulties.
+
+But Amos Entwistle was a man of tough fibre--by far the strongest man,
+next to the chairman, in that assemblage.
+
+"You can't deny, sir," he persisted doggedly, "that it is very
+difficult for a poor man to rise. His employers don't help him much.
+They are best satisfied with a man who keeps his proper station, as
+they call it."
+
+"Tyrants!" interpolated Mr Winch hastily.
+
+"Star Chamber!" added Mr Brash, _a propos de bottes_.
+
+"Tyrants? Star Chamber?" Juggernaut surveyed the interrupter
+quizzically. "Here is a question for you, Mr Brash. Which is the
+worse--the tyranny of the harsh employer who gathers where he has not
+strawed, or the tyranny of a Trades Union which a man is forced to
+join, and which compels the best worker to slow down his pace to that
+of the worst, and frequently compels him to come out on strike over
+some question upon which he is perfectly satisfied? I won't attempt to
+place them in order of merit, but I should feel inclined to
+bracket----"
+
+"Trades Unions," interrupted Mr Winch, who was beginning to feel
+himself unduly excluded from the present symposium, "are the first
+steps towards the complete emancipation of Labour"--he smacked his
+lips as over a savoury bakemeat--"from the degrading shackles of
+Capital. Every man his own master!"
+
+Juggernaut nodded his head slowly.
+
+"Ye-es," he said. "That sounds admirable. But what does it _mean_
+exactly? As far as I can see, it means that every one who is at
+present a labourer is ultimately going to become a capitalist. In that
+case it rather looks as if there would be a shortage of hands if there
+was work to be done. Your Utopia, Mr Winch, appears to me to resemble
+the Grand Army of Hayti, which consists of five hundred privates and
+eleven hundred Generals. No, no; you must bear in mind this fact, that
+ever since the world began mankind has been divided up into masters
+and men, and will continue to be so divided until the end of time.
+What we--you and I--have to do is to adjust the relations between the
+two in such a fashion as to make the conditions fair for both. I
+don't say that employers aren't frequently most high-handed and
+tyrannical, but I also say that _employes_ are extraordinarily touchy
+and thin-skinned. I think it chiefly arises from a sort of distorted
+notion that there is something degrading and undignified in obeying an
+order. Why, man, obedience and discipline are the very life-blood of
+every institution worthy of the name. They are no class affair either.
+I have seen the captain of a company stand at attention without
+winking for ten minutes, and receive a damning from his colonel that
+no non-commissioned officer in the service would have dreamed of
+administering to a private of the line. Master and man each hold
+equally honourable positions; and what you must drum into the minds of
+your associates, gentlemen--I'm speaking to the Board as much as to
+the deputation--is the fact that the interests of both are
+_identical_, instead of being as far apart as the poles, which appears
+to be your present impression. Neither can exist without the other. So
+far you have imbibed only half of that truth. You reiterate with
+distressing frequency, Mr Winch, the fact that Capital cannot exist
+without Labour. Perfectly true. Now try to absorb into your system the
+fact--equally important to a hair's-breadth--that Labour cannot exist
+without Capital. Each depends upon the other for existence, and what
+we have to do is to balance and balance and balance, employing a
+sense of proportion, proportion, _proportion_!"
+
+Juggernaut's fist descended with a crash upon the table, and for a
+minute he was silent--free-wheeling, so to speak, over the pulverised
+remains of Mr Winch. Presently he continued, with one of his rare
+smiles--
+
+"A Frenchman once said that an Englishman begins by making a speech
+and ends by preaching a sermon. I am afraid I have justified the gibe,
+but it's a good thing to thrash these matters out. I don't deny that
+the average employer is in the habit of giving his _employes_ their
+bare pound of flesh in the way of wages and no more. But I think the
+_employe_ has himself to blame for that. If you invoke the assistance
+of the law against your neighbour, that neighbour will give you
+precisely as much as the law compels him to give. Well, that is what
+organised Labour has done. It has its Trades Union, its Workmen's
+Compensation and Employers' Liability, and so on; and lately it has
+gouged out of a myopic Government a scheme of Old Age Pensions, to be
+eligible for which a man must on no account have exercised any kind of
+thrift throughout his working life. If he has, he is disqualified. All
+this legislation enables you to get the half-nelson on your employer.
+Under the circumstances you can hardly expect him to throw in
+benevolence as well. You can't have your cake and eat it. The old
+personal relations between master and man are dead--dead as Queen
+Anne--and with them has died the master's sense of moral
+responsibility for the welfare of those dependent on him."
+
+"Time, too! Degradation! Feudal system!" observed the ever-ready Mr
+Killick.
+
+"Well, perhaps; but the Feudal System had its points, Mr Killick. It
+fostered one or two homely and healthy virtues like benevolence and
+loyalty and pride of race; and I don't think a man-at-arms ever lost
+his self-respect or felt degraded because he lived in time of peace
+under the protection of the Lord of the Manor whom he followed in time
+of war. Yes, I for one rather regret the passing of the old order.
+Listen, and I will tell you a story. Forty years ago Cherry Hill Pit
+was flooded--flooded for nearly three months during a bitter hard
+winter. Sir Nigel Thompson's father, the late baronet----"
+
+Sir Nigel, who was puzzling out some specially complicated formula,
+suddenly looked up. He had an idea that his name had been mentioned;
+but as every one present appeared to be listening most intently to the
+chairman, he resumed his engrossing occupation with a sigh of relief.
+
+"--paid full wages during the whole of that time; and as coal was
+naturally unobtainable in the village, he imported sufficient to
+supply the needs of the whole community. Not a house in the village
+lacked its kitchen fire or its Sunday dinner during all those weeks.
+That was before the days of the Employers' Liability, gentlemen! If a
+similar disaster were to occur to-day, I doubt if Sir Nigel here would
+feel morally bound to do anything for such an independent and
+self-sufficient community. The present state of things may safeguard
+you against the ungenerous employer, but it eliminates the milk of
+human kindness from our mutual transactions, and that is always a
+matter for regret. That is all, gentlemen. You have our last word in
+this matter. These two men must go. If you would like to withdraw to
+the next room for a few minutes and consider whether you have anything
+further to say, we shall be glad to wait your convenience here."
+
+The deputation rose and filed solemnly from the room, and the Board
+were left alone.
+
+Presently Mr Aymer observed timidly--
+
+"Mr Chairman, don't you think we might let Conlin stay, and content
+ourselves with dismissing Murton?"
+
+"Afraid not," said Juggernaut. "It's a bit hard on Conlin, but we have
+to consider the greatest good of the greatest number. He's a
+plague-spot, and if we don't eradicate him he'll spread. Do you agree,
+Kirkley?"
+
+"Bad luck on the poor devil, but I think you are right," assented his
+lordship.
+
+"Crisp?"
+
+Mr Crisp nodded.
+
+"Nigel?"
+
+Sir Nigel Thompson looked up from his seventh envelope with a
+contented sigh.
+
+"I have it at last," he said. "It's a perfectly simple solution,
+really, but the obvious often escapes one's notice owing to its very
+proximity. The eye is looking further afield. Eh--what? My decision? I
+agree implicitly with you, Jack--that is, gentlemen, I support the
+chairman in his view of the case."
+
+And this vigilant counsellor collected his envelopes and stuffed them
+into his pocket. The chairman continued--
+
+"Montague?"
+
+"Before I answer that question," began Mr Montague, "I should like to
+protetht--protest, I mean--against the arbitrary manner in which you
+have conducted this meeting, Mr Chairman. You have taken the case out
+of our hands in a manner which I consider most unwarrantable; and,
+speaking as the actual employer of the two men----"
+
+Juggernaut swung rather deliberately round in his chair.
+
+"Mr Montague," he said, "you got yourself into a hole, and you
+called--no, _howled_--for a meeting of directors to come and pull you
+out. These agitators settled down in your district because they knew
+that it was the most fertile district to work in. You are considered,
+rightly, the worst employer of labour here. You are greedy,
+unscrupulous, and tyrannical. It is men like you who discredit Capital
+in the eyes of Labour, and make conciliatory dealing between master
+and man almost an impossibility. We have bolstered you up through a
+very difficult crisis, sitting here and putting those poor fellows,
+five of whom are infinitely more honest than you are, quite
+undeservedly in the wrong, and imperilling our immortal souls by
+whitewashing such employers as you. Accept the situation and be
+thankful!"
+
+It is said that hard words break no bones. Still, if you happen to be
+a member of a race which has endured hard words (to say nothing of
+broken bones) for twenty centuries, and when the hard words on this
+particular occasion are delivered by a large man with angry blue eyes
+and a tongue like a whip-lash, you may be forgiven for losing your
+nerve a little. Mr Montague lost his. He flapped his ringed hands
+feebly, mumbled incoherently, and was understood to withdraw his
+objections unconditionally.
+
+"Mr Amos Entwistle," announced a clerk at the door.
+
+Entwistle junior re-entered the room.
+
+"I am commissioned to inform you, Mr Chairman," he said, "that we
+acquiesce in your decision; but under protest. I should like to add,
+gentlemen," he continued, less formally but none the less earnestly,
+"that the Committee are very much dissatisfied with the result of the
+interview. I am afraid you haven't heard the last of this trouble.
+Good-day, and thank you, gentlemen!"
+
+"What does it all mean? Strike--eh?" inquired Lord Kirkley, as he and
+Juggernaut descended the stairs together five minutes later.
+
+"Perhaps. If so, we'll fight."
+
+"Righto--I'm on! I say, it was pretty smart of you finding out where
+those private supplies of theirs came from last time. We shall be able
+to put the lid on that sort of think in future--what?"
+
+Juggernaut nodded, but said no more.
+
+Mr Crisp, Sir Nigel Thompson, and Mr Aymer walked across to the
+latter's offices for luncheon. Mr Montague had gone home to lunch by
+himself. He usually did so.
+
+"The chairman arrived at the meeting in the nick of time," said the
+lawyer. "Kirkley would have been no match for Winch."
+
+"The chairman was very inflexible," sighed Mr Aymer, with all a weak
+man's passion for compromise. "He has a way of brushing aside
+obstacles which can only be described as Napoleonic. Is he always
+within his rights from a legal point of view?"
+
+"From a legal point of view, practically never," said the lawyer
+simply. "From a common-sense point of view, practically always."
+
+"He is a hard man--as hard as flint," mused Mr Aymer. "I wonder if he
+has a soft side to him _anywhere_. I wonder, for instance, how he
+would treat a woman."
+
+"I wonder," said Mr Crisp.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+THE DEVIL A MONK WOULD BE.
+
+
+The first member of the Rectory household whose eyes opened on Sunday
+morning was the Rector himself, who promptly arose and repaired to the
+church, there to conduct the early morning service. The second was a
+certain Mr Dawks, who has not previously been mentioned in this
+narrative. He was a dog. The term may include almost anything, which
+is perhaps fortunate for Mr Dawks; otherwise it might have been
+necessary to class him under some more elastic heading. Of his
+ancestry nothing was known, though many conjectures could have been
+made, and most of them would have been correct. He had been found
+lying half-dead in a country lane by Daphne six years ago, and though
+mistaken at the time for a derelict monkey jettisoned from some
+migratory hurdy-gurdy, had subsequently proved to be a mongrel puppy
+of a few months old. Regular meals and ripening years had developed
+him into a sort of general epitome of all the dogs that ever existed.
+He possessed points which, exhibited individually, would have gained
+many marks at Cruft's Dog-Show. His tail would have increased the
+market value of a Chow fourfold; his shoulders and forelegs would have
+done credit to a prize bull-terrier; his ears would have inflated the
+self-esteem of the silkiest spaniel in existence; and his lower jaw
+would have been regarded as an asset by an alligator. His manners were
+without reproach, but were derived rather from mental vacuity than
+nobility of character; for with the deportment of an hidalgo he
+combined the intelligence of a permanent official.
+
+His name, as already mentioned, was Mr Dawks, but he responded with
+equal amiability to "Angel Child" or "Beautiful One" (Daphne);
+"Flea-Club" (Ally); "Puss, puss!" (Nicky); and "Tank-Engine" (Stiffy),
+to whose mechanical mind bandy legs and laboured breathing suggested a
+short wheel-base and leaky outside-cylinders.
+
+Mr Dawks, having arisen from his nightly resting-place outside Daphne
+Vereker's bedroom door, strolled downstairs to the study. The Rector
+was frequently to be found there early in the morning, and were he not
+too deeply absorbed in some dusty volume, there might be biscuits. But
+the room was empty. Mr Dawks laboriously remounted the staircase and
+scratched delicately at his mistress's bedroom door.
+
+He was admitted, and found Daphne, in dressing-gown and slippers,
+preparing for her Sunday morning round, in which she doubled the parts
+of what is known in the North of England as a "knocker-up" and
+mistress of the wardrobe; for the week's clean garments were always
+distributed on these occasions. The pair set forth together.
+
+After a tap at her father's door, answered by a melodious
+"Good-morning, daughter!" which showed that the Rector had returned
+from his ministrations, Daphne proceeded to the regions above. Here
+upon the landing she encountered her youngest sister, who ought
+properly to have been dressing in the bedroom which she shared with
+Cilly. Instead, she was sitting resignedly outside the door upon a
+bundle composed of her Sabbath garments. As she was obviously posing
+for the excitation of sympathy, Daphne ignored her and passed into the
+bedroom, where the window-blind was flapping in the breeze and Cilly
+lay in a condition of almost total eclipse (if we except a long tawny
+pig-tail) under the bed-clothes.
+
+"Cilly," inquired Daphne, "what's Nicky doing outside?"
+
+"I kicked her out," replied a muffled voice.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well"--Cilly poked her head, tortoise-fashion, from under
+its covering--"she cheeked me--about"--the head retired
+again--"something."
+
+"Bobby Gill, I suppose," remarked Daphne calmly.
+
+Cilly's countenance reappeared, rosily flushed with healthy sleep and
+maiden modesty.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you must take her in again," said Daphne. "She's only playing
+up for a cold, sitting out there, and it will be a score for her if
+she can sniff the house down to-morrow."
+
+"All right," said Cilly resignedly. "I suppose I can pay her out some
+other way."
+
+"I wouldn't, if I were you," advised the elder sister. "She'll only
+wait till she gets you and Bobby together, and then say something
+_awful_. It's your own fault, dear. You do ask for it, you know."
+
+Cilly, whose flirtations were more numerous than discreet, sighed
+deeply, and rolled a pair of large and dreamy eyes upon her sister.
+
+"Daph, don't you _ever_ fall in love with men? Well--boys, if you
+like!" she continued, parrying an unspoken comment. "I know I do
+overdo it a bit; but you--well, you never do it at all. Don't you love
+to feel them edging up to you, and getting pink in the face, and
+trying to think of things to say to you, and offering to take
+you----"
+
+"No," said Daphne decidedly; "they bore me. Barring Dad and Mr Dawks
+and the boys, I have no use for males. Besides, I'm always too busy to
+bother with them: they waste so much of your time. Now, my child, if
+you want any breakfast you had better get up. I must go and see the
+boys."
+
+She departed, and with a passing admonition to Nicky to abandon her
+eleemosynary vigil and be sure to wash her neck, continued on her way,
+still accompanied by the faithful Dawks, to the chamber occupied by
+her two youngest brothers.
+
+Here peace reigned. Stiffy, one of whose chief joys in life was the
+study of the British Railway System, from Automatic Couplings to
+Newspaper Specials, was sitting up in bed with an old _Bradshaw_,
+laboriously ascertaining by how many routes and with how few changes
+the ordinary railway maniac might travel from Merthyr-Tydvil to
+Stockton-on-Tees. At the other end of the room the ever-occupied
+Anthony, with his night-shirt for a surplice and a stocking for a
+stole, was standing by an open grave (the hearthrug) rehearsing the
+opening passages of the Service for the Burial of the Dead,--an
+exercise to which, in common with various other ecclesiastical
+offices, he was much addicted.
+
+Daphne, having kissed Stiffy and gravely given her verdict upon a
+knotty point which was exercising that scrupulous youth's mind,
+namely, whether it was permissible by the rules of the game to include
+in his schedule of connections a train which ran on Thursdays Only,
+handed him his weekly dole of clean linen and turned to the youngest
+member of the family.
+
+"Good-morning, Tony dear," she said cheerfully.
+
+The celebrant, who, true artist that he was, disliked unnecessary
+abruptness in his transitions, stopped short in the Ninetieth Psalm.
+
+"Dearly Beloved Brethren," he gabbled in an apologetic undertone, "I
+am called for a moment from the side of this the last resting-place of
+our lamented sister"--apparently it was a lady friend he was
+interring--"by other business; but I shall be back in a minute." Then,
+unwinding the stocking from about his neck--
+
+"Daphne, those new vests are beastly scratchy. Must I wear them?"
+
+"I know, old man," responded his sister sympathetically. "But they've
+been bought and paid for--horribly dear, too!--so you must lump it.
+Try wearing them inside out for a time. That takes the edge off a
+bit."
+
+And thus, with sage counsel and practical suggestion (together with a
+brief whistle to Mr Dawks, who was moistening his internal clay at the
+water-jug), our young Minerva passed on to the sleeping-place of her
+beloved Ally.
+
+Rather to her surprise, Mr Aloysius Vereker was awake and out of
+bed. The reason was plain. Before him upon the dressing-table
+lay a pot of shaving-soap of a widely advertised brand, a new
+shaving-brush, a sixpenny bottle of bay rum, and a lather dish of
+red indiarubber,--youthful extravagances to which the hardened
+shaver of twenty years' standing, who smears himself with ordinary
+Brown Windsor out of the soap-dish and wipes his razor on a piece
+of newspaper or the window-curtain, looks back with mingled
+amusement and regret. In his hand gleamed a new razor.
+
+"Careful!" he gasped through a sea of lather. "Don't shake the room,
+kid!"
+
+Daphne sat cautiously down upon the bed, and surveyed the operator
+with unfeigned pride and enthusiasm. She clasped her hands.
+
+"Ally, how splendid! When did you begin doing it?"
+
+Ally, weathering a hairless and slippery corner, replied--
+
+"Third time. I'm doing it chiefly to make something _grow_. A man
+simply _has_ to shave after he gets into the Fifteen: you look such a
+fool on Saturday nights if you don't. A chap in our house called
+Mallock, who has had his colours four years, has a beard about
+half-an-inch long by Friday. He's a gorgeous sight."
+
+Daphne shuddered slightly.
+
+Ally continued.
+
+"I don't expect to rival him, of course, but I should like to have
+something to scrape off in the dormitory. My fag always grins so when
+he brings me my shaving-water--little tick!"
+
+Daphne was too well versed in the eccentricities of the young of the
+male species to experience the slightest feeling of surprise at her
+brother's singular ambition. She merely wrapped a blanket round her
+shoulders and settled herself against the head of the bed, anxiously
+contemplating the progress of a sanguinary campaign in the region
+surrounding Ally's jugular vein.
+
+Presently operations came to a conclusion; the traces of battle were
+obliterated with much sponging and spraying; and the pair sat and
+gossiped amicably while Ally stropped his razor and put studs in his
+Sunday shirt.
+
+It was a full quarter of an hour before Daphne returned to her room,
+for her Sunday morning call upon Ally was always a protracted affair.
+But before she left she had, after the usual blandishments, exacted
+from him a promise that he would come to church. Their father never
+exercised any compulsion in this matter; but if any member of the
+family did stay at home on Sunday morning, the Rector's mute distress
+was such as to blight the spirits of the household for the rest of the
+day; and Daphne always exerted herself to the full to round up her
+entire flock in the Rectory pew at the appointed hour. The most
+recalcitrant members thereof were Ally and Nicky, but the former could
+usually be cajoled and the latter coerced.
+
+After breakfast the Rector retired to his study to con his sermon; and
+not long afterwards was to be seen, key in hand, passing through the
+wicket-gate which led from the garden into the churchyard. Having
+tolled the church bell for five minutes, he busied himself at the
+altar, and then turned up the lessons at the lectern, marking these
+same in plain figures; for the Squire, who fulfilled the office of
+reader, required careful guidance in this respect. (He had been known
+to read the same lesson twice; also the Second Lesson before the
+First; and once he had turned over two pages together towards the end
+of a long chapter, and embarked with growing huskiness and visible
+indignation upon a supplementary voyage of forty-seven verses.)
+
+Presently the Rector returned to the house for his surplice; and ten
+minutes later, a tall and saintly figure, followed his hobnailed and
+bullet-headed choristers into the chancel.
+
+Snayling Church, though a diminutive building, was one of the oldest
+of its kind in England. The tower was square and stumpy, and had
+served as a haven of refuge more than once. A later generation,
+following the pious but unnecessary fashion of the day, had erected
+upon its summit a steeple of homely design, which indicated the route
+to heaven in an officious and altogether gratuitous manner. Inside the
+building itself the roof was supported by massive stone pillars and
+Norman arches. Beneath the floor lay folk long dead, their names,
+virtues, and destination set forth in many curious inscriptions in
+stone and brass, all greatly prized by the tourist with his
+tracing-paper and heel-ball. The chancel contained a real Crusader,
+who reclined, sword in hand and feet crossed, upon a massive
+sarcophagus, his good lady by his side. Tony Vereker had woven many a
+legend about _him_, you may be sure.
+
+Each of the tiny transepts contained two square pews, decently veiled
+from the public gaze by red curtains. Those on the north side belonged
+respectively to the Squire, whose arrival in church with his wife and
+four daughters always served as an intimation to the organist--Mr
+Pack, the schoolmaster--that it was eleven o'clock and time to wind up
+the voluntary; and old Lady Curlew of Hainings, who invariably arrived
+five minutes before the hour, accompanied by her maid; who, having
+packed her mistress into a corner of the pew with cushions and
+hassocks, retired discreetly to the free seats by the door.
+
+Of the pews in the south transept one was the property of the Lord of
+the Manor, the Marquis of Kirkley. It was seldom occupied, for his
+lordship suffered from the misfortune (which modern legislation is
+doing so much to alleviate) of possessing more residences than he
+could comfortably live in. His adjacent seat, Kirkley Abbey, was
+seldom open except for a few weeks during the pheasant season; and
+even the recurrence of that momentous period did not postulate undue
+congestion in the family pew.
+
+The other pew was the Rector's, and here Daphne succeeded on this
+particular Sabbath morning in corralling the full strength of her
+troupe.
+
+_Non sine pulvere_, however. Ally, as already related, had proved
+fairly tractable, but Nicky (who just at present stood badly in
+need of the services of a competent exorcist) had almost evaded
+ecclesiastical conscription by a new and ingenious device. At
+ten-fifteen precisely she had fallen heavily down a flight of two
+steps and sprained her ankle. Unsympathetic Daphne, experienced in the
+detection of every form of malingering, had despatched her upstairs
+with a bottle of Mr Elliman's strongest embrocation--the property of
+Ally--with instructions to anoint the injured member and report
+herself for duty at ten-forty-five prompt. At the appointed hour
+Nicky, limping painfully and smiling heroically, had joined the rest
+of the family in the hall.
+
+Presently Ally remarked casually--
+
+"Rotten stink here. Furniture polish, or something."
+
+"Yes--filthy reek!" agreed Stiffy.
+
+"It's turpentine," cried Cilly, crinkling her nose.
+
+"It's Elliman," said Tony.
+
+"It's _you_, Nicky!" said everybody at once.
+
+Daphne, who was drawing on her gloves, peeled them off again with some
+deliberation, and took her youngest sister by the shoulders.
+
+"Nicky," she inquired, "how much Elliman did you use?"
+
+That infant martyr, wincing ostentatiously, delicately protruded a
+foot, and exhibited a long black leg heavily swathed from knee to
+instep under her stocking with a bandage of colossal dimensions.
+
+"Not more than I could help, Daph," she said. "I found one or two
+other bruises on my--all over me, in fact: so I--I just put a little
+Elliman on each. I didn't want to be a trouble to any one, so----"
+
+"Run upstairs, Stiffy," Daphne interpolated swiftly, "and see how much
+Elliman is left in the bottle."
+
+By this time Cilly had thrown open the front door and staircase
+windows, and the remainder of the Vereker family were fanning
+themselves with their Sunday hats and ostentatiously fighting for
+breath--an exercise in which they persevered until Stiffy reappeared
+carrying an empty bottle.
+
+"Two bobs' worth!" shouted Ally. "And I meant it to last for months!
+Nicky, you little _sweep_!"
+
+Daphne glanced at the hall clock.
+
+"Fourteen minutes!" she calculated frantically. "Yes, it can just be
+done. Nicky, my cherub, you shall come to church this morning if I
+have to _scrape_ you. Go on, you others! I'll follow myself as quickly
+as I can."
+
+The last sentence was delivered far up the staircase, which Miss
+Vereker was ascending with flying feet, a tearful and unwilling
+appendage trailing behind her. Next moment the bathroom door banged,
+and the departing worshippers heard both taps turned on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At two minutes past eleven precisely Daphne and Nicky, the former
+cool, collected, and as prettily dressed as any woman in the
+congregation, the latter scarlet as if from recent parboiling, walked
+demurely down the aisle just as the choir entered the chancel, lustily
+bellowing a hymn which drew attention to the advantages accruing in
+the next world to that Servant of the Lord who should be found Waiting
+in his Office, in a Posture not specified--Tony used often to wonder
+what would happen if the Day of Judgment should fall upon a Bank
+holiday or Saturday afternoon--and joined the rest of the family in
+the Rectory pew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sermon, we all know, offers unique facilities for quiet reflection.
+As their father's silvery voice rose and fell in the cadences of his
+discourse--he had soared far above the heads of his bucolic audience,
+and was now disporting himself in a delectable but quite inaccessible
+aether of his own, where the worshippers (such of them as had not
+yielded to slothful repose) followed his evolutions with mystified and
+respectful awe, much as a crowd of citizens in a busy street gape
+upwards at the gambols of an aeroplane--the Rectory children wedged
+themselves into their own particular nooks of the pew, and prepared to
+get through the next twenty minutes in characteristic fashion.
+
+Ally closed his eyes and assumed an attitude of slumber, as befitted
+his years and dignity. But he was not asleep. He did not look
+comfortable. Perhaps his breakfast had disagreed with him, or possibly
+he was contemplating within himself the vision of a receding
+University and an all-too-adjacent office-stool. Daphne, with her eyes
+fixed on the wall opposite and her brow puckered, was pondering some
+domestic problem--her own extravagantly small feet, mayhap, or
+Wednesday's hypothetical leg of mutton. Despite her burden of care,
+her face looked absurdly round and childish under her big beaver hat.
+One hand supported her chin in a characteristic pose, the other
+controlled the movements of the restless Anthony, who was
+impersonating something of a vibratory nature. Cilly, with glowing
+eyes and parted lips, was reading the Marriage Service in her
+Prayerbook. Nicky, whose recent ablutions had apparently purged her of
+outward sin only, had pulled forward two long wisps of black hair from
+behind her ears, and by crossing these under her nose had provided
+herself with a very realistic and terrifying pair of moustaches, by
+portentous twistings of which, assisted by the rolling of a frenzied
+eye, she was endeavouring to make poor Stiffy laugh. That right-minded
+youth, though hard pressed, had so far withstood temptation by
+resolutely reciting to himself a favourite excerpt from Bradshaw's
+Railway Guide, beginning "Brighton (Central), Preston Park, Burgess
+Hill, Hassocks" ... and ending with ... "Grosvenor Road, Victoria,"--a
+sedative exercise to which he was much addicted at moments of bodily
+anguish or mental stress; but it was plain that his defence was
+weakening.
+
+Fortunately, the approaching explosion, which would have been of a
+cataclysmal nature,--Stiffy was not a boy to do things by halves,--was
+averted by a change of demeanour on the part of the temptress. Her
+quick ear had caught some unaccustomed sound behind her. Letting go
+her moustaches, which immediately assumed a more usual position, she
+squirmed round in her seat and gently parted the red rep curtains
+which separated the Rectory pew from that of Kirkley Abbey. An excited
+gurgle apprised her fellow-worshippers of the fact that some unusual
+sight had met her eyes.
+
+What Nicky saw was this.
+
+Immediately opposite to her improvised peep-hole sat a man--a large
+man with square shoulders and an immobile face. He was clean-shaven,
+with two strong lines running from his nostrils to the corners of his
+mouth--a mouth which even in repose looked determined and grim. He
+possessed a square jaw and rather craggy brows. It was difficult to
+decide if he were sleeping or no, for though his eyes were closed
+there was none of the abandon of slumber about his pose. His most
+noticeable feature was the set of his eyebrows, which, instead of
+being arched or level, ran upwards and outwards in a diagonal
+direction, and gave him a distinctly Satanic appearance--a
+circumstance which Nicky noted with sympathetic approval. He was
+dressed in the somewhat _degage_ Sabbath attire affected by Englishmen
+spending the week-end in the country, and his feet were perched upon
+the seat opposite to him.
+
+Presently, for some cause unknown--possibly Nicky's hard breathing--he
+opened his eyes.
+
+Immediately in front of him the stranger beheld a small excited face,
+a pair of saucer-like blue eyes, and a wide but attractive mouth--the
+whole vision framed in dusty red rep. The face was flushed, the eyes
+glowed, and the mouth was wide open.
+
+The picture, suddenly surprised in its inspection by a pair of the
+shrewdest and most penetrating eyes it had ever beheld, dropped
+hurriedly out of its frame and disappeared. If Nicky had waited a
+moment longer she would have received a less one-sided impression of
+the stranger, for almost simultaneously with the discovery of the
+apparition in the peep-hole the man smiled. Instantly his whole face
+changed. The outer corners of his eyebrows descended, the crease
+between them disappeared, and magnificent teeth gleamed for a moment
+in the dim religious light of the pew.
+
+Nicky leaned across to her eldest sister and whispered huskily:--
+
+"There's somebody in the other pew. I think it's the Devil. Look
+yourself!"
+
+But Daphne, deep in domestic mental arithmetic, smiled and shook her
+head; and Nicky received little more encouragement from the rest of
+the family. The profession of scare-monger and exploiter of mares'
+nests, though enjoyable on the whole, has its drawbacks: if you get
+hold of a genuine scare or an authentic mare's nest, nobody believes
+you.
+
+The sermon began to draw to a close, and a few minutes later the
+Rector descended from the clouds and gave out the final hymn,
+prefacing his announcement by an intimation that the offertory that
+day would be devoted to the needs of the Children's Cottage Hospital
+in the neighbouring county town. His appeal was characteristic.
+
+"Money," he mused, "is the most hampering and perplexing thing in this
+life. It is so artificial and unnecessary. I often sigh for a world
+where all commerce will be in kind--where a cheque on the Bank of
+Gratitude will settle the weekly bills, and 'I thank you!' be regarded
+as legal tender up to any amount. But there is no give and take in
+these days. Everything, from Life and Love down to the raiment we
+wear, is duly appraised and ticketed, and if we stand in need of these
+things we must render a material tale of pounds and pence or go
+without. No wonder men call this the Iron Age! But, though money as a
+rule brings nothing in its train but disappointment and regret (and
+therefore it is better to have too little than too much), there are
+times and seasons when it is permitted to us to purchase happiness
+with it. To-day gives us one of these opportunities. Do not let that
+opportunity slip. _Post est Occasio calva._" (Respectful intake of
+breath on the part of the congregation.) "I do not urge you to give on
+the plea put forward in a hymn that you will find in your books--a
+hymn written by a man who should have known better--a hymn which shall
+never, so long as I am Rector of this parish, emerge from the
+obscurity of the printed page--advocating generosity in almsgiving on
+the ground that contributions to the offertory on earth will be
+refunded at the rate of a hundred thousand per cent in heaven. I do
+not ask you to give either much or little. Very few of us here are
+over-burdened with this world's goods. Still, we can each afford to
+buy _some_ happiness to-day, at a very low rate. And it will not be
+transitory or temporary happiness either; for every time hereafter
+that your daily task or a country walk takes you past the Children's
+Hospital at Tilney, that happiness will blossom again with
+ever-reviving fragrance in your hearts. Let us sing Hymn number three
+hundred and sixty-nine--
+
+  'Thine arm, O Lord, in days of old
+  Was strong to heal and save....'"
+
+There was a general upheaval of the congregation and a clatter of
+rustic boots; the little organ gave a premonitory rumble, and the hymn
+began.
+
+The hymn after the sermon is not, as a rule--to-day was an
+exception--an impressive canticle. _Imprimis_, it is of abnormal
+length and little coherence, having apparently been composed for the
+sole purpose of lasting out the collection of the offertory; _item_,
+the congregation is furtively engaged in retrieving umbrellas from
+under seats and gliding into overcoats. Hence it was always a pleasant
+diversion to the Rectory children to follow the movements of the two
+churchwardens as they ran their godly race up the aisle in the pursuit
+of alms and oblations. They even risked small sums on the result. When
+the Squire and Mr Murgatroyd (Stationer and Dealer in Fancy Goods)
+stepped majestically from their respective pews and set to work on
+this particular morning, Daphne produced five sixpences and handed
+them to her brothers and sisters. Nicky, in her anxiety to see what
+sum the stranger in the Kirkley Abbey pew would contribute to the
+total, received her own contribution with such nonchalance that the
+coin slipped from her hand, and was being hunted for among hassocks
+upon the floor at the moment when Mr Murgatroyd reached the stranger's
+pew.
+
+Nicky found her sixpence, and resumed an upright attitude just in time
+to hear (in a pause between two verses) a faint papery rustle on the
+other side of the curtain.
+
+A moment later Mr Murgatroyd opened the door of the Rectory pew, with
+his usual friendly air of dropping in for a cup of tea, and presented
+the bag. The children put in their sixpences one by one. Nicky's turn
+came last. She peered into the bag, and her sharp eyes caught sight of
+something white protruding from amid the silver and copper.
+
+Taking the bag from Mr Murgatroyd's hands--she controlled that
+indulgent bachelor as she willed: he counted it a pleasure to turn his
+stock inside out on a Saturday afternoon whenever Miss Veronica came
+in with a penny to spend--Nicky deliberately drew out a piece of
+folded crinkly white paper. This, laying the offertory bag upon the
+baize-covered table in the middle of the pew, she carefully unfolded,
+and perused the staring black legend inscribed upon the flimsy white
+background. When she raised her eyes they were those of an owlet
+suffering from mental shock.
+
+"Golly!" she observed in bell-like tones. "The Devil has put in a
+ten-pound note!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+A SABBATH-DAY'S JOURNEY.
+
+
+The Rectory children, washed and combed for Sunday dinner, sat at ease
+in the old nursery--promoted to schoolroom since Tony went into
+knickerbockers--and discussed the munificent stranger of the morning.
+
+Their interest in his movements and identity had been heightened by
+the fact that after service was over he had proceeded to the right
+instead of the left on leaving the Kirkley Abbey pew, and, turning his
+broad back upon an undisguisedly interested congregation, had stalked
+up the chancel and disappeared through the door leading to the vestry.
+
+"I _wonder_ what he went for," said Cilly for the third time.
+
+"Perhaps he was going to give Dad more banknotes," suggested the
+optimistic Stiffy.
+
+"More likely going to ask for change out of the first one," rejoined
+Ally, the cynic.
+
+"I expect he was going to complain about you making faces at him
+through the curtain, Nicky," coldly observed Cilly, who had not yet
+forgiven her small sister's innuendoes on the subject of Mr Robert
+Gill.
+
+"Rats!" demurred Nicky uneasily. "I didn't make faces. I expect he's
+only some tourist who wants to rub brasses, or sniff a vault, or
+something."
+
+"He must be a friend of Lord Kirkley's," said Ally, "because----"
+
+"_I'll_ show you who he is," shrilled a voice from the depth of a
+cupboard under the window.
+
+Tony, who had been grubbing among a heap of tattered and dusty
+literature in the bottom shelf, now rose to his feet and staggered
+across the room carrying an ancient but valuable copy of 'The
+Pilgrim's Progress,' embellished with steel engravings.
+
+Having deposited the volume upon the hearthrug he proceeded to hunt
+through its pages. Presently, with a squeal of delight, he placed a
+stumpy fore-finger upon a full-page illustration, and announced
+triumphantly--
+
+"That's him!"
+
+The picture represented Christian's battle with Apollyon. Christian,
+hard pressed, had been beaten to his knees, and over him towered the
+figure of the Prince of Darkness, brandishing a sword and (in the most
+unsportsmanlike manner) emitting metallic-looking flames from his
+stomach. The children gathered round.
+
+"You are right, Tony," said Cilly at length, "it _is_ like him."
+
+Certainly Apollyon bore a sort of far-away resemblance to the late
+occupant of the Kirkley Abbey pew.
+
+"Look at his eyebrows," said Nicky, "they go straight up----"
+
+The churchyard gate clicked, and voices were heard in conversation
+outside. Daphne sped to the window.
+
+"Heavens!" she exclaimed in an agonised whisper, "Dad is bringing him
+in to lunch! Ally, take your boots off the mantelpiece! Nicky, pull up
+your stockings! Cilly, knock Dawks off the sofa! I must fly. I wonder
+if there's enough cream to make a trifle. Anyhow, the beef----"
+
+And she sped away kitchenwards like an agitated butterfly.
+
+A few minutes later the Rector appeared in the schoolroom, smiling
+joyously, with his hand resting lightly on the shoulder of the
+recently identified Apollyon. Tony was restoring 'The Pilgrim's
+Progress' to its shelf with the complacency of a second Bertillon.
+
+"These are my flock, Jack," said Brian Vereker. "I wonder if any of
+you children can guess who this gentleman is? Would you think that he
+and I were at school together? Tony, I have often told you of little
+Jack Carr, who used to light my fire and cook my breakfast. And a
+shocking mess he used to make of it, eh? Didn't you, Jack? Do you
+remember the day you fried sausages in marmalade, because the label on
+the pot said marmalade would be found an excellent substitute for
+butter? Well, here he is, Tony. We have run together again after
+twenty-five years. Come and shake hands. These are my two younger
+girls, Jack, and these are my three boys. Where is Daphne, children?"
+
+The Vereker family, drawn up in a self-conscious row, were understood
+to intimate that Daphne was downstairs. A move was therefore made in
+the direction of the dining-room, where Keziah, the little maid, was
+heatedly laying an extra place. Daphne joined the party a moment
+later, and welcomed Sir John Carr--such was his full title, it
+appeared--with prettiness and composure. But Cilly and Nicky noted
+that she had found time to rearrange her hair in honour of the
+occasion, and adorn herself with most of her slender stock of
+jewellery--two bangles and a thin gold chain.
+
+Sunday dinner was something of a function at the Rectory. For one
+thing there was hot roast beef, which counts for much when you see the
+like only once in the week. The Rector carved and Stiffy handed round
+the plates, Keziah, whose Sunday-afternoon-out commenced technically
+the moment the sirloin was dished, being excused from further
+attendance. Daphne presided over the vegetable dishes and Ally cut
+bread at the sideboard. The office of butler was in abeyance, for the
+Vereker family drank only water from their highly polished
+christening-mugs. Nicky was responsible for the table-napkins, and
+Cilly mixed salads in season.
+
+All these domestic details Daphne explained, with captivating
+friendliness and a freedom from self-consciousness that many a more
+matured hostess might have envied, to the silent man beside her.
+
+"Sorry to have _all_ the family pouring things over you," she said, as
+Stiffy with a plate of beef, Ally with a lump of bread impaled upon a
+fork, and Cilly with a bowl of lettuce, egg, and beetroot cunningly
+intermingled, converged simultaneously upon the guest; "but we have
+only one servant, and----"
+
+Stephen Blasius Vereker, poised upon his toes and holding his breath,
+was leaning heavily over the guest's right shoulder, proffering a
+platter upon the edge of which a billow of gravy, piling itself up
+into a tidal wave, strove to overcome the restraining influence of
+surface tension. Apollyon, his features unrelaxed, gravely took the
+plate, and restoring it to a horizontal position, turned deferentially
+to resume his conversation with his young hostess.
+
+----"And I like poor Keziah to have as long a Sunday out as
+possible," continued Daphne, entirely unruffled.
+
+"Her young man waits for her at the stile down by Preston's farm,"
+supplemented Nicky. "They go for a walk down Tinkler's Den, and never
+speak a _word_ to each other."
+
+----"So we wait on ourselves at this meal," concluded Daphne. "What
+will you drink, Sir John? Father is a teetotaller, and so are all of
+us; but if you are not, I've got some brandy upstairs in the nursery
+medicine cupboard."
+
+"Thank you, I will drink water," said Sir John solemnly.
+
+By this time the Vereker family had settled down to their own
+portions, and were babbling as cheerfully and unrestrainedly as usual.
+Shyness in the presence of strangers was not one of their weaknesses,
+and presently, taking advantage of Daphne's departure to the kitchen
+in quest of the second course, they engaged their guest in
+conversation, inviting his opinions on such widely different subjects
+as the quality of the salad (Cilly), the merits of the automatic
+vacuum railway brake as compared with those of the Westinghouse
+(Stiffy), and the prospects of Cambridge in the coming Boat Race
+(Ally). All of which queries were answered in a fashion which, while
+lacking in geniality and erring a little on the side of terseness,
+showed that the respondent knew what he was talking about.
+
+The Rector, at the head of the table, smiled benignantly. To him this
+reticent man of over forty, with the deep-set eyes and square jaw, was
+the sturdy chubby boy who had cooked his breakfast and worshipped him
+from afar in the dim but joyous days when Brian Vereker was a giant of
+nineteen, with side whiskers, and Jacky Carr a humble fag of twelve.
+It was almost a shock to hear him offered spirits to drink.
+
+Presently Daphne returned, and another general post ensued, at the end
+of which the beef and vegetables had disappeared, and a suet pudding
+(the standing Sabbath sweet at the Rectory), flanked by a dish of
+trifle of diminutive proportions, lay before the hostess. The Rector
+was confronted by a melon.
+
+Taking advantage of a covering conversation between the guest and her
+eldest brother, Miss Vereker made a mysterious pass over the surface
+of the trifle with a spoon, while she murmured to such of the family
+as were within earshot the mystic formula, "F. H. B.!" Then she
+inquired aloud--
+
+"Cilly, dear, which pudding will you have?"
+
+"Baby Maud, please," replied Miss Cecilia promptly, indicating the
+stiff, pallid, and corpse-like cylinder of suet.
+
+She was helped, and Nicky's choice was ascertained.
+
+"I don't _think_," that damsel replied sedately, "that I'll have
+anything, thank you, Daphne. I'm not very hungry to-day."
+
+Daphne, with a slight twitch at the corners of her mouth--she
+appreciated Nicky's crooked little ways, despite herself--turned to
+the guest.
+
+"Will you have pudding or trifle, Sir John? Let me recommend the
+trifle."
+
+"Thank you, I never eat sweets," was the reply.
+
+An audible sigh of relief rose from the Messrs Vereker.
+
+"Daph, dear," said Nicky before any one else could speak, "I think
+I'll change my mind and have some trifle."
+
+And thus, by prompt generalship, Miss Veronica Vereker, while obeying
+to the letter the laws of hospitality and precedence, stole a march
+upon her slow-moving brethren and sisters and received the lion's
+share of the trifle, the balance going to Tony by virtue of juniority.
+
+As Daphne handed her triumphant little sister her portion, she
+distinctly heard a muffled sound on her right.
+
+"I like this man!" she said to herself.
+
+"If you don't take sweets, Jack," observed the Rector from the other
+end of the table, "allow me to introduce you to this melon--a present
+from the Squire. Take the melon round to Sir John, Stiffy, and he
+shall cut in where he pleases; though, strictly speaking," he added,
+with simple enjoyment of his own joke, "it is hardly etiquette to cut
+anything you have been introduced to!"
+
+There was a momentary stoppage in the general mastication of "Baby
+Maud," and the right hand of each Vereker present performed the same
+evolution. Next moment the repast was resumed, but the guest observed,
+not without surprise, that every christening-mug--even Daphne's--had a
+knife lying across its top.
+
+"That is one of our customs," explained Cilly politely. "We do it
+whenever any one makes a stale joke."
+
+"_Alice through the Looking-Glass_," corroborated Nicky, scooping up
+trifle with an air of severe reproof--"page two hundred and seven."
+
+"You see my servile and dependent position in this house, Jack!" said
+the Rector, not altogether dejectedly.
+
+"I perceive that I have dropped into a Republic," said Sir John Carr.
+
+"Republic? A more absolute despotism never existed. Wait until you
+have transgressed one of the Laws of the Medes and Persians and been
+brought up for judgment before my eldest daughter? _We_ know, don't
+we--eh, Nicky?"
+
+Brian Vereker projected the furtive smile of a fellow-conspirator
+upon his youngest daughter, and then turned to gaze with unconcealed
+fondness and pride upon his eldest.
+
+"I trust that when I transgress," said Sir John, "I shall get off
+under the First Offender's Act."
+
+"You have broken that already," said Daphne readily; "but it's Dad's
+fault. It is twenty minutes to three, and you two ought to have been
+smoking in the study ten minutes ago instead of talking here. I want
+to get this room cleared for the children to learn their Catechism
+in."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At half-past three Brian Vereker summoned his eldest daughter to the
+study, and announced with frank delight that Sir John Carr had agreed
+to vacate the Kirkley Arms and accept the hospitality of the Rectory.
+
+"I am going to walk down to the inn now," said Apollyon to Daphne, "to
+see about my luggage. Perhaps you will keep me company?"
+
+"All right," said Daphne. "I'll bring Mr Dawks too. He wants a walk, I
+know."
+
+Sir John made no comment, but gave no active support to the inclusion
+of Mr Dawks in the party. It may be noted, however, that when Daphne
+had at length achieved that feat which encroaches so heavily upon a
+woman's share of eternity--the putting on of her hat--and joined her
+guest in the garden accompanied by Mr Dawks in person, Apollyon
+greeted the owner of the name with far more cordiality than he had
+greeted the name itself. It is sometimes misleading to bestow
+Christian titles upon dumb animals.
+
+Once away from the rest of the family, Daphne's maternal solemnity
+fell from her like a schoolmaster's cap and gown in holiday time. She
+chattered like a magpie, pointing out such objects of local interest
+as--
+
+(1) Farmer Preston's prize bull;
+
+(2) The residence of a reputed witch;
+
+(3) A spinney, where a dog-fox had once gone to ground at one end of
+an earth and a laughing hyena (subsequently ascertained to be the lost
+property of that peripatetic nobleman Lord George Sanger) had emerged
+from the other, to the entire and instantaneous disintegration of a
+non-abstaining local Hunt.
+
+"I say, where do you live?" she inquired suddenly, breaking off in the
+middle of a detailed history of Kirkley Abbey, whose _facade_ could be
+discerned through the trees on their right--"London?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"All the year round?"
+
+"No. I spend a good deal of my time in the North."
+
+"Oh. What do you do there? What _are_ you, by the way?" Daphne looked
+up at her companion with bird-like inquisitiveness. She moved in a
+society familiar with the age, ancestry, profession, wardrobe,
+ailments, love affairs, and income of every one within a radius of
+five miles. Consequently she considered a new acquaintanceship
+incomplete in the last degree until she had acquired sufficient
+information on the subject in hand to supply, say, a tolerably
+intimate obituary notice.
+
+"I suppose you are _something_," she continued. "I hope so, anyhow. An
+idle man is always so mopy."
+
+"What would you put me down as?" asked Apollyon.
+
+Daphne scrutinised him without fear or embarrassment.
+
+"I'm not much of a judge," she said. "You see, we don't come across
+many men here, and we are so poor that we don't get away much."
+
+"Don't you go up to London occasionally, to buy a new frock?" said Sir
+John, covertly regarding the trim figure by his side.
+
+"Me--London? Not much. Dad has a lot of grand relations there, but I
+don't think he bothered much about them, or they about him, after he
+married. He was too much wrapped up in mother. So we never hear
+anything of them now. No, I have hardly ever been away from Snayling,
+and I'm a great deal too busy here to worry about London or any other
+such place. So I don't know much about men," she concluded
+simply--"except my own, of course."
+
+"Your own?"
+
+"Yes--Dad and the boys. And then I know all about the sort of man one
+meets round here. I can tell a ditcher from a ploughman; and if I meet
+a man in a dog-cart with cases at the back I know he's a commercial
+traveller, and if he has a red face I know he's a farmer, and if he
+hasn't I know he's a doctor; but I haven't had much other experience."
+
+"Still, what am _I_?" reiterated Apollyon.
+
+"Well--I suppose you are not a soldier, or you would have a
+moustache."
+
+"No."
+
+"You might be a lawyer, being clean-shaven. Are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! That's rather disappointing. You would make a ripping judge, with
+a big wig on. Well, perhaps you write things. I know--you are an
+author or an editor?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Foiled again!" said Daphne cheerfully. "Let me see, what other
+professions are there? Are you a Don, by any chance? A fellow, or
+lecturer, or anything? We had a Fellow of All Souls down here once. He
+was a dear."
+
+"No."
+
+"You are a 'Varsity man, I suppose."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oxford or Cambridge?"
+
+"Cambridge."
+
+"I am glad. Dark blue is _so_ dull, isn't it? Besides, Dad is a
+Cambridge man. He is an old Running Blue. He won--but of course you
+know all about that. It seems queer to think you knew him before I
+did! Well, I give you up. What _do_ you do?"
+
+Apollyon reflected.
+
+"I sell coals," he replied at last, rather unexpectedly.
+
+This announcement, and the manner in which it was made, momentarily
+deprived Miss Vereker of speech--a somewhat rare occurrence.
+
+"I see," she said presently. "We get ours from the station-master,"
+she added politely.
+
+"I was not proposing to apply for your custom," said Apollyon meekly.
+
+At this point they reached the Kirkley Arms, and in the effort
+involved in rousing that somnolent hostelry from its Sabbath coma and
+making arrangements for the sending up of Sir John Carr's luggage to
+the Rectory, the question of why he sold coals, and whether he hawked
+the same round in a barrow or delivered his wares through the medium
+of the Parcels Post, was lost sight of.
+
+On the homeward walk conversation was maintained on much the same
+terms. Daphne held forth unwearyingly, and Apollyon contented himself
+for the most part with answering her point-blank questions and putting
+a few--a very few--of his own. Certainly the man was a born listener,
+and amazingly magnetic. Tacitus himself could not have said less, and
+the greatest cross-examiner in the legal profession could not have
+extracted more. As they strolled side by side through the Kirkley
+woods, where the last of the daffodils were reluctantly making way for
+the first of the primroses, Daphne found herself reciting, as to a
+discreet and dependable father-confessor, a confidential but
+whole-hearted summary of the present state of domestic politics.
+
+Ally's failure to secure a scholarship at the University was
+mentioned.
+
+It was disgusting of him to miss the Greek Prose paper, Daphne
+considered. "He didn't oversleep at all, of course. I soon found
+_that_ out. The real reason was that he had gone to some man's rooms
+the night before, and the silly brat must go and drink a
+whisky-and-soda and smoke a cigar. That did it! It was no use telling
+Dad, because he simply wouldn't believe such a story; and if he did,
+it would make him unhappy for weeks. Besides, who can blame the poor
+dear? You can't be surprised if a schoolboy kicks over the traces a
+bit the first time he finds himself out on his own--can you?"
+
+"I thought," replied Sir John, finding that some answer was expected
+of him, "that you said you knew nothing of men?"
+
+"I said I didn't know _many_ men," corrected Daphne. "But those I do
+know I know pretty thoroughly. They're very easy to understand, dear
+things! You always know where you are with them. Now, girls are
+different. Did you notice that boy whom we passed just now, who went
+pink and took off his hat. That's Bobby Gill--a flame of Cilly's. I'm
+going to have a lot of trouble with Cilly's love-affairs, I can see.
+She falls down and worships every second man she meets. I believe she
+would start mooning round the place after _you_ if you weren't so
+old," she added. "Cilly's a darling, but what she wants----"
+
+She plunged, with puckered brow and tireless tongue, into a further
+tale of hopes and fears. Stiffy's schooling, Nicky's boots, the curate
+who _had_ to come--all were laid upon the table. Even the Emergency
+Bag and Wednesday's joint crept in somehow.
+
+They were almost home when she concluded.
+
+Suddenly Apollyon inquired:
+
+"Do you know the name of that little hollow on our right? Is it
+Tinkler's Den?"
+
+"Yes; we often have picnics there. How did you know?"
+
+"It is part of Lord Kirkley's estate, as you are probably aware; and
+his lordship, finding like most of us that he has not sufficient money
+for his needs, has asked me to come and have a look at the ground
+round Tinkler's Den on the off-chance of our finding coal there."
+
+Daphne turned upon him, wide-eyed and horror-struck.
+
+"You mean to say," she gasped, "that you are going to dig for coals in
+Tinkler's Den?"
+
+"I can't tell you, until----"
+
+Apollyon paused. A small hand was resting on his sleeve, and a very
+small voice said beseechingly--
+
+"Don't--_please_!"
+
+"Very well, then: I won't," he said, in a matter-of-fact fashion; and
+they resumed their walk.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I hope you haven't been bored," said Daphne, the hostess in her
+rising to the surface as the shadow of the Rectory fell upon her once
+more. "Your ears must be simply aching, but it's such a treat to talk
+to any one who knows about things. I never get the chance to ask
+advice. I usually have to give it. Dad and the boys are so helpless,
+bless them!"
+
+They were passing through the wicket-gate. Daphne suddenly paused, and
+looked up at her guest with more mischief in her eyes than her
+brothers and sisters would have given her credit for.
+
+"It's queer," she mused, "that you should sell coals. _We_ thought you
+_shovelled_ them!"
+
+"Explain, please!" said Sir John.
+
+Daphne did so. "We _had_ to call you something," she concluded
+apologetically. "Do you mind?"
+
+"Not at all. I have been called a good many names in my time," said
+Sir John grimly.
+
+"What do your friends call you?" asked Daphne--"your intimate
+friends."
+
+"I am not sure that I have any."
+
+Daphne surveyed him shrewdly, with her head a little on one side.
+
+"No--I should think you _were_ that sort," she said gravely. "Well,
+what do your--do other people call you?"
+
+"Most of them, I believe," said Sir John, "call me 'Juggernaut
+Carr.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+DAPHNE AS MATCHMAKER.
+
+
+Juggernaut's stay at the Rectory had been prolonged for more than
+three weeks, the business upon which he was engaged being as easily
+directed, so he said, from Brian Vereker's study as from his own
+London offices. An unprejudiced observer might have been forgiven for
+remarking that to all appearances it could have been directed with
+equal facility from the Two-penny Tube or the North Pole; for if we
+except a prolonged interview with Lord Kirkley's land agent on the
+second day after his arrival, Juggernaut's activities had been limited
+to meditative contemplation of the Rector's spring flowers and some
+rather silent country walks in company with the lady to whom the
+Rector was wont to refer to in his playful moments as "my elderly ugly
+daughter."
+
+Whether Daphne's impulsive protest against the desecration of her
+beloved Tinkler's Den carried weight, or whether that sylvan spot was
+found wanting in combustible properties, will never be known; but it
+may be noted here that Lord Kirkley was advised that there was no
+money in his scheme, and Snayling remains an agricultural centre to
+this day.
+
+However, if it be a fact that no fresh experience can be altogether
+valueless, Juggernaut's time was certainly not wasted. He was absorbed
+into the primitive civilisation of Snayling Rectory. He was initiated
+into tribal custom and usage, and became versed in a tribal language
+consisting chiefly of abbreviations and portmanteau words. He was
+instructed in the principles which underlie such things as precedence
+in the use of the bath and helpings at dinner. He also studied with
+interest the fundamental laws governing the inheritance of out-grown
+garments. Having been born without brothers and sisters, he found
+himself confronted for the first time with some of those stern
+realities and unavoidable hardships which prevail when domestic supply
+falls short of domestic demand. The mystic phrase "F. H. B.!" for
+instance, with which Daphne had laid inviolable taboo upon the trifle
+on the day of his arrival, he soon learned stood for "Family, hold
+back!"
+
+Again, if Master Stephen Blasius Vereker suggested to Miss Veronica
+Elizabeth Vereker that a B. O. at the T. S. would be an L. B. of
+A. R.; to which the lady replied gently but insistently, "Is it
+E. P.?" Juggernaut was soon able to understand that in response to an
+intimation on the part of her brother that a Blow Out at the Tuck Shop
+would be a Little Bit of All Right, the cautious and mercenary damsel
+was inquiring whether her Expenses would be Paid at the forthcoming
+orgy. If Stiffy continued, "Up to 2 D.," and Nicky replied, "If you
+can't make it a tanner, Stiffy, darling, je pense _ne_!" the visitor
+gathered without much difficulty that in the opinion of Miss Veronica
+no gentleman worthy of the name should presume to undertake the
+entertainment of a lady under a minimum outlay of sixpence.
+
+Juggernaut soon settled down to the ways of the establishment. He said
+little, but it was obvious, even to the boys, that he was taking a
+good deal in. He seldom asked questions, but he possessed an uncanny
+knack of interpreting for himself the most secret signs and cryptic
+expressions of the community. This established for him a claim to the
+family's respect, and in acknowledgment of the good impression he had
+created he was informally raised from the status of honoured guest to
+that of familiar friend. What the Associated Body of Colliery Owners
+would have thought if they could have seen their chairman meekly
+taking his seat at the breakfast-table, what time the family,
+accompanying themselves with teaspoons against teacups, chanted a
+brief but pointed ditty consisting entirely of the phrase "pom-pom!"
+repeated _con amore_ and _sforzando_ until breathlessness
+intervened--an ordeal known at the Rectory as "pom-pomming," and
+inflicted daily upon the last to appear at breakfast--is hard to say.
+Mr Montague for one would have enjoyed it.
+
+Only once did this silent and saturnine man exhibit any flash of
+feeling. One morning before breakfast Daphne, busy in the
+knife-and-boot shed at the back of the house, heard a step on the
+gravel outside, and Juggernaut stood before her.
+
+"Good-morning!" she said cheerfully. "Excuse my get-up. I expect I
+look rather a ticket."
+
+Juggernaut surveyed her. She wore a large green baize apron. Her skirt
+was short and business-like, and her sleeves were rolled up above the
+elbow. Her hair was twisted into a knot at the back of her head.
+Plainly her toilet had only reached the stage of the _petit lever_.
+She was engaged in the healthful but unfashionable occupation of
+blacking boots; _per contra_, what Juggernaut chiefly noted was the
+whiteness of her arms. Finally his eye wandered to the boot in which
+her left hand was engulfed.
+
+"Whose boot is that?" he asked.
+
+"Yours, I should say. Dad's are square in the toes."
+
+Next moment a large and sinewy hand gripped her by the wrist, and the
+boot was taken from her.
+
+"Understand," said Apollyon, looking very like Apollyon indeed, "this
+must never occur again. I am angry with you."
+
+He spoke quite quietly, but there was a vibrant note in his voice
+which Daphne had never heard before. Mr Tom Winch and Mr Montague
+would have recognised it. She looked up at him fearlessly, rather
+interested than otherwise in this new side of his character.
+
+"I can't quite grasp why you _should_ be angry," she said, "though I
+can see you are. Not being millionaires, we all clean our own
+boots--excepting Dad, of course. I always do his. You being a visitor,
+I threw yours in as a make-weight. It's all in the day's work."
+
+But Juggernaut's fit had passed.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said. "I have no right to be angry with any
+one but myself. I am ashamed. I should have thought about this sooner,
+but I accepted your assurance that my visit would throw no extra
+burden upon the household rather too readily. Now, for the rest of the
+time I am here I propose, with your permission, to black my own boots.
+And as a sort of compensation for the trouble I have caused, I am
+going to black my hostess's as well."
+
+"Do you know _how_ to?" inquired the hostess, rather apprehensively.
+
+For answer Juggernaut picked up a laced shoe from off the bench and
+set to work upon it.
+
+"I once blacked my own boots every day for two years," he said,
+breathing heavily upon the shoe. "Now, if you want to go in and
+superintend the preparation of breakfast, you may leave me here, and I
+will undertake to produce the requisite standard of brilliancy." His
+face lit up with one of his rare and illuminating smiles, and he set
+grimly to work again.
+
+Daphne hesitated for a moment, and surveyed her guest doubtfully. He
+was burnishing her shoe in a manner only to be expected of an
+intensely active man who has been utterly idle for a fortnight. His
+face was set in the lines which usually appeared when he was driving
+business through a refractory meeting. Daphne turned and left the
+boot-house, unpinning her apron and whistling softly.
+
+Juggernaut finished off her shoes with meticulous care, and putting
+them back upon the bench turned his attention to his own boots. But
+his energy was plainly flagging. Several times his hand was stayed,
+and his eye wandered in the direction of his hostess's shoes. They
+were a remarkably neat pair. Daphne was proud of her feet--they were
+her only real vanity--and she spent more upon her boots and shoes
+than the extremely limited sum voted for the purpose by her
+conscience. More than once Juggernaut laid aside his own property and
+returned to the highly unnecessary task of painting the lily--if such
+a phrase can be applied to the efficient blacking of a shoe. Finally
+he picked up his boots and departed, to endure a pom-pomming of the
+most whole-hearted description on his appearance at the breakfast
+table.
+
+But henceforth he found his way to the boot-house every morning at
+seven-thirty, where, despite his hostess's protests, he grimly carried
+out his expressed intention.
+
+This was the only occasion, however, on which he asserted his will
+with Daphne. In all else she found him perfectly amenable. He
+permitted her without protest to overhaul his wardrobe, and submitted
+meekly to a scathing lecture upon the negligence apparent in the
+perforated condition of some of his garments and the extravagance
+evinced by the multiplicity of others. In short, Daphne adopted
+Juggernaut, as only a young and heart-whole girl can whose experience
+of men so far has been purely domestic. She felt like his mother. To
+her he was a child of the largest possible growth, who, not having
+enjoyed such advantages as she had all her life bestowed upon the rest
+of the flock, must needs be treated with twofold energy and special
+consideration. He was her Benjamin, she felt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Juggernaut was to depart to-morrow. His socks were darned. Items of
+his wardrobe, hitherto anonymous, were neatly marked with his
+initials. His very pocket-handkerchiefs were numbered.
+
+"You are sending me back to work thoroughly overhauled and refitted,"
+he said to Daphne, as she displayed, not without pride, his renovated
+garments laid out upon the spare bed. "I feel like a cruiser coming
+out of dry dock."
+
+"Well, don't get your things in that state again," said Daphne
+severely--"that's all! Who looks after them?"
+
+"My man."
+
+"He ought to be ashamed of himself, then. By the way, there is a dress
+waistcoat of yours with two buttons off. Can I _trust_ you, now, to
+get them put on again, or had I better keep the waistcoat until I can
+get buttons to match?"
+
+"You are very good," said Juggernaut, bowing before the storm.
+
+"That's settled, then. Where shall I send it to?"
+
+Juggernaut thought, and finally gave the address of a club in Pall
+Mall.
+
+"Club--do you live in a _club_?" inquired Daphne, with a woman's
+instinctive dislike for such a monastic and impregnable type of
+domicile.
+
+"Sometimes. It saves trouble, you see," said Juggernaut
+apologetically. "My house in town is shut at present. I spend a good
+deal of time in the north."
+
+"Where do you live when you are in the north?" inquired Daphne, with
+the healthy curiosity of her age and sex.
+
+"I have another house there," admitted Juggernaut reluctantly. "It is
+called Belton."
+
+"How many houses have you got altogether?" asked Daphne, in the
+persuasive tones of a schoolmaster urging a reticent culprit to make a
+clean breast of it and get it over like a man.
+
+"I have a little place in the Highlands," said Juggernaut humbly--
+
+Daphne rolled her brown eyes up to the ceiling.
+
+--"But it is the merest shooting-box," he added, as if pleading for a
+light sentence.
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Yes--on my honour!"
+
+"And--you live in a _club_!"
+
+Then came the verdict--the inevitable verdict.
+
+"What you want," said Daphne, regarding the impassive features of the
+prisoner at the bar, "is a wife. It's not too late, really," she
+added, smiling kindly upon him. "Of course, you think now at your age
+that you could never get used to it, but you could."
+
+"Do you think any girl would marry a man practically in his dotage?"
+inquired Juggernaut respectfully.
+
+"Not a girl, perhaps," admitted Daphne, "but somebody sensible and
+good. I'll tell you what--don't you know any nice widows? A widow
+would suit you top-hole. She would be used to men already, which would
+help her a lot, poor thing! Then, she would probably let you down more
+easily than an old maid. She would know, for instance, that it's
+perfectly hopeless to get a man to keep his room tidy, or to stop
+leaving his slippers about on the dining-room hearthrug, or dropping
+matches and ash on the floor. Do marry a widow, Sir John! Don't you
+know of any?"
+
+Sir John smiled grimly.
+
+"I will consult my visiting-list," he said; "but I won't promise
+anything. In spite of the apparent docility of my character, there are
+just one or two things which I prefer to do in my own way."
+
+"Still, I don't despair of you," said Daphne. "Old Martin down in the
+village married only the other day, and he was seventy-two. Nearly
+bedridden, in fact," she added encouragingly.
+
+That evening after supper the Rectory children sat round the table
+engaged in card games of a heating and complicated nature, Miss
+Vereker as usual doubling the parts of croupier and referee. The guest
+and the Rector were smoking in the study.
+
+Suddenly the door of the dining-room opened, and Brian Vereker
+appeared.
+
+"Daphne, my daughter," he said, "can you leave these desperadoes for a
+while and join us in the study?"
+
+"All right, Dad. Ally, you had better be dealer. Nicky, if you cheat
+while I am away you know the penalty! Come with me, Dawks. So long,
+everybody. Back directly!"
+
+But she was wrong. Game succeeded game: the time slipped by unheeded
+by all except Nicky and Tony, who, because it was past their hour for
+going to bed, noted its flight with special and personal relish; and
+it was not until the almost tearful Cilly had been rendered an old
+maid for the fourth consecutive time that the family realised that it
+was nearly half-past ten and Daphne had not returned.
+
+"Of course," said Nicky, wagging her head triumphantly, "we all know
+what _that_ means!"
+
+And for once in her small, scheming, prying life, she was right.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+THE MATCH IS STRUCK.
+
+
+Daphne sat rather dizzily by her father's side, holding his hand
+tightly and gazing straight before her. A sudden turn, and lo! before
+her lay a great break in the road. She had arrived at one of life's
+jumping-off places. No wonder she gripped her father's hand.
+
+Now, for a young girl to consent to a marriage with a man considerably
+older than herself, a man whom she hardly knows and does not love, is
+rightly regarded as a most unromantic proceeding; and since romance is
+the sugar of this rather acrid existence of ours, we are almost
+unanimous in discouraging such alliances. And yet there are two sides
+to the question. A loveless marriage may lead to the ruin of two
+lives: on the other hand, it introduces into the proceedings an
+element of business and common-sense all too rare in such enterprises.
+It is true that the newly united pair dream no dreams and see no
+visions. Each comes to the other devoid of glamour or false pretences.
+But if a couple find marriage feasible under such circumstances, the
+chances are that they are of a type which stands in no need of that
+highly intoxicating stimulant, Passion. They are simply people who
+realise at the outset, instead of later on, that life is a campaign
+and not a picnic; and each sees in the other not so much an idol or a
+plaything as a trusty ally. For such, mutual respect cannot but spring
+into being, and will in all likelihood grow into mutual love; and
+mutual love which matures from such beginnings as these is ten
+thousand times more to be desired than the frothy headachy stuff which
+we quaff in such reckless magnums in our thirsty youth.
+
+On the other hand, marriages made on earth (as opposed to what are
+popularly regarded as the celestial variety) can and often do lead to
+shipwreck. Granted. Still, marriage is a leap in the dark in any case,
+and humdrum philosophers must at least be excused for suggesting that
+one may as well endeavour to illuminate this hazardous feat of agility
+by the help of the Torch of Reason as not. But of course no one ever
+agrees with such suggestions. Romance and Sentiment cry, "Never!
+Shame! Monstrous!" And most of us very humanly, naturally, and rightly
+associate ourselves in the most cordial manner with the opinions of
+this old-established and orthodox firm.
+
+We left Daphne gazing into the study fire, with a silent man on either
+side of her and Mr Dawks' head upon her knee. She looked perfectly
+composed, but something was rocking and trembling within her.
+
+It is certainly disconcerting, even for the most self-possessed of
+maidens, to realise, suddenly and without warning, that there are
+deeper things than the domestic affections. It is still more
+disconcerting when an individual whom Nature might with perfect
+propriety have appointed your father, and whom you with feminine
+perversity have adopted as a son, suddenly kicks over the traces and
+suggests as a compromise that he should occupy the intermediate
+position of husband.
+
+Brian Vereker sat smiling, happy and confident. The fact that Sir John
+Carr was forty-two and Daphne barely twenty had not occurred to him.
+All he realised was that the little boy who had been his fag at
+school, who had lit his fire and made his toast in return for
+occasional help with caesuras and quadratic equations, had grown up
+into a man, and desired to marry his daughter. The whole thing seemed
+so natural, so appropriate. He glowed with humble pride that
+Providence should so interest itself in his little household. He
+beamed upon the young people.
+
+Suddenly Daphne turned to him, and released her hold on his hand.
+
+"Dad, will you leave us for a little?" she said. "I want to talk to
+Sir John."
+
+The Rector rose.
+
+"By all means," he said. "Now I come to think of it, the presence of a
+third party is not essential to a proposal of marriage. I am _de
+trop_! I shall be upstairs."
+
+He laughed boyishly, and left them.
+
+When the door closed Daphne turned to her suitor.
+
+"So you want me for your wife?" she said, with the air of one opening
+a debate.
+
+"I do," said Juggernaut. It was the first time he had spoken since she
+entered the room.
+
+"And you went and saw Dad about it," continued Daphne, rather
+unexpectedly.
+
+"Yes. As I understood you were not of age, I asked his permission to
+speak to you. He rather took the words out of my mouth by calling you
+in and telling you himself."
+
+"I'm glad to hear you say that," said Daphne. "I thought at first the
+thing was being arranged over my head, and that I wasn't to be
+consulted at all. But you _were_ going to ask me properly, weren't
+you? We prefer that, you know." She spoke for her sex.
+
+Juggernaut nodded.
+
+"Only Dad rushed in and spoiled it--eh?"
+
+"That is correct," said Juggernaut.
+
+"Well, begin now," said Daphne calmly. "A girl doesn't like to be
+done out of a proposal. It would be something to tell the kids about
+afterwards, anyhow."
+
+Juggernaut became conscious of a distinctly more lenient attitude
+towards the Rector's precipitancy.
+
+"Now that you know," he began, "a formal proposal would sound rather
+dull and superfluous, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Perhaps you are right," said Daphne, half regretfully. "Dad has
+spoiled it for me, after all!"
+
+Presently--
+
+"I wonder _why_ you want to marry me," she mused, fondling Mr Dawks'
+ears. "I suppose you have come to the conclusion that it is time you
+had some one to look after all those houses and servants of yours. Is
+that it?"
+
+Juggernaut regarded her curiously for a moment.
+
+"Perhaps," he said.
+
+"You are not in love with me, of course," continued the practical Miss
+Vereker, ticking off the unassailable features of the case. "At least,
+I suppose not--I don't see how you possibly could be. It's rather hard
+for me to tell, though, because I don't quite know the meaning of the
+word. I love Dad and the boys, and Cilly, and Nicky, and Mr
+Dawks--_don't_ I, Dawks, dear?--and I would do _anything_ to save them
+pain or unhappiness. But I suppose that's not the sort of love that
+people call love. It seems to have been left out of my composition,
+or perhaps it hasn't cropped up yet. Now Cilly--I am her exact
+opposite--Cilly is always in love with some man or other. By the way,
+she told me last night when I went to dry her hair that she had just
+fallen in love with you, so evidently you aren't too old after all!
+Would it do as well if you married Cilly?" Daphne inquired
+tentatively.
+
+"I'm afraid not," said Juggernaut.
+
+"Well, perhaps you are right. Cilly's a darling, but she is very young
+yet," agreed the time-worn Miss Vereker. "But"--she broke off
+short--"it seems to me that I am doing most of the talking. Would you
+care to address the meeting--say a few words? I think I should like to
+hear a bit of that proposal after all. So far, all I know is that you
+want to marry me. And _that_ I got from Dad. Now--I'm listening!"
+
+Daphne leaned back in her big chair and smiled upon her suitor quite
+maternally. There was something pathetic in her childish freedom from
+embarrassment or constraint under circumstances which usually test the
+_sang-froid_ of man and maid alike. Perhaps Sir John was struck by
+this, for his eyes suddenly softened and the lines about his mouth
+relaxed.
+
+"You needn't say you love me, or anything like that, if you don't,"
+supplemented Daphne. "I shall understand."
+
+Sir John's eyes resumed their normal appearance.
+
+"As you seem to prefer to keep matters on a strictly business
+footing," he said, "I will come to the point at once. If you will
+marry me I think I can make you tolerably happy and comfortable. I am
+a prosperous man, I suppose, and as my wife you would find a certain
+social position awaiting you. Any desires of yours in the way of
+houses, clothes, jewels, and so on, you could always gratify, within
+limits, at will. I mention these things, not because I think they will
+influence your decision--I should not want you for a wife if I thought
+they would--but because I feel that every woman is entitled to a plain
+statement of fact about the man who wishes to marry her. Too often,
+under the delusion that the sheer romance of a love-affair wipes all
+mundane considerations off the slate, she puts up with the wildest of
+fictions. However, I may point out to you that acceptance of my
+worldly goods would enable you to carry out certain schemes that I
+know lie very near your heart. You could send Ally to the University.
+You could have Cilly finished, or whatever the expression is, and
+bring her out yourself. And you could pay for a curate for your
+father. You can have all the money you want for these enterprises by
+asking for it; or if you prefer something more definite I would settle
+an annual sum upon you--say a thousand a-year."
+
+A thousand a-year! Daphne closed her eyes giddily. Before her arose a
+vision of a renovated Rectory--a sort of dimity Palace Beautiful--with
+an enlarged kitchen-boiler, new carpets, and an extra servant. She saw
+her father bending happily over his sermon while a muscular young
+Christian tramped round the parish. She saw Ally winning first classes
+at Cambridge, and Cilly taking London drawing-rooms by storm. Her
+pulse quickened. But Juggernaut was still speaking.
+
+"On the other hand, I ought to warn you that I am a hard man--at
+least, I believe that is my reputation--with somewhat rigid notions on
+the subject of _quid_ and _quo_. I would endeavour to supply my wife
+with every adjunct to her happiness; but--I should expect her in
+return to stand by my side and do her duty as my wife so long as we
+both lived. They say of me that I never make a mistake in choosing a
+lieutenant. Well, the instinct which has served me so often in that
+respect is prompting me now; and it is because I see in you a woman
+who would stand by her husband as a matter of duty alone, quite apart
+from"--he hesitated--"from inclination, that I ask you to marry me."
+
+Daphne gazed at him. Her heart was bumping gently. There was
+something rather fine about this proposed bargain--a compact between a
+man and a woman to stand by one another through thick and thin, not
+because they liked doing so but because it was playing the game.
+Daphne felt proud, too, that this master of men should have adjudged
+her--a woman--to be of the true metal. But she was honest to the end.
+
+"You would give all that to have me for your wife," she said.
+
+Sir John bowed his head with grave courtesy.
+
+"I would," he said simply.
+
+"I'm not worth it," said Daphne earnestly. "I am only accustomed to
+looking after our little Rectory and the family. I might make a
+fearful mess of all your grand houses. Supposing I did? What if I
+wasn't up to your mark? How if your friends didn't like me? It would
+be too late to send me back," she pointed out, rather piteously.
+
+Sir John's features did not relax.
+
+"I am willing to take the risk," was all he said.
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+"Let me think," said Daphne suddenly and feverishly.
+
+She slipped out of her chair on to the hearthrug, and lay before the
+twinkling fire with her arms clasped round the neck of the
+ever-faithful Mr Dawks and her face buried in his rough coat. There
+was a tense silence, accentuated by the amiable thumping of Dawks'
+tail. Sir John Carr sat in his chair like a graven image, looking down
+upon the slim lithe figure at his feet. Daphne just then was a sight
+to quicken the blood in a man's veins, but Juggernaut never moved.
+Perhaps he realised, for all his lack of lover's graces and his harsh
+methods of wooing, something of the solemnity of the moment. A child,
+without experience, with nothing but her own untutored instincts to
+guide her, was standing at her cross-roads. Would she go forward with
+the man whose path through life had so suddenly converged on hers, or
+fare on alone? And the man--what were his feelings? None could have
+told by outward view. He simply waited--sitting very still.
+
+At last Daphne sat up, and shook back her hair from her eyes.
+
+"We'll leave it to Mr Dawks," she said. "Dawks, old boy, shall we _do_
+it?"
+
+The house waited in breathless silence for Mr Dawks' casting vote.
+That affectionate and responsive arbitrator, hearing himself
+addressed, raised his head, licked his mistress's hand, and belaboured
+the floor with his tail in a perfect ecstasy of cordiality.
+
+Daphne turned to the man in the chair.
+
+"All right!" she said. "It's a bargain. I'll marry you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+"MORITURA TE SALUTAT."
+
+
+On a bright spring afternoon three weeks later the Rectory children
+sat huddled together like a cluster of disconsolate starlings upon the
+five-barred gate leading into Farmer Preston's big pasture meadow.
+
+It was the eve of Daphne's wedding-day.
+
+To those readers of this narrative who feel inclined to dilate upon
+the impropriety of marrying in haste, it may be pointed out that the
+bride possessed no money and the bridegroom no relatives. Consequently
+there would be no presents, no _trousseau_. The principal incentives
+to what Miss Veronica Vereker pithily described as a "circus wedding"
+being thus eliminated, the pair were to be married quietly next day in
+the little church where Daphne had been christened and confirmed, and
+under the shadow of which she had lived all her short life.
+
+As noted above, the bride had no _trousseau_, for her father could not
+afford one, and she flatly declined to take a penny from her _fiance_
+until he became her husband. The little village dressmaker had turned
+out a wedding-dress over which Cilly hourly gloated, divided between
+ecstasy and envy; and this, together with an old lace veil in which
+her mother had been married, would serve Daphne's needs.
+
+In truth, she had little time to think of herself. She was
+relinquishing a throne which she had occupied since she was eleven
+years old, and the instruction and admonition of her successor had
+occupied her attention ever since the date of her wedding had been
+fixed. Keys had to be handed over, recipes confided, and the mysteries
+of feminine book-keeping unfolded. There were good-byes to be said to
+bedridden old women and tearful cottage children. The bridegroom too,
+she felt, had a certain claim upon her attention. He had departed the
+morning after Daphne had accepted him, and was now very busy preparing
+his house in London for the reception of the future Lady Carr. But he
+had spent a good deal of time at the Rectory for all that, coming down
+for week-ends and the like; and Daphne, mindful of the duties of a
+_fiancee_, devoted herself conscientiously to his entertainment
+whenever he appeared.
+
+But now the end of all things was imminent. To-morrow the management
+of the Rectory would pass into the hands of the dubious and
+inexperienced Cilly.
+
+Meanwhile the Rectory children continued to sit disconsolately upon
+the gate. They were waiting for Daphne, who had promised to spend her
+last afternoon with them. Sir John, who was now staying at Kirkley
+Abbey,--to the mingled apprehension and exhilaration of the chief
+bridesmaid Lord Kirkley had offered to act as best man,--was to come
+over that afternoon, but only to see the Rector on matters connected
+with settlements and other unromantic adjuncts to the married state.
+
+The gate proving unsuitable for prolonged session, the family
+abandoned their gregarious attitude and disposed of themselves in more
+comfortable fashion. Ally, home on two days' special leave from
+school, lay basking in the sun. Cilly sprawled on the grass with her
+back against a tree trunk, her brow puckered with the gradual
+realisation of coming responsibility. Stiffy, simple soul, with his
+knees clasped beneath his chin, sorrowfully contemplated to-morrow's
+bereavement. Master Anthony Cuthbert, perched on a log with a switch
+in his hand, was conducting an unseen orchestra. Nicky, soulless and
+flippant as ever, speculated at large upon her sister's future.
+
+"It'll be pretty hot for Daph living down there at first," she mused.
+A joke lasted Nicky a long time: the humorous fiction that the
+bride-elect would to-morrow be carried off to reside permanently in
+the infernal regions was still as a savoury bakemeat to her palate.
+"Of course, Polly"--this was her abbreviation for Apollyon, adopted as
+soon as that gentleman had ascended from the grade of familiar friend
+to that of prospective relative--"will be glad to get back to his own
+fireside, but Daph will feel it a bit, I should think. Perhaps he will
+let her use a screen to begin with!... I wonder what housekeeping will
+be like. I suppose the cook will have horns and a tail, and all the
+food will be devilled. I should like to see Daph ordering dinner.
+'Good morning, Diabolo!' 'Good morning, miss! What would you like for
+dinner to-night?' 'Well, Diabolo, what have you _got_?' 'There's a
+nice tender sinner came in this morning, miss. You might have a few of
+his ribs; or would you prefer him served up grilled, with brimstone
+sauce? And I suppose you would like devils-on-horseback for a
+savoury.' 'That will do _very_ nicely, Diabolo. Oh, I forgot! It's
+possible that the Lucifers will drop in. Perhaps we'd better have
+yesterday's moneylender cold on the side-board in case there isn't
+enough to go round. And we must have something special to'--Ally, what
+do people drink in Hades?"
+
+"Dunno," said Ally drowsily; "molten lead, I should think."
+
+"Only the _lower_ classes, dear," said Nicky witheringly. "I am
+talking about the best people."
+
+"Sulphuric acid?" suggested Ally, who was beginning to study chemistry
+at school.
+
+"That will do," said Nicky, and returned to her dialogue. "'Diabolo,
+will you tell the butler to put a barrel--no, a _vat_--of sulphuric
+acid on ice. You know what the Lucifers are, when'--hallo, here's Daph
+at last!"
+
+The bride-elect approached, swinging her garden-hat in her hand, and
+followed by Mr Dawks.
+
+"Well, family," she said, "I'm yours for the rest of the day. What
+shall we do?"
+
+"Where is John?" inquired Ally. (John, it may be explained, was the
+name by which the family, with the exception of Nicky, had decided to
+address their future brother-in-law.)
+
+"In the study with Dad."
+
+"Has he arranged about having the five o'clock train stopped to-morrow
+afternoon?" inquired the careful Stiffy.
+
+"No. We are going in a motor all the way to London," said Daphne.
+"Jack was keeping it as a surprise for me. It's a new one, a----"
+
+"All the way to _where_?" inquired that economical humourist, Miss
+Veronica Vereker.
+
+"London."
+
+"H'm! Yes, I _have_ heard it called that, now I come to think of it,"
+conceded Nicky; "but it seems a waste of a good car, especially if
+it's a new one. Unless it's made of some special--Stiffy, what's the
+name of that stuff that won't burn?"
+
+"Asbestos?"
+
+"That's it--asbestos. I didn't expect to see you drive off down the
+road, somehow," continued Nicky in a somewhat injured voice, "just
+like an ordinary couple. I thought Polly would stamp his foot on the
+lawn, and a chasm would yawn at your feet, and in you'd both pop, and
+you would be gone for ever, like--Ally, who were those two people in
+the Latin book you had for a holiday task?"
+
+"What you want, Nicky," responded Mr Aloysuis Vereker, "is chloroform.
+Do you mean Pluto and Proserpine?"
+
+"That's it--Proserpine. Well, Proserpine, what are you going to do to
+entertain your little brothers and sisters this afternoon?"
+
+"Anything you like," said Proserpine, endeavouring to balance herself
+on the top bar of the gate. "How about making toffee down in the Den?"
+
+There was a chorus of approval. Nursery customs die hard. Even the
+magnificent Ally found it difficult to shake off the glamour of this
+youthful dissipation.
+
+"I'll tell you what," continued Daphne, warming up to the occasion,
+"we'll have a regular farewell feast. We'll send down to the shop and
+get some buns and chocolates and gingerbeer, and--and----"
+
+"Bananas," suggested Tony.
+
+"Nuts," added Cilly.
+
+"Cigarettes," said Ally.
+
+"Who has got any money?" inquired Nicky.
+
+The family fumbled in its pockets.
+
+"Here's threepence--all I have," said Cilly at length.
+
+"Twopence," said Ally, laying the sum on Cilly's threepenny bit.
+
+"Awfully sorry," said Stiffy, "but I'm afraid I've only got a stamp.
+It's still quite gummy at the back, though," he added hopefully.
+"They'll take it."
+
+Tony produced a halfpenny.
+
+"You can search _me_, friends!" was Nick's despairing contribution.
+
+"I have fourpence," said the bride--"not a penny more. I handed over
+all the spare housekeeping money to Dad this morning. That only makes
+tenpence-halfpenny, counting Stiffy's stamp." She sighed wistfully.
+"And I did so want to give you all a treat before I went! Well, we
+must do without the nuts and chocolates, and----"
+
+Nicky rose to her feet, swelling with sudden inspiration.
+
+"Daph, what's the matter with running along to this millionaire young
+man of yours and touching _him_ for a trifle?" she inquired
+triumphantly.
+
+Daphne hesitated. True, to-morrow she would be a rich man's wife, able
+to afford unlimited gingerbeer. But the idea of asking a man for money
+did not appeal to her. Pride of poverty and maidenly reserve make an
+obstinate mixture. Yet the flushed and eager faces of Nicky and Tony,
+the polite deprecations of the selfless Stiffy, and the studied
+indifference of Cilly and Ally, were hard to resist.
+
+"I wonder if he would mind," she said doubtfully.
+
+"Mind? Oh, no. Why should he?" urged the chorus respectfully.
+
+"Have a dart for it, anyhow," said Nicky.
+
+Daphne descended from the gate.
+
+"Righto!" she said. "After all, it's our last afternoon together, and
+I _should_ like to do you all proud. I'll chance it. The rest of you
+can start down to the Den and collect sticks, while I run along to the
+house and ask him. Nicky, you had better come with me to carry down
+saucepans and things. Come on--I'll race you!"
+
+Three minutes later, Sir John Carr, smoking a meditative cigar upon
+the lawn, was aware of a sudden scurry and patter in the lane outside.
+Directly after this, with a triumphant shriek, the small figure of his
+future sister-in-law shot through the garden-gate, closely followed
+by that of his future wife. Mr Dawks, faint yet pursuing, brought up
+the rear.
+
+The competitors flung themselves down on the grass at his feet,
+panting.
+
+"We have been having a race," explained Daphne rather gratuitously.
+
+"I won!" gasped Nicky. "Daph has the longest legs," she continued,
+"but I have the shortest skirts. Now, my children, I must leave you.
+Wire in!" she concluded, in a hoarse and penetrating whisper to
+Daphne.
+
+Her short skirts flickered round the corner of the house, and she was
+gone. Daphne was left facing her _fiance_.
+
+"I say," she began rather constrainedly--"don't get up; I'm not going
+to stay--do you think you could lend me a little money? I--I'll pay
+you back in a day or two," she added with a disarming smile. "The fact
+is, we are going to make toffee down in the Den, and I wanted to get a
+few extra things, just to give them all a real treat to finish up
+with, you know. Will you--Jack?"
+
+Juggernaut looked up at her with his slow scrutinising smile.
+
+"What sort of extra things?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh!"--Daphne closed her eyes and began to count on her
+fingers--"buns, and chocolates, and nuts, and gingerbeer. And I wanted
+to give Ally a packet of cigarettes. (After all, he's eighteen, and
+he does love them so, and they are only ten for threepence.) And if
+you could run to it, I should like to get a few bananas as well," she
+concluded with a rush, laying all her cards on the table at once.
+
+Juggernaut leaned back in his chair and looked extremely judicial.
+
+"What will all this cost?" he inquired.
+
+"One and eleven," said Daphne. "Jack, you _dear_! We _shall_ have a
+time!"
+
+Juggernaut had taken a handful of change out of his pocket.
+
+"One and eleven," he said; "I wonder, Daphne, if you will be able to
+purchase an afternoon of perfect happiness for that sum in a year's
+time."
+
+He handed over the money.
+
+"May I have a receipt?" he asked gravely.
+
+Daphne took his meaning, and kissed him lightly. She lingered for a
+moment, anxious not to appear in a hurry to run away.
+
+"Is there anything else?" inquired Sir John at length.
+
+Daphne ran an inward eye over the possibilities of dissipation.
+
+"No, I don't think so," she said. "Thanks ever so much! We shall be
+back about six. So long, old man. Don't go to sleep in this hot sun."
+
+She flitted away across the lawn, jingling the money in her hand. At
+the gate she turned and waved her hand. Juggernaut's eyes were fixed
+upon her, but he did not appear to observe her salutation. Probably he
+was in a brown study about something.
+
+Daphne was half-way down to the Den before it occurred to her that it
+would have been a graceful act--not to say the barest civility--to
+invite the donor of the feast to come and be present thereat. But she
+did not go back.
+
+"It would bore him so, poor dear!" she said to herself; "and--and us,
+too!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next day they were married.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO.
+
+FLICKERINGS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+A HORSE TO THE WATER.
+
+
+"And how is her ladyship?" inquired Mrs Carfrae.
+
+"Her ladyship," replied Sir John Carr, "is enjoying life. What good
+bread-and-butter you always keep."
+
+They were sitting in Mrs Carfrae's tiny drawing-room in Hill Street.
+Mrs Carfrae was a little old lady in a wheeled chair. Her face was
+comparatively youthful, but her hair was snowy white. She spoke with
+what English people, to whom the pure Highland Scots of Inverness and
+the guttural raucousness of Glasgow are as one, term "a Scotch
+accent."
+
+"I am glad you like my bread-and-butter," she said; "but I fancy you
+get as good at your wife's tea-table."
+
+"I don't often see my wife's tea-table," confessed Juggernaut. "She is
+out a good deal, and as a rule it is more convenient for me to have my
+tea sent into my study."
+
+"Where you grumble at it, I'll be bound. I ken husbands. So her
+ladyship is out a good deal? Well do I mind the first time I caught
+her in, the besom! That was nearly three years ago. I am not a payer
+of calls, as you know; but I felt that I must be the very first to
+greet your wife, Johnny boy. So the day after I knew you had settled
+in, I had myself bundled into the carriage, and off I went to
+Grosvenor Street. I told Maxwell to ring the bell and inquire if her
+ladyship was at home. The door was thrown open immediately--rather
+prematurely, in fact. I heard a sound like the cheep of a frightened
+mouse, and I saw a grand silk skirt and a pair of ankles scuttering up
+the staircase. I knew fine what had happened. I was her first caller:
+and though the child was sitting in her new drawing-room waiting for
+me and those like me, her courage had failed at the sound of the bell,
+and she was galloping up the stair out of the way when the man opened
+the door. Poor lassie! I did exactly the same thing at her age."
+
+"Did you go in?"
+
+"I did. I was determined to do it. I gripped my crutch and was out of
+the carriage and up the steps before the footman could answer Maxwell.
+I hobbled past the man--he just gaped at me like a puddock on a hot
+day--and got to the foot of the stair and looked up. As I expected,
+there was Madam, hanging over the banisters to see what sort of a
+caller she had hooked the first time. There was another creature
+beside her, with wild brown hair and eyes like saucers. They were
+clutching each other round the waist. When they saw me they gave a
+kind of horrified yelp. But I cried to them to come down, and in ten
+minutes we were the best of friends. They were terribly prim at first;
+but when they found out that I was just a clavering old wife and
+nothing more, they lost their grand manners. They overlaid me with
+questions about London, and while I was answering them the saucer-eyed
+one set to work cracking lumps of sugar with her teeth. The other--her
+ladyship--was eating jam out of an Apostle spoon. The spoon was in her
+mouth when a footman came in to mend the fire. She was fairly taken by
+surprise, and tried to push the whole concern into her mouth until the
+man should be gone. I thought at first she had swallowed it, but
+presently I saw the Apostle sticking out. And that was three years
+ago. Well, I have become less active since then, and I pay no more
+calls--wheel me a piece nearer the fire, Johnny--so I do not see so
+much of her ladyship as I did. Still, I am glad to hear she is
+enjoying life. And how is the baby?"
+
+"The baby," replied its male parent, "looks and sounds extremely
+robust. He uttered several articulate words the other day, I am told."
+
+"Can he walk?"
+
+"He can lurch along in a slightly dissipated manner."
+
+"Good! And how does your Daphne handle all these houses and servants
+of yours?"
+
+Sir John smiled.
+
+"She was a little out of her depth at first," he said. "She had not
+been accustomed to cater for a large household. The extravagance of
+ordering at least one fresh joint a-day appalled her, and it was a
+long time before the housekeeper could cure her of a passion for
+shepherd's pie. But she has a shrewd head. She soon discovered which
+items of domestic expenditure were reasonable and which were not. She
+has cut down the bills by a half, but I don't notice any corresponding
+falling off in the quality of the _menu_."
+
+"And does she love fine clothes, and gaiety?"
+
+"I think she found her maid rather a trial at first. She had been so
+accustomed not only to attiring herself but to going round and hooking
+up her sisters as well, that a woman who handled her like a baby
+rather paralysed her. She also exhibited a _penchant_ for wearing her
+old clothes out--to rags, that is--in private. But I think she is
+getting over that now. I received her dressmaker's latest bill this
+morning. It reveals distinct signs of progress."
+
+"And I hear she looks just beautiful."
+
+"She does. I must admit that."
+
+"_Then_," the old lady raised herself a little in her chair, and
+settled her spectacles with her unparalysed hand, "what is the
+trouble, Johnny Carr?"
+
+Juggernaut laid down his tea-cup with a slight clatter.
+
+"I was not aware," he said curtly, "that there was any trouble."
+
+Mrs Carfrae surveyed him long and balefully over her spectacles.
+
+"Johnny Carr," she observed dispassionately, "I have known you ever
+since you could roar for your bottle, and I have never had any
+patience with you either then or since. You are a dour, dreich,
+thrawn, camstearie creature. You have more money than you can spend,
+grand health, and a young and beautiful wife. But you are not happy.
+You come here to tell me so, and when I ask you to begin, you say
+there is nothing! Well, _I_ will tell you what the matter is. There is
+some trouble between you and your Daphne."
+
+Considerable courage is required to inform a man to his face that all
+is not well between him and his wife; but courage was a virtue that
+Elspeth Carfrae had never lacked. Juggernaut experienced no feeling of
+resentment or surprise that this old lady should have instantaneously
+sized up a situation which he himself had been investigating in a
+groping and uncertain fashion for nearly three years. Life is a big
+book of problems, and while man is content to work them out figure by
+figure, taking nothing for granted which cannot be approved by
+established formulae, woman has an exasperating habit of skipping
+straight to the solution in a manner which causes the conscientious
+and methodical male to suspect her of peeping at the answers at the
+end of the book.
+
+"Perhaps you had not realised that," pursued Mrs Carfrae. "Men are apt
+to be slow in the uptake," she added indulgently.
+
+"I fail to see where you get your _data_ from," replied Juggernaut. "I
+have not been particularly communicative on the subject. In fact, I
+don't remember telling you a single----"
+
+Mrs Carfrae subjected him to a withering glare.
+
+"If all that women knew," she observed frostily, "was what men had
+told them, I wonder how many of us would be able to spell our own
+names. No, laddie, you have told me nothing: that's true enough. But I
+know fine why you came here to-day. You are worried. You and Daphne
+are getting on splendidly. The match has been a great success. You
+have a son and heir. But--you are not happy; and it is about your
+Daphne that you are not happy."
+
+Juggernaut gazed into the fire.
+
+"You are right," he said. "I confess that my marriage has not been so
+uplifting as I had hoped. I daresay it is my own fault. As you point
+out, I am--well, all the Caledonian adjectives you heaped upon me just
+now: all that and a good deal more. I have the reputation of being a
+harsh man, and I hate it. I hoped, when I married that child, that she
+would pull me out of my rigid, undeviating way of life, and broaden my
+sympathies a little. I looked forward to a little domesticity." His
+dark face coloured slightly. "I may be an ogre, but I have my soft
+side, as you know."
+
+"None better," said the old lady gently.
+
+"Well, somehow," continued Juggernaut, "my marriage has not made the
+difference to me that I had hoped. We two have had our happy hours
+together, but we don't seem to progress beyond a certain point. We are
+amiability itself. If I ask Daphne to see to anything about the house,
+she sees to it; if she asks me to go with her to a tea-fight, I go.
+But that seems to be about the limit. I can't help thinking that
+marriage would not have survived so long as an institution if there
+had been no more behind it than that. I was under the impression that
+it made two one. At present we are still two--very decidedly two;
+and--and----"
+
+"And being you, it just maddens you not to be able to get your money's
+worth," said Mrs Carfrae calmly. "Now, John Carr, just listen to me.
+First of all, have you had any trouble with her?"
+
+"Trouble?"
+
+"Yes. Any direct disagreement with her?"
+
+"Never. Stop--we had one small breeze."
+
+Mrs Carfrae wagged a forefinger.
+
+"You have been bullying her, monster!"
+
+"Heavens, no!"
+
+"Well, tell me the story."
+
+"Six months ago," said Juggernaut, "she came to me and asked for
+money--much as a child asks for toffee--with a seraphic smile and an
+ingratiating rub up against my chair. I asked her what it was for."
+
+"Quite wrong!" said Mrs Carfrae promptly.
+
+"But surely----" began Juggernaut, the man of business up in arms at
+once.
+
+"You should have begun by taking out your cheque-book and saying, 'how
+much?'" continued his admonitress. "Then she would have called you a
+dear, or some such English term of affection, and recognising you as
+her natural confidant would have told you everything. After that you
+might have improved the occasion. As it was, you just put her back up,
+and she dithered."
+
+"She did, so far as I understand the expression. But, finding that I
+was firm----"
+
+"Oh, man, man, how can a great grown creature like you bear to be
+_firm_--_hard_, you mean, of course--with a wild unbroken lass like
+that? Well, go on. You were firm. And what did her poor ladyship say
+she wanted the money for?"
+
+"For her young cub of a brother," said Juggernaut briefly.
+
+"A wealthy young wife daring to want to help her own brother!
+Monstrous!" observed Mrs Carfrae.
+
+"I think you are unjust to me in this matter. Listen! When I married
+Daphne I was aware that she would want to finance her entire family:
+in fact, it was one of the inducements to marrying me which I laid
+before her. For that purpose, to save her the embarrassment of
+constantly coming to me for supplies, I settled upon her a private
+allowance of--what do you think?"
+
+"Out with it! No striving after effect with _me_, my man!" was the
+reply of his unimpressionable audience.
+
+"I gave her a thousand a year," said Juggernaut.
+
+"That should have been sufficient," said Mrs Carfrae composedly. "But
+do not be ostentatious about it. You could well afford the money."
+
+"Well, she had spent most of that year's allowance in six months,"
+continued Juggernaut, disregarding these gibes--"on her father's
+curate, the younger children's education, and so forth--and she wanted
+more."
+
+"What age is this brother?"
+
+"Twenty, I think. He is up at Cambridge, and wants to get into the
+Army as a University candidate. At present he appears to be filling
+in his time philandering with a tobacconist's daughter. The
+tobacconist's bill for moral and intellectual damage came to five
+hundred pounds. Before writing the cheque, I stipulated--"
+
+"You would!" said the old lady grimly.
+
+--"That I should be permitted to make a few investigations on my own
+behalf. Young Vereker is a handsome, fascinating rascal, with about as
+much moral fibre as a Yahoo. He was a good deal franker in his
+admissions to me than he had been to his sister--"
+
+"Ay, I once heard you cross-examining a body," confirmed Mrs Carfrae.
+
+--"And on the completion of my inquiries I paid the money down on the
+nail. It was the only thing to do."
+
+"Did you tell Daphne the whole story?"
+
+"No. I should hate to dispel her illusions. She loves her brothers and
+sisters."
+
+"There is no need to excuse yourself, John Carr. I knew fine that you
+would not tell her. Instead, you glowered at her, and read her a
+lecture about extravagance and improvidence. She tried to look prim
+and penitent, but danced down the stair the moment she got the door
+shut behind her. Now, mannie, listen to me. This is no light charge
+you have taken on yourself--to rule a wild, shy, impulsive taupie like
+that. You cannot contain the like with bit and bridle, mind. I have
+been one myself, and I know. There is just one thing to do. She must
+learn to _love_ you, or the lives of the pair of you will go
+stramash!"
+
+Juggernaut's old friend concluded this homily with tremendous
+emphasis, and there was a long silence. Then the man drew his chair a
+little closer.
+
+"How can I teach her?" he asked humbly. "I have no _finesse_, no
+attractiveness. Do you think I--I am too old for her?"
+
+"Old? Toots! I was nineteen when I married on my Andy, and he was
+thirty-nine. For the first few years after we married I called him
+'daddy' to his face. After that I found that I was really old enough
+to be the man's mother; so I called him 'sonny.' But that is a
+digression. I will tell you how to teach her. Do not be monotonous.
+It's no use just to be a good husband to her: any gowk can be that. Do
+not let your affection run on in a regular, dutiful stream: have a
+spate occasionally! Get whirled off your feet by her, and let her see
+it. Prepare some unexpected ploy for her. Rush her off to dine
+somewhere on the spur of the moment--just your two selves. Stop her
+suddenly on the staircase in a half-light, and give her a hug."
+
+"She'd never stand it!" cried Juggernaut in dismay. "And I could never
+do it," he added apprehensively.
+
+"You _do_ it, my callant," said Mrs Carfrae with decision, "and she'll
+stand it right enough! She may tell you not to be foolish, but she
+will not make a point of coming down by the back stair in future for
+all that. And let her see that with you she comes _first_ in
+everything. What a crow she will have to herself when she realises
+that a feckless unbusinesslike piece like herself has crept right into
+the inmost place in the heart of a man whose gods used to be hard work
+and hard words and hard knocks! She'll just glory in you!
+
+"Lastly, do not be discouraged if you have no success to begin with.
+At all costs you must keep on smiling. A dour, bleak man is no fit
+companion for a young girl who has always lived a sheltered sunny
+life. He just withers her. She may last for a while, and do her duty
+by him, but in time he'll break her heart. Ay, keep on smiling,
+Johnny, even if she hurts you. She will hurt you often. Young girls
+are like that. It takes time for a woman to realise that a man is just
+about twice as sensitive as herself in certain matters, and she will
+not make allowances for him at first. But until she does--and she
+will, if you give her time--keep on smiling! If you keep on long
+enough you will get your reward. Make the effort, my man! I have had
+to make efforts in my time--"
+
+"I know that," said Juggernaut.
+
+--"And the efforts have been the making of _me_. For one thing, I have
+acquired a sense of proportion. When we are young and lusty our
+knowledge of perspective is so elementary that in our picture of life
+our own Ego fills the foreground to the exclusion of all else; with
+this result, that we get no view of the countless interesting and
+profitable things that lie behind. My Ego is kept in better order
+these days, I assure you. It gets just a good comfortable place in the
+picture and no more. If Elspeth Carfrae stirs from that, or comes
+creeping too far forward so as to block out other things, she hears
+from me!"
+
+"Does she always obey you?" asked Juggernaut.
+
+"She got far beyond my control once," admitted the old lady. "I
+mind when my Andy went from me she swelled and swelled until she
+blotted out everything--earth, sea, and sky. But she has been back
+in her place these twenty years, and there she shall bide. There is
+no great selfish Ego blocking the view now when I sit and look out
+upon my section of the world. You have no idea how interesting it
+is to study your friends' troubles instead of your own, John. The
+beauty of it is that you need not worry over them: you just watch
+them--unconcernedly."
+
+The Scots have their own notion of what constitutes an excursion into
+the realms of humour, and Juggernaut, knowing this, made no attempt to
+controvert his hostess's last statement.
+
+"Not that I grudged my Andy," continued the old lady presently. "No
+wife worthy of the name could grudge her man to his country when he
+died as Andy died. But my only son--that was my own fault, maybe. I
+would not put him into the Army like his father, thinking to keep him
+safer that way; and he died of pneumonia at seven-and-twenty, an East
+End curate. Then my Lintie. But I have no need to be talking of Lintie
+to you, John Carr. You mind her still, Daphne or no Daphne. Then"--she
+indicated her paralysed shoulder--"this! But I keep on smiling.
+Perhaps that is why people are so kind to me. Perhaps if I did not
+smile they would not seek my company so freely. I suppose they see
+something in me, that they come and listen to me havering. When I
+first settled down here by myself in this little house many kind
+people called. I never thought to see them twice; but they come again
+and again. Maybe it is because English people have a notion that the
+Scots tongue is 'so quaint!' They seem to find something exhilarating
+in hearing fish called fush. Not that I call it any such thing, but
+they think I do. Anyhow, they come. Some of them bring their troubles
+with them, and go away without them. When they do that I know that it
+was worth while to keep a smiling face all these years. So smile
+yourself, Johnny Carr! And some day, when your Daphne comes and puts
+her head on your shoulder and tells you all that is troubling her, you
+will know that you have won through. And when that happens come and
+call me. I like to hear when my methods succeed."
+
+"I will remember," said Juggernaut gravely. "Good-bye."
+
+Mrs Carfrae watched his broad back through the doorway.
+
+"But I doubt you will both have to be worse before you are better,"
+she added to herself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later Lady Carr, a radiant vision of glinting hair and
+rustling skirts, on her way upstairs to dress for dinner, encountered
+her husband coming down. There was a half light. Sir John paused.
+
+"Are you dining anywhere to-night, Daphne?" he said.
+
+Daphne, her youthful shrewdness uneradicated by three years of adult
+society, replied guardedly--
+
+"Are you trying to pull my leg? If I say 'No,' will you tell me that
+in that case I shall be very hungry by bedtime, or something? I
+suppose that old chestnut has just got round to your club. Have you
+been electing Noah an honorary member?"
+
+"I was about to suggest," said Juggernaut perseveringly, "that we
+should go and dine at the Savoy together."
+
+Daphne dimpled into a delighted smile.
+
+"You dear! And we might go on somewhere afterwards. What would you
+like me to wear?" She preened herself in anticipation.
+
+"Oh, anything," said Juggernaut absently. He was regarding his wife in
+an uncertain and embarrassed fashion.
+
+Suddenly he drew a deep breath, and took a step down towards her.
+Then, with equal suddenness, he turned on his heel and retired
+upstairs rather precipitately in the direction of his dressing-room.
+
+It was as well that Mrs Carfrae was not present.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SOCIAL SUCCESS.
+
+
+By nine o'clock next morning Lady Carr, becomingly arrayed, was
+sitting up in bed munching a hearty breakfast, and reflecting
+according to her habit upon yesterday's experiences and to-day's
+arrangements.
+
+She had dined with her husband at the Savoy, but the meal had not been
+quite such a success as she had anticipated. Juggernaut had treated
+her with the restrained courtesy which was habitual to him; but ladies
+who are taken out to dinner at the Savoy, even by their husbands,
+usually expect something more than restrained courtesy. You must be
+animated on these occasions--unless of course you happen to be a
+newly-engaged couple, in which case the world benignantly washes its
+hands of you--or the evening writes itself down a failure. Juggernaut
+had not been animated. He had ordered a dinner which to Daphne's
+gratification and surprise--she had not credited him with so much
+observation--had consisted almost entirely of her favourite dishes.
+But he had not sparkled, and sparkle at the Savoy, as already
+intimated, is essential.
+
+About ten o'clock he had been called away to an important division in
+the House, and Daphne had gone on to a party, escorted by her
+husband's secretary, factotum, and right-hand man, one Jim Carthew,
+who arrived from Grosvenor Street in answer to a telephone summons.
+Carthew was a new friend of Daphne's. She accumulated friends much as
+a honey-pot accumulates flies, but Jim Carthew counted for more than
+most. They had never met until five weeks ago, for Carthew had always
+been up north engaged on colliery business when Daphne was in London;
+and when Daphne was at Belton, her husband's old home near Kilchester,
+Carthew had been occupied by secretarial work in town. But they had
+known one another by name and fame ever since Daphne's marriage, and
+at last they had met. Daphne was not slow to understand why her
+husband, impatient of assistance as he usually was, had always
+appeared ready to heap labour and responsibility upon these youthful
+shoulders. Carthew was barely thirty, but he was perfectly capable of
+upholding and furthering his leader's interests in the great
+industrial north; while down south it was generally held that
+whenever he grew tired of devilling for Juggernaut the Party would
+find him a seat for the asking.
+
+But so far Carthew seemed loth to forsake the man who had taught him
+all he knew. He cherished a theory, somewhat unusual in a rising man,
+that common decency requires of a pupil that he shall repay his
+master, at the end of the period of instruction, by a period of
+personal service.
+
+He was a freckle-faced youth, with a frank smile of considerable
+latitude, and a boyish zeal for the healthy pursuits of life. He
+possessed brains and character, as any man must who served under
+Juggernaut; and like his master he was a shrewd judge of men. Of his
+capacity for dealing with women Daphne knew less; but she had already
+heard rumours--confidences exchanged over teacups and behind fans--of
+a certain Miss Nina Tallentyre, perhaps the acknowledged beauty of
+that season, at the flame of whose altar Jim Carthew was said to have
+singed his wings in a conspicuously reckless fashion. But all this was
+the merest hearsay, and Daphne was unacquainted with the lady into the
+bargain. Possibly it was with a view to remedying this deficiency in
+her circle of acquaintance that she kept Jim Carthew at her side for
+the space of half an hour after they reached Mrs Blankney-Pushkins'
+reception.
+
+After a couple of waltzes Lady Carr expressed a desire to be fed with
+ices and cream buns.
+
+Mr Carthew assented, but with less enthusiasm than before. Daphne
+noticed that his eye was beginning to wander.
+
+"After that," she continued cheerfully, "we will find seats, and you
+shall tell me who everybody is. I am still rather a country mouse."
+
+"I should think so!" said Carthew, reluctantly recalling his gaze from
+a distant corner of the refreshment-room. "I beg your pardon! You were
+saying?"
+
+"Perhaps there is some one else whom you have promised to dance with,
+though," continued the country mouse demurely.
+
+Carthew, whose eye had slid stealthily round once more in the
+direction of a supper-party in the corner, recovered himself
+resolutely, and made the only reply that gallantry permitted.
+
+"That's all right, then," said Daphne. "Tell me who those people are,
+having supper over there. That man with the fierce black eyes--who is
+he? He looks wicked."
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Carthew, resigning himself to his fate,
+"he is about the most commonplace bore in the room. If he takes a girl
+in to dinner he talks to her about the weather with the soup, the
+table decorations with the fish, and suffragettes with the _entree_.
+About pudding-time he takes the bit between his teeth and launches
+out into a description of the last play he saw--usually _Charley's
+Aunt_ or _East Lynne_. If he goes to a wedding he refers to the church
+as a 'sacred edifice,' and the bride and bridegroom as 'the happy
+couple.' When he unexpectedly encounters a friend at a sea-side
+watering-place, he observes that 'the world is a very small place.' At
+his own funeral (to which I shall send a wreath) he will sit up and
+thank the mourners for 'this personal tribute of affection and
+esteem.'"
+
+Daphne sat regarding this exhibition of the art of conversation with
+some interest. She observed that Carthew's wits were wandering, and
+that with inherent politeness he was exercising a purely mechanical
+faculty to entertain her pending their return. Jim Carthew was a true
+Briton in that he hated revealing his deeper thoughts to the eyes of
+the world. But unlike the ordinary Briton who, when his feelings do
+get the better of him, finds himself reduced to silent and portentous
+gloom, he instinctively clothed his naked shrinking soul in a garment
+of irresponsible frivolity. The possession of this faculty is a
+doubtful blessing, for it deprives many a deserving sufferer of the
+sympathy which is his right, and which would be his could he but take
+the world into his confidence. But the world can never rid itself of
+the notion that only still waters run deep. Consequently Jim Carthew
+passed in the eyes of most of his friends as a kindly, light-hearted,
+rather soulless trifler. But Daphne was not altogether deceived. She
+took an instinctive interest in this young man. She interrupted his
+feverish monologue, and inquired--
+
+"Tell me, who is that girl? The tall one, with fair hair and splendid
+black eyes."
+
+"What is she dressed in?" asked Carthew, surveying the throng with
+studied diligence.
+
+"Flame-coloured chiffon," said Daphne.
+
+"That is a Miss Tallentyre," replied Carthew carelessly. "Do you think
+she is pretty?" he added, after a slightly strained pause.
+
+"I think she is perfectly magnificent. Do you know her?"
+
+"Er--yes."
+
+"Will you introduce me?" asked Daphne. "I should like to know her.
+See, she has just sent away her partner. Take me over and leave me
+with her, and then you will be free to run off and find the charmer I
+can see you are so anxious about."
+
+The hapless Carthew having asserted, this time with considerably more
+sincerity, that he had now no further thoughts of dancing, the
+introduction was effected. The sequel lay this morning upon Daphne's
+breakfast-tray, amid a heap of invitations--Daphne was in great
+request at present--in the form of a note, written upon thick blue
+paper, in a large and rather ostentatious feminine hand. It ran--
+
+     "DEAR LADY CARR,--Don't consider me a forward young person if
+     I ask you to be an angel and come and lunch with me to-day.
+     I know all sorts of ceremonies ought to be observed before such
+     a climax is reached; but will you take them for granted and
+     _come_? We had such a tiny talk last night, and I do so want to
+     know you better. I have been dying to make your acquaintance
+     ever since I first saw you.--Sincerely yours,
+                                                "NINA TALLENTYRE."
+
+Daphne was not the sort of girl to take it amiss that she, a married
+woman of twenty-three, with a husband and baby of her own, should
+informally be bidden to a feast by a young person previously unknown
+to her, who possessed neither. In any case the last sentence would
+have been too much for her vanity. She scribbled a note of acceptance
+to Miss Tallentyre's invitation, and set about her morning toilet.
+
+Once downstairs, she paid her regulation punctilious visit to the
+library, where her husband was usually to be found until twelve
+o'clock. She inquired in her breezy fashion after the health of the
+Mother of Parliaments, and expressed a hope that her spouse had come
+home at a reasonable hour and enjoyed a proper night's rest. She next
+proceeded to the orders of the day.
+
+"Are you dining out to-night, dear?" she inquired.
+
+"Yes, for my sins! A City dinner at six-thirty."
+
+"You'll be bad the morn!" quoted Lady Carr.
+
+"True for you, Daphne. Are you going anywhere?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, you had better have Carthew to dine with you, and then he can
+take you to the theatre afterwards. Sorry I can't manage it my--for
+our two selves," he added, guiltily conscious of Mrs Carfrae's recent
+homily.
+
+But Daphne was quite satisfied with the arrangement, which she
+designated top-hole.
+
+"Now I am off shopping," she announced. "After that I am lunching with
+a girl I met last night; then Hurlingham, with the Peabodys. If you
+are going gorging at six-thirty, I probably shan't see you again
+to-day; so I'll say good-night now. Pleasant dreams! I am off to play
+with Baby before I go out. So long!"
+
+She presented her husband with his diurnal kiss, and departed in
+search of Master Brian Vereker Carr, whose domain was situated in the
+upper regions of the house. Here for a time the beautiful and stately
+consort of Sir John Carr merged into the Daphne of old--Daphne, the
+little mother of all the world, the inventor of new and delightful
+games and repairer of all damages incurred therein. Her son's rubicund
+and puckered countenance lightened at her approach. He permitted his
+latest tooth to be exhibited without remonstrance; he nodded affably,
+even encouragingly, over his mother's impersonation of a dying pig;
+and paid her the supreme compliment of howling lustily on her
+departure.
+
+Master Carr never interviewed his parents simultaneously. His father's
+visits--not quite so constrained as one might imagine, once the
+supercilious nurse had been removed out of earshot--usually took place
+in the evening, just before dinner; but father and mother never came
+together. Had they done so, it is possible that this narrative might
+have followed a different course. A common interest, especially when
+it possesses its father's mouth and its mother's eyes, with a
+repertory of solemn but attractive tricks with its arms and legs
+thrown in, is apt to be a very uniting thing.
+
+
+II.
+
+Daphne duly lunched with Miss Tallentyre.
+
+"May I call you Daphne?" the siren asked, in a voice which intimated
+that a request from some people is as good as a command from most. "I
+have taken a fancy to you; and when I do that to anybody--which isn't
+often--I say so. My dear, you are perfectly _lovely_! I wish I had
+your complexion. You don't put anything on it, do you?"
+
+"Soap," said Daphne briefly. She was not of the sort which takes
+fancies readily.
+
+Miss Tallentyre smiled lazily.
+
+"I see you haven't got the hang of me yet," she drawled. "You are a
+little offended with me. Most people are at first, but they soon find
+that it's not really rudeness--only _me_!--and they come round. I
+don't go in for rouge either. Like you, I don't need it. But I have to
+touch up my eyebrows. They are quite tragically sandy, and my face
+looks perfectly insipid if I leave them as they are." She laughed
+again. "Have I shocked you? You see, I believe in being frank about
+things--don't you? Be natural--be yourself--say what you think! That
+is the only true motto in life, isn't it?"
+
+Daphne agreed cautiously. She had not yet plumbed this rather peculiar
+young woman. It had never occurred to her, in the whole course of her
+frank ingenuous existence, to ask herself whether she was herself or
+not. Such things were too high for her. She began to feel that she had
+been somewhat remiss in the matter. Miss Tallentyre appeared to have
+made a speciality of it.
+
+But as shrewd Daphne was soon to discern for herself, this was only
+pretty Nina's way. A more confirmed _poseuse_ never angled for the
+indiscriminate admiration of mankind. Nina Tallentyre was no fool.
+Having observed that in order to become conspicuous in this world it
+is an advantage to possess marked individuality, and having none of
+her own beyond that conferred by her face and figure, she decided to
+manufacture an individuality for her herself. She accordingly selected
+what she considered the most suitable of the _roles_ at her disposal,
+rehearsed it to her satisfaction, assumed it permanently, and played
+it, it must be confessed, uncommonly well. Her pose was that of the
+blunt and candid child of nature, and her performances ranged from
+unblushing flattery towards those with whom she desired to stand well
+to undisguised rudeness towards those whom she disliked and did not
+think it necessary to conciliate.
+
+Her method prospered. Whatever wise men may think or say of us, fools
+usually take us at our own valuation. Consequently Miss Tallentyre
+never lacked a majority of admirers. She set a very high price upon
+her friendship, too, conferring it only as an exceptional favour; and
+the public, which always buys on the rise, had long since rushed in
+and bulled Miss Tallentyre's stock--her beauty, her wit, her
+transparent honesty--sky high.
+
+The luncheon was a _tete-a-tete_ function, the parent-birds, as Miss
+Tallentyre termed them, being absent upon a country visit. Afterwards
+Russian cigarettes and liqueur brandy were served with the coffee.
+Daphne declined these manly luxuries, but her hostess took both.
+
+"Not that I like them," she explained with a plaintive little sigh,
+"but it looks _chic_; and one must be _chic_ or die. Besides, I am
+doing it to annoy one of my admirers--one of those simple-minded,
+early Victorian, John Bullish creatures who dislike seeing a girl
+smoke, or drink cognac, or go to the theatre without a chaperone. Here
+is his latest effusion; it will make you shriek."
+
+She picked up a letter from a little table by her side and began to
+read aloud.
+
+     "'_Nina, dear child, I know you don't care for me any  more,_'--
+
+As a matter of fact I never cared for him at any time--
+
+     '_but I can't help still taking an interest in you, and all
+     that. I must say this. On Tuesday night I saw you sitting at
+     supper with two men at the Vallambrosa, without anybody else
+     to keep you in countenance, sipping liqueur brandy and
+     smoking. Well, don't--there's a dear! You simply don't know
+     what cruel things people say about a girl who does that sort of
+     thing in public. Of course I know that you are absolutely----_'"
+
+But Lady Carr was on her feet, slightly flushed.
+
+"I think I must be going now," she said. "I had no idea it was so
+late. I have to meet some people at Hurlingham."
+
+"Sorry you have to rush off," said Miss Tallentyre regretfully; "we
+were so cosy. Isn't this letter perfectly sweet?"
+
+Daphne, who was glowing hotly, suddenly spoke her mind.
+
+"If an honest man," she said, "wrote me a letter like that, I don't
+think I should read it aloud to total strangers, even if I was
+mortally offended by it. It doesn't seem to me cricket. Good-bye, and
+thank you so much for asking me to lunch."
+
+"_Not_ altogether a successful party," mused Daphne, as a taxi-cab
+conveyed her to Hurlingham. "What a hateful girl! And yet, at the back
+of all that affectation I believe there is something. I couldn't help
+liking her. She certainly is very lovely, and she must have been a
+darling before men got hold of her and spoiled her.... I wonder if
+that letter was from Jim Carthew. It sounded like his blunt
+blundering way of doing things. Well, he is well rid of her, anyhow.
+Hurrah! here is Hurlingham, and there are the Peabodys! How lovely to
+see the trees and grass again! And the _dear_ ponies!"
+
+The country-bred girl drew a long luxurious breath, and in the fulness
+of her heart grossly overpaid her charioteer on alighting. Then,
+forgetting Miss Tallentyre and her exotic atmosphere utterly and
+absolutely, she plunged with all the energy of her sunny soul into the
+sane delights and wholesome joys afforded by green trees, summer
+skies, and prancing polo-ponies.
+
+
+III.
+
+Daphne concluded her day, after a joyous drive home in the cool of the
+evening on the box-seat of a coach, by entertaining Jim Carthew to
+dinner. Afterwards he was to take her to _The Yeoman of the Guard_,
+which was running through a revival at the Savoy Theatre. Daphne was
+by no means a _blasee_ Londoner as yet, for much of her short married
+life had been spent at Belton; and the theatre was still an abiding
+joy to her. On the way she rattled off a list of the pieces she had
+seen.
+
+"And you have never been to a Gilbert and Sullivan opera?" asked
+Carthew incredulously.
+
+"No--never."
+
+"All I can say is--cheers!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Supposing you were a benevolent person about to introduce a small boy
+to his first plum-pudding, you would feel as I do," replied her
+companion. "But wait. Here is the theatre: we are in the fourth row of
+stalls."
+
+Daphne sat raptly through the first act. Once or twice her laughter
+rang out suddenly and spontaneously like a child's, and indulgent
+persons turned and smiled sympathetically upon her; but for the most
+part she was still and silent, revelling in Sullivan's ever-limpid
+music and following the scenes that passed before her with breathless
+attention.
+
+When the curtain fell slowly upon the finale of the first act--the
+suddenly deserted stage, the bewildered Fairfax holding his fainting
+bride in his arms, and the black motionless figure of the executioner
+towering over all--Daphne drew a long and tremulous breath, and turned
+to her companion.
+
+"I understand now what you meant," she said softly. "How splendid to
+be able to bring some one here for the first time!"
+
+"What surprises me," said Carthew, "is that Sir John hasn't brought
+you here already. I know he simply loves it."
+
+"I am usually taken to places like the Gaiety," confessed Lady Carr.
+"Probably Jack considers them more suited to my intellect. Hallo, here
+are the orchestra-men crawling out of their holes again! Good!"
+
+Presently the curtain went up on the last act, and Jack Point
+introduced a selection of the Merry Jests of Hugh Ambrose, to the
+audible joy of the fourth row of stalls. The Assistant Tormentor and
+his beloved were likewise warmly received; but presently Daphne's
+smiles faded. Poor Jack Point's tribulations were too much for her:
+during the final recurrence of _I Have a Song to Sing, O!_ tears came,
+and as the curtain fell she dabbed her eyes hurriedly with an
+inadequate handkerchief.
+
+"Awfully sorry!" she murmured apologetically. "Luckily you are not the
+sort to laugh at me."
+
+Carthew silently placed her wrap round her shoulders.
+
+"Mr Carthew," said Daphne suddenly, "will you take me somewhere gay
+for supper? It wouldn't be awfully improper, would it? I can't go home
+feeling as sad as this."
+
+"Come along!" said Carthew.
+
+He escorted her to an establishment where the electric lights blazed
+bravely, a band blared forth a cacophonous cake-walk entitled
+(apparently) "By Request," and the brightest and best of the _jeunesse
+doree_ of London mingled in sweet companionship with the haughty but
+hungry divinities of the musical comedy stage.
+
+Carthew secured a table in a secluded corner, as far as possible from
+the band.
+
+"Sorry to have given you the hump," he said, with his boyish smile.
+"Next week I will take you to _The Mikado_. No tears there! You will
+laugh till you cry. Rather a bull that--what?"
+
+He persevered manfully in this strain in his endeavour to drive away
+impressionable Daphne's distress on Jack Point's behalf, and
+ultimately succeeded.
+
+"I hope he was _dead_, not simply in a faint," was her final reference
+to the subject. Then she continued: "I shall take them _all_ to see
+that lovely piece--separately. I am not sure about Nicky, though. She
+is just at the scoffing age just now, and I don't think I could bear
+it, if she----"
+
+"Not long ago," said Carthew, "I took a girl--that sort of girl--to
+see _The Yeomen_."
+
+Daphne regarded him covertly. She knew the girl.
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+"I took her on purpose," continued Carthew--"to see how she----"
+
+Daphne, deeply interested, nodded comprehendingly.
+
+"I know," she said. "How did she take it?"
+
+"She never stirred," said Carthew, "all through the last act. When
+the curtain fell, she sat on for a few moments without saying a word,
+and she never spoke all the time I was taking her home. When I said
+good-night to her, she--she said something to me. It was not much, but
+it showed me that she _was_ the right sort after all, in spite of what
+people said----"
+
+He checked himself suddenly, as if conscious that his reminiscences
+were becoming somewhat intimate. But Daphne nodded a serious head.
+
+"I'm glad," she said simply. "One likes to be right about one's
+friends."
+
+Carthew shot a grateful glance at her; and presently they drifted into
+less personal topics, mutually conscious that here, if need be, was a
+friend--an understanding friend.
+
+The evening had yet one more incident in store for Daphne.
+
+Twelve-thirty, the _Ultima Thule_ of statutory indulgence--the hour
+at which London, thirty minutes more fortunate than Cinderella,
+must perforce fly home from scenes of revelry and get ready to
+shake the mats--was fast approaching; and the management of the
+restaurant began, by a respectful but pertinacious process of
+light-extinguishing, to apprise patrons of the fact.
+
+As Daphne and Carthew passed through the rapidly emptying vestibule
+to their cab, five flushed young gentlemen, of the _genus_
+undergraduate-on-the-spree, suddenly converged upon the scene from
+the direction of the bar, locked together in a promiscuous and not
+altogether unprofitable embrace. They were urged from the rear by
+polite but inflexible menials in brass buttons.
+
+"What ho, Daph!"
+
+The cry emanated from the gentleman who was acting for the moment as
+keystone of the arch. Daphne, stepping into the cab, looked back.
+
+"Mr Carthew," she exclaimed, "it's Ally--my brother! He must have come
+up from Cambridge for the day. Do go and bring him here."
+
+She took her seat in the hansom, and Carthew went back. Presently he
+returned.
+
+"I would not advise an interview," he said drily. "Your brother--well,
+you know the effect of London air upon an undergraduate fresh from the
+country! Let him come round and see you in the morning."
+
+He gave the cabman his orders, and their equipage drove off, just as
+Sebastian Aloysius Vereker, the nucleus of a gyrating mass of humanity
+(composed of himself and party, together with two stalwart myrmidons
+of the Hilarity Restaurant and a stray cab-tout), toppled heavily out
+of the portals of that celebrated house of refreshment into the arms
+of an indulgent policeman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+More life--real life! reflected Daphne, as she laid her head on her
+pillow, tired out and utterly contented. To-day had yielded its full
+share. That peculiar but interesting interview with Miss Tallentyre,
+that glorious carnival under the blue sky at Hurlingham, and that
+laughter-and-tear-compelling spectacle at the Savoy--all had
+contributed to the total. Finally, that _tete-a-tete_ supper with Jim
+Carthew--indubitably a dear--ending with the episode of Ally. A little
+disturbing, that last! Well, perhaps Ally was only trying to see life
+too, in his own way. Life! Daphne tingled as she felt her own leap in
+her veins. And to-morrow would bring more!
+
+Then the sandman paid his visit, and she slept like the tired child
+that she was, having completed to her entire satisfaction another day
+of what, when you come to think of it, was nothing more or less than
+an utterly idle, selfish, unprofitable existence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+DIES IRAE.
+
+
+At Belton, Daphne, like her Scriptural counterpart, came to herself.
+Attired in what she called "rags," she ran wild about the woods and
+plantations, accompanied by the faithful Mr Dawks, who found a green
+countryside (even when marred at intervals by a grimy pithead)
+infinitely preferable to Piccadilly, where the pavement is hot and
+steerage-way precarious.
+
+They were to stay at Belton till Christmas, after which the house in
+Berkeley Square would be ready for her. Hitherto she had been well
+content with the little establishment in Grosvenor Street; but her
+ideas in certain directions, as her husband had observed to Mrs
+Carfrae, were developing in a very gratifying manner.
+
+One hot morning Daphne arrived at breakfast half-an-hour late. To do
+her justice, this was an unusual fault; for in the country she would
+never have dreamed of indulging in such an urban luxury as breakfast
+in bed. Her unpunctuality was not due to sloth. She had already
+superintended the morning toilet of Master Brian Vereker Carr, and had
+even taken a constitutional with Mr Dawks along the road which ran
+over the shoulder of a green hill towards Belton Pit, two miles away.
+She knew that her husband had gone out at seven o'clock to interview
+the manager at the pithead, and she had reckoned on being picked up by
+the returning motor and brought home in time for nine o'clock
+breakfast. Unfortunately Juggernaut had changed his plans and gone to
+another pit in the opposite direction, with the result that Daphne,
+besides being compelled to walk twice as far as she intended, found an
+uncomfortable combination of cold food and chilly husband waiting for
+her when she reached home.
+
+Juggernaut never called Daphne to book for her shortcomings now. It
+had become his custom of late, if he found anything amiss in the
+management of the establishment, to send a message to the housekeeper
+direct. He should have known better. Daphne, regarding such a
+proceeding as an imputation of incompetence on her part, boiled
+inwardly at the slight, though her innate sense of justice told her
+that it was not altogether undeserved. Being a great success is apt to
+be a slightly demoralising business, and Daphne herself was beginning
+dimly to realise the fact. There was no doubt, for instance, that she
+was not the housekeeper she had been. But what was the good? There had
+been some credit in feeding the boys and Dad on half nothing, and in
+conjuring that second weekly joint out of a housekeeping surplus that
+was a little financial triumph in itself. But now, who cared if a leg
+of mutton were saved or not? What did it matter if the cook sold the
+leavings and the butler opened more wine than he decanted? Her husband
+could afford it. And so on.
+
+A discussion had arisen upon this subject the evening before; and the
+silent enigmatical man whom she had married, whom she understood so
+little, and who, from the fact that he treated her as something
+between an incompetent servant and a spoiled child, appeared to
+understand her even less, had spoken out more freely than usual, with
+not altogether happy results. Daphne above all loved openness and
+candour, and she could not endure to feel that her husband was
+exercising forbearance towards her, or making allowances, or talking
+down to her level. Consequently the laborious little lecture she had
+received, with its studied moderation of tone and its obvious desire
+to let her down gently, had had an unfortunate but not altogether
+unnatural result. Juggernaut would have done better to employ his big
+guns, such as he reserved for refractory public meetings. As it was,
+Daphne lost her temper.
+
+"Jack," she blazed out suddenly, "I _know_ I'm a failure, so why rub
+it in? I _know_ you married me to keep house for you, so you have a
+perfect right to complain if I do it badly. Well, you have told me;
+now I know. Shall we drop the subject? I will endeavour to be more
+competent, honest, and obliging in future."
+
+Juggernaut rose suddenly from the table--they were sitting over their
+dessert at the time--and walked to the mantelpiece, where he stood
+leaning his head upon his arms, in an apparent endeavour to mesmerise
+the fender. Daphne, cooling rapidly, wondered what he was thinking
+about. Was he angry, or bored, or indifferent?
+
+Presently he turned round.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't handle you as successfully as I handle some other
+problems, Daphne," he said reflectively. "Good-night!"
+
+That was all. He left the room, and Daphne had not seen him since. Her
+anger was gone. By bedtime she was thoroughly ashamed of herself, and,
+being Daphne, no other course lay open to her than that of saying so.
+Hence her early rising next morning, and her effort to intercept the
+motor.
+
+The failure of the latter enterprise made matters more difficult; for
+courage once screwed to the sticking-point and timed for a certain
+moment cannot as a rule outlast postponement.
+
+Still, she walked into the breakfast-room bravely.
+
+"Jack," she began, a little breathlessly, "I'm sorry I was cross last
+night."
+
+Her husband was sitting with his back to the door. Possibly if he had
+seen her face--flushed and appealing under its soft hat of grey
+_suede_--he might have acted a little more helpfully than he did. He
+merely laid down his newspaper and remarked cheerfully--
+
+"That is all right, dear. Let us say no more about it. Sit down to
+your breakfast before it gets colder. You must have been for a long
+walk. Fried sole or a sausage?"
+
+He rose and helped her to food from the sideboard, as promptly and
+carefully as if she had been a newly arrived and important guest. It
+was something; but compared with what he might have done it was
+nothing. In effect, Daphne had asked for a kiss and had been given a
+sausage.
+
+It was rather a miserable breakfast. Daphne had vowed to herself not
+to be angry again: consequently she could only mope. Juggernaut
+continued to read the newspaper. The political world was in a ferment
+at the moment. There was a promise for him in all this of
+work--trouble--the facing of difficulties--the overcoming of strenuous
+opposition--the joy of battle, in fact. Manlike, he overlooked the
+trouble that was brewing at his own fireside.
+
+Presently he put down his newspaper and strolled to the open window.
+
+"What a gorgeous day, Daphne. And I have to spend it in a
+committee-room at Kilchester!"
+
+"Anything important?" asked Daphne, determined to be interested.
+
+"Important? I should just think it was, only people refuse to realise
+the fact. It's a meeting of the County Territorial Association. What
+humbug the whole business is! They started the old Volunteers, coddled
+them, asked nothing of them but a few drills and an annual picnic in
+camp, and then laughed them out of existence for Saturday-afternoon
+soldiers. Now they start the Territorials and go to the other extreme.
+They require of a man that he shall attain, free gratis and for
+nothing, at the sacrifice of the few scanty weeks which he gets by way
+of holiday, to practically the same standard of efficiency as a
+regular soldier, who is paid for it and gets the whole year to do it
+in. And then they blame us, the County Associations, because we can't
+find recruits for them! Luckily, we shall have compulsory service
+soon, and that will end the farce once and for all."
+
+Daphne liked to be talked to like this. In the first place, it removed
+the uncomfortable and humiliating sensation that she was a child in
+her husband's eyes; and in the second, it adjusted her sense of
+proportion as regards the male sex. Obviously, with all these dull but
+weighty matters to occupy him, a man could not be expected to set such
+store by conjugal unity as his wife, who had little else to think of.
+
+"Perhaps I have been a little fool," she philosophised. "After all, a
+man doesn't in the least realise how a woman----"
+
+"What are you going to do to-day?" asked her husband.
+
+"This afternoon I am going over to Croxley Dene to play tennis."
+
+"Anything this morning?"
+
+"I am going to order the motor for twelve o'clock"--rather
+reluctantly. "I suppose Vick will be back from Kilchester."
+
+"Oh, yes. Are you going out to lunch somewhere?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"Just a drive?"
+
+"Yes. The fact is," said poor Daphne, hating herself for feeling like
+a child detected in a fault, "I am going to try my hand at driving the
+motor myself."
+
+There was a pause, and Juggernaut continued to gaze out of the window,
+while Daphne pleated the table-cloth.
+
+Presently the hateful expected words came.
+
+"I would rather you didn't."
+
+Daphne rose suddenly to her feet. Her face was aflame, and all her
+good resolutions had vanished. She had always longed to drive the
+big car, her appetite having been whetted by occasional experiments
+upon the property--usually small, easily handled vehicles--of
+long-suffering friends. She had broached the subject more than once,
+but had found her husband curiously vague as regards permission.
+Usually it was "yes" or "no" with him. This morning, tired of the
+humiliation of constantly asking for leave, she had decided to give
+orders on her own account. And but for Juggernaut's unlucky question
+she would have achieved her purpose and settled accounts afterwards--a
+very different thing from asking leave first, as every child knows.
+
+"And why?" she asked, with suspicious calmness.
+
+"Well, for one thing, I don't think a lady should be seen driving a
+great covered-in limousine car. You wouldn't go out on the box seat of
+a brougham, would you? As a matter of fact, if you will have patience
+for a week or two----"
+
+"Yes, I know!" broke in Daphne passionately. "If I have patience for a
+week or two, and am a good little girl, and order the meals punctually
+in the meanwhile, you will perhaps take me for a run one afternoon,
+and let me hold the wheel while you sit beside me with the second
+speed in. Thank you! _Good_ morning!"
+
+She pushed back her chair, whirled round with a vehement swirl of her
+tweed skirt, and left the room.
+
+Juggernaut continued to finger a typewritten letter which he had just
+taken from his pocket. It bore the address of a firm of motor-makers,
+and said--
+
+     "SIR,--We beg to inform you that one of our Handy Runabout
+     10-12h-p. cars, for which we recently received your esteemed
+     order, is now to hand from the varnishers', and will be
+     delivered at Belton Hall on Tuesday next. As requested, we have
+     given the clutch-pedal and brake a particularly easy spring,
+     with a view to the car being driven by a lady.
+
+     "Thanking you for past favours, we are, sir yours faithfully,"
+
+                                          "THE DIABLEMENT-ODORANT
+                                              MOTOR CO., LTD."
+
+Juggernaut put the letter back into his pocket.
+
+
+II.
+
+In due course the Belton motor conveyed its owner to Kilchester and
+left him there.
+
+"Shall I come back for you, sir?" inquired Mr Vick, the chauffeur. He
+was a kindly man, despite his exalted station.
+
+"No, thanks--I'll take the train. But I believe Lady Carr wants you to
+take her over to Croxley Dene this afternoon."
+
+"Her ladyship shall be took," said Mr Vick, with an indulgent
+smile--Lady Carr was a favourite of his--and forthwith returned to
+Belton.
+
+On running the car into the yard he found the coachman, Mr Windebank,
+a sadly diminished luminary in these days, putting a polish upon an
+unappreciative quadruped.
+
+"You and your machine, Mr Vick," announced Mr Windebank, "is wanted
+round at twelve sharp."
+
+It was then eleven-fifteen.
+
+"Ho!" replied the ruffled Mr Vick, feeling much as the Emperor Nero
+might have felt on being requested by the most recently immured early
+Christian to see that the arena lions were kept a bit quieter
+to-morrow night--"ho, indeed!"
+
+"Them's your orders, Mr Vick," said Mr Windebank, resuming the
+peculiar dental _obligato_ which seems to be the inseparable
+accompaniment of the toilet of a horse, temporarily suspended on this
+occasion to enable the performer to discharge his little broadside.
+
+Mr Vick turned off various taps and switches on his dash-board, and
+the humming of the engine ceased.
+
+"I take my orders," he proclaimed in majestic tones, "from the master
+and missus direct, and from nobody else."
+
+Mr Windebank, after spending some moments in groping for a crushing
+rejoinder, replied--
+
+"Well, you'd better go inside and get 'em. And you'd better 'ang a
+nosebag on your sparking-plug in the meanwhile," he added, with sudden
+and savage irrelevance.
+
+Mr Vick adopted the former of these two suggestions, with the result
+that at the hour of noon the car slid submissively round to the front
+of the Hall. Presently Daphne appeared, and disregarding the door
+which Mr Vick was holding open for her, stepped up into the driver's
+seat--the throne itself--and took the wheel in her vigorous little
+hands.
+
+"I am going to drive, Vick," she observed cheerfully.
+
+Mr Vick preserved his self-control and smiled faintly.
+
+"I suppose you have a licence, my lady?" he inquired.
+
+"Gracious, no! I am only just beginning," replied Daphne, who regarded
+a driver's licence as a sort of reward of merit. "I want you to teach
+me. Which of these things is the clutch-pedal?"
+
+"The left, my lady. I am afraid," added Mr Vick, with the air of one
+who intends to stop this nonsense once and for all, "that you will
+find it very stiff."
+
+"Thanks," said Daphne blandly. "And I suppose the other one is the
+brake."
+
+"Yes, my lady; but----"
+
+"Then we can start. How do I put in the first speed?"
+
+Mr Vick, in what can only be described as a _moriturus-te-saluto!_
+voice, gave the required information; and the car, after a dislocating
+jerk, moved off at a stately four miles per hour. Presently, with much
+slipping of the clutch and buzzing of the gear-wheels, the second, and
+finally the third speed went in, and the car proceeded with all the
+exuberance of its forty-five horse-power down the long straight drive.
+Fortunately the lodge gates stood open, and the road outside was
+clear.
+
+Certainly Mr Vick behaved very well. Although every wrench and jar to
+which his beloved engines were submitted appeared to react directly
+upon his own internal mechanism, he never winced. Occasionally a
+muffled groan or a muttered exclamation of "My tyres!" or "My
+differential!" burst from his overwrought lips; but for the most part
+he sat like a graven image, merely hoping that when the crash came it
+would be a good one--something about which it would be really
+grateful and comforting to say "I told you so!" He also cherished a
+strong hope that his name would appear in the newspapers.
+
+But Daphne drove well. She had a good head and quick hands; and
+steering a middle course between the extreme caution of the beginner
+and the omniscient recklessness of the half-educated, she gave Mr Vick
+very little excuse for anything in the shape of a genuine shudder. She
+experienced a little difficulty in getting the clutch right out of
+action in changing gear; and once she stopped her engine through going
+round a corner with the brakes on--but that was all. Mr Vick began to
+feel distinctly aggrieved.
+
+There was a spice of _abandon_ in Daphne's present attitude. She had
+burned her boats; she had flown in the face of authority; and she
+intended to brazen it out. The breeze whistled in her ears; her eyes
+blazed; her cheeks glowed. She felt in good fighting trim.
+
+Presently, fetching a compass, the car began to head towards Belton
+again, and having been directed in masterly fashion through the narrow
+gates by the back lodge, sped along the final stretch which led to
+home and luncheon, at a comfortable thirty miles an hour.
+
+At the end of the dappled vista formed by the overarching trees of
+the avenue appeared a black object, which presently resolved itself
+into Mr Dawks, lolling comfortably in a patch of sunlight pending his
+mistress's return.
+
+"Mind the dog, my lady!" cried Mr Vick suddenly.
+
+Daphne had every intention of minding the dog; but desire and
+performance do not always coincide. Suddenly realizing that Mr Dawks,
+who was now sitting up expectantly in the middle distance, wagging his
+tail and extending a welcome as misplaced as that of Jephtha's
+daughter under somewhat similar circumstances, had no conception of
+the necessity for vacating his present position, Daphne put down both
+feet hard and endeavored to bring the car to a standstill. But thirty
+miles an hour is forty-four feet a second, and the momentum of a car
+weighing two tons is not lightly to be arrested by a brake constructed
+only to obey the pressure of a masculine boot. Next moment there was a
+pathetic little yelp. Daphne had a brief vision of an incredulous and
+reproachful doggy countenance; the car gave a slight lurch, and then
+came to full stop, as Mr Vick, having already snapped off the ignition
+switch on the dashboard, reached across behind Daphne's back and
+jammed on the side brake.
+
+
+III.
+
+It was Mr Dawks who really showed to the greatest advantage during the
+next half-hour. He assured his mistress by every means in his power
+that the whole thing was entirely his fault; and, like the courteous
+gentleman that he was, he begged her with faintly wagging tail and
+affectionate eyes not to distress herself unduly on his account. The
+thing was done; let there be no more talk about it. It was nothing! By
+way of showing that the cordiality of their relations was still
+unimpaired he endeavored to shake hands, first with one paw and then
+the other; but finding that both were broken he reluctantly desisted
+from his efforts.
+
+They carried him--what was left of him--into the house, where Daphne,
+white-faced and tearless, hung in an agony of self-reproach over the
+friend of her youth--the last link with her girlhood. Dawks lay very
+still. Once, opening his eyes and evidently feeling that something was
+expected of him, he licked her hand. The tears came fast after that.
+
+Presently Windebank arrived. He loved all dumb beasts, and was skilled
+in ministering to their ailments--wherein he transcended that highly
+educated automaton Mr Vick, to whom the acme of life was represented
+by a set of perfectly timed sparking-plugs--and he made poor mangled
+Dawks as comfortable as possible.
+
+"Is he badly hurt, Windebank?" whispered Daphne.
+
+"Yes, miss," said Windebank, touching his forelock. He was a man of
+few words in the presence of his superiors.
+
+"Will he die?"
+
+Windebank gazed down in an embarrassed fashion at the close coils of
+fair hair, bowed over the dog's rough coat. Then he stiffened himself
+defiantly.
+
+"He'll get well right enough, miss," he said with great assurance.
+"Just wants taking care of, that's all."
+
+It was a lie, and he knew it. But it was a kind lie. To such much is
+forgiven.
+
+Daphne sat with her patient until three o'clock, and then, overcome
+with the restlessness of impotent anxiety, and stimulated by an urgent
+telephonic reminder, ordered out the horses--not the motor.
+
+"Good-bye, old man," she said to Dawks, caressing the dog's long ears
+and unbecoming nose. "I'll be back in an hour or two. Lie quiet, and
+you'll soon be all right. Windebank says so."
+
+Mr Dawks whined gently and flapped his tail upon the floor, further
+intimating by a faint tremor of his ungainly body that if
+circumstances had permitted he would certainly have made a point of
+rising and accompanying his mistress to the door and seeing her off
+the premises. As things were, he must beg to be excused.
+
+Daphne drove to Croxley Dene, where for an hour or so she exchanged
+banalities with the rest of the county and played a set of tennis.
+
+She drove home in the cool of the evening, more composed in mind. The
+fresh air and exercise had done her good. Windebank had said that the
+dog would live: that was everything. Less satisfactory to contemplate
+was the approaching interview with her husband in the matter of the
+car. Until now she had not thought of it.
+
+On reaching home she hurried to the library, where she had left the
+invalid lying on a rug before the fire. Mr Dawks was not there.
+
+"I wonder if Windebank has taken him to the stable," she said to
+herself. "I'll go and----"
+
+She turned, and found herself face to face with her husband.
+
+"Jack," she asked nervously, "do you know where Dawks is? I suppose
+you have heard----"
+
+"Yes, I have heard."
+
+Daphne shrank back at the sound of his voice. His face was like flint.
+
+"Then--where is he?" she faltered. "Windebank said----"
+
+"I had him shot."
+
+Daphne stared at him incredulously.
+
+"You had him _shot_?" she said slowly. "_My_ Dawks?"
+
+"Yes. It was rank cruelty on your part keeping the poor brute alive,
+after--after reducing him to that state."
+
+The last half of the sentence may have been natural and justifiable,
+but no one could call it generous. It is not easy to be merciful when
+one is at white heat.
+
+Daphne stood up, very slim and straight, gazing stonily into her
+husband's face.
+
+"Have you buried him?"
+
+"I told one of the gardeners to do so."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I did not say, but we can----"
+
+"I suppose you know," said Daphne with great deliberation, "that he
+was the only living creature in all this great house that loved
+me--really _loved_ me?"
+
+Verily, here was war. There was a tense silence for a moment, and an
+almost imperceptible flicker of some emotion passed over Juggernaut's
+face. Then he said, with equal deliberation--
+
+"Without any exception?"
+
+"Yes, without _any_ exception!" cried poor Daphne, stabbing
+passionately in the dark. "And since he is dead," she added--"since
+you have killed him--I am going home to Dad and the boys! They love
+me!"
+
+She stood before her husband with her head thrown back defiantly,
+white and trembling with passion.
+
+"Very good. Perhaps that would be best," said Juggernaut quietly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+CILLY; OR THE WORLD WELL LOST.
+
+
+"Stiffy," bellowed the new curate ferociously, "what the--I mean, why
+on earth can't you keep that right foot steady? You edge off to leg
+every time. If you get a straight ball, stand up to it! If you get a
+leg-ball, turn round and have a slap at it! But for Heaven's sake
+don't go running _away_! Especially from things like pats of butter!"
+
+"Awfully sorry, Mr Blunt!" gasped Stiffy abjectly, as another pat of
+butter sang past his ear. "It's the rotten way I've been brought up!
+I've never had any decent coaching before. Ough!... No, it didn't hurt
+a bit, really! I shall be all right in a minute." He hopped round in a
+constricted circle, apologetically caressing his stomach.
+
+They were in the paddock behind the Rectory orchard. The Reverend
+Godfrey Blunt, a ruddy young man of cheerful countenance and ingenuous
+disposition, had rolled out an extremely fiery wicket; and within the
+encompassing net--Daphne's last birthday present--Stephen Blasius
+Vereker, impaled frog-wise upon the handle of his bat, and divided
+between a blind instinct of self-preservation and a desire not to
+appear ungrateful for favours received, was frantically endeavouring
+to dodge the deliveries of the church militant as they bumped past his
+head and ricochetted off his ribs.
+
+"That's better," said Mr Blunt, as his pupil succeeded for the first
+time in arresting the course of a fast long-hop with his bat instead
+of his person. "But don't play back to yorkers."
+
+"All right!" said Stiffy dutifully. "I didn't know," he added in all
+sincerity, "that it was a yorker, or I wouldn't have done it. Oh, I
+say, well bowled! I don't think anybody could have stopped that one.
+It never touched the ground at all!"
+
+Stiffy turned round and surveyed his prostrate wickets admiringly. He
+was an encouraging person to bowl to.
+
+"No, it was a pretty hot one," admitted the curate modestly. "I think
+I shall have to be going now," he added, mopping his brow. "Parish
+work, and a sermon to write, worse luck! I think I have just time for
+a short knock, though. Bowl away, Stiffy!"
+
+He took his stand at the wicket, and after three blind and
+characteristic swipes succeeded in lifting a half-volley of Stiffy's
+into the adjacent orchard. When the bowler, deeply gratified with a
+performance of which he felt himself to be an unworthy but necessary
+adjunct, returned ten minutes later from a successful search for the
+ball, he found his hero hastily donning the old tweed jacket and
+speckled straw hat which he kept for wear with his cricket flannels.
+
+"Hallo! Off?" cried Stiffy regretfully.
+
+"Yes; I'm afraid so," replied Mr Blunt. He was gazing anxiously
+through a gap in the hedge which commanded the Rectory garden-gate.
+"This is my busy day. So long, old man!"
+
+He vaulted the fence, and set off down the road at a vigorous and
+businesslike trot. But after a hundred yards or so he halted, and
+looked round him with an air which can only be described as furtive.
+Before him the road, white and dusty, continued officiously on its way
+to the village and duty. Along the right-hand side thereof ran a neat
+rail-fence, skirting the confines of Tinkler's Den. The landscape
+appeared deserted. All nature drowsed in the hot afternoon sun.
+
+Mr Blunt, who was a muscular young Christian, took a running jump of
+some four feet six, cleared the topmost rail, and landed neatly on the
+grassy slope which ran down towards the Den.
+
+"Now then, Sunny Jim!" remarked a reproving voice above his head,
+"_pas si beaucoup de cela!_"
+
+However sound our nervous systems may be, we are all of us liable to
+be startled at times. Mr Blunt was undoubtedly startled on the
+occasion, and being young and only very recently ordained, signified
+the same in the usual manner.
+
+When he looked up into the tree where Nicky was reclining, that
+virtuous damsel's fingers were in her ears.
+
+"Mr Blunt," she remarked, "I am both surprised and shocked."
+
+"Veronica Vereker," replied Mr Blunt, turning and shaking his fist as
+he retreated down the slope towards Tinkler's Den, "next time I get
+hold of you I will wring your little neck!"
+
+Miss Veronica Vereker kissed the tips of her fingers to him.
+
+"We will now join," she proclaimed, in a voice surprisingly
+reminiscent of the throaty tenor which Mr Blunt reserved for his
+ecclesiastical performances, "in singing Hymn number two hundred and
+thirty-three; during which those who desire to leave the church are
+recommended to do so, as it is _my--turn--to--preach--the--sermon_!"
+
+But by this time the foe, running rapidly, was out of earshot.
+
+Half-an-hour later Stiffy, who was a gregarious animal, went in search
+of his younger sister, whom he discovered, recently returned from her
+sylvan skirmish with the curate, laboriously climbing into a hammock
+in the orchard.
+
+"Nicky, will you come and play cricket?" he asked politely.
+
+"I suppose that means will I come and bowl to you?" replied Nicky.
+
+"No. You can bat if you like."
+
+"Well, I won't do either," said Nicky agreeably.
+
+"What shall we do, then?" pursued Stiffy, with unimpaired _bonhomie_.
+
+"Personally, I am going to remain in this hammock," replied the lady.
+"I recommend you, dear, to go and put your head in a bucket. _Good_
+afternoon! Sorry you can't stop."
+
+"I wonder if Cilly would play," mused Stiffy.
+
+"Cilly? I don't think! She is gloating over her clothes in her
+bedroom. If you and I, my lad," continued Veronica reflectively, "were
+going to be presented at Court next week, I wonder if we should make
+such unholy shows of ourselves for days beforehand."
+
+"I know her boxes are all packed," pursued Stiffy hopefully, "because
+I went and sat on the lids myself after lunch. Perhaps she will come
+out for half-an-hour before tea. Dad and Tony won't be back from
+Tilney till seven, so they are no good."
+
+"Well, run along, little man," said Nicky, closing her eyes. "I'm fed
+up with you."
+
+Stiffy departed obediently, and for ten minutes his younger sister
+reclined in her hammock, her sinful little soul purged for the moment
+of evil intent against any man. When next she opened her eyes Stiffy
+was standing disconsolately before her.
+
+"Go away," said Nicky faintly. "We have no empty bottles or
+rabbit-skins at present. If you call round about Monday we shall be
+emptying the dustbin----"
+
+"Cilly's not there," said Stiffy. "Keziah thinks she has gone out for
+a walk. She saw her strolling down towards the Den half-an-hour ago."
+
+"_The Den?_" Nicky's eyes suddenly unclosed to their full radius. "My
+che-ild! So _that's_ the game! _That_ was why the pale young curate
+was jumping fences. Ha, _ha_! Stiffy, would you like some fun?"
+
+Stiffy, mystified but docile, assented.
+
+"We are going," announced Nicky, rolling gracefully out of the
+hammock, "to stalk a brace of true lovers."
+
+"What--Mr Blunt and Cilly? Do you mean----? Are they really keen on
+each other?" inquired the unobservant male amazedly.
+
+"_Are_ they? My lad, it has been written all over them for weeks! I'm
+not certain, though," continued the experienced Nicky, "that the poor
+dears are aware of it themselves yet. But to-day is Cilly's last for
+months, so----"
+
+"Do you mean they are down in the Den together?" demanded Stiffy.
+
+"I do."
+
+"But--Mr Blunt has gone off to do parish work. He told me so himself."
+
+"Parish work my foot!" commented Nicky simply. "Come on! Let's go and
+mark down their trail! We can pretend to be Red Indians, if you like,"
+she added speciously.
+
+But the sportsmanlike Stiffy hung back.
+
+"Let's play cricket instead," he said hesitatingly.
+
+"Not me! Come on!"
+
+"Nicky," said Stiffy, searching his hand, so to speak, for trumps,
+"Preston is killing a pig this afternoon at four o'clock. I've just
+remembered. He promised not to begin till I came. We shall just be in
+time. Hurry up!"
+
+"I am going," said Nicky firmly, "to stalk that couple. Are you
+coming?"
+
+"No. It's not playing the game," said Stiffy bravely.
+
+Nicky, uneasily conscious that he spoke the truth, smiled witheringly.
+
+"All right, milksop!" she said. "I shall go by myself. You can go and
+hold the pig's hand."
+
+So they departed on their several errands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Cilly and the curate sat side by side beneath a gnarled and
+venerable oak in Tinkler's Den.
+
+... "Then your name is called out," continued Cilly raptly, "and you
+give one last squiggle to your train and go forward and curtsey--to
+_all_ the Royalties in turn, I think, but I'm not quite sure about
+that part yet--and then you pass along out of the way, and somebody
+picks up your train and throws it over your shoulder, and you find
+yourself in another room, and it's all over. Won't it be heavenly?"
+
+"Splendid!" replied Mr Blunt, without enthusiasm.
+
+"After that," continued Cilly, "my sister is going to take me simply
+everywhere. And I am to meet lots of nice people. It's too late for
+Henley and Ascot and that sort of thing this summer, but I am to have
+them all next year. Later on, we are going to Scotland. I'm not at all
+a lucky girl, am I?"
+
+It was one of those questions to which, despite its form, an
+experienced Latin grammarian would have unhesitatingly prefixed the
+particle _nonne_. But the Reverend Godfrey Blunt merely replied in a
+hollow voice--
+
+"What price me?"
+
+Cilly, startled, turned and regarded his hot but honest face, and then
+lowered her gaze hastily to the region of her own toes.
+
+The Reverend Godfrey was a fine upstanding young man, with merry grey
+eyes; and there was a cheerful and boisterous _bonhomie_ about his
+conversation which the exigencies of his calling had not yet intoned
+out of him. No one had ever considered him brilliant, for his strength
+lay in character rather than intellect. He was a perfect specimen of
+that unromantic but priceless type with which our public schools and
+universities never fail to meet the insatiable demands of a voracious
+Empire. The assistant-commissioner, the company officer, the junior
+form-master, the slum-curate--these are they that propel the ship of
+State. Up above upon the quarter-deck, looking portentously wise and
+occasionally quarrelling for the possession of the helm, you may
+behold their superiors--the Cabinet Minister, the Prelate, the
+Generalissimo. But our friends remain below the water-line, unheeded,
+uncredited, and see to it that the wheels go round. They expect no
+thanks, and they are not disappointed. The ship goes forward, and that
+is all they care about. Of such is the British Empire.
+
+The Reverend Godfrey Blunt was one of this nameless host. At school he
+had scraped into the Sixth by a hair's-breadth; at the University he
+had secured a degree of purely nominal value. He had been an unheroic
+member of his House eleven; thereafter he had excoriated his person
+uncomplainingly and unsuccessfully upon a fixed seat for the space of
+three years, not because he expected to make bumps or obtain his Blue,
+but because his College second crew had need of him. Since then he had
+worked for five years in a parish in Bermondsey, at a stipend of one
+hundred pounds a-year; and only the doctor's ultimatum had prevailed
+on him to try country work for a change. His spelling was shaky, his
+theology would have made Pusey turn in his grave, and his sermons
+would have bored his own mother. But he was a man.
+
+Cilly, whom we left bashfully contemplating her shoe-buckles under an
+oak-tree, was conscious of a new, sudden, and disturbing thrill. Young
+girls are said seldom to reflect and never to reason. They have no
+need. They have methods of their own of arriving at the root of the
+matter. Cilly realised in a flash that if a proper man was the object
+of her proposed journey through the great and enticing world before
+her, she need never set out at all. Something answering to that
+description was sitting beside her, sighing like a furnace. Her face
+flamed.
+
+"What did you say?" she inquired unsteadily.
+
+"I said 'What price me?'" reiterated the curate mournfully.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean----" he spoke hesitatingly, like a man picking his words from
+an overwhelming crowd of applicants--"well, I mean this. You and I
+have seen a lot of each other since I came here. You have been awfully
+good to me, and I have got into the way of bringing you my little
+troubles, and turning to you generally if I felt dismal or humpy.
+(There _are_ more joyful spots, you know, to spend one's leisure hours
+in than Mrs Tice's first-floor-front.) And now--now you are going away
+from me, to meet all sorts of attractive people and have the time of
+your life. You will have a fearful lot of attention paid to you. Nine
+out of ten men you meet will fall in love with you----"
+
+"Oh! nonsense!" said Cilly feebly.
+
+"But I _know_ it," persisted Blunt. "I simply can't conceive any man
+being able to do anything else. Do you know----" the words stuck in
+his throat for a moment and then came with a rush--"do you know that
+you are the most adorable girl on God's earth? I love you! I love you!
+_There_--I've said it! I had meant to say a lot more first--work up to
+it by degrees, you know--but it has carried me away of its own accord.
+I love you--dear, _dear_ Cilly!"
+
+There was a long stillness. All nature seemed to be watching with
+bated breath for the next step. Only above their heads the branches of
+the oak-tree crackled gently. Cilly's head swam. Something new and
+tremulous was stirring within her. She closed her eyes, lest the spell
+should be broken by the sight of some mundane external object. A
+purely hypothetical fairy prince, composed of equal parts of Peer of
+the Realm, Lifeguardsman, Mr Sandow, Lord Byron, and the Bishop of
+London, whom she had cherished in the inmost sanctuary of her heart
+ever since she had reached the age at which a girl begins to dream
+about young men, suddenly rocked upon his pedestal. Then she opened
+her eyes again, and contemplated the homely features of the Reverend
+Godfrey Blunt.
+
+Not that they appeared homely any longer. Never had a man's face
+undergone such a transformation in so short a time. To her shy eyes he
+had grown positively handsome. Cilly felt her whole being suddenly
+drawn towards this goodly youth. The composite paragon enshrined in
+her heart gave a final lurch and then fell headlong, to lie
+dismembered and disregarded, Dagon-like, at the foot of his own
+pedestal.
+
+... Slowly their hands met, and they gazed upon one another long and
+rapturously. How long, they did not know. There was no need to take
+count of time. They seemed to be sitting together all alone on the
+edge of the universe, with eternity before them. The next step was
+obvious enough; they both realised what it must be: but they did not
+hurry. They sat on, this happy pair, waiting for inspiration.
+
+It came--straight from above their heads.
+
+"Kiss her, you fool!" commanded a hoarse and frenzied voice far up the
+tree.
+
+Crackle! Crash! _Bump!_
+
+And Nicky, overestimating in her enthusiasm the supporting power of an
+outlying branch, tumbled, headlong but undamaged, a medley of arms and
+legs and blue pinafore, right at their feet.
+
+A few hours later Daphne, preceded by a rather incoherent telegram,
+drove up to the Rectory in the station fly.
+
+She was met at the door by Cilly, and the two, as if by one impulse,
+fell into each other's arms.
+
+"Daphne, _dear_ Daph," murmured the impetuous Cilly, "I am the
+happiest girl in all the world."
+
+"And I," said Daphne simply, "am the most miserable."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
+
+THE COUNTERSTROKE.
+
+
+The scene is the Restaurant International, a palatial house of
+refreshment in Regent Street; the time half-past one. At a table in
+the corner of the Grand Salle a Manger, set in a position calculated
+to extract full value from the efforts of a powerful orchestra, a
+waiter of majestic mien, with a powdered head, and a gold tassel on
+his left shoulder, stands towering over two recently arrived patrons
+with the _menu_.
+
+The patrons, incredible as it may appear, are Stephen Blasius Vereker
+and Veronica Elizabeth Vereker. Stiffy, in the gala dress of a
+schoolboy of eighteen, is perspiring freely under the gaze of the
+overpowering menial at his elbow; Nicky, in a new hat of colossal but
+correct dimensions (the gift of her eldest sister), with her hair
+gathered into the usual _ne plus ultra_ of the "flapper,"--a
+constricted pigtail tied with a large black bow of ribbon,--is
+entirely unruffled.
+
+How they got there will appear presently.
+
+"Will you lunch _a la carte_ or _table d'hote_, sir?" inquired the
+waiter, much as an executioner might say--"Will you be drawn or
+quartered?"
+
+The flustered Stiffy gazed helplessly at his sister.
+
+"He means, will you pay for what you eat or eat what you pay for,
+dear," explained that experienced and resourceful young person. "You
+must excuse him," she added, turning her round and trustful orbs upon
+the waiter. "He is not accustomed to being given a choice of dishes."
+
+The waiter, realising that here was a worthy opponent, maintained a
+countenance of wood and repeated the question.
+
+"You had better give _me_ the _menu_," said Miss Vereker. "How much is
+the _table d'hote_ lunch?"
+
+"Four shillings, madam."
+
+Madam mused.
+
+"Let me see," she said thoughtfully. "Can we run to it, dear?"
+
+"Of course!" said Stiffy in an undertone, reddening with shame. "You
+know Daphne gave me----"
+
+Nicky smiled joyfully.
+
+"So she did. I had forgotten. Two and nine, wasn't it?"
+
+Stiffy, with a five-pound-note crackling in his pocket, merely gaped.
+
+"Then," continued Nicky, calculating on her fingers, "there is the
+three and a penny which we got out of the missionary-box. That makes
+five and tenpence. And there is that shilling that slipped down into
+your boot, Stiffy. You can easily get under the table and take it off.
+Six and tenpence. I have elevenpence in stamps, and that, with the
+threepenny-bit we picked up off the floor of the bus, makes eight
+shillings. We can just do it. Thank you," she intimated to the waiter
+with a seraphic smile--"we will take _table d'hote_. I suppose," she
+added wistfully, "there would be no reduction if I took my little boy
+on my knee?"
+
+"None, madam."
+
+And the waiter, still unshaken, departed to bring the _hors
+d'oeuvres_.
+
+"Nicky, don't play the goat!" urged the respectable Stephen in a low
+and agitated voice. "That blighter really _believes_ we are going to
+pay him in stamps. We shall get flung out, for a cert!"
+
+"It's all right," said Nicky. "I am only going to try and make him
+laugh."
+
+"You'll fail," said her brother with conviction.
+
+At this moment a mighty tray, covered with such inducements to
+appetite as anchovies, sliced tomatoes, sardines, radishes, chopped
+celery, Strasburg sausage, _et hoc genus omne_--all equally
+superfluous in the case of a schoolboy up in town on an _exeat_--was
+laid before him with a stately flourish. Then the waiter came stiffly
+and grimly to attention, and stood obviously expectant. _Hors
+d'oeuvres_ are rather puzzling things. Here was a chance for the tyros
+before him to show their mettle.
+
+They showed it.
+
+"One gets tired of these everlasting things," mused Nicky wearily.
+"I'll just peck at one or two. You can fetch the soup, waiter: we
+shall be ready for it immediately."
+
+"Thick or clear soup, madam?"
+
+"We'll have thick to begin with, please: then clear," replied Nicky
+calmly. "Stiffy, I will take an anchovy."
+
+The waiter was not more than two minutes absent, but ere he returned a
+lightning transformation scene had been enacted.
+
+Certainly the Briton, with all his faults, surpasses the foreigner in
+the control of the emotions. What a Gaul or a Teuton would have done
+on witnessing the sight which met the eyes of the imperturbable
+Ganymede of the Restaurant International when he returned with the
+thick soup, it is difficult to say. The first would probably have
+wept, the second have sent for a policeman. For lo! the richly dight
+_hors d'oeuvres_ tray had become a solitude--the component parts
+thereof were duly discovered by the charwoman next morning amid the
+foliage of an adjacent palm--and the tail of the last radish was
+disappearing into Stiffy's mouth. Stiffy, once roused, made an
+excellent accomplice, though he had no initiative of his own.
+
+The waiter's face twitched ever so slightly, and there was an
+undulating movement in the region of his scarlet waistcoat. But he
+recovered himself in time, and having served the thick soup, departed
+unbidden in search of the clear.
+
+"Nicky," said Stiffy in a concerned voice, "are we really going to
+have everything on the _menu_?"
+
+"You are, my son," replied Nicky. "I, being a lady, will make use of
+this palm-tub."
+
+The waiter brought the clear soup, and asked for instructions with
+regard to the fish.
+
+"What sort of fish have you?"
+
+The man proffered the card.
+
+"_Sole: Sauce Tartare._ That means sole with tartar sauce," Nicky
+translated glibly for the benefit of her untutored relative. "We had
+better not have that. Tartar sauce always makes him sick," she
+explained to the waiter, indicating the fermenting Stiffy. "What else
+is there? Let me see--ah! _Blanchailles!_--er--_Blanchailles!_ A very
+delicate fish! Quite so. You may bring us"--her brain worked
+desperately behind a smiling face, but fruitlessly--"a _blanchaille_,
+waiter."
+
+There was an ominous silence. Then the waiter asked, in a voice
+tinged with polite incredulity--
+
+"A _whole_ one each, madam?"
+
+"Certainly," said madam in freezing tones.
+
+The waiter bowed deferentially, and departed.
+
+"Stiffy," inquired Nicky in agonised tones, "what _is_ a
+_blanchaille?_ Don't say it's a cod!"
+
+Stiffy devoted three hours a-week to the study of Modern Languages,
+but so far no _blanchaille_ has swum into his vocabulary.
+
+"I've a notion," he said after a prolonged mental effort, "that it is
+a sturgeon."
+
+"How big is a sturgeon?"
+
+"It's about the size of a shark, I think."
+
+"Mercy! And we have ordered a whole one each!"
+
+But their capacity was not to be taxed after all. The waiter returned,
+and with the nonchalant demeanour of a hardened clubman playing out an
+unexpected ace of trumps, laid down two plates. In the centre of each
+reposed a single forlorn diminutive whitebait.
+
+But it was here that Veronica Elizabeth Vereker rose to her greatest
+heights. She inspected her own portion and then her brother's.
+
+"Waiter," she said at last, "will you kindly take away this young
+gentleman's fish and ask the cook to give you a rather longer one?
+About three-quarters of an inch, I should say. The child"--indicating
+her hirsute and crimson senior--"gets very peevish and fretful if his
+portion is smaller than any one else's."
+
+Without a word the waiter picked up Stiffy's plate and bore it away.
+His broad back had become slightly bowed, and his finely chiselled
+legs had a warped and bandy appearance. The strain was telling.
+
+Stiffy gazed upon his sister in rapt admiration.
+
+"Nicky, you _ripper_!" he said.
+
+After this it was mere child's play to request a stout gentleman with
+a chain round his neck to submit the wine list--an imposing volume of
+many pages--and after a heated and highly technical discussion on the
+respective merits of Pommery and Cliquot, to order one stone-ginger
+and two glasses.
+
+Nicky next instructed the waiter to present her compliments to the
+leader of the band, and to request as a special favour that he and his
+colleagues would oblige with a rendering of _Shall We Gather at the
+River?_ The waiter returned with a reply to the effect that the _chef
+d'orchestre_ would be delighted. Unfortunately he had not the full
+score by him at the moment, but had sent along to the Cafe Royal to
+borrow a copy. Everything would be in readiness about tea-time. It was
+then a little after two, and it was admitted by both Nicky and Stiffy
+that honours on this occasion were divided.
+
+So far both sides, as the umpires say on Territorial field-days, had
+acquitted themselves in a manner deserving great credit; but the
+waiter scored the odd and winning trick a little later, in a
+particularly subtle manner. Age and experience always tell. Nicky,
+unduly inflated by early success, insisted upon Stiffy ordering a
+liqueur with his coffee. Green Chartreuse was finally selected and
+brought.
+
+"Shall I pour it into your coffee, sir?" asked the waiter
+respectfully.
+
+"Please," said the unsuspecting Stiffy.
+
+The man obeyed, and directly afterwards emitted a sound which caused
+both children to glance up suddenly. They glared suspiciously, first
+at one another, then at the back of the retreating foe.
+
+"Do people drink Green Chartreuse _in_ their coffee?" asked Nicky
+apprehensively.
+
+"I don't know," said Stiffy. He tasted the compound. "No, I'm _blowed_
+if they do! Nicky, we've been had. He's one up!"
+
+"It would score him off," replied the undefeated Nicky, "if you could
+manage to be sick."
+
+But Stiffy held out no hope of this happy retaliation; and they
+ultimately produced the five-pound note and paid the score with
+somewhat chastened mien, adding a _douceur_ which was as excessive as
+it was unnecessary. Waiters do not get much entertainment out of
+serving meals as a rule.
+
+
+II.
+
+"Now we must meet Daphne," said Stiffy, as they left the restaurant
+and hailed a cab.
+
+They were in town for an all-too-brief sojourn of twenty-four hours,
+to assist at the inspection of Daphne's new house. It was now
+February, and Lady Carr had not seen her husband since the eruption at
+Belton last summer. Juggernaut had made no attempt to prevent her
+going home, and when she wrote later, requesting that Master Brian
+Vereker Carr might be sent to her, had despatched him without
+remonstrance. No one save Cilly and her beloved Godfrey--least of all
+the Rector--knew of the true state of affairs; and all during that
+autumn and winter Daphne was happier in a fashion than she had ever
+been. To a large extent she resumed command of the household, setting
+Cilly free for other very right and natural diversions; and a sort of
+_edition de luxe_ of the old days came into being, with first-hand
+food at every meal and a boy to clean the boots and drive the pony.
+
+Daphne was entirely impervious to the gravity of the situation. There
+are certain women who are curiously wanting in all sense of
+responsibility. They preserve the child's lack of perspective and
+proportion even after they grow up, and the consequences are sometimes
+disastrous. If love arrives upon the scene no further harm ensues, for
+the missing qualities spring up, with that Jonah's-gourd-like
+suddenness which characterises so many feminine developments, at the
+first touch of the great magician's wand. The retarded faculties
+achieve maturity in a flash, and their owner becomes maternal,
+solicitous, Martha-like; and all is well.
+
+Daphne was one of these women; but so far, unfortunately, she had
+failed to fall in love. Her marriage had never really touched her. Her
+husband had vibrated many strings in her responsive impulsive young
+heart--gratitude, affection, admiration,--but the great harmonious
+combination, the master-chord, had yet to be struck. Consequently she
+saw nothing unusual in living apart from her husband, financing her
+family with his money, and enjoying herself with friends whom he did
+not know.
+
+Early in the year, however, it occurred to her that it would be
+pleasant to go home again for a time. Her elastic nature had entirely
+recovered from the stress of last summer's crisis, and she was frankly
+consumed with curiosity on the subject of the new house in Berkeley
+Square--and said so. It was perhaps an unfortunate reason for a wife
+to give for wishing to return to her husband, but this did not occur
+to her at the time. She received a brief note in reply, saying that
+the furnishing and decorating were now practically completed, and the
+house was ready for her inspection any time she cared to come up to
+town. Hence this joyous expedition.
+
+Daphne had half expected to find her husband waiting for her at the
+house, for the Parliamentary recess was over and she knew he was
+almost certain to be in town. Instead, she was received by an
+overwhelmingly polite individual named Hibbins, from the
+house-furnishers. Mr Hibbins' appearance and deportment proved a sore
+trial to the composure of Nicky, who exploded at frequent and
+unexpected intervals throughout the afternoon, lamely alleging the
+fantastic design of some very ordinary wallpaper or the shortness of
+Stiffy's Sunday trousers in excuse.
+
+It was essentially a masculine house, furnished in accordance with the
+man's ideas of solidity and comfort. The high oak panelling and
+dark-green frieze in the dining-room pleased Daphne, who recognised
+that glass and silver, well-illuminated, would show up bravely in such
+a setting. The drawing-room was perhaps a little too severe in its
+scheme of decoration: Daphne would have preferred something more
+feminine. "But that comes," she reflected characteristically, "of
+leaving the declaration to your partner!" There was a billiard-room in
+which Nicky declared it would be a sin to place a billiard-table, so
+perfectly was it adapted for waltzing after dinner.
+
+Opening out of the billiard-room was a plainly furnished but
+attractive little set of apartments--"the bachelor suite" Mr Hibbins
+designated it--consisting of a snug study with an apartment adjoining,
+containing a small camp-bed and a large bath. Daphne's own rooms
+consisted of a bedroom and boudoir on the first floor, with wide
+bow-windows.
+
+The nursery came last. It was a large irregular-shaped room at the top
+of the house, full of unexpected corners and curious alcoves such as
+children love, affording convenient caves for robbers and eligible
+lairs for wild beasts, fabulous or authentic. In addition to the
+regulation nursery furniture there was a miniature set, in
+green-stained wood--a table barely eighteen inches high, a tiny
+arm-chair, and a pigmy sofa upon which Master Brian's friends might
+recline when they came to drink tea, or its equivalent. Round the
+whole room ran a brightly coloured dado covered with life-size figures
+of all the people we love when we are young--Jack the Giant-Killer,
+Old King Cole, Cinderella, and the Three Bears. Even Peter Pan, with
+residence and following, was there. The spectacle of Doctor Johnson
+taking a walk down Fleet Street would pale to insignificance compared
+with that of Master Brian Vereker Carr enjoying a constitutional along
+his own dado, encountering a new friend round every corner.
+
+Daphne suddenly realised that here was yet another aspect of this
+strange, impenetrable husband of hers. The room in its way was a work
+of genius--the genius that understands children.
+
+As they departed to catch the afternoon train to Snayling the
+obsequious Mr Hibbins produced a letter.
+
+Sir John Carr, he explained, had called at the head office of their
+firm that morning--in _person_, Mr Hibbins added with a gratified
+smile--and requested that this letter should be handed to her ladyship
+in the afternoon. Sir John had also instructed Mr Hibbins to inform
+her ladyship that any improvements or alterations which she desired
+had only to be mentioned to be carried out.
+
+Mr Hibbins having handed them into a cab and bidden them an unctuous
+farewell, they drove away to the station, Nicky atoning for previous
+aloofness by hanging out of the window and waving her handkerchief
+until they turned the corner.
+
+
+III.
+
+The journey from London to Snayling, involving as it does a run of
+forty miles by main line, a wait of indefinite duration at a
+junction furnished with no other facilities for recreation than a
+weighing-machine and a printed and detailed record of the fate which
+awaits persons who compass the awe-inspiring but cumbrous crime of
+travelling-by-a-class-superior-to-that-to-which-the-ticket-in-their-
+possession-entitles-them, and concluding with an interminable crawl
+along a branch line, is not at first sight an enterprise that promises
+much joyous adventure; but Nicky and Stiffy, who usually contrived to
+keep _ennui_ at arm's-length, had a very tolerable time of it.
+
+Their efforts at first were directed to securing an apartment to
+themselves--an achievement which, when you come to think of it, fairly
+epitomises the Englishman's outlook on life in general.
+
+"Hang your face out of the window, Stiffy, my lad," commanded Nicky,
+returning from an unsuccessful attempt to wheedle the guard into
+labelling their carriage "engaged," "and play at Horatius Cocles till
+the train starts. That ought to do the trick."
+
+But no. At the last moment a crusty-looking old gentleman wrenched the
+door open, nearly precipitating Horatius Cocles (and face) on to the
+platform, and sat down with great determination in the corner seat. He
+glared ferociously at the demure-looking pair before him, in a manner
+which intimated plainly that he was too old a customer to be kept out
+of his usual compartment by tricks of _that_ kind. After this he
+produced _The Westminster Gazette_ from a handbag and began to read
+it.
+
+Nicky gave him five minutes. Then, turning to her brother and
+scrutinising his freckled countenance, she observed in clear and
+measured tones--
+
+"I think they have let you out rather _soon_, John."
+
+Stiffy, realising that he was the person addressed and that some fresh
+game was afoot, looked as intelligent as possible, and waited. Daphne,
+in the far corner of the carriage, hurriedly opened her husband's
+letter and began to read it.
+
+"The marks aren't all gone yet," continued Nicky, inspecting her
+brother anxiously. "Are you still peeling?"
+
+"Yes--I think so," said Stiffy, groping for his cue.
+
+"Ah!" Nicky nodded her head judicially. "We must give you a carbolic
+bath when we get you home."
+
+_The Westminster Gazette_ emitted a perceptible crackle.
+
+"It will never do," pursued Nicky, getting into her stride, "to have
+you disfigured for life."
+
+Stiffy, who was impervious to all reflections upon his personal
+appearance, grinned faintly. Opposite, a scared and bulging eye slid
+cautiously round the edge of _The Westminster Gazette_, and embarked
+upon a minute and apprehensive inspection of the plague-stricken
+youth. Nicky saw, and thrilled with gratification. She was on the
+point of continuing when the train dived into a tunnel. Having no
+desire that her schemes should go awry in the din, she waited.
+
+The train came to a sudden and unexplained stop. Deathlike silence
+reigned, broken only by murmurs of conversation from next door.
+Presently in the gross darkness Nicky's voice was once more uplifted.
+
+"By the way, is it infectious, or merely _contagious_? I meant to ask
+when I called for you at the Institute"--she was rather proud of that
+inspiration: an Institute sounded more terrifying and mysterious than
+a Hospital--"but in the excitement of that last fainting-fit of yours
+I forgot. Which is it?"
+
+"Both, I think," said Stiffy, anxious to help.
+
+"Ah! I feared as much. Still, things might be worse," commented Nicky
+philosophically. "So many of these complaints are infectious in the
+early stages, when no one suspects any trouble. Mumps, for instance,
+or scarlet fever. But others, like yours, are only dangerous in the
+convalescent stage, and then of course one knows exactly where one
+is."
+
+There was a crumpling of paper in the darkness, accompanied by a
+shuffling of feet and a vibratory motion of the seat-cushions--all
+indicative of the presence of one who knows exactly where _he_ is, and
+regrets the fact exceedingly.
+
+"The air is very close in here," resumed Nicky's voice. "I wonder----"
+she whispered a sentence into Stiffy's ear, the only distinguishable
+word in which was "germs." "Of course, I have _had_ it--slightly," she
+added in a relieved tone.
+
+Something moved again in the darkness opposite to them, and then came
+a sound as of a window being cautiously slid open.
+
+"Still, I _think_," replied Stiffy solicitously--as usual he was
+warming up to the game slowly but surely--"that it would be wiser for
+you to keep your mouth closed and breathe through your nose. One
+cannot be too careful."
+
+"All right," said Nicky.
+
+Once again silence reigned. But presently there fell upon the ears of
+the conspirators, rendered almost incredulous by joy, an unmistakable
+and stertorous sound, as of some heavy and asthmatic body taking in
+air through unaccustomed channels.
+
+Five minutes later the train, groaning arthritically, resumed its way
+and crawled out of the tunnel into a station. Nicky and Stiffy,
+blinking in the sudden daylight, beheld the reward of their labours. A
+corpulent and rapidly ageing citizen, shrinking apprehensively into a
+corner of the compartment and holding a small handbag upon his knees
+as if with a view to instant departure, sat glaring malignantly upon
+them. His face was mottled, his mouth was firmly closed, and he
+breathed perseveringly through his nostrils.
+
+Next moment he had flung open the door and was out upon the platform,
+inhaling great gulps of vernal air and looking for the station-master.
+
+"Stiffy, you darling! I'll never call you a fat-head again!" declared
+Nicky, enthusiastically embracing her complacent accomplice. "That
+notion of yours was simply _It!_ Daph, wasn't it splen--Hallo! Bless
+me, Stiffy, if Daph isn't breathing through her nose too! Look!"
+
+Certainly Daphne's lips were tightly compressed, but she turned to her
+companions and smiled faintly.
+
+"It's all right, kids," she said; "I think this carriage is overheated
+or something. I shall be all right in a minute. Keep that window open,
+Stiffy dear."
+
+She was very white, but on emphatically declining Nicky's offer of
+first aid she was left to herself, while her brother and sister
+discussed the course to be followed in the event of another invasion
+of the carriage. Like true artists, they scorned to achieve the same
+effect by the same means twice running.
+
+Meanwhile Daphne re-read her husband's letter.
+
+     "... I have waited six months, and as you display no
+     inclination to look facts in the face, I am compelled to take
+     the initiative myself. As far as I can gather from your
+     attitude, you seem to consider that things are very well as
+     they are. On this point I beg to differ from you. The present
+     situation must _end_. We must either come together again or
+     part for good on some definitely arranged terms.
+
+     "... As you have exhibited no desire to reconcile yourself to
+     me--your letter indicates that your sole object in returning
+     home is to play with your latest toy, the new house--I conclude
+     that you wish to remain your own mistress. I therefore place
+     the new house entirely at your disposal. You can draw money as
+     you require it from Coutts', and I will see to it that there is
+     always an adequate balance. I think, if you have no objection,
+     that it would be as well if I occasionally came to the house,
+     and occupied the bachelor suite off the billiard-room; but I
+     shall come and go without troubling you. We ought to make this
+     concession to appearances.
+
+     "I should not like your father, for instance, to be made
+     unhappy by the knowledge that his daughter and her husband
+     found it better to go their several ways.
+
+     "... As for the custody of the boy----"
+
+A long, slow shudder rippled down Daphne's spine. Custody! There was a
+horrible legal, end-of-all-things, divorce-court flavour about the
+word.
+
+"I think it would be a good scheme, Stiffy dear," broke in Nicky's
+cheerful voice, "for you to pretend this time that you have just been
+discharged from an asylum. I will be taking you home, and ..." Her
+voice faded.
+
+     "... You will naturally like to have him with you while he is
+     a mere child. I will therefore leave him in your hands for the
+     present. Later, when he goes to a public school and University,
+     I think I should like him to be with me during his holidays.
+     When he grows up altogether, he must please himself about----."
+
+Public School! University! Daphne turned sick and faint. Were the
+provisions of this merciless letter to cover all eternity? What had
+she done to deserve this?
+
+"It would be a bright thought," continued Nicky's voice, returning
+from a great distance, "to roll up your handkerchief into a ball and
+put it right into your mouth. Then do something to attract their
+attention, and when they are all looking, pull it right out with a
+jerk, and mop and mow. _Can_ you mop and mow, Stiffy? Mop, anyhow!
+Just before a station, you know, so that they can get out. If that
+doesn't work, roll about on the cushions, and----."
+
+Daphne detached her gaze from the flying landscape, and finished the
+letter.
+
+     "Forgive me if I appear to have resorted to extreme or harsh
+     measures. I suppose I am a hard man: at any rate, I am not
+     pliable. I dare say if I had been differently built I might
+     have played the part of the modern husband with fair success,
+     and you could have picked your companions at will.
+     Unfortunately, I would rather die than permit you to impose
+     such a _regime_ upon me, as you seem prepared to do. The thing
+     is degrading. To my mind there can be no compromise, no
+     half-measures, between man and wife. It must be all in all, or
+     not at all....
+
+    "Lastly, Daphne, let me say how sorry I am that things have come
+    to this pass. I realise that it is my fault. I should not have
+    asked a young and inexperienced girl to marry me. You could not
+    be expected to know better: I might and should. And it is
+    because I realise and admit that the fault is mine, that I
+    refrain from  attaching any blame to you or uttering any
+    reproaches. All I can do is to say that I am sorry, and make it
+    possible for you to go your way, unhampered as far as may be by
+    the ties of a marriage which should never have taken place.
+
+    "If I can at any time be of service to you, command me. I can
+    never forget that we have had our happy hours together."
+
+Daphne folded up the letter with mechanical deliberation. The first
+numbness was over. Her brain was clear again, and thoughts were
+crowding in upon her. But two things overtopped all the others for the
+moment.
+
+The first was the realisation of the truth of her husband's words. The
+old situation _had_ been impossible--as impossible as the new one was
+inevitable. She saw that--at last. "All in all, or not at all," he had
+said, and he was right.
+
+The second was a sudden awakening to the knowledge that we never begin
+really to want a thing in this world until we find we cannot have it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
+
+INTERVENTION.
+
+
+"Madame," announced the major-domo of the Hotel Magnifique with a
+superb gesture, "the post from England!"
+
+"Thank you, Themistocle," said Mrs Carfrae. "But you are
+over-generous: one of these letters is not for me."
+
+She handed back an envelope.
+
+Themistocle, needless to remark, was desolated at his own
+carelessness, and said so. But the old lady cut him short.
+
+"Don't distress yourself unduly, Themistocle. It is a mistake even an
+English body might have made. There is not much difference between
+Carfrae and Carthew."
+
+The punctilious Themistocle refused to be comforted.
+
+"But no, madame," he persisted; "I should have observed that the
+letter addressed itself to a monsieur, and not a madame. Doubtless it
+is intended for one of the English party who arrive this afternoon."
+
+"An English party? Is my seclusion to be disturbed by the disciples of
+the good Monsieur Cook?"
+
+"Assuredly no, madame. These are English milords from Marseilles. The
+Riviera season has been a failure: the mistral blows eternally.
+Therefore the party abandons Cannes and telegraphs for apartments at
+the Hotel Magnifique."
+
+"Are they from London? Possibly I may be acquainted with some of them.
+What are their names?"
+
+Themistocle would inquire. He departed amid a whirlwind of bows,
+leaving Mrs Carfrae to continue her _dejeuner_ in the sunny verandah
+of her sitting-room. She came to Algiers every spring, and she came
+unattended save for a grim-faced Scottish maid of her own age. It was
+Mrs Carfrae's habit to assume that she and her wheeled chair were a
+drag upon the world; and she systematically declined invitations to
+join friends upon the Riviera. People, she explained, who would
+otherwise have been playing tennis at the Beau Site or roulette at the
+Casino would feel bound to relinquish these pursuits and entertain
+her. So she came to Algiers by herself, this proud, lonely old lady.
+
+"Carthew?" she mused. "That is the name of Johnny Carr's familiar
+spirit. And that letter was in Johnny's handwriting. Well,
+Themistocle, who are--stand _still_, man!"
+
+Themistocle reluctantly curtailed an elaborate obeisance, and came to
+attention. The leader of the expedition, he announced, was Milord the
+Right Hon. Sir Hilton Bart., with Milady Hilton Bart. The names of the
+other guests were not known, but there were eleven of them.
+
+They arrived on the steamer that afternoon, and drove in an imposing
+procession up the long and dusty hill that leads to Mustapha
+Superieur, leaving Algiers--that curious combination of Mauretanian
+antiquity and second-rate French provincialism--baking peacefully in
+the hot sunshine below. As Themistocle had predicted, they came
+unshepherded by the good Mr Cook. They were of the breed and caste
+that has always found its own way about the world.
+
+There was Sir Arthur Hilton, a slow-moving Briton of few words, with a
+pretty wife of complementary volubility. There were one or two
+soldiers on leave; there was a Cambridge don; there were three grass
+widows. There were two newly emancipated schoolgirls, gobbling life in
+indigestible but heavenly lumps. There was a tall and beautiful
+damosel, with a demeanour which her admirers--and they were
+many--described as regal, and which her detractors--and their name was
+legion--described as affected; and whom her chaperon, Lady Hilton,
+addressed as "Nina, dearest." And there was a squarely built,
+freckle-faced young man with whom we are already acquainted. His name
+was Jim Carthew.
+
+Altogether they were a clean-bred, self-contained, easy-going band,
+unostentatious but quietly exclusive--thoroughly representative of the
+sanest and most reputable section of that variegated cosmos which
+represents what Gallic students of British sociology term "Le Higlif."
+Very few of them possessed much money: theirs was a stratum of society
+to which money was no passport. You could have money if you liked,
+they conceded, but you must have a good many other things first. Hence
+the absence from their midst of Hoggenheimer and Aspasia.
+
+Jim Carthew had not meant to come. Juggernaut had given him six weeks'
+leave, for there had been an Autumn Session in town and an industrial
+upheaval in the country, and the squire had worked early and late by
+his knight's side. Consequently when the spring came Carthew was
+summarily bidden to go to Scotland and fish. Without quite knowing
+why, he went to Cannes instead, where Nina Tallentyre, attended by a
+zealous but mutually-distrustful guard-of-honour, was enjoying herself
+after her fashion under the inadequate wing of Lady Hilton. When the
+exodus to Algiers was mooted, Carthew labelled his portmanteau London.
+But he ultimately crossed the Mediterranean with the rest. He had
+never seen Africa, he explained to himself.
+
+Daphne was of the party too. (Possibly the reader has already
+identified her as one of the three grass widows.) She had despatched
+Master Brian Vereker Carr to Belton for a season, and joined the
+Hiltons' party four weeks ago. The great new house in town stood
+empty. After her husband's bombshell in February, she had felt bound
+to do something to show her spirit. Another strike was brewing in the
+north, so doubtless her lord and master would soon be congenially
+occupied in starving his dependents into submission. Meanwhile her
+duty was to herself. Domestic ties were at an end. She would enjoy
+life.
+
+She experienced no difficulty in the execution of this project. Every
+one seemed anxious to assist her. Despite precautions, the fact that
+all was not well in the house of Juggernaut was public property; and
+the usual distorted rumours on the subject had set out upon their
+rounds, going from strength to strength in the process. Daphne was
+soon made conscious that people were sorry for her. Frivolous but
+warm-hearted women were openly sympathetic. Large, clumsy men
+indicated by various awkward and furtive acts of kindness that they
+too understood the situation, but were too tactful to betray the fact.
+Altogether Daphne was in a fair way to becoming spoiled. With all her
+faults no one had ever yet been able or inclined to call her anything
+but unaffected and natural; but about this time she began to assume
+the virtuous and long-suffering demeanour of a _femme incomprise_. She
+was only twenty-four, and few of us are able to refuse a martyr's
+crown when it is pressed upon us.
+
+Only her monosyllabic host--"The Silent Knight," his friends called
+him, denying him his baronetcy in their zest for the nickname--was
+unable to appreciate the extreme delicacy of the situation. He was a
+plain man, Arthur Hilton, and hated mysteries.
+
+"Why isn't that girl at home, lookin' after her husband, Ethel?" he
+inquired of his wife one morning.
+
+"I think she is happier with us, dear," replied Lady Hilton with
+immense solemnity.
+
+The Silent Knight emitted a subdued rumble, indicative of a desire to
+argue the point, and continued--
+
+"Happier--eh? Hasn't she got a baby, or somethin', somewhere? What the
+dev----"
+
+"Yes, dear, she _has_ a baby," replied his wife, rolling up her
+fine eyes to the ceiling; "but I fear she has not been very
+fortunate in her marriage. She was the daughter of a country
+clergyman--_dreadfully_ poor, I understand--and wanted to improve
+the family fortunes. There were eight or nine of them, so she took
+this old man."
+
+The Silent Knight's engine fairly raced.
+
+"Old man be damned!" he observed with sudden heat. "Sorry, my dear!
+But Jack Carr can't be more than forty-six. I'm forty-eight. I'm an
+old man, too, I suppose! Back number--eh? One foot in the grave! You
+lookin' about for my successor, Ethel--what?"
+
+It was useless to explain to this obtuse and uxorious critic that a
+young and sensitive girl cannot be expected to dwell continuously
+beneath the roof of a husband whose tastes are not her tastes, who has
+merely married her to keep house for him, and who neglects her into
+the bargain. Not that this prevented Lady Hilton from endeavouring to
+do so. When she had finished, her husband knocked the ashes out of his
+pipe, and remarked--
+
+"Can't make you women out. Here's old Juggernaut--best man _I_ ever
+came across, and as kind as they make 'em--marries this little fool
+of a girl and gives her everything she wants; and she goes off and
+leaves him slavin' at his work, while she comes trapesin' about
+here with a collection of middle-aged baby-snatchers and
+knock-kneed loafers. Next thing, she'll start flirting; then she'll
+fall in love with some bounder, and then there'll be the devil of a
+mess. Rotten, I call it! Don't know what wives are comin' to
+nowadays. Have _you_ goin' off next, Ethel--leavin' me and the
+kids, and becomin' a Suffragette--what?"
+
+After this unusual outburst the Silent Knight throttled himself down
+and said no more, all efforts on his wife's part to lure him into
+ground less favourable to his point of view proving fruitless. He
+merely smoked his pipe and emitted an obstinate purr.
+
+"But what else can one expect, dearest," Ethel Hilton confided to a
+friend afterwards, "if one marries an internal combustion engine?"
+
+
+II.
+
+Neither was Mrs Carfrae satisfied to find her beloved Johnny Carr's
+lawful wife disporting herself in her present company. One afternoon
+she heckled Jim Carthew upon the subject, to the extreme embarrassment
+of that loyal youth. The rest of the party had gone off to explore
+Algiers, and were safely occupied for the present with the
+contemplation of the passing show--ghostlike Moors in snowy burnouses,
+baggy-trousered members of that last resort of broken men, _La Legion
+Etrangere_, and spectacled French officials playing at colonies.
+
+Mrs Carfrae's chair had been wheeled into a corner of the open
+courtyard which occupied the middle of the Hotel Magnifique, as far as
+possible from the base of operations of a pseudo-Tzigane orchestra
+which discoursed languorous melody twice daily; and its occupant was
+dispensing to Carthew what Themistocle was accustomed to describe as
+"some five o'clock."
+
+"So you are leaving us, Mr Carthew," observed the hostess.
+
+"Yes, the day after to-morrow. There is a boat then. I must go. There
+is trouble brewing in the colliery districts again, and Sir John wants
+me."
+
+"And you will take Lady Carr with you?"
+
+"Oh no," said Carthew, flushing. "We are not together. I mean, it is
+not on her account that I am here."
+
+"So I have noticed," said Mrs Carfrae dryly.
+
+"I was invited here by the Hiltons," explained Carthew, and plunged
+into a sea of unnecessary corroborative details. "I was quite
+surprised to find Lady Carr here," he colluded. "I thought she was in
+London."
+
+"And why," inquired the old lady with sudden ferocity, "is she not at
+Belton, with her man?"
+
+The faithful Carthew stiffened at once.
+
+"I expect Sir John sent her out here to have a good time," he said.
+"He could not get away himself, so----"
+
+Mrs Carfrae surveyed him for a moment over her glasses.
+
+"You are a decent lad," she observed rather unexpectedly.
+
+This testimonial had its desired effect of reducing Carthew to
+silence, and Mrs Carfrae continued--
+
+"You have been with John Carr for some time now, have you not?"
+
+"Yes; ever since I came down from Cambridge."
+
+"How did you meet him? He does not take to young men readily as a
+rule, so I have heard."
+
+"I had the luck," said Carthew, his eye kindling with historic
+reminiscence, "to meet him at dinner one night at the end of my third
+year, at my tutor's. Sir John was an old member of the College,
+staying there for the week-end. He told us at dinner that he had come
+up to find a good ignorant unlicked cub to help him with his work, who
+could be trusted to obey an order when he received one and act for
+himself when he did not. Those were his exact words, I remember."
+
+"Ay, they would be. Go on."
+
+"This unlicked cub was to come and be a sort of general factotum to
+him, and do his best to help him with his work, and so on. Marvyn (the
+tutor) and I sat trying to think of likely men, and finally we made a
+list of about six, whom Sir John said he would run his eye over next
+day. After that I went off to bed. I remember wishing to myself that
+I had taken a better degree and been a more prominent member of the
+College: then I might have had a shot for this berth, instead of going
+into a solicitor's office. But as things were, I hadn't the cheek.
+Well, do you know, Jug--Sir John came round to me next morning----"
+
+"Before breakfast, I doubt."
+
+"Yes, as a matter of fact I had just come in from a run and was
+sitting down to it. He asked if he might have some: and after that he
+offered me--_ME!_--this grand billet. Of course I jumped at it--who
+wouldn't, to be with a man like that?--and I have been with him ever
+since."
+
+"Well," said Mrs Carfrae, "you should know more of the creature than
+most folk. What is your unbiassed opinion of him?"
+
+"I think he is the greatest man that ever lived," said the boy simply.
+
+"Hmph! As a matter of fact, he has less sense than anybody I ever
+knew," replied the old lady calmly. "Still, you are entitled to your
+opinion. I need not trouble you with an account of _my_ first meeting
+with him: it occurred a long time ago. But--wheel me a little nearer
+the sun, laddie: this corner is a thing too shady--it may interest you
+to know that he would have been my son-in-law to-day, had it not
+been--" she paused for a moment, very slightly--"for the uncertainty
+of human life. And that is why I take something more than a passing
+interest in the doings of that slim-bodied, brown-eyed, tow-headed
+hempie that he married on. And that brings me to the point. Laddie,
+those two are getting over-far apart, and it must be _stopped_!"
+
+"Yes, but how?" inquired Carthew dismally. "I understand that entering
+a lions' den just before dinner-time is wisdom itself compared with
+interfering between husband and wife."
+
+A quiver passed through Elspeth Carfrae's frail body, and she
+straightened herself in her chair.
+
+"I am a havering and doited old woman," she announced with great
+decision, "and no one takes any notice of what I say or do. But I tell
+you this. So long as my old heart beats and my old blood runs, I shall
+be perfectly willing to face every single lion in the Zoo, gin it will
+bring a moment's happiness to Johnny Carr. The lad deserves a good
+wife. Once he nearly got one--the best and fairest in all the
+world--but God decided otherwise. Now he has got another: I know her:
+she has the right stuff in her. And when I leave this hotel next week
+I am going to take her with me, in her right mind, and deliver her to
+her man!"
+
+The old lady concluded her intimation with tremendous vigour. Carthew
+sat regarding her with a mixture of reverence and apprehension.
+
+"You are going to--to speak to her about it?" he asked.
+
+"I am," replied Mrs Carfrae, with vigour.
+
+"I would do anything," said Carthew awkwardly, "to put things right
+between those two. But supposing you make your attempt, Mrs Carfrae,
+and--and fail, won't it make matters worse?"
+
+"Much," said Mrs Carfrae calmly. "If I interfere, unsuccessfully, I
+doubt if either of them will ever speak to me again. That is the usual
+and proper fate of busybodies. But--I am going to risk it!... Run me
+back to my sitting-room now, and call Janet. I hear your friends
+yattering out there in the verandah. They will be through with
+Algiers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
+
+JIM CARTHEW.
+
+
+But our two conspirators were fated, for all practical purposes, to
+exchange _roles_.
+
+The following evening Daphne and Carthew found themselves sitting
+together in the hotel garden after dinner. A great moon shone from a
+velvety African sky; the scented breeze rustled in the palms; and the
+music of the band drifted to their ears in intermittent waves.
+
+It was one of those nights which touch the imagination and stir the
+emotions--a night upon which human nature expands to its utmost
+limits. A night upon which passion awakes, and long-cherished secrets
+are whispered into suddenly receptive ears. Also a night upon which
+the devil stalks abroad. Dido resided a few miles from this spot. It
+was probably a night like this that made the Fourth Book of the Aeneid
+worth writing.
+
+If Dido failed to resist such environment, what of Daphne? She was
+young; she was intensely susceptible to such things as moonshine and
+soft music; and, disguise the fact from herself as she might, she was
+lonely. It is not altogether surprising that, as she surveyed this
+silent comely youth who lolled beside her eyeing the glittering
+Mediterranean in stolid abstraction, she should unconsciously have
+acquiesced in the first of the dismal prognostications of that
+splenetic but clear-sighted baronet, Sir Arthur Hilton. Jim Carthew
+had occupied Daphne's thoughts a good deal of late, and to-night she
+felt suddenly conscious of a desire to flirt with him.
+
+"Cigarette, please!" she commanded.
+
+Carthew silently handed her his case, and allowed her to select and
+light her own cigarette--a prodigal waste of opportunity, as any
+professional philanderer could have told her.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts!" continued Daphne pertly.
+
+Carthew, struck by a peculiar note in her voice, turned and looked at
+her. He was met by a provocative glance. There was a brief silence.
+Then he said gravely--
+
+"I don't think you are quite cut out for that sort of thing, Lady
+Carr."
+
+Daphne, feeling as if she had received a whip-lash in the face, stared
+at him, white with anger. Then she rose stiffly from her seat and
+moved towards the hotel. Carthew did not stir.
+
+"Don't go," he said. "We may as well have this out."
+
+Daphne stood irresolute. Then curiosity got the better of virtuous
+indignation, and she sat down again.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me," she said, "what you mean by talking in that
+way?"
+
+Carthew's honest eyes lingered on her face in a manner which she could
+not fathom. Did the man love her, or was he pitying her, or was he
+merely indulging in sarcastic reflections at her expense? Whatever his
+motives, he had a knack of compelling attention.
+
+Presently he began to speak.
+
+"I wonder," he said, as if talking to himself, "why men and women are
+made as they are? Why does A love B, while B worships C, who cares for
+no one in the world but himself? And why does D insist on confusing
+things still further by not quite knowing what he--she--wants? I
+wonder! They say there is enough money spent in charity every year to
+supply the needs of every poor person living, but so much is
+misapplied that many have to go without. I think it is the same with
+human affection. There is so much true love going about in this
+world--enough to keep all of us well-nourished and contented. But what
+a lot of it goes to waste! There is so much overlapping! _Why_, I
+wonder? It is a difficult business, Life, Daphne."
+
+He had never called her Daphne before, but neither of them seemed to
+notice the familiarity.
+
+"We're a contrary crew, we mortals," he continued presently. "Here we
+are, you and I, sitting in the moonshine inaugurating a flirtation,
+though neither of us cares a snap for the other--in that way. Why, I
+wonder? I think it is partly due to pride--wounded pride. You are
+angry with your husband----"
+
+Daphne, who was methodically picking her cigarette to pieces, looked
+up indignantly.
+
+"I'm _not_!" she said hotly.
+
+"Oh yes, you are," replied Carthew. "You think you are
+not, but you are. You try to believe that you are merely
+indifferent to him, but you are not. As for me, I am angry
+too--piqued--furious--jealous--raging--I admit it--with a girl whom
+I dislike intensely. The more I see of her the more selfish,
+affected, shallow, unwomanly I see her to be. And yet--I _love_
+her! Why? Why? Why? People tell me she is heartless, soulless,
+sordid, greedy, vulgar--everything, in fact. Sometimes I feel they
+are right. Still--" he dropped his head into his hands and
+continued doggedly--"what difference does that make to _me_? I love
+her!... She cared for me once, too. She told me so--and she meant
+it! Perhaps if I had been a little more patient with her I might
+have kept her, and--and helped her a bit. Perhaps that was what I
+was sent into the world for--to make things easier for Nina. I
+could have done so much for her, too. I could have made a woman of
+her. She has her soft side: I know: I have seen it. No other man
+can say that. Meanwhile," he continued with a whimsical smile, "I
+am trying to solace myself by allowing you to flirt with me----"
+
+Daphne drew her breath sharply.
+
+"And you are not very good at it," concluded Carthew unexpectedly.
+
+"You are very candid," said Daphne frigidly.
+
+"Yes, but I speak truth. You are not good at it. Flirtation is a
+crooked business, and you are straight, _mon amie_. But wounded pride
+is not the only thing that has drawn us here together. Something else
+is responsible. We are both craving for sympathy. 'A fellow-feeling,'
+you know! I know all about _you_," he continued quickly, as Daphne's
+lips parted. "You are by way of being a neglected wife; and since Nina
+has informed me that she has told you all about _me_, I suppose you
+regard me as a bit of a derelict too. Well, we have forgathered. What
+is going to happen next?"
+
+Daphne was silent. She certainly did not know what was going to happen
+next. Her ideas on all subjects were a little jumbled at this moment.
+Presently Carthew continued--
+
+"We came together," he said gently, "just when each of us required a
+little companionship and sympathy; and we got it. I think our chance
+encounter on the highway of life has been a very profitable one. But
+it has served its turn. Our roads diverge again. We must part company,
+little comrade."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Daphne spoke this time in a tremulous whisper. A great wave of
+loneliness was surging up towards her.
+
+"Because," said Carthew's deep voice, "it is the only thing to do.
+Think what may happen if we travel on together too far. At present we
+are safe. I love some one else, and so do--and you are angry with some
+one else, let us say. Supposing, since the girl I love does not love
+me any more--supposing I ceased to love her? It seems hopeless,
+incredible, I admit; but it might conceivably happen. And supposing
+you gave up being angry with--some one else, and became indifferent to
+him, where might we not find ourselves? Our sheet-anchor--our platonic
+sheet-anchor--would be gone. And sooner than send you adrift among
+cross-currents, little Daphne, I prefer to forgo the only friendship
+in this world that I really value. You are too delicate and too
+fragrant to be tarnished by common gossip, so I am going away
+to-morrow. Let us say good-bye now--you beautiful thing!"
+
+Daphne looked up at him in amazement. But there was no passion in his
+face--only an infinite tenderness. To him she was simply a woman--one
+of the rarest and fairest of her sex, perhaps, but still simply a
+woman--whom to succour, without expectation or desire of reward, was
+the merest courtesy on the part of any knight worthy of the name. This
+was a man! Daphne bowed her head, wondering dimly and scornfully at
+the insensate folly of Nina Tallentyre.
+
+"Shall we go back to the hotel?" asked Carthew at length.
+
+There was no reply. Turning to note the cause, he saw something bright
+and glistening fall upon his companion's hand--then another. With
+innate loyalty and delicacy he averted his gaze, and surveyed the
+distant seascape with laborious intentness.
+
+Meanwhile Daphne sat on, her head still bowed. Through the night air,
+from the hotel verandah, there came the refrain of a waltz. It was
+called _Caressante_, she thought. Carthew knew it too, and dug his
+teeth into his lower lip. Waltzes have an unfortunate habit of
+reviving the memories of yester year.
+
+"Don't go in," said Daphne at length. "Don't leave me--I can't bear
+it!" Her voice broke.
+
+Suddenly Carthew turned to her.
+
+"Daphne"--his voice was low, but he spoke with intense earnestness--"you
+are lonely, I know, and sad; and you are too proud to own it. Shall I
+tell you who is more lonely and more sad, and too proud to own it too?"
+
+"Do you mean--" were Jim Carthew's good resolutions
+crumbling?--"yourself?"
+
+"No, no,--nothing of the kind. I mean--your husband!" Then he
+continued hurriedly--
+
+"Daphne, if I thought I was leaving you to real loneliness and
+inevitable wretchedness, I--well, perhaps I shouldn't go away at all.
+But I--I am not needed. Little friend, you have the finest husband in
+all the world, waiting for you. For all his domineering ways, he is
+shy, and wants knowing. You have never discovered that. I don't
+believe you know him a bit. It all comes of having begun wrong. Go
+back and study him. Give him a fair chance! Give yourself a fair
+chance! You and I have always been friends: will you promise me this?
+Go back, and give yourself and Jack Carr another chance."
+
+Half an hour ago Daphne would have smiled sceptically and indulgently
+upon such a suggestion. But this lonely, loyal spirit had touched her.
+She felt she would like to please him.
+
+"Very well," she said. "I promise. No, _I can't_!" The memory of some
+ancient wrong suddenly surged up in her, swamping the generous
+impulse. "_I can't!_"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Jack is so hard," she said. "Look at the way he treats those in his
+power. His workpeople, his----"
+
+Carthew laughed, positively boisterously.
+
+"Hard? Jack Carr hard? Listen," he said, "and I will tell you a
+secret."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he had finished Daphne stood up, white and gleaming in the
+moonlight, and gave him her hand.
+
+"All right," she said softly--"it's a bargain. I go home to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THREE.
+
+THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
+
+SOME ONE TO CONFIDE IN.
+
+
+Certainly matters were in a serious state in the Mirkley Colliery
+district. The whole industrial world was unsettled at the time. There
+had been trouble on the railways, and a great shipyard strike was
+threatening in Scotland. Most serious of all, the men were beginning
+to defy their own leaders. They had taken to organising little
+sectional revolts of their own, and Employers' Federations were
+beginning to ask how they could be expected to ratify treaties with
+Trades Union officials who were unable to hold their own followers to
+the terms of agreements concluded on their behalf.
+
+The Mirkley district had caught the infection. The mischief had
+originated at Marbledown and Cherry Hill, the immediate cause of the
+trouble being a simple question of weights and measures.
+
+The ordinary collier is paid by piecework--so much per ton for all the
+coal he hews. This coal is carefully weighed on coming to the surface,
+and to ensure fair play all round the weight is checked by the men's
+own representative at the pit-head. Now just as all is not gold that
+glitters, so all that comes to the surface of the earth from the
+interior of a coal-pit is not necessarily coal. A good deal of it is
+shale, stone, and the like--technically summarised as "dirt"--and has
+to be sorted out from the genuine article by a bevy of young ladies
+retained at some expense for the purpose. As colliers are paid for
+hewing coal and not dirt, the mine managers, reckoning one
+hundredweight as the average weight of dirt in a tub of coal, had been
+in the habit, when making out their pay-sheets, of deducting this
+amount from the total weight of each load brought to the surface.
+_Hinc lacrymae._ The man in the pit claimed that he should be paid for
+all he sent up the shaft, alleging that it was impossible to separate
+coal from dirt at the face, and that dirt was quite as difficult to
+hew as coal. To this those in authority replied that a collier is a
+man who is employed to hew coal and not dirt, and that as such he
+should only be paid for the coal he hewed. It was a nice point, and so
+high did feeling run upon the subject, and so fierce was the demeanour
+of their _employes_, that pliable Mr Aymer and pusillanimous Mr
+Montague yielded to the extent of fifty-six pounds, and henceforth
+each toiler in Cherry Hill and Marbledown Colliery was debited with
+one half instead of one whole hundredweight of dirt per tub.
+
+Encouraged by the success of their colleagues, the men employed at Sir
+John Carr's great pit at Belton proffered a similar request. But
+though the request was the same its recipient was different. Sir John
+greeted the deputation with disarming courtesy, and announced in a
+manner which precluded argument that on the question of the owners'
+right to deduct for dirt in each load he would not yield one inch. On
+this the deputation rashly changed their ground and alleged that the
+toll of one hundredweight per tub was excessive. Whereupon Juggernaut
+whisked them off without delay to the pit-head. Here a minute
+examination was made of the contents of the next ten tubs of coal
+which came to the surface, and it was found that, so far from
+defrauding his _employes_, Juggernaut was defrauding himself, for the
+average weight of dirt in each tub was not one hundred and twelve but
+one hundred and thirty pounds.
+
+"You see, Mr Brash?" said Sir John cheerfully. "I am afraid you have
+all been in my debt to the extent of eighteen pounds of coal per tub
+for quite a considerable number of years. However, if you will be
+sensible and go back to work, we will call it a wash-out and say no
+more about it."
+
+Then he departed to London.
+
+But he had to return. The half-hundredweight of Cherry Hill
+and Marbledown outbalanced Belton's plain facts and ocular
+demonstrations. The Pit "came out" _en masse_, against the advice
+and without the authority of their Union officials; and for two or
+three weeks men loafed up and down the long and unlovely street
+which comprised Belton village, smoking their pipes and organising
+occasional whippet-races against the time when the despot who
+employed them should be pleased to open negotiations.
+
+But the despot made no sign. Presently pipes were put away for want of
+tobacco, and whippet-racing ceased for want of stake-money. Then came
+a tightening of belts and a setting of teeth, and men took to sitting
+on their heels against walls and fences, punctuating recrimination by
+expectoration, through another four long and pitiful weeks.
+
+Not so utterly pitiful though. For a wonderful thing happened. The
+unknown benefactor of the strike of seven years ago came to life
+again. Every morning the postman delivered to the wife of each man in
+Belton a packet containing a ration of tea, sugar, and (once a week)
+bacon. Coal, too, was distributed by a mysterious motor-lorry, bearing
+a London number-plate, and manned by two sardonic Titans, who
+deposited their sacks and answered no questions. So there was no
+actual destitution in the village. But there was no beer, and no
+tobacco, and no money. Women and children can live for an amazingly
+long time on tea and sugar eked out by a little bread, but man is the
+slave of an exacting stomach, and requires red meat for the upkeep of
+his larger frame. The whippets, too, had to be considered; and when,
+after an interval of seven weeks, a notice went up on the gates of the
+pit buildings, intimating that all who returned to work on the
+following Monday would be reinstated without question, Belton Colliery
+put its pride into its empty pocket and came back as one man.
+
+But the danger was not over yet, as Juggernaut well knew. For the
+moment the men were subdued by sheer physical exhaustion. The first
+pay-day would fill their bellies and put some red blood into their
+passions. And it was certain information, received on this head at the
+Pit offices, that sent Sir John Carr home to Belton Hall with knitted
+brow and tight-set mouth one wintry Saturday afternoon in early April,
+a fortnight after the men had resumed work.
+
+He stepped out of the big motor and walked into the cheerful fire-lit
+hall. He stood and gazed reflectively upon the crackling logs as the
+butler removed his heavy coat. But the removal of the coat seemed to
+take no weight from his shoulders. He felt utterly lonely and unhappy.
+Was he growing old, he wondered. He was not accustomed to feel like
+this. He did not usually shrink from responsibility, or desire a
+shoulder to lean upon, but at this moment he suddenly felt the want
+of some one to consult. No; consult was not the word! He could have
+consulted Carthew. In fact he had just done so, for Carthew had
+returned from his holiday two days before. What he wanted was some one
+to _confide_ in. With a sudden tightening of the heart he thought of a
+confidante who might have been at his side then, had things been
+different--a confidante who would have sat upon the arm of his chair
+and bidden him play the man and fear nothing. Well, doubtless he would
+play the man and fear nothing, and doubtless he would win again as he
+had done before. But--_cui bono_? What doth it profit a man----?
+
+He wondered where she was. Yachting on the Mediterranean, or
+frivolling on the Riviera. Or perhaps she was back in London by this
+time, ordering her spring clothes and preparing for another butterfly
+season. At any rate she was not at Belton Hall. Whose fault was
+that?...
+
+Had he been lacking in patience with her? Had he treated her too much
+like a refractory board-meeting?... A little fool? Doubtless; but
+then, so were most women. And she was very young, after all....
+
+"Will you take anything before dinner, sir?" inquired a respectful
+voice in his ear. "Tea? Whisky-and----"
+
+"No, thank you, Graves. Is Master Brian in the nursery?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I will go up shortly and say good-night to him. Meanwhile I shall be
+in the study if Mr Carthew or any one calls for me. But I don't want
+to be disturbed at present."
+
+A minute later he opened the door of the apartment, half library, half
+smoking-room, which he called his study. It was in darkness, but for
+the cheerful glow of the fire.
+
+As Juggernaut closed the door behind him and felt for the
+electric-light switch, there came a rustling from the depths of a
+great oak settle which formed a right-angle with the projecting
+mantelpiece; and a slim straight figure stood suddenly upright,
+silhouetted against the ruddy glare.
+
+"Daphne!"
+
+"Yes--me!" replied an extremely small voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
+
+THE CANDLE LIT.
+
+
+There is no more disagreeable sensation in this world than that
+furnished by a sudden encounter with some one with whom we are on
+"awkward" terms. Most people know what it is to cross the street to
+avoid an old friend, or to dodge into a shop in order to escape the
+necessity of inflicting or receiving the cut direct. Very often the
+origin of the quarrel has been forgotten or ceased to be of real
+moment, but the awkwardness endures. Oftener still a reconciliation
+would be welcomed on both sides; but pride, pride, pride intervenes.
+
+Now the best solvent of stubborn obstinacy is a sense of humour. As
+Juggernaut stood in the darkness, surveying the embarrassed little
+figure before him--in his eyes Daphne, five feet seven in her
+stockings, was always "little"--and feeling acutely conscious on his
+own part of an irresistible desire to shuffle with his feet, he
+suddenly and most providentially broke into one of his rare laughs--a
+laugh of quiet and unforced enjoyment.
+
+Apparently this was not quite what Daphne expected.
+
+"What is the matter?" she inquired. Her voice quavered pathetically,
+for she was highly wrought.
+
+"I couldn't help thinking," said her husband, "of an episode in the
+history of two old friends of mine. They had been engaged for about
+three months, when they quarrelled--severely. They parted company for
+ever, and whenever he or she saw the other upon the horizon, he or she
+fled. However, after about six weeks of this sort of thing they were
+taken by surprise. One day the man saw the girl advancing straight
+upon him down the street, quite oblivious of his proximity. He dived
+into the nearest shop, which happened to be a baby-linen
+establishment--"
+
+Daphne gave a sudden gurgle of laughter.
+
+"--And when the girl walked in, two minutes later," concluded
+Juggernaut, "to match some silk, she found her late beloved diligently
+sampling Berlin wool. That did it! The sense of humour of that young
+couple came to their rescue, Daphne, and they walked out of the shop
+hand-in-hand, not caring a dump for anybody. To my knowledge they have
+never had a quarrel since. You see the reason why I laughed just
+now?"
+
+Daphne sighed comfortably.
+
+"Yes," she said. The tension of the situation was relaxed.
+
+"I want to--to talk to you, Jack," she continued, considerably
+heartened.
+
+"Certainly," replied Juggernaut, with a slight return of his
+board-room air. "I'll turn the light on."
+
+"Please don't," said Daphne hastily. "I would rather talk in the dark.
+Will you sit down on the settle?"
+
+Juggernaut obeyed silently. The firelight played upon his face,
+showing the clear-cut lines of his mouth and his tired eyes. Daphne
+stood erect before him, keeping her face in the shadow. She had
+removed her hat and furs, and her thick hair caught the light
+fantastically.
+
+"Jack," she began, industriously scrutinising the vista of the room
+reflected by an ancient convex mirror hanging on the far wall, "I want
+to say something. I want to say that I am sorry. I have done you an
+injustice. I always thought you were a hard man, and I have discovered
+that you are not. In fact," she continued with a flicker of a smile,
+"I have found out that you are very much the other thing." She
+paused.
+
+"May I ask for chapter and verse?" said Juggernaut.
+
+"_Yes!_" The old Daphne flashed forth. "Here are you, fighting all
+these men with one hand, giving no quarter, and all that sort of
+thing--" Juggernaut stirred suddenly in his seat--"and feeding the
+women and children with the other! Aren't you, now?" She pointed an
+accusing finger.
+
+"Since you tax me with it--yes," said her husband.
+
+Daphne turned upon him impulsively, with the firelight full on her
+face.
+
+"Jack," she said softly, "it was splendid of you!"
+
+He looked up and saw that her eyes were glowing. She came a step
+nearer, and her head drooped prettily. "And I'm sorry if I have been
+unfair to you, Jack," she continued. "I--I thought you were just a
+feelingless sort of man, whose work was his world, and who cared for
+nothing but himself and what he had in view, and regarded women as
+merely useful things to keep house, and have babies, and so on. But
+now I _know_ that I was wrong. There is more of you than that. Being
+me, I had to tell you."
+
+She ended with a little catch in her voice. She had made her effort.
+She had humbled herself, and in so doing she had laid herself open to
+the cruellest of rebuffs. She waited tremulously. A hard word, a
+scornful smile, even silence now--and two lives would fall asunder for
+ever.
+
+But the wheels of Juggernaut had never passed over a woman.
+
+"Will you sit down?" said Sir John gently.
+
+He made room for her, and she sank down beside him, leaning her head
+against the high back of the settle and gazing unwinkingly into the
+fire. She was conscious now that this man was overflowing with
+tenderness towards her, but she would not look him in the face yet.
+
+"How did you find out about the rations to the women?" he enquired
+presently.
+
+Daphne told him.
+
+"But you mustn't blame Jim Carthew," she said in conclusion. "He
+simply _had_ to tell me."
+
+"Where did you see him?"
+
+"Last week, in Algiers. In fact, he brought me home; but I made him
+promise not to tell you I was in London. He _is_ a good sort!" she
+added irrelevantly.
+
+"In what way?" asked her husband curiously.
+
+Daphne turned and surveyed him.
+
+"Would you be angry if I told you--jealous, I mean?"
+
+"What right have I to be angry or jealous?" said Juggernaut simply.
+"In what way," he repeated, "has Carthew been showing that he is a
+good sort?"
+
+"Well, in bringing me his troubles. That always makes a conquest of
+any woman, you know. And in letting me take my troubles to him. A
+woman always _has_ to take a trouble to a man, Jack, when all is said
+and done--even if he is only the family solicitor!" she concluded
+hurriedly. She had suddenly skated on to thin ice, and she knew it.
+The man to whom she should have taken her troubles had not been there
+to receive them.
+
+"So Jim Carthew has his troubles like the rest of us?" said
+Juggernaut.
+
+"Yes, and I never suspected how he felt about them," said Daphne. "He
+is fearfully reserved about the things he really feels, although he
+babbles enough about the things he doesn't. So, when I was in
+trouble----"
+
+"What was your trouble?"
+
+"I was lonely," said the girl.
+
+Juggernaut drew his breath sharply.
+
+"I am glad you had some one to be kind to you," he said.
+
+Then came a long pause--the sort of pause which either brings a
+discussion to an end or begets another, longer and more intimate. We
+all know them.
+
+Finally Daphne braced herself.
+
+"Jack," she said, "I want to say something more. I didn't mean to: I
+have said all I came here to say. But I must say this too--now or
+never. I--I--I was wrong to marry you, Jack. I didn't love you, but I
+thought it didn't matter. I felt how divine it would be to be able to
+help the boys and Dad. That was all I considered. Then, when I began
+to go about, and meet new people, and make comparisons, I--found
+myself criticising you! _Me--you!_"
+
+"I wouldn't be too indignant about it if I were you," said her
+husband.
+
+He reached out deliberately for her hand, and continued his
+contemplation of the fire.
+
+"Go on," he said.
+
+Daphne, foolishly uplifted, continued--
+
+"I used to think you rough and hard and unsympathetic. I began to
+prefer the men who buzzed round and murmured things in my ear. And
+when people began to pity me as a neglected wife, I--I encouraged
+them. I let women say catty things about you, and I let men make love
+to me. That sort of thing has been going on ever since the
+time"--Daphne's grip of her husband's hand tightened--"when you and I
+decided--to go our own ways. I don't mind telling you now that it was
+a pill for me, Jack. My pride----"
+
+"It was a brutal act on my part," blazed out Juggernaut with sudden
+passion.
+
+"No it _wasn't_: it was what I deserved!" insisted Daphne, whose
+nature did not permit her to be repentant by halves. "Well, anyhow, I
+determined to flirt in real earnest now. So I began to carry on in an
+experimental fashion. But I can't say it was much fun. Finally I did
+fall in love with a man, in a sort of way--don't hurt my hand, dear;
+it was only in a sort of way--and I let him see it. Well, I got a
+facer over _him_. One night, under the moon, I tried to flirt with
+him; and he--well, Jack, he fairly put me in my place!"
+
+"What did he do?"
+
+"He made me feel ashamed of myself."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Not much that we need talk of now, except one thing."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"He told me to go back to you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because he said"--Daphne's voice dropped low--"that you loved me."
+
+There was a long silence, until a live coal subsided in the grate.
+Then Juggernaut said--
+
+"It was Carthew, I suppose."
+
+Daphne nodded.
+
+"Jack," she said, "Jim Carthew is the best friend that you and I
+possess."
+
+"I know it."
+
+They were silent again, until irrelevant Daphne enquired suddenly--
+
+"Jack, what made you do that unpractical thing? The tea and sugar, I
+mean. It was only prolonging the strike: even _I_ can see that."
+
+"It didn't prolong the strike to any particular extent," said
+Juggernaut with decision. "Not that I care," he added with unusual
+inconsequence, "if it did. It made things no easier for the men; and
+it is with the men that the decision lies in cases of this kind."
+
+"But it was so _unlike_ you," persisted Daphne.
+
+Her husband turned and regarded her quizzically.
+
+"Was it?" he said, smiling. "We all have our weaknesses," he added.
+"Mine are women and children. I think," he went on with great
+deliberation, "that there is only one woman in this wide world who has
+ever suffered ill at my hands."
+
+"And she is----"
+
+"My wife! Listen," he continued rapidly, "while I make confession. You
+have spoken your piece bravely, Daphne. Now hear me mine."
+
+He rose in his turn, and stood before his wife.
+
+"I never knew or cared very much about women," he said. "I do not
+remember my mother, and I had no sisters, which probably accounts for
+a good deal. Also, I was brought up by a man among men, and I learned
+to read men and handle men to the exclusion of all else. I was given
+to understand that women did not matter. I was trained to regard them
+as a sort of inferior and unreliable variety of the male sex. So I
+confined my dealings to men, and I found so much joy in handling and
+mastering men that my eyes became closed to the fact that life could
+offer me anything else."
+
+"But didn't you miss female society? Most men can't get on without
+_some_," said experienced Daphne.
+
+"You can't miss what you have never had, little girl. Perhaps if I had
+encountered female society early in life----"
+
+"But didn't you sometimes instinctively long for a woman to come and
+take charge of you? Most men are so helpless and messy by themselves."
+
+"Sometimes," admitted Juggernaut almost reluctantly, "I did. But I put
+the notion from me."
+
+"Shall I tell you why?" said Daphne quietly.
+
+"I suppose it was because I didn't want to yield to a weakness."
+
+"It was nothing of the kind," said Daphne with immense decision. "It
+was because you were _afraid_!"
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+"Yes--afraid! You would have nothing to do with women, because you
+told yourself you despised them. We were a waste of time, you said--an
+encumbrance! The real reason was that you feared us. Yes--feared!
+Success was the breath of life to you. You had always had your own way
+wherever you went. You were the great Sir John Carr--the strong
+man--Juggernaut! You had never been beaten. Why? Because you had never
+had the pluck to try conclusions with a woman. Your excuse was that
+you were a woman-hater, when all the time you were a woman-lover. You
+have just admitted it, impostor! You were afraid that where every man
+had failed to turn you from your own hard selfish way of life, a woman
+might succeed. And so you ran away, and you have been running ever
+since. There, my strong man, there's the truth for you!"
+
+For once in his life Sir John Carr, the terror of deputations, the
+scourge of unsound logicians, the respectfully avoided of hecklers,
+had no answer ready. The reason was obvious: no answer was possible.
+The victory lay with Daphne. She leaned back in the settle and looked
+fearlessly up into her husband's face. For the first time in her life
+she felt maternal towards this man--twenty-two years her senior--just
+as old Mrs Carfrae had predicted. She was utterly and absolutely
+happy, too, for she had just realised that she and her husband had
+come together at last. They were one flesh. The time for tactful
+diplomacy and mutual accommodation and making allowances was
+over-past. No need now to guard the flame from sudden gusts and
+cross-winds. The candle was safely lighted, and, please God, it should
+burn steadily to its socket. The Safety Match had accomplished its
+task after all.
+
+Then she gave a happy little sigh, for her husband's great arm was
+around her shoulders.
+
+"All my life, Daphne," said his deep voice, "I have thought that the
+sweetest thing in this world was victory. Now I have just received my
+first defeat--you routed me, hip and thigh--and I am happier than I
+have ever been. Why?"
+
+"Think!" commanded a muffled voice in the neighbourhood of his
+waistcoat.
+
+Juggernaut obeyed. Then he continued, and his grip round Daphne grew
+stronger--
+
+"I think I see. I married you because I wanted some one to keep my
+house in order and bear me a son. (That point of view did not endure
+long, I may say, for I fell in love with you on our honeymoon, and I
+have loved you ever since; but it was my point of view when I asked
+you to marry me.) I thought then that it would be a fair bargain if I
+gave you money and position in return for these things. We could not
+help living contentedly together, I considered, under the terms of
+such a logical and business-like contract as that. Well, I did not
+know then, what I know now, that logic and business are utterly
+valueless as a foundation for any contract between a man and a woman.
+The only thing that is the slightest use for the purpose is the most
+illogical and unbusiness-like thing in the whole wide world. And"--his
+iron features relaxed into a smile of rare sweetness--"I believe, I
+believe, _cara mia_, that you and I have found that thing--together."
+His voice dropped lower. "Have we, Daphne--my wife?"
+
+Daphne raised her head, and looked her man full in the face.
+
+"We have found it, O my husband," she said gravely--"at last!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The door flew open suddenly. There was a gleam of electric light.
+Graves, the imperturbable, inclined respectfully before them.
+
+"You are wanted outside, sir," he said, "badly!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
+
+ATHANASIUS CONTRA MUNDUM.
+
+
+A confused medley of men and women--not to mention the inevitable
+small boy element--was pouring up the road from Belton Pit in the
+direction of the Hall, which lay beyond the brow of the hill in a
+green hollow as yet unsullied by winding-wheels and waste-heaps.
+People who have made up their minds to do evil are usually in a hurry
+to get it over. Consequently our friends were advancing at a high rate
+of speed, keeping up their courage by giving forth unmelodious noises.
+
+Juggernaut's prophecy had come true. The rebellion had been damped
+down by sheer starvation; and now that starvation was over-past, the
+rebellion was flaming out again with tenfold vigour. That fine
+unreasoning human instinct which under a certain degree of pressure
+bids logic and argument go hang, and impels us to go forth and break
+some one else's windows, held the reins that evening. As the
+night-shift assembled at the pit-head, what time the day-shift was
+being disgorged, a cageful at a time, from the depths below, a great
+and magnificent project suddenly hatched itself in the fertile brain
+of Mr Tom Winch, who had been haunting the neighbourhood on business
+connected with the propaganda of his own particular revolutionary
+organisation for the past six weeks. Now was his chance. Evil
+passions, hitherto dimmed by hunger and privation, were reviving. The
+men were ripe for any mischief. What they were asking for, reflected
+Mr Winch, was blood, or its equivalent, and a man to lead them to it.
+
+Mr Winch was, to do him justice, a master of his own furtive trade. In
+five minutes his project was circulating through the throng. In
+fifteen the crowd had pledged itself to do something really big; and
+in half an hour most of the windows of the pit offices had been broken
+as a guarantee of good faith.
+
+Having whetted its appetite on this _hors-d'oeuvre_, the mob listened
+readily to Mr Winch's suggestion of a brisk walk to Belton Hall and a
+personal interview with its proprietor. The notion ran through the
+excited mass of humanity like fire through dry grass; and presently,
+as if from one spontaneous impulse, the advance on Belton Hall began.
+No one quite knew what he proposed to do when he got there, but the
+possibilities of the expedition were great. It was a picturesque
+procession, for every man carried a safety-lamp in one hand and a
+missile in the other. It was probably owing to the multiplicity of the
+twinkling points of light thus produced that no one observed the
+flickering halo of a solitary bicycle-lamp, as the machine which bore
+it slipped out from the side-door of the pit offices and silently
+stole away through the darkness, carrying a frightened messenger over
+the hill to Belton Hall.
+
+It may here be noted that Mr Tom Winch, having despatched his avenging
+host upon its way, remained behind at headquarters--doubtless to
+superintend the subsequent operations with that degree of perspective
+which is so necessary to a good general. Mr Killick, an old
+acquaintance of ours, supported by his friend Mr Brash, led the
+procession.
+
+"Supposin' the lodge gates is locked--what then?" enquired Mr
+Brash--ever a better critic than creator of an enterprise--as they
+trudged along the muddy road.
+
+"We shall trample them down," replied Mr Killick, ever contemptuous of
+irritating detail.
+
+But the lodge gates stood hospitably open. The lodge itself was
+shuttered and silent; and the procession, pausing momentarily to
+deliver a hilarious and irregular volley of small coal, proceeded on
+its way.
+
+Up the long avenue they tramped. There were electric lamps at
+intervals, intended for the guidance of strange coachmen on
+dinner-party nights. These were all ablaze. Evidently Juggernaut was
+expecting friends.
+
+Five minutes later our glorious company of apostles rounded the last
+turn in the avenue, and the broad Elizabethan _facade_ of Belton Hall
+loomed up before them. Every window was alight.
+
+A flagged and balustraded terrace ran along the whole frontage of the
+Hall. In the middle of the balustrade was a gap, where a broad flight
+of shallow stone steps led down to a velvety lawn three hundred years
+old. Most of the crowd knew that lawn and terrace well. The grounds at
+Belton were constantly and freely granted for miners' _fetes_,
+political demonstrations, and the like. On these occasions a band was
+nearly always playing upon the terrace, and not infrequently
+post-prandial orations were outpoured from the rostrum formed by the
+stone steps upon the heads of a gorged and tolerant audience on the
+grass below.
+
+To-night no band was playing; but at the head of the
+steps--motionless, upright, inflexible--stood a solitary figure. It
+was the master of the house, waiting to receive his guests--one
+against four hundred.
+
+But to one who knew, the odds were not overwhelming. In fact, provided
+that the crowd possessed no resolute leader, the chances were
+slightly in favour of the figure on the steps. One man with his wits
+about him has two great advantages over a crowd. In the first place,
+he knows exactly what he is going to do, and, in the second, he knows
+exactly what the crowd is going to do. The crowd knows neither. It is
+impossible to foretell how a single individual will behave upon
+emergency: the human temperament varies too widely. But there is
+nothing in the world so normal or conventional as a crowd. Mankind in
+the lump is a mere puppet in the hands of the law of averages. Given,
+as noted above, a resolute leader, the conditions are changed. The
+leader imbues the crowd with a portion of his own spirit, and creates
+an instinct of unanimity. Then the odds are once more in favour of the
+crowd; for now it is a resolute will, all alone, pitted against a
+resolute will with force behind it.
+
+Sir John Carr knew all this. He had studied men all his life; and as
+he stood silent and observant, surveying the surging multitude at his
+feet--it had flowed to the base of the steps now--he noted that there
+was no leader in particular. The crowd were acting under the influence
+of blind impulse, and, if properly handled, could be swayed about and
+sent home.
+
+Presently the hubbub ceased, and the men stood gazing upward,
+fingering lumps of coal and waiting for some one to fire the first
+shot.
+
+"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," observed Juggernaut. [The
+ladies, be it noted, constituted the front row of the assemblage,
+their cavaliers having modestly retired a few paces under their
+employer's passionless scrutiny.] "If you have come to serenade me, I
+shall have pleasure presently in sending you out some refreshment. If
+you have merely come to burn the house down, I strongly advise you to
+go home and think twice about it."
+
+The recipients of this piece of advice were undoubtedly a little taken
+aback. Playful badinage was the last thing they had expected. They
+murmured uneasily one to another, debating suitable retorts. Presently
+a shrill female voice opened fire.
+
+"Tyrant!"
+
+"Money-grubber!" corroborated another voice.
+
+"Who starves women and children?" shrieked a third.
+
+"Yah! Booh!" roared the crowd, taking heart.
+
+"Chuck some of his own coals at 'im!" was the frantic adjuration of a
+foolish virgin who had already expended all her ammunition against the
+shutters of the gate-lodge.
+
+A lump of something black and crystalline sang past Juggernaut's head,
+and struck a richly glowing stained-glass window twenty feet behind
+him. There was a sharp crash and a silvery tinkle, followed by a
+little gasp from the crowd. The first shot had been fired. Juggernaut
+knew well that a broadside was imminent, and countered swiftly. In the
+startled silence which succeeded the destruction of the great
+window--it had lighted the staircase at Belton for generations--his
+voice rang out like a trumpet.
+
+"Listen to me!" he cried. "You have a grievance. You have come up here
+to square accounts with me. You think you have right on your side: I
+think it is on mine. Both of us are spoiling for a fight. In our
+present frame of mind nothing else will satisfy us. Now here is a fair
+offer. Send up any two men you like out of that multitude down there,
+and I will take them on, both together or one after the other, as you
+please. I am rising forty-seven, but if I fail to drop either of your
+representatives over this balustrade, back where he came from, inside
+of five minutes, I promise to remit the dues on that odd hundredweight
+that you are making all this to do about. Is it a bargain, gentlemen?"
+
+He had struck the right note. The low, angry murmuring suddenly
+ceased, and a great wave of Homeric laughter rolled over the crowd.
+The British collier has his faults, but within his limits he is a
+sportsman. He appreciates pluck.
+
+"Good lad!" roared a voice out of the darkness. Then there fell
+another silence.
+
+"I am waiting, gentlemen," said Juggernaut presently.
+
+But he had to continue waiting. His audience, as previously noted,
+were sportsmen within limits. The limits, alas! in those soft days are
+too often the coursing of a half-blinded rabbit, or the backing of a
+horse in a race which will not be witnessed by the backer. It is
+always gratifying to be invited to participate in a sporting event,
+but there is a difference between a seat on the platform and a stance
+in the arena. Getting hurt gratuitously is slipping into the _index
+expurgatorius_ of modern field sports.
+
+Men began to look sheepishly at one another. One or two had started
+forward instinctively, but the impulse died away. A humourist was
+heard imploring his friends to hold him back. There was something
+unutterably grim about the towering figure up on the terrace.
+Democracy and the equality of mankind to the contrary, Jack usually
+recognises his master when it comes to a pinch. No Jack seemed to
+desire advancement on this occasion.
+
+Juggernaut waited for another minute. He wanted the silence to sink
+in. He wanted the crowd to feel ridiculous. That object achieved, he
+proposed to turn his visitors to the right-about and send them home.
+He had been through this experience before, and felt comparatively
+sure of his ground.
+
+Provided, that is, that one thing did not occur. There were women
+present.
+
+Now women are exempt from the law of averages: the sex snaps its
+fingers at computations based upon laboriously compiled statistics. If
+the women--or more likely a woman--gave the men a lead, anything might
+happen. And just as Juggernaut uplifted his voice to pronounce a
+valediction, the disaster befel.
+
+"Now go home," he began. "You are not yourselves to-night. Go home,
+and think things over. Consult the older men: I see none of them here.
+If you are of the same mind to-morrow, I promise to----"
+
+"Call yourselves men? Cowards! cowards! cowards! One of _us_ is worth
+the lot of you!"
+
+A woman, with a shawl over her head and a child in her arms, had
+mounted half-way up the steps, and was addressing the mob below. Sir
+John recognised her as Mrs Brash, a quiet little person as a rule.
+
+"Come up, chaps!" she shrieked. "Are you going to let him stamp on us
+_all_? Look at his fine house, and his electrics, and his marble steps
+and all!" [They were plain freestone, but let that pass.] "Where did
+he get 'em all? From _us_--us that he has starved and clemmed this
+last two months! Are you afraid of him--the lot of you? Great hulking
+cowards! I see you, Brash, hiding there! Isn't there _one_ man here?"
+
+"Yes--by _God_ there is!"
+
+With a bound, Killick, the brooding visionary, the Utopian Socialist,
+was at the top of the steps, brandishing a pit-prop and haranguing his
+comrades. There was no stopping him. Mrs Brash had fired the train and
+Killick was the explosion. His words gushed out--hot, passionate,
+delirious. The man's sense of proportion, always unstable, was gone
+entirely. He burned with the conviction of his own wrongs and those of
+his fellows. _Nobilis ira_ gave him eloquence. He laid violent hands
+upon wealth and power and greed and tyranny, and flung them one by one
+down the steps on to the heads of his hearers. Most of what he said
+was entirely irrelevant; a great deal more was entirely untrue; but it
+served. For the moment Sir John Carr stood for all the injustice and
+cruelty that strength has ever inflicted upon weakness. Every word
+told. The mob was aflame at last. They hung upon Killick's fiery
+sentences, surging ever more closely round the steps. The next wave,
+Juggernaut saw, would bring them in a flood upon the terrace; and
+then--what? He thought coolly and rapidly. There was Daphne to
+consider--also little Brian. Daphne, he knew, was close by, standing
+with beating heart behind the curtains of the library window. He had
+forbidden her to come farther. Perhaps, though, she had been sensible,
+and taken the opportunity of this delay to slip away. Of course, of
+course.
+
+There was a movement beside him, and he realised that his education in
+femininity still left something to be desired. A hand slid into his,
+and Daphne's voice whispered in his ear--
+
+"Jack, I want to speak to them."
+
+Her husband turned and smiled upon her curiously.
+
+"What are you going to say?" he asked.
+
+"I am going to tell them about--about the tea and sugar. It's the only
+thing to do," said Daphne eagerly.
+
+"I would rather be knocked on the head by a pit-prop!" said
+Juggernaut. And he meant it. Some of us are terribly afraid of being
+exposed as sentimentalists.
+
+Meanwhile the crowd had caught sight of Daphne. The men fell silent,
+as men are fain to do when a slim goddess, arrayed in black velvet,
+appears to them, silhouetted against a richly glowing window. But
+there was a vindictive shriek from the women.
+
+"Get back at once, dear," said Juggernaut. "You are in great danger.
+Telephone to the police, and tell Graves to get the fire-hose out. It
+may be useful in two ways. I promise to come in if things get worse.
+Hallo! who is that?"
+
+A burly man in a bowler hat, panting with the unwonted exertion of a
+two-mile run, was approaching him along the terrace. He had come up
+the drive unnoticed, and having skirted the edge of the crowd had
+gained access to the terrace from another flight of steps at the end.
+It was Mr Walker, the mine manager.
+
+"I tried to get you on the telephone," he shouted in Juggernaut's ear;
+"but they have cut the wire."
+
+"What is it?" asked Juggernaut.
+
+Walker told him.
+
+There was just time to act. The mob were pouring up the steps in
+response to Killick's final invitation. Juggernaut strode forward.
+
+"Stop!" he cried in a voice of thunder. "Stop, and listen to what Mr
+Walker has to tell you!"
+
+His great voice carried, and there was a moment's lull. Walker seized
+his opportunity.
+
+"There has been an accident at the pit," he bellowed. "Some of your
+lads went down after you had left, to see what damage they could do to
+the plant. Some of the older men went down to stop them. Something
+happened. The roofs of the main road and intake have fallen in, and
+Number Three Working is cut off--with eight men in it!"
+
+There was a stricken silence, and the wave rolled back from the
+steps. Presently a hoarse voice cried--
+
+"Who are they?"
+
+Mr Walker recited six names. Four of these belonged to young bloods
+who had been foremost in the riot at the pit-head. There were agonised
+cries from women in the crowd. All four men were married. The fifth
+name, that of Mr Adam Wilkie, who was a bachelor and a misogynist,
+passed without comment. The sixth was that of a pit-boy named Hopper.
+
+Mr Walker paused.
+
+"You said eight!" cried another woman's voice in an agony of suspense.
+"The other two--for the love of God!"
+
+"Amos Entwistle," replied Mr Walker grimly--"and Mr Carthew."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN.
+
+LABORARE EST ORARE.
+
+
+Six men sat upon six heaps of small coal in a long rectangular cavern
+five feet high and six feet broad. The roof was supported by props
+placed at distances specified by the Board of Trade. One side of the
+cavern was pierced at regular intervals by narrow openings which were
+in reality passages; the other was a blank wall of gleaming coal.
+
+This was the "face"--that point in the seam of coal which marked the
+limits of progress of the ever-advancing line of picks and shovels.
+
+The men were well over two hundred fathoms--roughly a quarter of a
+mile--below the surface of the earth, and they had been prisoners in
+Number Three Working ever since an explosion of fire-damp and
+coal-dust had cut them off from communication with the rest of Belton
+Pit six hours before.
+
+The prisoners were Jim Carthew, Amos Entwistle, and Adam Wilkie,
+together with a hewer, a drawer, and a pit-boy, named Atkinson,
+Denton, and Hopper respectively. There had been two others, but they
+lay dead and buried beneath a tombstone twelve hundred feet high.
+
+What had happened was this.
+
+About four o'clock on that disastrous afternoon, Amos Entwistle was
+sitting despondently in his own kitchen. He was the oldest and most
+influential overman in Belton Pit, but his counsels of moderation had
+been swept aside by the floods of Mr Winch's oratory; and like the
+practical creature that he was he had returned home, to await the
+issue of the insurrection and establish an alibi in the event of
+police-court proceedings.
+
+To him entered Mr Adam Wilkie, with the news that some of the more
+ardent iconoclasts of the day-shift had remained below in the pit, in
+order to break down the roofs of some of the galleries leading to the
+workings--an amiable and short-sighted enterprise which, though
+pleasantly irritating to their employer, must inevitably throw its
+promoters and most of their friends out of work for an indefinite
+period.
+
+Here at least was an opportunity to act. Entwistle hastily repaired to
+the pit-offices, where he knew that Mr Carthew had been spending the
+afternoon; and the three, united for the moment by the bond of
+common-sense, if nothing else, dropped down the shaft with all speed.
+Fortunately the man in charge of the winding-engine was still at his
+post, and of an amenable disposition.
+
+Arrived at the pit bottom, they hurried along the main road. The
+atmosphere was foul and close, for the ventilating machinery had
+ceased to work. There was a high percentage of fire-damp, too, as
+constant little explosions in their Davy lamps informed them.
+
+Presently they overtook the enemy, who had done a good deal of
+mischief already; for they had set to work in the long tunnel known as
+the intake, down which fresh air was accustomed to flow to the distant
+workings; and at every blow of their picks, a pit-prop fell from its
+position and an overhead beam followed, bringing down with it a
+mingled shower of stone and rubbish.
+
+There was no time to be lost, for the whole roof might fall at any
+moment. It was three against five; but authority is a great asset and
+conscience a great liability. By adopting a "hustling" policy of the
+most thorough description, Carthew, Entwistle, and Wilkie hounded
+their slightly demoralised opponents along the intake towards the
+face, intending to round up the gang in one of the passages leading
+back to the main road, and, having pursued the policy of peaceful
+dissuasion to its utmost limits, conduct their converts back to the
+shaft.
+
+The tide of battle rolled out of the intake into the cavern formed by
+the face and its approaches. Master Hopper was the first to arrive,
+the toe of Mr Entwistle's boot making a good second.
+
+"Now, you men," said Carthew, addressing the sullen, panting figures
+which crouched before him--the roof here was barely five feet above
+the floor--"we have had enough of this. Get out into the main road and
+back to the shaft. You are coming up topside of this pit with
+us--that's flat!"
+
+But his opponents were greater strategists than he supposed.
+
+"Keep them there, chaps!" cried a voice already far down one of the
+passages.
+
+"Catch that man!" cried Carthew. "Let me go!"
+
+Shaking off Atkinson, who in obedience to orders had made a
+half-hearted grab at him, he darted down the nearest passage. It led
+to the main road, but across the mouth hung a wet brattice-cloth.
+Delayed a moment, he hurried on towards the junction with the main
+road, just in time to descry two twinkling Davy lamps disappearing
+round the distant corner. They belonged to Davies and Renwick, the
+ringleaders of the gang. What their object might be he could not for
+the moment divine, but he could hear their voices re-echoing down the
+silent tunnel. Evidently they were making for the main road, perhaps
+to raid the engine-room or call up reserves. He must keep them in
+sight. Laboriously he hastened along the rough and narrow track.
+
+Suddenly, far ahead in the darkness, he heard a crash, followed by a
+frightened shriek. Next moment there was a roar, which almost broke
+the drums of his ears, and the whole pit seemed to plunge and stagger.
+His lamp went out, and he lay upon the floor in the darkness--darkness
+that could be felt--waiting for the roof to fall in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Renwick and Davies, it was discovered long afterwards, had reached the
+main road, running rapidly. Here one of them must have tripped over
+the slack-lying wire cable which drew the little tubs of coal up the
+incline from the lyes to the foot of the shaft. Two seconds later a
+tiny puddle of flaming oil from a broken lamp (which for once in a way
+had not been extinguished by its fall) had supplied the necessary
+ignition to the accumulated fire-damp and coal-dust of the
+unventilated pit. There was one tremendous explosion. Down came the
+roof of the main road for a distance of over half a mile, burying the
+authors of the catastrophe, Samson-like, in their own handiwork.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The survivors were sitting in the _cul-de-sac_ formed by the face of
+the coal and its approaches, three-quarters of a mile from the shaft.
+No one had been injured by the explosion, though Carthew, being
+nearest, had lain half-stunned for a few minutes. Possibly the
+brattice-cloths hung at intervals across the ways to direct the
+air-currents had been instrumental in blanketing its force.
+
+The party had just returned from an investigation of the possibilities
+of escape.
+
+"Will you report, Mr Entwistle?" said Carthew, who found that the
+surviving mutineers appeared to regard him as the supreme head of the
+present enterprise and Entwistle as his chief adviser.
+
+Amos Entwistle complied.
+
+There were two ways, he explained in his broad north-country dialect,
+by which Number Three could be reached from the shaft. One was the
+intake, along which fresh air was conducted to the workings, and the
+other was the main road, which could be reached through any of the
+passages leading away from the face. The explosion in the main road
+had brought down the roof for a distance which might be almost
+anything. The intake was blocked too. It was some way from the scene
+of the explosion, but the props were gone, and the roof had come down
+from end to end, for all he knew.
+
+"Is there no other way out?" said Carthew.
+
+"None, sir."
+
+Carthew indicated the row of openings beside them.
+
+"Don't any of these lead anywhere?"
+
+"They all lead to the main road, except that one at the end, which
+leads to the intake. We have plenty of room to move about, and plenty
+of air; but we are shut in, and that's a fact, sir."
+
+"Is that your opinion too, Mr Wilkie?"
+
+"We canna get gettin' oot o' this, sir," replied the oracle with
+complacent finality.
+
+There was a deathlike silence. Then Master Hopper began to cry softly.
+He was going to die, he reflected between his sobs, and he was very
+young to do so. It was hard luck his being there at all. He had only
+joined the riot from youthful exuberance and a desire to be "in the
+hearse," as an old Scottish lady once bitterly observed of a too
+pushful mourner at her husband's funeral. He entertained no personal
+animosity against the owner of the pit: in fact he had never set eyes
+on him. His desire had merely been to see the fun. Well, he was seeing
+it. He wept afresh.
+
+Atkinson and Denton sat and gazed helplessly at Carthew. The part they
+had played in sealing up six souls in the bowels of the earth had
+faded from their minds: to be just, it had faded from the minds of
+their companions as well. The past lay buried with Renwick and Davies.
+The future occupied their entire attention.
+
+There was another danger to be considered--the suffocating after-damp
+of the explosion. Carthew inquired about this. Entwistle considered
+that the risk was comparatively slight.
+
+"The cloths hung across the approaches to the main road should keep it
+away," he said. "It's a heavy gas, and don't move about much, like. We
+shall be able to tell by the lamps, anyway."
+
+"Then what had we better do?" said Carthew briskly. "Dig?"
+
+One of the men--Atkinson--lifted his head from his hands.
+
+"Ah were saaved by t' Salvationists once," he said hoarsely. "Ah could
+put up a prayer."
+
+"I think we will try the effect of a little spade-work first," said
+Carthew. "_Laborare est orare_, just now!" he added to himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few hours later they re-assembled. They had tapped, sounded, hewed,
+and shovelled at every potential avenue of escape, but to no purpose.
+The intake and main road appeared to be blocked from end to end. Six
+men were mewed up with no food, a very little water, twenty-four
+hours' light, and a limited quantity of oxygen; and they had no means
+of knowing how near or how far away help might be.
+
+All they were certain of was that on the other side of the barrier
+which shut them in men were working furiously to reach them in time,
+and that up above women were praying to God that He would deliver
+them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY.
+
+BLACK SUNDAY.
+
+
+The search party had concluded its investigations, and stood at the
+foot of the shaft, which fortunately had not been injured by the
+distant explosion, waiting for the cage.
+
+A pit-bottom is an unexpectedly spacious place, more resembling the
+cellars of a ducal mansion, or a city station in the days of the old
+under-ground, than a burrow in the hidden places of the earth.
+Whitewashed brick archways open up long vistas, illuminated by
+electric lamps. Through an adjacent doorway streams the cheerful glow
+of the engine-room, from which the haulage of the trucks is
+controlled. Only in the "sump," below the level of the flooring at the
+foot of the shaft, the water gleams black and dismally.
+
+"Is there any other road to explore, Mr Walker?" asked a huge man in
+blue overalls, with a patent breathing apparatus strapped upon his
+back.
+
+"No, Sir John. All we can do at present is to get the ventilating gear
+going again, and then send down a double shift to get to work on the
+main road, in the hope of finding some one alive at the end of it.
+Meanwhile we will go up and look at the pit-plan."
+
+"How long do you think it will take to get through? You know more of
+the geography of this pit than I do."
+
+"It depends on how far the roof is down. It will be slow work, for we
+must re-prop as we go. Twenty yards an hour is about the best we can
+expect to do, working top-notch all the time. And if the road is
+blocked from end to end, as well it may be, it will be a question of
+days, Sir John."
+
+"And in Number Three they have neither food nor drink?"
+
+"Neither, to our knowledge. Probably they have a little water, though.
+We must get at them double quick. Here is the cage coming down."
+
+The cage roared upwards between the wooden guides, black with long use
+and glistening with oil and water; and presently the party were back
+in the great shed which covered the pit-head, pushing their way
+through anxious inquirers to the office buildings.
+
+Leaving the other members of the search party--an overman and two
+hewers--to report progress, Sir John and his manager shut themselves
+into the inner office. Here Walker unrolled the pit-plan, which, with
+its blocks and junctions and crossings, looked very like an ordinary
+street map.
+
+"Here we are," he said. "We have been able to explore the whole pit
+except this part here"--he dug the point of his pencil into a distant
+corner--"and the reason is that the means of access to that particular
+level are blocked. Here is where the block begins." The pencil swiftly
+shaded in a section. "There is the intake, all blown to smithereens;
+that and the road to Number Three. But if there are men alive in the
+pit, Number Three is where we shall find them."
+
+"Do you believe that they are alive?" asked Juggernaut.
+
+"I do. It seems incredible that the whole roof should have come down.
+We must get the ventilating plant in order and dig them out; that's
+the only way. We should be able to start work immediately."
+
+"Right!" said Juggernaut, bracing himself at the blessed thought of
+action once more. "I'll call for volunteers."
+
+A minute later, appearing at a brilliantly lit window, he addressed
+the silent throng below him. To most of them this was the second
+speech that they had received from him in twelve hours.
+
+"We have been down the pit," he said. "There has been a biggish
+explosion, and Number Three is cut off by a heavy fall. The air below
+will be breathable in less than an hour, and we are going to set to
+work right away, and clear, and clear, and clear until we find out
+whether there is any one left alive there. Now,"--his voice rang out
+in sudden and irresistible appeal--"we want _men_, and plenty of them.
+Short shifts and high pressure! Those poor fellows have very little
+water, no food, and a doubtful air supply. I ask for volunteers. Who
+will come down? Step forward--now!"
+
+A gentle ripple passed over the sea of upturned faces. Then it died
+away. The distance between the speaker and his entire audience had
+diminished by one pace.
+
+"Thank you!" said Juggernaut simply. "I knew I had only to ask. Mr
+Walker, will you call the overmen together and get going as soon as
+possible?"
+
+A few hours earlier the men of Belton had failed in an enterprise for
+lack of a leader. Now they had found one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir John Carr drove the first shovel into the mass which blocked the
+main road, and for the space of thirty minutes he set a standard of
+pace in the work of rescue which younger and more supple successors
+found it hard to maintain.
+
+Shift followed shift.
+
+Sunday morning dawned up above, and the sun swung into a cloudless
+April sky, but still the work below went on--grim, untiring,
+unprofitable work. Hope deferred succeeded to hope deferred.
+
+Twenty-four hours of blind energy advanced the rescuers three or four
+hundred yards, but there seemed to be no end to the fall. Progress was
+growing slower too, for the excavated material had to be carried back
+farther every time. Once during the second night word was sent up the
+shaft that two men had been hurt through a fresh fall in the roof,
+over-eagerness being the cause. Still the work went on. And so Black
+Sunday drew to a close, to be succeeded by a Monday of a very similar
+hue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
+
+VEILLESSE SAIT.
+
+
+Lady Carr was at the pit-head early on Monday morning. She had arrived
+in the Belton motor, just in time to provide for the conveyance of the
+two injured men to the county hospital, eleven miles away. She herself
+passed quietly in and out amid the anxious groups of men and women.
+She said little: it was not a time for words; but it was noted that
+she lingered for more than a few minutes in the company of Master
+Hopper's mother, and that her grave, slow smile appeared to hearten
+that broken widow mightily.
+
+Presently she encountered her husband, whom she had not seen for two
+nights and a day.
+
+"You here?" he said.
+
+"Yes. I have sent those two poor men away to Kilchester in the car,
+and I am waiting for it to come back." Then a note of maternal
+severity intervened. "Have you been to bed at all since I last saw
+you?"
+
+"Not much," admitted Juggernaut. "But I have a vague recollection of
+lying down somewhere for a few hours last night. It may have been on
+the office sofa or it may have been in the sump. What I am more
+certain of is that I have not washed for days. I feel like Othello.
+But what has brought you down to the pit?"
+
+"I thought you would like to know," said Daphne, "that this affair is
+in the morning papers."
+
+Othello looked, if possible, blacker than before.
+
+"Have they got the names?"
+
+"Yes, Jim Carthew's too. And what do you think the result has been,
+Jack? I have had a wire from--from--" for a moment Daphne's concern
+for the tragedy around her was swallowed up in the joy of the
+match-making sex over one sinner that repenteth--"whom do you think?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Daphne told him. "It was the first thing she heard when she landed in
+England. She is _frantic_ about him, and is coming down here to-day.
+She has offered to sleep anywhere, do anything, if only she may come.
+Jack, isn't it too heavenly?" Daphne positively crowed.
+
+Juggernaut's teeth flashed across his grimy countenance in a
+sympathetic smile.
+
+"You women!" he said softly. "We must fish him out for her after this,
+Daphne. Well, Mrs Entwistle?"
+
+A middle-aged woman with hungry eyes was at his elbow. She was Amos
+Entwistle's wife.
+
+"Would you come and speak to old Mr Entwistle, sir?" she said--"my
+man's father. He is too rheumatic to move about easy, but he seems to
+have something on his mind about another way of getting at them."
+
+Sir John Carr turned and followed her promptly.
+
+"Shall I come too, dear?" said Daphne.
+
+"Better not. Go and send Walker to me if you can find him."
+
+Mrs Entwistle conducted Juggernaut to a sunny nook, sheltered from the
+keen breeze, against the brickwork of the power-house. Here sat
+Entwistle senior, stone-deaf, almost blind, but with his
+eighty-year-old wits still bright and birdlike.
+
+He was no respecter of titles or employers, this old gentleman, and in
+high-pitched, senile tones he criticised the arrangements for rescue.
+The excavatory operations were a mistake. Time was being wasted. The
+poor lads inside had nobbut a little water to drink and nowt to eat.
+The air would be getting foul, too.
+
+"You must get there _quick_, Sir John," he said, rising painfully from
+his seat. "See now."
+
+He began to hobble laboriously away from the vicinity of the pit-head
+towards the rather grimy fields which lay to the north of the
+colliery. By this time Walker had arrived, bringing with him a burly,
+bearded pit-inspector, sent down by the Board of Trade.
+
+Twenty minutes' laborious walking ended in a halt in the middle of a
+bleak pasture-field, from which a few unconcerned sheep were
+extracting some exceedingly dubious-looking nourishment. Mr Entwistle
+called a halt.
+
+"Been thinking things over," said he, breathing stertorously. "Known
+this country-side, above and below, nigh seventy year. The lads, they
+go buzzing round the pit-head, but the old man"--as a matter of fact
+he said "t'owd mon," but it will be simpler to paraphrase his
+utterance--"sits at home and thinks things over. They has to come to
+him in the end!"
+
+All this was highly irrelevant and proportionately exasperating; but
+old age has its privileges. Doubtless Agamemnon, Menelaus, and other
+eager stalwarts longed with all their hearts to tear Nestor limb from
+limb, what time that venerable bore delivered himself of fifty lines
+of autobiographical hexameters as a preliminary to coming to the
+point; yet they never did. Presently Mr Entwistle concluded his
+exordium and tapped upon the ground with his staff.
+
+"We are standing," he announced, "right over the road to Number Three.
+Two hundred fathom down," he added, in case they should have
+overlooked this point.
+
+This, at anyrate, was a statement of fact. Walker produced and
+consulted the pit-plan. "You are about right," he said. "Well?"
+
+"How far along this road is the face?" inquired the old gentleman.
+"It's a tidy number of years since I----"
+
+Walker told him, with the result that the excursion was resumed.
+Presently Mr Entwistle came to a halt again.
+
+"We're over Number Three now," he said.
+
+Walker again confirmed him, with the aid of a compass-bearing and the
+pit-plan.
+
+"Well?" he said.
+
+The old man pointed with his stick to some dismantled and abandoned
+pit buildings farther down the valley, a full mile away.
+
+"The old Shawcliffe Pit," he croaked. "Worked out this forty year. But
+I knowed it well when I were a lad."
+
+Juggernaut, suddenly seeing light, caught the old man by the arm.
+
+"You mean," said he rapidly, "that the Shawcliffe workings run up this
+way----"
+
+"No, no," said Walker, interrupting. "You are wrong, Mr Entwistle. The
+Shawcliffe workings all run down the other way, to the north."
+
+"Nay," persisted the old gentleman--"not all. They thowt there were a
+seam this way, and they drove one road out here, if so be they might
+pick it up. They had got signs of it, boring. But it were a faulty
+seam. It weren't until Belton Pit were opened, thirty years later,
+that they struck it fair."
+
+"And that road runs out this way, from Shawcliffe shaft?" asked the
+Inspector.
+
+"Ay, and it must come very nigh to the Belton Workings now--nigh to
+Number Three. I reckon----"
+
+"He is right!" said Walker excitedly. "It's a chance! I _have_ heard
+of this road, now I think of it." He turned to Entwistle again. "How
+far out do you think it runs? Quick, man--tell us!"
+
+For answer the veteran, much inflated, stumped off again in a
+northerly direction, with all the assurance of a water-diviner in full
+cry. After fifty yards or so he stopped.
+
+"I should say it ended about here," he said. "You can trust the old
+man's memory. The youngsters----"
+
+Another lengthy deliverance was plainly threatened, but this time our
+Nestor observed, not without justifiable chagrin, that the majority of
+his audience had disappeared. The symposium was suddenly reduced to
+himself and his daughter-in-law.
+
+Testily curtailing his peroration, to the exclusion of severable
+valuable aphorisms upon the advantages of senile decay over youthful
+immaturity, the old gentleman resignedly took the arm of Mrs Amos, and
+permitted himself to be conducted back to his fireside.
+
+But he had served his turn for all that.
+
+The other three were hurrying back to Belton Pit talking eagerly,
+Juggernaut leading by half a pace.
+
+"It's madness, of course," said Walker cheerfully. "This pit has been
+closed for forty years. The props will be down----"
+
+"The air will be foul," said the Inspector thoughtfully.
+
+"Or explosive," added Walker.
+
+"And there will probably be water," continued both together.
+
+"Is the shaft still open?" asked Juggernaut brusquely.
+
+"I believe so," said Walker.
+
+"I suppose it would be possible to rig a derrick and tackle over it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+They strode on a dozen paces.
+
+"I am going down," said Juggernaut.
+
+"I am going with you," said Walker.
+
+"And I," said the Inspector, "am coming too."
+
+They broke into a trot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.
+
+HOLD THE FORT!
+
+
+The safety-lamps had burned themselves out hours ago, and the
+imprisoned party sat on in the dark. There was nothing else to do.
+Food they had none: their water was exhausted. They slept fitfully,
+but in the black darkness sleep seemed little removed from death, and
+time from eternity.
+
+Jim Carthew lay with his head upon a friendly lump of coal, pondering
+with his accustomed detachment upon the sundry and manifold changes of
+this world. He thought of Death. Plainly he and his companions were
+about to solve the mystery of what lay hidden round that corner which
+our omniscience is pleased to consider the end of all things. What
+would they find there? Another life--a vista more glorious and sublime
+than man in his present state could conceive? Or just another long
+lane--just another highway of labour and love, of service and reward?
+Or--a _cul-de-sac_--an abyss--a jumping-off place? He wondered. Not
+the last alternative, he thought: more likely one of the other two.
+Anyhow, he would know soon, and it would be interesting. His one
+regret was that he would not be able to come back, even for five
+minutes, to tell his friends about it.
+
+Friends!...
+
+This brought a new train of reflection. He thought of Jack Carr and
+Jack Carr's wife. Would the latter keep her promise, and come back to
+her husband? He wondered. She should be in Belton this week, all being
+well--that is, if this was the week he thought it was. But time seemed
+rather a jumbled affair at present. Besides, he was so infernally
+hungry that he could not reason things out. Never mind!...
+
+He thought of Nina Tallentyre. _That_ difficulty had solved itself,
+anyhow. No need for further hopings or strivings: that was a relief!
+When their rupture occurred he had prayed to be excused from living
+further. He had even petitioned that the earth might open and swallow
+him up for ever. Well, the earth had done so, so he ought to be
+satisfied. He was gone down into silence, and Nina was rid of
+him--well rid of him! He was well rid of her, too. She had led him a
+dog's life the last few months. A _dog's_ life. He repeated the fact
+to himself pertinaciously, but without any great feeling either of
+conviction or resentment.
+
+He felt strangely contented and cheerful. His mind dwelt with
+persistence on the bright side of things. He thought of the day when
+she and he had first met, and Nina, in her superb, imperious manner,
+had desired him to take her out of "this rabble," and come and amuse
+her in a corner. He remembered subsequent meetings; various gracious
+acts of condescension on Nina's part; and finally one special evening
+on board a yacht in regatta-time, when they had sat together in a
+corner of the upper deck in the lee of the chart-house, with a
+perfectly preposterous moon egging them on, and the faint strains of
+_Caressante_ pulsing across the silent water from the Commodore's
+yacht hard by; and Nina had nearly--almost--all-but--and then
+actually--capitulated.
+
+She had gone back on her word three weeks later, it was true; but he
+drew consolation even now from the memory of something which had
+slipped through her long lashes and rolled down her cheek even as she
+dismissed him, a memory which had carried through many a black hour.
+
+It was over episodes like this that his mind lingered. Other and less
+satisfactory items declined to come up for review. Perhaps, he
+reflected, dying men, provided they had lived clean and run straight,
+were always accorded this privilege. Only the credit side of the
+ledger accompanied them on their journey into the unknown. It was a
+comforting thought.
+
+... He wondered what she would think when she heard about it. In a
+blue envelope at the bottom of his private strong-box they would find
+his will, a primitive document composed in secrecy, and endorsed: "To
+be opened when I have gone out for good." In this he had bequeathed
+all he possessed to "my friend Miss Nina Tallentyre," be she maid,
+wife, or widow at the moment. Carthew was not a man who loved by
+halves. All that he had was hers, whether she needed it or not. Of
+course she must not be made conspicuous in the matter; he had seen to
+that. The bequest was to be quite quiet and unostentatious. No
+probate, or notices in the papers, or rot of that kind. In the blue
+envelope was enclosed a private letter to his lawyers, dwelling on the
+importance of this point. They were decent old buffers, that firm, and
+would understand. They would square up any death-duties and other
+legal fakements that were necessary, and then pass on the balance to
+little Nina, to buy herself pretty things with. But no publicity! No
+embarrassment!
+
+... He fell asleep, and dreamed, from the natural perversity of
+things, of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
+
+When he awoke, low voices were conversing near him. Farther away he
+could hear the regular breathing of Master Hopper, who, with youth's
+ready amenability to Nature's own anodynes, was slumbering peacefully.
+
+"I can weel understand, Mr Entwistle," observed Mr Wilkie in measured
+tones, "that no decent body would like to be seen entering yin o' they
+Episcopalian Kirks."
+
+Amos Entwistle's heavy voice agreed. He commented with heat upon
+indulgence in vain repetitions and other heathen practices favoured by
+the Anglican community; and related with grim relish an anecdote of
+how his own daughter, lured from the Wesleyan fold by the external
+fascinations of the new curate, had once privily attended morning
+service at the parish church--to return, shocked to the foundations of
+her being, with horrific tales of candles burning on the altar in
+broad daylight and the Lord's Prayer repeated four times in the course
+of a single service.
+
+"But what I couldna thole," continued Mr Wilkie, who had been
+characteristically pursuing his own line of thought in the meantime,
+"would be no tae belong tae the kirk of the _land_. A Chapel body! I
+could never endure the disgrace of it."
+
+Entwistle demurred vigorously. It was no disgrace to be Chapel folks.
+Sturdy Independents were proud to be able to dispense with
+State-aided, spoon-fed religion. Disgrace, indeed! Were not Mr
+Wilkie's qualms on the subject of Dissent due rather to a hankering
+after the flesh-pots--the loaves and fishes--the----
+
+"Well, perhaps no exactly a disgrace," continued Mr Wilkie,
+disregarding the latter innuendo, "but a kin' o' stigma, like. Man,
+it's an awful thing tae walk doon the street and meet the minister o'
+the pairish, and him pass by and tak' no more notice of ye than if ye
+were a Plymouth Brother or an Original Secessionist. I mind yince when
+I was in a Tynside pit, I sat under Mr Maconochie--him that gave up a
+grand kirk in Paisley tae tak a call tae oor wee bit Presbyterian
+contraption, Jarrow way. Now, although Mr Maconochie's kirk was my
+kirk and him oor minister, I used tae feel far more uplifted if I got
+a good-day frae the minister o' the English Kirk--Golightly, or some
+sic' name--an _Episcopalian_! I canna imagine why, but there it was. I
+doot it was just orthodoxy. He was the minister o' the kirk o' the
+land, and Mr Maconochie, being, for him, on the wrong side of the
+Border, was not. Gin I had met yon felly Golightly trapesing doon the
+High Street o' Jedburgh, things would hae been gey different; for
+then----"
+
+The point at issue, Entwistle's deep patient voice asseverated, was
+this. Should a man who was an Independent allow himself or his bairns
+to have aught to do with Church folk on any pretence whatever?
+
+He was answered in the darkness by a third voice. Denton, the
+hewer--Atkinson, the retired Salvationist, shovelled and wheeled away
+in a tub what Denton hewed--had awoken from an uneasy sleep, and was
+listening to the conversation. Of all that little band, probably he
+was the least prepared to die. He was a drunkard, a blasphemer, and an
+evil liver. But like the rest of us, he had his redeeming features. He
+had inspired and kept alive for a period of ten years the love of his
+wife--a feat which many an ex-sidesman, buried beneath a mountain of
+expensive masonry adorned by an epitaph beginning, "Well done, good
+and faithful servant!" has signally failed to accomplish. He sat up
+now.
+
+"Ah niver 'ad nowt to do wi' churches or chapels," he began defiantly.
+"But ah knaws this. When my Maggie were lyin' badly four years agone,
+and us thought she was goin' to die, she asked me to go and fetch her
+pastor--that's what she called him. Ah ran along to his house and
+begged him to come. He said"--the man's voice grew thick, and one
+could almost see his sombre eyes glow in the gross darkness--"he said
+he were busy! There was a swarry that neet that 'twas his duty to
+attend, and next day he was goin' off to a political meeting to
+protest against t' Education Bill, or summat. He said, too, that he
+had enough to do ministerin' to the wants o' them that deserved
+ministerin' to, wi'out comin' to the house o' the likes o' me. When
+had he last seen me in t' chapel, he would like to knaw? Yes, _that_
+was what he wanted to knaw! He wanted to stand and ask me questions
+like that when my Maggie----!... Ah cursed him, and his chapel, and
+his fat-bellied deacons till Ah were out o' puff with it: then Ah went
+off down the street half-crazed. There Ah runs straight into a young
+feller wi' a soft black hat and long legs. He was standing outside t'
+door of his lodgings, smoking a pipe in the dark. He was t' curate at
+t' parish church, and when he saw I wasn't in liquor, he asked me what
+was my trouble. I telled him. 'Is that all?' says he. 'Will I do? I've
+just come off my day's work, and I ain't got nothing to do but amuse
+myself now.' It were nigh ten o'clock. Well, he comes with me, and he
+sat by my Maggie all the neet through, and sent me with a note to a
+doctor that were a friend of his, and only went away himsel' at seven
+o'clock next morning, because he had to get shaved and take early
+service or summat. _That's_ all your chapel folk ever done for me,
+Amos Entwistle."
+
+"That was a special case, and proves no rules. Besides," said
+Entwistle soberly, "this is no time for religious differences. We are
+in God's hands now, and I doubt we shall all be in a place soon where
+there is neither Church nor Chapel."
+
+"Would it no be best for us all tae keep silence for a matter o' ten
+minutes," suggested Wilkie, "and pit up a bit prayer each of his ain,
+we bein' no all of the same way of thinkin' in these matters? That
+gate, wi' so many prayers o' different denominations goin' up, yin at
+least should get gettin' through the roof of the pit. Are ye agreed,
+chaps?"
+
+"Ay, ay!" said Entwistle.
+
+The others all murmured assent, save Master Hopper, who shrieked out
+in sudden fear. The proximity of death had become instantly and
+dreadfully apparent to him on Mr Wilkie's suggestion. Carthew reached
+out and pulled him to his side.
+
+"Come over here, by me," he said.
+
+Master Hopper, greatly soothed, crept close, and settled down
+contentedly enough with an arm round Carthew's shoulders. Presently
+Carthew heard him repeating The Lord's Prayer to himself in a low and
+respectful whisper.
+
+The silence lasted longer than ten minutes. For one thing, the
+supplicants were exhausted in body, soul, and spirit, and their
+orisons came slowly. For another, there was no need to hurry. For
+nearly an hour no one spoke.
+
+At length some one sat up in the darkness, and the voice of Atkinson
+inquired--
+
+"Mr Carthew, sir, I think a song of praise would hearten us all."
+
+"I believe it would," said Carthew. He was not enamoured of the
+corybantic hymnology of the Salvation Army, but the horror of black
+darkness was beginning to eat into his soul, and he knew that the
+others were probably in a worse plight. "What shall we sing?"
+
+"At the meeting where I were saved," said Atkinson deferentially, "we
+concluded worship by singing a hymn I have never forgotten since:
+_Hold the Fort!_"
+
+"That sounds a good one," said Carthew, struggling with an
+unreasonable sensation of being in the chair at a smoking-concert.
+"Does any one else here know _Hold the Fort!_?"
+
+Yes, Entwistle knew it. Master Hopper had heard it. Mr Wilkie had not.
+He did not hold with hymns: even paraphrases were not, in his opinion,
+altogether free from the taint of Popery. If it had been one of the
+Psalms of David, now! Still, he would join. Denton knew no hymns, but
+was willing to be instructed in this one.
+
+Atkinson, trembling with gratification, slowly rehearsed the words,
+the others repeating them after him.
+
+"We will sing it now," he said.
+
+He raised the tune in a clear tenor. Most north-countrymen are
+musicians by instinct. In a few moments this grim prison was flooded
+by a wave of sonorous melody. The simple, vulgar, taking tune swelled
+up; the brave homely words rang out, putting new heart into every one.
+Each and all joyfully realised that there are worse ways of going to
+one's death than singing a battle-song composed by Moody and Sankey.
+With drawn white faces upturned to the heaven they could not see they
+sang on, flinging glorious defiance into the very teeth of
+Death--gentleman and pitman, Church and Chapel, zealot and infidel.
+
+"Last verse again!" commanded Atkinson.
+
+"Wait a moment!" cried Entwistle, starting up.
+
+But no one heard him. The chorus was rolling out once more--
+
+"_Hold the Fort, for I am coming_----"
+
+Tap, tap, tap! Scrape, scrape, scrape! Hammer, hammer, hammer!
+
+The hymn paused, wavered, and stopped dead on the final shout.
+
+"By God!" screamed a voice--it was Denton's--"here they are!"
+
+Carthew, with Hopper's arms tightening convulsively round him, started
+up.
+
+"Is it true?" he asked hoarsely.
+
+"Ay! Listen! They have found us. They are within a few yards of us,"
+said Entwistle.
+
+"_Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!_" sang Atkinson suddenly
+and exultantly, and the others joined him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Entwistle was right. They were found. Reasoned calculation, dogged
+persistence, and blind indifference to their own safety had brought
+the search party triumphantly along the mouldering rickety passages of
+Shawcliffe Pit to the nearest point of contact with Number Three in
+Belton; and _Hold the Fort!_ proceeding from a subterranean cave of
+harmony not many yards away, had done the rest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.
+
+THE LAST TO LEAVE.
+
+
+It was night once more, and the great arc lights snapped and sizzled
+above the waste-heaps and truck-lines surrounding the head of Belton
+Pit. But the scene was deserted. The centre of interest had shifted to
+Shawcliffe, a mile away. Here a vast silent throng of human beings
+stood expectantly in groups, their faces illuminated by the naphtha
+flares which had been erected here and there about the long-abandoned
+pithead.
+
+There was news--tense, thrilling news--and the prospect of more. The
+ancient shaft had been opened and a bucket and tackle rigged--there
+was no time to ship a cage--and a search party had gone down at dusk.
+Word had shortly been sent up that the road to the south was still
+open, though the air was foul and the props rickety. Then came a
+frantic tug at the rope, and a messenger was hauled to the surface,
+crying aloud that men were alive in Belton Pit. It was hoped, he
+added, that the search party would reach them by midnight, for the
+dividing wall was surprisingly thin. Sir John Carr's order was that
+blankets and stretchers should be prepared; also food and medical
+comforts, for the prisoners had fasted for something like sixty hours.
+With that the messenger had dived below once more, and the game of
+patience was resumed.
+
+It was past midnight now, and everything was in readiness. On the
+outskirts of the throng, at the side of the rough and lumpy road,
+stood a motor-car with two occupants--women. One of them was her
+ladyship; the other the spectators failed to recognise. But there were
+rumours about to the effect that she was a visitor to Belton recently
+arrived from London. Lady Carr had been seen meeting her at the
+station that afternoon.
+
+The stranger's name, had it been told, would not have conveyed much
+information to the watchers. It was Nina Tallentyre.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a sudden swirl and heave in the crowd. The hand-turned
+windlass was at work again, and some one was being hauled slowly up
+the shaft. It was Mr Walker, the manager.
+
+They made a lane for him, until he reached a convenient rostrum formed
+by an inverted and rusty truck. This he mounted and very briefly told
+them the news--news which made them laugh foolishly and sob by turns.
+There was no cheering: they were past that.
+
+In the excitement the next man who followed him up the shaft passed
+unnoticed. It was Sir John Carr. He saw the hooded motor standing
+apart, Mr Vick sitting motionless at the wheel. Next moment he was in
+beside the two women, overalls and all, holding Daphne's hands in a
+single grimy fist and telling them what we know already.
+
+"Is he _perfectly_ safe?" asked Nina for the tenth time. She did not
+possess Daphne's aristocratic composure under critical circumstances.
+
+"Yes--but very weak. I am sending him up second. The first is a
+pit-boy. When Carthew arrives you had better put him in the motor and
+take him straight home."
+
+"Jack!" said Daphne.
+
+She slipped out of the car and accompanied her husband into the
+darkness outside the radius of flaring lights.
+
+"Are you going down again?" she asked.
+
+"I am."
+
+"And when are you coming up?" The unflinching courage which upholds so
+many women in the face of danger had never failed Daphne during those
+long days and nights. But now the courage was receding with the
+danger.
+
+Juggernaut smiled.
+
+"When would you have me come up?" he asked.
+
+"Last," said Daphne, suddenly proud. "It is the only place for you. I
+will wait here. Nina can take her Jim home, and the car can come back
+later for you and me. Jack!"
+
+Her husband turned and regarded her curiously. Their eyes met.
+
+"Well?" he said.
+
+"Jack," continued Daphne in a low voice, "is there much risk down
+there--for you, I mean?"
+
+"There is always risk, of a sort, down a coal-pit," replied her
+husband pontifically. "A little explosive marsh-gas, or a handful of
+finely divided coal-dust lying in a cranny, might suddenly assert
+itself. Still, there are risks everywhere. One might be struck down by
+apoplexy at a vestry meeting."
+
+Daphne gave his arm a squeeze, an ingratiating childish squeeze,
+suggestive of the Daphne of old negotiating for extension of dress
+allowance.
+
+"Jack, stay up here! You have done enough."
+
+"_Post me, Satanella!_" smiled her husband. Then, more seriously:
+"Daphne, if I came to you and asked for orders _now_, where would you
+send me, I being what I am--the proprietor of the pit--and you being
+what you are--the proprietress of my good name?"
+
+Daphne's fit had passed.
+
+"I should send you," she answered bravely, "down the shaft, with
+orders to stay there until every one else was safely out."
+
+"I obey," said Juggernaut. "_Au revoir!_"
+
+"Jack!" said Daphne faintly. Her face was uplifted.
+
+"It will be a coaly one!" said her husband, complying. Then came an
+accusation.
+
+"Daphne, you are trembling! This is not up to your usual standard."
+
+"I can't help it," said Daphne miserably. "I am a coward. But I don't
+mind," she added more cheerfully, "so long as no one else knows. _You_
+won't give me away!"
+
+At that Juggernaut held her to him a moment longer.
+
+"Daphne, my wife," he whispered suddenly--"thank God for you--at
+last!"
+
+Then they fell apart, and she ran lightly back to the motor and Nina.
+
+Once she turned and looked over her shoulder, waving her hand
+prettily. Her face, framed in a motor bonnet and lit by the glare of a
+naphtha light, looked absurdly round and childish, just as it had done
+upon a dim and distant morning in Snayling Church.
+
+It was the last time in his life that her man was ever to behold it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Master Hopper, partially restored by brandy and meat juice, and
+feeling, on the whole, something of a hero, arrived at the pit-head an
+hour later, there to be claimed by his mother and hustled off, by more
+willing hands than he could comfortably accommodate, home to bed. The
+bucket, which provided standing-room for two passengers, then went
+down again.
+
+This time it brought up Mr Walker, holding a supporting arm round
+Carthew--a sick man indeed. He was less hardened to subterranean
+existence than the rest. Sympathetic murmurs arose. The bucket was
+swung out from beneath the pulley and landed gently on the edge of the
+shaft. Carthew stepped out and stood swaying uncertainly.
+
+A tall girl came suddenly forward.
+
+"Jim, dear!" was all she said.
+
+Carthew surveyed her, and smiled weakly.
+
+"Hallo, Nina! That you?"
+
+Miss Tallentyre took his arm.
+
+"The car is waiting for you," she said. "Lean on me _hard_, old boy!"
+
+And certainly no more desirable prop than this girl, with her splendid
+youth and glorious vitality, was ever offered to a weary mortal.
+Carthew, dazed but utterly content, put a feeble arm round the slim
+shoulders of the woman whose mere hand he had hitherto counted it
+heaven to touch, and the pair passed away together out of the
+crowd--and out of this narrative. Happiness has no history.
+
+Others were coming up the shaft now. First Mr Wilkie, in a very fair
+state of preservation: then Denton, the reprobate, insensible--his
+hands were in tatters, so fiercely had he worked,--then Atkinson,
+still sheer drunk with the success of his own hymnology: then Amos
+Entwistle.
+
+Denton's huge inanimate form was laid on a stretcher, to be carried
+home under the direction of his wife. (The wives of Renwick and Davis,
+poor souls, had gone home long ago.) But, the Belton Hall motor
+returning on that instant, Lady Carr insisted on carrying husband and
+wife home together. The rush through the night air brought Denton
+round, and he was able to walk into his own house, leaning
+undeservedly upon the proudest little woman in the north of England.
+
+Daphne returned to the pit-head for the last time. The rescue work was
+completed. Surely she might claim him now!
+
+No, the block and tackle were not working. No one else was coming up
+at present. Only round the shaft a knot of men conferred eagerly. She
+would wait in the car.
+
+She lay back, wrapped in a rug--a cold dawn was breaking--and closed
+her eyes. The rush and excitement of the three days had told upon
+her. She had no clear recollection of having slept for any length of
+time or eaten at any definite period. She had done work among stricken
+wives and mothers that Belton village would never forget, but she had
+not realised this. All her head and heart were filled by the mighty
+knowledge that after five years of married life she and her husband
+had found one another.
+
+Meanwhile there was silence round the pit-head.
+
+"Vick," said Daphne, suddenly fearful, "go and find Mr Walker, or some
+one, and ask when Sir John will be up."
+
+Mr Vick, who had been dozing comfortably at his wheel, clambered down
+into the muddy road and departed as bidden. Ten minutes later he
+returned falteringly.
+
+"Mr Walker has just gone down the pit again, my lady," he said. "There
+has been a slight explosion of coal-dust, I was to tell you. Nothing
+serious--just a flash and a spit in a holler place in the roof, the
+message said."
+
+"Is Sir John down there?" Cold fear gripped Daphne's heart.
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+"Is he safe, do you know?"
+
+"I couldn't say, my lady," replied Vick doggedly. "I'll inquire."
+
+He turned away, glad to escape, with the brisk demeanour of one
+anxious to investigate matters. But before he reached the pit-head the
+answer to all possible inquiries came to meet him, in the form of a
+slow-moving procession carrying something in its midst.
+
+Very gently the bearers laid the stretcher on the grass by the
+roadside. Daphne, white, silent, but composed, stooped down and turned
+back the blanket which covered her husband's face. He lay very still.
+His head and eyes were roughly bandaged. Daphne whispered, so low that
+none other could hear.
+
+"Jack--my Jack!"
+
+His voice answered hers, from amid the bandages--faint, but
+imperturbable as ever.
+
+"I'm all right, dear. Afraid it has got me in the eyes a bit, though.
+Take me home, wife of mine! You will have to lead me about with a
+string now!"
+
+Daphne's head sank lower still, and she whispered, almost exultantly--
+
+"At last I can really be of some use to you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.
+
+ANOTHER ALIAS.
+
+
+"Brian Vereker Carr," inquires a voice, "what time is it?"
+
+"Half-past four, sir," replies the same voice respectfully. "In twenty
+minutes"--in a more truculent tone--"you will have to go upstairs and
+get ready for tea. You will have to wash your hands--and your face
+too, I expect," adds the voice bitterly.
+
+Thus, at the age of eight, does Master Brian Vereker Carr commune with
+himself--a habit acquired during an infancy spent in a large nursery
+where there was no one else to talk to. The necessity for this form of
+duologue no longer exists, for now a sister shares the nursery with
+him--Brian lives in dread of the day when she shall discover that her
+manly brother not only owned but once rejoiced in the great doll's
+house in the corner by the fireplace--but the habit remains. Besides,
+Miss Carr is only four years old, and gentlemen who have worn
+knickerbockers for years find it difficult to unbend towards their
+extreme juniors to any great extent. Hence Mr Brian still confers
+aloofly with himself, even in the presence of adults. There are
+touches of Uncle Anthony Cuthbert about Brian.
+
+At present he is inadequately filling a large arm-chair in front of
+the library fire at Belton. The fire is the sole illuminant of the
+room. The curtains are closely drawn, for it is a cold winter evening.
+Brian Vereker continues his observations, now approaching an artistic
+climax.
+
+"If you go upstairs promptly _and_ obediently, like a good boy, what
+do you think mother will give you?" inquires voice number one.
+
+"Chocolates!" replies number two, with an inflection of tone which
+implies that it will be playing the game pretty low down if mother
+does not.
+
+The owner of both voices then turns an appealing pair of brown eyes
+upon Daphne, who is sitting on the other side of the fireplace,
+engaged in the task of amusing her four-year-old daughter.
+
+"We'll see," she replies after the immemorial practice of mothers....
+"And suddenly," she continues to the impatient auditor on her lap,
+"his furry skin fell away, and his great teeth disappeared, and he
+stood up there straight and beautiful, in shining armour. He _was_ a
+fairy prince, after all! Brian, dear, tumble out of that arm-chair.
+Here is dad."
+
+Daphne must have quick ears, for a full half-minute elapses before the
+door opens and a figure appears in the dim light at the end of the
+room. Apparently the darkness does not trouble him, for he
+circumnavigates a round table and a revolving bookcase without
+hesitation, and finally drops into the arm-chair recently vacated by
+his son.
+
+"Brian Vereker Carr," inquires a small and respectful voice at his
+elbow, "do you think dad will play with you to-night?"
+
+"I am _sure_ he will," comes a confident reply from the same quarter,
+"if you give him two minutes to light his pipe in, and refrain from
+unseemly demon--demonstrations of affection in the meanwhile."
+
+"It's a hard world for parents," grumbles Juggernaut, getting up.
+"Where is my tobacco-pouch?"
+
+His hand falls upon the corner of the mantelpiece, but encounters
+nothing there but a framed photograph of a sun-burned young man on a
+polo-pony--Uncle Ally, to be precise.
+
+"Now where on _earth_ is that pouch? I know I left it on the left-hand
+end of the mantelpiece after lunch."
+
+There is a shriek of delight at this from Brian, in which Miss Carr
+joins, for the great daily joke of the Carr family is now being
+enacted.
+
+"Where can it be?" wails Juggernaut. "Under the hearthrug, perhaps?
+No, not there! In the blotting-pad? No, not there! _I_ know! I expect
+it is behind the coal-box."
+
+Surprising as it may appear, his surmise proves to be correct; and the
+triumphant discovery of the missing property scores a dramatic success
+which no repetition seems able to stale. (This is about the fiftieth
+night of the run of the piece.)
+
+Presently the pipe is filled and lit, Master Carr being permitted to
+kindle the match and Miss Carr to blow it out, the latter feat only
+being accomplished by much expenditure of breath and a surreptitious
+puff from behind her shoulder, contributed by an agency unknown.
+
+"Now, Brian, young fellow," announces Juggernaut, "I will play for ten
+minutes. Let me speak to the sister first, though."
+
+He lifts his daughter, whom he has never seen, from her mother's knee,
+and exchanges a few whole-hearted confidences with her upon the
+subject of her recreations, conduct, dolls, health, and outlook on
+life in general. Then he restores her, and shouts--
+
+"Come on, Brian Boroo!"
+
+There is a responsive shriek from his son, and the game begins. It is
+not every boy, Master Brian proudly reflects as he crawls on all
+fours beneath a writing-table, who can play at blind man's buff with a
+real blind man!
+
+Daphne leans back in her chair and surveys her male belongings
+restfully. Time was when this husband of hers, at present eluding
+obstacles with uncanny facility and listening intently, with the
+youthful zest of a boy-scout, for the excited breathing of his quarry,
+found life a less hilarious business. There rises before her the
+picture of a man led from room to room, steered round corners, dressed
+like a child, fed like a baby--shattered, groping, gaunt, but
+pathetically and doggedly cheerful. Neither Daphne nor her husband
+ever speak of that time now. Not that she regrets it: woman-like, she
+sometimes feels sorry it is over and gone. She was of real use to her
+man in those days. Now he seems to be growing independent of her
+again. Then she smiles comfortably, for she knows that all fears on
+that score are groundless. He is hers, body and soul. And she----
+
+A small, unclean, and insistent hand is tugging at her skirt, and Miss
+Carr, swaying unsteadily beneath the burden of a bulky and tattered
+volume, claims her attention.
+
+"Show me pictures," she commands.
+
+She and her tome are hoisted up, and the exposition begins.
+
+"Where did you find this book, Beloved?" inquires Daphne. The book is
+an ancient copy of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and we have encountered
+it once before in this narrative.
+
+"Over there," replies Beloved, indicating the bottom shelf of a
+bookcase with a pudgy thumb--"under ze 'Gwaphics.' What's ze name of
+that genelman?"
+
+To Miss Carr distinctions of caste are as yet unknown. In her eyes
+every member of the opposite sex, from the alien who calls on
+Thursdays with a hurdy-gurdy to the knight-in-armour who keeps eternal
+vigil in the outer hall, is a "genelman." Even if you are emitting
+flames from your stomach, as in the present instance, you are not
+debarred from the title.
+
+Daphne surveys the picture in a reminiscent fashion, and her thoughts
+go back to a distant Sunday morning at the Rectory, with her youngest
+brother kneeling on the floor, endeavouring to verify a pictorial
+reference in this very volume.
+
+"What is he doin' to the other genelman?" continues the searcher after
+knowledge upon her knee, in a concerned voice.
+
+"He is trying to hurt him, dear."
+
+"What for?"
+
+So the inexorable, immemorial catechism goes on, to be answered with
+infinite patience and surprising resource. Presently the cycle of
+inquiry completes itself, and the original question crops out once
+more.
+
+"What did you say was ze name of that genelman?" with a puckered,
+frowning effort at remembrance.
+
+"Apollyon, dear."
+
+"Oh." Then the inquirer strikes a fresh note.
+
+"Do you know him?"
+
+"I used to," replies Daphne. "At least," she adds, "I used to know
+some one who I thought was like him. But his name turned out not to be
+Apollyon after all."
+
+"What _was_ his name, then--his pwoper name?" pursues Miss Carr,
+deeply intrigued.
+
+Daphne turns to another illustration, coming much later in the book,
+and surveys it with shining eyes.
+
+"His proper name, Beloved?" she asks.
+
+"Yes. What _was_ it?"
+
+"Mr Greatheart," says Daphne softly.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Blackwood's New Novels.
+
+
+    "The name of BLACKWOOD on a novel is a guarantee of good
+    literature."--_Saturday Review._
+
+
+SECOND LARGE IMPRESSION.
+
+_The Twymans._
+
+By HENRY NEWBOLT,
+
+Author of 'The New June,' 'Admirals All,' 'The Old Country: A
+Romance,' &c.
+
+    "A welcome refreshment to the weary traveller in the arid plains of
+    modern fiction ... a delightful book."--_Spectator._
+
+    "One of the most beautifully written books we have read for many a
+    long day. We congratulate Mr Newbolt. His novel has given us great
+    delight. We urge our readers not to borrow the book--but to buy
+    it."--_Liverpool Courier._
+
+
+THIRD LARGE IMPRESSION.
+
+_A Safety Match._
+
+By IAN HAY,
+
+Author of 'Pip,' 'The Right Stuff,' &c.
+
+    "Mr Hay is a writer of great charm ... this work is peculiarly
+    fascinating."--_Morning Post._
+
+    "'A Safety Match' is immense."--_Sheffield Telegraph._
+
+    Professor SAINTSBURY writes: "Let me congratulate you on 'A Safety
+    Match.' I have read nothing so good for a long time."
+
+
+_The Keepers of the Gate._
+
+By SYDNEY C. GRIER.
+
+    "A sound and skilful piece of work."--_Times._
+
+    "Deservedly popular."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+
+_A King of Vagabonds._
+
+By BETH ELLIS.
+
+    "A story of human people and should be popular."--_Morning Post._
+
+    "Will be widely welcomed."--_Aberdeen Free Press._
+
+    "One is grateful for a story such as this."--_Dundee Advertiser._
+
+    "A good sound historical tale."--_Daily News._
+
+
+_Richard Somers._
+
+By H. GRAHAME RICHARDS.
+
+    "Between these red covers there is that which makes hours spring by
+    like minutes."--_Sheffield Daily Telegraph._
+
+    "There are not many books written nowadays that will keep a tired
+    man up till the small hours of the morning. This is one of
+    them."--_Newcastle Chronicle._
+
+
+_Patches and Pomander._
+
+By ARTHUR BREBNER,
+
+Author of 'John Saint.'
+
+    A novel of the time of the second Charles and the intrigues of the
+    great Lady Castlemaine. The author has skilfully reproduced the
+    atmosphere of the Court--Brocades and Scent and Lace--the "Glimpses
+    of the Moon"--and here once more the attempt to breathe into those
+    painted Dames that look down on us from our galleries the Breath of
+    Life.
+
+    "Picturesque, spirited, vigorous, and romantic, the story has every
+    chance of popularity."--_Scotsman._
+
+
+SECOND IMPRESSION.
+
+_Saints, Sinners, and the Usual People._
+
+By ST JOHN LUCAS.
+
+    "Worth reading again and again."--_Times._
+
+    "An oasis in the desert of print."--_Scotsman._
+
+    "There is such a thing as laughter in the world. There certainly
+    is--even in literature; even too in the art of fiction. It is to be
+    found, for instance, in the work of Mr St John Lucas; laughter not
+    thin and hollow, but sound and deep."--_Observer._
+
+
+_The Joyous Wayfarer._
+
+By HUMFREY JORDAN,
+
+Author of 'My Lady of Intrigue.'
+
+    "The tale is told with infinite spirit, and rivets attention from
+    first to last."--_Scotsman._
+
+    "A charming novel."--_Irish Times._
+
+
+_Spinners in Silence._
+
+By RACHEL SWETE MACNAMARA,
+
+Author of 'The Trance,' 'Seed of Fire,' &c.
+
+    "An ideal love-story."--_Sheffield Daily Telegraph._
+
+    "A fresh and prettily romantic love-story."--_Times._
+
+    "An enchanting story ... we read it with delight and finished it
+    with regret."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+    "A treat to the jaded as well as the eager reader."--_Daily
+    Telegraph._
+
+
+_Troubled Waters._
+
+By L. COPE CORNFORD,
+
+Author of 'Captain Jacobus,' &c.
+
+    "An exceptional book, which has just that touch of vitality which
+    attracts the reader."--_Morning Post._
+
+    "A strong book, entertaining from first to last."--_Daily
+    Telegraph._
+
+    "A masterly piece of work."--_Standard of Empire._
+
+    "Of fresh and remarkable interest."--_British Weekly._
+
+    "A really fine story."--_The World._
+
+
+_The Missing Millionaire._
+
+By CHRISTOPHER WILSON.
+
+    "A good, rattling novel."--_Times._
+
+    "The story arrests and fascinates the reader."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+    "A clever and well-constructed story."--_Scotsman._
+
+
+_The Multiplicities of Una._
+
+By E. DOUGLAS HUME,
+
+Author of 'The Globular Jottings of Griselda.'
+
+    "A bright and fascinating book."--_Sheffield Telegraph._
+
+    "A well-written story, strong and convincing, and will be thoroughly
+    enjoyed."--_Liverpool Post._
+
+
+_His Honour and His Love._
+
+By EDITH SINCLAIR.
+
+    "Penned with a sure and dexterous hand."--_Times._
+
+    "Never loses its fascination."--_The World._
+
+    "A fascinating story."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+
+
+
+JUST PUBLISHED.
+
+
+A NOVEL OF THE COVENANTERS.
+
+THREE SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+_For Kirk and King._ BEING THE MEMOIRS OF JOHN PATERSON OF WHITEFOORD.
+By J. A. MACRAE.
+
+
+ONE SHILLING NET.
+
+_In Highland Harbours with Para Handy_, S.S. _Vital Spark_. By HUGH
+FOULIS, Author of 'Erchie: my Droll Friend,' 'The Vital Spark,' &c.
+In Cloth Boards, with Illustrated Wrapper in Three Colours.
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Word Portraits_: CHARACTER SKETCHES OF FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN. By
+MAXIMILIAN HARDEN. In a Translation from the German by JULIUS GABE.
+Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net.
+
+
+_By Mountain, Lake, and Plain._ BEING SKETCHES OF SPORT IN EASTERN
+PERSIA. By Major R. L. KENNION, Author of 'Sport and Life in the Further
+Himalaya.' Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net. With Coloured Frontispiece and 75
+Illustrations from Photographs by the Author.
+
+
+_Cupid and Cartridges._ By AUBREY O'BRIEN and REGINALD BOLSTER. Demy
+8vo, 10s. net. With Illustrations. Edition for India and the Colonies,
+5s. net.
+
+
+_Letters from India._ By Lady WILSON. Demy 8vo, 7s. 6d. net.
+
+    "It is the most fascinating book written about India since Miss
+    Eden published her famous letters, 'Up Country,' and proved to an
+    incredulous world that India is not hopelessly dull. With the light
+    touch of genius Lady Wilson paints the Indian scenes; she has also
+    the divine gift of sympathy which is not confined to her own race.
+    Humour and pathos lend the same charm to the letters as they do to
+    the letters of Cowper. She has revealed the prose poetry and the
+    tragedy of Anglo-Indian life."--_G. W. Forrest, C.I.E., Author of
+    'The History of the Indian Mutiny._'
+
+
+_Life of Sir Edward FitzGerald Law, K.C.S.I., K.C.M.G._ By Sir THEODORE
+MORISON, K.C.I.E., and GEORGE P. HUTCHINSON. Demy 8vo. With Portraits.
+15s. net.
+
+
+_The Forest Of Wild Thyme._ By ALFRED NOYES, Author of 'Drake: an
+English Epic,' &c., &c. Illustrated by CLAUDE A. SHEPPERSON. An Edition
+de Luxe. Leather, 10s. 6d.; Cloth, 6s. net.
+
+
+_An Ignorant in India._ By R. E. VERNEDE, Author of 'The Fair Dominion.'
+Crown 8vo, 5s. net.
+
+    _CONTENTS._--The First Day in India--A Ride round a Dead Water
+    City--At the Club in the Mofussil--A Camp near the Pelicans--The
+    Collector and the Tiger--Ou-opp Sahib--From a Bengal
+    Verandah--Hamlet at a Bengal Fair--Speech Day in Crocodile
+    Country--The Patwari and the Peacock--A Tramp through the
+    Jungle--The Meet, and the Parting.
+
+    "What's the matter?" I asked; "what does the man want?"
+
+    The ticket-collector gave that pleased and deprecating smirk with
+    which a native called upon to exercise his English usually opens.
+
+    "He want your paper of the luggage," said he.
+
+    "Is that all," I said; "what does he want it for?"
+
+    "He want it," said the Babu, "because he say that your are so
+    iggnorant that perhaps you lose the paper of the luggage. He say
+    you give it to him. He not lose it."
+
+
+_Ships that Pass In the Night._ By BEATRICE HARRADEN. Velvet Pile
+Leather Edition. Illustrated. 5_s_. net.
+
+
+_A Short History Of Scotland._ By ANDREW LANG, Author of 'A History of
+Scotland from the Roman Occupation.' Crown 8vo, 5_s_. net.
+
+    Mr Andrew Lang has never done a more patriotic piece of work or a
+    better service to education than by writing a concise one-volume
+    History of Scotland. Between inadequate primers and the larger
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+    need of a concise history giving the results of the most recent
+    historical scholarship.
+
+
+_The Elements of British Forestry._ A HANDBOOK FOR FOREST APPRENTICES
+AND STUDENTS OF FORESTRY. By JOHN NISBET, D. OE., Professor of Forestry
+at the West of Scotland Agricultural College; Author of 'The Forester,'
+'British Forest Trees,' 'Our Forests and Woodlands,' and other Works.
+Crown 8vo, 5s. 6d. net.
+
+
+_A Philosophical Study of Christian Ethics._ By G. F. BARBOUR, D. PHIL.
+Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net.
+
+
+_Eastern Songs._ By BEN KENDIM. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. With Frontispiece in
+Colours by Lady AILEEN WELLESLEY.
+
+
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+By JOHN G. ROBERTSON, Ph. D., Professor of German in the University of
+London; Author of 'A History of German Literature.' Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
+net.
+
+
+_In Malay Forests._ By GEORGE MAXWELL. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
+net.
+
+
+_Forest Entomology._ By A. T. GILLANDERS, Woods Manager to His Grace the
+Duke of Northumberland, K.G. Second Edition, Revised. Demy 8vo, 15s.
+net. With 351 Illustrations.
+
+
+_Private Letters of the Marquess of Dalhousie._ Edited by J. G. A.
+BAIRD. Popular Edition. With Portraits and Illustrations. Demy 8vo,
+6_s_. net.
+
+    With the exception of the diaries which Lord Dalhousie kept from
+    boyhood, his letters to Sir George Couper contain more of the man
+    himself than all the rest of his papers put together. In them he
+    liberated his mind, vented his wrath, and freely gave his opinions
+    of men and things.
+
+    "A fascinating revelation of the inner life and character of a
+    great Viceroy, the height of whose mental and moral stature was
+    only fully realised long after he had passed away."--_Times._
+
+
+_The Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt._ THE GREATEST OF
+THE PHARAOHS. By ARTHUR E. P. WEIGALL, Author of 'Travels in the Upper
+Egyptian Deserts.' Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net With Illustrations.
+
+    "Mr Weigall has written a remarkable book. Seldom does a reviewer,
+    having read a volume through, at once re-read it because of the
+    pleasure it has given. Yet such was the fact on this occasion. The
+    story of Akhnaton is strengthening and beautiful: it would perhaps
+    be pitiful--it is in some respects so human--if it were not
+    remembered that since it happened ages have drifted by; and,
+    with the intervention of centuries, abolition of sorrow comes.
+    Nevertheless, the spirit of its message lingers; and men will be
+    wise to remember the facts and the moral of the efforts Akhnaton
+    made."--_The Daily Chronicle._
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+1. Hyphenation and spelling have not been changed from the original text.
+
+2. Some punctuation has been left as it appears in the original text.
+For example, Mr appears without a period.
+
+3. A series of 16 words which were hyphenated have been split across
+two lines.
+
+
+
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